Smart people flee Fascism
Hugo Chavez and his hero, Fidel Castro
Venezuela’s Brain Drain
Mac Margolis – Newsweek magazine
Posted Saturday, June 27, 2009 11:52 AM
When they first elected him in 1998, Venezuelans hoped that Hugo Chávez would be a healer. Instead what they got was a tyrant who seizes private companies and farms, crushes labor unions, and harasses political opponents. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers, and engineers are leaving the country in droves. An estimated 1 million Venezuelans have moved away since Chávez took power, and a study by the Latin American Economic System, an intergovernmental research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor from Venezuela to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007.
The exodus is sabotaging the country’s future, and no industry has been harder hit than Venezuela’s oil sector. A decade ago, Petróleos de Venezuela ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Then Chávez named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA’s top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country’s leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA’s elite staff are now working overseas, and the talent deficit has crippled the company: PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control, but now pumps only 2.4 million, according to independent estimates.
Similar stories emerge from the media. Venezuela once had a combative and unfettered press, but no longer. In 2007 Chávez canceled the broadcast license for leading station RCTV, and now he’s threatening to shut down the only remaining independent network, Globovisión. The charge? Globovisión dared to break a story on an earthquake in Caracas ahead of the government press. Scientists have fared little better. Early on, Chávez diverted money from university science centers to official projects controlled by political allies. Now the country’s most respected research institutes are falling behind—the number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals has fallen by 15 percent in just the past three years.
It’s much the same elsewhere in the Axis of Hugo, the constellation of states that have followed Chávez on the march toward so-called 21st-century socialism. Leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media, and stoking class and ethnic conflicts. The result? More flight: a recent study by Vanderbilt University, for example, showed that more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index. Fitch Ratings, which analyzes credit risk, recently demoted the debt of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador to junk status. These states may be commodity-rich, but their biggest export is no longer minerals or oil. It’s the one resource best kept at home: talent.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/internationalist/archive/2009/06/27/venezuela-s-brain-drain.aspx
My comment: Fascism is sometimes difficult to define. Much like it’s twin force in this world– evil –it often hides behind fronts that may be appealing to people, for a while. It appeals to their laziness, their prejudice, their fears– it makes them feel safer in a big scary world. Once it establishes its grip on a society or culture– usually through lies, corruption, threats and murders– it is difficult to eradicate. Much like lice, roaches, rats and killer viruses (the principal scourges of mankind that we know of) fascism must be exterminated in some way. But also like those threats, even after extermination in a particular area, it always seems to come back, sometimes making an even stronger return as Fascists become more talented with the ways and means of spreading lies and propaganda.
The difference is that Fascism is only a concept held in the minds of evil people and the ones who have been infected with the thrill of absolute power– until that concept is backed by a heavily armed military of many ‘volunteers’. It always seeks to control a country’s media. It is a parasite and ordinary people are its host. Unlike the bugs and pests, it can be eventually stopped by education and democracy– if people can get those precious freedoms and pass the benefits and love of those activities on to their children– and if they can keep their media ‘free’ and honest.
Fascism can also begin as a reaction to criminal behaviors in society, a seemingly benign and worthwile effort. Without addressing the causes of criminal behavior, or the potential treatments for it, a police state can begin by just putting many people in jail or even prison. “Good, the ‘bad guys’ are all removed” thinks a public who see the police as their new saviors– a dangerous trend and a slippery slope.
Any country is only a generation or two away from the grip of tyranny, since history can now be quickly rewritten and people (yes, even adults) can be made to believe most anything. Hollywood movies are a symbol of our willingness to suspend disbelief and go into a trance and believe most anything. (We like that activity and will pay good money to experience it.) Our newest media (the Web, e-mail, cell phones) can be a force for individual freedoms or an easy and inexpensive way to spread the virus of coverups, lies and fear. Hackers and scammers and chain e-mail originators are mini-me Fascists.
I see the attempts at planting the seeds of fear and paranoia almost every month through the chain e-mails forwarded to me from relatives and friends. They are not mean people, but most likely just willing ‘dupes’ of bad people with agendas to promote. Some are written so cleverly (I’m a former copywriter as well) that many will just forward the trash because it makes them feel better– they are getting revenge for a perceived hurt, or they are made to feel holier and welcome in a heaven for having done it. Most current ones are promoting the fears of the Anti-Christ, Obamanation, the ACLU, socialism, losing ownership of handguns and assault weapons, extravagant pay and retirement plans for our dastardly Congress, and of course, unnamed higher taxes on people just like oneself.
In the early stages of development Fascism is best combated with humor. Sarcasm, satire and pointing of fingers with laughter toward deceitful liars can make them hide– for a while. In the full stages of its development, Fascism is very difficult to defeat. Visualize the last years of World War II. Germany and Japan and Italy (the peoples and governments) are now friends with the so-called Free World. Most have forgotten that their peoples were once a world-wide scourge. The illness is gone, or at least in deep remission.
When will the poor people of North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and many other police states be free? Time will tell.
