Thread: Chavez moves on

ah, the link on page 6.
I just got back from travel and on to the doc tomorrow, I'll comment later.

Originally Posted by Wallace

can you blame Chavez for wanting to protect the interests of his country?

It's more like Iran. Some twat of a leader putting the country back a few hundred years.

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

(sigh) Let me ask you directly then, what do you think about Chavez:

- closing independent media outlets?
- coercing political parties into joining his own?
- changing the constitution so that he can rule unchallenged until 2021?

(Sigh) Chavez is not perfect (sigh)
He seems to model himself on Castro, wanting to be the next indespendable leader.
These are worrysome signals which will cost him international support.

Coming back to the nationalisation strategy: Nationalization is not theft, particularly in those societies where law and precedent has long established the principle that mineral wealth is the property of the State and can be exploited solely with its permission! In fact, as far as Venezuela is concerned, privatization of the oil industry was the historical exception, since original exploitation was through a state company, PDVSA! For years, the large oil corporations did not locate a single refinery on Venezuelan soil but built the facilities in the Netherland Antilles and Trinidad because they could shelter under a different legal system.

In the past, most of the controversies over nationalization and compensation stemmed from the claim of the oil companies that they owned the unextracted petroleum and should be compensated for "lost profits"! The idea that they should only receive compensation in terms of depreciated infrastructure was anathema. However, in Venezuela, all oil exploitation is on the basis of government contract. None of the multinationals concerned own the petroleum in question but are simply venture capitalists in mutual agreements with PDVSA in limited joint ventures in specified areas. Chavez would not be "nationalizing" the oil industry--that event took place long ago--but is engaged in a very calculated game at extracting maximum national profits from foreign capital.

One should also keep in mind the historical context, the legacy of the Spaniards in South-America:
In many instances, entities such as telephone companies and railways (all essentially public services) began their business operations as government concessions; hence from the beginning were participatory ventures between state and capital. Much originates from the traditional Spanish laws of the colonial era as well as strong sympathy with what's called "just price theory".

This morning I read that the Venezuelans are going to vote on whether to give Chavez the power to pass laws by himself. Go, fella, go.

Originally Posted by Wallace

This morning I read that the Venezuelans are going to vote on whether to give Chavez the power to pass laws by himself. Go, fella, go.

Rule by decree passed for Chavez


Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting President Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months.

Mr Chavez said he wants to approve "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December.

The bill allowing him to enact laws by decree is expected to win final approval easily in the assembly next week on its second reading.

BBC News

He's a power mad nutter, no doubt about it. But you'll have to wait a few years before it becomes clear to one and all...

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

They're becoming government ministers, after all. All bizarrely with the blessing and approval of the US Government!

What's so bizarre about this?
"Events in Nepal suggest that the country is taking major strides towards democracy with the Maoists joining other parties in Parliament."

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

So, ironically, here's a super-radical Maoist insurgency, having voluntarily decommisioned their massive arsenal - although they have access to it at any time - now anxious to sell off Nepal's one valuable natural resource to the highest bidder!

What's this got to do with Venezuela???
And it's not selling off any natural resource, but the product of utilising it, i.e. electricity, to neighbouring India.

Hugo Chavez Takes Over




Venezuela set to let Chavez rule by decree for 18 months.

He got important stuff he needs to do like confiscate folks businesses and repealing the presidential term-limits law. See a revolution in the making here?

A statesman who knows how to play the game and gets things done, unlike your pathetic leader Dubya.
Jealous, Boon Mee?

ISLAMOCOMMUNISM Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler Friday, 19 January 2007
This past week, the chief proponent of Jihadi Islam and the use of terror to force people to believe in his religion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, traveled to Latin America to create an alliance with three atheistic Communists: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

This emerging "Marxist-Islamist entente," as it has been described, has caught a lot of folks by surprise. How in the world, they ask, could Chavez toast Ahmadinutjob by hailing him as the leader of "a revolution kindred to the Venezuelan revolution: the Islamic revolution."

What could the imposition of atheistic Marxism upon a society, Chavez's goal, have in common with the imposition of a theocracy? The answer must be, can only be for these puzzled folks, the bond of anti-Americanism.

As an editorial in the conservative New York Sun expresses it:

That the left makes common cause with the Islamists is one of the bizarre facts of modern geopolitics. The only thing Marxists like Messrs. Chavez, Ortega, and Correa have in common today with the likes of Mr. Ahmadinejad is a hatred of America. That is the foundation on which the Marxist-Islamist scheme is formed and the motivation behind any actions it carries out.

The New York Sun is almost infinitely superior to the New York Times in its understanding of the world. It is well aware of the dangers of the alliance of Marxists and Islamists to America's national security.

Yet the common bond between the two is far, far deeper than a simple emotion of hate. The bond is as deep as you get. It is metaphysical. That is because Marx and Mohammed share the same view on the nature of reality.

Their fundamental bond - thus that between Chavez and Ahmadinejad - is a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction.

I told you the bond was deep. Go prepare yourself. We're going deep.

Far more than a rule of logic, the Law of Non-Contradiction is the basic statement of the way reality works. It was first put into words by Aristotle:

"It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation." Metaphysics 1005b20.

Contradictions exist only between thoughts, not in the world. This is also known as "common sense." Both Marx and Mohammed disagree.

That reality is contradictory is the basic tenet of Dialectical Materialism - the philosophy of Marx, Engels, and Lenin - and of philosophical Islam, for which it is blasphemous to claim Allah is subject to the Law of Non-Contradiction as that would limit and bind him in the "chains of logic."

If reality is contradictory and logic is an illusion, then you are left with only one way to resolve conflicts and disagreements: violently . For Marxists and Moslems, change in the world consists of contradictory opposing forces - exploiters and exploited, believers and infidels - overcoming or being overcome.

Thus both Marx and Mohammed, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, are advocates of apocalyptic totalitarianism.

For both, "nothing is private," as in Lenin's famous dictum. The state, whether under the Communist "dictatorship of the proletariat" or Islamic Shari'a law, has the moral right and duty to control every aspect of an individual's life.

For both, there are no moral absolutes: morality is whatever serves to further the interests of the exploited over the exploiters, the believers over the infidels. To assert the end does not justify the means is "bourgeois morality" for Marxists, a perverse denial of the Will of Allah for Moslems.

For both, the only moral question is: Who conquers whom? Kto-Kovo? as Lenin asked, Who-Whom? For both, reality is zero-sum with no compromise, no mutual cooperation between proletariat and bourgeois or believers and infidels to mutual benefit. For one to win, the other must lose. There can be no other way.

For both, peace means submission. The very word Islam means "submission" in Arabic: submission of infidels to the God of Mohammed. For us, peace means the absence of violence. For Marx and Mohammed, peace means the absence of disobedience.

As the Soviet Military Encyclopedia states it: "Peace is impossible without Soviet socialism... A truly lasting peace is impossible and cannot be achieved without a proletarian revolution."

As the Koran states it: "O Unbelievers! We renounce you. Enmity and hatred will reign between us until you believe in Allah alone." (Sura 60:4)

For both Marx and Mohammed, terrorism and jihad are hard-wired into their souls.

Marx claimed that "revolutionary terrorism" was "the only means of shortening the lethal death agony of the old society and the bloody birth of the new."

Mohammed commanded his followers to spread Islam by the sword:

"Allah will instill terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads then, and strike off them every finger-tip" (Sura 8:12).

Both Marxism and Mohammedanism (a previously common and now very un-PC term for Islam) are ideologies of war and hate, dividing the world into bourgeois exploiters vs. exploited proletariat, the Dar al Islam (the world of believers) vs. the Dar al Harb (literally the Land of War, the world of infidels).

Peace can only come until the contradiction between them is resolved by force, and the latter compelled by the former to believe in Allah and Marx alone. For both Marx and Mohammed, peace and justice can only be achieved through an Apocalypse.

They and their fanatical followers, like all apocalyptic totalitarians, claim to be suffused with love, compassion, and mercy for their fellow man. The promise is always the same:

That once the evil scum of the world - the infidel, the heretic, the Jew, the American, the rich, the bourgeois, the exploiter, the follower of Satan - are beheaded, burned at the stake, put to the sword, gassed in ovens, starved to death in the Gulag, shot and heaped in mass graves, or blown up and slaughtered by martyrs, the sins of man will be washed away, society cleansed and purified by the apocalyptic fire of revolutionary justice, the world will be saved, and there will be heaven on earth for all those who believe and obey.

It matters not a whit whether Marx was an "atheist," for that only meant he wanted to supplant other religions with his own. Or whether Mohammed believed in a "god" named Allah, for "Allah" was only the name of the voice he heard in his head dictating a "Recitation" (that's what "Koran" means in Arabic).

"Allah" is just as much a figment of Mohammed's imagination as the "New Socialist Man" (the different species of humanity that will come into being with the triumph of The Proletarian Revolution) was of Marx's. Both are delusions of tyranny.

And thus we have that delusion of tyranny, announced to the world this week, by Chavez and Ahmadinejad, of Islamocommunism.

That's what this "Marxist-Islamist" alliance should be known as, that's what we should call it: Islamocommunism.

The alliance of Islamofascists and Communists makes the world an even more dangerous place than it was. But recognizing it for what it is, all the way down to its philosophical roots, will make it easier to combat and defeat it.

What's the source you copied from, Blackgang?

Originally Posted by blackgang

Yet the common bond between the two is far, far deeper than a simple emotion of hate. The bond is as deep as you get. It is metaphysical. That is because Marx and Mohammed share the same view on the nature of reality.

Ahahaha, I guess it would be reasonable to claim that Bush and Hitler share the same vision of bringing civilisation to the world by military expansion? What a load of gobble-dee-do!

Originally Posted by blackgang

That's what this "Marxist-Islamist" alliance should be known as, that's what we should call it: Islamocommunism.

Ahahaha, Chavez is an "Islamocommunist" now? Come on where did you find this jewel of a diatribe?

Originally Posted by stroller

A statesman who knows how to play the game and gets things done, unlike your pathetic leader Dubya.
Jealous, Boon Mee?

A 'statesman' who seals other folks property?
Even Dubya wouldn't stoop so low...

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

A 'statesman' who seals other folks property? Even Dubya wouldn't stoop so low...

No, he would never steal the Iraqi oil..

Originally Posted by lom

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

A 'statesman' who seals other folks property? Even Dubya wouldn't stoop so low...

No, he would never steal the Iraqi oil..

Well, he ain't.
It's going to the indigenous people of Iraq...

Originally Posted by Wallace

...and make sure every one has a nice home to live in, with clean running water, and good health care

Healthcare as well? Surely that would be communism.
In a Muslim country.
ISLAMOCOMMUNISM!

Originally Posted by Wallace

. Does anyone on this planet seriously believe that America will NOT profit from oil in Iraq? US companies have already made zillions out of the war and the new pipeline will ensure that more oil revenues will flow out of the country and into western pockets.

Forget America and the constant America-bashing for a minute - these oil companies are, like, multinational? Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon-Mobile etc are not American - Jesus H. Chocolate Christ!

Boon Mee, don't have a heart attack. As you quoted my post anyway, then you will clearly read the words 'flow out of the country into WESTERN pockets'. If you're going to rebut a post, then at least do it for the right reasons. I am quite aware that many oil companies are not American, that's why I said Western. However, you surely know that so far, almost all the contracts and profits have been made by American companies.

Interestingly, you say these companies are not American.

Exxon-Mobil headquarters are in Texas. They are an American company.
Chevron headquarters are in California. They are American.

Please check your facts before posting stuff like this, it's just embarrassing.

Originally Posted by Wallace

Exxon-Mobil headquarters are in Texas. They are an American company.
Chevron headquarters are in California. They are American.

What constitutes 'American' these days?
Schlumberger, a so-called French company is totally multi-national as well as Halliburton a so-called 'American' company. At any rate, Iraq will be a better place after these pesky terrorists are eliminated...

Originally Posted by Wallace

The history of Chevron and Exxon-Mobil is quite clearly American. They have grown from other American oil companies. Their board of directors are American, their offices are in America. Just because they are multi-national doesn't alter the fact that they are US companies.

Shell is Dutch, BP is British. Get the picture now?

I'm quite familiar with all that - point being, the oil (& profits) go world-wide. Not just to some specific American coffers...

My God, Boon Mee, you really were born on another planet. Of course, they do, and all the little bunnies stay nice and fluffy. And those big nasty multi-nationals are harmless and fun people who just want a better world for everyone.

Get real.

My God, Boon Mee, you really were born on another planet.

His reading comprehension is as bad as his debating skills.
Never mind.

Now, what about the oil in Venezuela, are American oil companies better at distributing the profits amongst themselves, or does Venezuela have a word to say as to what's happening to their resources?
Note my comments on the historic background of ownership of natural resources.