A sober view of Hugo Chavez.
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I am interested in a sober view of Hugo Chavez administration and economic policies. There are two completely opposing views about this and I think both are wrong. As I understand it from the little I've read he was IN FACT democratically elected so the accusation of him being a dictator or most certainly false. Also I hear anecdotal stories of government backed murders of opposition party members in the streets, imprisonment of political dissidents, and human rights abuses. I don't take any of the accusations lightly and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some degree of manipulation in a state run media outlet. But, I also feel the stories of him ruthlessly murdering people in the streets like Stalin are a bit ridiculous. I stumbled upon this article by Hitchens http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/08/hugo_boss.2.html (one of my favorite authors). It's probably not a good starting point as Hitchens' writing seems a bit comedic in this one. The article does point out his extremely ridiculous side, his disbelief of the moon landing, his doubt of the existance of al quaeda, and his supposed support for the Colombia guerrilla FARC. But apart from his absurdities I'm interested in the cold hard data shown here:
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Dictator or not, when one looks at group dynamics in evolution, when a big enough portion of a population is getting squeezed it will take the first opportunity to remove the power squeezing it when it can, if it can. Hugo did take care of the poor, but I am not fond of the track record to treatment of media and business in that country.
The same reason that the American Revolution happened was the same reason the Russian and French Revolution happened. Abuse of power. Unfortunately the outcomes of any revolution often turn out to be nothing more than a power shift from one abuser to another. But all of them happened for the same reason, as a evolutionary reaction to threats to resources. Ideology, politics and religion are the distraction to what our evolutionary drive is in reality.
Our Constitution is an anti monopoly law, while no system is perfect, the concept is to prevent abuse of power and absolute power. But it is patiently false to say that business cannot nor has ever been abusive itself. ANYTHING left to it's own devices, be it a religion, political party or a private business, ALWAYS has the potential to become abusive.
Hugo was no saint and his hands were dirty. Pleasing one portion of the population does not mean you are treating everyone equally. It is no different a selfishness than what corporate America's sense of entitlement. A better system is one that does not play favorites to any class or religion or race or worker or business owner.
While there was a rightful natural reaction that lead to Hugo, the outcome went too far. I think we do NOT need to model the likes of Hugo, or Cuba, to have the same better standards of universal health care, livable cost of living, lower pay gap, better education, that Canada and Europe have.
World wide the biggest problem causers are oil, global banks, weapons and religion. If our species priority shift fosters anti monopoly, and stops putting up with bullying, I think much of the worlds problems can be reduced greatly. But the key is to prevent absolute power and prevent ANYTHING from becoming so big it has too much control over others.
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Chavez and Castro are both the fault of America trying to step on people.
Irony being they're both better than any president the US ever had, and did more good for their regions than any other power ever did.
Which isn't to say they were great. Just better than the alternative. Infinitely better.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
My neighbor is from there and long before I heard any stories from my wife and her family (who have roots in Venezuela) this neighbor told me a story of the families who lived modest lives but were outspoken against Chavez.
They told me that there was a large group of these people (made up of professors, doctors, politicians and the like) who marched in protests and used their money to support the other political party.
Within 24 hours after Chavez took control, there were squads of thugs going around and rounding up the people who had been vocal before he took power. Several people were taken away from their families and thrown in to prison.
This neighbor of mine realized that several of his friends had disappeared so they packed up small bags and left in the night, leaving their home to the servants to control the properties.
They escaped across the border and made their way to America, where they have been ever since. Their properties were seized by Chavez's government and the servants kicked out.
Their personal property was taken in all forms and the people who had decided to stay and not flee were imprisoned and beaten. Their positions of higher station removed and had to take lower class jobs.
There are other stories I have heard from both my family and my neighbor and I believe them because the accounts were first hand. This is not a rumor passed along from person to person. Yes, there are some parts of the story which are biased and I feel weighed heavily to show disfavor of Chavez, but over all, he was a douche and a dictator.
He bought the elections by bringing people in from over the border to vote who were not citizens. He used his power to control his opponents and their political presence on the television. And gave tens of thousands of the poor class weapons, money, food and medicine all right before the election.
Funny how all that sounds extremely mild, even tame, compared to US activities around the world.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I respect your opinion but you are looney.
Are you dropping LSD again. Please give the drugs a break and go to rehab.
We've already established that you're the delusional one dropping heavy drugs multiple times over. Repeating your past stupidity hurts only yourself.
After your drugs run out, go back to grade school. Learn about English, history, and logic. You might be capable of intelligent conversation afterwards.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
The cold in Canada has frozen your brain. Go get it thawed out and when you are ready I'll teach you how to function like a normal human being in society.
More proof of your ignorance and stupidity. Canada hasn't been cold for 20 years.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
The election was monitored by 90 countries. Chavez’s elections were generally certified as “free and fair by international monitors,” Chavez had not invited international election monitors to observe Venezuelan elections since 2006 though a delegation from the Carter Center did conduct a limited audit of the 2012 election. Along with Bolivia's election of Evo Morales it is one of the most monitored elections in recent history. When compared with the situation during Bush vs Gore, it's pretty insane that a supposed "third world country" has a more fair election than the US. As for the anecdotal stories of gestapo style takeovers and seizures of property, I have yet to meet a person who can produce any evidence. Off course I'm not going to insist when they tell me the story that they should produce material evidence... But still I've heard to many stories that sound like a hollywood film. I listened to people complain about how poor they where when they lived in Venezuela but the blame for that cannot lie squarely on the shoulders of a president. It's the same thing here in the US everyone has heard an anti Obama rant that ends in "thanks Obama." As if a different president would automatically equal a better financial situation. Still I thank you for your comments, and I think there may be some truth to the stories you heard.
More proof of your ignorance and stupidy. Canada hasn't been cold for more than 21 years.
You've already made your decision.
On Dec. 28, 2006, Hugo Chavez played a joke on the radio for Dia de los Inocentes, the Latin American equivalent of April Fool’s Day. He announced that he was tired of being president and was going to resign. After a short pause, he impishly shouted, ”Ha ha! Gotcha!” Almost four years later, many in Venezuela feel as if the joke is still on them as elections become less of a civic exercise and more of a tool of the regime to cement its incremental autocracy.
When the New York Times and CNN reported recently that Venezuela is now more violent than Iraq, Hugo Chavez responded in a newspaper article by blaming the previous administration. Mr. Chavez has been in office for 11 years. With important elections looming Sunday, it would seem more prudent to announce a new anti-crime initiative or at least to feign concern for the country’s escalating crime wave.
Instead, Chavez regime officials have been threatening the opposition. “Our revolution is peaceful, but it’s also armed,” warned former mayor of Caracas and Chavez supporter Freddy Bernal. “If the bourgeois brings out its weapons again, we’ll bring out ours as well. Don’t forget it.” Aristobulo Isturiz, a Chavista campaign coordinator, was quoted as saying, “Either we liquidate them or they liquidate us.”
Notwithstanding the militant Bolshevik rhetoric, these statements betray an unease on the part of Chavez supporters over Sunday’s election outcome, which could explain some of the electoral machinations that are being reported out of Caracas. It would seem a counterintuitive campaign strategy, with Venezuelan violence getting worldwide news coverage, unless one were suitably confident of an election victory.
In late August, as polls showed that escalating violence had cut his approval rating 12 points, Mr. Chavez’s weekly chat show, “Hello President!” went on hiatus until after the elections. Insiders say it was to prevent the loquacious caudillo from further inflaming opposition voters, though Mr. Chavez himself told viewers it was so they could watch the Women’s World Cup baseball tournament taking place in Caracas. During the tournament, a female player from Hong Kong was hit in the leg by a stray bullet fired inside the stadium. Her team withdrew and immediately flew home. The incident underscored the out-of-control situation in Venezuela - just the latest disaster in the oil-rich country’s ever-deteriorating experiment with “21st-century socialism.”
As Sunday’s elections have drawn closer, Mr. Chavez has taken to blaming “capitalist culture” for the uptick in violence, a rather counterintuitive claim, as the murder rate has nearly tripled since he took office in 1999 and scores of businesses have either fled or been taken over by the government. And though the opposition has, after many years of disarray, formed a unity ticket for this election, Mr. Chavez already has rigged provincial election laws to increase greatly the number of representatives in areas that are far less populated but are much more Chavez-friendly.
Elections in the Chavez era have often been flash points for violence as well as a means to marginalize his opposition. But polls are showing that Mr. Chavez finally may be losing support among the poor, who are more directly affected by the rampant violence. (Roughly 96 percent of all murder victims are poor and lower middle class.)
A poll released by the Venezuelan polling firm Consultores 21 on June 4 revealed that Mr. Chavez has a 37 percent approval rating, while 56 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of his performance. Sixty percent of Venezuelans think Mr. Chavez has enriched himself in office and is responsible for the mismanagement of the country. A whopping 66 percent of Venezuelans said they do not want the kind of country Mr. Chavez wants to establish - a stunning statistic when even rural garbage trucks have “Socialist Beautification Project” painted on them (with no attempt at sarcasm).
Only if opposition candidates capture a simple majority in the congress will Sunday’s elections have any effect on Mr. Chavez’s rule by decree. (He does not stand for office again until 2012.) And, should the opposition not capture a majority, many speculate that this very well could be the last election in Chavez-controlled Venezuela.
In his weekly TV program, Mr. Chavez has told his audience that the revolutionary process has three stages: 10 years for the first, 10 for the second and another 10 for the third. He recently told supporters, “I am 55 years old and have been president for 11 years. During the next 11 years, I promise to take care of myself a bit more because, God willing, I’ll be 66 years old and 22 years as president. And for the following 11 years, I don’t even want to think about it since then I’ll be 77 years old and 33 as president. Don’t you think that would be a long time?” Indeed.
Hugo Chavez so far has withstood a coup and numerous elections, both fair and foul, with no sign of letting go of power. In a best-case scenario, Sunday’s elections potentially could tap the brakes on the latest experiment in romanticized tyranny in Latin America. But optimism is a luxury in today’s Venezuela, where many feel that their part in elections are simply as pantomimists in a Potemkin democracy, playing their parts so that far-off elites can continue to cite elections for their apathy toward a creeping dictatorship.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/23/the-last-election-in-venezuela/
Actually no, 21 years ago Canada was cold. Keep trying. I'm sure you'll get something right eventually.
The rest is American propaganda.
“He had support of the people and he was loved by the poor of his country. He was kind of a Robin Hood,”
~Jean Chretien; a man in a far better position to talk about Chavez than yourself.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
What wealth did Hugo ever produce that he could help the poor with? He rewarded people for doing nothing except voting or fighting for him.
Venezuela's wealth was produced by selling oil and rights to drill for oil. The drilling technology and many of the workers that produced this wealth came from greedy capitalist corporations he demonized. Their economy would be a basketcase due to low productivity if not for selling oil to the evil Americans.
In fact, every citizen in Venezuela would be an instant millionaire if they were just given an equal share of the oil. But Chavez and his cronies horde the oil for themselves, as much as any oil company ever did.
Wouldn't a real champion for the poor be one that eliminated the social conditions and high birthrates that cause poverty in the first place?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
lol. Your extremism is showing.
I'm not going to pretend that Venezuela is a paradise, but to suggest that the government is hoarding the nations oil is absolutely ridiculous. Venezuelan's pay pennies on the dollar per litre OR gallon compared to you or I. In effect, they DO in fact have a working share of the oil produced in that country.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
@ digitalbeachbum
This is where our detective skills come in... Washington times is a conservative website and news publication. They have been known to put a conservative slant on the articles they publish. The washington times is the conservative equivalent of the washington post, accept with a more extreme political bias. It's like the Glenn Beck of news publications, albeit slightly less extreme. Now on the other side of the news spectrum you have RT which is basically run by Putin tv, so many of the things you read or see on their page are going to have an extreme left slant. I recall a youtube video of a Russian investigative journalist in North Korea, where he is praising their technological progress, while behind him what looked like mal-nurished IT students pretended to work on ancient Dell CRT screens. The point is it's hard to read a news article that doesn't display some kind of bias. That's why I mentioned hard facts and data compiled by international organization. Like pew polls, carter administration, human rights watch, etc. Those tend to be more of a basis for judging the success of a nation state than opinion pieces from conservative or extremely liberal online news site.
Completely off topic but here is RT making North Korea look like Disneyland lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv57s_8TB-M
Of course socialist governments hoard the wealth they collect for themselves. If they weren't hording it, they would pass out shares to citizens and let them collect royalties directly. Instead the money flows through politicians who use the wealth to maintain their power and keep people dependant upon them for their survival.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/120612-636089-venezuela-ranks-tops-in-corruption-in-hemisphere.htm
These crooks totally depend on suckers that believe leftist politicians actually care about them. Face it socialism doesn't even work in a country with a vast source of revenue.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
More lies. I've already shown your complete ignorance on the subject. Your lack of a counter argument exemplifies your stupidity.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.