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Well my little buddy is at it again. In past communist takeovers the dictator has always slaughtered and imprisoned (re-educated) the intellectuals. It appears (at least for now) that Hugo is attempting a blood-less reformation. I wonder what happens to the private school operators who do not support the party line? Looks like left-wing death squads are right around the corner.

Associated Press Mon Sep 17, 2007 wrote:CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.

"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.

All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government's new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.

A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate "the new citizen," said Chavez's brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.

The president's opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop "critical thinking," not to impose a single way of thought.

You can only tell someone that what they are doing isn't a good thing. But they'll still have to learn on their own that it isn't. Seems like it's going to be an interesting transition. Given that the growth of the internet and availability of it, gonna be interesting to see how these text books will cover major historical events. I know a big portion of my studies requires me to seek out an internet access point to obtain readily available information. Then again, I'm not sure how easy it is to access the web in Venezuela.

Almost half of the population has a standard of living below the GDP per capita poverty line, I'd guess that most folks in Venezuela do not have web access.

The web does bring primary sources of information closer. As much as it stimulates my imagination, I always have to take it with a grain of salt – even Wikipedia.

With Hugo's rampant spending of his countries oil wealth on projects to put a "socialist" face on everything, one can at least know that an inevitable market crunch will hit his country. He spends so much of the oil wealth trying to win friends by buying Argentinian bonds no one wants, trading oil for Cuban Doctors, or propping up Bolivia's President that he is far outstripping his countries ability to keep the same spending level in the future when:

A.) Oil Production dips because many of the more efficient private companies that extracted the High Sulfur oil left because they were forced into new contracts unilaterally by the government and the state oil company has proven ineffecient at finding more reserves and/or extracting them.

B.) The Oil price hits Venezuela's magic number, and spending no longer is sustainable.

Either way, the Venezuelan people will suffer for their poor choice in electing Mr. Chavez, maybe not today or tomorrow, but they will, and they will be responsible for it. Unfortunately Mr. Chavez Communist tenancies were well on display before his second election with his many hour long rants against capitalism on the state broadcast channels as well is his Education Ministers insistence that teachers be educated according to Socialist ideology.

True enough Chavez did not hide his communist tendencies. But he did purge the civil service of a significant amount of opposition, and replaced these people with loyalists. And he does have a private army of thugs similar to the Nazi “brown shirts” that run roughshod over any form of opposition dialog. The Venezuelan people did not stand a chance in the second election. They might as well start calling him “Glorious Leader” just like Lil’ Kim in North Korea.

I'm sure he has some Communist style nickname already, Perhaps the "Great Oil Helmsman", or "The Second coming of Simon Bolivar"

The only problem is you'd have to listen to 4 hours of anti-capitalist tirades on one of the 3 channels you can now watch to hear it.