Surreal

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has put together block-committee goons, modeled on his mentor castro’s Committees In Defense of Revolution. He calls it “community policing,” barf, but the result will be the same as Cuba has seen – neighbor spy on neighbor along with extraordinary incompetence in policing. In the end, the result will be what Colombia saw when it abrogated its national duties to maintain a professional police force – vigilantes will appear. That’s already happening in Venezuela. If you think life in Venezuela cannot be made more hellish than it already is, see what it’s like when cops are replaced with block committees in the world’s most crime-ravaged country!
But the dictator who governs by decree is having none of that. He’s waxing the praises of castrodom, speaking in his florid lunatic lies. Bloomberg‘s reporter, grossing out, gave it full play here.

Chavez blamed crime on consumerism and capitalist values and set Cuba, a Communist-ruled nation, as an example of citizen safety where homicides are a “rare event.”
“The marrow of the problem is about values, about the model of society that we have,” Chavez said. “Our society is contaminated with all these capitalist values. In Cuba there is a different lifestyle.”

Yeah, there is a different lifestyle all right, it’s called communism, and its legacy is crime, abortion, demoralization, enslavement, misery, paranoia, broken spirits, Tobacco Road boredom, ennui, and poverty. People hate it so much they kill themselves. Others flee on anything that floats through shark infested waters on the off chance they won’t end up in the middle of the Atlantic! The only thing it’s missing from the road to hell Venezuela is on is a free press to report the horror. But Chavez too is shutting down the media. And the more oppressive he gets, the weirder and more surreal he sounds.