Venezuela - Imapct of August, 2004 election?

Arraitz · Coal Joined: Jul 13, 2004 Posts: 17 Location: Spain

One more thing,

buster · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 144

I know of vheadline's bias, but NED's "denial" of the story actually confirms much of it. It is subject to interpretation, of course, but in my judgement it indicates US funds were used to lobby against the incumbent government.

http://www.ned.org/grants/venezuelaFacts.html
_________________
http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!

buster · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 144

smiley · Fission Joined: Apr 16, 2004 Posts: 2106 Location: Europe

buster · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 144

While NED claims their funding of Súmate is apolitical, Súmate is definitely a rabid opposition group. Their organizers include some of the same people engaged in the 2001 coup, and NED funding both preceded and followed the coup attempt.

Giving them more money after they participated in a coup seems a pretty bald endorsement of their "fine work."

As I write, the polls in Venezuela are still open. You may not be aware, but it is illegal to release exit poll results while the poll remains open, yet Súmate leadership did announce that they would release poll results this afternoon.

Four hours ago, the UK Independent announced Chavez's defeat, based on exit polls, something no other news source has repeated.

According to some, this is the result of a Súmate "dirty trick":

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1248

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/8/15/175735/064

It'll be interesting to see how closely the results tally with Súmate's figures, and whether the anti-Chavista group turns atound and says that the exit polls are "proof" that Chavez stole the election.
_________________
http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!

buster · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 144

Well. This should make a nervous day on Wall St:

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela extended a recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez into a second day, after a record turnout and malfunctioning ballot machines kept voters in line for as long as 10 hours.

Chavez, a 50-year-old former paratrooper who survived both a military coup and two-month strike by oil workers, said after voting yesterday that he would respect the outcome. In a televised speech, Miranda State Governor Enrique Mendoza, a leader of the opposition, urged Venezuelans to endure the wait and vote.
_________________
http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!

aneerkoinos · Guest

Chavez wins landslide, opposition calls fraud, oil prices drop a bit.

tkn317071 · Heavy Crude Joined: May 29, 2004 Posts: 106

I'm certainly no expert on the situation in Venezuela but after watching the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, I was shocked that after the coup attempt, Chavez did not immediately jail, much less execute the instigators of the coup. Seems to me like Castro wouldn't have flinched for a second in such a situation.

Chavez seems to me to have the utmost respect for the Venezuelan Constitution and Venezuelan democracy.

gg3 · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:51 am Post subject:

Jimmy Carter was down there with his election-observer crew, and they reported no significant voting irregularities, i.e. it was clean.

By the way, interestingly enough, international elections observers were turned away at the US borders for the year 2000 election.

Re. not executing the coupsters, there was a similar case in Central America: Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took over. I recall very clearly hearing the news the day they declared victory, and thinking, "oh God here comes another bloodbath..." But then they declared the end of the death penalty, and when I did some follow-up research I found that they ran a fair court system and their prisons were fully open for international inspection -no torture-!, and I was amazed.

Then we have South Africa, which in my opinion set a new moral standard for the world with the "truth & reconciliation" process. The black majority leadership could have done unto the deposed white rulers what the latter had done unto them, but they didn't.

What I think the common denominator is here, is something that ultimately comes from religion rather than political ideology. The Christian social doctrine, which emphasizes the dignity of each person, and also the doctrine of following Jesus' example of forgiveness of one's enemies. These factors ran deep among the black South African leadership, as per Bishop Desmond Tutu, and in Nicaragua as per (I forgot the person's name) who was a priest or other member of the local Catholic church structure.

So I suspect, having read a few of Chavez' quotes, that at some level he's influenced by these religious factors. I have no proof of this, but it's an interesting hypothesis that should be looked into.

This doesn't guarantee that there won't be problems; i.e. any government institution is only as good as the people of whom it's composed. So I don't doubt that some of Chavez' people have done things like trying to indoctrinate school kids, or that other abuses have happened.

But we have to be ***consistent*** here (which after all is a key foundation of morality as well as Western legal systems: remember "a nation of laws not of men," and all that?). If the standard is human rights, what of the regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador, not to mention Pinochet's Chile? If the standard is respect for property, what about the expropriation of smallholders' properties by global companies with US backing?

I read an account of -can't remember which country- where the entire country's water rights were sold to some multinational. Apparently the company also somehow gained the right to come in and expropriate village wells that had been dug by peasant cooperatives at their own cost of labor and capital. With no compensation.

The whole concept of "eminent domain" (government takings of private property, and by extension, corporate takings using government power as the means) makes my blood boil furiously, and has ever since I first heard of the concept at age 11.

But as with any other moral or legal matter we have to be consistent or we're mere barbarians.

What Castro did in Cuba was basically apply American concepts of eminent domain. He nationalized stuff, and then compensated the property owners at the book value of the properties. Okay, what's fair for the American legal goose is fair for the Cuban legal gander. Only problem was, the big holders such as the fruit companies, had deliberately undervalued their properties for years in order to cheat on their taxes! So when they screamed bloody murder, it was pure hypocrisy. I have zero sympathy for that.

Agreed with Aaron, there has got to be a better way to get health care & literacy than out-and-out socialism. The whole concept of socialism bugs me because it seems like a leveling-downward, rather than a leveling-upward.

But how do you pay for teachers and doctors..?

There was a time in America when the "captains of industry" subscribed to the idea of "noblesse oblige," defined as "Benevolent, honorable behavior considered to be the responsibility of persons of high birth or rank." So you had the steel guy Carnegie building the free public library system across America, and you had Kaiser set up a health care system that lives to this day, and so on, too many examples to name.

But something changed in the 1980s. Suddenly, "greed is good" and any sense of moral obligation is out the window. Instead of "benevolent honorable behavior," the polar opposites of malevolent dishonorable behavior became somehow normalized. This to my mind is the greatest moral outrage of our time. Its direct effects have destroyed families, communities, and undermined fundamental institutions in our society.

So if we want to prove that the dull gray oppressiveness of socialism is not necessary, we have got to be willing to eschew the spoiled-baby rhetoric of the "greed is good" crowd and put some sense of responsibility back into our economic life.

buster · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 144

I have to differ a bit. Leftist Catholics, like the Sandinista, the Venezuelan Chavistas, and certainly the Fidelistas, tend to be more intellectual/secular, though they can still be devoutly spiritual.

Where you'll find more traditional Catholicism is among the Perons, the old ruling elite of South Vietnam, the Fulgencio Batista regime, etc.

Being a secular Catholic myself, take my word that you do not want to be subject to an interrogation at the hands of a self-righteous right-wing Catholic.
_________________
http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!