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IS CHAVEZ WELL ON HIS WAY TO BECOMING THE NEXT CASTRO?
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Zolt

Joined: 18 May 2006

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject:

- Look out! Commie! Runs away screaming and wetting himself. Seriously did your parents use Castro as a bearded substitute for whatever ogre eats disobedient children in your culture?

ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:20 pm Post subject:

Quote:

I'm sure that you'd love, say, Korea sending "peaceful support" and "financial assistance" to socialist death squads in the US, just like we do every time a Central or South American country (or any, really) gets uppity.
Also, we have tried a military coup in Venezuela under Chavez once, slick.

And that's big of you to suggest that we shouldn't bomb Venezuela into the stone age for its leader being inconvenient.

Sure, you're no neocon. You're a neolib. Worse, because you pretend you're doing people favors.

Could you please clarify? I really don't get what you are saying other than the personal attack at the end, which is neither here nor there nor any where.

DD

ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:42 pm Post subject:

Quote:

DD, let me give you some advice. You make good points but they become irrelevant when you throw in anti-us jabs that are generally not based on facts. I'm going to be somewhat of an ass and edit your post to make it sound more reasonable.

bb,

I know what you are saying and yes, it does sound like the sensible thing to do -- that is, a better way to engage diplomatically, those who think differently and have thin skins when it comes to "mother and country".

I do try to temper things but what is correct is correct and you can't talk about what should be done regarding Chavez without mentioning past wrongdoings. We did a whole thread on this previously and I do believe the charges labelled at the U.S. admin. I believe them based on priors, as any judge would and also the characters involved and the reportage.

But I do understand people's sensibilities and I would say in my defense, I don't generalize about American people, just much of their foreign policy and also some aspects of their society (prisons/policing , extremism in the sense of intolerance and general lack of world view). I would do the same about any other country, will critique. Unfortunately, America at this present time, has interests and ambitions everywhere and also, much of the world media is about America, so my awareness like so many others, atuned in that direction.......you critique what you are a part of......

Now about those Chinese shooting those Tibetans....

DD

Sincinnatislink

Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Location: Top secret.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:05 am Post subject:

ddeubel wrote:

Quote:

Could you please clarify? I really don't get what you are saying other than the personal attack at the end, which is neither here nor there nor any where.

DD

What I am saying is that you are encouraging one or more of a few unethical things I can imagine described as peaceful support or financial assistance.
By most definitions, every time the US has funded paramilitary groups (eg. The Nicaraguan Contras) those groups have technically only received financial assistance from the US.
And peaceful support to anti-government forces could easily be sanctions like those toward Cuba, which hurt the Cuban people more than their pinko leadership, and what happened with UN sanctions toward Iraq, and so on. Sanctions generally don't hurt the dictators. Kim Jong-Il has to try a little harder to get his Cognac. I'd be more worried about, say, babies getting their mmrs or making agriculture sustainable. (*political cred: did mission work with the people who pick citrus grown by absolutely unmaintainable plans for pennies a day a few years ago*) Chavez and his ilk have reasons to do this. They rely entirely on popular support for power. Rather than get military support from the US to beat his constituents into servitude, he appears to (*gasp*) have a populace willing to give him an astounding degree of power.

That's all. It's selective morality, and pretty glaring examples at that.

Sincinnatislink

Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Location: Top secret.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:10 am Post subject:

BJWD wrote:

Let them fail, and buy oil from Alberta. When the nations is emerging from a nightmare of totalitarian socialist madness, very kindly say "I told you so" to every che-shirt wearing fool you have ever met.

It is not our place to meddle. Let them fail.

Mencken said it best.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

So you are aware that you live under a government that works on the exact same ideological underpinnings as those "socialist dictatorships," right? The United States is not meaningfully democratic, and was designed to be not democratic whatsoever. Do your homework, just read the first 10 Federalist Papers or so.
I am not saying Chavez is all that and a bag 'o consensus-based government, but he at least seems to be making decisions that an overwhelming majority of his people like.
Is that totalitarian?

And are you supporting democracy or not?

stevemcgarrett

Joined: 24 Mar 2006

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:25 am Post subject:

So you're French, Zolt? Say no more. It explains your fascination with communism and socialism in all its incarnations. But I bet you wouldn't for a moment want to live under Castro's heel. No, that's for others to do; your job is to enable. Now go OD on a reading of that lunatic Foucault. By the way, is it possible for Chirac to speak without using his hands? Oh, and good luck taming your Algerian immigrants.

thepeel

Joined: 08 Aug 2004

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:35 am Post subject:

Sincinnatislink wrote:

BJWD wrote:

What the hell are you talking about?

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:56 am Post subject:

ddeubel wrote:

...and I do believe the charges labelled at the U.S. admin. I believe them based on priors, as any judge would and also the characters involved and the reportage.

By association? Funny.

No, I do not believe that "any judge" would, lacking direct evidence, convinct a defendant for a specific set of allegations based on "priors" or because defendant may have done something else that the judge does not like.

You are bringing this coup up again. So I ask you to help me see what you are seeing, again: how do you know for certain that Washington orchestrated this coup d'etat. And "the Bay of Pigs" is insufficient.

I think, Ddeubel, that you simply lack any understanding of Caribbean politics. As ignorant of ground conditions there as anyone can be.

Guatemalan President Juan Jose Arevalo, to cite but one example, survived over twenty coup attempts between 1944 and 1950. Would you tell us that the United States was behind them? Do you have any idea how many people plotted against Arevalo and Arbenz? This was not unique in the Caribbean Basin.

Why, then, is it so impossible for you to imagine that others many be plotting against Chavez wholly independently of the United States?

But, in any case, tell me this: was America behind Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz's backing Jose Figueres's overthrowing Costa Rica's constitutionally-elected government in the late 1940s?

Critically evaluating American foreign policy is one thing, Ddeubel. But adopting an antiAmerican, guilty-until-proven-innocent, U.S.-centric posture is not. Do you truly lack self-consciousness so deeply that you cannot see this in your own position...?

Last edited by Gopher on Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

Sincinnatislink

Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Location: Top secret.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:06 am Post subject:

Later. Anyone who isn't willing to see the socialist elements of Western Democracy is not worth my time.

sundubuman

Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:28 am Post subject:

BJWD wrote:

But the problem with this scenario is that everytime a pasty self-righteous canadian plops himself down on a beach in cuba, alonside european fellow travellers, they are "meddling"......

Propping up a regime which affords no political, geographic (mobility) or economic freedom to its people........extending the "nightmare of totalitarian socialist madness" one c o c k t a i l at a time.......

all the while celebrating their "freedom" to trvel to Cuba....unlike those Americans......

ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:29 pm Post subject:

Quote:

You are bringing this coup up again. So I ask you to help me see what you are seeing, again: how do you know for certain that Washington orchestrated this coup d'etat. And "the Bay of Pigs" is insufficient.

Gopher, we've been there and done that. Go revisit that thread and make it into your own kind of holy icon.

All I am saying is that in my belief, it is beyond doubt that there was U.S. involvement, sympathy in the coup attempt and other activities. No, the U.S. govt is not responsible for everything that goes "wrong" in Latin America. Far from it and yes, you are right that too often, many "cry wolf, cry, gringo" too much. But that doesn't sway me from my opinion after much reading of the evidence, that the U.S. admin, knowingly or through various agencies, stirred the pot strongly in Venezuela.

As for your claims;

Quote:

I think, Ddeubel, that you simply lack any understanding of Caribbean politics. As ignorant of ground conditions there as anyone can be.

First, they really add nothing to the debate and only are a means of you of once more parading your "emperor's new clothes" and saying to yourself, I know and everyone is ignorant.

Second, I don't understand everything. Neither do you. But I try to keep informed, read widely and am aware of the cultural backdrop and history. But in your sense of being an academic -- I am ignorant. But I've read enough of Fuentes, Naipal, Marquez (his journalism), Llosa, Borges (letters and journalism) and even some of the Venezuelan Gallagos.
I don't profess to know everything but I have things to add to the debate. I find these authors and others like them, the best way to gain knowledge of a community -- not as you would believe, through leafing through political committee minutes and history written by gringo academics, mostly interested in academic oneupmanship.

For an understanding of "Caribbean politics", I'd recommend the movie "The Agronomist". Fascinating and this is one of my fav. political / historical movies...... Has anyone else seen it?

DD

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:48 pm Post subject:

ddeubel wrote:

All I am saying is that in my belief...

LOL, Ddeubel: you are free to believe whatever you like. People on this board clearly believe many things. Make a provable/disprovable factual assertion, however, and I and anyone else has every right to ask you to produce your evidence. And you have no evidence to back up your assertions in this particular case. None.

Your replies to date have centered around past events like the Bay of Pigs and your mistrusting and disliking the W. Bush Administration, dramatically punctuated by conspiracy-theory-style "suspicious circumstances." You also talk about CIA not only as if it were a monolith, but a static one at that -- not having changed since April 1961. You studiously ignore, then, not only Latin American ground conditions but American ones as well. Yours are ideologically-driven conclusions, no more no less. And you do not merely assert. But rather you lecture and assert "beyond doubt."

Believe whatever you wish, then. But please do not ever sit on my jury, Ddeubel.

And, oh yeah, anyone interested in Caribbean politics ought to indeed look into some of the "magical realism" literature our friend cites, above. They also ought to look at films. Why not? Fuentes, Garcia Marquez, and Vargas Llosa, fascinate me, too.

But one difference between Ddeubel and me is that I get my information on actual ground conditions from professional historians and political scientists -- Americans like Gleijeses, LaFeber, Loveman, Sigmund, or Stern; and Latin Americans like Fermandois, to cite but a few examples -- and not in Gallagos and the others' world of Yanquiphobia and flying carpets...

thepeel

Joined: 08 Aug 2004

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:22 pm Post subject:

Sincinnatislink wrote:

Later. Anyone who isn't willing to see the socialist elements of Western Democracy is not worth my time.

Are you speaking of me?

ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:20 pm Post subject:

Quote:

And, oh yeah, anyone interested in Caribbean politics ought to indeed look into some of the "magical realism" literature our friend cites, above

Gopher, once again you show me you wear know clothes, as an emperor of old.....

I really thought first of all, that you would catch on that I pointed to these writer's academic and journalistic writings. I thought I made that clear. (I did leave a few clues).

Marquez, Fuentes and Llosa as well as Borges, all wrote amazing things regarding the politics of their society and the wider world. Not just magical realism and "flying carpets". If you understood anything about the literary tradition of the region, you would know that, in a very refreshing sense, literature is not divorced from politics and those who are deemed men of letters, are men who are actively part of the political community and debate. Valued by the people.

What I like about latin America, those of "Kulture" (meaning not just the opera and tea parties), are very aware, very educated and versed in the political world. Though I detest at times this "borderless" region and how many latin American writers (such as Neruda and also Prada and his detestable Marxist writings) throw out the baby and bath water with their ideological rhetoric), I gain invaluable insight from their political knowledge and writings.

I would recommend Llosa's book of essays, Making Waves. Llosa, as are many "magic realists", is a Phd and also a vocal participant in the national political scene. You might also try his Conversations in the Cathedral, for a full accounting of how religion melds with politics.

In short, you can stay with your gringo historians who paint by numbers. I prefer those with a nose and who live of the mind, not ONLY facts and footnotes.......but I restate my case. You have little understanding of the blending of literature and politics / journalism in the region. You still remind me of the kid in my 7th grade at the back, thinking he is so smart because he'd 5 pages ahead of the class in his New America reader.

DD

Sincinnatislink

Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Location: Top secret.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject:

BJWD wrote:

Sincinnatislink wrote:

Later. Anyone who isn't willing to see the socialist elements of Western Democracy is not worth my time.

Are you speaking of me?

Well, do you believe that the difference between so-called "Socialist" governments, and "Western Democracies" is one of degree or one of varying bases?

I'm not speaking about anyone in particular. I see a trend in how people talk on here, and I'm curious. It might help the discussion.

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