Venezuela's poor join protests as turmoil grips Chávez's revolution

[freshwest]

111. Two people murdered an hour per day. The situation that underlies that. Cenk was fair, too.

Somebody had better change their ways down there. The shooting of unarmed people has to stop. Everyone needs to come clean about what kind of government they want to have there.

As the comments at the article says, it's not left or right. We may be out of our depth at DU considering this. Perhaps we need to discuss what is good about Maduro or Chavez without commenting on his economic system, an without conspiracy talk.

There has been a failure from what we at DU who were hopeful for the uplifting of the dispossessed (which is the colonial history of all of the Americas) in Venezuela.

Maduro's paranoia, though, is well-founded. That he may be corrupt or incompetent, even without the paranoia, is not totally proven here. Look at the obstruction that Obama has faced here in the USA.

And what kind of government would Lopez have installed in the place of Chavez in his last coup attempt?

Would he have empowered the poor, who many at DU believed Chavez did or Maduro would do, and for which he holds firmly to his ideology?

Or would Lopez have put into place the same system Chavez won election to overcome? Was Chavez a failure, as well?

And are we judging failures on facts or ideology?

We have seen successful mixed socialist societies for most of our lives (social democracies) that include elements in the USA. Social Security, SBA, etc. that empower people and business.

The actions of Lopez in trying a coup don't speak well for him, but don't agree his attendance in American schools makes him an instant pawn. If that was so, do we also deny simliar positions of leadership in the USA to those who attended these universities?

Venezuela has many resources, and we have talked on their oil not being export quality, but it seems the climate itself would give prosperity by agriculture. There is something wrong and has been for a long time for them to not have a more equal society.

As regards killings from crime, I can't help but wonder if these are cartel killings for turf or street crime from those who see no other way to get by in a society without any chance of making an honest living. I don't know what the crime rate was pre-Chavez or Maduro, or why. When shortages were reported, about televisions, I thought it rather frivolous.

Now that article posted shows that the people are very bad off if they cannot get the necessiites. I've posted about the changes in population in Caracas, on this thread, that make no sense. This is an emergency.