Reply #48: Not really.

[Ken Burch]

Books are disparaged because they lead to thought and action, because they lead people to question and think.

Video games are time wasters. They can provide an escape from life for the moment(and fine, some yuppies need that)but they don't lead to anyone growing as a person. They are about encouraging passivity.

Why are you so anti-Chavez anyway? The alternative to him is putting the right-wing back into power(or putting in "centrists" who "welcome foreign investment" which means the same thing). The forces of capital won't allow a progressive democratic alternative. It's not as though if only Hugo left you'd get some nice pure Swedish social democrat in there. Chavez does things the way he does them(and, in case you haven't noticed, he's always been far less repressive than Fidel)because he's seen how empire works in his region.
If you don't want people like that, work to change how THIS country deals with Latin America. Work to wipe out the Monroe Doctrine mindset. This hemisphere doesn't belong to us. IT belongs to the PEOPLE of the hemisphere.