Posted on 04/12/2002 6:40:56 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
So was Mugabe. Go back to Cuba, hack.
As opposed to Chavez looting the same, and giving the money to his slum-thugs to keep them happy and himself in power
At least the oligarchs have an incentive to keep the economy going smoothly -- Communist-types never seem to manage that competantly
Contrast the aftermath of the French Revolution: the propertyless engaging in mass killing over who would get the loot confiscated from the nobility
Much of South America resembles 18th Century France and 19th Century Russia more than it resembles early US: you have wealthy oligarchs surrounded by numerous unskilled, uneducated, propertyless peasant-types. "Democracy" then becomes a code-word for "lets have us educated intelligensia types organize the poor into a thug army that will allow us to loot the rich"
Guess he's not Hitler after all.
The next guy will be same animal just different stripes. Probably Soto, ex general who was in Washington earlier this week. Probably have an ex Arther Anderson guy counting the barrels they pull out of the ground...just like next door in Colombia.
Chavez stepped down at the point where he was his choices were to step down or be killed
He saw he was not likely to get hung on a meathook, like Mussolini, so he didn't see a need to put a bullet in his head in his bunker
You paint a rosy picture of the typical Cuban's affluence. What else do they have besides the Giorgio Armani suits, Rolexes and $100 perfumes? Yachts? Annual per capita income in Cuba is ~$1700, in case you didn't know. And the internal exchange rate is 22 pesos to the US dollar. Even professionals, such as doctors and professors, are grossly underpaid and frequently moonlight as bartenders and waiters. The majority of Cubans eat a subsistence diet consisting of about half the calories they should be getting. They have many problems, but obesity is definitely not one of them.
Gordon DiRenzo, leftist professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, was recently permitted an extensive tour of Cuba. He observed and interviewed many people all over that island and concluded the following:
"...less people in jail than in the US..."
There is no way you or your "friend" could possibly how many people are imprisoned in Cuba. Castro has consistently refused to release prison population statistics to anybody, including the left-wing "human rights" groups who clamor for them endlessly. It is well-known that the island is peppered with many jails, prisons, detention centers and forced labor farms, and the prison population estimates I've seen vary wildly. But even if we accept the lowest of these estimates, Cuba would have one of the highest prisoner densities in the world. In any event, Cuba has less than 6% of our population, so why would it surprise anybody that they would have fewer people in prison than we do?
Your "friend's" claim of a rapidly expanding tourism industry is also contradicted by the facts. Cuban tourism is declining. Hundreds of hotel rooms have been shut down and so have some of the hotels themselves. Yes, there are still many tourists who go there, but recent years have seen a net loss in their numbers and also in the available accomodations.
For once, maybe you should just face facts -- after slaughtering these demonstrators, Chavez failed to get out of the country in time and had no choice but to finally step down. He was surrounded and out-numbered.
I could have guessed...
Just as a matter of curiousity, what makes you think I've never been to Venezuela? As a matter of fact, I have been there, and I have Venezuelan friends and colleagues.
And Hitler was elected; it's a matter of fact.
And I think you've probably gone back to whatever left-wing infested little corner you crawled out of - after somebody pointed out that you just joined a day ago!
I think some US envoys may have been talking to the new government: "You need money, you need US support, we need the price of oil to drop below $20 in order to get us out of recession. Come, let us reason together..."
BTW, Oil finished the day down $1.50/barrel
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.