In Brazil, socialists have been taking advantage of the World Social Forum as an opportunity to denounce economic development and demand that poverty be imposed on everyone. Complained union thug Arthur da Silva Santos:

There are just a few hundred companies today that hold all the cards for the global economy.

The goal for the left is for just a few hundred authoritarian bureaucrats and their cronies to hold all the cards for the global economy.

Shrieked Hildebrando Velez Galeano of the Colombian chapter of the environmental group Friends of the Earth:

We have to decolonize our territory and declare it free of Coca-Cola and Monsanto.

Monsanto is an agricultural company that oppresses people by feeding them. As we all know, Coke oppresses them by offering them a popular soft drink.

According to the AP report, Galeano’s denunciation of “capitalist speculators” occurred in a “conference hall filled with activists wearing shirts emblazoned with the image of legendary revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.” In contrast to Coca-Cola and Monsanto, Che oppressed people by murdering them — with a great deal of enthusiasm.

But others are content to oppress by seeing to it that the lack of economic freedom dooms Latin America to poverty in perpetuity. The point? You’d have to ask a ‘progressive’.

Hat-tip: The excellent Van Helsing at Moonbattery