One trillion dollars over ten years, just in oil sales, have been stolen by unscrupulous thugs who control the three branches of government and do whatever they please with total impunity.
It is such a shame, being the latin saudis, and having brought the country to such a deplorable state.
They had a chance and they blew it, now all they're doing is robbing as much as they can while assuring themselves in power forever in order to avoid being judged by international courts for all the crimes they have committed in all these years.
More than 100,000 deaths at the hands of government-sponsored killers, more than the afghan and iraq wars together.
The Economist has great coverage of what is taking place in Venezuela. There's almost not a week that passes without Chavez closing down a TV station or taking over some private businesses because, f.ex., they raised prices after he devaluated the country's currency by half.
It's the classic socialist play carrying itself out -- the ultimate end is death and destruction. Hopefully the Venezuelans will recognize what's going on and be able to stop it.
From what I've read (I'm afraid I don't have references, and reports vary wildly, this is just my synthesis, following the news fairly closely, as I live in S America) he's doing about average. The country is seeing gains in certain areas (health expectancy, literacy), but they seem to be (within the uncertainties I listed earlier) about what you'd expect from any country that has a sudden boost in (oil related) income.
I say all that to basically explain that it's unlikely he will collapse any time soon.
He's certainly a populist leader, which I find personally distasteful. And he has little respect for free speech or democracy, which is even worse (from my POV). But I think we're also understanding that the "western model" isn't that great either (articles of evidence: (1) the recent financial fiasco; (2) China).
[Edit: I feel I am not really contributing much except uncertainty here. So here's a more decisive take: the biggest problem facing S American politics is, in my opinion, corruption. The kind of approach that Chavez uses encourages corruption and so should be resisted. On the other hand - more uncertainty - most alternatives (particularly military law - this is a big lesson from Chile) also encourage corruption. And, wow, downvoted already... some passive aggressive cunt who hasn't bothered to explain why. What a surprise...]
I was just writing a defense of your thoughtful, nuanced comment, about how preposterous it was to downvote it when the parent, which contains nothing but ra-ra-team ideology, was sitting at +6. But then I noticed the charming addendum you put at the end. Come on Andrew, please don't do that. Not only does it violate the rules and spirit of the site, it undermines everything you wrote. In fact it totally spoils it (and changes the subject into a big distraction).
Edit: PG said he didn't want to let HN go down without a fight. It's our reponsibility to fight for it too. You've been around here for a long time and made many valuable contributions (definitely including this one, if that noxious bit were excised; there are so few comments on Venezuela that aren't 100% determined by ideological agenda).
You pick a bad example. Andrew's comment was unusually thoughtful until the end bit, it was the end bit which derailed the thread, and the end bit has nothing to do with politics.
How much more shallow can you get in your analysis than pithy comments like those? Both of them are flame bait for various people and ultimately don't seem to produce productive discourse.
"And, wow, downvoted already... some passive aggressive cunt who hasn't bothered to explain why. What a surprise..."
Indeed. If you downvote someone's comment, you should at least have the balls to make a coherent reply stating what you disagree with, or upvote such an argument.
As an aside (and purely for my own interest) is that because you consider that word particularly offensive - or just because of the whole tone of that p.s?
I ask because I'm noticing that while people seem to care less and less about "fuck" in conversation they are caring more about that word.
I'd not react if someone used "fuck" as an expletive (depending on situation), but if someone called another in the discussion for "fucker", or similar.
In sum: A curse is not high class, but might pass. A general insult to someone, because they disagreed, is much worse.
(And I partly agree with the poster, if someone disagrees I'd like a motivated comment. A vote up/down is just frustrating; what can I learn? [Edit: But to vote up/down to show you're (dis)agreeing is the culture on HN, it seems. So I accept that.])
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, but afaik "cunt" is quite offensive.
you're confusing me with someone that cares. at this point, for me, voting here is for groupthink. if people want to that signal i'm not part of "the gang", fine - that's been the way it's been for most of my life. as for this thread, there are plenty more where i am not down-voted without explanations and i'll be polite to the people in those.
You wrote a reasoned discussion about a subject filled with propaganda and locked positions in your whole hemisphere; please give me people that don't care.
But, for Fuck's sake, keep a minimum of politeness -- especially in sensitive subjects like this. They are degenerated enough as they are before any keyboards are touched.
Edit: To be clear -- the f word was a bit of a joke, considering what I criticized. Enough of this, I've written all I can add.
When the oil runs out, the clow.. politicians will stop making trouble with foreign countries so they have external enemies [edit: which makes all opposition close to treason; most of the troublesome countries are oil countries today]. That is because the politicians will need to make the internal economy run well, so there is anything worth stealing for them. (Just hope they won't think they are too unpopular to keep earning and take off the velvet gloves, North Korean style.)
Chavez is the Kim Jong Il of the Western Hemisphere. Military dictator who runs his country into the ground while talking big, waving his arms around, and thinking he's relevant. It's just staggering that despite all that oil they've got, they've managed to squander most of the proceeds via corruption and mismanagement.
I have a really bad anecdote about Venezuelan. We had a guy from Venezuela on our Uni course.
Once at a party one of the girls on our course with communist leanings (an American, as it happens) says to him "don't you think it's so great what's going on in your country at the moment?"
The look on his face was awful (to this day I dont think she understands quite why he was upset)
The trouble is that we / you don't have enough context / social knowledge to extrapolate from this. If the guy is in the USA then it's likely he comes from a fairly wealthy background. And that is absolutely not going to support Chavez. S American politics cover a much wider range than American / Western politics, where you are basically choosing between Pepsi and Coke. There really are Maoists and Fascists and everything inbetween.... And also, American leftist supporters of Chavez are incredibly naive, in my experience. So this is just the kind of cultural disaster you could predict - it doesn't really tell us anything new.
I am not criticising you - just trying to explain the general problem with understanding what is happening in Venezuela. It's very had to get a good grip on. So much news is extremely polarized.
> So this is just the kind of cultural disaster you could predict - it doesn't really tell us anything new.
Oh absolutely (you've pretty much described the situation spot on). It was just a related anecdote :)
(incidentally he was fairly poor in Venezuela but had distant family in the UK who managed to pay for him to make it over to university here. The girl was generally extremely naive: but in her eyes was wordly, experienced and a bit radical. You can imagine who was more interesting to hang with - Jose is one of the people that kicked off my fascination with South America)
I had a similar experience once. The thing is, though, that a Venezuelan on an international university course almost certainly comes from the tiny elite whose interests are so opposed to Chavez that they would hate him no matter what, regardless of the interests of the country as a whole. That doesn't make the opposite opinion any truer, of course.
In the 11 years he's been in office, the murder rate in the country has increased by a factor of 4, to a staggering 140 per 100,000, the highest in the world.
Actually, it's pretty tied with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Since you imply the murder rate in Venezuela is Chavez's fault, I assume the leaders of the other countries are at fault there, too? Except none of those countries have politics in any way similar to Venezuela's...
Besides, actual dictatorships tend to have a very low rate of homicides, at least reported such.
Doh! My bad. the 140 per 100,000 rate I cited is for the capital, Caracas. For the country as a whole the rate is 54 per 100K, second highest in the world.
What's your definition of a dictator? Chavez was reelected with 2/3 of the votes, against the leading runner-up with 1/3 the votes, and numerous independent parties have failed to show evidence of the massive election fraud that would have been necessary to skew the results by that much.
I know the US thinks that it has a monopoly on what democracy means, but just because he happens to be opposed to the US does not actually make him a dictator. Comparing him to Kim Jong Il shows a massive lack of perspective.
"The 2010 OAS report also found concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy,[55] political intimidation, and "the existence of a pattern of impunity in cases of violence",[56] as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure, and "chronic problems including power blackouts, soaring crime, and a perceived lack of investment in crucial sectors".[57] The report discusses decreasing rights of those in opposition to the government and "goes into heavy detail" about control of the judiciary. It says elections are free, but the state has increasing control over media and state resources used during election campaigns, and interference with opposition elected officials.[58] According to The Washington Post, the report shows that "Chávez holds tremendous influence over other branches of government, particularly the judiciary";[55] "
edit: To make my position clear, I'm not sure if I would call Chavez a dictator right now. That depends ENTIRELY on how we define "dictator". I think he would be under some definitions, not under others.
But if we look at the direction in which he's moving, he could very well soon be a dictator under all definitions, and I certainly am glad not to be living in Venezuela right now (or that our politicians here in Canada aren't like him, despite all their faults).
I don't have much doubt that Chavez is not doing a good job running the country. I also don't doubt that he is a thug.
However, he's not a dictator, anymore than Berlusconi is a dictator. He's been democratically elected several times. Each time the election was sufficiently clean that there can be no doubt that a majority of Venezuelians voted for him.
Many dictators were first elected, and with time eroded democratic institutions enough that subsequent elections meant less and less, and in the end the country became something else than what could fairly be called a democracy.
Sounds like it could be describing Saudi Arabia. Of course, whether we treat either country as an enemy or an ally has nothing to do with any of that stuff.
It is called "realpolitik" -- to a large part, all countries let their interests go before most other considerations and they lie about it.
That doesn't make all countries equal.
(Yes, Saudi Arabia is a typical example of a country that can get away with breaking human rights, because the rest of the world needs a stable Mid East.)
'Dictator' is not a synonym for 'unelected' or even 'unpopular'. It has more to do with the leader's ability to rule arbitrarily by their own personal decree.
I think this news has it's place on HN, just as well as other news on ACTA, net-neutrality, etc.. But some comments are really inappropriate to put so much political polarity on it.
Venezuela is a country relatively "rebel" on US domination: that doesn't make it a devil, but that doesn't make it a angel either: comments on Chavez being a "dictator" seem inappropriate in this thread (what about a previous US president who cheated with voting machines then ?). Essentially, beware of not distorting the perception of things by highlighting many more such facts when they happen in Venezuela than when they happen e.g. in France or Italy promoted by major media companies and securitarian policies. Overall, think about Chomsky...
It is such a shame, being the latin saudis, and having brought the country to such a deplorable state.
They had a chance and they blew it, now all they're doing is robbing as much as they can while assuring themselves in power forever in order to avoid being judged by international courts for all the crimes they have committed in all these years.
More than 100,000 deaths at the hands of government-sponsored killers, more than the afghan and iraq wars together.
The perfect definition of Kleptocracy.