Chavez's Popularity at 70 Percent, While Businesses Question Plans for 's

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBUFNPG98E.html

Chavez's Popularity at 70 Percent, While Businesses Question Plans for 'socialism'

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - A newly released poll gives President Hugo Chavez a 70-percent approval rating among Venezuelans, but his critics are increasingly asking where his plans for a new brand of "socialism" will take the country's economy.

Some business leaders criticized Chavez's economic proposals on Monday, saying there is considerable uncertainty about what the populist leader means by moving Venezuela toward a "socialism of the new century."

Meanwhile, a survey by the Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis estimated Chavez's public approval at 70 percent, director Luis Vicente Leon said.

The survey questioned a sample of 1,300 Venezuelans between Feb. 19 and March 2, and had an error margin of 2.7 percentage points.

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[knowbody0]

1. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeha

[bluestateguy]

2. OH MY GOD WE HAVE TO STOP THE DICTATOR OF VENEZUELA!!!!

If we don't stop him soon all of Latin America will be full of socialist governments: states where people are guaranteed a right jobs, education, health care and democratic elections!!! We have to do something, and fast! He's nationalizing all the oil businesses and damaging American interests!

[dissent1977]

3. Typical AP

If Chimp had a 70% approval rating the AP would be gushing about how well loved our beloved dictator is. With Chavez we hear about how the AP's corporate masters are worried about his socialist leanings. Give me Chavez over Chimp any day.

[Cha]

8. Welcome to DU!

Yeah, the Fascist press get their digs in on Progressives the World over!

[Cobalt Violet]

13. I hear that The Chimper is very popular with the horses.

[Larkspur]

32. Not with my horse. He's a smart horse.

[Zhade]

22. HELL YEAH! Welcome to DU!

NT!

[Minstrel Boy]

4. "Capitalism is not a sustainable model of development."

A couple of recent Chavez quotes, to which I can only add an amen.

"We have to invent the new socialism for the 21st century. Capitalism is not a sustainable model of development." Hugo Chavez, March 4, 2005.
http://www.trinicenter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1002

"We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one which puts humans, and not machines or the state ahead of everything. That’s the debate we must promote around the world."
http://www.swp.ie/socialistworker/2005/sw236/socialistworker-236-3.htm

[Dhalgren]

7. Can we get Venezuela to annex us?

I want a Chavez here! Is there no hope for the North American common people?

[aneerkoinos]

25. Amen

What my sig says.

[cprise]

30. I am flummoxed!

"We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one..."

But I've learned that won't sink-in with the United States. Over here, humanism is the cheerful plastic wrapper you take off a product to reveal the tasty corporate misanthropy inside. Or they think quite incorrectly that humanism is atheism. It is the CULTURAL GEM that every leftist movement used to wear proudly.

But it is not selfish enough to be "cool"... So Generation-Y Democrats wonder what in the world different progressives are supposed to have in common.

[Roland99]

33. Is Chavez a member of the "Yes-Men"? I saw that DVD last night

Great DVD on how they spoof being representatives of the WTO.


It's well-past time to put people ahead of corporate interests.

[burrowowl]

5. And the Chimp's ratings

He might get so jealous he'll try to topple Chavez again. Ware!

[Miss Chybil]

6. Oh my God! You mean the Corporation is not going to be running

Venezuela? Chavez must be stopped. How dare he put people over profits?

When do we bomb? When do we set freedom on the march? Heathens!

P.S. And what do we call them when we're setting them free? I know they're not "Ragheads," or "Hajis." I guess they'll have to settle for "Beaners." (Do they eat a lot of beans in Venezuela? No matter. It's close enough.)

[Cha]

9. Venezuelan Cuisine..

"The food in Venezuela is generally easy and flavorful. Caracas claims to have a greater variety of restaurants than any other South American city, and it would certainly be a pleasure to try and prove it, even if you failed. Venezuelan cooking has European, indigenous, and African roots - a heterodox cuisine formed over the centuries by immigrants. Some native dishes:

Pabellon - stewed and shredded meat accompanied by rice, black beans, and banana
Hallaca - a traditional Christmas dish.
Cachapa- a type of sweet corn pancake served with cheese.
Arepas - a type of round cornmeal biscuit."


http://www.geographia.com/venezuela/cuisine.htm

"What's really great:
It is amazing to me the variety of landscapes which Venezuela holds. There are mountains reaching an elevation of 12,000 feet. Venezuela is also the home of the largest waterfall in the world. It is called Angel Falls. It is located deep in the jungle."


"As a travelling vegetarian, I could always count on the largest avocados, some tortillas, beans and rice.

http://www.globosapiens.net/travel-information/Caracas-738.html

[Dhalgren]

11. Man! I am suddenly very hungry!

And it's too damned late to eat anything! I am planning a kick-ass lunch tomorrow! I wonder if there are any Venezuelan restaurants in town...

[Cha]

12. I was getting a Little hungry

myself ..reading about the cuisine of Venezuela! I can't wait to have corn tortillas,avocado,salsa, beans and rice tomorrow night for supper!:D

[Miss Chybil]

15. Yummmmmmm! Well, it's always good to bomb

where the food is good. I mean, when we send our troops on an
Oil-sade, it will be nice to know they'll have something good to eat.

Of course, they may not be allowed to eat it since it hasn't been blessed by the U.S.. Other people's food could kill our troops. Same with their drugs. They're just not safe. When my son was in Afghanistan he said the Afghan diet consisted of a lot of fresh grown vegetables, but the Americans were forbidden by their superiors to eat them. The dining facilities had to purchase their vegetables from another country and fly them in. I guess, Afghan dirt and water = bad. American blessed dirt and water from another country, not bombed, or in desperate need of money = good. My son did eat with the South Koreans who bought their food from the Afghanis. (Against orders - so don't tell.) He's still alive. I can't figure it out.

But, anyway, I'd love to visit Venezuela before George subjicates it. Then it will be nothing but KFC and Wal-Mart enhanced meat products for them. So sad. So much good food to go to waste.

[Frederik]

18. So they'll be..

Cachapas! Damn cachapas.

[MisterP]

10. Peru's little Pres., on the other hand, is at SIX percent,

but he's neoliberal so that's okay

[Jack Rabbit]

14. They once said 'What's good for General Motors is good for America'

There might be a Venezuelan equivalent of that statement, but Venezuelan peasants are too smart to believe it.

[Frederik]

19. Yes, it's..

What's good for ChevronTexaco is good for Venezuela.

[LeighAnn]

16. Wonder how broad the polling was?

Was this telephone polling, or door to door, I wonder?
Because I'm guessing many Venezuelans don't have phones, and I'm wondering how high on the hilltops and into the slums a Datanalisis pollster would go to get the opinion of one of the 80% of Venezuelans living in abject poverty.

I'll bet his numbers are even better than that

[Judi Lynn]

24. You're absolutely right. A DU'er who has lived for prolonged periods

in Venezuela told DU, during the coup that the very many poor in Venezuela are too poor to afford phones in their shacks, and they are not reached for phone polls, ever.

I've read in articles that poll takers simply don't go up into the barrios at all.

Took a quick trip to google and grabbed this article, which refers to this true absense of polling among the poor, which is estimated around 80% in a lot of sources.

An academic source—a person that has worked closely with Venezuela’s pollsters – said that most of Keller’s polling has been done in the middle class areas of the ten largest cities, meaning that the populous slums where Chavez’s support is concentrated have been largely excluded from Keller’s polling sample.

Our source informs us that Datanalisis’ polling samples are less skewed than Keller’s due to the firm’s superior operational team of field workers and access to Venezuela’s 1998 census tracts. However, the poll that Gil Yepes is currently releasing about the population’s views of the so-called “general strike” and Chavez’s handling of the crisis appears to be highly deceptive.

Here’s another fact unreported by English-language correspondents who cite polls by Gil Yepes and Keller as gospel: Since the “strike” began on December 2, Chavistas are not allowing Datanalisis’ field workers into the Chavista-controlled slums of Caracas and Maracaibo. While Gil Yepes recently released lopsided polls that purport popular support for the “strike,” he fails to mention that his polling sample excludes the populous slums where the “strike” has proved to be a complete failure. The progressive economist Mark Weisbrot, who recently spent time in Caracas, wrote a column for the Washington Post explaining that there were “few signs of the strike” in “most of the city, where poor and working-class people live.”

The academic source said that Keller and Gil Yepes generally do not poll rural inhabitants. The opposition newspapers that commission the polls are not willing to pay the increased costs that rural polling entails. Thus, landless peasants who may benefit from Chavez’s agrarian reform are also excluded from polling samples.
(snip/...)

http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article594.html



A true silent majority!

[Mika]

31. Only silent in phone polls, Judi Lynn

When the rubber needs to hit the road the masses turn out in droves to demonstrate their support for Mr Chavez, time and time again.







www.stopbolton.org

[ret5hd]

29. one clue might lie in the fact that datanalisis (the polling firm)...

is virulently anti-chavez. in fact, if i remember correctly (judi lynn or others might correct me) the president of datanalisis was once interviewed and stated that chavez "must be killed".

so yes, i would agree with your guess that the numbers are even higher.

edit: corrected judi lynn's name

[bemildred]

17. Hey, "business" needs to get with the program or get left behind. nt

[Frederik]

20. Splendid

Albis Munoz, of the Fedecamaras business federation, said Monday that Chavez's proposals won't solve the nation's economic woes.

"The problem of poverty is not a problem of businesspeople," Munoz told the Venezuelan TV channel Televen. "If there aren't clear rules to the game, if there is no confidence for the investor to risk capital ... the investment doesn't occur."

Most Venezuelans are poor despite Venezuela's oil wealth, and Chavez has directed billions of dollars in oil revenues toward public and social programs.

Businessman Rafael Alfonzo, who owns the food producer Alfonzo Rivas & Compania, C.A., said more state intervention will mean less private investment to create jobs.

Well less state intervention and more "confidence for the investor to risk capital" didn't create all that many decent-paying jobs for ordinary people now did it Señores Alfonzo and Munoz?

[TomClash]

26. Who invests in a country that

has a high percentage of abject poverty, a poorly educated workforce, no health care for many of its people?

The enormous levels of investment in China is not just based upon low wages.

[Rainscents]

21. WoW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ninkasi]

23. If I had the money

which, in the Bush economy I don't, I'd love to visit Venezuela. It sounds like a beautiful, vibrant country, with a democratically elected leader who is actually trying to serve the people who elected him. What a quaint idea, right Shrub? I'm sure your new Attorney General would be glad to tell you what an antiquated concept that is, along with the Geneva Conventions.

I'm glad that at least some countries, somewhere, know what it's like to live in a country with the interest of it's citizens, rather than corporations, as it's first priority.

[sadiesworld]

27. Dare I say...

MANDATE!!!!!!!!!!! Yep, read it and weep, Bushistas--this is what a REAL mandate looks like! :bounce:

[cprise]

28. A nice summary of developments in Latin America from MJ

"Harold Meyerson, writing in the Washington Post in mid-April on earlier Mexican protests over Obrador, commented (Greetings from Mexistan):

"Apparently, there are several kinds of capital city rallies. There are those in Kiev, where multitudes turned out to protest the subversion of a national election and the attempted murder of the opposition leader. There are those in Beirut, where people gathered to protest the murder of an opposition leader and to demand self-determination. These were outpourings that our government encouraged.

"And there was the one last Thursday in Mexico City, where 300,000 protesters filled the Zocalo… And what was the response of our government?... Did we tell the crowds gathered in the Zocalo that America walks at their side? " "

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/05/winners_and_losers.html


Plenty of news in there about VZ too.