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http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264424/hollywood-actors-hobnob-maduro-venezuelans-starve-david-paulinby: David Paulin
The leftist thugs who are running Venezuela into the ground and terrorizing political opponents got a boost from two prominent Hollywood actors who turned up in Caracas to support the socialist regime.
Jamie Foxx, who won an Academy Award for best actor for the biographical film "Ray," joined veteran actor
Lukas Hass at a carefully staged media event last Tuesday at the presidential palace. The actors, members of Hollywood's wealthy elite, provided moral support to the Maduro government just as Venezuelans are suffering from critical shortages of food and medicines -- a calamity that has made President Maduro a despised figure among ordinary Venezuelans.
President Maduro -- who has double downed on the socialist policies of Venezuela's late firebrand president Hugo Chávez -- spoke glowingly of the actors' commitment to humanity during the event, which revolved mainly around promoting housing projects that are planned with companies from Italy, Dubai, and Jordan.
Said Maduro: "We've been talking and I see these two actors, two extraordinary beings, indeed, very human, very sensitive and participating in these projects to seek the welfare of the peoples in the world."
The actors posed with Maduro for photos and Foxx was quoted by state media as saying he was on hand to show his "support" for the housing projects.
It's doubtful, of course, that the actors spent much time with ordinary Venezuelans, whose living hell under what Hugo Chávez called "21st Century Socialism" is being reported in one headline after another coming out of oil-rich yet impoverished Venezuela.
Recently, for instance, an Associated Press article by correspondent Hannah Dreier told the heartbreaking story of a little girl who nearly suffered an agonizing death after her scrapped knee became infected. A lack of decent medical care and shortages of medicines put her parents on a desperate search for medical care and antibiotics.
And Reuters reported that Venezuela's state oil workers, whose jobs were once coveted for decent salaries and benefits, are now selling off their PDVSA gear: boots, uniforms, gloves, and masks -- all to buy food.
Oil production has tumbled at the state oil company, PDVSA, a calamity because oil production accounts for more than 90 percent of export revenues. PDVSA's decline is blamed on epic levels of mismanagement and corruption under Venezuela's command-and-control socialist regime. Currency exchange and price controls have caused economic havoc as well, setting off massive street protests and brutal responses from security forces. Political opponents have been jailed on trumped up charges.
Foxx and Hass, to be sure, are not the first Hollywood elites to pay homage to Venezuela's socialist regime. Director Oliver Stone and actors
Danny Glover and
Sean Penn turned up in Caracas to hobnob with Hugo Chávez before his death. Stone paid tribute to Chávez with a film, "My Amigo Hugo," which Venezuela's government required television stations to broadcast.
Glover, for his part, reportedly took $10 million from the Venezuelan government in 2008 to finance a film about a Haitian revolutionary hero. It has yet to be made.
And in 2010, Penn reportedly received funds from the Venezuelan government for his charity work in Haiti. Praising Chávez, he declared that journalists should be jailed for daring to call Chávez a dictator.
Some news reports suggested that Foxx was in Caracas as part of fund-raising efforts for a film he wants to direct.
Of course, Foxx and Hass's antics in Caracas are nothing new in the annals of leftist love of tyranny, as reflected in the many leftists who continued to sing the praises of communism even after Stalin's crime were revealed.
Useful idiots never learn -- especially those with Hollywood pedigrees.
