Sure, if people stop the bullshit about “tinpot dictators” and “terrorist”.
This stuff on Chavez is like the way people on here insisted Saddam was part of 9/11 and he absolutely had WMD - because that’s what the media and politicians told them.
It’s as if people don’t want to learn; what did GWB say ‘once bitten, twice . . . bitten’. It’s ugly when otherwise intelligent people insult their own integrity.
Chavez is not Saddam Hussein, nor Bush, nor even Castro. But he **is **Chavez and his recent behavior is hardly that of someone interested in a free and fair democracy. He’s a demagogue, with all the baggage that implies.
Things have changed a lot in Venezuela since the last election. Let’s see how the next one goes.
I’ve posted the truth. He was a military leader who attempted a political coup. The fact that he was elected is irrelevant to the idea that he’s anything other than a dangerous Marxist crackpot who is doing everything to maintain himself indefinitely as such.
What you said was “He rose to power in a military coup. .” It’s a lie.
And the fact he never held any political office except after winning an election is irrelevant? You join up the dots like Jackson Pollock.
I don’t know who you think this stuff will convince . . .
Now that GWB is gone the world needs another leader at which to stare in jawdropping disbelief. Only this time it’s not a case of plodding intellect and stubbornness, but out and out irrationality. There’s no way the U.S. will get pissed off over this, we’re too busy laughing.
I have to be concerned, though, over what might happen to political opponents in Venezuela if he’s pushed over the edge, and he starts having them shot as counterrevolutionaries.
The existence of a Bush administration or the lack thereof has made no difference whatsoever in Hugo Chavez being able to make my jaw drop.
Yeah well, he might just do that. He’s already kind of a cliche.
It’s refreshing to see in this thread a manifestation of the naked fear of democracy in Latin America that has infected USA foreign policy for 50 years.
For all those decades the idea was to cast communist Cuba as the great enemy when it was really any form of leadership that wouldn’t take its orders from DC.
How it must grate the imperial mindeset to see the birth of organisations such as the Bolivarian Continental Movement.
What don’t you understand about the words “rose to power”? It’s a linear function of time.
It’s highly relevant that he used a military coup as a basis to acquire power. All his actions to date have indicated that he prefers Marxism and a Cuban style government. He is consolidating power by nationalizing businesses and restricting opposing views in the media. He is courting Iran and North Korea to build nuclear weapons and he’s threatening countries around him.
The Cuban government is not the great enemy of the United States. It is the enemy of it’s own people as witnessed by the one-way flotilla to the United States.
I’m not sure why you would bring up a FARC backed organization such as the Bolivarian Continental Movement. Are you promoting communist guerrilla groups?
Yep, the poverty in Cuba has nothing at all to do with the economic blocade, which is why it was in place all those decades.
Am I promoting communist guerrilla groups? I dunno, what’s the alternative, anglo-saxon imperial-capitalists invading on bogus pretexts and killing several hundreds thousand civilians?
You don’t understand the meaning of the word blockade. There is no economic blockade of Cuba. They are free to trade with countries willing to support dictators. The United States is not stopping them. We are also not supporting them.
Uh huh. I don’t see any ambiguity in your writing. Looks to me like you’re the mother of all FARC-ers with you chants of anglo-saxon imperial-capitalistism. The only thing FARC will ever accomplish is the equal distribution of dirt for all to share. Nobody is going to invest in the infrastructure of a communist country bent on nationalizing anything that moves.
You don’t understand the difference between communism and capitalism. One is a political system and the other is an economic model.
Obviously. Without it, Cuba would have a bustling economy that rivals all of the communisms around the world.
Whatever Chavez is a douchebag tinpot dictator. You elevate him toward the stature of some kind of mythical creature benighted to carry the torch for Latin America ascendant. :rolleyes:
Yes, everyone that disagrees with you is just an imperialist pawn of the US. Never mind that Chavez has exploited inflated oil revenues to increase his popularity and then used that popularity to gather more power to himself, nor that in the wake of the fall in oil prices is busily blaming the US for all the country’s woes rather than his own shortsighted economic policies (see also: Mugabe blaming Britain and/or homosexuals for Zimbabwe’s problems).
I am well aware that the US is not remotely blameless in this affair but even if they were, Chavez is not doing his country many favors these days.
I don’t give a damn about FARC, you mentioned them - I’m not going to consider FARC without a context, and US puppetry has a habit of not doing indigenous peoples a whole lot of favours.
I’m not “elevating” anyone, just levelling the playing field. If the USA took exception to every country in the terms you suggest, it would be invading itself every week.
You’re blaming a politician for playing politics – you don’t, for example, say he’s looting the oil money or undermining democracy or is the fop of external capital, your claim is he’s playing politics with politics . . .
Where did this “everyone is an imperialst pawn” come from – someone asked me if I supported FARC and I asked what was the alternative
Why are you still claiming he is a dictator after the question was resolved? It is not a matter of opinion.
I’ve seen this from you before and I’m starting to wonder what your agenda is and whether to even bother taking you seriously.
Because that’s the resolution. He’s a dictator.
Bothered being taken seriously by whom? Someone who takes Chavez seriously? I have to tell you, I’m pretty unconcerned.
Sure, he’s a “dictator”, which makes me Joan of Arc and you Spongebob Sqaurepants.
The relationship between the Dutch Antilles and the Dutch government has always been a difficult and unclear one. The Island’s government used to whine for aid, while at the same time claiming independence. They were a sort of free for all tax evasion-zone, and on top of those problems they sent us loads of maladjusted, or criminal youngsters and cocaine. But that is going to change.
In ten months, come Oct 1st, 2010, half of the Dutch antilles will become autonomous countries, no longer under Dutch government. So Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Aruba can do whatever they please and sell whatever they please to the highest bidder, and I wish them good luck with that.
OTOH, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustach will get closter connected to the netherlands, becoming, in effect, ordinary Dutch county’s.
**kitemaker_chuck **–Chavez is a clown & a cretin. Chavez is a troll.
Ignore him.