Hugo! Hugo! Hugo!

Hugo Chavez Embraces Socialism

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/02/25/venezuela.chavez.reut/

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday embraced socialism as his ideology of choice in a political statement that sharpened his antagonism against the United States.

Chavez, a firebrand nationalist who has governed the world's No. 5 oil exporter for six years, has persistently declined to define the precise ideology of his self-styled "revolution."

But, addressing an international meeting on poverty in Caracas, he said Western-style capitalism was incapable of solving global economic and social problems.

"So, if not capitalism, then what? I have no doubt, it's socialism," said Chavez, who also rebuffed U.S. criticism of his left-wing rule in Venezuela and denounced U.S. President George W. Bush as the "great destabilizer of the world."

Now, while honesty about one's ideology is always welcome, I'm getting a littled worried. Let's hope ol' Hugo doesn't turn into another Castro, and shut off democracy. I don't think he will, because Venezuela has a long democratic tradition which was totally unknown in Cuba. Even so, it's something to look out for.

Outflanking Dissent

This week, President Bush is meeting German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder. Beyond the strangeness of Bush being friendly to someone who's the head of the 'Red-Green Alliance', there's the issue of where this meeting will take place. Not in Berlin, not in Frankfurt, not in Hamburg, not in Bonn or any other major German city, but in Mainz. Previously, he met Russian Vladmir Putin not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in Slovenia.

Why? Simple: to avoid protestors. He's learned his lesson after showing up in London. Bush wasn't afraid of getting hurt, but he didn't want the news media covering the idea that people other than Hollywood celebrities and Communists don't approve of what the US is doing. He needn't have worried; the American media treats anti-war, anti-corporate protests with a mixture of contempt and amusement.

This is typical for Dubya; it's more the rule than the exception. That's why his rallies were closed, his 'town hall' meetings are invitation only, and any cabinet offical who disagrees either gets marginalized or kicked out.

The Bullet vs. the Ballot

I suppose the biggest policy disagreement today centers on how to make the world a peaceful, free place in places where peace and political freedom are virtually unknown.

Conservatives generally support charging in, tearing down the old system, and putting Jeffersonian democracy in it's place.

Liberals support spreading democracy around the world, but via methods other than invasion. Most despotic countries have strong democratic movements which are supressed by the government, often with support and aid from the US government. Liberals would prefer to suspend aid to dictatorial regimes and let countries choose their own fate rather than impose a foreign ideology.

Politics on Campus

In recent days I've been bombarded by the notion that young conservatives are somehow repressed in their freedom of speech.

The hysterical right-wing press is especially obsessed with this idea. I remember one National Review article which declared college campuses 'places of dangerous unreality'. Their prime example? Most of the students they surveyed believed in evolution and global warming, but not that Iraq had WMDs. The horror.

Well, it isn't true. Not only are Republican clubs as well-funded as Democratic ones (the board of 'ultraliberal' Brandeis University just gave it's GOP group $7,000 for a single speaker) but the economics department of every university I've ever seen teaches nothing but pure free-market capitalism. My own econ textbook dismisses Socialism and Social Democracy in a single sentence.

Granted, colleges might be a bit more culturally sensitive than the outer world, but that's what happens when you have thousands of people of all races, classes, rleigions, and sexual orientations gathered in one place. I suppose reactionaries have a right to be close-minded, but that certainly doesn't make me respect them.

The Terminator Lives

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4140446

The US government has authorized $127 billion (billion with a 'b') for fully automated 'robot' soldiers to fight in Iraq and elsewhere.

This has certain advantages, I admit. One loses fewer US troops, and it must inspire street rebels with a sense of frustration to fight robots all day.

But what worries me is, if we send cold automatons to fight real people, the public gets totally seperated from the realities of war. No triggers to pull, no grenades to throw, no buildings to dynamite. Let the machines do it. It's a form of numbing therapy, and it sounds very dangerous.