The Chavistas in Venezuela are taking said maxim quite literally:
The MSM and the Hollywood chapter of the Hugo Chavez Fan Club have yet to comment.
Technorati Tags: chavez, protests, referendum, socialism, venezuelaUpdate: Scott Pelley had the audacity to ask Ahmadinejad tough questions prior to his arrival. Good man.
LGF notes that the Kos Kids are terrified, but not of Idontwearanecktie.
Update #2: New Yorkers (and most of America) aren’t taking Ahmedinejad’s “visit” lying down. Atlas is on top of the protest coverage.
In Venezuela, the Chavez regime is “achieving” what our teachers’ unions dream about doing for all American schools:
President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to take over any private schools refusing to submit to the oversight of his socialist government, a move some Venezuelans fear will impose leftist ideology in the classroom.
All Venezuelan schools, both public and private, must submit to state inspectors enforcing the new educational system. Those that refuse will be closed and nationalized, Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be phased in during this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate “the new citizen,” added Chavez’s brother and education minister Adan Chavez in their televised ceremony on the first day of classes.
Just what the curriculum will include and how it will be applied to all Venezuelan schools and universities remains unclear.
But one college-level syllabus obtained by The Associated Press shows some premedical students already have a recommended reading list including Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Fidel Castro’s speeches, alongside traditional subjects like biology and chemistry.
The syllabus also includes quotations from Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose leftist guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, the U.S. and European Union. […]
“We must train socially minded people to help the community, and that’s why the revolution’s socialist program is being implemented,” said Zulay Campos, a member of a Bolivarian State Academic Commission that evaluates compliance with academic guidelines.
“If they attack us because we’re indoctrinating, well yes, we’re doing it, because those capitalist ideas that our young people have — and that have done so much damage to our people — must be eliminated,” Campos said.
Somewhere on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton and the usual suspects are taking notes.
If you think having a federal education department is bad, just think how bad things will get if the extreme left has their way with America’s schoolchildren. Their “education reform” will make the “Bolivarian” curriculum look like a homeschool program.
Update: Chavez’ money shot: “Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants.” Sounds like something Hillary would say…
Another Democrat performs random acts of treason:
US Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, on a Mideast visit that included a stop in Syria, said the country lambasted by the Bush administration deserves credit for taking in more than a million Iraqi refugees.
Kucinich, a strong anti-war opponent who trails far in the US presidential polls, also said he won’t visit Iraq on his trip to the region because he considers the US military deployment there illegal.
“I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation … I don’t want to bless that occupation with my presence,” he said in an interview in Lebanon, after visiting Syria. “I will not do it.”
But he had no scruples about “blessing” Bashar Assad with aid and comfort.
Sadly, no one will demand his immediate resignation from Congress and a public apology, as socialist Democrats nowadays are given blanket immunity from criticism or controversy.
(link via Wizbang)
Update (9/7): LGF has jaw-dropping video footage.
It seems that the socialist thug can dish it out in our country, but can’t take it at home:
President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country.
Chavez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela — and deport any outspoken critics.
“How long are we going to allow a person — from any country in the world — to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Chavez asked during his weekly television and radio program.
The Venezuelan leader’s statements came after Manuel Espino, the president of Mexico’s conservative ruling party, criticized Chavez during a recent pro-democracy forum in Caracas.
Government opponents argue Chavez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — is becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent as he steers oil-rich Venezuela toward what he calls “21st-century socialism.”
If Chavez truly wasn’t a dictator and a tyrant, his government would be more tolerant of free speech — especially when that free speech isn’t always favorable. Also, he wouldn’t go around censoring free expression among native Venezuelans, including shutting down a TV station he doesn’t like.
So the next time Chavez steps on U.S. soil to attack our country and our leaders, I say we tell him to take a Citgo pump nozzle and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine — followed by immediate deportation. What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.
Yesterday, a double-car bomb threat was averted in Londonistan; however, Scotland’s Glasgow Airport suffered a car bomb attack. In return, the Ostrich Guild of politicians and activists call for appeasement and capitulation, lest the same fate should happen here in the USA.
Eric of The Tygrrrr Express has penned a strong essay on our appeasers at home, and pulls no punches. That is your required reading for today. Go. There. Now.
The BBC admits that they’re biased toward the left.
Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, on the cult of Goreism (aka Global Warming):
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists. […]
The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.
As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.
That will preach.
Over the weekend, French voters chose center-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy over socialist candidate Segolene Royal as their next president. Sarkozy won 53% of the vote, based on an 85% voter turnout.
In contrast to the visceral anti-Americanism of Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy stated that America can count on France as a friend once more. This in itself is a good thing for U.S.-French relations.
Although Sarkozy is a believer in man-made global warming and stands opposed to the Iraqi theater, he has plans to dismantle the French welfare state, cut taxes, and enact much-needed free-market reforms to counter massive unemployment and rebuild the French economy. This is a far much better improvement over the socialist policies that have cast a dark cloud over France for decades.
Things are definitely looking up for the French again.
Update: Not all of France was happy with the change of leadership, especially the anarchists. ¡No Pasarán! has reports aplenty, including post-riot videos.
Nancy Pelosi’s travels down the Damascus road are among many seditious acts the Democrats are engaging in to undermine this country and our allies. Thomas Sowell comments:
Today, Ms. Pelosi and the congressional Democrats are stepping in to carry out their own foreign policy and even their own military policy on troop deployment - all the while denying that they are intruding on the president’s authority.
They are doing the same thing domestically by making a big media circus over the fact that the Bush administration fired eight U.S. attorneys. These attorneys are among the many officials who serve at the pleasure of the president - which means that they can be fired at any time, for any reason or for no reason.
That is why there was no big hullabaloo in the media when President Bill Clinton fired all the U.S. attorneys across the country - even though that got rid of the U.S. attorneys who were conducting an investigation into corruption in Mr. Clinton’s administration as governor of Arkansas.
So much hate has been hyped against George W. Bush that anything that is done against him is unlikely to be questioned in most of the media.
But whatever passing damage is being done to President Bush is a relatively minor concern compared with the lasting damage that is being done to the presidency that will still be here when Mr. Bush is gone.
Once it becomes accepted that it is all right to violate the laws and the traditions of this nation, and to undermine the ability of the United States to speak to other nations of the world with one voice, we will have taken another fateful step into the degeneration of this society.
Such a drastic and irresponsible step should remove any lingering doubt that the Democrats’ political strategy is to ensure that there is an American defeat in Iraq in order to ensure their political victory in 2008.
That these political games are being played while Iran keeps advancing relentlessly toward acquiring nuclear weapons is a fateful sign of the utter unreality of politicians preoccupied with scoring points and a media obsessed with celebrity bimbos, living and dead.
Although they’re no friend of Bush, The WaPo did a good job of bringing the smackdown to Pelosi:
Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration — rightly or wrongly — has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker’s freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That’s true enough — but those other congressmen didn’t try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. “We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.
Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush’s military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi’s attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.
Pelosi needs to be taken to the woodshed — for the sake of us all.
Prince Charles Calls for Ban on McDonald’s Restaurants and Big Macs
The Prince of Wales told a nutritionist in Abu Dhabi Tuesday that the “key” to people eating healthily was to ban McDonald’s fast food restaurants.
Prince Charles was attending the launch of a public health awareness campaign aimed at fighting diabetes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
He visited the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre and watched as a group of children chose from a selection of “good” and “bad” snacks for their school packed lunches.
Talking to Nadine Tayara, a nutritionist from the centre who had put the children through their paces, he asked her: “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s? Have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.”
A McDonald’s spokeswoman said that Charles’s remark was “disappointing”.
Other members of his family had visited the fast-food chain, she said, and “have probably got a more up-to-date picture of us.”
It’s sad that Charles would blatantly call for the use of government to ban goods and services “for the common good”. The saddest part, however, is that his home country has been marching down that path for quite some time now. Maybe a Big Mac would change his bland disposition (the late Princess Diana tried to get him to lighten up, bless her heart…).
It’s up to the individual (or in the case of children, their parents), and not government, to choose healthy food options. While too much fast food can be a bad thing, a governmental ban just isn’t the answer. Market forces have caused Mickey D’s and other burger joints to offer healthier items on their menus, and they can do just fine without an also-ran to the British crown mucking things up.
Would the world be better off?
Actually, Britain would probably be under Sharia law if the radical Islamists get their way, but I digress…
(links via James Hudnall and LGF)
As Venezuela embarked on another six years under Hugo Chavez, the president announced plans to nationalize power and telecommunications companies and make other bold changes to increase state control as he promised a more radical push toward socialism.
Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank (other-otc: CHPA.PK - news - people ) of its autonomy and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to approve “a set of revolutionary laws” by presidential decree.
“We’re moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution,” Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his new Cabinet on Monday. “We’re heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it.” […]
“The eight-year transition phase is ending and we’re entering a new era - the Simon Bolivar national plan, Bolivarian socialism,” Chavez told his audience of cheering supporters.
Chavez is also moving to censor freedom of expression:
As he begins a new six-year presidential term this week, Chavez is vowing to shut down Radio Caracas Television, Venezuela’s largest and oldest network, because it allows the expression of political ideas opposing the Chavez regime. Since the TV station was among many media outlets that supported the bungled coup against Chavez in 2002 and a general strike against his government in 2003, the dictator-elect apparently feels he has consolidated enough power to retaliate. ”Go and turn off the equipment,” Chavez said as he vowed to deny renewal of the network’s license, which expires in May.
Of course, this threat of totalitarian censorship has been condemned as a grave violation of freedom of expression by many concerned observers, from press freedom groups like Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Press Association to the Organization of American States.
Somewhere, in the neighboring country of Colombia, Bolivar — a classical liberal who advocated free markets and admired the American Revolution — is spinning in his grave. If he were alive today, he would surely denounce Chavez’ warped, Marxist worldview and proceed to smack the taste out of his mouth.
While many politicians paid their respects to the late president Gerald Ford, Harry Reid was too busy schmoozing with some of South America’s leftist leaders:
Reportedly, he has expressed his sudden love of Peru.
Has he suddenly forsaken his first and only true love — to serve the people of Nevada (if you could call it that)?
Related: Haiku party at Meryl’s!