Comments on: YAR Travelogue from Venezuela No. 3 http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2006/09/21/yar-travelogue-from-venezuela-no-3/ let's activate something Sun, 20 May 2012 21:04:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Carl http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2006/09/21/yar-travelogue-from-venezuela-no-3/#comment-13 Carl Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:00:38 +0000 http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2006/09/21/yar-travelogue-from-venezuela-no-3/#comment-13 When Karissa and I visited her cousin in Italy this summer, we went hiking with a Brazilian guy who was studying at the same university and talked some Latin American politics. His take (as I recall it) was interesting, in that he clearly despised US domination of the region, but also thought Chavez (and Morales in Bolivia) were taking their countries down a path to inevitable disaster by openly standing up to the US economically (i.e. Chavez' oil policies, Morales' nationalization of gas production). I couldn't quite figure out the "therefore" - it seemed to be mostly a preference for centrist leaders who would navigate the waters of diplomacy with more subtlety and less incendiary rhetoric. He was also no fan of Lula in Brazil - I think corruption was the main issue there. There always seems to be more talk of corruption under left-leaning governments. I guess the relevant definition of corruption is "people skimming off the government who aren't already filthy rich." When it's the corporate fat cats benefitting from <a href="http://blog.meyerbros.org/2006/09/13/innovative-emergency-management/" rel="nofollow">lucrative government cronyism</a>, I think that's called "freedom and democracy." When Karissa and I visited her cousin in Italy this summer, we went hiking with a Brazilian guy who was studying at the same university and talked some Latin American politics. His take (as I recall it) was interesting, in that he clearly despised US domination of the region, but also thought Chavez (and Morales in Bolivia) were taking their countries down a path to inevitable disaster by openly standing up to the US economically (i.e. Chavez’ oil policies, Morales’ nationalization of gas production). I couldn’t quite figure out the “therefore” - it seemed to be mostly a preference for centrist leaders who would navigate the waters of diplomacy with more subtlety and less incendiary rhetoric. He was also no fan of Lula in Brazil - I think corruption was the main issue there.

There always seems to be more talk of corruption under left-leaning governments. I guess the relevant definition of corruption is “people skimming off the government who aren’t already filthy rich.” When it’s the corporate fat cats benefitting from lucrative government cronyism, I think that’s called “freedom and democracy.”

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