Actually, Chavez himself ran an attempted coup back in 1991, a long time before he was elected as chief executive. I guess attempting a coup isn’t political suicide in Venezuela; it’s a longstanding tradition, after all.

let me ask you a question, are you from venezuela?

it always makes me laught how great sites like this (cuz actually I love bb) makes the great mistake of believing anything bad of chavez and vzla they read..

cmon, you are smarter than that dont you?, you now that “on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog”, so dont believe everything you read..

you want facts?

on 1996 the inflation on vzla went up to 99.9% (you can chech that on the International monetary found online http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm), and the past 40 years before chavez was all the same. the poor gets more poor, and the rich gets more rich..

I wont deny that chavez is fucking with the rich ppl, but you know what? fuck them!..

I have to many friends and family in bad conditions to worry about the crying rich elite..

Our only hope is that there are elections of the National Assembly diputees next september. An Assembly that is now 90% PSUV diputees (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the Chavez-made party).

It needs to be reminded that less than a month ago Chavez closed down (again) one TV Station and a couple of months ago he closed down 34 radio stations, all of them for being critical of his “revolution”.

This man knows no limits…

If he had a reality show, I wonder what it would be called?

Can you prove this? 45% of Venezuelans lived like Europeans? Citation needed.

”
While we are on the subject of Merida (Guidodavid) lets talk about how the opposition thugs shot and killed a “Chavista” protestor and then lets see how that was reported around the world? (what a surprise it wasn’t..) Oh and as for the riots being about power-cuts, the only power cuts they were protesting about was the loss of power that the rich and old political elite have suffered since the fair and completely democratic elections.”

Why don’t you mention that the other dead student was a member from an opposition party? And you have the balls to complain about biased reports? And you are simply _lying_ about the power cuts only affecting rich people or that people were not protesting about the power cuts. There are articles from Venezuelan newspapers in Spanish on the Internet about this, you are not fooling anyone.

“I am from the UK and I have been talking with many ordinary people, the vast majority of Venezuelans support Chavez and even the people who have their reservations about him have had to admit that he has provided education, health-care and hope for all and this has to be respected”

You have lied before, you might be lying about this. Barrio Adentro modules are being shut down, as Chávez himself has admitted.

“My government has gone to war without asking me, provided a leader (Gordon Brown) that was never elected, provided Hundreds of Billions of Pounds for Banks and cuts funding for Arts, Music, Health-Care & Welfare, Allows MP’s to claim outrageous expenses while the rest of the people in the country suffer repossessions and rampant unemployment.”

So, you have to fall in love with a crazy tyrant who babbles leftist words while exports oil to the US, and has lower taxes for the rich than Bush did? Non sequitur.

“All countries have problems and no political leader is perfect (look at Gordon Brown for crying out loud), but lets not turn Chavez and what he and his government have done into some kind of joke”

We do not have to do it, he is doing it by himself.

“nd for the record Twitter is terrorism, particularly when its Richard Madeley at the helm”

Twitter is terrorism, Carlos the Jackal is not. What a tool

Says who? I am not rich, not even close to. Many of us are not rich, there are plenty of cybercafés, and people use them. Even if that’d be true, care to watch the news. Did you see what happened in Mérida, where I live, a week ago?
People got pissed and fed, and some very serious riots ensued, due to random power cuts. I wrote about the cuts some time ago:

http://www.caracaschronicles.com/node/2263

So, is Mérida populated by rich people only? If the govt cares about people, why was it necessary to burn the town in order to have a rational power outage schedule?

Because for the govt:
“Social issues in Venezuela: overlooked.
Poverty issues in Venezuela: overlooked”

Gollinger? What a damn tool. Plenty of conflict of interest. At least, I am not making money out of my opposition to the govt.

ANYONE who disagrees with Chavez is quickly and publicly ostracized. It’s ugly.

He did said the tweeter posts should be considered terrorist attacks, and said anonymous posters were cowards and probably paid by the CIA or something, and in any other country if the president says something like that it’s supposed to be taken seriously..but this is chavez.

While I don’t think the internet is compatible with his idea of socialism, he is nowhere near censoring the web…yet.

It was a pretty idiotic comment of his, and we should be making fun of him for doing so (as always), but the page linked here shouldn’t don’t go around implying he’s ordered to build a firewall or anything without an actual quote.

…At least as far as I know

anti-authoritarians unite!

That said, in some situations, there are criteria to decide quickly and easily on a political movement or a person.

In this example, you have a person, a government and a party that proponents and allies claim to be democratic, and even respectful of civil liberties. Whether they are or not, can be answered simply:

How well do dissent, protest and anonymous opinions sit with the guy/group?

Answer: Not well at all, in the case of Hugo Chavez. No matter that he is maybe not able yet to restrict access to Twitter in Venezuela…

Mighty Chavez has struck out with this one. One for RCTV TV station, two for the radio stations and circuits closed, three for Twitter and stadium protests.

The guy cannot be held to be a democrat in any meaningful way.

@Anonymous #2: He *does* have a reality show — an afternoon on state television every week, and that doesn’t include the rest of the week on several channels that his office directly controls. Watch the Frontline report linked above.

Our recent power outages involved thousands of people having no power for days at a time. In some cases, over a week without power. I blame the weather, and the fact that the power utilities would rather spend money on executive salaries and political lobbyists than on infrastructure modernization and line worker’s wages.

I understand your feelings about the Chavez government’s PR stunt, but look at it from my point of view – that PR stunt is keeping people in my state from losing their homes or their lives.

My own government is too busy killing brown people in the Middle East to bother caring for the poor and elderly in my area, and Venezuela is doing something about it, so I have to appreciate the work and effort that Venezuelans are doing for the people of the USA. That includes Chavez (though his motives probably are not pure) and the oil workers and taxpayers of Venezuela (although they might not really want to subsidize the poor people of North America). I feel morally obligated to be grateful to Venezuelans as a group.

If we took Hugo Chavez seriously, we could ask ourselves if he is up to commit some gross violation of the civil rights of dissenters, or is just showing gross intolerance. Given the degree of control over Venezuelan institutions that he has, there would not be much difference either.

In a country with independent institutions that guarantee civil rights and limited government such expressions, particularly if recurrent would constitute grounds for judicial action or a review of his sanity/fitness for office.

Whether it is impossible for him to censor the net (or not) is immaterial. Either
a)he will try and punish whoever the State can catch and indict.
b)he is a prevaricating demagogue trying to intimidate on an excuse that is false.
c)he is delusional and possibly insane.

I know nothing about what goes on in Venezuela from personal experience. I’ve never been there. In my area, though, here’s what I can say personally: Citgo is sending heating oil to poor people on the East Coast of the USA so they don’t freeze to death. Also, we’ve had massive power outages in my area over the last month, but I do not blame President Obama for them. That is all I really know for sure.

While we are on the subject of Merida (Guidodavid) lets talk about how the opposition thugs shot and killed a “Chavista” protestor and then lets see how that was reported around the world? (what a surprise it wasn’t..) Oh and as for the riots being about power-cuts, the only power cuts they were protesting about was the loss of power that the rich and old political elite have suffered since the fair and completely democratic elections.

I am from the UK and I have been talking with many ordinary people, the vast majority of Venezuelans support Chavez and even the people who have their reservations about him have had to admit that he has provided education, health-care and hope for all and this has to be respected.

My government has gone to war without asking me, provided a leader (Gordon Brown) that was never elected, provided Hundreds of Billions of Pounds for Banks and cuts funding for Arts, Music, Health-Care & Welfare, Allows MP’s to claim outrageous expenses while the rest of the people in the country suffer repossessions and rampant unemployment.

Literacy in my country have a look:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/29/literacy-numeracy-skills

…and what is it in Venezuela at the moment?

http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/document.aspx?ReportId=124&IF_Language=eng&BR_Country=8620

finally, what about internet control and legistlation in the UK, I have two words: Peter Mandelson

All countries have problems and no political leader is perfect (look at Gordon Brown for crying out loud), but lets not turn Chavez and what he and his government have done into some kind of joke.

..and for the record Twitter is terrorism, particularly when its Richard Madeley at the helm.

VENEZUELA Venezuelan President believes the messages on social networks such as terrorist threats and called to monitor the protests at matches.

Wednesday February 3, 2010

After an unprecedented demonstration in the virtual social network Twitter, where thousands of messages calling for his resignation and called for Venezuela to press freedom and opinion, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, asked the National Assembly deputies to prepare a law to control the Internet.

On Tuesday, three press associations under the slogan “Venezuela disaster area for the exercise of freedom of expression,” called a protest in the network microbloggin Twitter to reject, among other measures, suspension of the international signal of RCTV and threats to the exercise of journalism, making locating the hashtag #freevenezuela as the third term often used by about 70 million users worldwide, in a campaign called Twitterolazo users themselves.

Twitter could be declared ‘a tool of terror’ because the deputies, responding to the presidential request, said they will intervene “for the welfare of the people”, eliminating terrorist threats posed by social networks.

On Jan. 25, Chavez criticized the messages transmitted on Twitter and make a counter called the Internet.

The onslaught against the web is the next step in the president’s decision to close the channels of cable TV who refused to link their presidential chains, a situation that sparked strong student protests that were broadcast on social networks.

The first time a Venezuelan issue dominated the top of Twitter was in August 2009, with the air outlet of the 34 radio stations.

Now Chavez also wants to control the expression of Venezuelan citizens into stadiums.

Chavez asked not to be politicized in the Caribbean Baseball Series, by questioning the anti-government protests that have proliferated in recent days in stadiums Venezuelans.

The president reported that he sent the interior minister to oversee security at the stadium Nueva Esparta, Margarita, as opposition groups “are crazy trying to generate violence in stadiums.”

“They’re looking for violence,” he said on his TV show.