Newsweek says Chavez referrendum rigged

[BrainGlutton]

@Lemur866

Wait, was that Wikipedia link supposed to make me feel Castaneda was an asshole?

Maybe he is an asshole, but that Wikipedia article certainly doesn’t establish him as an asshole.

What makes you think he’s an asshole (if you do in fact think he’s an asshole)? Remember that articles denouncing him from The Nation and similar ilk are probably not going to be convince me and others like me. Is he seen as a traitor by the hard left because of his book? Or for corruption? Or what, exactly?

I don’t know much about Castaneda but what I read there; but if he started out as a Communist and ended up as campaign advisor to Vicente Fox, he’s either an opportunistic whore or the Mexican version of an ex-Trotskyist neocon. Neither reinforces his credibility. Would you take anything David Horowitz said seriously?!

[Lemur866]

Wait, so every ex-leftist, now centrist is either a whore or a neocon? No other options? And what does David Horowitz have to do with anything? David Horowitz’s record implicates David Horowitz, no Castaneda.

So in other words, the only reason you think Castaneda is an asshole is that he used to be a communist, but isn’t any more?

[BrainGlutton]

@Lemur866

Wait, so every ex-leftist, now centrist is either a whore or a neocon? No other options? And what does David Horowitz have to do with anything? David Horowitz’s record implicates David Horowitz, no Castaneda.

So in other words, the only reason you think Castaneda is an asshole is that he used to be a communist, but isn’t any more?

I think leftists who convert to the right are, by and large, flaming assholes compared to most others on the right, and often more dishonest, but that is based on the behavior and rhetoric of such in America. I admit it may not apply in Mexico. But this is (1) an op-ed (2) authored by a politician, not a journalist (3) making very harsh conspiracy-theory accusations against both the Chavez government and its opponents (4) based entirely on unnamed sources. It’s not argumentum ad hominem to question the author’s credibility – it’s all we’ve got to go on.

[Mr.Moto]

@BrainGlutton

I think leftists who convert to the right are, by and large, flaming assholes compared to most others on the right, and often more dishonest, but that is based on the behavior and rhetoric of such in America. I admit it may not apply in Mexico. But this is (1) an op-ed (2) authored by a politician, not a journalist (3) making very harsh conspiracy-theory accusations against both the Chavez government and its opponents (4) based entirely on unnamed sources. It’s not argumentum ad hominem to question the author’s credibility – it’s all we’ve got to go on.

And now you understand our dislike of David Brock.

Seriously, though, your little mini-analysts doesn’t take into account that people may change their views honestly, through intellectual and spiritual inquiry. You make the same mistake many leftists do of regarding people who deviate from the “true path” as traitors of some kind.

[BrainGlutton]

@Mr. Moto

Seriously, though, your little mini-analysts doesn’t take into account that people may change their views honestly, through intellectual and spiritual inquiry. You make the same mistake many leftists do of regarding people who deviate from the “true path” as traitors of some kind.

Traitors or not, it is no mistake to regard most observed contemporary American left-to-right converts as assholes (or, still worse, neocons). And the reverse does not hold true nearly as often – Michael Lind, e.g., is in no way an asshole (not much of a leftist either, I admit, but David Horowitz seems to regard him as such for some reason).

[BrainGlutton]

As for David Brock, I’ve read several post-defection RW excoriations of him, and it seems the only real stick they can find to beat him with is that he is gay.

[Mr.Moto]

I don’t care who he sleeps with - he just plays loose with the facts quite a lot.

[Shodan]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Chavez is a corrupt jerk from what I can tell, but comparisons between him and Hitler are about as stupid as comparisons between Bush and Hitler.

I disagree.

Comparisons of Bush and Hitler are stupid, certainly.

Hitler - staged the Beer Hall Putsch, but failed to take over the government. Was imprisoned, pardoned, and later elected as leader.
Chavez - attempted a coup in 1992, but failed to take over the government. Was imprisoned, pardoned, and later elected as leader.

Hitler - succeeded in making himself Fuhrer for life.
Chavez - attempted to make himself President for life.

Hitler - funded the brownshirts.
Chavez - funded the piqueteros, or street fighters. (Cite.)

Hitler - interfered with Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland.
Chavez - interfered with Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, Nicaragua, and Columbia.

Hitler - spoke German.
Chavez - speaks Spanish.

Gosh, you got me there!

Regards,
Shodan

[BrainGlutton]

Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and hid in a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and hid in a theater. Coincidence?! Ha!

[Sapo]

@Shodan

I disagree.

Comparisons of Bush and Hitler are stupid, certainly.

Hitler - staged the Beer Hall Putsch, but failed to take over the government. Was imprisoned, pardoned, and later elected as leader.
Chavez - attempted a coup in 1992, but failed to take over the government. Was imprisoned, pardoned, and later elected as leader.

Hitler - succeeded in making himself Fuhrer for life.
Chavez - attempted to make himself President for life.

Hitler - funded the brownshirts.
Chavez - funded the piqueteros, or street fighters. (Cite.)

Hitler - interfered with Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland.
Chavez - interfered with Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, Nicaragua, and Columbia.

Hitler - spoke German.
Chavez - speaks Spanish.

Gosh, you got me there!

Regards,
Shodan

Hitler: had a plan, carried it out. Only got defeated when the entire world united against him.
Chavez: has no clue, cannot do squat. Only sticks around because the entire world ignores him.

[Little_Nemo]

I don’t care who he sleeps with - he just plays loose with the facts quite a lot.

Because if there’s one thing all conservatives agree on, it’s their belief that playing loose with the facts is intolerable.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Sapo

Hitler: had a plan, carried it out. Only got defeated when the entire world united against him.
Chavez: has no clue, cannot do squat. Only sticks around because the entire world ignores him.

Bush: had a totally clueless plan. Carried it out disastrously and now cannot do squat. Sticks around despite the fact that the entire world is united against him.

Omigod, he’s Hitler’s and Chavez’s love child!

Seriously, Shodan. When people talk about the evils of Hitler, they’re not talking about how he was imprisoned and pardoned. They’re talking about the goddam Holocaust. Hitler’s not reviled because he made himself leader for life, he’s reviled for the goddam Holocaust. Comparisons between Chavez and Hitler, to paraphrase Stewart, demean Chavez, demean you, demean the reader–and they demean Hitler. He worked too hard at being that evil to be compared to every third-rate strongman out there.

Daniel

[BrainGlutton]

I should think if Chavez would be compared with anyone it would be Castro, whom he openly admires – but his revolution does not really bear comparison to Castro’s; it is working out very differently. Chavez does not have the level of power in his country that Castro has had in his since 1959, and he is not likely to. Upper-class Venezuelans have lost their longstanding predominance in political power, but they have not been executed, imprisoned, or expropriated, and by and large they seem to be thriving as well now as before Chavez took office, and in many cases better. None of the human-rights abuses of which Chavez has been accused by his worst enemies in this forum would raise an eyebrow if done by the United States government. And electoral democracy appears to be very much alive and well.

[Shodan]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Bush: had a totally clueless plan. Carried it out disastrously and now cannot do squat. Sticks around despite the fact that the entire world is united against him.

Omigod, he’s Hitler’s and Chavez’s love child!

:sigh:

I thought you asserted that comparisons of Bush and Hitler were stupid. Now you are trying it on.

Seriously, Shodan. When people talk about the evils of Hitler, they’re not talking about how he was imprisoned and pardoned. They’re talking about the goddam Holocaust.

No, in this case, we are talking about fixing elections and other forms of grabbing or retaining power by illegitimate means.

In that way, Chavez and Hitler are similar.

Your comparison is stupid; mine is apt (as far as it goes).

Regards,
Shodan

[Little_Nemo]

I thought you asserted that comparisons of Bush and Hitler were stupid. Now you are trying it on.

I think that was the point he was making. Comparisons between Chavez and Hitler are as useless as comparisons between Bush and Hitler. I agree with Daniel’s post; when you’re talking about Hitler, you’re talking about genocide and world war, not about voting irregularities. Hitler shouldn’t be invoked for trivial comparisons - “I refuse to watch My Name Is Earl because Jason Lee, like Hitler, has a silly moustache.” - you should save Hitler for the big stuff like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il.

[Shodan]

I agree with Daniel’s post; when you’re talking about Hitler, you’re talking about genocide and world war, not about voting irregularities.

The OP, however, was talking about rigged elections. Thus I pointed out what Fearless Leader might pull next, just like Herr Schickelgruber did.

For cryin’ out loud, we got BrainGlutton doing his usual “move along now, nothing to see here, let’s all pretend freedom in Venuzuela isn’t at number 223 of the Death of a Thousand Cuts”, and all you can come up with is implying that Chavez isn’t so bad because he hasn’t started setting up gas chambers yet.

Y’All might want to think about your priorities here.

Regards,
Shodan

[Ludovic]

Shodan, you’re making BG look reasonable by comparison. Dictatorships are to be opposed on principle anywhere they are, if only by mouth when it’s not practical to do so actively.

But there’s dictators and there’s dictators.

[BrainGlutton]

@Shodan

No, in this case, we are talking about fixing elections and other forms of grabbing or retaining power by illegitimate means.

In that way, Chavez and Hitler are similar.

But we have no proof Chavez has done any of that since 1992. (Everything in the OP article is, as noted, the conclusions of a non-journalist politician based on unnamed sources.)

Whereas his opponents have done it plenty. Again from The Nation:

With regard to democracy, there has always been a clear difference between the two sides. Chavez’s immediate acceptance of a razor-thin margin of defeat before all the votes were even counted should cut through all the media hype about a “strongman” and a “dictator.” Chávez congratulated his opponents on their victory. As in previous elections, he had publicly committed to accepting the results before the vote and had called on the opposition to do the same.

On the other side, the opposition tried several oil and business strikes and a military coup in April 2002 to win what it could not gain at the ballot box. The first act of the short-lived coup government was to abolish the Constitution and dissolve the Supreme Court and the elected National Assembly. The coup was reversed due to massive prodemocracy street demonstrations, but eight months later the opposition once again tried to topple the government with a devastating management-led oil shutdown. Unlike in the United States, where we have three sets of labor laws that would have put the leaders of such a strike in jail, the Chávez government allowed the strike to run its course, with the economy crippled in the process.

Only after all extralegal means failed to dislodge the government did the Venezuelan opposition resort to the ballot box, exercising its constitutional right to a recall referendum on the presidency in August 2004. The opposition lost by a margin of 59 to 41 and promptly refused to accept the result. Although vote-rigging was nearly impossible under the dual electronic-plus-paper-ballot voting system and the result was certified by the Carter Center and the OAS, the opposition–which has its own media and invents its own reality–to this day holds to conspiracy theories that the referendum was stolen by a fantastic electronic fraud. In December 2005, seeing that it would lose congressional elections, the opposition boycotted, despite the OAS and European Union observers’ condemnation of the boycott.

The opposition did finally accept its defeat in the December 2006 presidential elections, which Chávez won with 63 percent of the vote and the highest turnout ever. And now that it has finally won at the ballot box, there is a possibility of an opposition emerging that is more willing to play by the democratic rules of the game. The student movement seems to have more elements that favor democratic means of challenging the government, and may have played a role in persuading others in the opposition to vote in the referendum. But they have not transformed the opposition into a democratic movement.

[Mr.Moto]

It’s an awful thing when a man has only one magazine subscription.

[Lemur866]

For crying out loud, Ixnay on the Itlerhay!

Shodan, can’t you see that comparing a dictator to Hitler is a losing tactic? Because, face facts, Hitler’s one of History’s Greatest Monsters. Is Chavez going to go down as one of History’s Greatest Monsters? No he’s not. You pretty much have to create a mountain of skulls, or several such mountains to go down on that list. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ghengis Khan, whatever.

Chavez is a garden variety asshole demogogue. Chavez could more usefully be compared to Pinochet, the Duvaliers, a boatload of African strongmen, Peron, and so on. Thing is, you can’t escape the association of Hitler with the Holocaust and World War II. You can’t compare someone to Hitler unless you really do believe that the gas chambers are ready and the panzers are massing at the border.