Lots of Chavez, not much Putin

Yesterday, there were two elections.

In one, the Venezuelans rejected a constitutional ammendment that would, among other things, have allowed Hugo Chavez to run again for president in 2013.

In the other, the Russians returned Vladimir Putin's United Russia party to government.

The Venezuelan election was at least mostly fair (there were issues about the campaigning, but I haven't heard anyone raise any objections at all about the vote count); it was in a small, not terribly powerful country; the result was tht nothing changed.

The Russian election was massively fraudulent, in a large, powerful country, and will have far-reaching, probably very bad, ramifications.

And yet the former generates far, far more posts on DU than the latter.

My guess is that the reason is that Chavez has both supporters and opponents on DU, which means that if you express an opinion on him someone will disagree, and this leads to debate, whereas Putin probably has pretty much only critics.

Nevertheless, the disparity is striking.

because it is so very very VERY similar to what is happening in Bush-Occupied Imperial Amerika.

In fact, I would say that Amerika, Russia, and China all have essentially the same form of governbment, only varying degrees of brutality (all of the Big Three have Total Information Awareness of their Subjects, so they are identical in that regard) required to keep the subjects in line.

So what Putin is doing to Russia is verboten to be discussed on Amerikan MSM, by and large (Amerika doies not yet have the kind of complete media control that the other BushPutinist States, China and Russia, have), and I suspect that what the Bushies are doing to Amerika is also verboten as a discussion in Putin's Bushie-style media for the same reasons.

Putin's abuses of democracy are orders of magnitude worse than anything in modern America; it's just than American flaws are close up and Russian ones are far away.

China is massively less democratic even than Russia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/0,,180992,00.html is a good place to take a closer look at the recent Russian election.

that Putin's abuses of democracy are much, much worse in orders of magnitude, but not that the actions themselves (turning MSM into State Propaganda, neutralizing opposition parties into weakness, etc.) are different.

One is the Big Cousin of the other. Why? Because what works in Russia, a nation with a people with centuries of tradition of bowing to autocratic rule, will NOT work here on our shores. Any outfit with the same vision for America, ultimately in the end, would by necessity have to take different, more subtle, more measured methods.

But please don't take my word for it. In my signature line is a 47-minute lecture by author Naomi Wolf on You Tube. She went out and did the research. This is not hyperbole that I have been saying, and she is so much more eloquent and learned than I.

I have always respected your posts Donald, and I am not disagreeing with your post here, except that I am asking you to take 47 minutes of your life and look at what Ms. Wolf has to say. What she has to say may change your perspective, and it may not, but please give it a chance.

...Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong-il. With slogan that says that news is important, now more than ever.

For years they had Saddam and Osama on the billboard, but replaced them with Chavez and Ahmadinejad.


Tells you something about DUers too, if you ask me.

the Musharraf business in Pakistan.

I think Americans should clean up their own elections before having so much to say about elections in other sovereign countries. I'm so glad Putin won big. This planet needs someone to stand up to Bush.

Funny how there is so much more discussion on MSM and BBC about these elections than about the illegal election in Pakistan.

Bush is a far, far better leader than Putin.

"This planet needs someone to stand up to Bush", when referring to Putin, is *insane* - Putin is an influence for the worse, not the better, on Western policy. He's a far worse leader than Bush - the Russian behaviour in Chechenya makes the American occupation of Iraq look extremely benevolent. Putin didn't "win big"; he cheated in fashion not merely worse but several orders of magnitude worse than the irregularities in the American election in 2000.

I can't speak for the American media, but both the Guardian and the Telegraph have had more on Pakistan than Russia, and more on Russia than Venezuela.

he mingles in new democracies like Georgia and Ukraine, he's trying to start a new Cold War with the West, and most of all he's ordering human rights violations on a massive scale in a filthy, devastating and sadly forgotten war in Chechnya.

And you are glad this Stalin-like KGB-czar won?

What's more he's mingling a lot less than Bush. I'm dealing with geo-politics now. The difference between me and you is that I recognize both Bush and Putin as war criminal scum bags.
Add.

So what you're saying is: we need more leaders like Bush? So the people in Russia and especially Chechnya have to suffer gravely just because you want a Stalinist dictator to 'stand up to' Bush? Yeah, like Bush is sooo afraid of Putin......

this morning on what has traditionally been a reliable news source (National Public Radio) they reported the Venezuelan election turned back Chavez' bid to be "president for life." Not exactly what the vote was about, was it? :eyes:

It's far from a complete summary of today's events, but as far as it goes I think it's accurate and not misleading - I think that Chavez probably was (and is) trying to become president for life, and this result will have been at least a setback for him.

In addition, I think his claimed desire to be President until 2050 said something about the referendum's true goal.

Sorry to see you're so accepting of it.

There are far from a reliable news source. No source is reliable. Some journalists are. Very few. That's it.

they have nukes.

Back home there was the other way around. With Norw. bordering to Russia, that's maybe not so strange.

If he was on my border, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. :scared:

It's not a good prospect in the east. Hopefully, a new US pesident from the Democrats would make a better job in dealing with also Russian politics. We need more democratic credibility ourselves if we're to speak out against authoritarianism with any success, no matter where it comes from.

the Democrats accommodate the authoritarians. It's as if they believe they can be a little pregnant while they wait it out. I don't think this is a winning strategy. And the centrists have never really delivered anything here although they take credit for quite a bit.

I'll never understand why they're doing that. But it's somehow the same as up on the Norw. rock up north; the Left-Center has everything they need to proceed with, well, let's be moderate and say 'reform of capitalism'. Every argument is on their side; the democratic deficit in capitalism, the poor environmental prospects as a result of following capitalism as it is, the people's estrangement from the alliance of war, politics and corporates. It's like having all the arguments in the world to enable you to create dynamics in the political spectrum yet no momentum at all as far as progression go.

As for me I cannot chalk it up to the opinions about Putin. Look more closely and you will find that there just are not that many hit pieces about Putin.

Alas...

than the right that they do.

something about trains running on time or something...

lol

But seriously, I think you have it right.

I have absolutely no fear of Hugo Chavez.