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Send in the tanks! (Chavez)

Back to the OP.

Chavez did indeed send in the military vehicles and soldiers to take over private firms then?

Very democratic. Change the laws one day, steal stuff the next.

Owe someone billions, just dont bother paying it and take over the company assets and declare it nationalised. Offer shares in the oil company who cannot pay their bills instead.

I have seen how much Chavez oil buddies owes my company. Scary. Especially when everything he does depends on that oil.
 
funk de fino said:
That smiley would have been even better if I could have accessed your link. Blocked here.
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Good for you. It's Hugo singing wholeheartly loud and false.

funk de fino said:
You do realise that students are, in the main, in opposition to Chavez? They do not speak that way because the US pay them. They do it for free.
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No, i don't realize that. Show your numbers. And don't omit public universities, please.
 
Childlike Empress said:
Good for you. It's Hugo singing wholeheartly loud and false.

No, i don't realize that. Show your numbers. And don't omit public universities, please.
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You trying to say the students are not a large part of the opposition? That its only because the US pays them?
 
@Pardalis: You forgot him:

Chavez-Assad.jpg


I fully expected to see one of the usual hysterical threads pop up here during Chavez visit to Syria. Yes, he's meeting with all the guys your sources of information about world affairs demonize, how dare he (you had to look up Lukaschenko, didn't you?)! Of course he meets with nearly everybody else, too. Was quite a tour he did.

On his tour, Chavez also promoted the South America-Africa Summit, which is scheduled to take place on September 25 to 27 on the Venezuelan resort Margarita Island. So far, fifty-four African heads of state have confirmed their attendance.

In the week leading up to the summit, Venezuela's ministries of education, culture, women and gender equality, and foreign relations will host thousands of diplomats, university students and professors, politicians and cultural workers from the African continent at the III Cultural Festival of the Peoples of Africa. The festival's purpose is for the peoples of both continents "to recognize themselves as part of the same origin, the same struggle for life, liberty, and self-determination," according to the event organizers.
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Venezuelan President Strengthens Relations with Libya, Algeria, and Syria on Tour

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funk de fino said:
You trying to say the students are not a large part of the opposition? That its only because the US pays them?
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funk, please! This is ridiculous. I want to see evidence for your claim that students are, in the main, in opposition to Chavez. Of course we both know that this isn't true.
 
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I don't have to demonize them to know they are not pro-democracy. Their track records are very clear.

You say you're "for the people", but support dictators.
 
Pardalis said:
Ahmadinejad, Lukashenko, Mugabe... such interesting friendships eh Childlike?
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The fact is the world is a place of competing interests and nations absorbed with their self-interest. This causes ALL nations to engage with what we would term "ethically compromised" nations in order to pursue their self-interest.

So with Chavez being alienated from the west and being antagonistic to the US it is no surprise to see him throwing sand in the eye of the states by being chummy with people who share his antagonism and/or have resources to trade.

This game is a pretty silly one, since those condemning Chavez for his "friendships" likely were silent during the "friendships" of the US/UK with the Shah of Iran, America's relations with Saddam, with the torturing dictator of Kazakhstan, UNITA, South Africa, various brutal monarchies of the middle east, ruthless dictators in Southeast Asia and the baddies of Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Panama. Oftentimes when highlighted people will defend these relations by identifying the national self-interest at the root of them: they were aligned against communism, they had resources we needed, they were aligned against islamic radicals and so supporting repression under archaic monarchies was worthwhile... etc.

This same kind of outlining of the national interest when it comes to Chavez is not done however, and instead of using these relations as a mechanism by which we can better understand Venezuela's perception of its self-interest it is used as a shallow game of guilt-by-association.

Of course if we were playing this game fairly there would be no saints after we were done.
 
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Praktik said:
This same kind of outlining of the national interest when it comes to Chavez is not done however
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Because it isn't Venezuela's national interests which drive those connections, it's Chavez's interests. And the point isn't that he's doing something other than acting in his own interest, the point is exactly what these connections say about what those interests are.
 
Ziggurat said:
Because it isn't Venezuela's national interests which drive those connections, it's Chavez's interests. And the point isn't that he's doing something other than acting in his own interest, the point is exactly what these connections say about what those interests are.
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Well see, that's still an interesting debate. Notice my phrasing in another passage "perception of its self-interest".

Many will argue that perhaps there wasn't truly a communist threat involved in America's relations with brutal dictators - but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a perception of that threat being real that guided policy.

What counts is the perceptions of the people at the wheel, and the way they see the world. So we can have an interesting discussion about how closely these perceptions match with reality - and that's infinitely more worthwhile then showing a picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam or Chavez throwing an arm around Mugabe, and leaving it at that. As if the association is enough for us to conclude that Rumsfeld/Chavez = EVIL.
 
Good point, Praktik. But given the choice, I'll always choose America, full-blown socialist states always lead to dictatorships, famine and mass murder.
 
Pardalis said:
Good point, Praktik. But given the choice, I'll always choose America, full-blown socialist states always lead to dictatorships, famine and mass murder.
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Well I wouldn't be comfortable making a general rule about one thing ALWAYS leading to the next, but I'd be inclined to agree with you that if I could choose between living in America or living under a strongman-style leader in a democratic socialist state I'd probably choose America.

Replace "America" with "Canada" and I'd ALWAYS pick Canada... some things about American society rub me the wrong way and I kind of like the kind of conservatives we have up here compared to theirs (harper excepted!).

But that might be cause of where I live right now being rather comfortable, safe, and equitable (Toronto).

My opinion might change if I had grown up in a Venezuelan slum, or if I was working the fields for a pittance in a country not all that far along from a nearly feudal existance.
 
Ziggurat said:
Because it isn't Venezuela's national interests which drive those connections, it's Chavez's interests. And the point isn't that he's doing something other than acting in his own interest, the point is exactly what these connections say about what those interests are.
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That simply isn't true. I invite you to go to venezuelanalysis and browse through the many articles they have about the stops of his tour. Everywhere he signed win-win agreements that are very much in the interest of Venezuela and her partners. For example Algeria:

In Algeria, Chavez and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika drew up what they called a "work map" for bilateral cooperation. Chavez invited Algeria, which is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries along with Venezuela and Libya, to form a mixed enterprise with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA to exploit Venezuela's vast Orinoco Oil Belt.

"The oil in the [Orinoco Oil Belt] is heavy, and Algeria's is light. There we have potential to produce mixtures and improve our oil," said Chavez, adding that cooperation in the production of natural gas, petrochemicals, the fishing industry, and tourism were also on the agenda.
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Praktik said:
Well I wouldn't be comfortable making a general rule about one thing ALWAYS leading to the next, but I'd be inclined to agree with you that if I could choose between living in America or living under a strongman-style leader in a democratic socialist state I'd probably choose America.
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When something has shown consistently and repeatedly to end with horrors, then it's safe to assume it cannot work. And the self-proclaimed "democratic" part of these socialistic states always seems to be the first thing to get thrown out the window.

Replace "America" with "Canada" and I'd ALWAYS pick Canada... some things about American society rub me the wrong way and I kind of like the kind of conservatives we have up here compared to theirs (harper excepted!).
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But we have pretty much the same system, a capitalist one, and it works, a hundred years of it and we're still pretty much fuly democratic and free, but China, North Korea, and Cuba? Not so much.

But that might be cause of where I live right now being rather comfortable, safe, and equitable (Toronto).
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And clean! Boy, Toronto puts Montréal to shame. :( (well, except during the last garbage strike)

My opinion might change if I had grown up in a Venezuelan slum, or if I was working the fields for a pittance in a country not all that far along from a nearly feudal existance.
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Maybe Chavez will prove himself to be good, but seeing him being best buddies with antisemitic theocrats like Ahmadinejad really makes my skin crawl.
 
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funk de fino said:
Back to the OP.

Chavez did indeed send in the military vehicles and soldiers to take over private firms then?

Very democratic. Change the laws one day, steal stuff the next.

Owe someone billions, just dont bother paying it and take over the company assets and declare it nationalised. Offer shares in the oil company who cannot pay their bills instead.

I have seen how much Chavez oil buddies owes my company. Scary. Especially when everything he does depends on that oil.
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Come on, funk, let the cat out of the bag - is it Exxon?
 
Childlike Empress said:
Come on, funk, let the cat out of the bag - is it Exxon?
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No, failed again. Exxon are not the only company owed billions by Chavez goons. I could give you figures but I won't.

Thats your problem. You assume. You guess. You read biased crap. it clouds your judgement.

Check out who donates server space and bandwidth to venezuelanalysis?

aporrea - straight down the middle eh? Bit like the BBC.

EA - or owed millions!!
 
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Childlike Empress said:
funk, please! This is ridiculous. I want to see evidence for your claim that students are, in the main, in opposition to Chavez. Of course we both know that this isn't true.
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It's funk de fino.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1876066,00.html


http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/venezuela/090130/students-lead-opposition-hugo-chavez

But Abelaicy Gonzalez, a 23-year-old student leader at the School of Social Work at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), said that the student movement is divided along class lines.

“Here the dynamic is that 85 percent of the student population belongs to the middle classes, while the other 15 percent come from poorer sectors,” she said. “It's a classist and oligarchic university. At the moment there are just 13 departments that are progressive or leftist while the other 30-something are with the opposition.”

Gonzalez insisted that while the pro-Chavez student movement was smaller, its argument regarding the referendum was stronger. Efforts to engage opposition students in debate had failed, she said, because “they won’t engage because they don't have arguments to defend that ‘no.’”
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You were saying?
 
funk de fino said:
Thats your problem. You assume. You guess.
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That's all i can do as long as you only post nebulous accusations that can't be checked. You are just an anonymous guy on the internet posting from the office of an unnamed oil company. It's worth nothing funk and it only hurts your argument, because people see that YOU have an axe to grind - you are biased, to use your favorite word.

So bring details to the table or stop mentioning it - that's my advice. I for one am certainly not taking your word for anything.
 
Childlike Empress said:
That simply isn't true. I invite you to go to venezuelanalysis and browse through the many articles they have about the stops of his tour. Everywhere he signed win-win agreements that are very much in the interest of Venezuela and her partners. For example Algeria:
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Why would anyone use a bias site instead of media with no angle?
 
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