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Who knows what these countries would do if after one of their civilian airplanes were blown up, the bomber was freed from an American jail. The US has curtailed the rights of many of its citizens for far less grievous offenses. Japanese-Americans, for example, were put in concentration camps during WWII simply because of their ethnicity. The problem with Cooper is that he has two yardsticks, one to measure things around the house and the other to use as propaganda cudgel against enemies singled out by the US State Department, the mainstream media, and Dissent Magazine.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Ad hominem abusive

Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves insulting or belittling one’s opponent, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensibly damning character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent’s arguments or assertions.

This tactic is frequently employed as a propaganda tool among politicians who are attempting to influence the voter base in their favor through an appeal to emotion rather than by logical means, especially when their own position is logically weaker than their opponent’s. Another example is calling conspiranoia to a conspiracy theory that one does not like.

Examples:

* “You can’t believe Jack when he says God exists because he doesn’t even have a job.”

* “Candidate Jane Jones’s proposal X is ridiculous. She was caught cheating on her taxes in 2003.”

On the other hand: Those who make apologies for the all-powerful, who stand with an unaccountable state against the individual and civil society, those who glibly cede the basic human rights of others while they bask in comfort and privilege, those who condone authoritarian rule in the name of expediency, those who justify the means by an illusory and utopian end, those who hold and maintain a double standard of upholding democracy where they live but excusing dictatorship when exercised against others, wel,… they are known at best as lackeys. At worst, as moral invertebrates. In courts of international law, they are known as collaborators.

Which category best describes you?

When you acquire and demonstrate one-tenth of the pure, unfiltered courage possessed by someone like Yoani Sanchez who is willing to defy an authoritarian regime (which has not hesitated to exercise arbitrary power against the innocent) armed with nothing more than a keyboard, then maybe you can lift your own head high enough to dare to call someone else a coward. In the meantime, the loyal followers of Granma and of the Living God Fidel await your insights and your links.

I do not equate either Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez with Augusto Pinochet (though there are some if not too many uncomfortable overlaps –especially in the former case). But I don’t hesitate in saying that your knee-jerk defense of the indefensible is a perfect mirror image of those who supported Pinochet to the bitter end.

I have no doubt we will see the same die-hard dogmatic defense from you as we saw from the Pinochetistas when the General finally got pinched. When the Cuban government eventually falls and it will be unarmed citizens on the street faced by rumbling tanks of the “Revolutionary Armed Forces” I have absolutely no doubt which side you will be on. From a safe distance of 3000 miles, of course. There is nothing that distinguishes you from the wingnut keyboard bombardiers who cheered the invasion of Iraq. Same crap. Different label.

I just noticed that DJ Slim has got a Columbia Univ IP address.

Man, what a flood of thoughts that evokes….
$35 grand a year down the tubes.. an Ivy league kid comfy in an elite university praising a system in which people eek by on ration cards and bartering eggs for razor blades… sort of nauseating, really.

Maybe DJ should get off his comfy rear end and head down to Cuba for a couple of years and do some character building manual labor (without a union nor without having to be badgered by any real news in the newspaper, nor be distracted by legal access to the Internet or satellite tv) for around the current going wage of $25 a month. I vote, yes! DO I have a second?

People like DJ Slim are precisley the same sort of automotan zombies that populate the desks of the Kafkaesque state ministries in Cuba , if not the guys who stood passively with clipboards to check the lines on the trains to Auschwitz.

There’s plenty flawed about the American media (says this writer who for years wrote a press crit column called Newspeak). But to say that the New York Times and Wash Post for example range from bad to worse while implying that they are somehow equivalent or worse than literal toilet paper like Granma should in itself disqualify one from being taken seriously on any subject.

I will say for the last time, you are dealing here with people who have a NEED, a psychological NEED to believe what is –to the naked eye– things that are not.

DJ Slim, thank god you are but a muttering troll and hold no state power. I shudder to think how many people would be rotting in jail if you could snap ur fingers and put them there. What a dangerous mind [sic].

Again, Venezuela has way more reseves per capita – $77 billion (26 million people) versus Brazil’s $200 billion (192 million people). Venezuela’s debt is only 9% of GDP. Brazil’s debt is 35% of GDP. Massively in debt is not where you want to be right now. Closely linked to the US is not where you want to be either.

Brazil, btw, is ahead of the BR Venezuela in the overall HDI.

http://hdrstats.undp.org/2008/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_SWE.html

Just imagine if Cuba was not robbed of many economic possibilities by the US embargo. It would be even higher, I’m sure. Not high enough perhaps so that the average citizen could live like an American media whore, but quite high nonetheless.

I have a high STT (Sphincter Tolerance Threshold).

As for Leftside/Av2ts’s comments re: Brazil, it’s amazing that a lefty/socialist extolling the virtues of Castro’s Cuba finds common cause with Citigroup to make a rather dilettantish point.

FYI: Brazil has a far more diverse economy than many other nations in the region. Inflation is far less than that of Venezuela’s and is under control, has a very high trade surplus, with strong hard currency reserves, new oil discoveries with a state-run oil company far more efficient than PDVSA, a strong currency without artificial currency controls (ask Argentina about currency controls) and has improved its economy so significantly that immigrants who fled for greener pasturs are seeing greener pastures in Brazil.

You also failed to notice this comment in the article to which you linked:

Dennis reduced his rating on Brazilian stocks to “neutral” from “overweight,” saying the downgrade is a “trading call.” He maintained his year-end target for the Bovespa at 55,000 and kept his “bullish long-term view.”

In other words, long-term, Brazil is in good shape. By all means, keep waxing rhapsodic about Castro and Chávez and the cult of personality

Hey, it’s worth a laugh or two. Imagine one convenient portal thru which you can link to such vital entities as Granma, the organ of the Cuban Communist Party or to The Party for Liberation and Socialism magazine and of course to ANSWER (which is spelled wrong on the blogroll).

Uh-oh, I also see he links to your site! Hijole!
Ur just a few links below Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency known to be a major employer of overseas state security agents. How cool!

And, silly boy, there is no cult of personality in Venezuela! Hugo is happy to step down sometime during the middle of this century. He’s got 40 yrs more before he catches up with Fidel Castro who after 50 years still maintains no such cult. Deja de preocuparte, escualido gusano!

A transparent lie.

blow

hard

As for the “smart money,” they are being told to get their hynies out of Brazil right now. Brazil’s stocks are overvalued and will “capitulate” soon Citigroup’s smart money folks say.

about the anti-democratic nature of the term limit as you are Randy.

Please show me where I used the word “anti-democratic”

Trying to locate a successor to Chavez 10 years down the road simply misses the point. Why force the people to choose someone new, when they are quite obviously satisfied with what they have – 64% voted for Chavez in the last Presidential election in 2006. If or when Chavez is no longer doing the job, there will be other candidates. To ask Chavez to manufacture opposition to himself at this point is more than a little absurd.