Oil Fuels Latin American Binge (where thesr is smoke...

[banana republican]

MEXICO CITY -- With Venezuela rolling in oil dollars, President Hugo Chavez has increased spending 50% this year, buying everything from school uniforms for the poor to a fleet of Russian attack helicopters for the military.

He also is helping to revive memories of Latin America's great oil-funded binges of the past -- and the economic meltdowns that followed when energy prices fell. While Mr. Chavez's outlays are hard to match, spending is on the rise as the region's other oil exporters such as Ecuador and Mexico find it hard to resist exhausting windfalls from oil's run-up over the past year.

[aquart]

1. They're not spending it here, I notice.

[countmyvote4real]

2. If I were them, I wouldn't either.

Good for them.

[AlCzervik]

8. We don't really make much stuff here anymore

except for misery that is, we do really well in that area, especially in exporting.

[bin.dare]

3. where is this from?

the revolutionary things happening in SA at the moment include battering for oil. this means doing away with petro-dollars which has the US very pissed off and biting at the bit to punish the likes of Chavez. BTW saddam's greatest sin was to start pricing iraqi oil in euros.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. If I Were Hugo Chavez, I Wouldn't Buy From the US Either

If I were Hugo Chavez, I wouldn't buy from the US either. After watching Bush's underlings Noriega and Reich at work in Haiti, and after the apparent US involvement in the attempt to oust the elected Venezuelan government by a coup, I'd consider the US to be on my list of hostile states. I'd want my weapons coming from reliable suppliers who are less than likely to kowtow to the Pentagon's and the US State Department's demands.

I may be a loyal American, I may be less than overwhelmed by what I see as Chavez's less-than-respectful attitudes towards constitutional government and rule of law, but it doesn't take much brainpower to glimpse where other peoples' interests lie. And thanks to the Boosh regime, the Venezuelans government has decided that its interests don't coincide with those of the Boosh regime.

[AP]

5. What could be more respectful of constitutional gov't than having one?

The first thing the weekend coup fascists did when they kidnapped Chávez was tear up the consitution.

[Vogon_Glory]

6. Actually Following It...

What could actually be more respectful of constitutional government than having one? Following that constitution, that's what.

The Soviet Union actually had a fairly liberal, decent constitution which in taken up and placed in another socio-political context might have proved a fine framework for a liberal, democratic republic instead of the tyranny of Stalin all the way through Andropov and Chernenko. A constitution should mean more than a pretty bit of pr fluff.

[AP]

7. When didn't they follow it?

What's so liberal about the Soviet Union's constitution?

[AP]

9. Some funny quotes about the Soviet constitutions:

First Constitution of the Soviet Union, 1918

The first constitution of the new Soviet state--the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic--was adopted by the Congress of Soviets on July 10, 1918. It is notable for its uncompromising encouragement of world revolution and the complete overthrow of capitalism. There is no hint here that the "suppressing (of) all exploitation of man by man" as announced in Chap. II presaged any commitment to political democracy as practised in the West. Power was highly centralized and exercised by the Communist party to the exclusion of all other political parties. Furthermore, Sec.2, Chap. IX, para. 23 suggests the impossibility of any organized opposition proving successful in the face of overwhelming state power. Thus, for example, the vote was denied to bourgeois elements, ex- (pre-revolutionary)-policemen and clergy. And whereas Karl Marx in his vision of the socialist future had looked forward to a society in which man gave according to his abilities and got according to his needs, the Leninist version reads more menacingly: "He who does not work shall not eat," a prescription that was carried over word for word into Stalin's later constitution of 1936.

With the reconstitution of the Soviet republics (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, et al.) into the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1923, a new constitution was adopted in 1924. There, also, the monopoly of power by the Communist party was retained. That constitution in turn was replaced by Stalin's Constitution of 1936 which was, like the earlier efforts, a mere façade of the democracy it professed to install.

Sounds real liberal.

http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob103.html

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Touche, score, fold

[AP]

11. Even though I didn't agree with your posts above, my esteem for you is

immense. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that before.

I like you.

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Thank you.

Thank you.

I try to be civilized here. I posted a lot on AOL's message boards. The "conservatives" over there were definitely the sort of people that Hannibal Lector would have had over for dinner--to call them members of the free-range rude would have been a gross understatement.