Is Chavez Giving Socialism a Bad Name?

August 4, 2010 04:12


As Hollywood director Oliver Stone releases his pro-Hugo Chavez film, “South of the Border,” the Socialist International (SI) reports that the oil-rich Venezuelan ruler is suppressing dissent, interfering with freedom of the press, mismanaging the economy, and threatening peace in the region. – AIM

AIM Report By Cliff Kincaid

The SI report includes a description of the Chavez regime as a “democradura”—a democratic dictatorship.

The SI is an international alliance of 170 left-of-center political parties and organizations that might be expected to defend the Chavez regime. But its report confirms all of the charges that critics have been making about the would-be dictator. What’s more, it says that Chavez’s policies are hurting the very people he claims to represent—the poor—through schemes that are undermining economic growth and costing jobs.

In other words, Chavez is demonstrating, once again, that socialism doesn’t work.

Following the release of the report, the Socialist International Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean issued a statement expressing “concern with regard to the respect for human rights and democratic freedoms” in Venezuela and calling for the release of political prisoners there.

Chavez is a hero of “progressives” who support Obama and staff his administration. For example, Mark Lloyd, the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has publicly praised Hugo Chavez and the Marxist revolution in Venezuela.

Other supporters of the regime include Mark Weisbrot of the George Soros-supported Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and Tariq Ali, a British Pakistani associated with the Institute for Policy Studies, also based in Washington, D.C.

Weisbrot and Ali wrote the screenplay for the Oliver Stone film about Chavez.

FULL STORY



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