Socialism missing from religion: SC The Hindu The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed concern at the threat of musclemen taking over charge of religious assets and properties. Everywhere with temple and church properties there is a problem ... there is a problem of musclemen taking over temple ... |
Filmmaker Michael Moore once celebrated Venezuela's socialism, but it has brought average Venezuelans nothing but misery. (AP)
Sometimes it's been hard to tell with socialist filmmaker Michael Moore whether he's trolling you or really serious when he says certain things. Case in point: An old tweet on Venezuela, vintage 2013, in which Moore celebrated the nationalization of that nation's oil company, PDVSA. It's been an unmitigated tragedy.
"Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all," Moore tweeted nearly four years ago.
Time hasn't been kind to Moore, in many ways. This tweet in particular now seems like little more than rank ignorance by someone who actually seems to believe that socialism a system that has never succeeded anywhere it's been tried on earth is superior to the free market.
But we shouldn't be surprised. After all, Moore's "documentary" "Sicko" paid glowing tribute to the Stalinesque, two-tier Potemkin village that is the Cuban health care system. Moore was used by Cuba's communist rulers, who let him film scenes of "typical" Cuban health care in clean and well-stocked medical centers that were used exclusively by VIPs, communist officials and cash-only foreigners.
He didn't film what the average people are subjected to: filthy clinics, bloody and bug-ridden hospital beds, medicine shortages and substandard care.
So you wouldn't expect Moore to get Venezuela's oil disaster right, either.
We mention this old tweet now because in a piece this week in Forbes, Johns Hopkins University economist and energy expert Steve Hanke shows just how wrong Moore was, calling Venezuela's PDVSA "the world's worst oil company." It's not hard to see why.
After socialist Hugo Chavez took Venezuela over in 1999, oil output for the newly nationalized oil company immediately began to slide, along with the nation's proved reserves. In 2003, faced with growing unrest and resistance to his heavy-handed rule, Chavez purged the company's management and replaced them with his socialist cronies.
The result has been an utter disaster. Venezuela used the oil company as a national cash cow, draining its coffers for short-term social spending projects that came to nothing. PDVSA, meanwhile, is a company in collapse.
Chavez died in 2013, which is what prompted Moore's tweet. But he was replaced by Nicolas Maduro, another deluded socialist. The country's decline has continued apace, and so has PDVSA's.
Hanke notes that the giant oil company owes just over $10 billion this year in debt payments but, after being raided repeatedly for its cash, is desperately short of financing for badly needed investment. Citing unnamed sources, Hanke says PDVSA has just $2 billion in cash on hand, while the government's foreign exchange reserves all it really has to stave off mass starvation, since Venezuela imports most of its food stand at just $10.5 billion.
Oil output is off 23% since Chavez came to power.
PDVSA, says Hanke, is in a "death spiral." So is the entire country.
Venezuela's devastated oil company, which sits on one of the world's largest pools of oil, is emblematic of the entire deeply troubled country. Because of the imposition of socialism, Venezuela's economy is collapsing. The once-prosperous nation is now ranked 179th in the world on the Heritage Foundation's respectedIndex of Economic Freedom, just ahead of another socialist paradise: North Korea.
Today, Venezuela suffers from endemic corruption, 800% inflation, a -19% annual GDP growth rate, and interest rates of over 20%. Rampant food shortages are causing malnutrition, and all the diseases that come from that. One area of improvement: Income inequality. Now, most of the country is equally poor, with the exception of those in power.
Maduro, of course, blames his country's woes on "capitalism." It's a bad joke, but it doesn't hurt capitalists. It hurts average Venezuelans. Children die for lack of decent food and medicine. Jobs are scarce, and families are being destroyed. Crime is rampant: The murder rate is now the highest in the world, a dubious honor that makes it safer to live in downtown Damascus or Tripoli than in Venezuela's capital of Caracas.
Just like the Castros in Cuba, Venezuela's older socialist twin, Chavez, Maduro and their allies have turned a country once known for baseball and beauty pageants into a living hell. Michael Moore and the many other celebrity fools who have held out Venezuela as a shining example of enlightened socialism should be ashamed.
Today, in the U.S., more than a third of college students in recent polls give a big thumbs up to socialism, preferring it to U.S. style capitalism. So here's an antidote to this Moore-inspired foolishness: Rather than continue to waste money on their kids' obviously useless left-wing indoctrination at college, parents would be wiser to fork over their money instead for their precious progressive snowflake to spend a year studying in that socialist paradise, Venezuela. That would be a real education, one that would last a lifetime.
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The logo of the legendary Mosfilm Studios, depicting the Vera Mukhina sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. | Mosfilm
Dear Editor,
I thank you for your recent article Ten films that shook the world, detailing ten very earlySoviet films, as we look towards the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik victory over royal imposters, oppressors of the masses,and archaic forms of autocracy.
I am an arm-chair historian and am already working my way through these films, at least the ones that are easilyavailable online. Thank you, once again!
If you ever get the chance, consider viewing the Nazi propaganda films such as The Eternal Jew, and the work of LeniRiefenstahl on behalf of that insanewallpaper hanger and thelittle corporal, Herr Schicklgruber.These films, especially The Eternal Jew, are so outrageous in proclaiming every lie about the Jews.
Finally, Im out here in rural western Wisconsin, small towns mostly, so having your work andeducational phone/video conferences keeps the flame alive in my heart that once we move beyond the currentultra-right, so-called populist regime that we will one day come to realize, more and more, Bill of Rights socialism being embraced by the working class in our land.
In solidarity,
Darren Foster
comments
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Enjoying Bolshevik films and hoping for socialism - People's World
For those thinking that the French could be on the brink of a collective epiphany, you might want to hold your bets. Even if the people of France wanted a badly needed economic upgrade to bring their nanny-state system into the 21st century, theres no presidential contender willing to give it to them. Any candidate who ever tiptoes into economic reality is promptly vilified and has to maneuver to avoid criticism. And while some say that the French would never go for serious economic reforms, how are we to know if theyre never given the option?
As Ive discovered while living in France for almost a decade, capitalism is a dirty word in French politics. But no one actually attacks capitalism by name. Instead, they use the term ultraliberalism or neoliberalism. The word liberal isnt synonymous with leftism in France like it is in North America. (For that, the French actually say leftism.) In France, liberalism is used in a more classic sense. If youre a conservative proponent of free-market economics and limited government, youre labeled a liberal in France. Or, heaven forbid, an ultraliberal.
Based on the way the current presidential front-runners are using the term ultraliberal to vilify each other, youd think that the most important thing in this election is to convince French voters that the nanny state will persist at any cost.
The candidate who comes closest to being a free-market proponent is independent Emmanuel Macron. During his mandate as minister of economy, industry and digital affairs, Macron was responsible for the entrepreneur-friendly law for growth, activity and equality of economic opportunities but backed off the idea of bumping the French workweek back up to 40 hours from the current 35 hours.
National Front leader Marine Le Pen constantly hammers Macron for his free-market worldview. In economic matters we know what he wants, Le Pen said. It is ultraliberalism, it is death to the poor.
Yes, there are actually French citizens who believe that their woes are caused by too much capitalism. I challenge Le Pen to show me how true free-market capitalism has failed the French. Im guessing that any example would involve socialism or corporatism that is, government involvement in capitalist efforts.
Meanwhile, former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon of the Republican Party is already hamstrung with a Thatcherite label, as if it were an insult. Fillons foes attacked him for suggesting that health insurers compete for business, and for a proposal focusing universal public insurance on serious or long-term illnesses, and private insurance on the rest. He eventually pulled this proposal from his platform. Some French citizens are taxed half of their income for social security and health care, yet the system reimburses little beyond serious illness. Still, no politician has shown the backbone to force the government monopoly to compete with private insurers, as is the case elsewhere in Europe.
French politicians always seem justify their highly expensive existence by convincing voters that the solution to their problems is more government management. Le Pen has been on the campaign trail promoting an upgrade to the socialist concept: the strategic state. But socialism, however strategic, is still socialism.
Le Pen is correct to argue for increased national sovereignty and border control, but her nanny-state economic policies, which vilify true capitalism and ultraliberalism, wont fix France.
The benefits of capitalism dont flow from the government down; theyre created by keeping the governments hands out of the cookie jar. No one needs the government to muck around under the guise of strategic statehood investing money that the French cant afford in things that would already be thriving if people actually wanted them. Just leave more money in taxpayers pockets and see where it ends up.
The French system of government, which is really just an updated version of the old monarchy, has always played favorites, picking winners and losers based on proximity to power. It doesnt help that power is concentrated in a single city everything outside of Paris is a power desert. Inequalities give rise to revolt, which in turn creates a need to quell it. Enter unions and taxes to give the illusion of leveling the playing field. Where is any durable wealth created for the individual in this scheme?
Under the current French system, there is no incentive for the individual to break free and create his own wealth. And the European Union, endorsed by Macron and Fillon, continues to create an economic burden. Unfortunately, there is no French presidential candidate willing to free the French people from the fiscal straitjacket in which they find themselves. Until one comes along, French presidential elections are doing little more than shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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French Still Unwilling to Try Backing Away From Socialism - Wheeling Intelligencer
It's always refreshing to see the truth about Cuba and Venezuela in the U.S. media. We've had our share of great "health care" stories about Cuba or movie stars embracing Hugo Chvez.
Let's thankIoan Grillo for pulling the curtain and exposing the truth about Venezuela:
In Venezuela the food lines are only the most visible evidence of a nation in free fall. Known aslas colas, the lines form before dawn and last until nightfall, several bodies thick and zigzagging for miles in leafy middle-class neighborhoods and ragged slums alike. In a country that sits atop the world's largest known petroleum reserves, hungry citizens wait on their assigned day for whatever the stores might stock: with luck, corn flour to make arepas, and on a really good day, shampoo.
"I never dreamed it would come to this," says Yajaira Gutierrez, a 41-year-old accountant, waiting her turn in downtown Caracas."That in Venezuela, with all our petroleum, we would be struggling to get corn cakes."
This is insane and makes you want to scream. It is a such a shock for those of us who knew pre-Chvez Venezuela. As I recall, it was a nation with a large middle class who loved life, talking baseball and beauty pageants. Yes, in Venezuela, they love their baseball players and all of those beautiful women who appear in the Miss Universe pageants.
For Cubans like my parents, as well as those of us who grew up here, it is like watching a horrible movie remake.
The article talks about "las colas," or the lines outside stores to buy the basic items. Or the people who cross the Colombia border to buy anything for their families. Or the repressive nature of the state. It is Cuba all over again!
President Trump has a great opportunity to put the U.S. on the side of the Venezuela people, especially all of those marchers calling for change.
I'm not talking about a military invasion. I am talking about an invasion of "ideas" and "messages" that change must come and that the U.S. does not stand with the corrupt dictatorship. It may be just what the opposition needs to bring down the Maduro regime.
In the meantime, share this article with the next clown that you see wearing a Che T-shirt.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow meon Twitter.
It's always refreshing to see the truth about Cuba and Venezuela in the U.S. media. We've had our share of great "health care" stories about Cuba or movie stars embracing Hugo Chvez.
Let's thankIoan Grillo for pulling the curtain and exposing the truth about Venezuela:
In Venezuela the food lines are only the most visible evidence of a nation in free fall. Known aslas colas, the lines form before dawn and last until nightfall, several bodies thick and zigzagging for miles in leafy middle-class neighborhoods and ragged slums alike. In a country that sits atop the world's largest known petroleum reserves, hungry citizens wait on their assigned day for whatever the stores might stock: with luck, corn flour to make arepas, and on a really good day, shampoo.
"I never dreamed it would come to this," says Yajaira Gutierrez, a 41-year-old accountant, waiting her turn in downtown Caracas."That in Venezuela, with all our petroleum, we would be struggling to get corn cakes."
This is insane and makes you want to scream. It is a such a shock for those of us who knew pre-Chvez Venezuela. As I recall, it was a nation with a large middle class who loved life, talking baseball and beauty pageants. Yes, in Venezuela, they love their baseball players and all of those beautiful women who appear in the Miss Universe pageants.
For Cubans like my parents, as well as those of us who grew up here, it is like watching a horrible movie remake.
The article talks about "las colas," or the lines outside stores to buy the basic items. Or the people who cross the Colombia border to buy anything for their families. Or the repressive nature of the state. It is Cuba all over again!
President Trump has a great opportunity to put the U.S. on the side of the Venezuela people, especially all of those marchers calling for change.
I'm not talking about a military invasion. I am talking about an invasion of "ideas" and "messages" that change must come and that the U.S. does not stand with the corrupt dictatorship. It may be just what the opposition needs to bring down the Maduro regime.
In the meantime, share this article with the next clown that you see wearing a Che T-shirt.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow meon Twitter.
More:
Socialism is killing Venezuela - American Thinker (blog)