7 in 10 Venezuelans approve of their democracy. Venezuela's economy rates second in the region...

[Peace Patriot]

... (after Bolivia) for fairness of income distribution and third (after Chile and Brazil) on believing their children will be better off than they are. Another interesting stat: Venezuelan crime numbers do not match Venezuelan fear of crime (i.e., Venezuelans have an overinflated fear of crime--and guess who likely did THAT to them?) (Hint: rightwing media.)

And, finally, Colombians hate democracy. Really. The Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro (which "publishes the world's most comprehensive survey of Latin American perceptions," according to BoRev.net) reports that only 49% of Colombians support democracy (compared to Costa Rica, 74%, Uruguay, 81%, Venezuela, 85%).

http://www.borev.net/2009/12/every_year_the_venerable_old.html#more

[EFerrari]

1. BoRev is great.

Now I'm going to have to look for headlines. :)

[Judi Lynn]

2. Outstanding stats. Better than that crap we've seen from the right-wing "polls" for certain.

Will never forget the poll fed bogus info. by US-financed Sumate, headed by Maria Corina Machado.

http://www.viomundo.com.br.nyud.net:8090/img/Maria_Corina_Machado__Sumate__meets_George_W._Bush__2002_.jpg

Maria Corina Machado does Washington.

Or what about the poll from Penn and Schoen?

Penn & Schoen's Inaccurate and Dishonest "Exit Poll" on Chávez Vote
Maneuver by U.S. Political Consultants Violated Venezuelan Law and Professional Ethics Codes

CARACAS, VENEZUELA AND SOMEWHERE IN AMÉRICA: The United States-based, British-owned, political consulting firm bearing the names of pollsters Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, and Michael Berland, committed a crime under Venezuelan election law on Sunday: It violated the law against releasing “exit poll” data before polls had closed.

In the firm’s own press release, Penn, Schoen & Berland admitted that they knew they were releasing the supposed “exit poll” information while voting was still underway:


“New York, August 15, 2004, 7:30pm EST – With Venezuela’s voting set to end at 8:00pm EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the ‘Yes’ movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuelan presidential recall referendum.”

The careless and malicious approach that Penn, Schoen & Berland displayed with the Venezuela referendum on the continued tenure of President Hugo Chávez can be seen by the hour when the firm put out its press release: Voting in Venezuela had already been extended another two-and-a-half hours, until 10 p.m. (it would later be extended past midnight) so that all the millions of Venezuelan citizens still waiting on line to vote would be able to cast their ballots.

Thus, the gringo-British polling firm played fast and loose with the facts, and the law, in ways that it would never have been able to get away with in the United States on an election day. Justice demands that it not get away with this unethical behavior in Latin America either. To wit: If the pollsters and Penn, Schoen & Berland knew that polling hours had already been extended when they released their poll, then the pollsters clearly intended to deceive. But if the pollsters did not know what had already been announced in the news media in Venezuela, that would indicate a level of reckless disregard for the truth and incompetence as pollsters, as well as laziness at the hour the pollsters were supposedly tracking the vote, that will seriously stain the firm’s ability to meddle credibly in Latin American elections – or any elections anywhere – ever again.

More:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue34/article1046.html

Who would have guessed Mark Penn would become Hillary Clinton's own advisor/pr guy, and also one of 5 Washington, D.C. firms working for Alvaro Uribe as he tried to blitz the US Congress a couple of years ago?

Datanalysis' Jose Antonio Gil Yepes, who claimed Chavez had to be killed?

Alfredo Keller?

~snip~
Alfredo Keller's "Fight to the Death"

As with Gil Yepes, there is good reason to believe that the pollster Alfredo Keller has come to advocate a violent solution to Venezuela's current political conflict. In Keller's recent letter published by PetroleumWorld.com, he describes the current political standoff as "a fight to the death for power between two counter-posed ideological forces: an authoritarian socialism with a spirit of revenge against a democracy that is open to the market."

The charge of authoritarianism against Chavez is weak, and is especially hypocritical coming from the likes of Keller.

More:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/11034

[ChangoLoa]

3. Latinbarometro poll shows only 45% of Venezuelans support Chavez...

BoRev gives too much spin this time. So much that it forgets to say that, according to the Latinobarometro poll he's referring to "(which "publishes the world's most comprehensive survey of Latin American perceptions," according to BoRev.net)", only 45% of Venezuelans support the government of Chavez (less than what I thought), who is the worst evaluated leader in the region, after Castro.

If you are interested about Venezuela and want to have a clear view, try to go to primary sources.

Concerning your comment about crime and its perception in Venezuela, a country of 28 mil. where, in a year, you have 15,000 people murdered by the "crime" and 2,500 by the "police", it's reality that over-inflates the fear of crime, not "right-wing media".

[EFerrari]

6. That was the poll's conclusion, not Peace Patriot's.

Are you now questioning the poll?

lol

[ChangoLoa]

7. You don't need to be directly affected by crime to be worried

Obviously not.

The poll doesn't say it's right-wing media that scare them about criminality like Peace Patriot does. They just say it's the criminality (!) that has affected them, directly, in most cases.

55% Venezuelans believe that crime is the most important issue in the country while "only" 39% have been crime victims. From that information to concluding that they have an "overinflated" fear of crime because of the right-wing media, it takes a big amount of spin and a real nugget to believe that "logic".

If Venezuelans are scared about crime it's because crime is really high. This year, the estimations are around 14,500-15,000 killed by the crime and 2,500 by the police.

[EFerrari]

8. The right wing media is a fact, not a theory or even a conclusion.

And you know that, too. :)

[Braulio]

4. Venezuela's economic and human rights meltdown process

Interestingly, the Venezuelan economy is starting a long meltdown period from which its unlikely to EVER recover. The Chavez regime is acting as a cancerous agent, driving changes which are hardly to be reversed. Right now it the per capita GDP is dropping. Inflation is the second highest in the world. Crime is very high and increasing. Corruption is very high and increasing. Human rights are being eroded, and to top it off PDVSA is melting down, its production is dropping, it's unable to secure foreign investors to help it out. Thus, the the country is suffering from brain drain and capital flight.

It's a case similar to what we see in Africa: a nation run by incompetent and corrupt individuals who are forced to follow their leader's dogma, supported by the creation of false "good news" and utterly foolish propaganda. It's as if the band on the Titanic were playing "Everything's fine, folks" as the ship sinks.

By the way, it has just been reported Chavez has earned the position as the most disliked Latin American leader. The same poll gives number one to Lula da Silva, from Brazil, and President Obama. SO I guess the people don't like the communist, corrupt, and was mongering types after all.

[sabrina 1]

10. Do you think Bloomberg is working for Chavez, 'spreading

good news' and 'foolish propaganda'?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aOrLBeErIro0

Venezuela Debt Raised, Brazil Cut by Deutsche Bank

By Laura Cochrane

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan bonds, the second-highest yielding emerging-market government debt, were raised to “overweight” from “neutral” at Deutsche Bank AG because returns have become more attractive. Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Colombia and Ukraine bonds were downgraded.

Investors should buy Venezuela’s dollar-denominated bonds due in 2020, 2025 and 2039 because they offer better value than Argentine debt, which carries a “high risk of disappointment,” Deutsche Bank analysts Marc Balston in London and Hongtao Jiang in New York wrote in a strategy note today.

Sounds like Bloomberg at least, expects Venezuela to be doing okay for some time to come.

[Braulio]

12. Bond investing basics: Why Venezuela is high risk

I suppose you don't invest in bonds, therefore you don't understand the article you posted...what it says is that Venezuelan bonds are the second highest yielding - this means they are the second riskiest. The bond rating was shifted a bit by a German bank - Bloomberg only reports the news. Now let's go over reality:

Basis points over us Federal bonds is a measure of risk, the higher the basis points, the riskier the investment. I took the following basis points from the article:

Venezuela, 9.89 basis points
Ecuador 10.8 basis points

compared to

Colombia 2.73 basis points
Brazil 2.65 basis points

In other words, the market says Brazil and Colombia are a much better bet than Venezuela and Ecuador - these two are the pariahs of the bond investing world.

The information coming out of Venezuela is grim indeed, and the latest wrinkle is a series of bank collapses and government takeovers of banks - some of which seem to have been corruptly linked to high government officials.

Another grim sign is the black market Bolivar rate...the B has dropped about 10 % this month alone. If you go to the OPEC webpage, you'll see OPEC reports Venezuela is failing to make its oil export quota - PDVSA isn't performing and oil production just isn't what it used to be. Another sign of economic malaise is record high inflation rate - officially ranging between 20 and 30 %. The whole mess is largely caused by the government's insisting on keeping the controlled exchange rate at the same level while inflation is raging - this is a classic case of economic mismanagement, similar of trying to lift yourself up in the air by tying a short rope to your waist and pulling up as hard as you can...

Now you know why the bond spreads are the way they are - the bond market setters DON'T LIKE Venezuela (and Ecuador), they LIKE Colombia and Brazil. As for minor shifts in the basis points, they are just that, little wiggles. The grim reaper is still the grim reaper, even if its blade's sharpness oscillates a bit.

[Peace Patriot]

5. There is a REASON that Venezuelans have the highest regard for democracy in Latin America

--and that is because democracy WORKS in Venezuela! --the U.S. State Department, CIA and corpo-fascist 'news' scribblers to the contrary notwithstanding. The latter are LYING that Venezuela is a "dictatorship." The people of Venezuela have contradicted that lie time and again, in poll after poll, and election after election.

The pathetic thing is that the purveyors of this "Big Lie" about the Chavez government have managed to create this smeary, fuzzy, subliminal IMPRESSION of a "banana republic dictator" dictating over the MOST democratic country in Latin America. It would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. But their lie succeeds with some people in this country--very like the lie that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. requiring invasion and the slaughter of a million innocent people. Now, I happen to know--because I took the trouble to do the research--that most people here did not believe that Iraq was a threat. Nearly 60% of our people opposed the invasion of Iraq (Feb '03--all polls). About half opposed the Iraq War outright; the other half would only approve if it were a UN peacekeeping mission (i.e., international consensus on the threat, or, in other words, they didn't trust Bush). I suspect that the same may be true of the creation of "bogeyman Chavez." I haven't seen any polls on it, but I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and discrimination of most of our people. What happens, though, is that the minority--the rightwing stupids--are given a BIG TRUMPET in the corpo-fascist media, creating (again) an IMPRESSION of support for whatever our corporate rulers are alleging and for whatever dirty rotten schemes they are about to spring upon us and others. One result of this very tilted political spectrum is the demoralization of the majority, who feel isolated and powerless to influence government policy.

Well, eat dirt, my fellow and sister Americans! Venezuela far outstrips us on the matter that we tout as our biggest selling point: democracy! They don't have a demoralized majority! They don't have global corporate predators and war profiteers running their government and looting them blind. They don't have corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. They have a democracy that WORKS and they have a government they LIKE!

But they DO have rightwing, corpo-fascist dominated media. So it ain't the media--or it ain't all the media. My opinion: It's the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--the biggest difference between Venezuela and the U.S. They have transparent vote counting and an internationally certified election system. I don't want to underestimate the difficulty of achieving democracy in the USA. I think it is a very difficult project, indeed--and that we have been specially targeted for brainwashing and control, because of our potential power as a progressive people. And I don't really mean "eat dirt." I take that back. I mean PAY ATTENTION, ask questions, seek out alternative information, and seek out lessons and remedies from examples of SUCCESSFUL democracy, like Venezuela. Resist the brainwashing! Recognize it for what it is. Understand why you feel demoralized and powerless--and fight back!

[Braulio]

13. Separation of powers missing in Venezuela

Therefore Venezuelan democracy doesn't work.

[Wilms]

9. .

[Mithreal]

11. Late kick