BRING IT ON!

This excerpt is from an article on one of the 'brave new intellectual' magazines that has hit the online (and print) world called the Jacobin. I do love the artwork by the way...I wish a few conservative magazines would take a leaf out of their book!

 

It promotes left-wing socialism (calls itself Marxist) yet embraces 'capitalistic' methodologies to exist and grow and sees no conflict in its actions...typical of today's 'young intellectuals' who view the world as owing them something and are therefore entitled to break any and all rules to achieve their 'rights'.

"This kind of business sense — what Sunkara calls “petty-bourgeois hustling” — has always been a part of his management of Jacobin. Back in 2010, when he realized the digital-only publication was drawing only a small audience, he used all the revenue he had from 100 four-issue subscriptions to fund the first print run. Between issues one and two, he gained another one hundred subscribers, the revenue from which he used to finance another issue. Slowly, but not without risk, the magazine grew and approached stability.

“I want to run the magazine productively, as efficiently as a business would run it,” Sunkara says. He’s trying become more comfortable running the company at a small deficit if it means growth in the longterm. Someday in the near future, he might even draw a full-time paycheck.

 “Even though we’re the most Marxist publication out of this new wave of publications, I think we’re very much the most in tune with making our business strategies and our development strategies integral with everything else,” he says. “I think a lot of times when people look at young publications, and want to see what they’re doing right, they often talk about enthusiasm and other things that people like to associate with young people, instead of looking at their success and just seeing solid fundamentals.”[E R Goldstein

They recognise no logical inconsistencies in their approach because they have no logical training and are therefore by definition; not truly intellectual at all. Their delusional modus operandi embraces a form of self-blindness all the while navigating the slippery slopes of the moral high ground, a logically dangerous practice for the simple reason that like the mythical Ouroboros,

.......the very people they attract are probably the same ones who will likely cause their demise, just like the leader of the historical Jacobin's was killed by the very revolutionaries he led and inspired and just as we are witnessing how many left-wingers are currently being attacked by the more extreme Social Justice Warriors in their midst...it is precisely the sort of behaviour that has allowed both Brexit and Trump to emerge.

SOME MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Socialism in the old USSR worked the way it always works in every country its ever been established in...everybody is equal but some are more equal than others.

The 'tofu socialists' in Australia are no different, take Alan Joyce's boast about the Qantas Chairman's lounge and how he uses it as a political tool to manipulate politicians:

But the problem with the Qantas CEO is that he wields a disproportionate amount of
power and influence in this town, because everyone who’s anyone wants to belong to his invitation-only “Chairman’s Lounge”.
Talk about elites. It’s the hottest ticket around.
“If you’re unhappy with a company that’s involved with the [Marriage Equality] campaign you won’t be able to bank and you won’t be able to fly anywhere,” Joyce boasted to the gay and lesbian newspaper the Star Observer.So when Joyce turns Australia’s beloved national airline into a tool of the same-sex marriage lobby, few people dare criticise, even if they disagree, as many of his passengers do.

The national carrier of the world’s most egalitarian nation ironically boasts the most elitist VIP lounge of any airline.
Joyce himself once boasted that the Chairman’s Lounge was: “probably the most exclusive club in the country”.

Inside, in the Jetsons-inspired honeycomb-carpeted hush you will find politicians, media heavyweights, CEOs, judges, union leaders, models and celebrities, noshing companionably on free Neil Perry “inspired” gourmet meals on demand and lapping up fine champagnes and boutique beers.
It’s all truffled vinaigrette, Schultz bacon and sesame seed noughatine for lounge denizens, although last weekend’s champagne selection was more pedestrian than expected, featuring a Seppelt 2012 sparkling white.
There you’ll find such working class heroes of the political classes as Labor Senator Doug Cameron and Independent Jacqui Lambie.In the Chairman’s Lounge you always score a complimentary flight upgrade, and obsequious staff will whisper in your ear when it’s your turn to board, so that you waste no time queuing with the hoi polloi.
While Qantas is believed automatically to bestow Chairman’s Lounge membership on all Federal MPs, and their partners, not everyone declares the gift on the parliamentary register of pecuniary interests. Maybe that’s because they don’t use it, or perhaps, because if “everyone has it,” as one pollie puts it, it’s not worth mentioning.
“It’s the crack cocaine of travel,” says another member of the exclusive club. “You know it’s wrong but you don’t want to give it up.”
Among the more than 100 politicians who have declared membership are Liberals Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Josh Frydenberg, Julian Leeser and Kelly O’Dwyer. Labor’s Bill Shorten, Terri Butler, Jim Chalmers, Jason Claire, Emma Husar and Cameron also are among the Qantas elite, as is Lambie and the Greens’ Adam Bandt and Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlam." [M Devine]

Perhaps this is why Abbott lost his way and eventually the respect of the 'deplorables' in Australia. I love the way Jackie Lambie, Sarah Hanson-Young and other communards are part of the witches brew...talk about hypocrisy on steroids....but then why should we expect anything different...and these sybaritic hypocrites whinge about Trump.

I wish there was a Trump on Australia's political horizon.

HARK! CHURCHILLIAN IRONY

Professor Thomas Sowell captures the spirit behind the curse of the Wests 'progressive elite' succinctly and with a dash of historical irony in this quote:

"In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly 'thinking people' who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression," Sowell observed. "In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes, but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many."

His wisdom will be sorely missed and the world of ideas will be much the poorer. His work has not only inspired many conservatives to hope but has also changed a few leftist mindsets as well, which as we all know is not an easy thing for another human being to do:

The former leftist playwright David Mamet, in his 2008 manifesto, "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal," cited his exposure to Sowell, whom he dubbed "our greatest contemporary philosopher," as a critical factor in his conversion. Whether tackling the "bait and switch media," the "organized noisemakers," or the lawless enablers of "social disintegration, Thomas Sowell's dozens of academic books and thousands of newspaper columns have sparked generations of his readers across the political spectrum to think independently and challenge imposed visions.

A BROBDINGNAGIAN AFFECTATION

It behoves us rational folk to recognise talent when we see it.

The socialist left have become past masters at NEWSPEAK...that is; the ability to take ones own position and twist it in such a way as to use it to damn ones opposition.

Take Rachel Sylvester for example....here resides a model citizen of left-wing-world journalism whose raison d'etre is to push the benefits of emotionalism over logic which many in the left regard as so 'last century' (post-modernism hey!) and have been at the forefront of pushing the 'what-is-truth' (relativity) movement, making the case that excess 'emotionalism' (prejudice is an emotional position) and an opposition to 'truth' is what drove many to vote against their betters in both the Brexit move and Trump in America:

In this year of the demagogue, Donald Trump tweeted his way to victory in the US while his mini-me, Nigel Farage, shaped events in Europe and then became the face of Britain abroad. The photograph of the US president-elect and the former UK Independence Party leader smiling in the gold and diamond-studded Trump Tower lift was the image that defined the past 12 months. Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings in France, hoping to capitalise on the anti-establishment mood. Emotion has trumped intellect, and prejudice overwhelmed truth, as populism goes mainstream.

These are the same people who fly in on private aeroplanes to rail against the common people flying excess air-miles and damaging the planet with their selfishness...they rail against 'capitalism' from one of their many private properties scattered around the globe, use Trumps lack of personal tax paying status to smear his character while their own fortunes sit in tax havens around the globe,  call Trump a hater because he indulges in locker-room sexist banter (not excusing bad behaviour here) all the while protecting and ignoring shocking behaviours on the part of Democratic Presidents and community 'leaders'. I could go on ad infinitum, but you get the hypocrisy.

It takes a special form of a whitewashed conscience (or none at all) to be able to publicly pontificate on those issues that you know you are guilty of (or worse) without a sense of shame.

I have no doubt that all politicians, irrespective of their affiliations do these things, but within the new-left it appears to have reached Brobdingnagious proportions.

A FRAGILE FREEDOM

We are in danger when we take our Liberal Democracy for granted.
Just as we are in danger when we take friendships, or marriages, or partnerships for granted.

We did not just arrive at our current state of being!
It is not some self-evident evolutionary accident that comes about as the result of time + chance.
It is the result of a worldview; a paradigm if you will, a way-of-seeing the world and its potential and taking that perspective and marrying it to hard work, sacrifice, painful lessons learned, chances taken, lives lost and a solid framework of freedom, liberty, property rights, law and goodwill that has made Australia into the successful nation that it currently is. These 'fundamentals' are under attack.

21st Century Australia has reached a point where the Fabian/Gramscian 5th Columnists have almost completed their occupation of the cultural 'high ground', that is; education, law, State & federal bureaucracies, the arts, academia and the media and in doing so have lulled many average Aussies into a false sense of security and a belief that our culture will continue on its present peaceful and prosperous path without a hiccup.

For example we are confronted with carpetbagging politicians on all 'sides' voicing syrupy, sanctimonious, infantilising untruths selling the plainly illogical lies that would have us believe that it is possible to hand out masses of 'free' goodies ad infinitum, all the while building up crippling debts but doing so without penalty and/or making any sacrifices.

All we have to do is ask ourselves if we could run our personal accounts like that.

But our itching ears want to hear such things and the fantasy continues, but the real 'twist' is that these occupiers of the cultural 'high-ground' are actually waging a subtle war on the very things that they are promising to us. These ideologues are not happy with the current state of the Western ideas of freedom, either economic or personal. Many are radicals who are violently opposed to the fundamentals that have provided for our current levels of civilisation and success and they are committed to destroying our way of life and replacing it with the models they view as the 'correct' one.

And one of the ways they are doing it is by scaring the population: the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam began as the Global Cooling danger of the 60's. The overpopulation fears, Y2K, the running out of water, food, oil, space, etc,etc. The activists use these scares to inveigle huge sums out of money the taxpayer. Of course there is nothing new about this, these struggles for power and cash have been going on since time immemorial the only things changing are the scares and those who are being ripped off.

A new wrinkle has been that social media and the internet are making many of the heretofore hidden details of motivations and intentions quite accessible if one is prepared (or has the time) to read and research through the masses of conspiracy theories, obvious lies, misinformation and methods so readily available on the net.

Our way of life is not inevitable nor is it able to survive without a struggle. There will always be forces striving to gain power, prestige or comfort at others expense. The theory's that sound so good usually are too good to be true and appear that way because they seldom take human nature into account, and most of the 'replacement philosophy's' these days are academic rather than real. The 'models' rather than the data.

George Orwell — 'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.'
The problem we face for our children's sake is that if we surrender our culture through ignorance it is probably true that it will be lost forever...of at the very least, for a very long time.

Hence the importance of the following article:

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/6723/full

FAKE NEWS EXPOSED

Some truth out of the Syrian conflict and how Obama's America (not the 'real' America) is assisting in the wars raging in the Middle East:

http://www.xyz.net.au/evidence-msm-lies/

PERSUADE THEM TO EAT EXPERTS!

I watched some mindless TV over lunch today. An entertainment/info program but was struck (once more) by the whole fake news idea. Many of these programs trumpet that they provide the latest, up-to-date news but are in reality little more than propaganda for the producers/telehosts/writers to push their ideologies on the unsuspecting viewer. 

Hans Rookmaaker once said that propaganda only works when it operates as a 'hidden persuader' and in my opinion, many of these daytime 'entertainment' shows are operating as hidden persuaders.

Anyway, today's drivel concerned shark nets....and their 'expert' concluded that shark nets are a barbaric invention designed to brutally 'murder' defenceless sharks and that they are in use not to defend people but to prevent people from litigating against the State Government if there is an attack. In today's litigious environment I have no doubt that such a prospect does exist, but I grew up in a non-litigious society and whose shark nets provided protection for decades. Anyway his whole approach was permeated by anthropomorphism and reinforced my observation that too many of these eco-warriors who scream blue murder at the death of a cold blooded fish are quite cool in the face of mass murder of humans and in particular babies....in fact many of these Social Justice Warriors are quite misanthropic in their ideology, which begs the question; what is their motivation?

His solution?...To use the latest technology...sound familiar Green energy people? 

He then pontificates on the use of drones (I have no objection to drones or technology BTW)...and provides us with entirely fictitious costings such as: " it costs 10$ per hour to keep a drone in the air. Anyone who has a drone or knows anyone who operate commercial drones will know immediately that such costings are straight out of Green ideology's;  Environmentally friendly book of fantastical, wish-fulfilling costings for masters of the universe!  

in other words completely fictitious and intended to subdue arguments of a 'capitalistic' nature.

The problem with the experts trotted out by TV shows is that they all seem to read from the same playbook. When last did you see a dissenting argument against the eco-friendly, saccharine sweet, politically correct, mumbo jumbo, psycho-babble advanced by the 'progressive' left?

For a more balanced take on the subject lets look at the EVIDENCES...

Whoa! who swore? Aaaaargh!....take me to my SAFE PLACE quickly before I faint or start crying.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2016/12/sharks-ate-experts/

FAKE FAKERY

The big news at the moment is FAKE NEWS....what universe have these people been living in? 

Fake News has been around since the 1980's when the university's, then in the first stages of the left-wing takeover ala Antonio Gramsci, began touting the Post Modern 'truth' that there is no truth, only opinion...in fact schools of 'journalism' began to teach that its OK to express your opinion on any given subject rather than searching for 'objectivity' which is unattainable anyway. 

Anyone ever heard the phrase 'relative truth'? 

Its just the first manifestation of what they now call FAKE NEWS with the small twist that now the Fake news is all from the alt-right! 

Go Figure!

BREAKFAST SHOW LOONY TUNES = DANTES INFERNO

My wife taped the weekend morning 'Sunrise' program for the competition words and I have to watch and find the correct password to enter on her phone while she sleeps off last nights late-night shift, fair enough.  But watching these smug, arrogant, self-satisfied 'journalistic' hacks makes for a queasy stomach and some frenetic fast forwarding finger-work on the remote.

What really got to me during this mornings taping was the irony of these morons complaining that 'nutjobs' (their description) like Cory Bernardi and other conservative politicians were not allowing the climate change inspired new taxes on the taxpayer to: " even be discussed". Of course they prefaced this claim with the statement that all of the scientists and the truly 'clever' people of course agreed with them that AGW was happening.

The irony in this is how the climate change preachers have had FREE RUN OF MOST OF THE LEFT-WING PRESS for decades now and have tried every which way  they could to close down debate on the issues often resorting to quite fascistic means to quieten the 'sceptics':

Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a “preordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence”. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.

Look what happened to a butterfly ecologist named Camille Parmesan when she published a paper on “Climate and Species Range” that blamed climate change for threatening the Edith checkerspot butterfly with extinction in California by driving its range northward. The paper was cited more than 500 times, she was invited to speak at the White House and she was asked to contribute to the IPCC’s third assessment report.

Unfortunately, a distinguished ecologist called Jim Steele found fault with her conclusion: there had been more local extinctions in the southern part of the butterfly’s range due to urban development than in the north, so only the statistical averages moved north, not the butterflies. There was no correlated local change in temperature anyway, and the butterflies have since recovered throughout their range. When Steele asked Parmesan for her data, she refused. Parmesan’s paper continues to be cited as evidence of climate change. Steele meanwhile is derided as a “denier”. No wonder a highly sceptical ecologist I know is very reluctant to break cover.

Jim Hansen, recently retired as head of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at NASA, won over a million dollars in lucrative green prizes, regularly joined protests against coal plants and got himself arrested while at the same time he was in charge of adjusting and homogenising one of the supposedly objective data sets on global surface temperature. How would he be likely to react if told of evidence that climate change is not such a big problem?

Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton University, who frequently testifies before Congress in favour of urgent action on climate change, was the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior scientist for nineteen years and continues to advise it. The EDF has assets of $209 million and since 2008 has had over $540 million from charitable foundations, plus $2.8 million in federal grants. In that time it has spent $11.3 million on lobbying, and has fifty-five people on thirty-two federal advisory committees. How likely is it that they or Oppenheimer would turn around and say global warming is not likely to be dangerous?

Why is it acceptable, asks the blogger Donna Laframboise, for the IPCC to “put a man who has spent his career cashing cheques from both the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace in charge of its latest chapter on the world’s oceans?” She’s referring to the University of Queensland’s Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.

These scientists and their guardians of the flame repeatedly insist that there are only two ways of thinking about climate change—that it’s real, man-made and dangerous (the right way), or that it’s not happening (the wrong way). But this is a false dichotomy. There is a third possibility: that it’s real, partly man-made and not dangerous. This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely.

I find that very few people even know of this. Most ordinary people who do not follow climate debates assume that either it’s not happening or it’s dangerous. This suits those with vested interests in renewable energy, since it implies that the only way you would be against their boondoggles is if you “didn’t believe” in climate change. [M Ridley]

The loons then presented a segment on 'fake news' and how damaging it had been to the Hillary Clinton campaign, citing only how false accounts had influenced and probably rigged the election, thus continuing the campaign against democratic elections in America only because 'their side' lost. To be sure there was indeed lots of 'fake news' and in fact much of it (if not most) was on the 'side' of the Democrats. As for the leaking emails....this was not fake, these were actual emails generated by the individuals involved, what irks the left is that the public were given access to the information, information that proved Hillary Clinton was a liar, a political prostitute, an anarchist and probably was going to bring America to destruction more swiftly than current estimates. At least it now has some time to recover and perhaps make the necessary arrangements.

Our civilisation is truly imploding from within and I fight against these loony tunes only because I find it impossible to sit still in the face of blatant and hypocritical 'useful idiots (Lenin's words), plus the truth is that I want a little more peace-time with my children because one thing is for sure; that the policy's of these useful idiots and their demonic cronies (Soros) are going to send the whole world into a massive conflagration in the not-to-distant future.

HOW TO COOK FOOD WITHOUT COOKING THE PLANET

...and other verbal excretions from the (mouth)holes of global warming catastrophists such as:

Fight global warming by reducing CO2 emissions from your spaghetti bolognaise! This is the recommendation of two academics associated with Melbourne’s RMIT University whohave found that the farm-to-fork “Global Warming Potential” (GWP) of pasta with meat sauce can be significantly reduced by eliminating beef and substituting kangaroo. They recommend that for an even greater impact on global heat, rising seas, coral bleaching, tempests, bushfires and ocean acidification, you should dispense with the kangaroo too, and make your spagbol topping with lentils and kidney beans.

and...............................

A Conversation commenter, William Hollingsworth, self-identifying as “a Marxist monarchist”, suggests another planet-saving refinement to our favorite family fare. “Reduce the footprint for spaghetti bolognaise even further by cooking it in one pot, not by boiling the spaghetti separately which doubles the amount of energy needed for cooking and adds another pot to be washed up. Tastes just the same,” he says.

and............................

The authors see their rankings of 168 kitchen foods’ footprints and the GWP of 1718 food stuffs’ values as relevant to the concerns of Gaia-loving householders and catering companies. If you’re fretting about your food emission “hot spots” from buffalo milk, eel, brassica, pollock, pepo, swedes, carp, hesperidium, true berries and pinto beans, just use their ready reckoner for planet-saving purposes.
But the researchers lament that the emissions intensity of peanuts, goat, turkey, duck, quinoa, ostrich, emu, and rabbit are not yet calculated – a task crying out for hefty research grants if ever there was one. Even the carbon footprint – rather, macropod print – of kangaroos needs re-calculation. “Such information is critical if attempts are made to inform dietary choice for environmental purposes,” the authors say. Perhaps “critical” is over-stating things a bit; I’d rank cancer cures, rice yields and dark matter higher in the “critical” research category.

Seriously, these media tarts are almost beyond a comment other than to mention briefly that the decision by Australian State governments to deinstitutionalise ww.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/senate/.../mentalhealth.../addinfo003_pdf.ash)
has overlapped with an outbreak of peculiar subject matter being discussed in academic contexts.

Is this a coincidence or is there a correlation?

This cries out for a hefty research grant don't you agree?

POST-TRUTH, POST-CHRISTIAN, POST-REALITY

When are people going to realise that the Marxist inspired (and they no longer deny it) 'Left/Green' ideology is anti-work, anti-family, anti-jobs, anti-social, anti-successful business small or large, in short they are anti everything that modern civilisation holds dear and they believe that if only they can get a hold of the institutions of learning they can manipulate people into believing as they do:

"....the fundamental problem with the Left is what Friedrich Hayek called the fatal conceit: the delusion that experts are wise enough to redesign society."

Their whole intention is to bring down Western civilisation through propaganda, re-education, social programs and the re-writing of history in order to replace it with a new 'feudalism' where they are the aristocrats and we are the serfs:

 “….today’s progressives promote social control and the consolidation of a cognitively determined world order. Its promise amounts to forging a kind of high-tech middle ages in which the new aristocracy—techies, media grandees, financial moguls, academics, high-level bureaucrats—dominate while the middle class becomes increasingly serf-like. (J Kotkin 2016)

Take careful note that the majority of Green movers and shakers are rich, they have reached a position in society that protects them from the banality's and consequences of their ideologies (for now!) and now that they have made comfortable lives for themselves they want to protect them at all cost from the 'deplorables'. These are the masters-of-the-universe behind the Utopian daydream that the 'ideal society' is a socialist one. 

They refuse (alternatively: too ignorant?) to learn from other deterministic social experiments such as; Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China, Angola, Zimbabwe et al, where the only ones who live in 'paradise' are the ones at the top of the heap (and who annihilate the 'intellectuals' [Stalin's useful idiots] on their way up!), everyone else is kept in a state of penury and starvation; as Robert Mugabe remarked: "it is easy to control one whose primary needs can only be met by government". 

These are fanatical, ideologically driven bozo's and the sooner we learn to ignore their constant wailing the sooner Australia will be a better place.

Unfortunately they are assisted by the 4th estate acting as a 5th column within Australia because the training, education and employment of journalist is undertaken by those who are by far more ideologically opposed to the Western model than the average man-in-the-street:

The faculties of journalism are churning out a conga line of brainwashed robots who all sing from the same songbook. They are totally indoctrinated - first at high school and then at the journalism schools - and have precisely no exposure to or understanding of business and its importance to our life, of conservative politics, of the legitimacy of differing opinions, or of the fundamental structure of a true democracy.

The educational systems have been almost entirely captured by the Left:

A whole course for Years 9-10, involving ten lessons, is devoted to the book “This Changes Everything”, an anti-capitalism, anti-fossil-fuel polemic by Canadian activist Naomi Klein.[2] She advocates populist uprisings – “Blockadia” — against fossil-energy developments, and for gigantic dollar transfers to (mostly corrupt) Third World governments to repay the West’s (mythical) “climate debt”. She attacks even the major green groups such as WWF and Nature Conservancy as sell-outs to the fossil-fuel industry.

Not only students are being targeted by the left but the teachers as well, those who have not yet capitulated to the left already that is:

News today that Australian “Safe Schools” operatives are pushing a global teacher training program designed to shame people who believe in marriage between one man and one woman and who resist radical gender theory should be of concern to parents.
“It is alarming that Australian ‘Safe Schools’ organisers want the next generation of teachers to view anyone who believes marriage is between one man and one woman as ‘modern homophobes’,” Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton said.

When are we, the ordinary citizens, going to wake up and vote in a man (or woman; P Credlin?) of power and character who will shut down these anti-Australian misanthropes and cause them to gnash their teeth like their comrades are in America!

SLOW LEARNERS OR OBSTINATE OSTRICHES

When will people learn.

The death of Castro has prompted liberals of all stripes to focus on how he 'helped' his people when the truth is he helped himself to all the money and left his 'people' impoverished. 

He was supposed to have helped Venezuela yet observe what has happened there with the richest family being Chavez's and the rest impoverished. 

Yesterday I watched a TV program where an Angolan woman who had emigrated to America defended Castro as being the countries 'saviour'...look at Angola now:

Angola, which liberal reporters and economists often cite as proof of economic growth in Africa, is another family-run kleptocracy, with the president’s daughter Isabel reportedly worth $3 billion and the IMF reporting $32 billion in oil revenues as simply “missing.”

Anyone spot the common thread?