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tagged w/ Socialism
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Americans HATE Libertarianism
“All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desire a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo,” wrote the study’s authors Michael Norton and Dan Ariely.
5,522 Americans responded to the blind test with 92 percent of Republicans and 93.5 percent of Democrats saying they favor a model similar to Sweden.
“The problem is most Americans are persuaded by Fox News, a soapbox for billionaire Rupert Murdoch, that redistribution or socialism should not be part of our democracy let alone regulated by the government,” Richard Durban, a popular pollster for a leading website, told Politically Illustrated. “This survey contradicts Mr. Murdoch’s grip on America.”
The research comes as the wealthiest quintile, the top 20 percent of Americans, hold around 84 percent of the nation’s wealth, a percentage that keeps increasing even during the economic downturn.
“Just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States—beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth,” wrote Norton and Ariely.
Meaning some Americans fear higher taxes if one day they became rich—a dream larger than America, for everyday Americans.“All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth... more-
- H2O_4U
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- 1 year ago
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The Punk Patriot is hosting a fundraiser for Gene Cranick
So, I made this shirt a while ago. It was meant to be a joke. I made it in response to Republicans accusing everything they didn’t like of being “socialism.”
I made a video about my reasoning behind it as well, which you can watch by clicking here.
The free-market worshipers insisted that I was wrong, that Fire Departments were never socialist, and that privatizing things ALWAYS fixed everything and made things run better.
Unlike those who find it convenient to ignore facts, I’ve studied history, and I know what happens when you start charging fees for essential public services. You get corrupt, immoral behaviour. Before NYC employed the socialist model, they once had private fire departments, that used to squabble over fees while houses burned down.
I thought that we had such ignorant barbarism only in our past. But that happened again, just a few days ago, in the USA. This time in Tennessee. Gene Cranick’s house burned to the ground while the Fire Dept watched, because of a squabble over a $75 dollar fee.
This is what you get when you attach a dollar sign to doing the right thing.
Glenn Beck sees nothing wrong with that. Reaching a new level of hypocritical fucktard, Glenn Beck mocked Gene Cranick on the air, complaining that “if you don’t pay your fee, you are sponging off your neighbor” totally oblivious to the poster of Benjamin Franklin behind him, with the word “Charity” on it. Go ahead and watch the clip for yourself
Now, an anti-christ, by definition, is somebody or something that claims to represent the teachings of Christ while simultaneously preaching the exact opposite of Christ taught. Glenn Beck does this on a daily basis. Food for thought.
The mocking aside, Glenn beck is absolutely right to say that “if you don’t pay the fee, your house burns down.” That is how a privatized fire department works.
Now you might think, “well I pay my taxes, I don’t have to pay any fee for the Fire Department.” You’re right. That’s because you are living in a socialist town, with a socialist government, taking taxes from everybody (mostly from those with the most wealth and most ability to pay) and then providing the protection of both fire rescue and police services to everybody in your municipality regardless of their ability to pay. That’s what compassionate, charitable, civilized human beings do.
I decided after seeing this clip that rather than being mocked on national broadcasting, that the Cranick Family actually needs is help.
To try and help out the Cranick Family, I’m doing a fundraiser.
$10 of every “Socialism” shirt purchase will go directly to the Cranick family. Please forward this message to your friends in email, tweet and retweet this, share it on your facebook wall, talk about it in person with people you know. Spread the word. This is important. If not to help the Cranicks, do it to piss off Glenn Beck.
::read full post at the link::So, I made this shirt a while ago. It was meant to be a joke. I made it in response to... more -
WHACKO-TV BETTER INTERCOURSE
Well it is that time of the year for elections and the race for Mayor in Intercourse, PA has taken a nasty turn. WHACKO-TV has been running this spot for the incumbent Benny Schneckter. This is what politics are like in the Keystone State. Wow, Amish Parties are fun.Well it is that time of the year for elections and the race for Mayor in Intercourse,... more-
- dwightdouglas
- added this
- 1 year ago
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The Horrors of Hamas and the stupidity of Westerners
PLEASE NOTE: This video contains material that might be disturbing to some... Especially if you're a gullible idiot parading in the street after being brain washed by petro-dollar backed propaganda.
What happens when propaganda blurs the lines and blinds the public? What happens when are deliberately concealing the truth. Hamas is terror organization working on two fronts. One is against Israel and the IDF, the other is against their own people in Gaza. If you're a Palestinian in Gaza, after Hamas took over violently, you better not be supporter of Fatah, you better not be gay, you better abide to Sharia and attended only the mosques approved by your government.
It makes one wonder, where are all those protesters when Hamas is killing their own? Why aren't they shouting hatefully in the streets? Well, you better ask them, or god forbid - ask yourself.PLEASE NOTE: This video contains material that might be disturbing to some...... more-
- crystalman
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- 1 year ago
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- 65 comments
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Study: Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden | Raw Story
92 percent prefer Swedish model to US model when given a choice
Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.
For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans -- around 40 percent -- consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.
According to research (http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden's model over that of the US.
What's more, the study's authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.
But the study also found that respondents preferred Sweden's model over a model of perfect income equality for everyone, "suggesting that Americans prefer some inequality to perfect equality, but not to the degree currently present in the United States," the authors state.
Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record, exceeding even the large disparities seen in the 1920s, before the Great Depression. Norton and Ariely estimate that the one percent wealthiest Americans hold nearly 50 percent of the country's wealth, while the richest 20 percent hold 84 percent of the wealth.
But in their study, the authors found Americans generally underestimate the income disparity. When asked to estimate, respondents on average estimated that the top 20 percent have 59 percent of the wealth (as opposed to the real number, 84 percent). And when asked to choose how much the top 20 percent should have, on average respondents said 32 percent -- a number similar to the wealth distribution seen in Sweden.
"What is most striking" about the results, argue the authors, is that they show "more consensus than disagreement among ... different demographic groups. All groups – even the wealthiest respondents – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality – even the poorest respondents."
The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. "Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth," they write.
The authors also note that, though there may be widespread agreement about income inequality, there is no agreement on what caused it or what should be done about it.
"Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes towards economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap," the authors argue.
Norton and Ariely's survey was carried out on 5,522 respondents in 47 states in December of 2005. The results are to be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.92 percent prefer Swedish model to US model when given a choice Americans generally... more-
- toyotabedzrock
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- 1 year ago
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- 6 comments
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Is President Obama a Socialist? Part 2
Andrea Kaye asks the Perspectives Panel whether President Obama is a socialist? Part 2-
- perspectives
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- 1 year ago
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Chavez Loses Supermajority in Venezuelan Parliamentary Elections, Opposition Gains 52% of Popular Vote
Results from the voting centers finally came out early in the morning of September 27 starting at around 2:00 am after the parliamentary elections on Sunday went deep into the night. The results that have been announced by National Election Center (CNE) revealed that Chavez's PSUV has suffered a reversal to the opposition and lost the two-thirds supermajority that allowed his party to pass legislation without opposition.
The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) or United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its allies controlled a total of 139 of 167 seats in the National Assembly before the elections.
The current election results now show that the opposition controls a total of 62 seats to the 94 by the PSUV, a huge pickup of seats for Chavez' opponents. The loss of the super majority now means that the opposition in Venezuela will effectively be able to oppose Chavez' agenda, which up until now, had been essentially unopposed.
The opposition also won the popular vote with 52% of the vote. However, gerrymandering on the part of Chavez' government has given more power to rural areas while dividing the opposition into different regions, preventing them from gaining an overall victory in delegates.
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What does this mean for Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution?
Feel free to leave comments.Results from the voting centers finally came out early in the morning of September 27... more-
- UrbanGypsy
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- 1 year ago
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- 46 comments
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Liberal Dreamland Cuba is falling apart..proof socialism does not work
Reporting from Mexico City —
Cuba's announcement that it will lay off half a million state employees, about 10% of the workforce, is a dramatic shift for the communist government as it urgently tries to salvage the flailing economy.
The plan, which is scheduled to launch in full force next month, calls for workers to move into a small but soon-to-expand private sector of mostly mom-and-pop businesses, such as barber shops, B&Bs and vegetable farms. The government has defined 124 jobs that citizens can take on as "self-employed" businesspeople, allowing them to pocket profits but also requiring them to pay taxes.
Can it work? Cuba has stifled entrepreneurship in the name of equality. The government will have to loosen access to cash and supplies. But a turnaround, with few resources, raw materials, capital and limited expertise, will be difficult.
And what does the policy shift say about who is running Cuba? Is it President Raul Castro, or his brother, the ill-but-recovering revolutionary legend Fidel?
It was Raul Castro who in effect delivered the pink slips in August, when he complained in a major speech that the state-run economy was bloated with unproductive workers.
"We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working," he said Aug. 1. (Lest anyone miss the point, the text of the speech published the next day in Granma, the official communist party newspaper, had that line in capital letters.)Reporting from Mexico City — Cuba's announcement that it will lay off half... more -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=23362
if you think something is owned by the state your an idiot-
- evilsocialistbastard
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- 1 year ago
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- 0 comments
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Is President Obama a Socialist? Part 1
Andrea Kaye asks the Perspectives Panel whether President Obama is a socialist?-
- perspectives
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- 1 year ago
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- 1 comment
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Cuba to lay off 500,000 in 6 months, allow private jobs
Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba announced on Monday it would lay off "at least" half a million state workers over the next six months and simultaneously allow more jobs to be created in the private sector as the socialist economy struggles to get back on its feet.
The plan announced in state media confirms that President Raul Castro is following through on his pledge to shed some one million state jobs, a full fifth of the official workforce -- but in a shorter timeframe than initially anticipated.
"Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities and services with inflated payrolls and losses that damage our economy and result counterproductive, create bad habits and distort workers' conduct," the CTC, Cuba's official labor union, said in newspapers.
Castro had announced layoffs in August, but said they would occur over the next five years.
At the time, he said the government "agreed to broaden the exercise of self employment and its use as another alternative for the employment of those excess workers."
The drastic and unprecedented economic changes have many Cubans worried that jobs they had long taken for granted under the Communist government will no longer be guaranteed.
Others are hopeful that they will have more freedom to set prices and earn more than the average state wage of $20 a month.
The state currently controls more than 90 percent of the economy, running everything from ice cream parlors and gas stations to factories and scientific laboratories. Traditionally independent professions, such as carpenters, plumbers and shoe repairmen, are also employed by the state.
State media on Monday did not give details about where private enterprise would be allowed to grow or which sectors would suffer layoffs, but did talk about which areas are still strategic.
"Within the state sector, it will only be possible to fill the jobs that are indispensable in areas where historically the labor force is insufficient, like agriculture, construction, teachers, police, industrial workers and others."
The announcement avoided the word "private," but said alternative forms of employment to be allowed included renting or borrowing state-owned facilities, cooperatives and self employment and that "hundreds of thousands of workers" would find jobs outside of the state sector over the next few years.
Castro has launched a few, small free-market reforms since taking over from his brother Fidel Castro in 2006.
In April, for example, barbershops were handed over to employees, who pay rent and tax but charge what they want. Licenses have also been granted to private taxis.
For a couple of years, fallow land in the countryside has been turned over to private farmers. The more they produce, the more they earn.Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba announced on Monday it would lay off "at least"... more-
- UrbanGypsy
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- 1 year ago
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- 50 comments
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Keifer Sutherland Honors Socialist Grandfather
Who knew that the Sutherland's were related to the man Canadian's voted to be the greatest Canadian of all time.
http://archives.cbc.ca/society/celebrations/topics/1455/Who knew that the Sutherland's were related to the man Canadian's voted to... more-
- trut
- added this
- 1 year ago
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- 2 comments
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Dr. Stephen Baskerville, "The Family Crisis and the Future of Western Civilization"
Government of/for the governed; and Power Games/plays by authorities within "civilized community," even within the otherwise free and democratic republics.
http://www.nhinet.org/baskerville22-1.pdfGovernment of/for the governed; and Power Games/plays by authorities within... more-
- justadad
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- 1 year ago
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- 2 comments
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A Civics Lesson for America the Ignorant
3 Terms that people throw around and don't know the meaning of:
1) Constitution - A very simple document that outlines the fundamentals of United States Doctrine. The Constitution’s main purpose is to protect the people from unlawful treatment by the Government. Simply stating that something is Unconstitutional is an easy accusation to make. To prove it; usually leads to troubles with the user of the statement. There are only 26 Amendments to the original constitution so labeling so many things as Unconstitutional pretty much statistically makes most of the accusations false. For instance the freedom of speech only guarantees you freedom of persecution by the Government, and only the government. You can't say whatever you want to a private individual and not expect a backlash. You also can't make threats and false accusations. Those are superseded by the Justice System.
2) Socialism - Is a governmental system. Not economic. It has nothing to do with Free Trade or how a person can make money within their own country. Close to every modern nation in the world operates in a Socialist fashion today. Many people have begun to accuse the United States of becoming Socialist, but they are either ignorant of the meaning or denying the last century. The United States is a Socialist country already. In fact the Public Education system is one of the largest and most successful Socialist programs in the history of human civilization. Medicare is another example. Social Security is another one. Municipal road work. The Interstate System. The list goes on and on. Pretty much anything that the Government does for you with your tax dollars is Socialism. If you want to protest this; stop drinking your town water. Stop driving on paved roads. Plow your own Interstate. Teach your own kids K-12. Socialism is paying your Government in Taxes and in return they give you services that would cost you a lot more in private sale. Nazis and Soviets weren't Socialist. They called themselves this for Propaganda because it's a "caring system". They were in fact Totalitarian Fascist and Dictators. I'm not going to explain the meaning of the last two because if you can't understand that the US doesn't operate like that you can't understand the meaning's of these words.
3) Communism - This is purely an economic system. It has nothing to with the way the Government governs the people. Communism is a flawed system in that it relies all on trust of the Government. In Communism the totaled income of the country is divided evenly amount the Citizens. There are no social classes, no tax brackets, and property is distributed among the people not bought and sold by individuals. It's great in theory but no government seems to be able to handle the burden and trust needed to implement it. The Soviets butchered the system into punishing the people and reaping the benefits of the private sector's lost income. The United States will never be a Communist society. Financial regulations do not constitute communism. If pick pocketing wasn't a crime and the government suddenly enacted laws banning it would you cry Communism? No, the free trade system would still exists you would just have to change the way you made money. You couldn't steal it anymore.
There are a plethora of other issues sparking across the nation today. But most are to stupid to even address. Hatred is strong in the nation today and it's disgusting. If we did have a Black Muslim Socialist President what exactly is wrong with that? Ask yourself that. Pull the words apart.
Black = Skin Color
Muslim = Branch of Judaism just like Christianity
Socialist = Last 10 Presidents fit in that realm
President = Elected by the people.3 Terms that people throw around and don't know the meaning of: 1)... more-
- PrivateBurke
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- 1 year ago
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- 97 comments
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Pro-War Conservatives Are A Walking Contradiction
It is a testament to the power of government propaganda that several generations of self-described conservatives have held as their core belief that war and militarism are consistent with limited, constitutional government. These conservatives think they are "defending freedom" by supporting every military adventure that the state concocts. They are not.
Even just, defensive wars inevitably empower the state far beyond anything any strict constructionist would approve of. Prowar conservatives, in other words, are walking contradictions. They may pay lip service to limited constitutional government, but their prowar positions belie their rhetoric.
"War is the health of the state," as Randolph Bourne said in his famous essay of that title. Statism, moreover, means central planning, heavy taxation, fascist or socialist economics, attacks on free speech and other civil liberties, and the suffocation and destruction of private enterprise. Classical liberals have always understood this, but conservatives never have. (Neoconservatives either don't understand it or don't care.)
Thus, you have the celebrated neoconservative writer Victor Davis Hanson writing in the December 2, 2009, issue of Imprimis that antiwar activism and other "factors" that make people "reluctant" to resort to war are "lethal combinations" that supposedly threaten the existence of society. Hanson was merely repeating the conservative party line first enunciated by the self-proclaimed founder of the modern conservative (really neoconservative) movement, William F. Buckley Jr. Murray Rothbard quoted Buckley as saying in the January 25, 1952 issue of Commonweal magazine that the Cold War required that
we have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … [We must support] large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington.
"We" must advocate the destruction of the free society in the name of defending the free society, said "Mr. Conservative," a former CIA employee.
In reality, antiwar "factors" are a threat only to the military/industrial/congressional complex, which profits from war; they are not a threat to society as a whole. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
Seeing through the dense murk of such war propaganda is one of the purposes of my ten-week, online Mises Academy course on "The Political Economy of War," which begins on September 21. Students will learn about the economics and politics of war from some of the giants of classical liberalism, such as Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, Lionell Robbins, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Robert Higgs, and others. Among the topics to be discussed are
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Why capitalism is the very opposite of war
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The economic causes of war
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Why nationalism is always a threat to peace and prosperity
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Why Marx was wrong about war and imperialism, but the Austrian economists got it right
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Why and how war is the health of the state, always ratcheting up governmental power at the expense of individual liberty and prosperity
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The role of free trade in deterring war
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The evils of military conscription
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How war cripples a nation's economy, benefiting only a small group of war profiteers in the process
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How the state employs the Fed to hide and disguise the costs of war
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The role of statist intellectuals in promoting war precisely because they, too, understand that war is the health of the state
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Why conservatives love war and the state
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The dangerous myth that democracy promotes peace
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Private alternatives to a massive "national-defense" establishment
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What is a just war?
Each class will consist of a 45–50 minute lecture followed by 45 minutes of Q&A with students. My lectures will cover the topics listed on the syllabus for the course, but will be more than rehashes of the readings that are listed — I will concentrate on both my understanding of the readings (and other literature) and my own research and writings.
The importance of understanding the political economy of war is perhaps illustrated by this passage from Randolph Bourne's famous essay:
War is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State's chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing processes of the national life.
Ludwig von Mises expressed a similar sentiment in Human Action, when he wrote,
Mises Academy: Tom DiLorenzo teaches The Political Economy of War
What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action. The emergence of the international division of labor requires the total abolition of war. …
This philosophy is, of course, incompatible with statolatry.[1]
These two quotes give one an indication of why those individuals who help the public to become reluctant to support war are more likely to be heroes of society as opposed to the "lethal combinations" of neoconservative folklore.
http://mises.org/daily/4659It is a testament to the power of government propaganda that several generations of... more-
- shanklinmike
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- 1 year ago
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Venezuela, more deadly than Iraq
CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.
In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.
Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.
Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities.
Then a front-page photograph in a leading independent newspaper — and the government’s reaction — shocked the nation, and rekindled public debate over violent crime.
The photo in the paper, El Nacional, is unquestionably gory. It shows a dozen homicide victims strewn about the city’s largest morgue, just a sample of an unusually anarchic two-day stretch in this already perilous place.
While many Venezuelans saw the picture as a sober reminder of their vulnerability and a chance to effect change, the government took a different stand.
A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer.
“Forget the hundreds of children who die from stray bullets, or the kids who go through the horror of seeing their parents or older siblings killed before their eyes,” said Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of another newspaper here, mocking the court’s decision in a front-page editorial. “Their problem is the photograph.”
Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).
There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.
Caracas itself is almost unrivaled among large cities in the Americas for its homicide rate, which currently stands at around 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Roberto Briceño-León, the sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela who directs the violence observatory.
That compares with recent measures of 22.7 per 100,000 people in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and 14 per 100,000 in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. As Mr. Chávez’s government often points out, Venezuela’s crime problem did not emerge overnight, and the concern over murders preceded his rise to power.
But scholars here describe the climb in homicides in the past decade as unprecedented in Venezuelan history; the number of homicides last year was more than three times higher than when Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998.
Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say. While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.
Police salaries remain low, sapping motivation. And in a country with the highest inflation rate in the hemisphere, more than 30 percent a year, some officers have turned to supplementing their incomes with crimes like kidnappings.
But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.
More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.
Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, a state encompassing parts of Caracas, told reporters last week that Mr. Chávez had worsened the homicide problem by cutting money for state and city governments led by political opponents and then removing thousands of guns from their police forces after losing regional elections.
But the government says it is trying to address the problem. It recently created a security force, the Bolivarian National Police, and a new Experimental Security University where police recruits get training from advisers from Cuba and Nicaragua, two allies that have historically maintained murder rates among Latin America’s lowest.
The national police’s overriding priority, said Víctor Díaz, a senior official on the force and an administrator at the new university, is “unrestricted respect for human rights.”
"I’m not saying we’ll be weak,” he said, “but the idea is to use dialogue and dissuasion as methods of verbal control when approaching problems.”
Senior officials in Mr. Chávez’s government say the deployment of the national police, whose ranks number fewer than 2,500, has succeeded in reducing homicides in at least one violent area of Caracas where they began patrolling this year.
Still, human rights groups suggest the new policing efforts have been far too timid. Incosec, a research group here that focuses on security issues, counted 5,962 homicides in just 10 of Venezuela’s 23 states in the first half of this year.
Meanwhile, the debate over the morgue photograph published by El Nacional is intensifying, evolving into a broader discussion over the government’s efforts to clamp down on the news outlets it does not control.
The government says the photograph was meant to undermine it, not to inform the public. The authorities are also threatening an inquiry into “Rotten Town,” a video by a Venezuelan reggae singer that shows an innocent child struck down by a stray bullet. For all the government’s protests, the video has spread rapidly across the Internet since its release here this month.
Given the government’s stance in these cases, many here worry it is focusing on the messenger, not the underlying message.
Hector Olivares, 47, waited outside the morgue early one morning this month to recover the body of his son, also named Hector, 21. He said his son was at a party in the slum of El Cercado, on the outskirts of Caracas, when a gunman opened fire.
Mr. Olivares said Hector was the second son he had lost in a senseless murder, after another son was killed four years ago at the age of 22. He said he did not blame Mr. Chávez for the killings, but he pleaded with the president to make combating crime a higher priority.
“We elected him to crack down on the problems we face,” he said. “But there’s no control of criminals on the street, no control of anything.”
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I would like to thank my Venezuelan friend and fellow Currenteer voxaustralis for pointing me to the article.CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in... more-
- UrbanGypsy
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- 1 year ago
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- 105 comments
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Fidel Castro Fascinated by Book on Bilderberg Group
HAVANA – Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.
The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin.
Estulin's work, "The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club," argues that the international group largely runs the world. It has held a secretive annual forum of prominent politicians, thinkers and businessmen since it was founded in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland.
Castro offered no comment on the excerpts other than to describe Estulin as honest and well-informed and to call his book a "fantastic story."
Estulin's book, as quoted by Castro, described "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."
The Bilderberg group's website says its members have "nearly three days of informal and off-the-record discussion about topics of current concern" once a year, but the group does nothing else.
It said the meetings were meant to encourage people to work together on major policy issues.
The prominence of the group is what alarms critics. It often includes members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, senior U.S. and European officials and major international business and media executives.
The excerpt published by Castro suggested that the esoteric Frankfurt School of socialist academics worked with members of the Rockefeller family in the 1950s to pave the way for rock music to "control the masses" by diverting attention from civil rights and social injustice.
"The man charged with ensuring that the Americans liked the Beatles was Walter Lippmann himself," the excerpt asserted, referring to a political philosopher and by-then-staid newspaper columnist who died in 1974.
"In the United States and Europe, great open-air rock concerts were used to halt the growing discontent of the population," the excerpt said.
Castro — who had an inside seat to the Cold War — has long expressed suspicions of back-room plots. He has raised questions about whether the Sept. 11 attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government to stoke military budgets and, more recently suggested that Washington was behind the March sinking of a South Korean ship blamed on North Korea.
Estulin's own website suggests that the 9/11 attacks were likely caused by small nuclear devices, and that the CIA and drug traffickers were behind the 1988 downing of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that was blamed on Libya.
The Bilderberg conspiracy theory has been popular on both extremes of the ideological spectrum, even if they disagree on just what the group wants to do. Leftists accuse the group of promoting capitalist domination, while some right-wing websites argue that the Bilderberg club has imposed Barack Obama on the United States to advance socialism.
Some of Estulin's work builds on reports by Big Jim Tucker, a researcher on the Bilderberg Group who publishes on right-wing websites.
"It's great Hollywood material ... 15 people sitting in a room sitting in a room determining the fate of mankind," said Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank in New York.
"As someone who doesn't come out of the Oliver Stone school of conspiracy, I have a hard time believing it," London added.
More at link...Herb London definitely knows about the Bilderberg Group; he works for them..."nonpartisan policy think tank" my a$$. Daniel Estulin is very great at breaking down the New World Order, he makes a great cameo in Fall of the Republic, watch it via my page:
www.current.com/groups/conspiracy-filmsHAVANA – Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far... more-
- rodstradamus
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- 1 year ago
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- 2 comments
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What is Reality?
Is reality overrated or just underappreciated?
http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/TomTomorrow8-11.pngIs reality overrated or just underappreciated?... more-
- Progresshiv
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- 1 year ago
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- 1 comment
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Obama bypassing Senate for new Health Care chief
WASHINGTON – Bypassing Republicans wanting answers from an administration official over the new health care law, President Barack Obama is planning to appoint the head of Medicare and Medicaid without Senate hearings.
Obama intends to use a so-called recess appointment to put Dr. Donald Berwick in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a White House official said Tuesday night. The appointment was expected Wednesday.
The decision means Berwick can assume the post without being confirmed by the Senate, which is in recess for the July Fourth holiday. He could serve through next year without Senate confirmation.
Republicans had indicated they were prepared to oppose him over comments he had made on rationing of medical care and other matters. Obama wanted to avoid a confirmation fight that could reopen the health care debate. Berwick was nominated in April but no confirmation hearing had been scheduled.
"This recess appointment is an insult to the American people," Sen. John Barrasso said in a statement. "Dr. Berwick is a self-professed supporter of rationing health care and he won't even have to explain his views to the American people in a congressional hearing."
The Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, "The fact that this administration won't allow the man charged with implementing the president's plan to cut $500 billion out of Medicare to testify about his plans for the care of our nation's seniors is truly outrageous."
Berwick, 63, is a pediatrician, Harvard University professor and leader of a health care nonprofit organization.
He's been criticized for a number of comments, including telling an interviewer last year: "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100707/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_health_care_appointmentWASHINGTON – Bypassing Republicans wanting answers from an administration... more-
- JohnA
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- 1 year ago
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- 3 comments
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Ron Paul - “Obama Is Not A Socialist; He’s a Corporatist! Republicans Are Too!”
Ron Paul points out the corporatism in the two party (one party) system, including but not limited to the military industrial complex and the medical industrial complex.
http://www.peacefreedomprosperity.com/?p=3666Ron Paul points out the corporatism in the two party (one party) system, including but... more-
- shanklinmike
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- 1 year ago
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- 300 comments
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