Chavez To Socialize Venezuela

Another article by the same reporter says that, <p>"Chavez's first big move — to nationalize "strategic" power and telecommunications companies — heralds a series of planned "revolutionary laws" that remain vaguely defined. But with oil profits booming, his popularity high and a crushing re-election under his belt, Chavez appears to be in step with a majority of Venezuelans even as spooked investors dumped shares in the affected companies. <p>"Everything the man is doing is good," said Orlando Vera, a 63-year-old window washer, on Tuesday, adding that his economic situation has improved under Chavez. As for the nationalization project announced Monday, Vera said it makes sense for companies that serve the public interest." <p>In Washington, White House press secretary Tony Snow suggested Venezuela was making a mistake. "Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world. We support the Venezuelan people, and think this is an unhappy day for them." <p>But optimism reigns among Chavez supporters like Miguel Angel Martinez, a 52-year-old street vendor, who says the president "has dedicated himself to studying communist, socialist and democratic models and has taken the best of those models." <p>Chavez, whose third term in office runs until 2013, also said he will ask the National Assembly for special powers allowing him to enact a series of laws by decree. <p>"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it," he said Monday." <p>An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted three weeks before Chavez was re-elected on Dec. 3 found 62 percent of those asked supported nationalizing companies when in the national interest — a result that paralleled Chavez's victory with nearly 63 percent of the votes." <br><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_chavez_17">Linkie</a> <p>To paraphrase Tony Snowjob, "Nationalization bad, Privatization good". NWO motto "<b>What is yours is mine, what is ours is mine, what is mine is my own</b>."<p>---<br><br />
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."<br />
(Albert Einstein)

Any chance that we have a guy like Chavez anywhere even remotely near Ottawa?

He's on foreign import I'm currently all in favour of.

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

Neither system works. Communism nor Capitalism. Nationalising everything leads to huge bureacracies and inefficiency, and neo-liberal privatization leads to price inflation so bad it kills people, driven by human greed.

We need to smash everything down, and look at all the pieces on the ground, and start coming up with outside-the-box ideas, taking into account our urgent need for overhauling our entire society and it's misplaced priorities of consumerism, greed, and a life of excess and comfort at a price built on the backs of slave labour.

We all need to start living with less.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”

Not to comment on whether socializing is a good or bad idea, as I believe that history affords us the answers to this question....

"to give him greater powers to legislate by presidential decree."
is the part that concerns me. If what he is doing is approved of by his countrymen, there is no need to fear asking for their approval prior to legislating. Not even the best-intentioned should be allowed to legislate by decree. History affords us the answers to what happens in these circumstances as well.

Rico AB.

I said what I said because we need some people like that to counter the Harper tribe's line of PPP BS.

Right now we have center, right of center, and extreme right of center being represented.

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

"We all need to start living with less." <br><br> Actually I think that we need to start living <i>more</i> with less. I find the more people have, the more they spend, and the more they spend the more they must work to resupply what they've spent, the more they work the less they live, becomming a slave to their source of free wheeling income. It's a vicious circle that's hard to break out of without thinking outside-the-box. Once you're stuck in the box, you're really stuck in there good. <br><br> Another way to look at it, are all those people getting fat eating bad food while watching TV ads telling them to spend their money eating bad food as well as on loosing weight. So they go on a diet and/or exercise program which they cannot ever stick with, then they regain all the weight back plus a few extra. What is really needed, is a complete overhaul not only on what is being eaten, but on how life is being lived, nothing else will be a permanent solution. <br><br> To get out of a slave job that feeds 2 SUV's and a monster home, you really have to fundamentally change the way you think and how you choose to live your life. <br><br> Imagine what it will take to fundamentally shift a society away from what it currently is to something else entirely, and add to that, a system no one has ever seen before? Not so easy. Such a thing will take decades, perhaps a few centuries. Change will however accelerate when the current system starts to break apart, as it appears to already be doing. <br><br> As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

In Capitalism everything has a price, even human life and dignity. Socialism allows at least, everyone's basic needs to be taken care of but reduces dignity. Hopefully Chavez will allow the dignity.

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Expect little from life and get more from it.

Chavez is too eager to emulate Castro. Let's see how long it takes him now to do away with elections and start locking up dissidents.

Valid concern Individualist! The same valid concern that many have of the Neo-con regime in Washington. See... common ground.
Socialism isn't necessarily about one guy and his cronies seizing power any more than capitalism is. Socialism is about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of a few. Corruption can, has and will run rampant and the end result has been the same for both capitalists and socialists.
Tearing things apart and starting from scratch as per the post above is probably what is needed. As is relates to this story, nationalizing ones own assets is a damned good start regardless of political bent.

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Everybody got to deviate from the norm

I'm suspicious of this report. So far Chavez has always been against dictatorship and now suddenly he wants to rule by presidential decree? Either the report is purposefully mis-translated or Chavez has gone off the deep end.

Damned near everything I've seen in the "western" media about Chavez has been a pack of lies, including AP reports. Therefore, I'm going to go with the former theory until I see otherwise from someone like Palast or Amy Goodman.

If he does want rule by decree, he's getting crossed off my christmas list as being no better than Bush.

"Socialism isn't necessarily about one guy and his cronies seizing power any more than capitalism is. Socialism is about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of a few."

So the Vulcans invented socialism?

It seems to me that a better description is that socialism is about the needs of some outweighting the rights of others. It's also about elevating the group above the people who constitute it.

From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, right? There's no notion of earning in that statement. Those with needs have only rights. Those with abilities have only obligations. There's no duty to provide for one's own needs or develop one's own abilities.

It's not just about corruption. If socialist leaders were just hypocrites who were motivated by simple greed and lust for power, I'd find them no more objectionable than their right-wing equivalents. But I believe that many socialist dictators actually buy into their own propoganda. They actually believe they're serving the common good by drawing more and more power to themselves. After all, perfecting people and the society they live in requires a great deal of power and force. This kind of "true believer" is far more dangerous than some cynical, self-interested thug.

Someone who believes that they're doing good by acquiring dictatorial power and that the individual is nothing and the group everything will be the most ruthless kind of leader. He will create gulags and killing fields and slaughter tens of thousands of people with an unblemished conscience because he believes he is serving a greater good.

It is this unique combination of self-delusion, misguided altruism and the devaluing of individuals that make these kinds of leaders so frightening and remorseless.

Here is a report which sheds more light on what Chavez wants to do. <p>"To be clear about what he meant by achieving social justice, Chavez stated, “The time has come for the end of privileges, the end of inequality, and nothing and no one can make us stop the car of the revolution, cost us what it may.” <p>With regard to the five “motors” for the transformation, Chavez reiterated that the first one was the “law of laws,” referring to his request to the National Assembly to pass an “enabling” law, which would allow the president to pass laws as decrees on certain specified issues for a period of one year. He said that such an enabling law would be necessary to correct a number of old laws that come from the pre-Chavez period and that are written in the interest of private capital. Here he specifically singled out the Commerce Law, the laws that govern the distribution of state budget (FIDES and LAEE). <p>On Monday, Chavez had said that part of the enabling law would be the nationalization of previously privatized industries. <p>Next, Chavez provided a few more details about constitutional changes he has in mind, the second motor, such as the change of article 302, which reserves oil exploitation to the Venezuelan state, but does not mention natural gas. Also, Chavez mentioned article 303, which states that parts of the state oil company PDVSA could be privatized. This section, according to Chavez, had to be eliminated. Chavez then repeated his earlier proposal of allowing for an indefinite number of reelection of the president, which is currently limited to two terms. <p>The third motor, the launch of a program of popular education throughout the country for the whole of 2007, Chavez did not add anything to his announcement of two days earlier. <p>The fourth motor, the creation of a new “geometry of power,” which was left quite unclear in Monday’s announcement, Chavez explained today that it had to do with the re-configuration of how municipalities are divided in Venezuela’s geography. According to Chavez, many municipalities do not make much sense because they have either too large a population or too much territory, while others are too small. <p>Finally, with regard to the fifth “motor,” Chavez repeated the proposal to create an “explosion” of communal power. One of the proposals for this would be to create federations of communal councils that might eventually supplant the existing state structures. This type of federation of communal councils could go all the way to the national level. <p>Currently there are thousands of communal councils that were launched in 2006, with each gathering between 200 and 400 families in a direct democratic framework. The communal councils are receiving over $1 billion directly from the central government to engage in a wide variety of community improvement projects. <p>Chavez then said he recently “had an idea” that he was articulating now for the first time as a proposal, which is to construct socialist cities, either from scratch or from existing ones, where communal councils are the only form of political power." <p><a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2189">Linkie</a> <p>But wait, there is more. <p>Caracas , January 10, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— The Venezuelan government announced Monday that $5 billion dollars will be available for the new participatory democratic institutions the Communal Councils in 2007. The Intergovernmental Fund for Decentralisation (Fides) will be responsible for distributing the money. <p>The Communal Councils came into being in April 2006 with the passing of the Communal Council Law by the National Assembly. They are intended to provide a participatory democratic body for communities to manage and develop themselves. Prior to the law being introduced there were separate projects such as the Social Missions and the Urban Land Committees. <p>The new institution is designed to pull these distinct programmes together so a strategic view can be taken of what the community needs as a whole. The funds will be for education, construction, transport, health, agriculture and housing related projects. <p>The idea is that there is a community of around 200 – 400 families for each Communal Council and all members of each community over the age of 15 can participate in the process and put forward ideas for development. <p>In a speech on Monday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suggested that as the Communal Councils spread they will also deepen and will become the new Venezuelan state taking over what he described as the old “bourgeois state” <p><a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2188"> Another Linkie</a><p>---<br><br />
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."<br />
(Albert Einstein)

Your right RG, and humans will never willingly choose an alternate lifestyle that is more restrictive and less opulent by choice.

However, Mother Earth has decided that we will change, and CHANGE NOW! whether we like it or not. And change we will. The extent of how well we do it will determine if we flourish and improve as a civilization, simply survive, or go extinct like the dinosaurs.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”

<blockquote> It seems to me that a better description is that socialism is about the needs of some outweighting the rights of others. </blockquote> Sort of like the US "defense" industry..........?<p>Or....to keep it simple</p>Expropriation......?<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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