Pat Roberston stirring up a storm again

[Tigger_Magic]

While he may have been elected democratically, he took the decidedly UNDEMOCRATIC step of consolidating all power under the executive branch of government. His highly trained police shot 3 protesting students on the streets of Caracas. He has taken to organizing youth groups, a la Stalin, et al. to rail against the enemy, the United States of America", all while building up his armies. He has met with like minded people; Castro, Iran's leaders, China and the dictator of Libya. He is buying Russian MIG's and AK-47s with intelligence suggesting that he will distribute them to his supporters. I believe he is a Castro mini me, a dictator in the making.

And for all these "high crimes and misdemeanors" he should be assassinated?

 

[Tigger_Magic]

Would this be known as a "Patwa"?

Welcome to the "American Jihad" led by our own religious extremists, the Rev. Pat Robertson and our very own DawnCT.

 

[DisDuck]

T_M.. We don't always agree on some of these discussions; however, YOU ARE SO RIGHT ON THIS ONE. I agree with your sentiments entirely.

 

[bcvillastwo]

Well I've certainly been flamed for (1) condeming PR's comments and (2) for suggesting that he's human like the rest of us. Someone posted the following,

PR has really done a disservice to Christ, IMHO.

Yes, he probably has done just that as have nearly all of us, he just did it in a very public and unfortnuate way.

For the record, I am not a PR fan and I was in no way trying to take up for him. He said what he said and now he must take his lumps.

But, I still wonder where the charity is for people making mistakes. I have always found it amazing that when a preacher falls that the rest of us sinners take so much pleasure at their fall. Preachers, whatever their stripe or pursuasion are still just forgiven sinners.

For those of you who aren't Christians I completely understand your glee but for those who aren't, I don't understand it at all (well actually I think I do).

So, flame away.

By the way, I am not saying not to condemn the sin. However, I am saying its probably wise to have a little charity because there will likely come a time when you step on your "you know what" and you might be wanting a little charity yourself.

 

[DawnCt1]

And for all these "high crimes and misdemeanors" he should be assassinated?

No, not at all. I am pointing out that he isn't a "good guy" and I would not be broken hearted if he departed the planet. How you made the leap from, "its fine with me if he's dead" to "lets send assassination teams", is amazing to me. No place can you find that I advocated taking out Chavez by any aspect our our goverment in this thread. But obviously you needed to have someone to respond to since Pat Robertson isn't answering your email. BTW, I have never seen Pat Robertson except when he occasionally makes the news by these type of statements.

 

[caitycaity]

I thought he was talking about Cesar Chavez, the guy in Cuba, but isn't he dead?

cesar chavez isn't a guy from cuba. he was an american who championed the rights of farm workers.

http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Chavez.html

as for the venezuelan chavez, while we might not like what he is doing, he was democratically elected. and the citizens of venezuela seem to like him well enough. i think we need to butt out.

 

[peachgirl]

Welcome to the "American Jihad" led by our own religious extremists, the Rev. Pat Robertson and our very own DawnCT.

It's so comforting to know that 2 people (you and I), who are so often on opposite ends of the political spectrum can find common ground.

Maybe there's hope after all....

Btw, I'm reading some very interesting articles regarding Venezuela and the Citgo Corporation...Looks like I'll be buying all my gas at Citgo. I'd much prefer my money go there rather than Saudi Arabia....

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm

By the way, I am not saying not to condemn the sin. However, I am saying its probably wise to have a little charity because there will likely come a time when you step on your "you know what" and you might be wanting a little charity yourself.

And when I do, I hope I have the good sense to at least apologize. Robertson didn't just mis-speak. He believes he was right.

The man is in favor of killing a democratically elected leader of a foreign country because he doesn't like his politics. That's not a simple matter of sticking your foot in your mouth.

 

[tlgoblue]

Actually, PR has now said that he was misinterpreted. "Take out" could mean anything, he says. There are lots of ways to take out a dictator. UMMHMM. Whatever! Says he never said we should assassinate him.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

Actually, PR has now said that he was misinterpreted. "Take out" could mean anything, he says. There are lots of ways to take out a dictator. UMMHMM. Whatever! Says he never said we should assassinate him.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/

Sure "take out" could mean fast food.
It could mean "take out" for a night on the town.

Pat, stop spinning, apologize, and slowly back away from the microphone.

 

[DawnCt1]

It's so comforting to know that 2 people (you and I), who are so often on opposite ends of the political spectrum can find common ground.

Maybe there's hope after all....

Btw, I'm reading some very interesting articles regarding Venezuela and the Citgo Corporation...Looks like I'll be buying all my gas at Citgo. I'd much prefer my money go there rather than Saudi Arabia....

.

Before you do, you may want to read something about Venezuela's prisons. They aren't any better than the Saudi's. You may also want to read about their latest efforts to thwart the DEA after they pledged cooperation....unless you think that importing cocaine is a good thing.

 

[peachgirl]

Add lying to his list of sins.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said Monday on his show, "The 700 Club."It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

I guess "do it" could mean anything too, right?

 

[toto2]

While he may have been elected democratically, he took the decidedly UNDEMOCRATIC step of consolidating all power under the executive branch of government. His highly trained police shot 3 protesting students on the streets of Caracas. He has taken to organizing youth groups, a la Stalin, et al. to rail against the enemy, the United States of America", all while building up his armies. He has met with like minded people; Castro, Iran's leaders, China and the dictator of Libya. He is buying Russian MIG's and AK-47s with intelligence suggesting that he will distribute them to his supporters. I believe he is a Castro mini me, a dictator in the making.

First , apparently , Lybia is a friend now. An now for the flip sideI know , it is long !)

"Last June, on Page One of the San Francisco Chronicle, an Associated Press photo of a mass of demonstrators carried the following caption:

"TENS OF THOUSANDS OF VENEZUELANS OPPOSED TO PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ..."

The caption let us know this South American potentate was a killer, an autocrat, and the people of his nation wanted him out. The caption continued: "[Venezuelans] marched Saturday to demand his resignation and punishment for those responsible for 17 deaths during a coup in April. 'Chavez leave now!' read a huge banner."

There was no actual story in the Chronicle -- South America simply isn't worth wasting words on -- just the photo and caption. But the Chronicle knew no story was needed. Venezuelans hated their terrible president, and all you needed was this photo to prove it.

And I could confirm the large protests. I'd recently returned from Caracas and watched 100,000 march against President Chavez. I'd filmed them for BBC Television London.

But I also filmed this: a larger march, easily over 200,000 Venezuelans marching in support of their president, Chavez.

That picture, of the larger pro-Chavez march, did not appear in a single U.S. newspaper. The pro-Chavez marchers weren't worth a mention.

By the next month, when the New York Times printed a photo of anti-Chavez marchers, they had metastasized. The Times reported that 600,000 had protested against Chavez.

Once again, the larger pro-Chavez demonstrations were, as they say in Latin America, "disappeared." I guess they didn't fit the print.

Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers in Venezuela. Note their color. White.

And not just any white. A creamy rich white.

I interviewed them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.

And the color of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola nuts -- just like their hero, their President Chavez. They wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts.

Let me explain.

For five centuries, Venezuela has been run by a minority of very white people, pure-blood descendants of the Spanish conquistadors. To most of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are brown, Hugo Chavez is their Nelson Mandela, the man who will smash the economic and social apartheid that has kept the dark-skinned millions stacked in cardboard houses in the hills above Caracas while the whites live in high-rise splendor in the city center. Chavez, as one white Caracas reporter told me with a sneer, gives them bricks and milk, and so they vote for him.

Why am I explaining the basics of Venezuela to you? If you watched BBC TV, or Canadian Broadcasting, you'd know all this stuff. But if you read the New York Times, you'll only know that President Chavez is an "autocrat," a "ruinous demagogue," and a "would-be dictator," who resigned when he recognized his unpopularity.

Odd phrasings -- "dictator" and "autocrat" -- to describe Chavez, who was elected by a landslide majority (56 percent) of the voters. Unlike our President.

On April 12, 2002, Chavez resigned his presidency It said so, right there in the paper -- every major newspaper in the USA, every single one. Apparently, to quote the New York Times, Chavez recognized that he was unpopular, his time was up: "With yesterday's resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator."

Problem was, the "resignation" story was a fabulous fib, a phantasmagoric fabrication. In fact, the President of Venezuela had been kidnapped at gunpoint and bundled off by helicopter from the presidential palace. He had not resigned; he never resigned; and one of his captors (who secretly supported Chavez) gave him a cell-phone from which he called and confirmed to friends and family that he remained alive -- and still president.

Working for the Guardian and the BBC, I was able within hours of the kidnapping to reach key government people in Venezuela to confirm that this "resignation" factoid was just hoodoo nonsense.

But it was valuable nonsense to the U.S. State Department. The faux resignation gave the new U.S.-government-endorsed Venezuelan leaders the pretense of legitimacy -- Chavez had resigned; this was a legal change of government, not a coup d'etat. (The Organization of American States bars recognition of governments who come to power through violence.) Had the coup leaders not bungled their operation -- the coup collapsed within 48 hours -- or if they had murdered Chavez, we would never have known the truth.

The U.S. papers got it dead wrong -- but how? Who was the source of this "resignation" lie? I asked a U.S. reporter why American news media had reported this nonsense as stone fact without checking. The reply was that it came from a reliable source: "We got it from the State Department."

Oh.

"He's crazy," shouts a protester about President Chavez on one broadcast. And if you watched the 60 Minutes interview with Chavez, you saw a snippet of a lengthy conversation -- a few selective seconds, actually -- which, out of context, did made Chavez look loony.

In the old Soviet Union, dissidents were packed off to insane asylums to silence and discredit them. In our democracy we have a more subtle -- and more effective -- means of silencing and discrediting dissidents. Television, radio, and print press obligingly sequester enemies of the state in the media's madhouse. In this way, Bush critic Rep. Cynthia McKinney became "loony" (see "The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney"); Chavez a mad "autocrat."

It's the electronic loony bin. You no longer hear what they have to say because you've been told by images, by repetition, and you've already dismissed their words ... if by some chance their words break through the television Berlin Wall.

Try it: Do a Google or Lexis search on the words Chavez and autocrat.

For who is the autocrat? Today, there are hundreds of people held in detention without charges in George Bush's United States. In Venezuela, there are none.

This is not about Venezuela but about the Virtual Venezuela, created for you by America's news wardens. The escape routes are guarded.

January 5, 2003, New York City. Picked up bagels and the Sunday Times on Delancey Street. Looks like that s.o.b. Chavez is at it again: Here was a big picture of a half-dozen people lying on the ground. The Times story read: "Protesters shielded themselves from tear gas during an anti- government rally on Friday in Caracas, Venezuela. In the 33rd day of a national strike, several protesters were shot."

That was it -- the entire story of Venezuela for the Paper of Record.

Maybe size doesn't matter. But this does: Even this itty-bitty story is a steaming hot bag of mendacity. Yes, two people were shot dead -- those in the pro-Chavez march.

I'd be wrong to say that every U.S. paper repeated the Times sloppy approach. Elsewhere, you could see a photo of the big pro-Chavez march and a photo of the "Chavista" widow placed within an explanatory newswire story. Interestingly, the fuller and correct story ran in an outlet that's none too friendly to Chavez: El Diario, New York City's oldest Spanish-language newspaper.

Lesson: If you want to get accurate news in the United States, you might want to learn a language other than English.

Friday, January 3, 2003. The New York Times ran a long "News Analysis: Venezuela Outlook." Four experts were quoted. For balance, two of them don't like Chavez, while the other two despise him.

The Times reporter wrote that "the president says he will stay in power." "In power?" What a strange phrase for an elected official. Having myself spoken with Chavez, it did not sound like him. He indicated he would stay "in office" -- quite a different inference than "in power." But then, the Times' phrasing isn't in quotes.

That's because Chavez never said it.

This article was based on a contribution to the compendium, "Abuse Your Illusions," released this month by Disinformation Press. Oliver Shykles, Fredda Weinberg, Ina Howard, and Phil Tanfield contributed research for this report. Palast, an investigative reporter for BBC television, is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin/Plume 2003)."

 

[Laugh O. Grams]

But, I still wonder where the charity is for people making mistakes. I have always found it amazing that when a preacher falls that the rest of us sinners take so much pleasure at their fall. Preachers, whatever their stripe or pursuasion are still just forgiven sinners.

I am saying its probably wise to have a little charity because there will likely come a time when you step on your "you know what" and you might be wanting a little charity yourself.

You mean the same charity that Rev. Robertson preached when he suggested Chavez be assassinated for the perceived sins that he has committed in his life?? Please!! The hypocracy is so extreme, it's almost unbearable.

On a positive note, it is nice to see that this thread has brought together the forces of good and evil (depending on your views ) of the DIS and we for once we all agree on one common interest, besides Walt Disney World, of course!!!!

 

[bimshire]

That would be a hope. I do hope that whoever decides to take Chavez out, takes good old Fidel right along with him. We can all feign horrified shock and then celebrate. It wouldn't break my heart. We could attribute it to a "nutty follower". Sounds like a plan to me!

Uhhh Huh. Yes, the "nutty follower" is how it works. Isn't this the same reason several abortion doctors were murdered right here in the USA.

 

[Independent]

But, I still wonder where the charity is for people making mistakes. I have always found it amazing that when a preacher falls that the rest of us sinners take so much pleasure at their fall. Preachers, whatever their stripe or pursuasion are still just forgiven sinners..

I have a very hard time believing this was a "mistake", therefore does not make him eligible for my charity. As media savy as PR is - and he has to be one heck of a media savy businessman to have masterminded the 700 club and CBN - it would reasonably safe to assume that he knew exactly what he was saying and how his remarks would go over in the press.

The man is scary. Very, very scary!

I second JER's remark - put the mike down Pat and back away - back slowly away.

 

[peachgirl]

Before you do, you may want to read something about Venezuela's prisons. They aren't any better than the Saudi's. You may also want to read about their latest efforts to thwart the DEA after they pledged cooperation....unless you think that importing cocaine is a good thing.

The citizens of Venezuela elected him. They like him apparently and that's all I need to know.

Me thinks that the taxes he wants to impose on big oil is the bug up the butts of Bu$h and his big oil cohorts. They could care less about the conditions of prisons in Venezuela.

Definitely sticking with Citgo..

 

[Charade]

Actually, PR has now said that he was misinterpreted. "Take out" could mean anything, he says. There are lots of ways to take out a dictator. UMMHMM. Whatever! Says he never said we should assassinate him.

Whew!~! I'm sure glad that he cleared that up!

 

[Charade]

The citizens of the Venezuela elected him. They like him apparently and that's all I need to know.

Hmm... that's what happened when Bush was relected.

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

Me thinks that the taxes he wants to impose on big oil is the bug up the butts of Bu$h and his big oil cohorts. They could care less about the conditions of prisons in Venezuela.

Documented source please for this accusation.

 

[Laugh O. Grams]

Works for me.

Hey!!! Charade just "Swift Boated", peachgirl!! Back to opposing sides everyone!!