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I love how just a few short months ago so many people were all "Citizen United, Super PACS, subverting the election rah rah"...
Chavez was using the police to shut down opposing media. I'm sure the US election would have looked a bit different if Fox News and WSJ clones were the only media allowed to operate in the country. Even if the voting itself had still been open and fair.
tinwhiskers on
+3
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I love how just a few short months ago so many people were all "Citizen United, Super PACS, subverting the election rah rah"...
Chavez was using the police to shut down opposing media. I'm sure the US election would have looked a bit different if Fox News and WSJ clones were the only media allowed to operate in the country. Even if the voting itself had still been open and fair.
As has been mentioned, while this was one of the worse aspects of Chavez's administration, their media is rated better than, say, Mexico's and some others.
The man was ahead of his time when it came to running a dictatorship. Oh sure others have pandered to the poor while consolidating power and making rich buddies before, but no one did it with quite his savvy. People who oppose him didn't end up disappeared or imprisoned; they ended up jobless and poor. People who adamantly supported him got a slight standard of living increase if they toadied to him.
Meanwhile he played his game in the worldwide media that got leftists around the world to cheer for him and his sticking it to America...even though he did business with us until the day he died. And he died a rich, self important bastard while fucking over the people who supposedly "loved" him.
I don't see that he fucked over most people. Middle and upper class? Yeah, they got fucked. The many, many desperately poor? I think they got off ok. Which I don't mind, overall.
This is how you lose your best minds.
There's a pretty broad line between creating a safety net for the worst off, and simply paying them while chasing off the middle class and above. The latter helps you in elections, but it cripples your economy in the future. You really should mind it, overall.
Jibba on
+6
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
When oil is $40 $60 a barrel in 2006, and you have 7 years of 25% inflation, you need that oil to be selling for $191 $286 a barrel in 2013 for it to buy the same number of loafs and circuses. Since it's currently $91 a barrel....that isn't happening.
But... those figures are both denominated in US dollars, which have not been experiencing 25% yearly inflation?
I love how just a few short months ago so many people were all "Citizen United, Super PACS, subverting the election rah rah"...
Chavez was using the police to shut down opposing media. I'm sure the US election would have looked a bit different if Fox News and WSJ clones were the only media allowed to operate in the country. Even if the voting itself had still been open and fair.
Chavez is probably a good example of why things like Citizen United are a terrible idea. He pretty much shut down opposition media, while make sure he had plenty of air time, ensuring that he dominated when it came to name recognition. Then there was the whole making people fear losing their job if they voted against him. Finally, he made sure those that supported him weren't in the shitter. So he had his bribes and his mafia equivalent of breaking legs for people that got out of line. He also group all his foes together, which makes it hard for the non-shitheads that don't agree with him to get much traction, given that they are being grouped in with the wealthy shitheads that fucked people over before Chavez was running things.
I think people are silly if they don't acknowledge that he was a dictator just base on the above. Then there are the other things he did that, IMO are things a non-dictator should be doing. I suppose people don't want to admit that he was a dictator because that means have to accept that it's possible for a dictator to be popular with a majority of the people or at least sort of legitimately win the election (it does lose some legitimacy when people are afraid to vote against you).
As I said and XoB pointed out, the guy was just smarter than your average dictator. He realized he could have his power without totally shitting on the poor. He also realized that doing certain things (like killing opposition or making them disappear) starts to make people dislike you and makes it easier for outsiders to justify intervening.
I love how just a few short months ago so many people were all "Citizen United, Super PACS, subverting the election rah rah"...
Chavez was using the police to shut down opposing media. I'm sure the US election would have looked a bit different if Fox News and WSJ clones were the only media allowed to operate in the country. Even if the voting itself had still been open and fair.
As has been mentioned, while this was one of the worse aspects of Chavez's administration, their media is rated better than, say, Mexico's and some others.
I live on the country, and pretty much second everything that RockinX said. Just today I went through a mad rush for getting to buy packs of (rationed) flour and butter. Also, seriously, fuck the noise of being a Cuban colony.
Being rich is bad, ya know. Unless you belong to the ruling class, then is A-OK.
EDIT: Forgot to add, is rich to hear "sticking it to the US" from a Goverment that a)Is from a country that is the 5th seller of oil to the US and b)Makes business with both Chevron and the Koch Bros.
A lot of those media stations Chavez had shut down were funded by Americans who for some reason didn't like Chavez. It's still not a great situation, but he was doing that to mitigate American interference in Venezuelan politics.
Why exactly do people her who don't like him dislike him?
He was a man of the people and while he did kind of lose that sentiment at points in his reign he wasn't a brutal leader just not a very effective one. He wanted to make life better for poor people of many nations, as seen by his offering cheaper prices for heating oil for poor people. I'll never say he was perfect just that he was a person who tried to do good and made mistakes along the way. It's been a couple of years since my Southern America Class where I did a report on Chavez, but he's not the kind of person who took out his anger on the people he wanted to make things better and did a decent job of it.
it has been argued that there are very few of venezeula's statistics that seem entirely reliable - it is oddly hard to confirm the claimed falls in poverty and rises in literacy. in particular the claimed exchange rate, inflation rate, and literacy rates are utterly unbelievable; there is simply no way that any government vaults the literacy rate up that much in a single decade.
but take the statistics as given. even if so, I don't think anyone here can dispute that he did redistribution badly
which makes sense if you reflect that the only way to retain the support of the rural masses is to damage the power of the local elites much, much more than merely extracting from them would. The moderation of Lula would not work in Venezuela, which was too unstable when Chavez took power. the risk of elites hopping to another nearby country and funding a coup from there is well-established, sadly
I swear that this essay was not written by me (also I wrote my remarks above before ever reading it):
Chávez was a strongman. He packed the courts, hounded the corporate media, legislated by decree and pretty much did away with any effective system of institutional checks or balances. But I’ll be perverse and argue that the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn’t authoritarian enough. It wasn’t too much control that was the problem but too little.
Chavismo came to power through the ballot following the near total collapse of Venezuela’s existing establishment. It enjoyed overwhelming rhetorical and electoral hegemony, but not administrative hegemony. As such, it had to make significant compromises with existing power blocs in the military, the civil and educational bureaucracy and even the outgoing political elite, all of whom were loath to give up their illicit privileges and pleasures. It took near five years before Chávez’s government gained control of oil revenues, and then only after a protracted fight that nearly ruined the country.
Once it had access to the money, it opted not to confront these pockets of corruption and power but simply fund parallel institutions, including the social missions that provided healthcare, education and other welfare services being the most famous. This was both a blessing and a curse, the source of Chavismo’s strength and weakness.
Prior to Chávez, competition for government power and resources took place largely within the very narrow boundaries of two elite political parties. After Chávez’s election, political jockeying took place within “Chavismo.” Rather than forming a single-party dictatorship with an interventionist state bureaucracy controlling people’s lives, Chavismo has been pretty wide open and chaotic. But it significantly more inclusive than the old duopoly, comprised of at least five different currents: a new Bolivarian political class, older leftist parties, economic elites, military interests and the social movements mentioned above. Oil money gave Chávez the luxury of acting as a broker between these competing tendencies, allowing each to pursue their interests (sometimes, no doubt, their illicit interests) and deferring confrontations.
My interpretation of Venezuelan history is identical, but I am sufficiently on the side of "not authoritarian enough" to argue that the populist democracy of Chavismo was a dead-end, too. It included more people but it was not more inclusive, since their empowerment was dependent on continued funds from the state, which willingly used its discretion to maintain discipline - and so never it formed into an independent civil-social force, that can continue to enforce their influence independent of whoever succeeds into the control of the distribution of oil wealth. You can have acolytes or you can have a vanguard, but not both.
It always seemed to me Chavez was a stopped clock on nationalization, that seemed to be his solution to everything.
Some people see his good move at securing the proceeds of the nation's oil wealth for his nation as some greater act beyond just nationalizing everything he could. It might have even been a better idea to let the companies keep running them and just take a big cut (they would still have drilled).
Instead he just kept nationalizing things until it just destroyed the economy, but then he did not have a plan on how to tackle the problems a communist economy has. It wasn't some grand plan for a socialist utopia he was running that some people seem to think, he was just a one trick pony economically which ruined what could have been a great thing.
Good luck anyone who lives there, it seems like it will get worse before it gets better. Just don't let this put you off a socialist-market based balanced economies, providing social services is not what ruined your economy, a zealot for communism did, from what I can tell.
Also booo to fascist media control.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Again, we didn't cause the coup, we just created the conditions that allowed it to happen. A distinction that is ultimately meaningless.
You mean the US were the ones to drive inflation in Chile to 350%, caused scarcity, expropriate nearly all of Chilean companies and farms without compensation, illegally armed Allende's militant supporters through the Cuban embassy outside the control of the Chilean police and military and had said militants take over Christian Democratic radio stations, businesses and farms owned by Chileans, suppress all media opposed to Allende, financially strangle Allende's political opposition, made the Confederation of Truck owners call a nationwide walk-out to protest the government's intention to create a competing regional public trucking firm (a protest which snowballed into a popular protest against the government amounting to a general strike), attempt to politicize Chile's education system, made Allende bring the military officers into his cabinet and made the Chilean Supreme court, comptroller general and the chamber of deputies declare Allende's government to be unconstitutional and outside the law?
Eh. The CIA was involved. Kissinger said explicitly "We helped them" on a taped conversation with Nixon the week of the coup. They coordinated with Pinochet and the junta and helped them with propaganda and intelligence gathering before the coup and through the following years.
Yes the CIA was involved in 1970 where they attempted unsuccessfully to prevent Allende's inauguration. Yes they "helped them". They helped the political opposition and the free press survive the economic warfare waged against them by Allende.
And I repeat they had no dealings with the plotters as was acknowledged in the link that Alistair was so nice to provide us with earlier on.
Yes, I'm willing to admit if you ignore everything America did including the intelligence sharing link between the CIA and the coup instigators then America clearly had no influence on the 1973 coup.
I know this might be a silly question, but who is legally supposed to be in charge of Venezuela right now?
The inauguration was postponed due to Chavez's absence, so I don't think Maduro was actually sworn in as VP. Legally speaking, he was acting as Chavez's agent under the authority of the extended outgoing term, rather than as his successor for the new term. I don't know their constitution, so I'm not sure if the VP elect gets sworn in, if the VP from the previous term is technically still successor or if it goes to someone else, since the old mandate has expired and the new administration didn't officially take office.
I think I remember reading that they swore in the VP and lower-level officials in private ceremonies and were just waiting for Chavez to return from Cuba to hold the big public one. I assume Chavez privately took the oath of office at some point during his stay in Cuba as well, but I don't remember reading about it.
But yeah, the current VP is just managing the caretaker government until they have elections around the end of the month.
AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
During the sick, sick neoliberal era, millions of proles in South America basically became non-citizens. Subjugated, powerless workers only. Residents and nationals yes, citizens no.
Chavez' election augured in a renewed sense of citizenship and awareness of community and strength among the majority of Venezuelans. Yes, he reached these results the wrong way and mistreated businesspeople and the middle class, while creating huge deficits and bad inflation, but he made the population of Venezuela resemble the sort of population a modern nation should have.
Venezuela is in for some bad times, and the great leftist government of Rousseff in Brazil proves that Chavez could have made his improvements in a far more competent and mature way without sacrificing results, but civics, citizenship and societal awareness is more important than economics and fiscals for a nation in the long run.
This might sound patronizing, but I can only hope the Venezuelans realize that empowerment as citizens will also mean responsibilities as citizens.
0
ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
Didn't Chavez close the Venezuelan consulate in Miami in order to try and prevent a bunch of people from absentee voting against him? Not exactly a beacon of democracy.
A lot of those media stations Chavez had shut down were funded by Americans who for some reason didn't like Chavez. It's still not a great situation, but he was doing that to mitigate American interference in Venezuelan politics.
Those same US funded media groups played a huge role in the (almost successful) coup attempt against Chavez. He gutted them after that, I believe.
During the sick, sick neoliberal era, millions of proles in South America basically became non-citizens. Subjugated, powerless workers only. Residents and nationals yes, citizens no.
Chavez' election augured in a renewed sense of citizenship and awareness of community and strength among the majority of Venezuelans. Yes, he reached these results the wrong way and mistreated businesspeople and the middle class, while creating huge deficits and bad inflation, but he made the population of Venezuela resemble the sort of population a modern nation should have.
Venezuela is in for some bad times, and the great leftist government of Rousseff in Brazil proves that Chavez could have made his improvements in a far more competent and mature way without sacrificing results, but civics, citizenship and societal awareness is more important than economics and fiscals for a nation in the long run.
This might sound patronizing, but I can only hope the Venezuelans realize that empowerment as citizens will also mean responsibilities as citizens.
oh boy, you're going to be astonished to discover what went on before the neoliberal era
Didn't Chavez close the Venezuelan consulate in Miami in order to try and prevent a bunch of people from absentee voting against him? Not exactly a beacon of democracy.
Yes, and that didn't stop people from voting because they rented a bus in order to vote. He also shouted (at his presidential campaign, no less) that it doesn't matter how consistent power outages were, how much crime there was, how water supply is virtually non-existent in some areas, as long as we have "the nation."
Didn't Chavez close the Venezuelan consulate in Miami in order to try and prevent a bunch of people from absentee voting against him? Not exactly a beacon of democracy.
The consulate in Louisiana is still open, I heard yesterday.
Didn't Chavez close the Venezuelan consulate in Miami in order to try and prevent a bunch of people from absentee voting against him? Not exactly a beacon of democracy.
Yes, and that didn't stop people from voting because they rented a bus in order to vote. He also shouted (at his presidential campaign, no less) that it doesn't matter how consistent power outages were, how much crime there was, how water supply is virtually non-existent in some areas, as long as we have "the nation."
A "Socialism cannot fail. It can only be failed" kinda thing, huh?
It's easy to disdain the rich when you don't need their money because of your infinite money cheat.
Its easy to disdain the rich when they corrupt and oppress countries to have a monopoly of their resources, rather then sharing the profits with the locals. You shouldn't be surprised when guys like Chavez successfully exploit that to gain political power. At least Chavez pretended to care about the natives.
Posts
Chavez was using the police to shut down opposing media. I'm sure the US election would have looked a bit different if Fox News and WSJ clones were the only media allowed to operate in the country. Even if the voting itself had still been open and fair.
As has been mentioned, while this was one of the worse aspects of Chavez's administration, their media is rated better than, say, Mexico's and some others.
There's a pretty broad line between creating a safety net for the worst off, and simply paying them while chasing off the middle class and above. The latter helps you in elections, but it cripples your economy in the future. You really should mind it, overall.
But... those figures are both denominated in US dollars, which have not been experiencing 25% yearly inflation?
no, his parents were schoolteachers, not ghetto poor, but no wealth.
Chavez is probably a good example of why things like Citizen United are a terrible idea. He pretty much shut down opposition media, while make sure he had plenty of air time, ensuring that he dominated when it came to name recognition. Then there was the whole making people fear losing their job if they voted against him. Finally, he made sure those that supported him weren't in the shitter. So he had his bribes and his mafia equivalent of breaking legs for people that got out of line. He also group all his foes together, which makes it hard for the non-shitheads that don't agree with him to get much traction, given that they are being grouped in with the wealthy shitheads that fucked people over before Chavez was running things.
I think people are silly if they don't acknowledge that he was a dictator just base on the above. Then there are the other things he did that, IMO are things a non-dictator should be doing. I suppose people don't want to admit that he was a dictator because that means have to accept that it's possible for a dictator to be popular with a majority of the people or at least sort of legitimately win the election (it does lose some legitimacy when people are afraid to vote against you).
As I said and XoB pointed out, the guy was just smarter than your average dictator. He realized he could have his power without totally shitting on the poor. He also realized that doing certain things (like killing opposition or making them disappear) starts to make people dislike you and makes it easier for outsiders to justify intervening.
But I'm a cynic. Then again, I don't know enough about tally scrutinization or random audits to say precisely how you'd enforce them in the US.
ffs half of Mexico is a war zone
Most places are better than Mexico
See here.
I live on the country, and pretty much second everything that RockinX said. Just today I went through a mad rush for getting to buy packs of (rationed) flour and butter. Also, seriously, fuck the noise of being a Cuban colony.
Finally:
http://frentecomuncubano.blogspot.com/2012/06/extrema-corrupcion-de-chavez-y-familia.html
Being rich is bad, ya know. Unless you belong to the ruling class, then is A-OK.
EDIT: Forgot to add, is rich to hear "sticking it to the US" from a Goverment that a)Is from a country that is the 5th seller of oil to the US and b)Makes business with both Chevron and the Koch Bros.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
He was a man of the people and while he did kind of lose that sentiment at points in his reign he wasn't a brutal leader just not a very effective one. He wanted to make life better for poor people of many nations, as seen by his offering cheaper prices for heating oil for poor people. I'll never say he was perfect just that he was a person who tried to do good and made mistakes along the way. It's been a couple of years since my Southern America Class where I did a report on Chavez, but he's not the kind of person who took out his anger on the people he wanted to make things better and did a decent job of it.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
but take the statistics as given. even if so, I don't think anyone here can dispute that he did redistribution badly
which makes sense if you reflect that the only way to retain the support of the rural masses is to damage the power of the local elites much, much more than merely extracting from them would. The moderation of Lula would not work in Venezuela, which was too unstable when Chavez took power. the risk of elites hopping to another nearby country and funding a coup from there is well-established, sadly
My interpretation of Venezuelan history is identical, but I am sufficiently on the side of "not authoritarian enough" to argue that the populist democracy of Chavismo was a dead-end, too. It included more people but it was not more inclusive, since their empowerment was dependent on continued funds from the state, which willingly used its discretion to maintain discipline - and so never it formed into an independent civil-social force, that can continue to enforce their influence independent of whoever succeeds into the control of the distribution of oil wealth. You can have acolytes or you can have a vanguard, but not both.
Some people see his good move at securing the proceeds of the nation's oil wealth for his nation as some greater act beyond just nationalizing everything he could. It might have even been a better idea to let the companies keep running them and just take a big cut (they would still have drilled).
Instead he just kept nationalizing things until it just destroyed the economy, but then he did not have a plan on how to tackle the problems a communist economy has. It wasn't some grand plan for a socialist utopia he was running that some people seem to think, he was just a one trick pony economically which ruined what could have been a great thing.
Good luck anyone who lives there, it seems like it will get worse before it gets better. Just don't let this put you off a socialist-market based balanced economies, providing social services is not what ruined your economy, a zealot for communism did, from what I can tell.
Also booo to fascist media control.
Yes, I'm willing to admit if you ignore everything America did including the intelligence sharing link between the CIA and the coup instigators then America clearly had no influence on the 1973 coup.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I think I remember reading that they swore in the VP and lower-level officials in private ceremonies and were just waiting for Chavez to return from Cuba to hold the big public one. I assume Chavez privately took the oath of office at some point during his stay in Cuba as well, but I don't remember reading about it.
But yeah, the current VP is just managing the caretaker government until they have elections around the end of the month.
Chavez' election augured in a renewed sense of citizenship and awareness of community and strength among the majority of Venezuelans. Yes, he reached these results the wrong way and mistreated businesspeople and the middle class, while creating huge deficits and bad inflation, but he made the population of Venezuela resemble the sort of population a modern nation should have.
Venezuela is in for some bad times, and the great leftist government of Rousseff in Brazil proves that Chavez could have made his improvements in a far more competent and mature way without sacrificing results, but civics, citizenship and societal awareness is more important than economics and fiscals for a nation in the long run.
This might sound patronizing, but I can only hope the Venezuelans realize that empowerment as citizens will also mean responsibilities as citizens.
Those same US funded media groups played a huge role in the (almost successful) coup attempt against Chavez. He gutted them after that, I believe.
pleasepaypreacher.net
oh boy, you're going to be astonished to discover what went on before the neoliberal era
The consulate in Louisiana is still open, I heard yesterday.
A "Socialism cannot fail. It can only be failed" kinda thing, huh?
Its easy to disdain the rich when they corrupt and oppress countries to have a monopoly of their resources, rather then sharing the profits with the locals. You shouldn't be surprised when guys like Chavez successfully exploit that to gain political power. At least Chavez pretended to care about the natives.
Leftists in America have internalized the idea that they are unamerican.
Also that liking Chavez or not liking Chavez is intrinsically tied to how American you are (hint: it's not)
Point being you don't have to be a gringo to hate him
I wonder why that is...
Because he was a dick