Bolivia defends seizing foreign energy firms

[dipsydoodle]

Bolivia's government has defended its policy of nationalising companies that it says are vital to the economy.

Businesses in the energy sector have been seized by President Evo Morales's left-wing administration.

It follows a trend started by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, who has called on all Latin American nations to follow his lead.

Bolivia's government has said it is redistributing oil and gas wealth to the country's indigenous population.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11744226

[Al Jilwah]

1. If done correctly

Not exactly a terrible idea if done properly.

However, I highly doubt it will done properly.

[Mika]

2. Care to expand on your pronouncement? n/t

[rabs]

3. Yep, Hugo is to blame

from the BBC article:

It follows a trend started by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, who has called on all Latin American nations to follow his lead.

--------------------

Guess all-powerful Hugo also was responsible for:

-- Mexico's nationalization of its petroleum industry in 1938.

-- Argentina's nationalization of the mostly British-built railway system in 1946.

-- Chile's (Allende) nationalization of its copper industry in 1971.

There are probably others, these three off the cuff.

------------

OT: Nice photo of FC. :thumbsup:

[social_critic]

4. Baloney

Everybody knows Chavez has influence over Morales, but Morales seems to be a lot smarter. However, I don't think there will be much serious investment in Bolivia unless it is covered by bilateral investment treaty protection, and there's a mechanism for the foreign company to recover compensation. This is the critical issue, these Latin American regimes which like to default on bonds and nationalize but fail to pay aren't trusted.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Nice try. They all pay compensation. It's the filthy bastards who hire death squads

to drive people off their ancestral land and sell it to corporate interests who "fail to pay" and scum like that destroy the occupants, their loved ones, any witnesses, and anyone in the area who decides to run to avoid being tortured and murdered.

They give their filthy money to filthy other degenerates to take all the risks slaughtering innocent people and rake in the profits.

That doesn't seem to bother right-wing clowns in the least. They never acknowledge it even happens.

[social_critic]

7. They don't pay compensation

That's the problem. Venezuela in particular has failed to pay compensation - they owe billions of US dollars to the injured parties. It's very simple, companies invest expecting profits, if their properties are nationalized they expect the compensation to include the book value as well as a portion of the future profits they would have received. Most companies are pretty reasonable. These communist regimes which emphasize nationalization do so for two reasons: One, they run the economy into the ground, so they need it as a short term palliative to get cash flow, two, they do it to concentrate power at the top - having control of industry allows them to fire management and workers. In countries where inflation is very high (such as Venezuela), they have the ability to squeeze the working class by giving sub-par raises - not adjusted for inflation. This allows them to ruin those workers who are showing resistance to government autocracy.

Thus, the nationalizations have a strategic objective, to subject and terrorize the population with the threat of substandard wages or outright firings. These communists follow a typical script, all one has to do is start by reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other "luminaries" who explain how to implement the dictatorship of the proletariate. This dictatorship, of course, happens to be the dictatorship of a party oligarchy, corrupt power grabbers imbued with a religious zeal to rebuild society in a fashion which is so utterly contrary to human nature, that it fails every time - no matter how much brutality and abuse they impose on the people, the people eventually reject them. Thus neither Lenin's terror, Stalin's massacres, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, Mao's massive murders, nor Castros' abuses of the Cuban population lead to success. All of them fail. You will fail because you face human nature, and human nature is relentless, it is wired into us, and thus, communism fails over and over again.

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's why all cultures' deepest aspirations include spiritual evolution, transcendence.

Evil has just about run out of steam. The people ARE going to win, in the end:

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Keep your rightist assertions about non-winger people.

The right is in its death throws. The right has controlled these countries forever, and the toll on life has been hellacious, hideous, unredeemable.

A vast number of taxpayers' substance has been used to overthrow government after government, covert, overt, death squad creating/financing/training for decades. Every one knows it, only wingers attempt to deny it.

In case you've not noticed, the rest of the world DOESN'T want this overbearing, controlling country running their internal business, choosing their leaders, suppressing their people through puppets.

You need to do some basic reading in American history. Learn about the labor movement right here and all the lives lost, the countless brave people tortured and murdered, the spies planted among the workers, etc., etc. right here in the U.S. It is appalling that ANYONE would take the side of the monsters in this day and age.

WE'VE got the problem with labor. It's OUR Republican asshole party which plans to do away with our minimum wage, destroy our medicare, social security, and let the whores at the top rape and plunder what's left of the country, what they already haven't destroyed yet.

Your lame words simply seem like feeble, sad defenses of an utterly evil, desperately dirty way of life. Wingers have absolutely NO respect for democracy, look what they have done to democracies in other countries. As fascist loon Kissinger said, regarding Chile:

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Other_9-11_Chile_1973.html

[social_critic]

9. It has little to do with the USA

It's human nature. The imposition of communism has always failed. The people in Eastern Europe are an excellent example of the revolsion against communism that intelligent people develop when they're forced to live under its claws. And there's no doubt about it, once communism begins to be imposed, it has to be done by repression and brute force, by deception, lies, media control, and other human rights abuses. So this isn't about US imperialism. This is about a virulent form of left wing dogmatism, based on Marx's feverish and flawed thought process, which ALWAYS fails. Those who think opposition to communism is "right wing" are seriously mistaken. It's possible to be a social democrat, or even a socialist, without falling into the extremes, which usually involve personality worship of a charismatic leader, or one who has used brute force to take over (Stalin is one example).

This is more about left versus left, about a more pragmatic left such as practiced by Bachelet or Lula, versus the extreme, corrupt left advocated by the likes of Castro and Chavez. Don't you see what could have been if they had known better? They ruined it, not only for their countries, but also for everybody else.

[Judi Lynn]

6. They only get around to posting more important information until after they load in the propaganda

first, and remember to blame Hugo. :eyes:

This is worth highlighting, from the article:

"We're just fulfilling the promise we made when we were elected, to recover all these areas that were in the hands of the state before these privatisations", Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera told the BBC World Service.

Thanks for the article, dipsydoodle.

Recommending.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_0_0aJD_zluE/SHQBan7pCvI/AAAAAAAAASo/zQG8KHB-7wQ/s400/portada3.jpg

Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera,
a fine man in his own right.