MadmanOfALeader
Deity
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Wait a minute... you say Chavez hasn't shut down a single media outlet? What about RCTV?
[LH] Hugo Chavez
- Thread starter NikNaks
- Start date
Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
Charismatic? His policies aside, you can't deny that he has a personality that many people in his country seem to find appealing.
Delving into the political discussion a bit... I think "straight up despot" and the people's man are both pretty far off the mark. I mean, there's no doubt that he's a strong-man and Venezuela has been pushed closer to dictatorship than it was previously, but he's not totally without accountability and the population is not without recourse. He yanked the license for the opposition news media to continue broadcasting ensuring that his message would be the only one people heard (why arrest and kill the journalists when you can just mute them?), but plans for unlimited terms was soundly defeated in a referendum. I think he's an ass and an embarressment to the South American continent, but I think calling Venezuela a dictatorship at the moment is... premature.
I think Financial is a joke. If anything, his oil production is not where it could be because he's fired everyone who opposes his policies and has replaced them with his cronies who know nothing about what they're doing (Zimbabwe's agricultural system was decimated after Mugabe did essentially the same thing).
Protective seems like a pretty good fit though. Protective, to me, sort of represents the positive aspects of xenophobia and nationalism (few though they are), and he's got those qualities in bulk.
Delving into the political discussion a bit... I think "straight up despot" and the people's man are both pretty far off the mark. I mean, there's no doubt that he's a strong-man and Venezuela has been pushed closer to dictatorship than it was previously, but he's not totally without accountability and the population is not without recourse. He yanked the license for the opposition news media to continue broadcasting ensuring that his message would be the only one people heard (why arrest and kill the journalists when you can just mute them?), but plans for unlimited terms was soundly defeated in a referendum. I think he's an ass and an embarressment to the South American continent, but I think calling Venezuela a dictatorship at the moment is... premature.
I think Financial is a joke. If anything, his oil production is not where it could be because he's fired everyone who opposes his policies and has replaced them with his cronies who know nothing about what they're doing (Zimbabwe's agricultural system was decimated after Mugabe did essentially the same thing).
Protective seems like a pretty good fit though. Protective, to me, sort of represents the positive aspects of xenophobia and nationalism (few though they are), and he's got those qualities in bulk.
Laurencius
Just a tourist.
RCTV was not shut down. RCTV still operates freely via cable. It was RCTV's license to transmit via public airwaves that was simply not renewed. But you can get RCTV through cable any place in Venezuela, and you can watch it through satellite here in the US.
Laurencius
Just a tourist.
Yes, the difference here is that The Carter Center, countless European Union Observers, and observers from the Organization of American States all declared the elections transparent and fair.
Are you saying that Chavez somehow bribed all those independent observers and Jimmy Carter into giving him the elections?
Last December there was a referendum for a new constitution which Chavez lost by less than 1% point. If he were a despot, he would have found a way to demand recount after recount and intimidate the system into giving him a victory. Instead, he accepted defeat. Hardly Saddam Behavior.
Laurencius
Just a tourist.
Yes, he fired all the managers and workers involved in the oil strike toward the end of 2002. This oil strike was designed to topple Chavez after the failed coup of that same year. So after 2 or 3 months of this strike, Chavez had to intervene and replace the managers and workers. If by cronies, you mean he put people in place that will not sabotage the company for political ends, then yes, he replaced the previous managers with cronies.
PDVSA (Venezuela's oil company) is the most solvent oil company of Latin America, ahead of Petrobras (Brasil) and has had nothing but growth since the oil strike.
Ekmek
on steam: ekmek_e
I always felt term limits or a politician leaving power peacefully as better indicators of democracy not the policies they pursue while in power.
He'll make a great addition to my petromod!
He'll make a great addition to my petromod!
Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
Considering that he's sacrificed the profitability of the company for the purposes of embarressing the US government, I would say Mr. Chavez is more concerned about using the oil power of his country for political purposes than his opposition ever was. The fact still stands that he fired veterans engineers and experts who had been working for the company for years and replaced them with people who supported his socialist vision. There's no doubt that when you base who you're going to hire for any organization based on a narrow political view, you're going to get a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Really? So in spite of the fact that Venezuela has vastly larger oil reserves than any other country in Latin America (and most countries in the world), we're supposed to chalk up the fact that it's doing better than any other company in the region during a time of record high oil prices to the wonderful management skills to Mr. Chavez? In fact, it also depends on whose statistics you're looking at. Venezuela's energy ministry initially released a report saying the company had suffered a 35% fall in profits last year... until those numbers were reworked to show a 15% increase in profits in spite of the fact that international observers confirmed an almost $8 billion loss for the company.
Considering that he also hasn't used the windfall oil profits as an opportunity to invest in a more diversified economic base, he's essentially assured that when the prices do drop, his country will be left impoverished. Nor has he spent the money on exploration of new oil sources since the company is currently spending about a third of the money it spent on exploration as of 2001. Nor has he spent much money upgrading the infrastructure of the oil industry to more easily convert the extra heavy crude that makes up most of their reserves (as opposed to the far more preferrable light sweet crude). In short, he's sacrificed long-term sustainability of either the company that's bankrolling all of his ambitious social programs, or the economy as a whole by increasing the company's role as virtually the only financial provider of the health and well-being of the country's people.
Of course, it's hard to determine how exactly the money's being spent since Venezuela has been ranked by independent watchdog groups as one of the most corrupt countries on Earth (a reality which is certainly not of Mr. Chavez's making but which has hardly been improved under his regime).
But, like I said before, Mr. Chavez is not a dictator. All too often, Americans have a tendency to equate any country or its leader who is anti-American as being obviously despotic. Venezuela is still a relatively free society. But his tight control over the oil company which is the be all and end all in Venezuela gives him de facto control that is atypical for a democratically-elected leader. Personally, I think his bombast and saber-rattling (as well as obvious funding of FARC) makes him a national disgrace, but he doesn't offset those negative qualities with an equally brilliant ability to manage his country's economy.
Wolfshanze
CFC Historian
The Carter Center...
Embracing the world's dictators and murderers for years, shaking their hands, propping them up and saying they're wonderful.
If you're embraced by the Carter Center, you've just been given the Dictator for Life endorsement!
Thanks for proving my point!
ripple01
Emperor
Yep, no conservatives have ever done such a thing...
Attachments
Huayna Capac357
Deity
Irony...it's funny.
Wolfshanze
CFC Historian
Arseholes... they just stink.
MadmanOfALeader
Deity
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What kind of Republican uses British words like "arsehole"?
Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
It was better than typing out a-*-*-h-o-l-e.
MadmanOfALeader
Deity
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What happens if you say . .. .. .. .. .. .. .?
Oh, that.
Oh, that.
JeffIllinois
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2008
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- 389
Did someone here defend Chavez? I actually agree with Wolfshanze. Hopefully the CIA is successful next time they try to kill this wacko. Nuts like this guy are why we need independence from foreign oil.
bernie14
Filter Manipulator
I don't want to compare Mr Chavez to Allende, but I feel a déja vu coming on...
Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
Damn straight! Only right-wing wackos are allowed to stay in power in America's backyard! Hopefully when we kill this bastard Chavez, the dictator we put in to replace him will make sure Chavez's tens of thousands of close supporters will get brand new jobs fertilizing the back lawn of the Presidential palace like any one of half a dozen other examples around Latin America.
Let me tell you something about what you're standing behind. In 1964, Brazil had a leftist-leaning (but democratically elected) President. The Brazilian military with the backing of the CIA and the US Navy, launched a relatively bloodless coup to oust the President. My family, being rich plantation owners plagued by continued communist insurrection in the jungles, supported the military coup believing that once they'd established order, new elections would be held and the conservatives would be back in power.
What they got, however, was a reign of terror where even they had to watch what they said because it might mean disappearing in the middle of the night. My father had friends who simply disappeared. Having lots of political connections, he managed to get at least one of them out of the government's political prisons. The man had his fingernails pulled out, his genitals eaten by dogs, in addition to the numerous broken bones and damaged internal organs. He was dead within a matter of weeks after my father brought him home.
One of my uncles was a captain of the police in my family's home city. Among his regular police duties, it was his responsibility to purge the city of communists. He and other powerful police officials he knew were being bankrolled and trained by the CIA. Through some kind of partnership they had, the Americans arranged for members of the Israeli Mossad to come and demonstrate new "interrogation" techniques. Apparently whatever they showed him really shook him up because he said nobody scared him as much as those agents. And this was a man who would regularly take a man, stack up old truck tires around him and set them on fire burning him to death.
And once democracy returned and the Cold War ended, many of those police officials who had been getting paid off by the CIA found themselves without their lucrative source of income. Still having extra houses and girlfriends to maintain, they turned to easy money from kidnapping. And those same people who had backed the coup a generation earlier, who had been the ruling class under the military regime, now found their children being targetted by those same people who had once served them.
I think I've already made it pretty clear I'm not hot on Chavez. Nor am I particularly fond of his leftist and left-leaning allies such as the current Brazilian President "Lula" da Silva who my right-leaning family members refer to as "Brazil's George Bush". I'm certainly not looking to get into a pissing contest over whether the leftist or rightist regimes have the highest body count because that's not the point of my post. I just wanted to point out that your rather flippant statement about CIA meddling in the affairs of America's smaller and weaker neighbors carries a lot more connotation than you perhaps realized.
ripple01
Emperor
Typical right winger, when they are confronted with the truth the only thing they can is hurl personal insults...
Cheers,
ripple01
Wolfshanze
CFC Historian
Typical left winger... thinking they know anything about the truth...
Cheers,
Wolfshanze
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