◼ Chavez Wins: Venezuela Loses
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took a chance by asking his people to do away with term limits, giving him license to be their president indefinitely. He won his gamble on Sunday in a 54% - 46% vote.
The victory is worrisome — even more so, the reasons why this vote took place at all....
...The January-February campaign was the most violent Venezuela had seen since Chavez was first elected. The student movement who opposed him was repressed. Chavez went as far as demanding that police “throw tear gas, and of the strong kind” at any student demonstration.
Chavez also used naked blackmail, threatening the country with civil disorder if he was ever forced to relinquish the presidency.
In past months, we Venezuelans have been subjected to the most brutal and heavy-handed campaign we have ever endured in our democratic history, as the government threw all the power of the state behind Chavez, with open political activity in most public buildings. Public employees were required to donate one day’s paycheck to the campaign and attend a variety of political activities during working hours.
The opposition did its best to fight government dominance, but it was essentially penniless following regional election of 2008. It was also vastly outspent....
A comment on that article: ...I happen to know that the government had a list of everyone that received a fridge, a house, a medical treatment, etc. and abstained from voting in the last Constitution amendment (that’s why the SI lost)… Now they went house-to-house saying: “You better vote this time or…” Although the opposition said that the vote was secret and nobody would know how you voted, the people were sufficiently scared and knew the government manipulates the information to their own benefit. So don’t be too harsh on your fellowmen… They have lived under an autocracy for ten years now, and haven’t a clue what Democracy means for that reason. The countries in LA that lived dictatorships, had to re-learn the meaning and benefits of liberty…. When you don’t exercise a limb or your brain, it takes a lot of exercise to take it back to normal. Plus, the people have been clearly brainwashed….!!
◼ More,,,
Rose, who's the brainwashed person here. You overlook WHY Hugo Chavez wins because you never look at the dirty tricks the opposition has used against him and you never look at WHY these people look to Chavez to keep his country from massive exploitation by foreign corporations. It's like you forgot all about WHY Castro rose to power in Cuba by forgetting all about the corrupt regimes preceding him that kept the majority of Cubans in poverty and illiteracy and no health care.
ReplyDeleteBacklash from corporate exploitation and corruption is what creates these militant socialist and until that stops you will get Hugos as the people's reaction to the US corporations messing with their country.
And of course when the people democratically elect a person Republicans don't like its fair game for assassinating them, right, Rose?
No, Stephen. When a person becomes a dictator, and sets about squashing all dissent, and ruling through fear and murder of his own people, that is when it is fair game to get rid of them.
ReplyDeleteBut you are right, they have done this to themselves - at least 54% of them, just like your Palestinians, electing murderous zealots who do not have freedom in mind. If Iraqis choose to go back to a dictator, after all we have done to help them rise above that, then they will deserve what they get, too.
It continues to astound me that you, who have chosen a life, a counter culture life, that by its very nature abhors rules, and restrictions such as those you would live under if your country was ruled by a dictator, that you are not first in line condemning this, and standing for the individual rights and freedoms of all peoples.
It's an esoteric exercise to support dictators and rail about corporations and the great evils of America, and laud the dictator's taking away freedoms because you perceive he is 'oppressed' by us, quite another to live under real repression which he brings.
As for Cuba, Stephen, you ignore the means by which the monster stays in power and oppresses his own people. Military force. Stephen. Against his own people.
May we never see that here. Sadly, it is the American left that supports this, people like Michael Shellenberger who aid the monster in his rise to power in Venezuela. All they have to do is fool 51%.
"If Iraqis choose to go back to a dictator, after all we have done to help them rise above that, then they will deserve what they get, too."
ReplyDeleteAnd the neocons and those who run their lives will get what they wanted as well,one reason we armed Daddam then stabbed him in the back,to allow him total control over his populace and laying groundwork for their obedience,only to overthrow him to install someone less resistant to U.S. hegemony.
"then they will deserve what they get, too."
typical neocon jargon.It's the outlook which says,we invade and rape and torture you and kill your brothers and sisters and children,but well,you should be thanking us because your evil leaders would be doing so much worse to you,so if you don't like wahat we're doing then well,"Fuck you,you ungrateful bastards.!!"
Do you think that the soldiers at Abu Garib improved the lives of the prisoners they tortured?
Rose,I think that you are a bit misguided to think that having term limits on Chavez's seat would prevent him from empowering himself.I just can't believe that you would want to see him operate under the same pretext as someone like Chesbro can,as a direct result of a term limit.
At this point the system is so badly broken - and Chesbro is a good example - I don't think there is much we can do, mresquan.
ReplyDeleteChavez promises freebies and more to the unemployed, under employed, sick, lame, and lazy. Kind of like promising to "re-distribute" the wealth to get votes.
ReplyDeleteChavez will cause problems for the U.S., for S. America, and the world if he remains in power.
Steve and mesquanie, what a pair!
I hope the price of oil goes up so that Chavez can continue to improve the lives of Latin American people. He helped break the grip international banking had on Latin American economies. The IMF went from doing 80% of their business down there to 0% in just two years. The same unregulated free market ideology that was imposed on them now threatens to bankrupt us and Europe while widening the gap between the few at the top and the downwardly mobile middle class. Social Democracy is illuminating the way for freedom loving people. Viva Chavez!
ReplyDelete"Never before in modern times has an elected president been overthrown by military commanders, his successor inaugurated, and then the ousted leader returned to power on the wings of a popular uprising."
ReplyDeleteI didn't write this but it rigns true.
I'm sorry, Rose, but as a Republican you are a victim of propaganda when it comes to recognizing the plight of those people we Americans have kept under our imperialist thumbs via corporate exploitation of Third World resources or via CIA assassinations. In Israel we arm the IDF to the max to kill the Third World non-European peasants. One of these days you might fall out of an airplane and land in a village of Indians and have to explain your Republican political philosophy to them as they run for cover from gold-diggers and catapillar tractors dragging the forest trees down with chains. I think my aunt armed with her Bible and facing headhunters in Bolivia in the '40's might fare better than an American proud of America's past in dealing with the indigenous peoples of other lands.
ReplyDelete2:22 PM: "...unregulated free market ideology that was imposed on them now threatens to bankrupt us and Europe."
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could direct us to a "unregulated free market" that has been "imposed" on anyone. Should you trouble yourself to travel to Venezuela, you would discover that since at least 1975 the government (not the US government) decreed price is printed on the label of every item sold in the markets.
The following is a short list of regulatory agencies in our own "free market" society:
Federal Reserve
Internal Revenue Service
Security and Exchange Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
Fair Employment Practices Comm.
Food and Drug Admin
Dept of Agriculture
Federal energy regulatory agency
National Labor Relations Board
Transportation Security Admin
Office of Fair Housing
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives
OSHA (CALOSHA in the Peoples Republic of California)
Amtrak
Environmental Protection Agency
We are told who we can hire, how much they are to be paid. No such thing as a "free market" has existed in the US since at least 1887.
I'm curious, ex, if you believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and if you will stand by when Obama removes your right to bear arms.
ReplyDeleteYou a gun owner Rose?
ReplyDeleteFederal reserve paid cost plus contracts to American multinationals in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteFair Employment Practices Commission. Boneless.
Food and Drug Admin. Our food security is terrible while drug administration keeps pharma over priced in this country.
EPA weakened.
Federal energy regulatory agency. ENRON? Gyrating fuel prices?
Dept of Agriculture. Your fucking kidding me.
Transportation security admin. Federal responsibilities turned into for profit private enterprise. Expensive. Incapable.
Office of fair housing. Fair to Katrina victims? Foreclosure victims?
Venezuela mandates that all market items have a price tag? Convenient for the customer, damned unfair for the retailer who would overcharge and make unfair profit.
Many of the Federal regulatory agencies that were created to protect American citizens from predatory practices of banks, corporations and resource extractors were downsized when Bush appointed corporate lobbyists to head those very same agencies. They were given the responsibility to slash the budgets of those agencies and rewrite regulatory laws that favored the very entities that those agencies were meant to protect us from.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the Securities and Exchange Commission working overtime to protect our, um, er... Well, you know.
ReplyDeleteRose, dear friend, I have been giving you a hard time lately, haven't I. I guess I'm feeling more feisty about social changes now that there's a slight opportunity for something to change radically in our economic system. I have been a socialist since the '60's and don't ever plan to change that because the capitalist system as such just is too unstable and unsustainable to keep around dragging everyone under periodically in its cycles of boom and bust. It is an extremely inefficient economic system and does need replacement--with communitarian capitalist enterprises which the Palco Community Corporation was to be a model example. PCC would have socialized Palco by turning it into an employee owned and operated corporation like Winco only much more socialized in company operation and company profit-sharing taking the Company Mill Town idea to its logical conclusion. This is me and even though we are on different wave-lengths re capitalism vs. socialism, we are friends because we respect each other's views even if demented.
ReplyDeleteLet's have lunch sometime soon?
yer pal,
Stephen,
Stalin's unacknowledged son..
7:36 PM,
ReplyDeleteThe point is dummy, that all of those alphabet soup agencies are evidence that no such thing as a "free" market currently exists. How then can the "free market" be the cause of the present depression?
The trouble with you "progressives" is that you are so dumb you need the state to help you avoid the consequences of foolish decisions and to decide what is a "fair" price. In such a system only an idiot would blame the "free market" for the routine fuckups that invariably result from the actions of political hacks.
The point is Pogo, the current depression is world wide. The global free market system has privatized governments and their agencies which are now operated by proxy from the board rooms of multinational corporations and world wide banking interests. You and I didn't create the problem and alone we can't fix it. The free market feeds from the bottom and directs from the top. Maybe you are insulated from the economic decline, but I doubt it. Maybe denial makes it easier for you to deal with it. Good luck to you as you try to survive on diminishing returns for your labor. The ownership society is contracting. Yet money still flows freely at the top. Toyota sells more cars than GM. Products are made cheaper in Asia. Opportunities for good wages are disappearing. Owning your own home is becoming a relic of history. We pay for things that are provided by the governments of countries that our manufacturing industry has fled to. Eventually with rising energy prices that will negatively effect shipping, some of that industry will come back. Maybe. But will wages and working conditions ever be what they were? How much worse will this economy get? Why are the republicans bent on it's destruction? Why aren't the democrats being more aggressive? This stimulus bill doesn't amount to a half measure as an economic cure. China seems to be the model that Wall Street would have us emulate. That will leave most of us unemployed and the rest of us working for next to nothing.
ReplyDeleteYou are so full of shit, 10:16. It is astounding that people with your outlook are walking around. Sadly, I fear people like you are now running the government, working hard to make sure that home ownership is indeed a thing of the past.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it amusing that our already bloated budget was considered adequate only a few months back. Now the massive spending spree is "only a half measure" and there are cries from democrats that it should have been more.
The money that went into family planning was once considered enough, now Pelosi defends expanding that budget item and defends it as a "stimulus."
This is insane. There is no other explanation.
10:16 AM: "We pay for things that are provided by the governments of countries that our manufacturing industry has fled to."
ReplyDeletePlease tell us one product that a "government" provides. Government provides nothing to any consumer that it has not stolen at gunpoint from a taxpayer.
Communist China. Want another?
ReplyDelete10:16 AM,
ReplyDeleteTake a close look at any dollar bills you may be "fortunate" enough to have in your purse. They have clearly printed on them "Federal Reserve Note". Definition of "note"= promise to pay. With what? The only product of the Federal Reserve is more paper with printing on it. At the rate these things are coming off the presses we will not be far behind Zimbabwe.
The last I checked the dimocrats controlled both houses of congress and the presidency. The repubs were bad enough but were not even close to these idiots.
Vote for me Rose and not only will I guarantee home ownership, I will nationalize all extractive industries and make all Americans stock holders in them. Family planning is an excellent investment in this over crowded world. To bad you missed out.
ReplyDeleteWell your republican friends didn't leave the democrats much of a choice, did they Pogo. Obama could have just offered tax cuts and our economy would have tanked by $1.9 trillion over the next two years and we would end up with another Tom Delay republican den of thieves inhabiting the legislature and doing business behind closed doors and telling the democrats to get over it. That coupled with John McCain in the White House acting like a silver back gorilla thumping his chest and starting WW-3... Well there would be nothing left of the world but some tenacious cock roaches living at the equator. Most of the money that was lost was just so many bits of electrons when home values tanked. Real money is lost in trade deficits and those bricks of hundred dollar bills that are handed out to keep the peace in Iraq. When the price of oil goes back up maybe we could sell all of our military equipment and foreign bases to Russia so they can police the world and go broke.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the old progressive/collectivist cliches ain't hacking it so well now that they're in charge.
ReplyDeleteBy the way; Pogo is not a Repub.
"thumping his chest and starting WW-3..."
ReplyDeleteObama isn't much different than McCain there,McCain's failing ws that he simply just talked Bush's talk.Obama at least looks to take road of deception.He's already pumping for more troops in Afghanistan,and declared to Iran that same Bush rhetoric that "all options are on the table", and will continue to pursue a draftesque plan.
Never called you a republican. But isn't a libertarian just a republican that smokes dope? Clear this up for me, please. Ya know, I've heard the rumor.
ReplyDeleteYeah, McCain and Obama - no difference.... Jesus mresquan!
OK, now I have a headache.
You a gun owner Rose?
ReplyDeleteNope. Never tried it but I don't give a shit if you do.
ReplyDeletePretty much how I feel about it, too.
ReplyDeleteWhat's with "are you a gun owner, Rose?" ad nauseam . It's not your business or the governments. It is a right not a privilege.
ReplyDeleteIf it is not the the government's business, then what is that background check and federal form that has to be filled out when you buy a gun? Seems to me your right to own a firearm is your right if you meet some standards set by the the Federal government. But you are right - its none of my business. Maybe the other anon had a reason for asking.
ReplyDeleteI asked Rose about owning a gun when she posted this-
ReplyDelete...if you believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and if you will stand by when Obama removes your right to bear arms.
She also wrote about how Obama won't keep us safe. Lead me to believe that she's packing heat.
5:55 PM: "Lead me to believe that she's packing heat."
ReplyDeleteYour ignorance of sentence composition seems to be on a par with that of the Constitution. Don't feel badly. The government also ignores the Constitution.
5:17 PM, If the government decided on the brand of toilet paper you used, you would doubtless comply.
Rose is neurotic. Stashing a gun under her pillow will solve the problem. And don't forget to pray every night! Only then will you fit the description of a Republican in Humboldt County.
ReplyDeleteYou are clueless 7:14. Truly, you would be at home on Daily KOS or Huffington Post. They welcome people with your mentality.
ReplyDeleteAre you a gun owner Rose?
ReplyDeletePogo, if you wish to buy a rifle or shotgun from a retailer in this country you have to fill out a federal form. It used to be, and maybe still is, called the Federal Firearm form #4473. Now I am not aware of any Federal Toilet paper form that we are compelled to fill out at this time, but you let me know if I'm wrong so that I can throw a big shit fit.
ReplyDeleteIf the government tries to take away my toilet paper, they will have to pry it from my cold dead hand.
ReplyDeleteMy feelings exactly.
ReplyDeleteViva Chavez! Viva Venezuela!
ReplyDelete