What are we to make of this? Is there hope for this place or not?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SLIA982&show_article=1

Of course there's hope for Venezuela. But you're back again with a thread title spinning like a disco-ball, either by your own design, or from the momentum of your sources so far.

Try and understand that if protesters in Washington did what these Venezuelan students did, they would get the very same treatment- Possibly rougher, in the present American Zeitgeist.

This is no Tiananmen Square in Caracas. Nobody is being shot, and let's hope it stays that way. I'm not in support of violent protest any more than I am in support of Chavez consolidating his personal power. Before things got a little nasty, the students had been granted a meeting with Electoral Counsel President Tibisay Lucena, and seem to have been getting their message out without undue harassment.

Maybe if you try reading about how it went down from some more sources, and do some more thinking, you'll come away a little less alarmist. Relax, Chavez is not the Socialist Mehdi. He may have already peaked, and he's certainly not coming to gitcha. Take a look at Venezuelan Analysis (http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/about) to balance your viewpoint a little from the other side of the issue.

Didn't they vote this guy in?? Aren't they getting exactly what they voted for?

Orleander,
Didn't they vote this guy in?? Aren't they getting exactly what they voted for?
Hugo Chavez only got 62.84% in the 2006 Venezuela elections. There will always be dissenters (about 37.16%) and you have to be aware that majority of Chavez's voters were poor (majority of the country) whereas these protesters are students and most likely anti-socialists.

I also doubt he stated he was going to run indefinitely or change the Venezuela constitution during his campaigning. ;)


[Renrue]

It was well known during the last election.

Having no term limit is not necessarily a bad thing.

So it would be OK to lift the term limits on George Bush?

Yes.

I think we could do better without re-election limits and also abolishing the Electoral College. We should have run-off popular elections between the two leading candidates if they near a tie. With free and fair popular elections, Dubya wouldn't be a serious contender today. He would never have won a second term even.

He won a second term, with a majority of the popular vote, so I am somewhat confused by your assertion "He would have never won a second term."

In that post, I was exploring what free and fair elections might mean, and included the concept of a runoff election in the case of a close and contentious vote. In 2004, the spread was miniscule, and the count in serious question, especially in the key State of Ohio, where a large miscount in Bush's favor was later proven. Exit polls called into doubt the assumption that Bush defeated Kerry in popular votes. A runoff election would have settled the matter. But you're right, I should avoid saying "never" about things we'll never know.

The groundwork was laid for this a long time ago. Cant keep falling for the same tricks- lol

Fool me once, shame on . . . . . . . . . shame on you . . . . . . git fooled. I mean, you can't git fooled again.

cue Won't Get Fooled Again The Who

cue (We)Won't Get Fooled Again The Who

Sounds good but of course it is not true.

In that post, I was exploring what free and fair elections might mean, and included the concept of a runoff election in the case of a close and contentious vote. In 2004, the spread was miniscule, and the count in serious question, especially in the key State of Ohio, where a large miscount in Bush's favor was later proven. Exit polls called into doubt the assumption that Bush defeated Kerry in popular votes. A runoff election would have settled the matter. But you're right, I should avoid saying "never" about things we'll never know.

Can you back any of that up, or is this more liberal ranting of the sort that refuses to acknowledge the fact that Bush won TWO elections. I find it amusing that Democrats, like you, never seemed to have a problem with elections or want the manner of elections changed until this man was elected, TWICE. It really betrays your bias, if you ask me.

bush stole the elections. he did not win them

countezero: "I find it amusing that Democrats, like you, never seemed to have a problem with elections or want the manner of elections changed until this man was elected, TWICE. It really betrays your bias, if you ask me."

If my bias is so prominent, it's odd that you can't identify my political affiliation. I'm not a Democrat, and I don't vote like one. I'm registered as Independent. If you truly believe that GWB's Presidential elections were not controversial, and called into question by more people than Democrats, you really should take a look back at the record and catch up with contemporary US history.

While I'm not prepared to go so far as Gustav, those were some unusually close and even shady elections that got Dubya in the White House and kept him there a second term.

its a decent soundbite

the issue is being spinned by US media as an evil Chavez controlling poor Venezuela citizens...meanwhile all that is really happening is Chavez is against US control.

That is his most unforgiveable crime before the major US media, it seems- Chavez is off the reservation, and consorts with other deviants. That frightens many of our controlling institutions and their fans.

countezero: "I find it amusing that Democrats, like you, never seemed to have a problem with elections or want the manner of elections changed until this man was elected, TWICE. It really betrays your bias, if you ask me."

If my bias is so prominent, it's odd that you can't identify my political affiliation. I'm not a Democrat, and I don't vote like one. I'm registered as Independent. If you truly believe that GWB's Presidential elections were not controversial, and called into question by more people than Democrats, you really should take a look back at the record and catch up with contemporary US history.

While I'm not prepared to go so far as Gustav, those were some unusually close and even shady elections that got Dubya in the White House and kept him there a second term.

I'll ask you again to provide some examples for your wild assertions.

The 2000 election, for example, was discussed recently in another thread. As I pointed out there, if a person looks at Wikipedia's excellent entry on the subject, they will see that Bush won the election by most counts. The Ohio accusations you've made are just that, accusations. What proof is there? You can't run around lobbing accusations and then whenever your questioned about them essentially tell a person they are ignorant and uninformed. It's your job to defend your claims. I never said the elections weren't controversial, I questioned your subjective remarks about them...

We've digressed enough in this thread. You could do worse, in reviewing the 2004 controversy, than reviewing spidergoat's posts in the thread linked below at center. The 2000 election (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000) was still more controversial, but I don't know how to get the search engine here looking back that far.

It Seems that Kerry Won the 2004 Election (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=49543&highlight=Election)

If you would like to point me to a fitting thread of your choice on that topic, I'll review with you there the basis of my "wild assertions".

I typically disregard anything Spider says, as he's never met a Republican he liked and speaks in such generalizations and propaganda that I suspect he actually works for the Dems. Still, I find your decision to "back up" your earlier assertions by linking me to an old sciforums thread and pointing me to another member's comments curious. Can you really find nothing of any worth that explains why you believe what you believe? I suspect not.

But you're right. We're way off topic...

the issue is being spinned by US media as an evil Chavez controlling poor Venezuela citizens...meanwhile all that is really happening is Chavez is against US control.


still got that russian in you?

still got that russian in you?

still got? and ever will. once I got my degree in bachelors and masters, I am out of this God damned country.

Still having pipe dreams of the mother land?

I bet you never even been there.

I bet you never even been there.

I spent most of my life there...of my 20 years of life.

What is your favorite place in Russia?

What is your favorite place in Russia?

;) cant tell you. I don't want to be pinpointed.

Is it Moscow or the Ukraine?

Is it Moscow or the Ukraine?

none of the mentioned

The 2000 election, for example, was discussed recently in another thread. As I pointed out there, if a person looks at Wikipedia's excellent entry on the subject, they will see that Bush won the election by most counts. The Ohio accusations you've made are just that, accusations. What proof is there? The more complete aftercounts of the Floirida vote showed Gore winning. And of course under ordinary judicial standards for handling conflicts of interest, Gore would have won the Supreme Court vote as well, 4-3.

The 00 Florida votes have never been recounted completely, btw. Nor have the thugs who interrupted the original recount by threat of violence ever been arraigned.

A year or so back John Conyers put out a monograph about the flagrant Ohio fraud of '04. Even more has come out since, some in court testimony leading to convictions.

The 00 and 04 elections were marked by many large discrepancies between exit polls and recorded vote - much more significant discrepancies than have marked other elections of the modern polling age. For some reason, almost all these discrepencies favored the Republican Party candidate. The 04 election was especially noteworthy - http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen --
But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida. - - -
- - -
''When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud,'' concludes Freeman. ''The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud -- and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party.''

The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)
What I saw on TV was Norm Coleman declaring, not that there was anything odd about the vote pattern, but that "Exit polls are dead". The failure of exit polls to match the vote totals in 00, causing a revamping of the polling procedure rather than a challenge of the vote, had been repeated and made worse in 04: and the Republican spokesman's solution was to quit exit polling.

In Venezuela, the election would have been instantly recognized as having been rigged.

After Seeing John Pilger's War on Democracy, and his high opinion of Chavez, I'm disapointed.

[QUOTE=draqon;1613987]still got? and ever will. once I got my degree in bachelors and masters, I am out of this God damned country.[/QUOTE

20 years old? and you think you have the answer to everything, and that answers is Russia, but yet you had to come to America to get your education, yet another Spam, use our education system because you can't get educated at home and speak in nothing but derogatory terms of your host country. I hope they do go back to communism you deserve it.

lol

It's amazing the lack of interest there is in vote safety. We don't even meet the UN security standards for elections. It's completely outrageous.

I think I saw one mainstream media source report on the situation where Bush received more votes in some Ohio district than there were registered voters... But it never got followed up as far as I know.

[QUOTE=draqon;1613987]still got? and ever will. once I got my degree in bachelors and masters, I am out of this God damned country.[/QUOTE

20 years old? and you think you have the answer to everything, and that answers is Russia, but yet you had to come to America to get your education, yet another Spam, use our education system because you can't get educated at home and speak in nothing but derogatory terms of your host country. I hope they do go back to communism you deserve it.

I didnt choose to come to this s**t country, my mom dragged me into here. She stayed because she had a job here, and I wanted to be with her because otherwise I would have been an orphan in Russia.

Well guess you mom know better than you.

Well guess you mom know better than you.

it's my life, I decide what I want.

Then decide to love USA.

Thats true, have fun is St. Petersbug.

Thats true, have fun is St. Petersbug.

heh? St. Petersburg? I am not really into that city, too noisy for me.

Then decide to love USA.

never.

You ungratefull...USA has raised you since a little boy.

You ungratefull...USA has raised you since a little boy.

f**k USA. Once I am over in Russia I will be making ICBMS.

f**k USA.
What a horrible thing to say about a nation that you have suckled from like a piglet.

What a horrible thing to say about a nation that you have suckled from like a piglet.

heh? piglet? I am a russian nationalistic piggy, I got a communism logo stamped on my soul.

You have never lived under communism, or at least enough to remember. Where will you be going in U.S.S.R?

gulags.

You have never lived under communism, or at least enough to remember. Where will you be going in U.S.S.R?

I have places :) And yes I remember living under communism...even though it collapsed in 92-93...the system still functioned until 97'

communism sucks. those who lived through it and do not despise it remember their lives as farcical -- getting horrible infections in hospitals, beginning the day at 4am at lineups for regular things like bread, milk, toilet paper, etc., and that's in Leningrad -- the 2nd largest city. imagine how things were in villages and smaller towns.

and that's the 80's and 70's. the early decades were far FAR worse.

You have never lived under communism, or at least enough to remember. Where will you be going in U.S.S.R?
It will only get worse in coming years, I'm afraid. If you think platitude-spewing masses of idealistic kids trying to affect change through the collective power of their Che tee shirts were annoying in the 1990s, we're getting to the point where that demographic is too young to remember any of the harsh realities of communism.

we're getting to the point where that demographic is too young to remember any of the harsh realities of communism. They could always visit a Mennonite community, or a Christian monastic retreat, for a reminder.

I mull more the vanishing of any real experience of the onset of fascism in an industrial power once otherwise governed. That seems to me more worth the annoyance factor of attention, as our leaders increasingly adopt the trappings and decor and rhetoric - and policies - of the ill-omened 'tween war Axis.

communism sucks. those who lived through it and do not despise it remember their lives as farcical -- getting horrible infections in hospitals, beginning the day at 4am at lineups for regular things like bread, milk, toilet paper, etc., and that's in Leningrad -- the 2nd largest city. imagine how things were in villages and smaller towns.

and that's the 80's and 70's. the early decades were far FAR worse.

who are you to say this? Have you lived through it? Communism rules! It is the only system that is applicable to society...we exist for others, not ourselves. It is like a feeling of God or consciousness of many.

who are you to say this? Have you lived through it? Communism rules! It is the only system that is applicable to society....

If communism is so great, why has it failed in every nation that's tried it?

Baron Max

You're not supposed to mention that Baron.

You're not supposed to mention that Baron.

Ahh, so we're discussing strictly idealism here, is that it? ..where all humans love all others, and there's no bad guys anywhere in the world? ...and babies are all born with silver spoons in their mouths? ...and shit don't stink? :D

Baron Max

If communism is so great, why has it failed in every nation that's tried it?

Baron Max

says who it has failed? your western propaganda? the democratic payed of lobbyists re makers of history?! It has failed in many countries because it needs more strict rules of implementation of security of the system from outside interference. Gorbachev collapsed USSR, he has been payed of. I will personally snipe him along with the fake freedom puppet president Eltsin.

Ldpr is a new way to go! Liberal Democratic party of Russia under ultra nationalistic ideals! Drive out all immigrants!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/12/17/wrussia17.jpg

says who it has failed?

Well, name a nation that's operated under the ideals of communism and has NOT failed. Russia is NOT one of those, by the way. Russia is not far from being communist in terms of anything but name only ...and I don't think they even use the term, do they?

Baron Max

Ldpr is a new way to go! Liberal Democratic party of Russia under ultra nationalistic ideals! Drive out all immigrants!
there's ultranationalism and there's communism. 2 different ideas about different things. you can be a nationalist and capitalist, and nationalist and communist.

says who it has failed? your western propaganda?
no - reality says it failed. have looked outside your window in the past 15+ years? :P

who are you to say this? Have you lived through it? Communism rules!
i have - a little bit. but my parents and grandparents, and their friends, tell me how it was. you know how the past is nostalgic - you remember the best and forget the worst? well, they did not forget the worst. actually, they probably did, and what they remember is still nightmares. actually it's not nightmare. it's just farce how people lived.

how's "communal'naya kvartira" for you? (communal appartment) - 4 families living in 1 big apartment - 1 family per room, with no shower - you get to shower once a week at some place you have to walk to for 10 minutes. and there's only 1 sink in the whole apartment for 15-20 people to use.

my mom used to hang my reusable diapers in the kitchen (only 1 for all families) over the kitchen table that 3 other families had to use to eat. fucking LENINGRAD! 2nd largest city in the entire Soviet Union where things were actually good. this is 3rd world conditions buddy. you call that "ideal"?

how old are you? did you live through communism? or did you read about it in the newly approved (by Putin) school curriculum?

we exist for others, not ourselves. It is like a feeling of God or consciousness of many. And post-Stalinist Russia is where this will be found?

Russians may be mystics, but alchoholism and thuggery are not mystical.

I think a nearby Christian monastery, or Buddhist temple, or Mennonite community, might be more what you seek. Have you considered enlisting in the military?

And read Eric Hoffer, on your way: "The True Believer". It's a short book.

Then decide to love USA.

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, dont they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh, -CCR


Back on topic: Chavez has nationalised the TV station that criticized him without reason in the past, now, does anyone know if there are still independent tv stations there ?

i've read in a recent Maclean's issue (Canada's equivallent of Time magazine) that Hugo has created a special paramilitary force outside the regular army to protect him in case there ever was a coup. an ideological hardcore loyalist. good news eh