Chávez Wins!!! Chávez Wins!!! Chávez Wins!!!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

:party::party::party:

[Vladimir]

1. Wohooo!!! Wohooo!!! Wohooo!!!

[enigmatic]

2. This is good to hear.. n/m

[Political_Junkie]

3. <<<APPLAUSE>>>

Damn good to hear! Made my Monday!

[Crunchy Frog]

4. Congratulations Chavez!

[althecat]

5. I posted another thread... then saw this one... and this deserves a few

[buycitgo]

6. VIVA!!!! BUY CITGO!!!!

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aneAd6g3qm6I&refer=home

[indigobusiness]

56. I demand a recount...

Did you have something to do with this?



(actually, this is terrific news, I'm heading for Caracas)

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

7. Beautiful!

[Citizen Daryl]

8. I just watched "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" Last Night

... for the first time. Well, actually the second time, because the first time I saw it was on Dutch TV when I was on vacation. But my Spanish is really rusty and my Dutch isn't much better, so I couldn't grasp most of the Spanish-language dialogue.

[G_j]

9. what a relief!

:thumbsup: :toast: :thumbsup:

[WillyT]

10. Yeah Baby !!!

:bounce::party::bounce:

[ret5hd]

11. There is a little more hope for all the little men in the world today...

Sometimes justice does prevail.
Sometimes hope does shine.

[Dob Bole]

12. w00t w00t w00t

The U.S. government has got to be pissed. You know they planned this thing.

[sendero]

14. Dubya...

... fails again!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

15. they'll move on to Plan F now

where theres oil there our interests lie

[no name no slogan]

58. I pray to Allah that Chavez has a "plan Z" (like Allende supposedly did)

The parallels to Allende in Chile are very frightening this time around. However, unlike Allende, Chavez has the support of the rank-and-file military, as he's an ex-paratrooper. IIRC, wasn't it a paratrooper who stopped the kidnapping/coup attempt in 2002?

With more light being shed on Venezuela's politics (and the meddling done by US corporations and covert ops-- NOT just Repubs, but Democrats as well, unfortunately), Chavez will have an easier time in winning the war for worldwide public opinion. Hopefully he can finish out his term, and pass the torch to the next democratically-elected leftist leader, who will continue to use the resources of Venezuela to benefit EVERYONE, instead of just the rich.

[deutsey]

13. Wow...maybe some of that democracy well come to the US?

Go, Chavez!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Viva Hugo! Victoria por los pobres!!

The good guys win one!

[Minstrel Boy]

17. The Venezuelan constitution is a revolutionary icon:

and so again should America's, under the Bush despotism.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

19. absolutely!

Great post!

[leesa]

18. This is so encouraging. The Bush Crime Family didn't pull off the coup!

Even with the corrupted voting systems in place, they couldn't do it. Stay alive Chavez, you are a hero.

[RedEagle]

32. No, they used paper as part of the voting system

Paranoid Pat, the one with all the information, has weighed in on this.

The machines used in the election printed a paper ballot- just like they SHOULD.

You see, if you have checks and balances in the system, it helps keep the system "honest."

[Mrs_Beastman]

20. congrats!

[MoonRiver]

21. Yea!! bushco falls to Citgo! Another coup bites the dust!!

:kick:

[Jack Rabbit]

22. ¡Viva la gente!

This is a vicotry for Chávez and the Venezuelan people. It is a defeat for Bush, noeoconservatives and those who would impose on the humnan race a dictatorship of the multinational corporate elite.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

23. Amen to that!

I feel really great about this development!

:party:

[stickdog]

24. And his opponents say that he massively cheated using BBV!

Do you think BushCo wants to repeat this charge to the American public?

The irony is quite delicious!

[RedEagle]

34. Hey guys, don't let the idea get out that they couldn't cheat ....

...even using BBV, because they couldn't.

They used touch screens that printed a voter verified paper ballot.

Hey Pat, need you to weigh in here again!

If anything points to the absolute need and guarantee of a paper ballot, this is it.

Paper can be RECOUNTED.

Paper is a powerful deterant to fraud.

Paper is part of the checks and balances system- accountability, that HAS to be in voting systems.

Paper that the voter can confirm and that is left in a secure ballot box for auditing, NOT a "receipt" that walks out the door. That's a "feel good" for the voter, absolutely worthless for recounting or auditing.

The threat of the ability to recount a close race or to even audit the accuracy of the machines is one of the most fraud deterant systems you can have. And with new methods of marking paper these days you can circumvent a lot of paper shenanigans, too.

Paper and PEOPLE won this election.

If PEOPLE get to vote on paper, if elections can be truly recounted, if voting systems can be audited, tangible source document against electronic "record," fraud is much less likely to happen.

Ordinary citizens are not a big fraud threat- insider fraud, the kind that HAVA doesn't happen to address, is the real fly in the ointment.

Keep paper in voting, verified by the voter and treated like a ballot*, and you stand a chance of more honest elections.


*If they promise paper but don't call for it to be treated like a ballot, if the rules only say to print it but not what it's used for, then you're only getting half of the solution. Auditing, auditing, auditing. And auditing is different from recounting. Recounts onl happen in the cases where a race is close and meets certain requirement set down in law. I want a rountine, robust audit of elections, the kind that will give us statistics on just how well the equipment does- or does not- work. Vendors don't want system audits- we might find out just how rinky a lot of them really are.

[ParanoidPat]

38. Absolutely correct RedEagle!

That's what makes Rush Holt's Bill, HR 2239 and it's Senate companion Bill, S 1980 so important. EVERYONE needs to keep pestering their representatives in the House and Senate to get those Bills up for a vote as well as their State elections officials (Secretary of State and County elections director) for legislation at the State level containing language similar to that in the proposed Federal laws.

In brief, the laws should require a permanent paper record of each voters intent that can be verified at the time their vote is cast and also require a mandatory recount of a small percentage of the paper ballots, at random, in all precincts, and that those results be compared to the totals reported by he machines. Should the counts differ, the machine count is thrown out and a full recount of all the paper ballots is performed.

Here's the relevant sections of the legislation referenced above. :hi:

Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)

HR 2239 IH

SEC. 4. PROMOTING ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY THROUGH VOTER-VERIFIED PERMANENT RECORD OR HARD COPY.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 301(a)(2) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)(2)) is amended to read as follows:

`(2) VOTER-VERIFICATION AND AUDIT CAPACITY-

`(A) VOTER-VERIFICATION IN GENERAL- The voting system shall produce a voter-verified paper record suitable for a manual audit equivalent or superior to that of a paper ballot box system, as further specified in subparagraph (B).

`(B) MANUAL AUDIT CAPACITY-

`(i) The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record, each individual paper record of which shall be made available for inspection and verification by the voter at the time the vote is cast, and preserved within the polling place in the manner in which all other paper ballots are preserved within the polling place on Election Day for later use in any manual audit.

`(ii) The voting system shall provide the voter with an opportunity to correct any error made by the system before the permanent record is preserved for use in any manual audit.

`(iii) The voter verified paper record produced under subparagraph (A) and this subparagraph shall be available as an official record and shall be the official record used for any recount conducted with respect to any election in which the system is used.

<Snip>

SEC. 7. REQUIREMENT FOR MANDATORY RECOUNTS.

The Election Assistance Commission shall conduct manual mandatory surprise recounts of the voter-verified records of each election for Federal office (and, at the option of the State or jurisdiction involved, of elections for State and local office) in .5 percent of the jurisdictions in each State and .5 percent of the overseas jurisdictions in which voter-verified records are preserved in accordance with this section immediately following each general election for Federal office, and shall promptly publish the results of those recounts. The treatment of the results of the recount shall be governed by applicable Federal, State, or local law, except that any individual who is a citizen of the jurisdiction involved may file an appeal with the Commission if the individual believes that such law does not provide a fair remedy.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

25. Why was all the media coverage I saw on the matter

convinced Chavez was at least a million votes behind, and doomed to lose.
Suspicious?

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

26. Absolutely suspicious - and extremely biased

Chavez's biggest enemy is the media - mainly the Oligarchy-run Venezuelan media but also CNN and Fox and the American media.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

27. So it seems. Nasty.

[ParanoidPat]

43. So it IS!

Google word combinations such as "psychological operations" and media or CNN and PSY-OPS and you'll get a real edumacation. :)

The best thing about understanding how psychological operations work is that once you can identify what they're trying to do to you, you become immune to the effects! :evilgrin:

If you get a chance, read through this thread. Here's a teaser.

D5E:destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation

CONCEPT PAPER


Working Group on Preventive and Preemptive Military Intervention


William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell1
Project Coordinators

<Snip>

U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for an FBI investigation into the forgery of documents cited by President Bush and Secretary Powell as proof of Iraq’s nuclear transactions with Niger. As Rockefeller explained in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller: “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”26

The timeliness of Rockefeller’s proposed inquiry was underscored by the appearance of official documents that lay out official American deception plans: "In a document last autumn, the joint chiefs of staff stressed the need for strategic deception and influence operations as tools of war. The army, navy and air force have been directed to devise plans for information warfare."27

According to defense analyst William Arkin, the Bush strategy lays out goals for information warfare that pursue D5E: "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation." Arkin notes that the wide array of sites and ractices of information control brought into the range of this policy "blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare on the other."28

This fusion of military deception programs with media propaganda efforts enabled the Office of Strategic Influence to commission officers from the U.S. Army's Psychological Operations Command to work as interns in the news division of CNN.29

Eventually, the Bush Administration was burned by the political heat generated when the Office of Strategic Influence was leaked to the media. The ensuing firestorm of controversy prompted Secretary Rumsfeld to close the propaganda unit. Yet less than a year later, Rumsfeld stipulated that his action had only been symbolic, and that information warfare missions were still underway at other Pentagon offices: And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that.
And “oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.” I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.30

The political implications of blurring military strategic deception and public sphere propaganda are worth exploring, given Arkin's concerns about military deception that "while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate."31

<More>

Perhaps someone on Air America would like to open up a discussion of this topic. :)

[Cha]

37. Were you watching cnn, msrnc, faux?

If so then that would explain it in my view.

[CanIgonow]

28. Unlike the other Latin American oligarchs,Chavez is descended

from the most despised of Latin America, a son of the blacks and Indians.He put himself on the line for these wretched of the earth and they responded magnificently.Hugo Chavez has given hope to millions of downtrodden people from Latin America, Africa, Asia and yes, the United States.We in the Us can do no less than drive out the oppressive Republican regime that has despised our own Democracy as our way of honoring Hugo Chavez.

Hugo Chavez, God Bless you and your fellow Venezuelans.You have given us hope!

[oasis]

29. Nice post and welcome to DU.

:hi:

[LibertyorDeath]

41. Cheers & Welcome!

"Hugo Chavez, God Bless you and your fellow Venezuelans.You have given us hope!"

A great day!

[ButterflyBlood]

30. It's nice to see someone pull through after such assault from evil

viva Chavez!

[LittleApple81]

31. I got e-mails from Venezuelan friends--anti-Chavez--declaring this a fraud

and screaming and crying and pointing me to the "truth found in web pages."
I have never liked the oligarchies in Latin America... they have been criminals from day one.
but this could spell trouble for Chavez and the country. These people don't plan to take this lying down....

[Vladimir]

33. I think Chavez is safe for a while now

I doubt the opposition has the numbers to try for a coup without international (read US) backing, and as this is election year I imagine they will be told to swallow their pride and wait.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

39. Hugo just needs to keep on empowering his people and being a great

example to the rest of the world

[Veggie Meathead]

46. As Hugo diffuses power to the people, the oligarchs will realize

that if they harm Hugo, there will be a thousand Hugos to carry his banner.This alone will make them think twice.The only way Democracy can survive is to empower more and more people.Power To The People!

[KamaAina]

35. The voters saw through the pathetic recall attempt

and consigned it to the ashcan of history.

Too bad Coll-ee-four-knee-ya couldn't have done as well.

[Cha]

36. This is what I was waiting for...

I didn't have time to check it out this morning ..so I came home on a break to do my protest e-mail to cnn And find out if Chavez won!


Viva Chavez! Far Freaking Out!!

[Butterflies]

40. Thank God!!

Great news! :-)

[Cat Atomic]

42. Any numbers yet? I heard he won by 58%, but I don't know

if that was just an estimate or what.

[genius]

44. At least we have some place to go if the thief steals again.

[TankLV]

45. Thank God.

Be ever vigilant, Venezualans.

Be ever vigilant.

We won - but we only drove the cockroaches back into the darkness and into the walls - thay haven't been eradicated.

Things will revert to more extremem measures coordinated with bunkerboy's thugs.

If bunkerboy steals another election, watch for the "restoration" of "democracy" in Venezuala soon thereafter.

Now it's up to us to see to it that the source of the coups and recalls against democratically elected heads-of-state is finally crushed by kicking bunkerboy and the repukes out of their seats of control.

Hope this is a harbinger of good things to come.

[rastignac5]

47. No more excuses for Chavez

He's solidified his power base, has a majority in the legislature, purged the state oil company, and packed the courts.

He has almost complete power in Venezuela now. The direction of the country lies entirely on his shoulders now.

It will be interesting to see how it gors.

[Vladimir]

49. He has, of course, not packed the courts

otherwise there would for example have been no referendum. And the assertion that he has almost complete power is also dubious, as a large proportion of the media is against him, and his parliamentary majority is not only very small but constituted of a group of quite disparate political parties uniting around him. His power is limited in many ways, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

[rastignac5]

50. Of course he packed the court,

by expanding it and assuring that it can be purged and recast at the whim of a simple majority of the legislature.

[Vladimir]

52. When the court starts 100%

biased in one direction, and you expand it to roughly half half, that's called balancing, not packing.

The recasting was motivated by the courts letting coup plotters off the hook - another example of how limited Chavez' power really is.

[CanIgonow]

48. At a time when our own Democracy has been debased beyond

recognition by Straussian liars,it was like a breath of fresh air to see a son of the despised and poor in Venezuela truly casting his lot with the dispossessed much in the same way our own Founding Fathers did more than two hundred years ago.Our Founding Fathers would have recognized in Hugo Chavez the animating principles of their own spirit.The energy released by Chavez's landslide election victory is going to prove contagious and we will also drive out our oppressors come November 2.

[Jax]

51. Venezuela keeps hope alive

You and Tinore have been such good voices on DU, voices I have consistently looked to for information about the repeated attempts to oust Hugo Chavez.

THANK YOU ChavezSpeakstheTruth. And thanks to Tinore, whom I miss on these pages.

Very happy for the people of Venezuela today.

Jax

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

57. I thank Judylin, AP, Tinoire, SMIRKY_W_BINLADEN, Vladimir and a bunch of

others for staying on this persistently!

Thanks for the kind words!

Woohoo!!!

[ulysses]

53. good news!

:bounce:

[ProfLefty]

54. Outstanding!!!

This was a watershed event because it was accomplished by the people of Venezuela despite massive U.S. interference and pressure!

[proud patriot]

55. I'm so Happy the People got who they voted for

Viva Democracy