Hugs from Chavez as Gaddafi's Libya reaches 40

[WriteDown]

Source: Reuters

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was guest of honor at a military parade to kick off six days of festivities in Libya marking 40 years since Muammar Gaddafi took control of the desert country in a bloodless coup.

Chavez swept into Tripoli's landmark Green Square to mix with dignitaries and joke with the press before greeting the veteran Libyan leader who arrived dressed in military uniform.

The two leaders known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric hugged then sat together, flanked by African heads of state including Tunisia's Zine al Abidine Ben Ali and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and dozens of army top brass.

Military bands from 17 nations including France and Italy filed past and Italian acrobat jets zoomed over the Mediterranean in Gaddafi's honor, trailing smoke in the red white and green of Italy's national flag.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5803ZA20090901

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Two men of the people. Chavez and the colonel.

[Mika]

1. More men of the people..

Pot.. meet kettle.

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[9119495]

2. Your point being...

www.chavezunderground.com. Post away at that site.

[Mika]

3. I didn't post anything about Chavez.

Maybe your post should be directed at the OP.

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[EFerrari]

27. Skinner, is that you?

The point being that the same assholes that floated "Obama bowed to the Saudis" floated this little POS.

[Psephos]

4. Tres amigos

Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe
Alexander Lukashenco - Belarus



Hope that doesn't make this guy jealous:

[Mika]

5. 2 amigos.

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[Psephos]

7. you are who you hang out with

Chavez should lose those other dudes and spend some more quality time with Obama. ;)

[EFerrari]

11. And Obama should stop coddling butchers in Afghanistan

and spend more time with progressive leaders like Chavez. :)

[Psephos]

23. So, the solution is for Obama and Chavez to hang out together more and dump those other losers

I can get behind that, no problem. ;)

[Bacchus39]

9. Take me Hugo!!

[Mika]

30. Nice to see you've elevated the standard of your anti Chavez/Castro diatribe.

NOT!

Your Cuba/Venezuela thread contributions border on infantile - the other side of the border.

[SOS]

52. Don't forget one of the worst human rights abusers on earth:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/pressclips/Obiang,%20Rice%20240.jpg

Equatorial Guinea:

The use of torture in prisons continued to be widespread, and foreign journalists were banned from covering elections.
Equatorial Guinea is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and Obiang continue(s) to amass huge personal profits from the oil windfall.
The 1992 press law authorizes government censorship. All journalists are required to register with the government. There are no effective human rights organizations in the country. Security forces generally act with impunity. Prison conditions, especially in the notorious Black Beach prison, are extremely harsh. The authorities have been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture, detention of political opponents, and extrajudicial killings. Constitutional and legal guarantees of equality for women are largely ignored, and violence against women is reportedly widespread.
Equatorial Guinea’s civil liberties rating declined due to an intensification of the environment of fear stemming from the widespread use of torture in prisons.

Torture and mass murder are OK if Exxon has a deal!

[onehandle]

6. Thugs of a feather... nt

[proteus_lives]

16. Will eventually hang together.....

[endarkenment]

8. Gaddafi is our good friend ever since 9-11.

We are all playing nice with him, so I am somehow missing the point of the OP. Oh wait, it is just more rightwing drooling Chavez bashing on a supposedly progressive democratic message board. Got it.

By the way, how is your concern for the rightwing military coup in Honduras these days? Or the 'dictator' status of the rightwing thug Uribe over in armed to the teeth with our weapons Colombia now that he has abolished term limits?

What? You don't care? How interesting.

[denverbill]

12. No, not since 9-11. Since he opened up oil leases to American firms.

Over dinner in tent, Kadafi and 'darling' Condi Rice put U.S.-Libyan relations on normal footing



http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/09/rice-libya.html&usg=__oshD7krYmZWtiKraPX21GrimiZo=&h=336&w=499&sz=28&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=51PuI07KRHQCzM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcheney%2Bkadafi%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

DICTATOR BUSH

[endarkenment]

14. Process started after 9-11 and before Iraq invasion.

Yes the official normalization did not occur until 2004.

[unkachuck]

55. since Gaddafi is now our boy....

"The two leaders known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric hugged then sat together,..."

....can only mean Hugo wants help with having better relations with the US....$1.50 a gallon gas by Christmas....

[EFerrari]

10. LOL

[Odin2005]

13. Where are the Hugo-Bots now?

*CRICKETS*

[endarkenment]

15. If you are going to claim there are no reponses it helps to do so before those responses

at least then you have some valid claim that up till then *crickets*. As it is your post is simply brain dead on arrival.

Funny though. Thanks for the laugh.

[UTUSN]

17. K&R to undo the UnReKKK, but the Huguito Squads have buried it!1 n/t

[endarkenment]

18. It is almost like this is some sort of progressive democratic message board

or something, where people just don't have much tolerance for rightwing bullshit. I could suggest other places that would be more receptive to this sort of crap.

[Psephos]

22. You mean a board where diversity of opinion is valued and groupthink frowned upon?

Tolerance requires, well, being tolerant.

And avoidance of groupthink requires that some participants in the discussion not think like the group.

Those are foundation values at DU, and will remain that way.

I'm not trying to put you down here. I'm trying to get you to think about what would really happen if we all said only what's "approved."

[endarkenment]

29. rightwing think is generally frowned on here

We have limits on the diversity of opinion we tolerate. You get to post your rightwing crap, we get to unrec it so it stays off the greatest page, you get to whine on and on about the unfairness of it all. Pretty good system in my opinion.

[Psephos]

31. "We have limits on the diversity of opinion we tolerate."

"Limited diversity" tolerance is as Orwellian a phrase as I've seen in a while. I hope never to see the day when we value uniformity of opinion over clash of opinion here. As a reminder, the only speech that needs protection is speech we don't like. You can substitute "toleration" for "protection" if it adds clarity.

I agree with you that the system employed at DU is better than that I see at Kos, MyDD, HuffPo, etc. Far better.

[endarkenment]

32. You do understand the charter of the board owners, right?

This is explicitly a progressive Democratic board.

"Who We Are: Democratic Underground is an online community for Democrats and other progressives. Members are expected to be generally supportive of progressive ideals, and to support Democratic candidates for political office. Democratic Underground is not affiliated with the Democratic Party, and comments posted here are not representative of the Democratic Party or its candidates."

Those are not my rules, they are the board owners. The owners tolerate rightwing crap like this OP. I wouldn't. The right has more than ample access to the media including the internet for its opinions.

[Psephos]

36. We're probably more like-minded on this than you think

I fully support the board statement and think DU is superior to a number of other progressive sites because of its commenting structure and policies. DU is able to foster a better discussion because of those policies. Better because it does not push dissenters into the memory hole, but does have an effective way of dealing with trolls.

Tolerating moderately-stated RW viewpoints is not at all the same as endorsing them. We tolerate moderate expressions of the RW worldview because it provides *US* a benefit. Without dissent, we would become a groupthink site, and the knife-edge of our arguments and ability to project them in the real world would grow dull.

No RW viewpoint that is insulting or damaging to progressive principles has a home here. I have done my share of alerting on those that fail this simple test.

[endarkenment]

37. There is a long history here.

We have a bunch of DU'ers, not a lot, but enough, that appear to be Cold War era anti-left foreign policy hawks intent on supporting the destruction of anything they can identify as left wing, especially if it is left wing and located in latin america. Some of them might actually be progressive on other issues, but I've seen little evidence of that.

[Odin2005]

40. A left-wing authoritarian is still an authoritarian.

Good ends (left-wing economic policy) does not justify bad means (authoritarianism).

God forbid a LIBERAL defend Liberal Democracy...

[endarkenment]

42. case in point

where are your outraged posts on rightwing thug Uribe? On military coups in Honduras?

[Odin2005]

45. I was always against the coup, and have always thought that Uribe is an ass.

But there are a lot more threads on Chavez than there are on Uribe, mainly because every sane person here agrees that Uribe is a fascist asshole.

[BOG PERSON]

44. Of course ends can justify means.

What are you, simple?

[Odin2005]

48. Immanuel Kant was a simpleton then?

[BOG PERSON]

51. George W. Bush wasn't a simpleton?

"Even the noblest ends do not justify any means."

[ProudDad]

56. No, we mean

that if you post right-wing bullshit, be prepared to be called out for posting right-wing bullshit.

[Forkboy]

33. 12 posts previous to yours. You didn't read a one, did you?

[SOS]

53. Hugo-Bots?

British Petroleum doesn't post on DU.

[Peace Patriot]

19. Rotters has been outdoing itself lately on hating Hugo.

The Venezuelan economy is going south, according to them--again. They predict it every year and they were sure hoping that their Financial 9/11 last September would do it to Venezuela this time, but hey, Venezuela came out of it with $40 billion in international cash reserves, and landed on its feet, according to objective analysts (not Rotters). i'd rather be dealing with a little inflation right now, wouldn't you--instead of a dead economy and Great Depression II? But see Rotters' lament for the rich people in Venezuela who can't afford to fly their salmon in from Norway because of inflation...

Here, with some comments including from an American living and working in Venezuela who says Rotters is wrong...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=21892&mesg_id=21892

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They're hunting the globe for anything they can find to dis Chavez with. But they don't report that he meets monthly with Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, who said, of Chavez: "They can invent a lot of things to criticize Chavez, but not on democracy!"

[Mika]

20. Who cares what Lula says?

He is a friend of ....

get ready for it ....

are you ready ....

sure? .....

he's a friends with (((GASP111))) ....


































CASTRO.!

OMG!11!!



BOTH OF THEM!!111!!!




lol

:hi:

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[EFerrari]

24. LOL

[NeoConsSuck]

21. Writedown, would you have posted the story

if it was simply:

Military bands from 17 nations including France and Italy filed past and Italian acrobat jets zoomed over the Mediterranean in Gaddafi's honor, trailing smoke in the red white and green of Italy's national flag.

No need to answer :) Just more red meat for the Chavez bashers. Oh and BTW, let me know at the end of September how that capitalism thing is working out for everybody.

[Alamuti Lotus]

26. HEY! NO FAIR INSERTING CONTEXT!

since we're all posting pictures in lieu of basic content, here's a few:


http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Obama+Meets+Colombian+President+Uribe+White+72xgCwLFIccl.jpg

Mubarak...Netanyahoo...Uribe...aww. But yes, let's all get back to that "evil Chavez" drumbeat; The Red Menace must be stopped! :eyes:

[Forkboy]

34. The anti-Chavez people are hypocrites of the highest order.

[NaturalHigh]

25. I can't say that I'm surprised.

One ruthless dictator lionizing another - no big surprise there.

[EFerrari]

28. Careful

[Forkboy]

35. Uribe is hunky dory to the people who don't like Chavez. That's been made clear time after time.

And that tells me that the issues they claim to care about are just bullshit lies to make themselves look good.

[Mika]

39. Didn't Uribe make himself "dictator for life", by changing the constitutional term limits?

Not a peep about this from the crowd accusing Chavez of "dictator for life" for the same thing.

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[Odin2005]

41. I think both are authoritarian assholes.

Just because I don't like Marius doesn't mean I like Sulla.

[endarkenment]

43. But oddly you never post on the subject.

[SOS]

54. Posting on actual human rights abusers gets ZERO responses

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6420699&mesg_id=6420699

Shoulda put the name "Chavez" in the OP as bait.

[BOG PERSON]

47. I think you're a superstitious old biddy who's never struggled a day in his life. n/t

[Odin2005]

50. Old biddy? I'm 23. And what's a biddy?

:shrug:

[BOG PERSON]

38. Libya has done fairly well for itself human-development-wise

So it wouldn't be all that incorrect to call Gaddafi a "man of the people"

http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_LBY.html

[IndianaGreen]

46. At least Chavez didn't free a terrorist to Libya like UK's Gordon Brown did for an oil deal

And no matter how many times Brown denies it, his government played a big role in influencing Scotland to release the Lockerbie bomber (who may be innocent anyway!).

[Mika]

49. Yep & The US is harboring Luis Posada & Orlando Bosch in violation of extradition treaty w/Ven.

Kinda takes away any solid footing for the US to be crying over other nation's justice systems.

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[ProudDad]

57. You know, we've found agreement on some other threads

And that's been nice and refreshing...

But these knee-jerk, anti-Chavez threads that you continue to post, usually without a shred of basis beyond innuendo, convince me that you really need to let go of your mindless hatred of the guy.

It's not good for your blood pressure or your cholesterol levels... :hi: