Venezuela's president admits economy has failed

[Loren Pechtel]

Like reporting that a Palestinian woman was killed but failing to report that the Palestinians launched around 150 rockets into Israeli territory and that Israel was retaliating?

Because as we know.

Two crimes makes everything right.

Why can't the Palestinians stop individuals firing rockets?

Because they are oppressed, under the boot of foreign occupation, Israeli troops in and out at will, and not free to create a modern society.

Use the chaos you create to show those animals who's boss.

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

 

[untermensche]

Like reporting that a Palestinian woman was killed but failing to report that the Palestinians launched around 150 rockets into Israeli territory and that Israel was retaliating?

Because as we know.

Two crimes makes everything right.

Why can't the Palestinians stop individuals firing rockets?

Because they are oppressed, under the boot of foreign occupation, Israeli troops in and out at will, and not free to create a modern society.

Use the chaos you create to show those animals who's boss.

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

The population of Gaza are not doing anything except living under oppression.

A tiny few people are firing rockets.

And the people can't stop them because they are living under oppression and are forbidden to have a normal state.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

The population of Gaza are not doing anything except living under oppression.

A tiny few people are firing rockets.

And the people can't stop them because they are living under oppression and are forbidden to have a normal state.

You didn't address my point at all.

Why aren't there rockets from Western Sahara?

(Hint: Nobody's spending billions to encourage them to fight.)

 

[untermensche]

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

The population of Gaza are not doing anything except living under oppression.

A tiny few people are firing rockets.

And the people can't stop them because they are living under oppression and are forbidden to have a normal state.

You didn't address my point at all.

Why aren't there rockets from Western Sahara?

(Hint: Nobody's spending billions to encourage them to fight.)

Your point is a distraction from the problem.

Millions under Israeli oppression for decades.

And the inability of those people to create a normal society because of the oppression.

 

[angelo]

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

The population of Gaza are not doing anything except living under oppression.

A tiny few people are firing rockets.

And the people can't stop them because they are living under oppression and are forbidden to have a normal state.

That's a load of hogwash and if you care to open your eyes you'd see it too. They're living under the oppression of Hamas not the Israelis who are doing nothing more than defending themselves. If the blockades from Israel and Egypt were to end tomorrow, the whole of Gaza would become just a launching pad for even more deadly weapons than just rockets. Arabs in general will never accept a Jewish state living side by side with an Arab/Palestinian State.

 

[untermensche]

The populations in the world that are truly oppressed and occupied don't fire rockets.

How about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_conflict

It's Muslims doing the occupying and oppressing so nobody cares.

The population of Gaza are not doing anything except living under oppression.

A tiny few people are firing rockets.

And the people can't stop them because they are living under oppression and are forbidden to have a normal state.

That's a load of hogwash and if you care to open your eyes you'd see it too. They're living under the oppression of Hamas not the Israelis who are doing nothing more than defending themselves. If the blockades from Israel and Egypt were to end tomorrow, the whole of Gaza would become just a launching pad for even more deadly weapons than just rockets. Arabs in general will never accept a Jewish state living side by side with an Arab/Palestinian State.

The oppression from Israel is what has driven a group like Hamas into power.

You put people in prison and abuse them and some gang will arise to resist the oppression.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You didn't address my point at all.

Why aren't there rockets from Western Sahara?

(Hint: Nobody's spending billions to encourage them to fight.)

Your point is a distraction from the problem.

Millions under Israeli oppression for decades.

And the inability of those people to create a normal society because of the oppression.

Millions under far greater oppression for longer in Western Sahara. No rockets.

What's the difference?

 

[untermensche]

You didn't address my point at all.

Why aren't there rockets from Western Sahara?

(Hint: Nobody's spending billions to encourage them to fight.)

Your point is a distraction from the problem.

Millions under Israeli oppression for decades.

And the inability of those people to create a normal society because of the oppression.

Millions under far greater oppression for longer in Western Sahara. No rockets.

What's the difference?

As long as you are admitting they have been living under oppression.

What people do under oppression is never known.

But many times people resist.

Even with rockets.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Like reporting that a Palestinian woman was killed but failing to report that the Palestinians launched around 150 rockets into Israeli territory and that Israel was retaliating?

I've read Al Jazeera many years, and I think it's held up really well. I haven't found anything to convince me it's not high quality fact-checked news reporting. Unless you have anything to back up your allegations with, I'm going to call bullshit on you.

I presume you're aware that Al Jazera is owned by the ruling family of Qatar?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and_criticism

So? A newspapers value lies in it's trustworthiness. That's the product they're selling. Newspapers have a sharp divide between the editorial staff and bussiness side. They don't mess with each others territory. If the owners would meddle in the newspapers content it would be fucked. Because it'd be less trustworthy. Which leads to less ad revenue = sad owner.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Millions under far greater oppression for longer in Western Sahara. No rockets.

What's the difference?

As long as you are admitting they have been living under oppression.

What people do under oppression is never known.

But many times people resist.

Even with rockets.

The Palestinians are mostly being oppressed by the Arabs.

And you're still not explaining why no rockets in Western Sahara as you are acting as if they are inevitable given the circumstances. If not, what's the difference??

- - - Updated - - -

I presume you're aware that Al Jazera is owned by the ruling family of Qatar?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and_criticism

So? A newspapers value lies in it's trustworthiness. That's the product they're selling. Newspapers have a sharp divide between the editorial staff and bussiness side. They don't mess with each others territory. If the owners would meddle in the newspapers content it would be fucked. Because it'd be less trustworthy. Which leads to less ad revenue = sad owner.

Which means nothing when they're more interested in pushing a viewpoint than in making money.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

On “Real” Socialism

As children die of hunger in Venezuela, an old line is making a comeback: it’s not real socialism!

One version of this reply alleges that socialism requires that workers directly control the means of production. So even though the Venezuelan government has placed over 500 companies under state control, this system qualifies “state capitalism” rather than socialism. I won’t address this move except to mention that there are plenty of cases where socialists are happy to identify socialism with state control—see, for instance, the Democrat Socialists of America’s explicit endorsement of “government-run healthcare.”

The version of the “not real socialism” argument that I’m interested in is the one that claims Venezuela isn’t socialist because it doesn’t live up to the stated goals of socialism. Here’s an example, picked more or less at random, from Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs:

“Like many other examples of radically authoritarian “socialist” regimes, the collapse of Venezuela tells us a lot more about the problems of dictatorship, corruption, and incompetence than it does about “socialism” . . . Venezuelan “socialism” is socialistic in name only. In fact, the government is comprised of corrupt elites who have barely pretended to be socialists, and have recently been abandoning even the label . . . They are wealthy and self-interested, with no real concern for equality.”

On Robinson’s view, generosity and equality are baked right into the definition of socialism. Indeed, he is refreshingly explicit about this: “If there isn’t equality, there isn’t socialism, no matter what the country’s leaders may choose to call themselves. Dictatorships are profoundly unequal, and since my politics demand equality, you can’t indict my politics by pointing to a highly unequal society.”

If we define socialism in terms of a moral ideal, then a greedy political regime with little concern for equality and the common good can never, by definition, qualify as socialist. But as Jason has pointed out, we shouldn’t build moral principles into the very concept of socialism. For one, this move makes arguments about the moral status of socialist institutions completely uninteresting. To evaluate socialism, we need not look at the real-world outcomes produced by (ostensibly) socialist regimes; we need only check the words Merriam-Webster uses in its entry titled “socialism.”

But I want to make a different point. Socialists who play the “not real socialism” card when real-world regimes fail to produce a worker’s paradise are thereby deprived of their right to criticize fascism. After all, consider these descriptions of fascism from Mussolini:

“Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation […] The object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people.”

 

[NMN]

For the last century we've watched Free Market Capitalism bring more people out of poverty than existed in all the previous centuries combined, and yet people still argue for socialism, even in the face of failures like Venezuela.

Liberals: hear no facts, see no facts, speak no facts.

 

[ZiprHead]

For the last century we've watched Free Market Capitalism bring more people out of poverty than existed in all the previous centuries combined, and yet people still argue for socialism, even in the face of failures like Venezuela.

Liberals: hear no facts, see no facts, speak no facts.

And there it is again.

 

[untermensche]

What we have had since WWII is Americans somewhat free to advance, free from attack, and other systems that may have been better if allowed to grow attacked because they didn't submit to the US system.

The Geeks attacked, the Iranians, the Vietnamese and Cambodians, the Cubans and Chileans, the Nicaraguans and the Venezuelans, the Guatemalans and the Haitians, and many others.

Human innovation gave humans the modern world, not capitalism.

Capitalism allowed a few to prosper far more than others. That is all it has done. It is a system of power not a system that creates innovation.

Imagine if we didn't have capitalism and the wealth human innovation has created was spread fairly?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Human innovation gave humans the modern world, not capitalism.

Capitalism set free human innovation to do this. Your system has people breaking into zoos because they are starving.

Imagine if we didn't have capitalism and the wealth human innovation has created was spread fairly?

We don't have to imagine it, we've seen it.

 

[untermensche]

Human innovation gave humans the modern world, not capitalism.

Capitalism set free human innovation to do this.

Nonsense.

In the US, slavery was the economic system that brought about its Industrial age, not capitalism.

Capitalism just happened to be around when human information reached a tipping point.

It had nothing to do with it.

Soviet so-called communism, which was nothing but old fashion strong man dictatorship, brought Russia from third-world status to launching the first human into space rapidly.

Human innovation does it.

Not the economic system.

Capitalism is just where exploitation of innovation occurs.

We don't have to imagine it, we've seen it.

Oh you mean the Spanish Anarchists?

Orwell said they were special.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

If slavery was what brought about the industrial revolution, that explains why slavery kept the South in an agricultural economy while free North had the industrial revolution. It was capitalism that set free innovation - you didn't need to ask permission of a Baron or Commissar and were free to profit from your innovation.

I don't mean the Spanish Anarchists, their reign was far too short for any meaningful look at the results of what you preach. Shooting people for daring to actually use money was a nice touch though. No, we can see it in all the places that lasted longer, such as Venezuela.

 

[untermensche]

If slavery was what brought about the industrial revolution, that explains why slavery kept the South in an agricultural economy while free North had the industrial revolution.

Slavery did not bring about the Industrial Revolution.

Human innovation progressed during US slavery and monarchy in Britain, which eventually led to the Industrial Revolution.

And the Industrial Revolution itself led to a lot more innovation.

And what we had in US cities was massive child labor and other forms of exploitation.

Basically a kind of slavery in another name.

Shooting people for daring to actually use money was a nice touch though.

Delusion.

There were large areas that functioned without money however.

Another Anarchist innovation not much liked by capitalists.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

In the US, slavery was the economic system that brought about its Industrial age, not capitalism.

Slavery did not bring about the Industrial Revolution.

Nice.

Shooting people for daring to actually use money was a nice touch though.

Delusion.

There were large areas that functioned without money however.

Under penalty of death, yes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Imagine if we didn't have capitalism and the wealth human innovation has created was spread fairly?

Yup, your utopia where everyone starves equally.