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It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

washingtonpost.com

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Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#81

Post by jimmywanger »

i7i wrote: post #77
jimmywanger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships 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 fi…

>However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven How is that even a logically coherent sentence...

The quote from here should help http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33029.html.

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.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#83

Post by paulddraper »

jimmywanger wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships, so I'm not sure how much we can learn from your observation.

> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships 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 fi…

> right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people

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)

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#84

Post by eternalban »

jimmywanger wrote: post #79
eternalban wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". 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 & hiera…

Check out South Korea and Taiwan. 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.

Surely they both justified their military dictatorship as a bulwark from the menace of communism and for liberation/unification of homeland, which sounds to me like "good of the Chinese/Korean people."

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.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#85

Post by pastProlog »

Maduro was elected president. There's no vote upcoming, just yet another recall referendum, this one which failed to get going in the courts.

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.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#86

Post by jimmywanger »

paulddraper wrote: post #83
jimmywanger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships 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 fi…

> right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people 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)

Also, Hitler was a national socialist.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#87

Post by andrenth »

tptacek wrote: post #31
andrenth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is this right wing intelligentsia that supported death squads?

The entire American foreign policy establishment of the 1980s.

By foreign policy establishment do you mean politicians? Because that's not what "intelligentsia" means.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#88

Post by finid »

robk wrote: post #19
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Venezuela'a foreign exchange reserves stand at less than $12 billion [1]. They pay over 15% of that this month to bond holders [2]. 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 t…

When a democracy transitions to a dictatorship in a decade how do you not hood the electorate responsible? They made the choices continually to allow this.

How long did it take Germany to transition into a dictatorship? How long will it take the US to transition into one? For us, the laws are already in place. We're just watching and waiting for the right guy, or the wrong guy, depending on your perspective.

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#89

Post by JabavuAdams »

finid wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Turkish situation is tragic and complicated, but is there any doubt that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship?

According to Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabia is a kingdom.

The conventional long-form name of Saudi Arabia is "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". This isn't some thing that Clinton made up, and I'm not sure why it's relevant to mention her. The country is referred to as "The Kingdom" by many. Of course, that doesn't preclude it being a dictatorship, as the two are not mutually exclusive.

Did I just miss an attempt at sarcasm, here?

Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship

#90

Post by nikcub »

asimuvPR wrote: post #68
robk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a democracy transitions to a dictatorship in a decade how do you not hood the electorate responsible? They made the choices continually to allow this.

Thats a frequent opinion that sounds sensible. But when you put some thought into it, you realize that a lot of the electorate are poor uneducated people who did not know better.

and in the regions most people vote for whichever party drove them to the polling booth in a bus then gave them a sack of food and a gas canister afterwards.

Venezuelan elections have never been fair - there is a lot of vote rigging from all sides

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