It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
This makes no sense until one considers that the bond holders might be regime insiders. Venezuela is a state structured to maximise the transfer of wealth from the many to the few.
Shockingly, as recently as 2004 Venezuela boasted fair elections [3]. The degree to which Venezuelans are to blame for their predicament (and the related probability that they will recreate it in spite of aid) is a difficult moral question.
[1] https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/venezuela-new-roadblock-re...
[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-venezuela-602c...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum...
I suppose outsiders feel more or less justified in meddling depending on how much "it's their own damned fault" ?
Venezuelan elections have never been fair - there is a lot of vote rigging from all sides
The funny thing is, at that time, Venezuela was known to have suffered quite a decline from it's heights in the late 70s and early 80s when it was on the cusp of being a 1st world country thanks to the oil boom and (relatively) smart investment in infrastructure.
Even back then they had price controls, where the prices of things were printed on the packaging of all products.
It's always a shame when a country suffers, and it's particularly sad to me because I know the country well, and there are a lot of great things to celebrate about the country.
Partisan fanatics who breathlessly wait for the total victory of their side would do well to remember this.
Put more power into the hands of the common people and you end up with someone like Trump as a nominee.
Don't you think in a weaker country with more classism like Venezuela, that if a Trump were elected, that you'd end up with something like this?
The majority can turn a democracy into a dictatorship.
In many "classless", free-market capitalistic societies (and a bunch of similar ones), society ends up approximating social class by the logarithm of the wealth of the person. In these cases "liberty and equality" really mean "lack of government interference in use of wealth", which ultimately translates to government restraint on social status to influence society for your own benefit.
In cases where there's no special laws targeting the wealthy, you essentially have a feudalistic society without any formalized duty of or decorum from the higher classes to the lower classes, which ultimately leads to an exploitative and abusive relationship.
As with many cases in politics, the lack of an explicit structure merely means a more abusive invisible structure.
The further argument is that this is why we should have laws which target the wealthy to provide civic funding/service, eg, higher taxes above say, $250k/yr. That allowing the dynamic class assignment of free-market economies, but formalizing the duty of the higher classes to provide for those under them, provides for the strongest and most resilient societies. Which is generally speaking what the data shows.
Similar arguments can be made about why you should have laws which provide damages if you buy a newspaper and lie about your business rivals molesting kids.
I'd probably phrase it as the US leftwing and rightwing have different importances placed on different kinds of libterties a person can have and different notions of equality.
Gun rights, for the left, are an issue of liberty; while abortion, for the right, is a matter of equality.
Too often in American politics, we pretend that what are orthogonal axes are different choices in a dilemma. Here I think we have an instance of that: liberty and equality are related but mostly orthogonal groupings of several related concepts, the preference of which can lead to radically different notions of "equality" or "liberty".
That's what makes politics hard: the other guy wants liberty too, but he understands that in a fundamentally different way than you.
By 'this' I mean the idea that the Left and the Right have different experiences of what is moral.
My issue with politics is that I think we need to extricate it from morality. Like we have separation of Church and State a la Secular Society, we need amoral politics.
See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?.... It speaks a lot about market dominant ethnic minorities. The Chinese and the Jews are the target of a lot of these attacks.
If you're filipino, and ethnic filipino, it's easy for a populist government to incite economic confiscation and persecution of the ethnic group that tends to hold all the money, which happens to be the Chinese in the Phillipines.
Same thing happened in Venezuela. "All the rich people have the money! Let's go take it back! They must have cheated us somehow! Nationalize the factories."
This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people".
Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than financial purposes. They usually end in either a referendum or revolt when all the money goes away and there are no other exits. That's what Venezuela is doing right now.
And it's also quite interesting that your response is "Oh yeah? Well the right wing does it too." What's your point?
Maybe it does, and they should be strung up by the thumbs as well. We're talking about left-wing governments who believe in central control of methods of production.
I'm curious. Do you have a specimen in mind?
[p.s.]
> right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven
And I question this as well. The ideological basis of right-wing is precisely that the natural order of things is a rigid & hierarchical and that such hierarchies are by nature more stable.
And anywho, minus the superficial comrade this and people's soviet that, what was the difference between Stalinist Soviet Union and some right wing system with a generalisimo on top?
The power went fairly smoothly from a military dictatorship to a democratically elected government.
Sure the parallel isn't perfect - Taiwan and South Korea were on a war footing against communist rump states. However, the generals never claimed any particular moral high ground or rights.
I patiently await for you to point me to a cite that documents that the South Korean/Taiwanese military justified their rule because they asserted the right to dress up in military uniforms and lord it over the rest of the population.
Most enterprise was limited to Park's inner circle (which became the chaebol), allowing him to have a planned economy that finally surpassed North Korea's. Labor rights were nonexistent, journalists and other writers frequently became political prisoners, and travel outside the country was not allowed. The only thing that can be convincingly said to be better (holding Western liberal democracy as best) than in North Korea is the GDP, whether that meant much to the average citizen is up for debate since North Korea remains opaque. And it surely would have carried on if not for Park's assassination, which left no obvious successor. The new constitution (remember, Yusin made sure that only Park Chung-hee could be president) had a term limit on the new president, Chun Doo-hwan, to appease democratization activists who had been incensed by the Gwangju (5/18) massacre, the murder of hundreds or thousands of people for the crime of living in a restive province. When Chun's term ended, violent protests, this time in Seoul, forced his successor to make the 6/29 Declaration, a complete capitulation to the democratization activists.
That was long...point is, South Korea's military dictators did claim a democratic mandate, justifying oppression as the only way to economic prosperity (sound familiar?). After Park Chung-hee, they sought to appease democratization activists. Despite that effort, the transition was quite messy, not "fairly smooth": between 200 and 2000 protestors were killed in one week in 1980, and democracy was finally won through violent protests in the streets of Seoul in 1987.
How is that even a logically coherent sentence...
Basically authoritarian governments want something, and don't really care what else happens as long as they get what they want. Fanatics want to run everything.
There isn't a meaningful spectrum that has "authoritarian" on one side and "communitarian" on the other. One is a "how" and the other a "why".
WTF? Hitler definitely said he did what he did for the good of the German people (okay. not the Jewish people or handicapped people, but the people that mattered)
https://www.quora.com/Was-Hitlers-Nazi-party-left-wing-or-ri...
Of course this probably just shows that left vs right is really one dimensional, and politics is bigger then one dimension.
Again with "trying to use the word socialist without a clear definition is not making your argument any more credible."
For instance: "All citizens must have equal rights and obligations", "Abolition of unearned (work & labor)income. Breaking of rent slavery", "Nationalization of all associated industries","Profit sharing of heavy industries","Expansion on a large scale of old age welfare","Provision of a law for free expropriation of land for the purpose of public utility". "Enabling of every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education", "State to support all outstanding intellectually gifted children".
Fascism does not mean much when it comes to spectrum and can be compared to anything as long as the dictator's mood was right. It essence it believed in the strength of one man to take the nation forward.
For Nazism, you will see a mishmash of economic policy that slants a little towards the right economically as compared to Mussolini's fascism that leaned a little towards the left - he was part of the socialism movement before obvious disgruntlement.
It's not useful to compare against something defined by the whims of one man.
Like, North Korea even calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
How credible would I sound talking about a right-wing intellectual elite after referencing something Ann Coulter had said? Because that's who Michael Moore is: the Ann Coulter of the left.
Both have supported Chavez and therefore I have mentioned both "in the same breath".
There is a raise of leftists (at least in speech because in substance from Sanders to Corbyn there so much "left", rather a mild "right")
So, not exactly just a dude. Michael Moore represents a growing anti-capitalist ideology in America, and when their socialist experiments fail it should be noted.
From Michael Moore's website: "I first endorsed Bernie Sanders for public office in 1990 when he, as mayor of Burlington, VT, asked me to come up there and hold a rally for him in his run to become Vermont’s congressman."
This is an extremely silly attempt to salvage a hopeless argument that Michael Moore is a meaningful data point.
1 formOfGovernmentX - ie democracy, socialism, dictatorship, etc 2 On america's shit list
?
In 10 years we'll probably find out that the CIA orchestrated this whole fiasco. I mean, that's pretty much the story of, like, every thing that ever goes wrong in every country. Or near enough. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic, but yeah c'mon.
All those demonstrations by the so-called opposition were not by accident. On the contrary, they were well orchestrated. The same stunt we tried to pull off in Cuba just late last year.
Fortunately for Cubans, they arrested the lead front man, who was operating under the guide of a member of a Jewish religious group.
If the CIA had staged a coup Chavez would have been killed when he was captured. They're not amateurs.
And Eva Golinger makes a lot of accusations in her book that are literally crazy, particularly surrounding Chavez's death.
Jesus, I'm tired of american military acting world police pretty much everywhere. I do not like dictatorships, but bombing people into democracy rarely works, as northern Iraq is an excellent example of.
Something like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12766554
N.Korea: Nations that have had "second-in-command" officials "eaten alive by... hungry dogs" for "attempting to overthrow the state" in the last 3 years won't be listed on my top ten stable countries.
More interesting questions include whether Turkey or Saudi are dictatorships.
Did I just miss an attempt at sarcasm, here?
That was her response to a dig about why we're not pushing for democracy in Saudi Arabia. It was her way of saying they don't need democracy.
I remember how ten years ago people on my university (in a Western country) were trying to convince me that Chavez's version of Socialism is the future for humanity. And when he came to give a speech he was celebrated like a pop star.
Pinochet won a referendum in 1980 to stay in power. It may have been manipulated, but judging by the number of people I've met longing for the days of Pinochet, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a true majority supporting him. People told me variants of "He kept the trains running on time".
There are, after all, a lot of communist revolutions that turned into complete bloodbaths once the ruling party consolidated its power.
Or the United States in the early 20th Century. Grapes of Wrath and all that.
I think this is a perfect description of capitalist countries, including the US. Of course, they try to give people thousands of perceived options, like what color of car to buy, but in the end everyone needs to abide by rules that are increasingly more coercive.
US citizens, esp those under so called middle class, rank worse than most other western countries. Ya know all those Eurpean socialist ones.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/08/us-is-doing-be...
In the case of Venezuela, the late Chávez and his friends stole every petro-dollar they could laid their hands on. Obviously, they also made huge public spendings, something that will naturally give a sense of prosperity and economic development, and make them very popular; yet, that public spending was not investment per-se that could later generate wealth. The Bible puts it quite clear: don't give them fish, teach them how to fish.
Now the oil money is gone so is the fake bonanza. Maduro has to stay in power in order to keep himself and his buddies out of jail.
Well, nice knowing ya
I wonder how a world without main stream media would look like... Would it be a better place? So much negativity, hidden agenda, pay for play, etc. is present, that one would probably be better off staying uninformed, than reading articles with God knows what agenda.
Given the choice of getting my reporting from either pseudonymous posters writing on random blogs, or professional journalists who write under their own name, abide by an ethics code, and are supported by a publishing organization that includes editors and fact checkers -- well, I'll rather pay for the latter in any world.
They are all quiet now and will surely soon claim that things went wrong there and misrepresent the original intents of the "revolution".
It's time to recognize that, once again, socialism resulted in the same results that it has always achieved: hunger, death, lost freedom. And this is not because "things went wrong". It's by design.
Chile, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, they all had people who got "disappeared" but all their citizens are currently fed, which means it's fairly possible to switch out of that mindset somehow.
The only left wing country I can think of that led its economy to recovery is China. Other than that, Venezuela, DPRK, Argentina, and Brazil don't seem to be doing so well.
It was once used enthusiastically by the Great and the Good to describe Venezuela. Venezuelan leaders still use it freely to describe their policy.
Recently though, the intelligentsia has become reluctant to attribute Venezuela as Socialist, leaving the matter conspicuously ambiguous with much discussion of oil prices mumble mumble. Thankfully our thought leaders have come to the rescue and solved this problem by declaring Venezuela a Dictatorship, so we no longer need to step around the precious S word.
Whew.
Thing is, other factors, foreign support/interference, wars, corruption have more of an impact than left/right posturing of governments.
Few would praise the Union of Myanmar, for instance, despite its hermetic demeanor towards the rest of the world.
I'm choosing my words carefully when I say this was the worst instance of the USA invading another country. Gulf War 1 was justified, if any war can be justified --- you don't get a much clearer casus belli than invading and annexing an ally. Gulf War 2 was a disaster of world-historical proportions.
Honduras on the other hand had an elected president. Obama bankrolled his generals, who overthrew him in a coup in 2009, and then he continued bankrolling them. Where are the US newspaper headlines about the Honduran dictatorship? The Organization of American States, with the exception of the US, is who was condemning this.
Insofar as Venezuela's oil business doing badly...what country is the the energy business doing well in? Fracking and North Dakotan energy businesses are going bankrupt left and right, which is said to be the fault of Arabian oil flows, but when Venezuela's economy suffers from the same thing it's said to be due to mismanagement or whatever nonsense.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos has his newspaper spin things in the interests of American billionaires, what a shock. The majority of Venezuelans don't give a damn what the yanquis think, they can just look to what they did to Honduras, a real dictatorship, seven years ago, and what they're still doing.
Americans loooove to get up and pontificate in some kind of imperial self-satisfaction. Like how the Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen would overthrow Afghanistan's secular government in the 1980s with America's arms, money and blessing. Kind of hit Americans in the ass when they strung Arabia with military bases, causing a response of a plane flying through the Pentagon from those guys they bankrolled in the 1980s like bin Laden. Blowback from America's imperial pretensions.
This isn't what socialism is supposed to look like.
As for the rich: the old rich certainly are poorer, and the old middle class seems to be sinking below poverty line by international metrics... But don't forget that there is a new class of rich people in Venezuela, as the leading party's inner circle has accumulated wealth. Even North Korea has its rich people despite its extreme Stalinist interpretation of socialism.
The GDP has tripled, yet the average citizen's health and purchasing power are worse in the same time period. Where is the money? What kind of socialism are they building when even poor stagnating Cuba manages to look like a positive example?
The Socialist Fairy Tale Ending.
Now, I've never been to Venezuela, but weren't they running out of toilet paper, bread, and butter, earlier this year? Or is that just how the Western Media is spinning it so we all fear Socialism, while on the ground forced asset seizure by the state is paradise realised?
Where did you read this? Wikipedia tells a very different story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_constitutional_c...
The OAS vote suspending Honduras from the organization was unanimous.. including the US.
The US and Costa Rica also negotiated with Honduras to have Zelaya reinstated (san jose accord).
If the supreme court of Honduras issues an arrest warrant for the president.. in what way is that the fault of the US? Surely you're not suggesting some kind of grand conspiracy involving the US, the Honduras supreme court, Honduras military, multiple OAS members and Costa Rica... all working together to remove the president of Honduras just so that 6 months later they could hold an new election and continue their democracy? That would be a bit crazy.
It's official: Washington Post declares Venezuela a dictatorship on a monthly basis for past 17 years, is now openly encouraging a(nother) coup.
At least the editorial isn't written by Donald Rumsfeld, like it was in 2007[1].
"[..]a relatively large, relatively sophisticated major oil producer just three hours’ flying time from the United States has just become the second all-out, no-more-elections dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere."
Seems like a bit of a hysterical speculation based on the judicial rejection of a recall referendum between elections.
I realize that the opposition placed a lot of their hopes of turning over the results of the last election on this, but just because their plan failed doesn't mean democracy has ended. And anyway, they've clearly fallen to plan B, the same plan for if the referendum was defeated, to get the US to help with another coup. Clinton has probably indicated that she's into it. She loves that sort of thing.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11...