Comments on: Hugo Chavez calls using Twitter “terrorism”

By: Clear Evidence of the Violation of our Civil Rights by the Venezuelan Government « The Devil’s Excrement

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:40:02 +0000

[...] whole thing is not new, I have reported about this fact and this evidence a few times, here, here and here, but just want to add to the clear evidence that the Venezuelan Government under [...]

By: Links « The Everyday Idealist

Links « The Everyday Idealist — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:11:50 +0000

[...] Chavez says Twitter = Terrorism [...]

By: Juancho

Juancho — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:09:30 +0000

Moctavio wrote: “Actually Juancho heath care is worse under Chavez according to studies.”

I was willing to give Chavez the benefit of the doubt on this one, first, because I know that there are thousands of Cubano nurses posing as doctors here in Venezuela, but at least some increase in health care professionals is evident over the past decade; and two, there actually have been clinics set up in pueblos that were not there ten years ago.

But the public sector medical field is quite grim. And the following story is an absolute fact that I can vouchsafe from direct experience.

A neighbor is a medical student who works in the state hospital (location undisclosed). The air conditioner broke down in the morgue and the administrator simply couldn’t get it together to fix it. There are huge signs posted in front of the hospital with giant pics of Hugo and smiling babies and all that basura. Meanwhile corpses are festering in the morgue, with the bodies stacking up so high that some had to be placed in chairs. When it came time to burry those in the chairs rigor mortis had already set in owing to the lack of air conditioning, and the bodies had to be “broken down” to fit into the caskets.

The air conditioner broke down over a year ago. It’s still busted.

No shit.

Juancho

By: moctavio

moctavio — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:56:20 +0000

Actually Juancho heath care is worse under Chavez according to studies. The only thing that has improved is a slightly better purchasing power by the poorer, which is much less that in teh past given all the money that came in, but all other indicators of quality of life have disappeared, Iw ould bet the purchasing power will soon be worse thanks to the devaluation.

By: Juancho

Juancho — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:42:18 +0000

Chavismo can largely be seen as a natural power shift from los ricos (pocos) to los campesinos (muchos), from the haves, to the have-nots. It didn’t work out as planned or as hoped for, but there can be no doubt that power is now widely wielded by many who just a decade ago were basically powerless owing to socio-economic position near the bottom of the food chain. Tragically, the lower class is arguably worse off now (manos a little health care in el pueblos). The problem is that vital institutions (power, communications, water, etc.) were given over to the former have-nots, who unfortunately have-not the wherewithal, judgment, discipline, and know-how to maintain services, and now, predictably, we see those institutions starting to crumble. Every thinking person in every country on earth knows that the larger part of Chavez’ legendary speeches is theater, narcissistic posturing, and political grandstanding, all lardered with the most fatuous bullshit. But those aforementioned institutions could not run on bullshit alone – and so now the lights are going out and the water is off half the time. Que lastima, indeed.

It is argued on this and many other sites that Chavez and the Bolo Revolution cannot be corrected, that a coherent opposition cannot be fashioned till the psychological profile of the “average” Venezuelan undergoes a major makeover. Many on this site think violence is the only catalyst for such radical and much needed change. Perhaps the hardships just ahead – resulting from the total collapse of all our institutions and basic services – will provide the required impetus, and we can avoid the blood bath.

Por seguro – some basic and indismissible shock (what they call a “bottom” in the recovery movement) is probably needed for a cultural transformation to ever occur, and for real and lasting change to sweep the land like wildfire.

Junacho

By: espadachin

espadachin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:48:53 +0000

Nothing more need be said:

By: Kepler

Kepler — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:50:22 +0000

Never in modern history?
Actually: plenty. Afghanistan is one. Kambodia was another one. It is recovering after many years.
Haiti has been doing it for 200 years already. Several African countries have as well, like Somalia and before Uganda (although not as badly)

By: Kepler

Kepler — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:25:42 +0000

Guillermo, it depends what you understand by going down the drain. That simply means that the situation deteriorates so dramatically that it will take decades to get the country on the road to development. We were doing badly before that, of course. chavismo is just the consequence of it: of the widespread ignorance, the corruption, the parasitic relationship with oil.

Still: education for the poor is worse than ever. When most of your teachers are actually incapable of the most basic reasoning, when they hate reading (no, this goes beyond salary), when they know not what quality control is, you are in trouble. Venezuela stopped taking part in open evaluation of its education in 1998.

When drug consumption increases in the way it has increased in Venezuela as it has done in the last 20 years and nothing is done, you have a pressure cooker.

When you have that Venezuela has the highest birth rate in South America (apart from French Guyana, I think) and it just depends on oil and the world can experience an energy shift during this generation, you have the potential for disaster.

I said it several times here: Hugo is just lethal TB, Venezuela has sociocultural AIDS. We need to tackle both, as doctors do.

I did not buy the crap about chavismo taking away children or Venezuela becoming communist. It is now a dictatorship, though. And that we did not have for a long time.

By: Guillermo Andrade

Guillermo Andrade — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:12:48 +0000

Dear Kepler: You said “We have seen how the country has gone down the drain in the past 11 year”… I do disagree.
No country has ever gone down the drain. That’s bullshit coming from the media and the opposition. Never in modern history has any country faced an utterly level of destruction such as the one implied by your statement. Not even Polony, which BTW, has the all-time record in recorded inflation (after WWII) has gone down the drain.
As I said, it’s just a dramatic statement created only to scare children and little people. Please pay no heed to it.

By: Guillermo Andrade

Guillermo Andrade — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:06:51 +0000

Chavez will rule as long as venezuelans keep being like they are now: illiterate, lazy, egotistic and self-centered. As long as any citizen you find in any street at any day (and I don’t mean your neighbor but a taxi driver or a simple pedestrian), keeps behaving as a “vivo” or “más vivo que el otro”, we will extend this situation into an endless cyclic pattern. Chavez is not the problem… is the necessary effect of a degraded population, where, i.e. at least 70% of teachers at all levels of education suffer from some type of psicopathy, and at least 90% of the whole teaching strata comes from the D level of our “society”.

Chavez is just capitalizing in what’s already inside most venezuelans.
BTW: I’m not implying that there’s no hope to this situation. I’m just saying that having hope as such is completely inmaterial in terms of finding a “nice democratic solution”.

There’s an old saying: When the shit hits the fan, that’s when you know you have to run….
Well, we didn’t and now are deeply surrounded by it. We just have to wait until this society can achieve a certain level of conditioning in order to begin our release…