Hugo Chavez begins campaign for Social Justice

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<p>"What I’m arguing is that Chavez is concerned about the people, and nothing but the people.</p>

<p>We’re talking about a guy who’s demonstrated a serious interest in maintaining his authority, for better or for worse. I’m always cautious around powermongers. "</p>

<p>Then our administration must scare the hell out of ya. Deficeit what deficeit? I waiting for jesus and the rapture…::):):slight_smile: :)</p>

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<p>At least with our administration, you know they’re out in a couple of years.</p>

<p>Chavez, it seems, will either extend his rule indefinitely, rewrite the constitution, or finish the coup he started in 1992.</p>

<p>I mean, the guy tried to overthrow the government he’s currently the executive of. Isn’t this fishy to anyone else?</p>

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<p>"Chavez, it seems, will either extend his rule indefinitely, rewrite the constitution, or finish the coup he started in 1992.</p>

<p>I mean, the guy tried to overthrow the government he’s currently the executive of. Isn’t this fishy to anyone else? "</p>

<p>Absolutely. Stinks to high heaven. But, I don’t want my government to get too involved until if your theories proove themselves to be correct. Then we can offer assistance. Say in a decade or two.</p>

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<p>“There is more than one way to deal with states that do things that run contrary to what the international community wants.”</p>

<p>I’m currently objecting the way you implied in that message by suggesting Chavez should be like Saddam. By the way, what is the international community for you? American conservatives? If there were a tiny bit of agreement in this world, “international community” would make sense.</p>

<p>“The rules of domestic politics don’t apply internationally. The US, or China, or India, or the UK, or any state telling another state to “do X, Y, and Z” is not a form of dictatorship. It’s international affairs.”</p>

<p>In a globalized world there is room for the term “global dictatorship”. There is no other hard word for that yet, if words matter. I just need to give a stronger name to those “international affairs”; why would I want to use such an ambiguous term for an specific use? It could mean anything…By the way, seems I didn’t coin the term “Global dictatorship”. Guess who did…</p>

<p><a href=“Alex Jones' Endgame”>Alex Jones' Endgame;

<p>Don’t think I like Chavez; I don’t at all.</p>

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<p>I think the international community is usually the UNSC or some approximation thereof. </p>

<p>Of course, it may be a more limited sample, especially when China and Russia have some interest that runs counter to ours. But international relations is so complicated. </p>

<p>Oh man, your link. The very term “global dictatorship” is just so silly. We have a word already that encapsulates the US’s role: hegemon. But why not make up a new, more emotional word when the academic one is so sterile?</p>

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<p>Meh. I say let the Venezuelans sort it out. If we want, we can always place sanctions. </p>

<p>And yes, I know how “effective” sanctions are.</p>

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<p>China and Taiwan is more about unifying a country, similar to the Civil War. I’ve never heard anyone mention that China is forcing North Korea to stay a communist country either.</p>

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<p>Don’t forget that our talk revolved around the world “dictatorship”. And yes, hegemon and hegemony are so trite; that’s why, like a good leftist, I’m full of sappy, irrelevant words like dictator, war, children dying, poor countries, gap, etc. I’m sure to convince a lot of people this way, go figure.</p>

<p>I do think hegemony is against my ideals, which are based on a good/evil concept as subjective as anyone else’s. I only consider this concept convenient, and not ultimate or real, so I feel it’s empty to debate from the ideals themselves. Besides that, I must admit that I felt a bit offended as a South American.</p>

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<p>What about when they sent hundreds of thousands of troops into the peninsula in the 50s? They weren’t trying to spread communism by the bayonet?</p>

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<p>The problem with the term is that it’s a weak description of the role that a hegemon plays. </p>

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<p>Relativism is the genocide’s best friend…</p>

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<p>That’s fine. I do find it odd that you aren’t more offended by a pseudo-dictator, though…</p>

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<p>EDITED: This quoted line didn’t sound like Ari, and he’s corrected it below, so I’ve deleted my content here.</p>

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<p>I meant-- and I agree that I articulated this poorly-- what I’m arguing against is the idea that Chavez is concerned about the people, and nothing but the people.</p>

<p>Good prose is very important, everybody.</p>

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<p>Well, all you have is China trying to protect its border.
However we destroyed democracies in : Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, South Vietnam,the list goes on and on… Where do you get my signed up for this system?</p>

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<p>What about the Soviet Union attempting to bring down Afghanistan?</p>

<p>How about the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland? </p>

<p>Umm, we destroyed a democracy in South Vietnam? What democracy? And how did Chinese support for the Viet Cong somehow do anything better?</p>

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<p>The U.S. initiated the Afghan war if you look at a timeline. IMO, to back American foreign policy by mentioning Afghhanistan is probably not the best technique. That’s kind of where he went and emblazoned Islamic fundementalism as a bulwarl against communism. Then we complain that they are such a strong presence. Who would have known?!</p>

<pre><code> Sorry if I misspoke about S. Viet. I meant that we took their self-determination from them as Ngo Diem wanted to reconciliate with the North Vietnames but the CIA went and killed Diem on JFK’s orders. Later Kennedy was killed. Talking about karma…

The USSR was trying to maintain its domain, its surroundings. Their record of overthrowing democracies comes nowhere close to ours.

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<p>By the way, I hope you can play the role of a moderator and an impassioned debater at the same time correctly. Look I am not trying to have a series of "Kitchen Debates " with you, but the fact is there are many ways to create a strong industrial base. America and much of Western Europe chose to do that by exploiting and devasting other countries.</p>

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<p>Another issue of endogenaity rears its head. Why didn’t the USSR overthrow more governments? Was it because it didn’t want to, or because it couldn’t?</p>

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<p>Such a loaded statement. For one, the Soviet Union did it through the same means-- they just did it in Eastern Europe.</p>

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<p>Right…by overthrowing sovereign nations. This is better because they only did it to their neighbors?</p>

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<p>What always bugs me about these debates is how quickly the Soviets and Maoists are apologized for.</p>

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<p>Well ok , lets look at Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. They are all shipped off and human trafficked as prostitues and now they beg the Russians for the oil. It seems as if they benefited from the Union more than the Russians did.</p>

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<p>I am not defending the USSR but lets look at even before the creation of the Socialist Bloc. THE US, UK, and other European interests had already colonized the world. One good side effect of WWII and the German siege is that it destroyed the UK and France to an extent they could not hold its colonies anymore. Whether or not others could have done it gets you nowhere. The fact remains that we created our system by colonizing , the White Man’s Burdens, remember.</p>

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<p>Bless Wikipedia to see the extent of the colonization, click here. <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Colonisation2.gif[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Colonisation2.gif&lt;/a&gt;
or here </p>

<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Colonisation2.gif[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Colonisation2.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;