Rule by Decree Passed for (Hugo) Chavez

Page 1 of 2 [ 19 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

20 Jan 2007, 12:03 pm

From the BBC:

Quote:
Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months.

President Hugo Chavez says he wants "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December.

The bill allowing him to enact laws by decree is expected to win final approval easily in the assembly on its second reading on Tuesday.

Venezuela's political opposition has no representation in the National Assembly since it boycotted elections in 2005.


The rest of the article is available here (link).



hyperbolic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,869

20 Jan 2007, 1:26 pm

Quote:
Venezuela's political opposition has no representation in the National Assembly since it boycotted elections in 2005.


No offense to them, but Chavez's opposition have in some ways brought this upon themselves, with their continuing to look like upperclass bigwigs and rejecting everything about Chavez instead of working with Chavez on shared common ground.



Gamester
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Nov 2006
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,935
Location: Newberg, OR

20 Jan 2007, 5:19 pm

and we can't assassinate him?


_________________
I want peace for all. Simple yet elegant.


peebo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Mar 2006
Age: 49
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,624
Location: scotland

21 Jan 2007, 7:07 pm

apparently he thinks you are already trying to...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Mar16.html


_________________
?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

22 Jan 2007, 12:01 pm

I don't think ordering the assassination of Hugo Chavez, at this point, would be very smart. The backlash would be immense as the information would almost certainly leak out.

Quote:
Last week, Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and prominent Bush supporter in south Florida, asserted in an interview with Miami's Channel 22 that the administration has "contingency plans."


This person obviously is not in on any active operations otherwise he would not be speaking so openly on television. The CIA wasn't what it was it was, and doesn't have the capabilities it had, in the 1960s.



peebo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Mar 2006
Age: 49
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,624
Location: scotland

22 Jan 2007, 12:10 pm

jimservo wrote:
The CIA wasn't what it was it was, and doesn't have the capabilities it had, in the 1960s.


this is, if true, certainly a good thing, no?


_________________
?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


hyperbolic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,869

22 Jan 2007, 4:45 pm

I wanted to go see Good Will Hunting (a movie about the early days of the CIA and one of their top agents) last night but decided the money would be better spent elsewhere.

I've heard the CIA is not as well off as they used to be.

But if they are like the FBI, the police, or firefighters, they may have a strong sense of fraternity. When a cop gets killed, for example, the police sometimes go above an beyond, it seems, what they would do for a non-cop who gets killed, and they may not even be conscious of it. But perhaps this guy formerly in the CIA has some inside knowledge from members still on the inside, if the CIA has a fraternity of its members that may occasionally result in the exchange of information with former CIA members.



jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

22 Jan 2007, 8:11 pm

The Hollywood movies (I think you mean "The Good Shepard") are often filled with inaccurate information to suit the makers personal politics.

peebo wrote:
this is, if true, certainly a good thing, no?


It depends how you look at it. The CIA had it's share of abuses (technically, as a legal question, the OSS broke the law too on occasion to beat the Nazis) in before Frank Church and his committee essentially ripped much of it's effective foreign intelligence and subversive operations away in the middle of the Cold War. Unfortunately, the KGB, and it's sister agencies in eastern Europe weren't as kind as to oblige and return the favor.

Due to this fact the entire organization (which was created by WWII spy master Bill Donovan, not the fictionalized "Bill Sullivan" in the De Niro flick) had to rebuilds it's intelligence abilities. Some agents had actually been killed due to leaks from the committee itself. Additionally, the committee forced the committee to stop dealing with anyone who was believed to be murderer or had questionable human rights background (because all spies tend to have clean records?). This meant names were dropped off the register. It also meant that it was much more difficult to say, try to place pay some terrorist inside al-Qaida in the days before 9/11 in an effort to get Bin Laden killed off.



amerikasend
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jan 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 404
Location: South Africa

22 Jan 2007, 8:30 pm

Hugo Chavez is pretty interesting. Although, I don't know much about him.

Isn't the CIA still considered the 'Cocaine Importing Agency'?



Hoorahville
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 236

22 Jan 2007, 8:55 pm

I've always felt a benevolent dictator would do most countries a lot of good.

Chavez doesn't quite seem to be fitting the bill though.



jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

22 Jan 2007, 9:05 pm

amerikasend wrote:
Isn't the CIA still considered the 'Cocaine Importing Agency'?


Such an accusation should be followed by evidence.

Hoorahville wrote:
I've always felt a benevolent dictator would do most countries a lot of good.


Please name some benevolent dictators that you think have done a lot of good.



Hoorahville
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 236

22 Jan 2007, 9:12 pm

Anyone that's classified as a benevolent dictator would have to in fact done a lot of good, otherwise he'd have just been a dictator. =)

Most of the ones that immediately come to mind are from more ancient times though.

Does the idea of one person in charge of everything bother you?? It seems odd you'd ask me to list off names, and it was hardly my intention to poke you with the proverbial stick.



jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

22 Jan 2007, 9:44 pm

Hoorahville wrote:
Anyone that's classified as a benevolent dictator would have to in fact done a lot of good, otherwise he'd have just been a dictator. =)

Most of the ones that immediately come to mind are from more ancient times though.

Does the idea of one person in charge of everything bother you?? It seems odd you'd ask me to list off names, and it was hardly my intention to poke you with the proverbial stick.


I was curious.

I am very suspicious of absolute power being placed in the hands of a single person. This is due to the fact that such persons have been known to abuse such power with much frequency in the pass. Even General Augusto Pinochet, who turned Chile's economy around with free-market reforms, also oversaw the murder and torture of thousands of people. He also enriched him since to the sum of millions of dollars. Singapore is a economic miracle since it freed itself from the Indonesia, however it remains authoritarian with the people having limited political rights (admitted the economic, and property rights of the people of Singapore are beyond that of those in the United States). In Africa, numerous politicians promising to end the era of military or socialist dictatorships have instead started their own and looted their country's treasuries. Fortunately, this seems to be improving gradually.

Traditionally, the term "benevolent dictator" is ascribed to those such as Italy's Benito Mussolini (who ironically coined the word "totalitarian" to apply to his an ideal term own regime; it retroactively seems inappropriate), Spain's Francisco Franco, Portugal's Antonio Salazar, and Iran's Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Often a "benevolent dictator's" regime (at least as the word is traditionally applied) does not bring a country economic success (the Shah of Iran is probably exception to this rule for the most part), and is less likely to demand control over every part of society like someone (on the lesser end) like Saddam Hussein) or (on the extreme end) like Iosef Stalin.

This isn't to say there are not examples of autocrats getting overthrown with worse resulting. The fall of the Shah (brought on largely by a reluctance to use harsh measures) resulted in the rise of an extremist regime that was far more hostile by to the west and to it's on people's human rights. The rise the Bolsheviks in Russia sent resulted in amounts of executions, and prisioners that would have been unthinkable under the Tsar. Additionally, major economic progress stagnated.

I do agree with you about admiration of certain ancient "dictators." I have developed a strong admiration of the Emperor Augustus, as an example.



Hoorahville
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 236

22 Jan 2007, 10:07 pm

jimservo wrote:
I was curious.

I am very suspicious of absolute power being placed in the hands of a single person. This is due to the fact that such persons have been known to abuse such power with much frequency in the pass. Even General Augusto Pinochet, who turned Chile's economy around with free-market reforms, also oversaw the murder and torture of thousands of people. He also enriched him since to the sum of millions of dollars. Singapore is a economic miracle since it freed itself from the Indonesia, however it remains authoritarian with the people having limited political rights (admitted the economic, and property rights of the people of Singapore are beyond that of those in the United States). In Africa, numerous politicians promising to end the era of military or socialist dictatorships have instead started their own and looted their country's treasuries. Fortunately, this seems to be improving gradually.

Traditionally, the term "benevolent dictator" is ascribed to those such as Italy's Benito Mussolini (who ironically coined the word "totalitarian" to apply to his an ideal term own regime; it retroactively seems inappropriate), Spain's Francisco Franco, Portugal's Antonio Salazar, and Iran's Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Often a "benevolent dictator's" regime (at least as the word is traditionally applied) does not bring a country economic success (the Shah of Iran is probably exception to this rule for the most part), and is less likely to demand control over every part of society like someone (on the lesser end) like Saddam Hussein) or (on the extreme end) like Iosef Stalin.

This isn't to say there are not examples of autocrats getting overthrown with worse resulting. The fall of the Shah (brought on largely by a reluctance to use harsh measures) resulted in the rise of an extremist regime that was far more hostile by to the west and to it's on people's human rights. The rise the Bolsheviks in Russia sent resulted in amounts of executions, and prisioners that would have been unthinkable under the Tsar. Additionally, major economic progress stagnated.

I do agree with you about admiration of certain ancient "dictators." I have developed a strong admiration of the Emperor Augustus, as an example.


I agree that in most cases, if you give anyone any large amount of power, they'll find some means of abusing it.

I was speaking in ideals, which is probably where the problem occurred. What I meant to imply was that the problems of a democracy could be overcome by a dictator who truly tried to do what he could for the human race as a whole without being insane about it or trying to look out for his own self-interest. Is it realistic to expect that anyone like this will ever be in the correct position at the correct time in the correct state of mind to accomplish this sort of thing? No. Would it be nice? Yes. lol.

Many of the names that came to mind came from the Roman Empire. Alexander the Great popped up as well. I was also considering Mussolini, as I felt he and his situation were largely misunderstood. However, I doubted mentioning him would do much but add confusion to the conversation.



jimservo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,964
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs

22 Jan 2007, 10:50 pm

Hoorahville wrote:
I was also considering Mussolini, as I felt he and his situation were largely misunderstood.


Mussolini backed the wrong horse. Italy was never incredibly repressive (comparatively, he wasn't a saint, obviously) during the Mussolini years. Although I must note he became was perfectly ruthless as Hitler's puppet in the "Italian Social Republic" or whatever it was called. It was the one place in Italy where Hitler was able to get Jews exported to death camps without any real resistence from Italian authorities.

The diaries of his deputy, Ciaco (I think), are very interesting. I read them in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (dated but good).



amerikasend
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jan 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 404
Location: South Africa

23 Jan 2007, 6:33 pm

jimservo wrote:
amerikasend wrote:
Isn't the CIA still considered the 'Cocaine Importing Agency'?


Such an accusation should be followed by evidence.


I was asking a question. That's why my question had a question mark at the end of it. (?) in the parenthesis is a question mark.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/north.html You can read that. Seems that the CIA was up to no good.