“One hopes the bulldozer manufacturers aren’t foolish enough to pull out. The Venezuela mass grave industry is poised for explosive growth.”
[x] hyper-inflation
[x] price controls
[x] currency revaluation
[x] food shortages
[x] nationalize banks
[x] nationalize industry
[x] land seizures and “redistribution”
[x] silencing opposition media…
[x] President for life.
Any questions?
Previous.
Oh sure, why don’t you just cherry-pick horror stories about state socialism.
EBD: Luckily I have learned not to drink and read SDA.
Too many keyboards lost.
[x] Jimmy Carter’s seal of approval.
Poor Chavy, when Fidel kicks off and Cuba moves away from socialist dictatorship, no one is going to come to his ‘paradise’.
Chavez is a democrat, elected with paper ballots in an election more closely scrutinized than most only a few months ago. I don’t like to see this dishonest talk about him anointing himself president for life because a) it’s not accurate if your read the article; and b) it lets democracy off the hook somewhat. Actually it lets democracy off the hook a lot, the more I think about it.
He’s proposing the removal of term limits on the Venezuelan presidency, not appointing himself President For Life. His shutting down of that dissenting private media station was indeed a worrisome development; this policy proposal, less so. To my understanding, the Canadian Prime Ministership is not term-limited either (does that make Harper “PM for Life”?). A number of US presidents, including Raegan and Clinton, have proposed amending (Clinton) or repealing altogether (Raegan) the 22nd Amendment.
Your post, like the original Telegraph article you link to, is misleading and dishonest, Kate. Expect the usual suspects to jump on the bandwagon and echo the headline, but none of the actual details. For all your tough talk against liberal bias and spin in the media, what happens when you find a favourable piece in a traditionally conservative paper? You happily regurgitate it whole without comment or criticism. You’re not above the “liberal MSM” you love to deride; you’re just working from the opposite side.
As usual, the left is thick. Kate is highlighting the pattern, with some characteristic nimbleness and flare. Learn to read well, not just pedestrian literalism. Even left-wing commentators are seeing through and criticizing Chavez—and the blindness of those on the left.
It is nice to see the closet-commies coming to the defense of the tin-pot commie in training. I suppose that north Korea’s problems are all because of Bush, and that Cuba would not be a failed state if not for that evil Stephen Harper. Socialism/communism is a loser’s ideology. When are you leftoids going to finally admit it? Leftoid losers!
I can’t figure you lefties at all. Alberta grows it’s oilsands production, and it is a bunch of rednecks and climate criminals. Venezuela grows it’s oilsands production and Chavez is a hero…..and you accuse Kate of Bias. Rock. Hard. Stupid.
Grith. You left out that PMSH eats kittens, and that George Bush started WW2.
Ummmmmm…time to buy some Caterpillar shares!
murray: Even left-wing commentators are seeing through and criticizing Chavez
Sure, where it’s warranted. But “Hugo Chavez to make himself president for life (subject to recurring popular elections)” ain’t it. Chavez has been rightly criticized for many of his policies — from left and right, Venezuelan student groups and overseas political pundits alike. But only unaccountable bloggers and sensationalistic hard-liners are making allusions to mass graves.
Please, explain to me how the actual proposed constitutional amendment abolishing presidential term limits — not elections, not opposition parties — is inherently dictatorial?
Grithater: Alberta grows it’s oilsands production, and it is a bunch of rednecks and climate criminals. Venezuela grows it’s oilsands production and Chavez is a hero
Private wealth v. public wealth. Environmentalists haven’t given Chavez a free pass, either e.g., recently scuttling of proposed pipeline crossing S. America in response to opposition from environmental groups.
I wonder when The Phantom will arrive to call me a leftard idiot…
Mao/Castro/Trudeau/Mugabe/Chavez.
Great minds think alike, eh?
“I wonder when The Phantom will arrive to call me a leftard idiot…
Posted by: Smoke at August 20, 2007 8:20 AM ”
He doesn’t have to,Smoke and Mirrors. Everybody here knows what you are. Ummmmmmm. Didn’t the Soviets,Chinese,Nazis start the same way? Just askin.
For the lack of ‘readers tips’, flat Fatima strikes again or is it just me?
http://apnews.myway.com/image/20070819/IRAQ_MORTAR_ATTACK.sff_BAG110_20070819072228.html?date=20070819&docid=D8R43DE00
Saddam Hussien was regularly elected with massive approval ratings.
So it will be with Chavez. He will control the media and control the voting using intimidation. I assume the Venezualans put the term limits for president for a reason.
Quit enabling.
Chavez is a democrat, elected with paper ballots in an election more closely scrutinized than most only a few months ago.
Like a populist thug promising the poor stuff that can’t be delivered hasn’t made it into office in SA or Africa before. The poor and illiterate are capable of making foolish choices.
Look no farther than Zimbabwe’s Mugabe for a template and final outcome. He was initially loved too. The poor were instructed to squat on white farmer’s property and claim it, they succeeded in a creating a famine after driving the skilled farmers off. The body count has gotten excessive there. He turned a prosperous country into a hell on earth.
Dang, some sheeple are so blind that they cannot see the obvious. I really wonder if GW Bush had proposed that there be no limits on American presidential terms, that the leftoids would come to his defence as fast.
They also have seemed to forgotten that there are no opposition parties in Venezuela (or at least none outside of jail) so holding an election to re-annoint Hugo will only be a PR exercise for the sake of the MSM.
“Saddam Hussien was regularly elected with massive approval ratings.”
Not in elections certified by the EU and the Carter centre he wasn’t. You FAIL.
“So it will be with Chavez. He will control the media and control the voting using intimidation.”
He doesn’t need to intimidate anybody you jackass. He just needs to promise the lower classes all sorts of free stuff, and the election is in the bag. Works the same in all countries.
Wow Smoke, do you actually read the whole article, or just the part that you think proves your point?
“But Chávez has signaled a desire to be president at least until 2021 as part of a project to reconfigure political power structures in Venezuela. A central feature of this plan is the president’s communal councils.
About 20,000 of the councils are expected to be created this year, with authority over issues like infrastructure and some social welfare projects transferred to them from municipal and state governments. Chávez’s critics say the councils must remain loyal to his political ideology to receive funding.
The president said one Sunday last month on his television program that the 1999 Constitution, which he fought for after his first election as president in 1998, has become vulnerable to “counterrevolution” and “infiltration” by reactionary elements.
Still, even some politicians within Chávez’s coalition have expressed concern that his proposals could weaken the authority of regional governments.”
So let’s see… a president who wants to stay in power for a whole generation for no better reason than to ensure that HIS political power reforms are instituted, he’s setting up extraneous “communal councils” which supercede the authority of municipal and state governments and which only receive funding if they remain loyal to him and his idealogy, AND he’s afraid of change that doesn’t come from himself (counter-revolution and infiltration by reactionary elements).
So do you WANT me to start listing off all of the dictators in history with a similar view of helping the people? Hitler, Lenin, Castro, Mao… that’s just the 20th century…
Forget it guys. No way on earth that these leftoid apologists for the tin-pot murderer’s of the world will ever acknowledge that socialism/communism is a loser’s ideology. Face it, they have spent their whole life talking up tin-pots and dictators. Too late to change now, it would mean that they have been WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. MOONBATS ARE LOSERS!
Chavez is following the Stalin/Hitler/Mussolini/Hussein/Mugabe game plan to a T. Venezuela’s democracy is being destroyed and a dictatorship established. The only thing enabling his ridiculous economic “reforms” and destruction of free enterprise is the sky-high price of oil. Take that away and the whole thing collapses.
This will ultimately prove a great tragedy for Venezuela.
The potential for a crackdown on dissidents is definitely in the cards. Venezuela is about five to ten years behind Zimbabwe in terms of government restrictions and oppression of the people, not to mention “mysterious disappearances”.
The wildcard here is oil revenue. Chavez might be able to keep things floating for a while if prices remain high, but if the price of oil dips and the country’s gravy train starts to dry up, the potential for (first) an uprising in the populace and (second) a crackdown by Chavez are accentuated.
Some far right wing politician type should run for political office under the banner of socialism. Most leftards don’t pay any attention to actual policy or laws passed anyway. As long as our “neo-con” is spewing left wing rhetoric leftards will cheer him at every turn no matter how far right his policies are.
When the government comes to “nationalize”, i.e. steal, my property and business they will be met with both barrels. This is what the right to bear arms is about, and it goes back way before the second amendment if anyone is going to say it doesn’t apply to us because we are not Americans. Theft is theft. It doesn’t matter if its some kid breaking into your house to steal your tv, or the state voting to “redistribute” your property.
Why don’t you leftists get that? I can only assume you own no property, have never created anything, or are make the assumption that you will be the thief.
It is quite unbelievable that there actually people that grew in a free country that support totaliran dictatorship.
To say that Chavez is a democrat, someone must have changed the meaning of the word from fascist/socialist/communist.
Democracies like ours should strive to have term limits however constructed, so that those drunk with power can be gotten rid of just in time.
To say that removing term limits and still have election in situation as in Venezuela with Chavez is much as they had elections in Soviet Union or any former communist country.
There was only one approved candidate and you voted for the candidate, not against, not voting was punishable by prison. You took your ballot and went to the ballot boxes for yes or no. While the whole world watched toward which box you walked the apparatchiks made sure you go to the right one. If you thought different and went to the wrong one, they would have a chat with you and from then on it went down hill for you.
It seems that either the commenting socialist/fascists totalitarians must think that those who grew in socialist or fascist dictatorship have no memory of this nonsense.
The whole deal has nothing to do with ‘left’ or ‘right’, it has everything to do with totalitarian dictatorship and democracy. The socialist put people to jail for the ‘wrong thinking’. democracy has its flaws that allow it to self-destruct though it is far superior to any alternative.
There are some people in America that are as contemptuous of democracy as Chavez:
http://tinyurl.com/2czjmt
“”Exclusive: Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
Philip Atkinson
Author: Philip Atkinson
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: August 3, 2007
While democratic government is better than dictatorships and theocracies, it has its pitfalls. FSM Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson describes some of the difficulties facing President Bush today.
Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
By Philip Atkinson
President George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005 after being chosen by the majority of citizens in America to be president.
Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.””
I recall PET and Castro being as contemptuous of the chaos of democracy as well.
Smoke,
It is rather interesting that you mention public wealth v. private wealth.
In private Alberta, quite a bit of the public seems to have gotten wealthy, while in public Venezuela only Chavez and governing cronies are wealthy, while the pulic starves.
Rock. Hard. Stupid.
(x) Adoration of the terminally stupid.
We can debate this until we are all blue in the face. All dictators start out as a benevolent saviour of their nation. Nothing is going to change until the people of Venezuela see through the crap. Once this happens, El Presidente for Life Hugo will be doing the neck stretch swivel from a lamp post, or living it up with his stolen millions in Havana or Tehran!
“The wildcard here is oil revenue. Chavez might be able to keep things floating for a while if prices remain high, but if the price of oil dips and the country’s gravy train starts to dry up, the potential for (first) an uprising in the populace and (second) a crackdown by Chavez are accentuated.”
And when that happens, and the poor of Venezuala first look to him for help in getting food and other basics and, when he fails to help them, turning out in protests, you’ll see Chavez implement “security” measures to protect the “the People”, he’ll blame the US and outside forces and say the only way to defend the nation is with even stronger powers for himself. He’s a dictator in the making, if not already.
That he is implementing dictatorial powers in order to defend “the people” from other dictatorial powers (corporate, US, whatever), whether true or not, is standard fare for all dictators, and hardly justifies incursions on democracy or individual freedoms.
Chavez is such a buffoon though and Venezuela so small that I am amazed at how much attention he gets in the news and the internet, as opposed to Putin and Russia, or Saudi Arabia. Both of those countries pose a far far greater threat, both to their citizens and to North American/European democracies and free markets. Yet the Chavezes and Castros and Husseins of the world, horrible and murderous dictators that they are, are made out to be not just dangerous to their own people but a worse and greater and even more imminent threat.
It’s like picking a fight with a kid who like to kick puppies, while Rome starts to smoke.
Our golf course marshall is from Venezuela and returns each year for 2-3 months for the winter. Last winter when he returned he said that there is no dairy, no meat and no produce on the store shelves.The result of Chavez demanding that all farmers sell their produce for such a low price that they cannot afford to grow it. So they only grow what they need for their own families. Isn’t socialism wonderful?
Smoke? Toke is more appropriate.
“He’s proposing the removal of term limits on the Venezuelan presidency, not appointing himself President For Life. His shutting down of that dissenting private media station was indeed a worrisome development;”
Duh, well what do you think leftard? When the only media allowed is state run, or forced to be supportive of dictator chavez, under threat of being shut down – do you really think any other party has much of a chance at being elected?
Pretty devastating to democracy when combined with his armed jack boot goon squads.
“Expect the usual suspects to jump on the bandwagon and echo the headline, but none of the actual details.”
Well, here’s the ‘details’ that you yourself posted:
“President Hugo Chávez will unveil a project to change the Constitution on Wednesday that is expected to allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, a move that would enhance his authority to accelerate a socialist-inspired transformation of Venezuelan society.”
“Indefinitely.” Put it all together and voila, dictator for life.
Isn’t socialist democracy wonderful? They ‘democratically’ get into power – usually by lies, threats, intimidation and the age old tactic of clubbing heads. Then, once that’s achieved, they shut down private media outlets, begin nationalizing everything and redistributing private property. Finally, they deal with the pesky ‘democracy’ bit, by making themselves ‘electable’ for life, or else.
Then they start killing and hiding the bodies. If the monkey monster hasn’t already started.
~:D
Chavez is such a buffoon though and Venezuela so small that I am amazed at how much attention he gets in the news and the internet, as opposed to Putin and Russia, or Saudi Arabia.
I think you answer your own question. Because Chavez is such a buffoon, and given to spouting socialist cliches and strident anti-American broadsides, he makes for good copy/argument fodder and thus gets the usual suspects in US/Europe, on the left and right, excited. Putin, by contrast, is a smooth operator who knows how to work through bureaucracies and relatively incremental policy shifts, and avoid drawing too much attention to himself.
I’d accept that view Dudley, except Putin has gone way further than Chavez already… and everyone knows it.
I think the more realistic answer is that it is easier, less challenging, less risky, and less consequential to ramp up the rhetoric on tin pot dictators (who don’t support you) than to try to hit someone over the head with your principles who has the ability to hit back.
And that would be who??
Putin. King Faud. Wen Jiabao. Kim Jong-il.
Lots of real threats to choose from.
Ted: I’m surprised you would mention Wen and not someone else (Hu Jintao seems to be the primary target around here). Wen is one of the more moderate members of the Politburo — he was one of the few to speak to the 6/4 demonstrators and not be purged in the aftermath of the massacre, even.
I say let’s just wait and see how Chavez handles dissent when the Venezuelan economy hits the wall. How’s he going to handle the opposition and media critics (or what there are left of them) when people start suggesting that just, kinda maybe, someone else ought to be elected president? Will he stand down quietly if the bloody “people” tell him to go away? “Fatherland, socialism, or death?” How about: fatherland, socialism, and death- with death to be written in blood red ink, if twentieth century socialist history’s anything to go by.
This thread is further proof of something I have long suspected and thus I now believe that I have solved one of the great mysteries of the blogosphere….
‘Leftards’ spend so much time at conservative blogsites because they cannot form their own opinion on ANYTHING until they are absolutely certain it is directly counter to what conservatives believe.
‘Leftoids’ don’t really develop any of their own positions so much as they create ANTI-positions.
I give them full points for consistency anyways.
Sheldon: EBD: Luckily I have learned not to drink and read SDA.
Yep, I pretty much use that logic when dealing with the MSM.
But, either drunk or sober, Hugo Chavez is a pain in America’s backside, plus we all know he’s a Russian Trumpet Puppet..
,
CO: ‘Leftoids’ don’t really develop any of their own positions so much as they create ANTI-positions.
Good Point C.O., kindof like Smoke, he really doesn’t debate the points of the article in question, instead; his soul purpose seems to be bashing Kate.
,
Ratt…leftoids CANNOT come up with any rational thinking or points on their own. They have to prowl conservative sites to find something to be “anti” about :).As for his bashing Kate..hehehehehe…not to worry. She can handle them quite well. If I ever in need of a back-up,she will be one of the first I call on!(then kingstonlad,Phantom,etc)
Nice to see you caught onto how Smoke just NEVER answers direct questions. He/she/it can’t. “Emotions” can’t survive in reality.
Belisarius, you’re absolutely right.
Chavez is a textbook case of how a tyrant comes into being.
As a wise man once said over 2400 years ago, “In the first days of his time in office, doesn’t [a tyrant] smile and greet whomever he meets, and not only deny he’s a tyrant but promise much in private and public, and grant freedom from debts and distribute land to the people and those around himself, and pretend to be gracious and gentle to all?…But I suppose that when he is reconciled with some of his enemies outside and has destroyed the others, and there is rest from concern with them, as his first step he is always setting some war in motion, so that the people will be in need of a leader…then, too, I suppose – if he suspects certain men of having free thoughts and not putting up with his ruling – he can have a pretext for destroying them [and burying them in mass graves dug by giant bulldozers…]” (Republic 566d ff)
And Andrew, it’s simply untrue that intimidation plays no part in Venezuela and/or their elections. I have a Venezuelan friend who isn’t moving back there because he’s afraid of being killed (he was an influential leader in the opposition movement). For most, it’s preferable simply to conform to the new reality than risk their lives. That’s hardly democracy.
Venezuela has always been a messed up country, I was there in 94 helping my brother in a place called Km88. At that time the economy was crashing and corruption was killing the ability of anything to succeed. When Chavez came in I thought he might stir things up a bit and give people a chance. I was wrong, Chavez is another of Bolivar’s seeds and it is sprouting and growing roots. I foresee a generation of Venezuelans living under the yoke of a brutal dictorship. Sad the country is immensely wealthy, overrun with raw material like Iron ore, gold, oil and diamonds. Not to mention stunningly beautiful women and gorgeous scenery.
Well, hey! How bad can this Chavez guy be, really!??
After all, he didn’t add the the phrase ‘dada’ to his new title, and so far, no reports of human livers found in his refrigerator. 😉