Thread: US bans arms sales to Venezuela!!!!!

I think you missed the sarcasm in my post. Very much aware of that. What I was refering to was the constant labelling by the US media or the Chavez ennemies. The labels these days doesn't mean anything and China is a perfect example. The US is more socialist that China these days.

Originally Posted by stroller

Well, Chavez talks a lot of sense, I'll reserve judgement when I see further results of his policies.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

One Very Busy Fascist Dictator

"Chavez is no different" - examples, please.

Chavez's Blacklist of Venezuelan Opposition Intimidates Voters
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...fer=news_index

People who signed a petition for his recall are blacklisted. There's your Joseph McCarthy for you.

Venezuela's coffee industry in chaos as price of beans doubles

· Shortages in shops after producers hoard stocks
· National Guard told to find every last kilogram

In response, President Chávez has said that he might be forced to nationalise the coffee industry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/...683002,00.html

Venezuelanalysis.com reported on March 29 that the mayor of Greater Caracas, Juan Barreto, has announced that the city will confiscate some 400 buildings and sell them to the people currently renting apartments within them.

“All good rented buildings that were constructed between 10 and 30 years ago, or longer and of which the sum of the rental contributions has been, when totalled up, more than five times the value of the building, [will be] expropriated”, Barreto told Union Radio. “The business of renting is legitimate, but it can’t be indefinite because eventually it becomes predatory.”

Chavez added, “Many people are owners of a number of houses, for example, five homes, because they are people who dedicate themselves to acquiring homes” with the intention of making a profit on the housing market. “If someone refuses to sell, except at a fabulous price, somewhere in the stratosphere, we will expropriate, and pay the real value.”

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/663/663p15c.htm

Commerce grinds to a standstill while people wait to see what comes next. People won't rent their apartments, they hoard personal supplies and they withhold inventory from the market. It generates shortages in food and housing. Business needs stability so it can plan and allocate resources for the present and the future. Chavez as usual has purposely generated instability and uncertainty in order to maintain the upper hand. He sees governing as war with enemies everywhere. Individual and corporate wealth and investment is leaving the country. As the resources of the private sector dwindle within the country greater government intervention becomes "justified". So generating ruin works for him. Maybe he invisions some sort of phoenix rising from the ashes. The guy is a romantic who is concentrating power.

I don't see how he is any differnet. He's a thug who uses the mob to intimidate the middle class and the rich. He generates a carnival atmosphere which he must keep feeding with greater stunts to entertain the mob else they get bored and turn on him.

A Venezuelan-linked company called Smartmatic has bought out a U.S. electronic voting device firm called Sequoia, which holds contracts for elections in Chicago and elsewhere.

http://www.americanthinker.com/comme...mments_id=4814
More antics. Being able to spread the rumor that he can fk with the elections of the USA (supported by the truth of owning voting machines) would play well in the surreal carnival atmosphere he has created down there.


A picture of the Minister of Defense. What party spirit. He dresses like it's carnival. Dije que hace fiesta!

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

Venezuela: Human rights under threat

All parties involved in the political conflict in Venezuela must show real commitment to respecting the rule of law if they are to break the violence cycle. In a new report launched today, Amnesty International highlights cases of excessive use of force, torture and ill-treatment committed by security forces in the context of demonstrations that took place between February and March 2004 and raises serious questions about the commitment of key institutions to prevent and punish such abuses impartially.

At least 14 people died in these demonstrations in circumstances that have yet to be clarified. As many as 200 were wounded. Several of those detained were severely ill-treated or tortured by members of the security forces.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR530082004

Human Rights Watch does not take sides in the current political conflict in Venezuela. Our commitment is solely to the protection of fundamental human rights enshrined in international treaties such as the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights, which categorically prohibit torture under any circumstances. As a party to both of these treaties, Venezuela has an obligation not only to prevent violations, but also to conduct thorough and impartial investigations, and to prosecute those found responsible for committing them.

Over the past several weeks, Human Rights Watch has collected testimony regarding alleged ill-treatment and torture that took place from February 27 until March 5. The cases described below are based on Human Rights Watch’s interviews with young people who were detained during the protests and, in one case, with a detainee’s parents. Venezuelan nongovernmental human rights groups have also documented similar abuses, as have press accounts based on interviews with former detainees. Altogether, the available information suggests a disturbing pattern of conduct that clearly violates international law enforcement standards.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/12/venezu8423.htm

Hmmm, not very biased sources there...

Get one from Autie Beeb and I'll take it seriously.

Thanks attaboy.

Still, your quotes make him look like yet another South-American dictator with a different twist, not comparable to the nazis as suggested.

Interesting that the US media and admin focus so much on him, could the reason be because he's an "enemy", unlike the other dictators who have been sponsored and supported by the US?

I don't say this to distract from the human rights issues which are raised and documented by reliable sources and he loses a lot of sympathy for it.

But the social and economic interventions already appear in a different light when ones reads the full articles, not just the bits you quoted. It doesn't look like someone is enriching himself and his cronies, as I already suggested. It remains to be seen what longterm effects his 'antics' will have.

I find the pic of the MoD hilarious, and admire Chavez's bold, clown-like actions. The laughter is, for a change, at the expense of the rich entrepreneurs and property-owners in Venezuela and the almighty Bush-regime in the US.

Bring it on, Chavez!

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

i prefer this piece of cut and paste SK, by the enlightened and always enlightening John Pilger.

Chávez is, of course, a threat, especially to the United States. Like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who based their revolution on the English co-operative moment, and the moderate Allende in Chile, he offers the threat of an alternative way of developing a decent society: in other words, the threat of a good example in a continent where the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage. In the US media in the 1980s, the "threat" of tiny Nicaragua was seriously debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being "softened up" for something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the "largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism". When I said to Chávez that the US historically had had its way in Latin America, he replied: "Yes, and my assassination would come as no surprise. But the empire is in trouble, and the people of Venezuela will resist an attack. We ask only for the support of all true democrats."

John Pilger has long been criticised for his criticisms of the mainstream media - moreso in his homeland of Australia, where the majority of media is owned by the same man who owns FOX News and other major world media outlets. Is little wonder that his voice is dimmed slightly?

The more I study world media, the more afraid I become for the future of our planet! Economics rules on every page and every news broadcast.

Just read between the lines!

Originally Posted by attaboy

In what light should the food shortages and the resulting suffering he created be seen? He doubled the price to be paid to coffee growers while maintaining the price set for the sale of the roasted coffee. I'd guess the result was coffee roasters didn't buy any raw coffee from the growers and they sat on their existing inventory to see what would happen. The growers in the meantime had to store their beans at their expense without any income from sales. I wonder what percentage of the beans molded while sitting in possesion of the growers? Is this ineptitude, romanticism run amok or intimidation and destruction of his enemies' economic resources? If I give him the benefit of the doubt and say it is the latter should the people suffer during his policy of destroying his enemies' resources? Is Chavez for peaceful co-existence of the classes and races or is he promoting a 'your turn in the barrel' mentality?

edited: I removed a line in the first paragraph.

What food shortage? The coffee roasters were hording the beans at the risk of them going moldy - hardly a food crisis.

Is this ineptitude, romanticism run amok or intimidation and destruction of his enemies' economic resources? If I give him the benefit of the doubt and say it is the latter should the people suffer during his policy of destroying his enemies' resources? Is Chavez for peaceful co-existence of the classes and races or is he promoting a 'your turn in the barrel' mentality?

I can not judge how sensible the measures are, I have little knowledge of the culture and background in Latin America and Venezuela.
His approach is different from the text-book class warfare, and also from European style social-democratic reforms.
"classes" co-existing peacefully? - obviously not one of his aims, he seems determined to stop the exploitative 'free-market' profiteering, that's just the sort of thing which would raise hairs in the US who have controlled and taken advantage for decades in the region.
Chavez: "As Rousseau said, between the poor and the rich, liberty is oppressive, only law can liberate".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1775763,00.html

Also, may I ask what you know about the regime in Venezuela before Chavez elections? A comparison might put the present situation into perspective.