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Venezuelan president says PlayStation is 'poison,' leads children down 'road to hell'
digg_url = 'http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/18/venezuelan-president-says-playstation-is-poison-leads-childre/'; Venezuela's extreme leftist president Hugo Chavez recently took aim at the PlayStation and non-indigenous toys in his weekly radio-TV show, Alo Presidente. According to the AFP, Chavez stated, "Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison. Some games teach you to kill." El Presidente had previously knocked Nintendo for promoting "selfishness, individualism and violence." He believes video games reinforce capitalism which, of course, is "the road to hell." Chavez would like to see Venezuela making "educational games" instead of Super Murder Simulator VI and "little indigenous dolls" in place of Barbie. Venezuela's (sometimes paranoid) government outlawed violent games last October in an effort to curb the country's extremely high violent crime rate.
Hugo Chavez to give out free PCs to Venezuelans?
While we're not sure what happened to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's $6.26 million plan to manufacture $350 "Bolivar" PCs with unnamed Chinese manufacturers, it seems as though that project's apparent failure hasn't set ol' Hugs back at all -- CNET is reporting that Venezuela is planning to enter the oddly crowded PCs-for-undeveloped-regions market, alongside such players as Intel and OLPC. Details are pretty light, as you'd expect, but apparently Venezuelan authorities are contacting Asian OEMs about building the machines, which will be funded by oil profits and either heavily subsidized or given away free to people in various Latin American countries. It's a nice idea, but we're wondering why these "authorities" don't just call up any random catalog reseller and place an order -- last we checked, you could spec out a laptop at retail for under $500, so we can't imagine the wholesale revolutionary-discount price would be over $300. And hey, we just might know someone who'll laser-etch Hugo's face on the lids for cheap -- feel free to give us a call, El Presidente.
