You must have a link to show that, more likely that is your first lie in the post. Where did I use the term 'trust', perhaps the term 'predictable' is the best one to use. Ever notice the staggering amount of sanctions that are applied to the few nations that have escaped the clutches of the Jewish Bankers yet the people demand their leaders do not buckle. To show they are very vile people they howl to high heaven if they face any sanctions or boycotts.
How about you are just 'slow' and leave out the 'learn' part as all you do is cling to an ideology you latched onto sometime in the past. Considering you are void of any knowledge about what is written in the Bible your views have been adopted from what others have told you and then you failed to investigate that to verify it was sound advice. That leaves you gaining other rewards and seeing how much time you spend her I have to assume none of that worked out for you in any positive way.
You described the place as it already was before I made my first post. FF to today and the few remaining ones are 'quieter' but still holding onto the party line. go for it, your sudo owners are in a death spiral so your fate will be the same as theirs. In the history books and then, . . . nothing.
Have a peek into the black heart that is the core of capitalism.
The history of socialist construction
Prior to the 1917 revolution, Russia was a primitive, agrarian country. By 1936, after the completion of the Five-Year Plan, it was a world industrial power, surpassing every other country on the globe in terms of
steel and tractor production. The barren Soviet countryside was lit up with electricity. The children of illiterate peasants across the Soviet Union grew up to be the scientists and engineers who first conquered outer space. The planned economy of the Soviet Union drastically improved the living standards of millions of people, bringing them running water, modern housing, guaranteed employment, and free education.
There is no contradiction between central planning and economic growth. In 1949, China had no steel industry. Today,
more than half of all the world’s steel is produced in China’s government-controlled steel industry.
Cuba has
wiped out illiteracy, and Cubans enjoy one of the highest life expectancies in Latin America.
People hold up images showing Fidel Castro, second from right, Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, center, and Cuba’s revolutionary hero Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, bottom left and right, during a May Day march in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The image of Chavez carries the words in Spanish “Chavez : Our best friend.” (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
When the Marxist-Leninist governments of Eastern Europe collapsed in the early 1990s, economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who can be counted among capitalism’s “true believers,” predicted rapid economic growth. Since the 1990s, conditions in what George W. Bush called the “New Europe” have become
far worse than under socialism. The life expectancy has decreased and infant mortality has risen. Human and drug traffickers have set up shop. In endless polls, the people of Eastern Europe repeatedly say
life was better before the defeat of Communism.
Russia’s recovery from the disaster of the 1990s has come about with the reorientation of the economy to one centered around public control of its oil and natural gas resources — much like Venezuela. The Putin government has also waged a crackdown on the small number of “oligarchs” who became wealthy after the demise of the Soviet Union. Once strong state to control the economy was re-established, Russia’s gross domestic product increased by 70 percent during the first eight years of Putin’s administration.
From 2000 to 2008, poverty was cut in half, and incomes doubled.
Neoliberal capitalism has failed
It is only because these facts are simply off-limits in the American media and its discussions of socialism and capitalism that the distorted narrative about Venezuela’s current hardships are believed.
American media has perpetuated a cold-war induced false narrative on the nature of socialism.
When discussing the merits of capitalism and socialism, American media usually restricts the conversation to pointing out that socialist countries in the third world have lower living standards than the United States, a country widely identified with capitalism. Without any context or fair comparison, this alone is supposed to prove the inherent superiority of U.S.-style capitalism.
If the kind of neoliberal “free trade” advocated by U.S. corporations was the solution to global poverty, Mexico, a country long ago penetrated with the North American Free Trade Agreement, would be a shining example of development, not a mess of drug cartels and poverty. The same can be said for oil-rich countries like Nigeria, where
exports are massive but the population remains in dire conditions.
The governments of Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, and the Philippines have done everything they can to deregulate the market and accommodate Western ”investment.” Despite the promises of neoliberal theoreticians, their populations have not seen their lives substantially improve.
If one compares the more market-oriented economy of the U.S., not to countries in the global south attempting to develop with a planned economy, but to other Western countries with more social-democratic governments, the inferiority of the “free market” can also be revealed.
The U.S. is rated 43 in the world in terms of life expectancy, according to the CIA World Factbook. People live longer in Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Sweden, Australia, Italy, Iceland — basically, almost every other Western country.
Statistics on the rate of infant mortality say approximately the same thing. National health care services along with greater job security and economic protections
render much healthier populations.
Even as the social-democratic welfare states of Europe drift closer to the U.S. economic model with “austerity cuts,” the U.S. still lags behind them in terms of basic societal health. Western European countries with powerful unions, strong socialist and labor parties, and less punitive criminal justice systems
tend to have healthier societies.
The American perception that socialism or government intervention automatically create poverty, while a
laissez faire approach unleashes limitless prosperity, is simply incorrect. Despite the current hardships, this reality is reflected in the last two decades of Venezuela’s history.
A punishment vote, not a vote for capitalism
The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.
It is odd that the mainstream press blames “socialism” for the food problems in Venezuela, when the food distributors remain in the hands of private corporations. As Venezuelan political analyst Jesus Silva told me recently: “Most food in Venezuela is imported by private companies, they ask for dollars subsidized by the government oil sales to do that; they rarely produce anything or invest their own money.”
According to Silva, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the U.S., in addition to the oil crisis, have made it more difficult for the Venezuelan government to pay the private food importing companies in U.S. dollars. In response, the food companies are “running general sabotage.”
“Venezuela’s economy depends on oil sales. Now that oil prices are dropping down, the challenge is to get other sources of economic income,” he explained. “Meanwhile, the opposition is garnering electoral support due to the current economic crisis.”
When the United Socialist Party and its aligned Patriotic Pole lost control of Parliament in December, many predicted the imminent collapse of the Bolivarian government. However, months have passed and this clearly has not taken place.
While a clear majority cast a
voto castigo (“punishment vote”) in December, punishing the government for mismanaging the crisis, the Maduro administration has a solid core of socialist activists who remain loyal to the Bolivarian project. Across Venezuela, communes have been established. Leftist activists live together and work in cooperatives. Many of them are armed and organized in “Bolivarian Militias” to defend the revolution.
Even some of the loudest critics of the Venezuelan government admit that it has greatly improved the situation in the country, despite the current hardships.
In December, I spoke to Glen Martinez, a radio host in Caracas who voted for the opposition. He dismissed the notion that free market capitalism would ever return to Venezuela. As he explained, most of the people who voted against the United Socialist Party — himself included — are frustrated with the way the current crisis is being handled, but do not want a return to the neoliberal economic model of the 1999s.
He said the economic reforms established during the Chavez administration would never be reversed. “We are not the same people we were before 1999,” Martinez insisted.
The United Socialist Party is currently engaging in a massive re-orientation, hoping to sharpen its response to economic sabotage and strengthen the socialist direction of the revolution. There is also talk of
massive reform in the way the government operates, in order to prevent the extreme examples of corruption and mismanagement that are causing frustration among the population.
The climate is being intensified by
a number of
recent political assassinations.
Tensions continue to exist on Venezuela’s border with the U.S.-aligned government of Colombia. The solid base of socialist activists is not going to let revolution be overturned, and tensions continue to rise. The Maduro and the United Socialist Party’s main task is to hold Venezuela together, and not let the country escalate into a state of civil war.
https://www.mondialisation.ca/us-led-economic-war-not-socialism-is-tearing-venezuela-apart/5535633
