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Dictator Chavez steals second Hilton hotel in Venezuela

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by AroundTheWorld, Oct 15, 2009.

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  1. DaDakota

    DaDakota Balance wins
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    If Ross Perot owned that hotel he would have killed Chavez and taken it back.

    DD
     
    #41 DaDakota, Oct 16, 2009
  2. pippendagimp

    pippendagimp Member

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    considering the fact that stern and a cabal of other owners forced perot to sell his mavpricks team to cuban - and for a sweetheart deal to boot, i doubt chavez would've been scurred :D
     
    #42 pippendagimp, Oct 16, 2009
  3. thumbs

    thumbs Member

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    Is our skin a little thin? :p Or do I skate too close to the truth?
     
    #43 thumbs, Oct 16, 2009
  4. Kwame

    Kwame Member

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    I hope you condemned the 2002 coup against Chavez.
     
    #44 Kwame, Oct 16, 2009
  5. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Also our own government uses "emminent domain" to acquire private property for government use. The article I suspect forgot to say that the Venezuelan government probably paid market price for the remainining part.

    It is good to see a growing trend of resistance to just accepting conservative propaganda pieces like this as moderate, conventional common sense wisdom.
     
    #45 glynch, Oct 18, 2009
  6. glynch

    glynch Member

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    This guy gets it. Good post, point forward.
     
    #46 glynch, Oct 18, 2009
  7. glynch

    glynch Member

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    #47 glynch, Oct 18, 2009
  8. Mr. Clutch

    Mr. Clutch Member

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    Chavez is going to ruin the economy with these types of moves. That will not be good for the poor.
     
    #48 Mr. Clutch, Oct 18, 2009
  9. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Member

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    Venezuela's economy, from what I understand, is almost entirely based on oil. Chavez could deport all the CEOs and entrepreneurs and he'd STILL be able to lavish money on his social programs so long as the price of oil holds somewhat steadily.
     
    #49 Northside Storm, Oct 18, 2009
  10. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

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    According to all of the articles I have read, they have yet to pay anything. There are also no reports of how much they will pay or when they will pay it.
     
    #50 bobrek, Oct 18, 2009
  11. hopshtbu

    hopshtbu New Member

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    If you're interested in sharing your development cost, let me know and we can talk more.
     
    #51 hopshtbu, Oct 18, 2009
  12. thadeus

    thadeus Member

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    SPAM?!
     
    #52 thadeus, Oct 18, 2009
  13. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

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    Must be, because the reply makes no sense.
     
    #53 bobrek, Oct 18, 2009
  14. shastarocket

    shastarocket Member

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    PointForward and Glynch

    While I agree that Chavez is not a full fledged Dictator by any means, I don't understand the argument that he has been good for his people.

    I don't remember when, but there was a thread about him in the D&D about his rise to power, etc. I can't find the thread, but I found the link as to where you can watch the Frontline episode it was referring to:

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hugochavez/view/

    It is about 90 minutes long, but I certainly felt it was worth it. Now, It is definitely biased against Chavez but the facts do not lie. It portrays Chavez as some sort of crazy, narcissistic ruler that is loved by his people b/c of his charisma and sincerity -> kind of like if we ever elected Artest as POTUS!

    I am pretty sure Glynch watched it already, but I suggest you watch it, PointForward. Not because I expect it to change your mind about the guy, but so that you can see why Americans perceive him as a dictator.
    We like to group all of our crazy, foreign, unstable, long-serving rulers in a single category...for simplicity ;)
     
    #54 shastarocket, Oct 18, 2009
  15. PointForward

    PointForward Member

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    I will give it a go when I get some time, but I don't think anything can change my analysis of the concrete information I have, and the conclusion I draw from it. You say "the facts don't lie", well, sure they don't. And all the facts point to that Chavez has been great for his country and has brought along revolutionary change for the better (comparing it to pre-Chavez era). I don't care what this thing "portrays" Chavez as, and I'm sure his people don't just love him because of "charisma". Comparing him to Artest is laughable lol, Chavez started serving his country at age 17 (enrolling in the military academy).The peace and prosperity he brought to his country are enough reason for his people to love him.
     
    #55 PointForward, Oct 18, 2009
  16. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Member
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    He has been good for many of his people. For people living in poverty the rate of poverty decreased by 55% under Chavez.

    http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com/downloads/ceprpov.htm

    The guy has followed through with promises to put in more medical clinics and health care for the poorest communities, helped reduce poverty in his nation. He's increased spending on education for the nation, again focusing on the poor.

    http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1763

    Not everything he's done has been great, and I think he has gotten the balance wrong on several issues, and he has closed down on media and done things that have abused power.

    He's definitely narcissistic. I just think it's good to look at both the good and bad of Chavez.----
     
    #56 FranchiseBlade, Oct 18, 2009
  17. AroundTheWorld

    AroundTheWorld Member

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    He is a dictator. Some people here (glynch, Point Forward) who are obviously from the leftist end of the political spectrum choose to ignore that because...he is a leftist dictator.

    --------------------

    VenEconomy: Express Dictatorship

    From the Editors of VenEconomy

    It is becoming more evident daily that President Chávez is finding it extremely easy to do what the hell he likes with the country and its inhabitants. He no longer even takes the trouble to keep up appearances or invent half-way believable excuses for taking from people what belongs to them, their freedom and their property, for example. He could care even less about the disastrous consequences of his actions and policies for the Venezuelan population.

    This dramatic situation was captured for posterity in his speech this Wednesday, when he gave his reasons for the forced expropriation, without warning or right to protest, of the Margarita Hilton & Suites Hotel Complex and Marina.

    Before the television cameras, the great head of state, in a fit of “supreme sincerity,” stated that he had given the order to expropriate because, despite the fact that the State was a minority shareholder of the hotel complex, the government had had to “request permission” to hold the Africa-South America Summit there, where Chávez exchanged experiences with the world’s most select dictators.

    It is worth mentioning that just some of the “difficulties” the President failed to mention were dozens of reservations made many months ago by tourists from different countries and time-share owners. In other words, the complex’s administration had commitments with hundreds of people that were difficult to break without having to pay them large sums in compensation, besides the fact that this would have set a serious precedent for an island such as Margarita, which depends on tourism for its livelihood.

    But expropriations, confiscations, and appropriations of privately owned assets by the government on a whim of the President’s or of one of his acolytes are nothing new in these times of communist revolution. Suffice it to recall just a few examples of cases that preceded the expropriation of Margarita Hilton & Suites and its Marina:Banco de Venezuela, whose sale to Banco Occidental de Descuento was sabotaged by the government in order to then subject it to a forced sale to the State; the ranch La Marqueseña, whose owner in vain resorted to the Constitution and even to negotiating using the “Cha-Az method”; and the oil companies on the Eastern Coast of Lake Maracaibo, despite the fact that many of their owners gave Chávez their unconditional support during the 2002-2003 national oil strike.

    The only new element in this manner of doing things in these days of communist revolution is that the “justification” given by the President “simply” means that he (Chávez) is the one in charge in the country and that here, consequently, whatever he says goes. And anyone who still believes that this only has to do with property is truly, but truly mistaken.

    In today’s Venezuela, Chávez even dreams up accommodating laws, which he orders the National Assembly pass, at whim, no longer even troubling to go through the motions to give the appearance of complying with constitutional precepts. In fact, the National Assembly did not even bother to put on the “street parliamentarism” circus invented by this anarchy-prone government to give people a sensation of participation and the illusion that it was making an effort to keep them informed, as demonstrated by the passing of the Bolivarian National Armed Force Law and the latest amendments made clandestinely to the Electoral Processes Law.

    The most deplorable part of this dictatorship that is brewing in the country is the lack of institutions capable of standing up to or putting a brake on it; and the most dramatic is that there is no sign in the population, their political leaders or the representatives of civil society of any spunk to prevent the express kidnapping of democracy in Venezuela.

    http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=345696&CategoryId=13303
     
    #57 AroundTheWorld, Oct 19, 2009
  18. PointForward

    PointForward Member

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    I'm not a leftist, but my grip on the meaning of English words is satisfactory. And thus I understand what DICTATOR means, and that's not what you or your little article describes.

    I'm going to try this one more time:
    Dictator = NOT democratically voted, seized control using force

    Chavez was democratically elected BY THE PEOPLE in a legitimate democratic election (with opponents and everything! and guess WHO funded his opponents?). Calling him a dictator is absurd.

    question his policies, disagree with them. Heck, call him an awful person, a freaking idiot, I don't care. Those are all subjective terms that you can use at your discretion to express your opinion of him. But the word "dictator" is a specific word that has a strict factual meaning, and that meaning DOESN'T apply to the democratically elected Hugo Chavez.

    Calling him a dictator is like calling Yao Ming a point guard. It's factually incorrect and we can't really disagree on it considering the fact that it's a well defined word: no gray area. Either dictator or NOT, Chavez is NOT.

    And let me offer you this piece of advice: quit making subjective articles and news commentators formulate your thoughts and opinion for you. Try doing it yourself! (innuendo not intended :D ). Look at the facts, look at statistics, look at what HIS people think of him (because that's ALL that matters, Venezuelan opinion, not American, not Mexican, not Siberian, not Zimbabwean, but Venezuelan), then formulate your opinion about this guy. It might be different than my opinion, but it's YOURS, not Glenn Beck's, not Keith Olbermann's, and certainly not that of the writer of this ridiculous "article" you posted.
     
    #58 PointForward, Oct 19, 2009
  19. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Well one can always sepeculate, but one thing we no for sure is that the economy of the previous 50 years under the previous ruling elite, which was such a delight to US oil companies and conservatives, hurt the hell out of the Venezuelan poor.
     
    #59 glynch, Oct 19, 2009
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2009
  20. Oski2005

    Oski2005 Member

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    And going in the complete opposite extreme will hurt everybody. Everything he does is paid for by oil. What happens as fuel mileage continues to improve and more people switch to alternative fuel? If the demand for gasoline goes down, how is he going to fund Venezuela, Cuba, and FARC?

    As he chases out the "elite," aka scientists, engineers, doctors, and skilled labor, who's going to help build Venezuela? Like I said, everything he does hinges on Venezuela's oil money, but if all the best employees of the oil company are leaving and their production is slowing down, what in the hell is he going to do then?

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/204835

     
    #60 Oski2005, Oct 19, 2009
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