Chavez is da man

[GePap]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
the problem venezuala has is oil.

That enabled the capitalist parties to survive without developing the country. And now its enabled Chavez to buy popularity. As long as the price of oil stays up, this is unlikely to change - at least until the time Venezulas neighbors pull substantially ahead using other industries, as happened to Indonesia. I dont see that happening anytime soon (note for these purposes Brazil is too far away - neighbors are Colombia, Central America, Carib states)

IIUC Chavez is accused of courtpacking,etc, but I presume there are constitutional arguments justifying him. I dont suppose he'll be less inclined to push the envelope after his win. Next question is will he change the constitution to allow successive terms?

The constitution was already changed in 2001-2002. It was the new Bolivarian constitution as he calls it that allowed for the referendum election, and yes, Chavez can try for another term under the new consitution.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sikander
Yea, it worked so well for China didn't it?

Excellent example. Considering how bad China was in, hm, say 1930, with that of China in 1970. Some remarkable progress was made. Taking in consideration that the PRC had to constantly fend off destablising attempts from the Capitalist camp headed by the US, yes, it was quite remarkable indeed.

Originally posted by Sikander
Was your family lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of the revolution in China, or were they spared by living in Hong Kong?

Neither. My family lost big time.

Originally posted by Sikander
I visited Hong Kong in the mid-sixties, and I was horrified by the thousands of refugees living in rough conditions.

Most people in Hong Kong weren't that well off, either. Large families lived in small flats or in housing estates (government subsidised housing). It wasn't unusal for flats to be partitioned off into small rooms of 50-60 sq. ft to sublet out to families of 4 or so. For housing estates there were no kitchens and the washrooms were public. Youngsters often had to work part time to supplement family income.

Originally posted by Sikander
I thought to myself that they (the refugees) risked their lives to live like this. Whatever is on the other side of that wall is worse.

Not necessarily. Most people are easily swayed. For example, many are still paying "snake heads" large sums of money to go to England, France, etc. to work illegally, because they think that's the only way the can make real money.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


. Taking in consideration that the PRC had to constantly fend off destablising attempts from the Capitalist camp headed by the US, yes, it was quite remarkable indeed.

If they were so hurt by destabilizing attempts led by the US, why did they break with their principle ally the USSR, over destalinization? Maybe destabilizing attempts from the US werent all that important to the PRC leadership. And what did the US do to PRC that was more destabilizing than the Great Leap Forward, or the Cultural Revolution?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
If they were so hurt by destabilizing attempts led by the US, why did they break with their principle ally the USSR, over destalinization? Maybe destabilizing attempts from the US werent all that important to the PRC leadership. And what did the US do to PRC that was more destabilizing than the Great Leap Forward, or the Cultural Revolution?

It's the same thing as Yugoslavia. While the rest of Eastern Europe was liberated by the Soviet Union, Marshall Tito led the movement that kicked out the Nazis. So there was no point for him to follow Stalin around.

[Giancarlo]

Well I guess the Venezuelan people are not as smart as their Colombian neighbors. They elect a a-hole stupid moron. The Colombians elect somebody who has some brains (Uribe).

[Caligastia]

The Price of Dissent in Venezuela
Hugo Chávez's thugs celebrate their "victory" by shooting my mother.

BY THOR L. HALVORSSEN
Thursday, August 19, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

CARACAS, Venezuela--On Monday afternoon, dozens of people assembled in the Altamira Plaza, a public square in a residential neighborhood here that has come to symbolize nonviolent dissent in Venezuela. The crowd was there to question the accuracy of the results that announced a triumph for President Hugo Chávez in Sunday's recall referendum.

Within one hour of the gathering, just over 100 of Lt. Col. Chávez's supporters, many of them brandishing his trademark army parachutist beret, began moving down the main avenue towards the crowd in the square. Encouraged by their leader's victory, this bully-boy group had been marching through opposition neighborhoods all day. They were led by men on motorcycles with two-way radios. From afar they began to taunt the crowd in the square, chanting, "We own this country now," and ordering the people in the opposition crowd to return to their homes. All of this was transmitted live by the local news station. The Chávez group threw bottles and rocks at the crowd. Moments later a young woman in the square screamed for the crowd to get down as three of the men with walkie-talkies, wearing red T-shirts with the insignia of the government-funded "Bolivarian Circle," revealed their firearms. They began shooting indiscriminately into the multitude.

A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.

I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."

In a jarringly similar attack that took place three years ago, the killers were caught on tape and identified as government officials and employees. They were briefly detained--only to be released and later praised by Col. Chávez in his weekly radio show. Their identities are no secret and they walk the streets as free men, despite having shot unarmed civilian demonstrators in cold blood.

I was not in the square on Monday. I was preparing a complaint for the National Electoral Council regarding the fact that I had been mysteriously erased from the voter rolls and was prevented from casting a vote on Sunday. In indescribable agony I watched the television as my mother and my elderly grandparents--who were both trampled and bruised in the panic--became casualties in Venezuela's ongoing political crisis.
Col. Chávez assumed power in 1999. One need not go into great detail about the deterioration of Venezuelan life since then to understand why a recall referendum has been years in the making. Every aspect of existence has worsened. The only people who are not profoundly affected are those at the highest levels of the government party. Poverty, for instance, is at an all-time high and the country is afflicted, for the first time ever recorded, with malnutrition on a massive scale. This unprecedented suffering has occurred during the greatest oil boom in the nation's history (Venezuela has oil reserves on the scale of those in Iraq). Col. Chávez and his "revolution" have not only led a ferocious assault on civil liberties, but have also needlessly alienated one of Venezuela's closest allies, the U.S.

The recall referendum process has been obstructed and delayed at every turn. Dozens of independent polls predicted defeat for Col. Chávez, who did everything--including granting citizenship to half a million illegal aliens in a crude vote-buying scheme and "migrating" existing voters away from their local election office--to fix the results in his favor. One opposition leader was moved to a voting center in a city seven hours away. Another man, Miguel Romero, had for years voted in his neighborhood school in a Caracas suburb. But this time the Electoral Council computer indicated that he was to vote at the Venezuelan Embassy in Stockholm. Thousands of others, like me, were wiped from the voting rolls. Ironically, in the runup to the vote, the embassy in Stockholm, like Venezuelan diplomatic posts around the world, inexplicably ran out of passports. Many Venezuelan expatriates were thus prevented from returning to their country to vote.

In the early hours of Monday, the Electoral Council's president (who had imposed a gag order on all exit polls until a full audit of the vote had been completed) issued a statement declaring that the computer votes had been tallied and that the government had won the referendum with 58% of the vote. The announcement came in a vacuum, without an audit, with no verification whatsoever from the international observers, and over the indignant protest of two of the five council members, who publicly questioned the result's transparency.

The opposition, understandably shocked and demoralized, insisted on a hand-count of all computer voting receipts as the only way of settling the dramatic disparity between exit polls that showed 58% to 41% in favor of the recall and the announced result of 58% to 41% in favor of retaining Col. Chávez. Later that morning the most important observer, former President Jimmy Carter, declared that he was shown the computer tally by government supporters and that everything seemed in order. Mr. Carter then left Venezuela, and the opposition groups that had put their faith in him to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Mr. Carter, who was vociferous and insistent about patience, transparency and hand-tallies during the Florida recount, left Venezuela to attend Mrs. Carter's birthday party.

Many in the opposition are baffled by the inverse relationship between the projected numbers and those reported by the Chávez regime. One possible clue to this remarkable phenomenon lies with the companies hired to supply the voting machines and the software. Smartmatic Corp., a Florida company that has never before supplied election machinery, is owned by two Venezuelans. The software came from Bizta Software, owned by the same two people. The Miami Herald recently revealed that the Chávez regime spent $200,000 last year to purchase 28% of Bizta and put a government official and longtime Chávez ally on the board. After the story broke, Bizta bought back the government-held shares and the official resigned from the board. But not until after the two companies were granted a significant part of the $91 million contract for the referendum. Executives at both Smartmatic and Bizta have denied any political allegiance to the Chávez regime and have issued public statements saying the contract was awarded purely on the merits.


Col. Chávez has publicly stated that the results of the referendum are irreversible and permanent and that the revolution will now intensify. He is firmly in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government; the armed forces; electoral bodies and two-thirds of the country's economy.
In a free and decent society, it is not a crime to differ with the democratic government. The vast distance between democracy and contemporary Venezuela may be seen in the depth of Col. Chávez's disregard for Monday's bloodbath. Blithely ignoring the overwhelming video evidence that a massacre had taken place in his name, he minimized the incident's importance and suggested that the gunmen were most likely linked to opposition groups. His reactions chillingly indicate the fate that might befall the millions of Venezuelans who oppose him, and who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid political violence in registering their dissent by peaceful protest or by vote.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005494

Am I too late to post this? I didn't bother to read the whole thread...

Anyway...the people here who support this murderous dictator are idiots.

[GePap]

Yeah, that is old news.

The opposition has lost every time they have tried to take down Chavez simply becuase they have no unity, and they have never been able to convince the poor that they will be any more competent in power this time than they were prior to Chavez.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Caligastia
The Price of Dissent in Venezuela
Hugo Chávez's thugs celebrate their "victory" by shooting my mother.

Yeah, right. The Venezuelan media is so untrustworthy that they make The Washington Times seem objective, and that paper's owned by a Korean guy claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

I'd believe George Bush was telling the truth about Iraq before I'd believe Venezuelan news.

The people who post this kinda stuff here are idiots.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Excellent example. Considering how bad China was in, hm, say 1930, with that of China in 1970. Some remarkable progress was made. Taking in consideration that the PRC had to constantly fend off destablising attempts from the Capitalist camp headed by the US, yes, it was quite remarkable indeed.

What progress was made that isn't explained by 17 years of peace in 1970 vs a breather in years of civil war?


[QUOTE] Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Neither. My family lost big time.

How so?

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Most people in Hong Kong weren't that well off, either. Large families lived in small flats or in housing estates (government subsidised housing). It wasn't unusal for flats to be partitioned off into small rooms of 50-60 sq. ft to sublet out to families of 4 or so. For housing estates there were no kitchens and the washrooms were public. Youngsters often had to work part time to supplement family income.

But it beats starving to death, which is in part what drove so many people there. And for most it wasn't an easy journey. Not only was no one helping you emmigrate, there was considerable effort put into keeping people from doing so.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Not necessarily. Most people are easily swayed. For example, many are still paying "snake heads" large sums of money to go to England, France, etc. to work illegally, because they think that's the only way the can make real money.

See above. Tens of millions starved to death during Mao's mismanagement of the economy.

[Dinner]

Chavez has presided over a near implosion of the Venuzuelan economy. I believe the economy is down nearly 33% since he took office. Supposedly, it is because of he has nationalized the businesses of his political rivals and then handed them over to his cronies who have no education or know how in running large businesses. The political uncertainity his rewritting the constitution and using his new powers (granted in the constitution he wrote for himself) to pack the other two branches of government with his cronies hasn't helped.

In short he's making the same mistakes just about every power hungry 3rd world dictator has made in the past 50 years.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
In short he's making the same mistakes just about every power hungry 3rd world dictator has made in the past 50 years.

This is indeed my main beef with Chavez. He should definitely try to install a political regime based on parties, instead of personality.

Actually, Chavez reminds me somehow of Napoleon III. This guy (nefew of the real thing) started out as a populist, emphasizing the help to the poor, and ruled with popular approval, being plebiscited regularly. Unfortunately, the Parliament was useless, nepotism and favoritism reigned supreme, and as Nappy3 aged, he became increasingly paranoid and favoured the Bourgeoisie increasingly, thus losing the support he had among the populace.
People change, and Chavez is no exception. Plebiscitary rule, even if well intended, has a strong chance of bringing the same excesses as before.

His reign ended as he started, on his wife's suggestion, a war against Germany and lost miserably.

[Agathon]

The political uncertainity his rewritting the constitution and using his new powers (granted in the constitution he wrote for himself) to pack the other two branches of government with his cronies hasn't helped.

Because the opposition were trying to overthrow the democracy.

I don't see how any reasonable person who believes in democracy could deny that Chavez is the choice of the Venezuelan people. That has been proved three times now. Leave them alone - it's their country.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Agathon
I don't see how any reasonable person who believes in democracy could deny that Chavez is the choice of the Venezuelan people. That has been proved three times now. Leave them alone - it's their country.

Well, we don't leave the Yanks alone, don't we?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Yeah, right. The Venezuelan media ...

I wasn't aware the Venezualan media included 1st Amendment scholars at The Commonwealth Foundation living in New York. They must be more widespread than the BBC.

[Agathon]

Well, we don't leave the Yanks alone, don't we?

They meddle in our affairs, Chavez doesn't.