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[Nadaka]

http://news.yahoo.com/9-11-trial-mention-torture-classified-military-judge-003521708.html

So, any mention of the torture the US is doing is classified, see we have nothing to hide once you are not allowed to look at things!

[RedKing]

@Reelya: I'm not saying Chavez is ineffective or even bad for Venezuela. But dude is not exactly on the up-and-up when it comes to democratic norms. And I say this from having a friend and former classmate that is about as left-leaning as it gets for the US who lived in Venezuela working for an NGO for a few years and facepalms at all the shit Chavez does. And he *is* colorful, you gotta give him that.


As for NK, I wonder how much of the problem is simply no money or time for quality control. Which realistically, should make us all somewhat less worried about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. I would give their nukes a 50/50 chance of detonating early and wiping their own base off the map.

There's also that whole "Oh god it's hard to calculate orbital mechanics when I HAVEN'T EATEN IN THREE WEEKS" problem.

[Sheb]

I think they've played too much KSP.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As I recall, NK has about 10 nukes (all smaller than Fat Man), and no effective launching system for them. Which we are seeing further proof of now.

At the moment, Aegis anti-missile ships are sitting off the coast of Japan and around Hawaii, so if NK suddenly tries something it won't go far. Japan and SK have less advanced anti-missile systems of their own, but theirs only has the capacity to hit a falling missile, not a rising one.

[10ebbor10]

Apparently I gave North Korea too much credit, their satellite is spinning out of control and rapidly losing altitude.

How, But How. How can you even ... 

It takes an exceptional level of fail to accomplish this. I mean, as long as you manage to get in orbit friction and stability shouldn't be a problem anymore.

[RedKing]

North Korean missiles seem to have the falling part down pat. Not so much the rising.

The Taepodong 1 isn't a terrible MRBM (it's basically a SCUD with a booster stage), which is more than enough to reach Japan and SK. It's the Taepodong 2 (the ICBM upscaled version) that seems to be made of epic fail.

[Reelya]

The only thing I will say is that the USA itself hasn't been so great on "democratic norms" in Venezuela - outright supporting a coup in 2002 by straight-up fascists who massacred their own followers so they could blame it on Chavez as a pretext. After the coup plot fell apart, rather than distance themselves from those factions, America doubled-down on the financial support to the groups who'd lead a coup and massacred civilians.

Hell if you look at the footage of the opposition rally the day of the coup (in the film The Revolution will not be televised), the right-wingers are outright leading the crowd in making NAZI-style salutes while talking about toppling the government by force!

The generals who lead the coup pre-recorded their statement of outrage about snipers shooting civilians (both anti and pro Chavez factions came under sniper fire, but it was selectively broadcast to paint a picture that made the coup plotters to be the victims). The massacre followed a "spontaneous" diversion of the opposition rally to attack the presidential palace. This diversion came AFTER they recorded the "outrage" video, so they either knew their were snipers, and knowlingly ordered the civilians to their deaths, or the right-wing placed the snipers themselves, then shot their own rally.

This video mentions that the army recorded their outrage at snipers shooting civilians 2 hours before it happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Uqx_mkhPs

Basically, the military took over the country, the cops joined in and are on film on several docos plainly massacring anyone who came out in opposition to the coup (video'd firing shotguns straight at socialist protestors), the coup leaders abolished parliament, the constitution, the supreme court, the electoral commission, and the human-rights ombudsman.

Meanwhile American TV reported "democracy has been restored".

[ChairmanPoo]

I really want to know how they handle failing at everything they do. What kind of shitty scientists does their government employ?

They will simply deny this ever happened.
And then throw magic man to the sea, of course.

Or maybe not, its certainly an improvement over their last "satellite launch" (which exploded in mid-air. They claimed it was a glorious success nonetheless)

[Urist Imiknorris]

Obviously they'll scale back their objective to meet their results.

[RedKing]

I really want to know how they handle failing at everything they do. What kind of shitty scientists does their government employ?

They will simply deny this ever happened.
And then throw magic man to the sea, of course.

Or maybe not, its certainly an improvement over their last "satellite launch" (which exploded in mid-air. They claimed it was a glorious success nonetheless)

What satellite launch?? That was a fireworks display for the Glorious Leader's amusement! It was super effective!


@Reelya: No argument that the counter-Chavez folks aren't on the up-and-up either. That doesn't validate Chavez, though. It's not always a case of "the enemy of bad is good". Sometimes (hell, most of the time when you're talking Third World squabbles) the enemy of a bad guy is another bad guy. Just look at Syria. al-Qaeda is one of the most effective groups fighting the Assad loyalists. Which leaves us in an incredibly uncomfortable place of not really being able to back anybody, but kind of required to pick a dog in that fight. And if we back some secular rebel faction that really didn't do that much to win the civil war, and place them in charge when the dust settles....will it be any wonder if the Syrian people reject that?

Honestly, we should just stay the fuck out of Venezuelan domestic politics, but thanks to economic and strategic concerns, we can't.

[Reelya]

Can you cite some sources that show Chavez is undermining democracy, because every link I see is like this one:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12074-independent-observers-venezuelas-election-a-model-of-democracy
Or this one:
http://foundationfordemocraticadvancement.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/insight-into-venezuelas-automated.html

If you compare the electoral system in Venezuela vs the USA the voting machines used in VZ are far more transparent, with complete paper trail and compulsory manual counts in parallel to the electronic counts, and they have built in many more checks and balances than the US machines, and are actually open-source, though encypted, and each political party plus the electoral commission generate part of the encryption key for each machine, which they exchange only after the election. This allows the hard-drives of all machines to be cloned and audited independently by each political party after the elections have concluded, and also prevents direct manipulation of the data stored on the machines during the election process.

The design of the Venezuelan machines has some really brilliant anti-vote-fraud mechanisms built-in, they're really cutting edge ideas in the design, it's just too improbable that they're just "faking it" and have purely by chance come up with these ingenious ideas.

[Sheb]

Well, elections are not enough to do a democracy. Putin won every single of his elections, and would have even without the ballot stuffing.
Chavez undermined the courts, nudged opposition medias out of business and also got that tendency to make irrelevant a level of power when he loose it. (Like when he instaured local council after loosing lots of municipalities).

So not a dictator. But not a real democrat either.

(Oh, and while his management of the economy is better than his predecessors, it's far from perfect. He didn't invest in much of anything, and the economy depends entirely on oil.

[RedKing]

Yeah, I suppose "dictator" might be a bit too strong a word. He's more in the same category as Berlusconi, I suppose. Although I think he does veer a bit more toward the heavy-handed side than Berlusconi.

[Reelya]

One thing that does cloud the waters is that the private channels in Venezuela, which get about 80% of the viewers, are virulently anti-Chavez, and they demonize of Chavez in the same manner as FOX vs Obama. A lot of the stuff about Chavez is easily fact-checked, and is complete rubbish, which tends to make it difficult to sift the crazy stuff from the legitimate criticism.

Think if every single American channel was FOX News spewing Obama hate 24/7.

===

The one big human-rights thing every anti-Chavez website / news source points to, is that his government didn't renew the broadcast license of RCTV in 2007. But the stated reason, which is highly transparent given the amount of relevant TV footage, is that RCTV was directly involved in planning, and executing the coup in 2002, some admirals etc, even went on a talk show on the channel the day after the coup and thanked the network for their assistance.

But RCTV wasn't even shut down, and they waited until their terrestrial broadcast license expired, and just didn't renew it. So not quite the same as "shutting them down", and specifically done in a completely legal, and constitutional manner. No government has a legal obligation to renew broadcast licenses to particular companies, especially if that companies executives have used the license to commit high treason.

And even now, they're still allowed to broadcast on cable and satellite, and none of their directors are in prison or anything - does that sound like a "heavy handed" way to deal with an organization which openly tried to overthrow the constitutional government?

[penguinofhonor]

Some discussion from happy thread that people thought belonged in here.

I've never understood why so many libertarians decide to associate themselves with plutocrats, police statists and theocrats among the conservatives who explicitly are against everything you believe in, except that parts empower those same plutocrats, police statists and theocrats. On a fundamental level, libertarians are just another flavor of liberal, with a different priority of liberties and a difference of opinion on what constitutes economic liberty/equality.

My dad has called me a libertarian based on my personal values, actually. He just believes it's the individual/community/market should do what I think the government should do.

Eh? This is getting off pretty far off topic, and we should probably drop it or go elsewhere. But that doesn't really sound much like a libertarian point of view.

He believes that individual liberty should be maximized. Where people are disadvantaged and incapable, the community should make up for it with charity. He thinks the free market allows the maximum amount of liberty in purchasing decisions through the free market's natural self-regulation.

I also believe that individual liberty should be maximized. If anyone cannot exercise their rights, the government should protect and enable them. I think a government-controlled market allows the most liberty in purchasing decisions (with the exception of purchases that harm society) through outlawing fraud and deception.

Your dad sounds like the libertarian.

Regulated markets to prevent fraud, deception tend to be more of a liberal idea.

Yeah, he's a libertarian and I'm a liberal. I was bringing it up because originally Nadaka said that liberals and libertarians are very similar fundamentally, as shown by the fact that I and my father have really similar ideals but opposite executions. It was an anecdote of agreement.