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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 11:16 AM
Subject: End of the beginning?
Venezuelan lawmakers give Chavez power to rule by decree
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070119/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_chavez
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:02 PM
Subject: Chavez money si, Yankee investor money no
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011702063.html
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:07 PM
Subject: Still there is no shortage of fools
'Viva Chavez: Venezuela is the hip new socialist utopia
Leftists are flocking to see a country being transformed,
writes Rory Carroll in Caracas'
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/viva-chavez-venezuela-is-the-hip-new-socialist-utopia/2007/01/19/1169095977635.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Until they get snake bit themselves.
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:09 PM
Subject: Anyone here still holding out hope for Venezuela's future
Jerome?
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From: Joseph
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: Chavez money si, Yankee investor money no
you had to be a fool not to see that one coming...and invest 1.7 billiones
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:17 PM
Subject: RE: Chavez money si, Yankee investor money no
The guy who made the mistake admits it:
‘Taking risks is what business is all about," Bakke said in an interview yesterday. "The question is how much risk you take." In this case, he said, "we took too much. Forbes magazine at the time said the AES move was "perplexing," noting that other investors were fleeing because they saw Chavez as an unpredictable, self-styled revolutionary autocrat. But Bakke, now retired from AES and running a chain of charter schools, said the opinion of AES executives and directors was unanimous back then.
Now I think it was a mistake," he said. "Not so much doing it; you're going to make mistakes. You'd like to be smarter about how big a mistake.’
The thing is I think we all could agree with his business model. In fact, I think many businessmen have a similar model: make profit but benefit the community at the same time:
‘And Chavez was impressed by Bakke, a devout Christian who still believes that "the purpose of business is not making money or making a stock price go up, but to do something wonderful for society . . . in an economically sustainable manner."
Asked about the AES investment by a Venezuelan newspaper in May 2000, Chavez said, "I do not have to meddle in that, because I consider it strictly private." He said the company's executives "displayed a quite progressive vision."
For AES at that time, there were reasons to take the risk. Because so many foreign investors were nervous about Venezuela, the price of EDC shares was attractive. EDC paid out $184 million in dividends to AES in 2004 and 2005, according to the AES Web site. EDC has generating plants, about 2,600 employees and more than 1 million customers.
Bakke said the EDC investment was one of a handful made during his tenure that violated his own guidelines limiting AES's exposure in any one place.’
The bad guy in the 3rd world is less likely to be big business and more likely to be the government itself. I think this is where the anti-globalists go wrong. Even here: If not for Disney, what would Times Square be like?
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From: Joseph
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: Still there is no shortage of fools
I have seen these naive do gooder types all over the world
Usually they start off all misty eyed, loving their romantic third world brethern, and anxious to help and provide a cool hip counterweight presense to the grotesque, meat eating global warming capitalists of the west.
Several years later, after having been gang raped by the village youths, extorted by local police, pickpocketed and insulted while shopping in the marketplace, and seen the utter fruitlessness of their UWS multicultural rainbow kumbaya "help" to the locals...they return to the US shattered and broken creatures, only to be mocked by me upon their return.
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 10:18 AM
Subject: RE: Still there is no shortage of fools
Funny. When is the next mocking of a tail-between-the-legs-do-gooder?
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From: Jerome
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:25 PM
Subject: RE: Still there is no shortage of fools
You're such a cynical moron I'm having a tough time understanding the value of responding to you. For everyone of these "broken people" are volunteers around the world doing valuable work. Maybe or maybe not Chavez' policies will ruin his country's economy. Or maybe the US will engage in economic and political sabotage making that a fait accompli, but let them go ahead and try in peace and if it fails, it can't be worse than wasting a trillion on Iraq. If they fail, the pendulum will switch back. If they're attacked, in any way, the damage will last decades.
Or we could send Pat Robertson to assassinate him.
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From: ag30476
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:38 PM
Subject: RE: Still there is no shortage of fools
I may be cynical moron but I am also an eloquent idiot.
The point of all my cynical eloquence is that for all the evil done by multi-nationals and imperial states, local states do much more evil and harm to their own people. The point is not just to be cynical of multi-nationals and the US government but also to be cynical of the anti-US, anti-free market rhetoric of autocrats. That rhetoric is less about revolution for the people than it is about insuring the power of the dictator.
In the long run, I think the free societies will win over the autocratic states...No, I’m too cynical for that. That’s just my idiotic hope.
But in the meantime, the support given, misguidedly, by leftists to these dictators has the real effect of helping them enforce and prolong their power and the damage they do to their own people.