Run Away!
Drudge is reporting:
CHAVEZ FLEES NYC; CUTS TRIP SHORT AFTER ‘DEVIL’ SPEECH
Thu Sep 21 2006 08:21:15 ET
Fiery Venezuela President Hugo Chavez will ‘wrap up’ his controversial NYC visit early this morning to return home to Caracas, sources say.
The president cancelled several appointments previously scheduled in NYC today including a second news conference he was to hold at Venezuela’s United Nations mission.
On Wednesday, Chavez, in a controversial speech in the UN General Assembly, mocked President George Bush repeatedly calling him ‘The Devil’.
Maybe Bolton asked him if he liked Thai food…
World Stuff | Mr. Bingley | 
September 21, 2006 9:08 am
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Leno said Bush ordered lunch for him – spinach salad.
“WATCH IT!! That Thai food’s DYNAMITE!!”
“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberry wine!”
I wonder what “Ni!” means in Thai?
It means “in the groin”
Pleased to meet you – hope you guess my name…
Thai food… cute. One could only wish Venezuela had an army like Thailand’s.
Sigh. (And no, that wasn’t sarcastic – the Thai army does ‘corrections’ when things get out of hand.)
Kathy K – you know not whereof you speak. Having a politically active Army is a very dangerous thing – in Thailand only the King keeps them in check – and things could still get easily out of hand. I’ve been in a correction, and it is not pretty.
Kathy K – I didn’t mean to come off as abrupt or sarcastic, I just think you’d have a little different perspective if you’d seen what happens when the military is not as benevolent as the Thai one has been historically (and historical perfomance is no assurance of future performance).
Some trials and tribulations just have to be lived through in order for wisdom to be gained. The electorate in many new democracies are little more than mental teenagers, and need the same freedom to make mistakes – and take the consequences – that real teenagers do. The Thai army is allowing the Thai electorate to remain political children, because they are not living with the long-term consequences of their actions. When the electorate does something stupid, the more astute among them realize that the Army is a safety net, and the stupid ones will always claim that the leftist policies were going to turn out all right in the end, but the bad old army got in the way again. The Venezualans may come out of the Chavez experience wiser than the Thais come out of this coup. But it will be an ugly and painful experience before they gain that wisdom.
Think of how American politcs would have been changed for the worse if the Army had staged a coup instead of submitting to the Army-McCarthy hearings.
Thing is that we have working mechanisms in place to ‘correct’ things. And vote buying is not a popular sport here anymore. The Thais are getting better at politics – this is the longest they’ve gone so far without a correction.
I do not think Thailand really needs to suffer under a tyrant in order to grow up. They are already beginning to grow up politically – and culturally. But it’s going to take a while. They still have more rule-of-bribe than rule of law.
And meanwhile, I’d rather see a correction than a Pol Pot or Mugawbwe.
Oh – just FYI – I do know something of the culture, I lived there for 2 years. (I also know something of the King – if he were not there, I’d be a LOT more worried.)
Kathy K – you obviously know a lot more about the local situation than I do. Why do you say that the periodic meddling by the military is not a sign of electoral infantilism? Is it that the parliamentary system is broken and whackos can get into power easily?
I still feel that military political intervention in Venezuela is not a good idea. If you base your conclusions on Thai experience, the key safety interlock missing from the machine is the King. Basically, I see military intervention in political affairs as falling on a distribution ranging from Haiti at the worst to Thailand at best. The distribution isn’t normal, though, and the tail with the Thai examples is much, much smaller than the tail with the Haiti examples. The center of mass is closer to what I experienced in Lithuania, therefore I think that it is extremely unlikely that any good will come out of a military coup in Venezuela.
On top of that, a system that requires periodic military intervention is one that relies on good people always being in key positions. If the king in Thailand fails to bring up a responsible heir, this military tradition could turn very ugly, as it did in Myanmar. One of the marks of genius in the American system is that the founders assumed that most of us will be shitheads, and designed a system that required very little (but not none) in the way of benevolence from people in high places.