[Cincinatus' Wife]

Left turn: 'Revolution' hits Venezuela's oil culture - PDVSA beachhead for Chavez's vision *** CARACAS, VENEZUELA - At the gleaming offices of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the country's state-owned oil giant, a corporate revolution is under way. Nine-to-fivers have come to think of themselves as patriots. Senior managers now eat at the same cafeteria tables as secretaries. And former soldiers have left the battlefield for the boardroom.

After PDVSA workers walked off the job last December in a bid to force Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez from office, the fiery populist hitched his social revolution to the $110 billion business: He purged the company's ranks and installed his own people. What was widely regarded as a world-class energy company before the strike has a new philosophy: to help the poor. And a new corporate culture is gradually taking shape, injected with the president's particular brand of leftist ideology.***

[Wilhelm Tell]

That reminds me of a joke from Ceaucescu's Romania. The dictator appointed family members to well-paying jobs and basically looted the country. Some clever person described the system as "socialism in one family."

Perhaps I need to explain the joke for anyone who isn't familiar with old communist terminology. There used to be the phrase "socialism in one country." It meant that communist countries were supposedly self-sufficient. Hence, the humor of "socialism in one family" -- it describes in a few words how the Ceaucescus were a nation unto themselves while they looted Romania.

Chavez is doing the same thing to Venezuela. Old communists in the Old World and new communists in the New World are very much alike.

[JudgemAll]

his cousin takes over: Selective recovery, just as Castro's selective health care and economy.