No facts. Just more corpo-fascist smeary, smooshy, impressionistic propaganda.
The FACT is that Venezuelans rated their own country FIFTH IN THE WORLD on their sense of well-being and future prospects, in the Gallup Well-Being Poll last year.
The FACT is that Venezuela ranked FIRST IN SOUTH AMERICA and 9th of 151 countries in a more refined study of well-being and happiness this year. (The World Happiness Report for 2013, by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/you-probably-didnt-hear-that-venezuela-was-again-ranked-the-happiest-country-in-south-america
(--and 7th of 151 countries on "experienced well-being")
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/countries/venezuela/
And WHY do Venezuelans register such a strong sense of WELL-BEING, HAPPINESS and HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
The FACT is that the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean recently rated Venezuela "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution.
The FACT is that Venezuela met ALL of its Millennium goals ahead of schedule (dramatic poverty reduction, improved education, etc.) The FACT is that Venezuelans have enjoyed unprecedented levels of public participation (voter turnouts, political campaigning, community councils, strong and effective labor unions) and unprecedented access to health care, to educational opportunity, to housing and to jobs, including good salaries/benefits, under the Chavez/Maduro government.
It is NO ACCIDENT that people who ARE EXPERIENCING access to health care, educational opportunity, good jobs and other elements of advancement and who feel part of the political life of their society, feel positive about life in general, and have a sense of well-being and happiness, even if things go wrong, even if things are not perfect.
But the corpo-fascist newsmongers NEVER ask this question--why do Venezuelans feel good?--because they NEVER report on the MANY indicators that point to well-being, on which the Venezuelan government has SUCCEEDED.
No facts. So, no question, no analysis, no answer.
Venezuela IS BAD. Socialism IS BAD. Chavez was BAD. Maduro is BADDER. Bad, bad, bad.
It's like the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland": Insane, tyrannical insistence on THEIR VIEW, with complete disregard for REALITY.
As for Bacchus4.0 repeatedly posting this corpo-fascist news garbage about Venezuela here at DU, and agreeing that Venezuela is BAD-BAD-BAD, it is like the Red Queen's "playing card" servants and we are like the long-necked birds they use as croquet bats, getting our heads bashed with every whack of the ball that pleases the Queen. The purpose is to ADDLE us, so we don't see how wrong this all is--what a "Big Lie" it is--while our own government's secret agencies do their best to make the Bad come true.
They've done it before, repeatedly--acted to destroy socialist (fair, equalizing, democratic) governments in Latin America. They're doing it NOW--certainly with propaganda, more than likely with continued dirty ops (continued from the Bush Junta). These DEMOCRATIC socialist successes in Latin America--a movement that has spread from Venezuela all over South America and into Central America--are the TARGET of the CIA, the Pentagon, the NSA, the DEA, the FBI, and every secret and police-state capability that the U.S. government has, combined with the banksters and transglobal corporate capabilities for secret ops and sabotage. Our government and the 1%-ers it serves HATE Venezuela, in particular, as the first and most inspiring example of this leftist democracy movement. And they are scared out of their minds that it might spread to HERE.
One of the generals in the U.S.-supported rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras in 2009 stated that their coup was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). Venezuela is NOT communist. But it IS socialist, in the "New Deal" mode: Democracy AND FAIRNESS. Democracy that raises the whole society up, that effectively fights poverty and that provides opportunity for all. Rightwing generals, fat with U.S. military funding, would mistake socialism for communism, as this one did. (And you gotta wonder whose cocktail party he was attending, where he picked up this notion of Honduras being the moat around the Capitalist Empire--a moat now running red with the blood of journalists, peasant farmers, labor leaders and other advocates of the poor.)
It's tragic that our government never changes. No matter who's in charge, Latin America is viewed as its BACK YARD--a very large place that must knuckle under to U.S. corporate theft of its resources and exploitation of its labor force, and that must submit to the Pentagon's designs and to the insults and horror of the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs." The U.S. wants oligarchs and fascists running things in Latin America, to do the bidding of U.S. corporations and the U.S. military machine.
THAT is reality. And this non-stop, relentless, pervasive, "Big Lie" barrage from the corpo-fascist media about "bad Venezuela" is NOT REALITY.
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