Sunday’s Alo Presidente was messy and varied, a few buildings were expropriated and a steel company was nationlaized falsely accsued of charging too much (It’s prices have been regulated for four years). But lost in all the noise and the threat to Polar owner Lorenzo Mendoza (LM), was this pearl directed against Gustavo Cisneros President of the Cisneros group of companies which includes Venevisión:
“I suggest to you (LM) that you go talk to Cisneros…look, he doesn’t mess with me anymore and he still has Venevisión…I even invited one of his reporters to my trip so that she could cover everything.”
Can it be clearer than this? Not only you protect your property, you may even get some favors from it.
Spoken like a true mafiosi Dictator…
The Devil's Excrement 
May 8, 2011 at 10:45 am
In English……………………………………..
BANANA REPUBLIC OR OIL REPUBLIC. THE DEVIL’S EXCREMENT. Used in manner pejorative
Any term or phrases above is used often in derogative manner, being one the worst examples of the disastrous triangulation [State-Capitalism-Policy]; and reminds us that like the banana growers as the rubber growers and the sugar. We with our barrels of oil, never we could exit of the underdevelopment. Only we can achieve this with the industrialization of these products. In deep, we are and have Our Banana Republic.
November 12, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Chavez, TU ERES UN LADRON, ESTAS ROBANDO LA DIGNIDAD DE LA GENTE VENEZOLANA,ESTAS ROBANDO LAS RIQUESAS DE LA GENTE VENEZOLANA, ESTAS ROBANDO LOS SUENOS DE LOS JOVENES VENEZOLANOS, QUE PENA ME DAS, PORQUE LO UNICO QUE TU ERES ES UN LADRON
November 6, 2010 at 10:23 am
M Astera,
I completely agree with what you say here.
My mother is just one example of the many like that I know.She goes to the extreme of blatant lying just to make her points as well.So how could she be convinced? Impossible.In fact most of my family is extreme liberal and I know them like the back of a book, and what you say is 100 % correct.It is a kind of culty thing which is why they do not respond to verbal logic or facts..It is more of an emotional commitment than an intellectual understanding.
I have been studying this phenomena and have come up with a few correlations that often fit, but that do not fit the more moderate forms of liberalism, only the more angry extreme hateful kind( which is also quite common)
1. they tend to be cheap and materialistic( they do not want to share so they vote to make others do so) as they do not want to give to charity or give their money away to family and friends or neighbors, they like the idea of the government doing it.This is a form of both denial and projection.
2. they tend towards self centeredness so they vote in a way as to hide that even from themselves.They can go about feeling self satisfied and smug without actually have done a thing but vote.
3. they are very concerned about what others think of them so they like to be on the side of the ” cool” and so called progressive
4.some of them are not quite above board( drug users for example) so they prefer liberal attitudes towards drugs, crime,privacy, sex etc.Many have a strange combo of defending legal drugs and other liberal ideas with retrograde machismo attitudes….bizarre!!!!!!!!!!! Liberalism in some cases is just an excuse for licentiousness and the feeling of having no limits.
How many contradictory men are out there who say they support gay marriage and woman’s lib, and then go home and their their wives as less than equal ?Politics foments this in people but it is more important to BE a better person than to vote for others who pretend to be good.
My daughter in law who is a more moderate liberal and is a State Lawyer, did change her mind when voting for judges.As this is one area she has personal experience in, she knows for sure that the liberal judges here in NC tend to approve of baseless law suits for large amounts of money often made to sue the government which is a form of corruption and recommends voting straight Republican in this area.But my mother refused to listen to her despite such evidence.This is the essence of the authoritarian mind.
November 3, 2010 at 3:02 pm
I could make a list here of the most popular alternative (non-establishment, not obviously rightwing) news sites in the US, as in those who get the most traffic. There would not be a web site on the list where a person could post a disparaging comment about HC where they would not be viciously attacked by every other poster. I know this because I have spent a lot of time trying to set the record straight. Facts are ignored and never addressed. These people watched “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and know that HC inferred that GW Bush was a devil at the UN. That is all they know, to this day, and all they want to know. HC can do no wrong, ever, in their eyes.
I don’t know how this brainwashing was accomplished, but it is very real. I stand by my first comment.
November 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Juancho,
That is a very nice dispassionate analysis, but when you are living right in the middle of it, “‘Tis a puzzlement” doesn’t even begin chip the surface of how I feel about it.
November 3, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Hi Ira, et al:
I think the overall picture gets very muddled owing to the current crisis. Originally, Chavez addressed a real and crucial need: giving the vast, poor majority political voice and power, awakening the political conscious of the “pueblo,” and so forth. Too much power was held in too few hands, and many had no voice at all. That all had to change.
However the methods merely borrowed from the past (corruption, gangersterism, dictatorial M), etc.) because there was no other model on hand on how to do business. What’s more, an economic and political path (socialism) was chosen that sounds okay on paper but has never worked in the history of the world. And never will work.
So it’s a strange place we find ourselves in today, with no way to go back, and the future equivocal.
‘Tis a puzzlement…
Juancho
November 3, 2010 at 8:49 am
“Not only you protect your property”
I heartily disagree. Rather, by submitting you get granted the PRIVILEGE of holding on to what WAS yours sometime in the past. It’s a BOON.
That is, until DON HUGO changes his mind. Though I am misusing the word “DON”, implying falsely with it he has a given word or is honourable after a fashion. Experience shows us this is not the case. He is THUGO and that’s the shape of it.
That has to change, once and forever, irreversibly, if we want to have a country that is tyrant-proof.
November 3, 2010 at 4:16 am
Juancho, I don’t think he inferred 99% of all gringos. It’s 99% of the progressives/ultra liberals. (I think that’s an exaggeration, but I get the point.)
The problem U.S. liberals like me have is that the word has become distorted. I believe in government’s responsibility to help those who need it, but I also believe in government’s responsibility to create an environment which will actually allow them to financially ACCOMPLISH that:
Not the case with the creeping communism of VZ today, although Chavez really could have taken concrete steps toward that at the start. He just blew it because of ideology and his particular mental disorders. Not to mention the fact that truly transforming the country for the better was never on his agenda in the first place.
So progressives in the U.S. and throughout the world only see the “lie” and “false promises” of Chavez’s attempts to help the poor. They don’t see the abuses and stripping and freedoms, and believe that “the ends justify the means.”
Their problem is they can’t see the forest for the trees, and justify their defense of Hugo by falsely believing he’s bringing more freedom and prosperity to VZ, when in fact, we all know the exact opposite to be true.
November 3, 2010 at 2:37 am
“I hate to bring this up again, but it is true that 99%+ of the people in the US and Canada who consider themselves progressive, enlightened, and informed continue to support any words or any action by HC (or Fidel). His complete rightness and infallibility is not and may never be questioned. I am not exaggerating.”
Not exaggerating, but not remotely accurate. The idea that Chavez’ hijinks are entirely lost on ALL gringos is like saying they all voted for George Bush. The Stage Department know all about Chavez – of that we may be sure.
JL
November 3, 2010 at 12:17 am
Roy,
“Do whatever Chacumbele wants, no matter how far it goes against your own self-interest or moral principles”
The Cisneros’es moral principle is to keep Venevision at all costs. In the [very] hypothetical case that an opposition candidate wins in 2012, you’d see them get aligned with him/her faster than it is possible to blink.
November 2, 2010 at 8:45 pm
“I suggest to you (LM) that you go talk to Cisneros…look, he doesn’t mess with me anymore and he still has Venevisión…I even invited one of his reporters to my trip so that she could cover everything.“
Why the surprise at the remark? when asked about the hundreds of people killed in his attempt to grab power Chavez retorted, like a true psychopath “It was just a few people”
Some people still don’t know what we are dealing with, and I suspect many of them gave him a free pass with that one, after all whats a few eggs when you are making a revolution?
November 2, 2010 at 6:51 pm
For a long time, at least 5 years, I’ve been encouraging you to expose Chavez for who he really is.
“PROVOKE HIM”, I said. Now more than ever. He can’t (well, actually, he can) expropriate the entire country, but there simply aren’t any Rojorojitos compentent enough to run any of them.
Your possessions, while important, aren’t really.
Go back and read that sentence again, I’ll wait.
The sooner his house of cards collapses…
November 2, 2010 at 6:10 pm
One normally doesn’t notice one’s own accent. Some people pick up an accent from others around without noticing. It’s not Chavez’s fault. I guess there aren’t many Sabanetans in his inner circle. But he sure is bringing the Cuban accent into disrepute.
There is a parallel with m_astera’s comment. Any one of the 1,200,000 or so Cubans living abroad are considered by the enlighted progressives as rich fascists who hate the poor and are probably CIA agents who wish that the US had invaded Cuba in 1961.
November 2, 2010 at 5:43 pm
The majority of progressives see Hugo Chavez for who he is, but there’s still a few useful idiots out there who think he’s the savior of Latin America and that everyone that criticizes him is a wealthy counterrevolutionary. Most if not all Latin American governments are small, tightly-knit mafias controlled by a select few and ideology tends to matter little. It’s kind of like how most American leftists defended Manuel Zelaya last year when in reality he was just some rancher in a cowboy hat who got elected president and decided the presidential sash fit him a little too well. Those who think Chavez forms a front against American imperialism, neoliberal policies or whatever bogeyman they choose at the time either have no idea how Latin America works or are willfully ignorant/malicious.
November 2, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Maybe he thinks a Cubano accent sounds sophisticated and revolutionary.
I hate to bring this up again, but it is true that 99%+ of the people in the US and Canada who consider themselves progressive, enlightened, and informed continue to support any words or any action by HC (or Fidel). His complete rightness and infallibility is not and may never be questioned. I am not exaggerating. So what can be done about that? Nothing. Any attempt to educate those enlightened progressives or inform them of the facts on the ground is met with ad hominem attacks. Anyone who questions HC is a wealthy fascist who hates the poor, wishes the US to invade VE and restore the oligarchs, and is probably a CIA agent.
November 2, 2010 at 4:58 pm
What many of these expropriations are about is strangling those companies who donate to opposition politicians, with the added bonus of spreading fear amongst the business class and forcing them to either pack their bags and leave, or stay and do nothing to oppose him.
The calculus is probably that he knows if the opposition keeps getting funded by business, it will be harder for him to win in 2012. Add in that law that passed before the elections about NGO’s receiving funds from outside, and you begin to see the trap he wants to spring.
Camilo Manrique indeed died “plantacion adentro, Camara’ ”
And that’s where he wants to take us, this “Mayoral” of ours.
November 2, 2010 at 3:04 pm
And spoken in cuban accent, to make it even more despicable and empathize who knows what mental disorder the character has.
November 2, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I’m not in Venezuela but I follow up Venezuelan news. Can someone (probably Mr. moctavio) tell me if the people notice any relationship between the fact that Chavez treated new elected congressperson Mrs. Machado, and then, one and something months after the treat, he ordered to expropriate Sidetur, business tied to Machado’s family? Is this just coincidence? Why this has not been denounced?
November 2, 2010 at 2:01 pm
The guy is rolling down a vicious spiral of authoritarianism. He went beyond any boundary of rationality and fair play. It is right to call for an end of his abusive regime by any means, or at least to prepare for a non-democratic solution.
I was reading Paine’s Common Sense http://bit.ly/b4b0gj and it surprised me how that 200+ year old political manifesto applies to Venezuela word-by-word today. We have regressed at least that much in time. ch[avez hurts all the people and doesn’t even please himself. He is a victim of a strange mental disorder and is carrying everybody with him down the toilet.
Black outs are common in many cities, hospitals and schools are in shambles, the roads kill even their own governors due to huge holes and general disrepair, public finances are a mess with loans and revenue for future sales used to patch up deficits created by megalomaniac foreign aid. It is time to move to action. I don’t have a plan, but the conviction that the democratic doors are closed and it is time to send this son of a bitch packing.
November 2, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Yep! Chrystal clear. Do whatever Chacumbele wants, no matter how far it goes against your own self-interest or moral principles. Or else…
The interests and principles of all Venezuelans are subordinate to the State. Suck it up, or pack your bags and go.