Boycott Citgo!

I'm starting a grassroots boycott of Citgo Petroleum.

Why?

Chavez of Venezuela owns it.

The man is a card carrying socialist populist of the highest order. He panders to the masses without any real results. He uses populist rhetoric to get the poor voting to nationalize corporate profits. And only ends up helping himself.

Worse is he has partnered with Castro to export his dogma to Caribbean nations with fragile economies. His latest tactic? Oil on credit. With oil prices so high, many Caribbean nations are struggling with high fuel prices. Does Chavez help out his neighbors? No! He sells the fuel at full price and delays part of the bill. Then he slaps on interest charges and gets letters of debt to arm twist these small nations' political machines for years to come. And makes a fat profit that is siphoned into government coffers to extend his influence.

When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, he held press conferences on how he was coming to the rescue of the US despite the "Washington disrespect of his country". More populist rhetoric to snuggle closer to America's poor classes.

But did he help us?

No! He opened his strategic reserve and rushed gasoline to the US to SELL to us while Atlanta gas prices hit $6 a gallon. Yeah, there are Citgo gas stations in Atlanta selling Chavez gas at extortionist rates.


For a populist and socialist, the man sure knows cutthroat sales tactics!


So when buying your next gallon of gas, pass the Citgo station by and find another oil company to patronage. Don't fund communistic terror tactics in our hemisphere!


Pass this message along! Copy/Paste it wherever you visit forums.

There may or may not be much behind Chavez's politcal speeches in terms of genuine concern for the poor.

But at least he says he cares about them. The owners of the other Oil Companies don't even do that. They just piss on everyone they can.

A corporation is simply a known force.

Their job is to find a product and sell it for a profit.

It's like complaining about insurance adjusters. An insurance company makes money by paying out less than it takes in. So why people get pissed at the adjuster low balling them is just silly. They all do that. Just learn how to jump the hurdles and get your proper payout.

Corporations are not governments. They aren't in the business of running a country. They are good neighbors only if it is good business to do so.

National governments do, however, owe a burden to the people.

You state that at least Chavez says he cares, but oil companies don't.

I see you making my argument instead with that statement.

A corporation loses no integrity for being greedy. But a government does.

So a lie from a public servant is more abominable to me than from a corporation.


Socialism, communism, and populism as concepts are proven failure. Humans breed faster than wealth is generated. Take all the wealth in the world and spread it out equally. Now everyone is dirt poor. Worse, there is no pooling of money in one place to generate change. Rich capitalists have killed less peons than populist tyrants. Every experiment in wealth reallotment has failed or is failing. Social Security is a ponzi scheme going bust. European governments face aging crisis that threaten their socialism programs. Taxes there are so bad that the rich simply sell their homes forever and become stateless on their yachts. Russia and China simply gave up the idea of generating money under a nationalized labor plan.

He says he cares. That is the philosophy of populism. Pander to the masses. Tell them what they want to hear. Peron did that Argentina and that country is still paying for that fiasco decades later. Roosevelt did it with the New Deal.

The only thing worse than populist speeches are populist actions by the government.

Chavez is trying to wrest political control of the Caribbean. It's only about power. Anyone with a basic college economics course under their belts knows the eventual effects of ponzi or collective schemes. Sooner or later they fail. Chavez is no idiot. He knows he cannot feed, clothe, educate, and medicate them all. And yet he is earning big money from petro dollars and other natural resources. But the poor still fill the slums. He's been in power for years with a rapidly growing cash flow. And the poor still exist in the same numbers. He hasn't even dented the problem.

At least give Castro some credit, unlike Chavez, he did find a way to feed and clothe his people with very little hard currency. His poor are healthy, reasonable educated, and not starving. Chavez hasn't made a dent and is swimming in money. Frankly, the best communistic system ever implemented was in Cuba. Castro somehow made it work, after a fashion. But the results are not very impressive anyway. Heavy infrastructure is on its last legs there with no large outside investments looking to modernize it. Entropy will eventually rule Cuba under the status quo.

Chavez knows all of this. And he still spouts the populist lies to his people. At the same time he keeps pushing his influence using his natural resouces as the stick.

This isn't about profit or corporate lack of compassion. It's about a pure undalterated power grab on the backs of his people. This isn't about beating the competition. It's about elimating it by fiat.

And lest we forget that unlike Chavez with absolute power, the owners of the other oil companies are stockholders. The masses own them and profit from them. The stockholders insist on alternative fuels and clean environment support. So the oil companies are spending money in those areas because the stockholders demanded it. Chavez has turned his coastline into a cesspool. You'll never catch me going to the beach there. I've seen Exxon Mobil pump millions of barrels of oil out of a fragile wetland and the biggest damage was the road going in. Been to an American drill site lately? Very clean. The biggest oil spill is coming from the engine block of the drill hand's pickup truck. But Venezuela? Bet you never see fish in the market from there. Even the poor won't eat those toxic sickly coastal fish.

The oil companies aren't pissing on anyone. They are selling a scarce commodity under heavy regulation and taxation. It's Chavez pissing on everyone.

I had to stop reading there since, in my opinion, corporations do not have the right to manipulate markets and take advantage of the "little guy" simply to increase their profits.

Corporations are very similar to the hi-tech weapons of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They allow the killing to be done at a great distance. The stockholders (and managers) are insulated from the suffering they cause, and thus are enabled to cause much more of it.

You stop literally the sentence before my major point?!


You make it sound like stockholders are some kind of elite group.

The majority of stocks are managed by institutional investors.

Institutional is a euphamism for 401k, IRA, pension, and 403B clearing houses.

These are the savings of ordinary workers.


It is the average citizen who owns these corporations. What is the corporate management primarily tasked with? Success. Giving the consumer what they want. Owned by the average citizen in hopes of providing something that average citizen will want to purchase.

That's hardly what you make it out to be.

Look at your last post again. You are barely hiding huge sweeping accusations with zero basis or logic.

Manipulating markets? Where?

Increasing profits? Success is a character flaw?

Taking advantage of the little guy? Where? And who is the little guy? Microsoft was a company that formed in a garage. Google was founded in a dorm room.

Is a company only respectable if it isn't successful enough to become large? What kind of crazy idea is that? Only failure is respectable. Each according to his own needs? Where are you going with that?

And then the doozy.....

Killing from behind closed doors anonymously.

Do you hear yourself?


Everything you stated was card-carrying communist rhetoric. Everything! Just read it again.

Is that why you challenge my boycott?

Have you become socialist?


Class warfare? Spreading of wealth and resources until only the power brokers retain control? Denying the average citizen from investing into the dynamic wealth of an economy at their own pace? Forced charity? Stifling growth and invention under a flood of regulation? Protecting us from our own action?

Why? Because you know how to run our lives better? Promise bread and circuses in order to get us to trade in our free will?


Corporations are large and rich because they deliver what the average person asks for. Autos kill more than any war ever has and we still buy them by the millions. We know they kill. We know tobacco and alcohol kills. We still buy them. We are willing to risk life for quality of life. Corporations simply provide what we ask for. We are free to ignore those offerings as well. Socialism doesn't offer that choice. It tells you how your life will be led. Only the rulers enjoy a lifestyle of their choosing. With corporate free markets, a person can refuse the bread and circuses, but can still invest in them and grow rich enough to make a circus of their own choosing.

Corporations don't lie. They only promise what they can deliver. If they don't deliver then they go away.

Populists lie. They make promises of comfortable life that is impossible to deliver. But keep drawing power in the face of failure by blaming outside entities.

Do you see America blaming other countries for our economic situation? Do you see Japan, Australia, and South Korea doing that either? True capitalist countries don't blame others for their economic woes. But populist run countries do exactly that all the time. Look at Castro. The economic boycott on Cuba is only for America. Cuba can trade with Mexico, Canada, Europe, Japan, Brazil, etc. All are economies much larger than Cuba. And yet they remain poor. Proximity is of little value in a world with instant communications and plane travel. Spain is just as close by plane as New York. America trades quite easily across the entire breadth of the Pacific. No, the Cuban boycott is now just a handy excuse for Castro to retain tyrannical power.

Your objections are baseless accusations grounded in fear and panic to change the power structure from citizen ownership to elitist control. Ergo, your objections are socialistic.

Yes, but to be fair, I did go back afterwards and finish reading your post. It was exactly as I expected.

Exactly my point. The middle class of America is investing a huge amounts of money in multinational corporations. These corporations are raping the Third World (mostly Africa, but South America too) of natural resources to increase the retirement fund of the investors and put hamburgers on their table. But at what price?

Ever accelerating habitat destruction. Ever accelerating species extinction (plant and animal). Structural poverty in much of the Third World, caused both by corporations not reinvesting in the local economy and by unethical dictators (which may or may not include Chavez, I honestly don't know).

[

Enron, California, a couple years ago...

"We're going to rob Grandma Millie blind." Ring a bell?

I'm more worried about companies like Brown & Root and Halliburton than I am about Microsoft or Google, although I think we would be unwise to ignore them. Just because a company starts small does not mean it will be responsible or ethical, especially if it grows very large.

I didn't say that, but nice try.

Large corporations do have the ability to be respectable and ethical. I'm not sure why most of them aren't, but I suspect the main motivation is greed. No matter how much money you have, there is always more to be had.

The problem I have with very large corporations is that to continue to succeed, they must convert more and more people to their cause. Every hamburger must be a Big Mac. Every OS must be Windows. If you study biology and history, you will see that whenever an organism relys primarily on a single food source, it runs grave risks to it's survival (cf. Irish potato famine). Diversity is important because it cushions us from shocks. Computer virii are so dangerous because there are so many Windows machines out there. One virus can infect 80% of the world's computers. Of course, there is a trade off. It's unrealistic to give everybody a unique OS, but it's just as unrealistic to give everyone the exact same one.

Yes, do you?
Tell me this. Is it easier to hold a pistol to a man's temple and pull the trigger, or to sit in a cockpit 35,000 feet above and push a button on a console? Is it easier to enter a hovel in Lagos and take all the rice off the table, or is it easier to call your stock broker and tell him to buy more shares of Multinational Company X? Just because investors don't make the day to day decisions that lead to a decline in the quality of life of third world children doesn't make them any less responsible. It is their money that is helping it happen.

No, I always was one, to a certain extent. I walk that fine line between Socialism and Libertarianism.

You're starting to ramble, but I think I understand what you are trying to say.

Obviously, the examples of Communism that the 20th century gave us showed that it is a flawed system open to abuse. But the 20th century examples of Socialism are much more promising. It is unclear to me whether or not the socialist democracies of Scadanavia and Western Europe will prosper for another 200 years, but I know that if I were poor, I would much rather live there than here. In the U.S., there is very little opportunity for movement between the classes (except moving down). Yes, there are examples of people who have done well for themselves, but the vast majority of poor people had poor parents, and will have poor children.

Simple Christian charity should move us to do something about the appalling poverty rate in this country.

:rofl: This is the all-time funniest thing you've ever said. I've never before read such a concise pack of bullshit in my life. Congratulations.

Everybody lies. People in power lie even more, because they are afraid to lose that power. Need I remind you of all the lies Bush (and his agents) told us before the election?

Contrary to what you think is true, proximity is important in world trade. The vast majority of trade does not take place by plane, but rather by container ship. The time involved in shipping something from Europe, China or Canada to Cuba dwarfs the time neccesary to make that shipment from Miami or (until recently) New Orleans. (Side note: the loss of the port is a biggie. It was responsible for 70% of our Grain exports and large quantities of our imports of sugar and other commodities. The Houston Ship Channel is going to be very busy this year.)

The boycott of Cuba is unneccessary. What reason do we have to do that? Not only does it hurt Cuba, but it hurts us as well. I'm sure if trade was normalized, we would have an export surplus with that country.

Your logic is flawed. My objections are socialistic because I am a socialist. They are not baseless, and while grounded in credible fear, they are not grounded in panic. (And even if they were, that would not make them socialistic; I think you are just a chip of the McCarthy block and have an unhealthy paranoia all things red).

I do not want elitist control. In fact that is exactly what I would like to change. The world is run by a small group of people who "own" the majority of the resources. This includes Bush and his cronies, Kerry and his, the Saudi Royal Family and many others around the world. We live in a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And due to the Catholic's Churchs admonitions against birth control (as well as ridiculous myths held by African men about condoms) we have exploding population in much of the world that will soon outstrip the pace at which we create wealth as a world economy.

The pie is getting bigger each year, but many more people want a slice, and average slice size will decrease. Each of us who takes a bigger slice will be taking it from someone else.

It's that zero-sum game called Life.

Oh, I forgot to add that if you want to stick it to Chavez, you'll probably have to do more than boycott Citgo seeing as Venezuela is either the number two or number three importer of oil into the U.S.

When are you going to accept that personal responsibility should be the primary guiding factor?

American companies pay for the oil and natural resources of the world. We offer an agreed payment and the countries collect the money.

We owe them zero social responsibility for mismanaging their internal affairs. We don't sign oil leases with infants and retarded people. We sign agreements with adult governments.

Why do we need to help the poor? If their parents were poor and they do nothing with their life then they well know they will father poor children. And yet they breed anyway. Forget birth control. Why do they deserve even sex? I'm for castrating the poor just like we do with pets. You want a food and water bowl? Ok, off with your balls.

No, We should never give aid to the poor. The poor should fix their lives or die childless with dignity.

The money belongs with the people who have learned to obtain it on their own. The only concession I'll ever agree to is public education. Nothing else.

If we offer perfectly good money for a natural resource and the money gets used to attack us then we should offer violent death as the next payment.


And don't even begin telling me that the 20th century produced any form of socialism that is thriving. All socialistic endeavors beyond education have proven to require ever increasing resources to sustain for the same results. Socialism in Europe will end before the end of this new century.


Socialism is dead. The poor will learn to fend for themselves.


And you wave Enron as an example of corporate misconduct. Their only crime was lying to investors. And Houston juries are putting them in jail for that. They will never see the courtroom for California.

Why?

It was California's fault. 100% Californians kept putting increasing demands on their power grid without building the infrastructure. So they bought our excess Texas power. It was OUR power. Not California's. If your state insists on growing while refusing to build power plants in your little utopia then I hope the next time that they double the price again. You want to drive everywhere and have beautifully manicured laws and yet you don't want to pay for the gas and smog that results.

You Left Coasters are living a pipe dream built on zero industrial infractructure. Industrial infrastructure is big, ugly, noisy, and smelly. Always has been and will be until they can put cold fusion into a Coke can.


If you want to avoid rolling blackouts then I suggest you wander down to the coast, shoot a few seals and start pouring big ugly concrete until it can hold that big smoke belching powerplant that dumps effluent into the surf. It's what we do here. And that's why we have power to sell.

If you want to live in Utopia then you will pay top dollar to us who live with the mess it causes to give it to you. You will pay for my dirty shoreline.

We aren't children here in Texas when we sign energy agreements. You claim that energy companies rip off the places they buy it from. Well now you know what it really costs to get what you want. Perhaps you should be thankful that other countries are too stupid to charge what deserves to be charged for your good life. Not us, though. We'll take you to the cleaners every time. Your way of life won't be so pretty when the rest of the energy producing world begins to charge you the same as we do.


Chavez will fail like Peron did. Castro will fail. Socialism will fail. The poor will remain and get no better off because they are stupid and think breeding and crying is the cure. All we do with charity is piss the money away and encourage more breeding and crying.

My idea of boycotting Citgo is to merely speed the process up. Castro will fail, but may not live long enough to see it happen. I want Chavez to see it collapse in his lifetime.

What I can't understand is the idea that socialism will help the dwindling resource problem.

The problem isn't the resources. It is the people.

Socialism is about granting access for everyone to everything. It never works out that way, but that is the benign theory.

So with every resource shrinking then how will letting everybody get their hands on these resources save them.


Free markets allow for a true value to be assigned to scarcity. If something is rare then it becomes more expensive. Then people quit demanding their "fair share" and quest for alternate solutions to the rare resource. Thus pressure is reduced on demand for the scarce item.

You seem to want to save the planet and resources for species survival. And yet you seem to deny the biggest problem at full value. You know in your heart that the sheer numbers of people are the root of the problem. Working to build a system that provides basic substistance for everyone, as socialism does, only ensure a more fucundity. American welfare systems never reduced the birthrate of the poor. It actually increased them. We drop bags of grain on Africa and the people there keep trying to breed in desolate lands that cannot support human survival.

Yes, I know that true free markets and aggressive capitalism kills the weak. But I don't turn a blind eye to the suffering and death. I embrace it as necessary. The strong and the smart in poverty situations will recognize their vulnerability and work to change their lot against the odds. The weak and the stupid will meet their inevitable fate sooner. Shortened lifespan means less opportunity to breed.

The survivors will succeed and follow the age old pattern of reduced and selective breeding to maintain clan wealth.

Free market capitalism means reduced breeding and scarcity pricing on rare resources. The pressure on resources is actually reduced due to poverty and mortality.

You can save the race and the planet. You just have to be willing to accept the destruction of our least capable members of humanity.

Death and pain isn't fun or pretty, but every living thing must accept them as the final reality.

Socialism tries to blind us from that inevitability.

Wow. I can't tell if you're just trying to drum up interest in this thread by being a complete troll, or if you actually believe some of that hogwash.

We shouldn't help the poor at all?

Kick all those people out of the Astrodome then.

That is not their only crime, but it is probably their worst.

You obviously didn't read much about what Enron did in California back then. California did not have the infrastructure because
ENRON SHUT DOWN THEIR POWER PLANTS WHEN DEMAND PEAKED
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...L&type=business

Once again, it is the energy companies like Enron and the rest of Bush's cronies who artificially restriced supply and were RECORDED ON THE TELEPHONE JOKING ABOUT HOW THEY WERE ROBBING GRANDMA MILLIE BLIND.

I know you are not a dumbshit, but you are certainly acting like one.

Socialism will not solve our problem of limited resources. It is intended to achieve an equitable distribution of those resources.

And yes, you are correct in that the problem is the people. The resources (raw materials, not innovation/invention) are more or less fixed. Our populations continue to grow, meaning the average pie piece is getting smaller.

Socialism is not making sure that every drop of oil or every tree is distributed. It is making sure that those resources which are distributed are distributed fairly.

You can have a very eco-friendly country that doesn't cut down trees or pump oil, but still employs socialist methods in determining how wealth is distributed.

You are correct. Simply feeding hungry people is not the solution. I am not a text book socialist. My beliefs are fairly unorthodox and unique.

I believe that every living human being has the right to a life outside of poverty. I also believe that the population growth rates of Africa and South America are unsustainable. If things continue the way they are, there will be major conflict in 50-100 years, and it won't be pretty. America turns a blind eye to the genocidal conflicts around the globe and the AIDS crisis in Africa because these two things are the only things keeping population levels in check. Without war and AIDS, the population of Africa (currently about 900 million) would easily be 2 billion.

The solution is two-fold. First and foremost, we must make birth control available to everyone. Part of this will include educating people about birth control and dispelling myths about condoms and AIDS.

The second part is to bring primary education to everybody. It is clear that birth rates go down as education goes up, so giving everyone access to (at least) a basic education is a no-brainer.

Neither of these really has anything to do with socialism. Socialism (or Communism or Capitalism) is merely a method by which to distribute resources. I do not think that the state should make every decision about every market, but I also do not think that leaving every decision in the hands of private citizens or corporations is wise either. There are things such as public goods (air, water, etc.) that need to be protected. There is absolutey no incentive for a coal plant to install expensive scrubbers in it's smoke stack. It is much more profitable to simply pollute more. There is no economic cost to the coal plant if they pollute more rather than less, so why should they pollute less. (And don't give me any bullshit about "If there is a public outcry, they will not pollute." Give me one example where that occurred and I will give you ten where it didn't.)

The other problem with completely unfettered capitalism is that some people don't get a fair shake in life (e.g. natural disaster victims, physically/mentally disabled). Do they deserve the same 7 figure salary as Gates? No. But do they deserve to live below the poverty line? No.

Wealth has never been equally distributed in this country (or any other for that matter) but this is not due to some people being lazy. White people built up a tremendous amount of wealth in the first 3/4 of this nation's history. Even with the inheritence tax, the vast majority of this country's wealth is passed down from one generation to the next among a relatively few number of families. You can't expect a person with no education and no money to be able to succeed or even support themselves (let alone a family) vs. a person with a college education and a trust fund.

Ever hear of the saying, "It takes money to make money?"

Got under your skin did I? Looks like it.

Ok, you are spread out over 3 posts and that makes line-by-line quoting a bitch for rebuttal.

So I'm going to respond to everything in a summary manner.


Let's start with the poor and downtrodden. You may not believe this from my earlier writings, but I have been demure about one of the ugly truths I've grown to accept over my life. For a couple decades, I've accepted catastrophic death tolls as essential to our species and planet survival. Yes, I'm in favor of war and natural catastrophe simply for the body count. The poor dying are a double bonus. Weaker of the species do not add to the gene pool and the population count is reduced.

You seem to think that birth control and education will reduce the population count. That may slow the birthrate, but only death reduces the number. Waiting for old age to thin the herd is simply avoiding the facts. The population doesn't reduce until there is a death.

So how is the world doing in this last 100 years of wars, catastrophes, social upheavals, instantaneous communications, and cheaply printed information?

The would population doubled quite a few times. It has been estimated that if you counted all of the human births since fire was harnessed for human use that more than HALF of those people are still alive! We are breeding too fast for patient slow education to work its magic.

We need catastrophic death tolls just to stay even.

Perhaps in time, the education will catch hold over the vast majority of people or we find an outlet off-planet to ship our excess mouths. But not at the moment. Nothing is holding back the population count right now other than death.

It ain't pretty, but it's the truth. To see it any differently is delusion. Don't feel bad, though, most people are suffering the same delusion. No one wants to face a truth that ugly. Do you think I find this truth amusing? But there it is and it's not going away anytime soon. I have learned to accept the reality.

So if you accept this reality then you have to triage who gets to live. I favor the lucky, smart, or strong. The poor don't fit that mold. It's just brutal Darwinism to me. We can't save everyone. So I choose to save those who succeed instead of fail.


Now let's take your little shot at me over the Astrodome refugees. These were the people smart enough to get out. A little short term aid is ok. I have no real objection to short term aid anywhere. It is the long term aid that disturbs me. If Guatemala has a mudslide disaster then sending down food and supplies for a few months doesn't bother me. It's if the aid goes on ad nauseum. But sending food to countries with long term drought problems and repeat famines is just plain dumb. At most, I'd send them luggage and tell them to move to the food.

I don't get bent out of shape over the Katrina deaths and destruction. It's happened and it's over. The weakness has been exposed. Help the refugees for a few months and then tell them to fend for themselves. Actually, tell them now so they get the message. As for rebuilding, I only recommend federal funds in the long term to the Army Corps of Engineers. Let the civilian rebuilding be paid for by insurance and bank investment. The federal government should not pay for a single home that wasn't covered by flood insurance.

Ok, that's enough for you to digest for now. Discovering you are talking to someone pro-death can be unsettling. Especially now that you disover all my earlier writings were with that reference frame. And just for the record, I'm pro-abortion and pro-death penalty.

I'll cover California power and socialistc fallacies later.

Time for the California power fiasco.

You seem to be mad that Enron refused you power or put a high price on it.

But it was THEIR power. They made it and have the right to do as they please with it.

They have the right to shut down their plants and sell power for any price they choose.


And you have the right not to buy it.


That's how the game works. Demanding someone part with something they own is theft. It's still theft if you demand they sell it for ANY price other than what they choose.

You people could have simply not turned on the light switch or the air conditioner. Enron didn't tell you to live in California. They didn't force you to buy their power. Plenty of people all over the planet use zero electricity in their lives. You made yourself dependent. They simply gave you what you asked for at the price they chose to sell it to you for.

If everyone had turned off their breaker boxes then Enron would have faced the issue of lowering its price or losing the sale.

California is a seller's market for power. Blaming one power producer is ignoring the fact that you let yourself become dependent desperately on them because your state stifled competition by enacting extremely prohibitive environmental regulations that discouraged power companies from building new resources.

In Texas, no power company can do what happened in California. We have surplus power and it is a buyer's market. If the next "Enron" tried that here then another producer would simply undercut that company. The only thing that raises my utility bill here is the global commodity trading markets when the base cost of raw materials rise.

You people are blaming the last farmer for high food prices when you shot all the other farmers.

Until you grasp this fundamental fact then you will stay victim to the whims of power producers. More regulations will simply drive investors away again.

One day you will realize you can't force a producer to sell you something for the price you choose. They will refuse you, sneak around the rules, or leave. The only thing you can do is create an environment where competition will blossom. In the case of power generation that means loosening environmental regs and accepting the mess that results. All power generation at present is either a strong waste producer or low yield per square footage. If you don't want smog or spent fuel rods then you will need to canvas the entire Death Valley and High Desert with solar collectors, which will cost you trillions of dollars and raise your utility bills for a century paying off the investment.


Ok, I was going to get into it with you over socialism. Then I realized that would mean yet another divergent debate going on in this thread. Furthermore, debating the usefulness of socialism would be huge and totally swamp my original debate on Chavez.

So I leave it at this in this thread. Socialism is fundamentally flawed at it's base premise. Any derivative would build off that flawed base. Given that pronouncement that Chavez is a socialist then I consider Chavez flawed in his core philosophy. Should you wish to debate the philosophy of socialism then crank out a new thread on the topic.

Now I shall return the topic to its original purpose and debate Chavez himself.

Back to Chavez. He was on Nightline tonight. What an arrogant bastard. He likens himself to Jesus and breaks bread with Cuba, Syria, Iran, Lybia, and Saddam when he was in power. He honestly sees himself in a global revolution against American power while he takes our money freely. What hipocracy.

Here's is some of the lastest crap from the news:

Venezuela Denies Drug Smuggling Charge

September 16, 2005 8:53 PM EDT
CARACAS, Venezuela - A U.S. decision to brand Venezuela as a country failing to do enough against drug smuggling drew a sharp denial from the Venezuelan government Friday, aggravating tensions between Washington and one of its top oil suppliers.

President Bush criticized President Hugo Chavez's government Thursday, saying the South American nation had "failed demonstrably" to make a concerted effort to block shipments of illicit narcotics to the U.S. and Europe last year.

"Mr. Bush's government knows perfectly well the strong action by our country, the cooperation it offers and the impressive volume of drugs seized," Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in a statement. "But none of that counts because what matters to the U.S. government is the political disqualification of Venezuela for the purpose of future aggressions."

The U.S. is the top buyer of Venezuelan oil, but tensions have run high between Washington and Chavez - a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The White House determined that despite an increase in seizures, Venezuela hasn't done enough to halt a growing flow of drugs - mainly from Colombia to the United States and Europe. By U.S. estimates, 165 tons of cocaine passed through Venezuela last year.

Rangel said the United States, as a leading consumer of illegal drugs, had no "moral authority" to pass judgment.

Rangel said the U.S. government congratulated Venezuelan authorities last year when they seized 43 tons of drugs, and so far this year seizures have netted 59 tons.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.


Chavez: U.S. Plans to Invade Venezuela

September 16, 2005 9:49 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he has documentary evidence that the United States plans to invade his country.

Chavez, interviewed on ABC's "Nightline," said the plan is called "Balboa" and involves aircraft carriers and planes. A transcript of the interview was made available by "Nightline."

He said U.S. soldiers recently went to Curacao, an island off Venezuela's northwest coast. He described as a "lie" the official U.S. explanation that they visited Curacao for rest and recreation.

"They were doing movements. They were doing maneuvers," Chavez said, speaking through a translator.

He added: "We are coming up with the counter-Balboa plan. That is to say if the government of the United States attempts to commit the foolhardy enterprise of attacking us, it would be embarked on a 100-year war. We are prepared."

Chavez has been attending the summit of world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week. On Thursday, he denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq and told other leaders they should consider moving the U.N. headquarters out of the United States.

To prove U.S. intentions to invade Venezuela, Chavez offered to send "Nightline" host Ted Koppel maps and other documentation.

"What I can't tell you is how we got it, to protect the sources, how we got it through military intelligence," he said.

In the event of a U.S. invasion, Chavez said the United States can "just forget" about receiving any more oil from his country.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.



The latest article is hillarious. The US Defense Department is tasked with creating invasion plans for EVERY nation on earth. It's their job to be ready for any contingency. To not have an invasion plan for Venezuela in the shelf means someone is slacking at the Pentagon. There are plans there ready to invade England, Australia, and Tibet as well. That a plan exists is no indicator of it happening. Only that we concede the possibility exists for the need for such a plan.


I also find it funny that Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and even Zimababwe all seem to be saber rattling that a US invasion is coming any day now. Just how many soldiers do they think we have? Don't they watch CNN? Can't they see the news that our politicians cry how overstretched our military is? Do they think we have underground bunkers with millions of combat humanoid robots just waiting to be unleashed?

No, they use it as an excuse to continue public support for their tyrannical power structures. They want to give their masses an enemy to hate to divert their attention. It also gives them an excuse to play UN power games.

The worst thing that the US would do to Chavez while he remains democratically elected would be to give election funds to his opposition.

And Chavez knows this.

But if he can make the claim then he can throw propaganda at his populist agenda and visit the UN in NYC to get US news airtime.

Even lefty Ted Koppel was showing his distaste for the man.

Maybe we should take Chavez up on that offer....


Chavez is obviously posturing; apparently he's trying to fight his way up the third-rate dictator pecking order.

What would make this boycott even more effective is if someone could do a google search and see which companies besides Citgo use Venezuelan oil.

I have no problem not buying from Citgo, as it doesn't have a chain in any of the towns I'd likely to be buying gas in (and I likely wouldn't buy gas from that particular chain in the first place). So, sign me up, especially since it doesn't inconvenience me in the first place; besides, I like seeing third-rate dictators take the hard plunge into obscurity.

I noted his idea to move the UN.

Frankly, it needs a hard shakeup and a move might do it some good.

But he suggested Jeruselum!

Now the suicide bombers would simply ask for diplomatic immunity before they entered.

A move there would be a bloodbath as every arab nation would go bonkers that Israel hosted the UN.



I think a great idea would be to move the UN to Tokyo. It might actually increase their immunity to invasion or attack without requiring any military upgrades. Sinking it in the middle of a non-violent capitalist powerhouse wouldn't hurt either.


Ah, but here we go digressing again. As much my fault as anyone's.


So you have no Citgo's at home. Ok, so copy my first post and drag it to places online that you frequent. A grass roots boycott is of little value without exposure. Slap that first post up on any blank space you find online and encourage others to do the same.

And this guy lives for a microphone. Today he's fronting for his Middle East tyrant buddies by claiming he needs protection from UN intervention.


Chavez Criticizes U.N. Reforms in Speech

September 17, 2005 6:01 PM EDT
NEW YORK - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez criticized United Nations reforms on Saturday, saying they would permit powerful countries invade developing ones whose leaders are considered a threat.

In a speech at a community center in New York City's Bronx borough, Chavez said the document adopted at a U.N. summit Friday was developed without consensus and was "invalid and illegal."

He singled out a section of the document creating a Peacebuilding Commission that outlines a "responsibility to protect."

"This is very suspicious ... tomorrow or sometime in the future, someone in Washington will say that the Venezuelan people need to be protected from the tyrant Chavez, who is a threat," he said in a speech that was broadcast on state-run television in Venezuela.

Chavez also directed a member of his delegation to arrange support for a project to clean a Bronx river.

"I want to help," he told a group of youths who made the proposal.

Chavez, a self-declared "revolutionary," has often clashed with the U.S. government and has accused Washington of seeking to oust him - a claim U.S. officials have vehemently denied.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

Tokyo is a bit close to North Korea....but then again being within range of a madman's nuclear weapon might bring some of the UN officials back to their senses....

anyway, back on topic...

This is actually the only forum I visit that allows political discussion (the only other one being the Elder Scrolls forums). But I could sneak it into my sig over at the TES forums....maybe with a link to this post.

Heh. Thats probably the first time he's been honest about his tyrant status, and unfortunately he meant it with sarcasm