Chavez has never shut down any radio or TV station. He merely revoked their license to use the public airwaves. He did that because they openly advocated the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government. They still broadcast their bile like Fox or CNN on cable.

Your link goes to a cheesey syndicated article from a year ago. You are full of mush and bullshit, like Chris Sinnard and all the other wingnuts who flock here. They are just smarter wingnuts because they stopped defending Bush long before you ever will. They come here and spread their own fear and hysteria about other perceived and exaggerated threats, infecting poor innocents like beth who doesn't know any better.

I can agree with Shooter or others on one point and that does not make me a "wingnut".

The need to put everyone in a neat little sterotype is a Rovian strategy-that you, being a Dem should know better of-and be aware of your own complicity (freewill-WHOOOOOOOOOOOO!)

and behavior in yourself.

The prevention of talking about Israeli involvement in the telecom industry is a good example.

It seems as an American, you would want to make sure that all of the rights/interests/security of Americans were insured-even if that means investigating an ally.

Speaking of off-the rails on the Harman/Bush/torure CIA coverup:

how'd we end up in Venezuela Toto?

To keep these threads as free of bullshit, propaganda (from any side, just the facts, please), fearmongering, hysteria, conspiracy theories, etc.

I've been reading and commenting here since UT and it has never been this bad. We've always had to put up with the bullshit from the Barts and Shooters. Now we have right wing antiwar nuts to go with the rightwing pro-war nuts. We've got mixed nuts. We don't want to turn into left wing nuts here. Remember, even a conservative like John Dean is "left wing" to Shooter.

Alexander Cockburn wrote about this a year ago:

"The Age of Irrationality

The 9/11 Conspiracists and the Decline of the Anmerican Left"

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11282006.html

The combined irrationality of the pro-war wingnuts and antiwar wingnuts is just too much irrationality.

John Dean is a "flaming liberal" compared to the right wing antiwar nuts we've been infested with lately. I don't mind that they have their say but I intend to call bullshit when I see it.

It has long been argued that Capitalism is a race to the bottom. Chavez with his oil money may be the most important socio/economic experiment of this century….a watershed event for the western world.

Your authoritarian tendencies are starting to show.. I'll post what I please when I please.

I know why I give you a headache.. You can't answer my simple questions and everyone here is watching you bob and weave trying to evade undeniable truths.

For instance.. When I stated that, in my mind, the percentage of citizens locked in cages was the best metric of a police state, you claimed that there was a better metric.

And yet then when asked what that metric might be you refuse to answer. I know why that is too, you cannot think of a better metric.

You are as pellucidly transparent as intergalactic vacuum.

I'm an obstinate, hard headed, obsessive jerk and you have just made yourself a focus of my obsessive tendencies. I'm going to ask you what your "better metric" is until you either answer or go away.

One other conspicuous characterizing thing about police states - to me anyway - has been the cultural integration of citizens informing on each other. As you say, LWM, hard to define.

I guess you've never heard of the "drug tips hotline"?

Even grammar school kids are encouraged to turn in their parents for heresy against what Silenced has brilliantly termed the "state religion" of the USA.

The government is pushing for a "drug free America", given that drugs are available even in maximum security prisons, a "drug free America" will not be a free America.

It is not quite correct to call the US a Police State. Not for folks like you and me. For privileged sectors of the population -- very large sectors in a superrich country with unparalleled advantages -- it is probably the most free society in the world. On the other hand, for black teenagers in urban slums, it wouldn't be false to say it's a police state. Simply look at the record of criminalization/incarceration. But "death squads against dissidents"? That's not the US model.

A differnt sort of population control

If you read Alan Greenspan's profound analyses, or even serious mainstream economists, you would know that the economic miracle of the US that inspires such is based largely on intimidation -- what they call "worker insecurity," a great thing, since it keeps wages low and hence improves "the health of the economy."

[T]he character Aycharaych, an alien telepath working for the Merseians is introduced in these stories are Flandry's nemesis. Aycharaych is rare or possibly unique: a telepath who can read any mind, human or alien. On top of that, he is learned, crafty. and deeply wise, knowing more of human culture and history than Flandry. Aycharaych is Anderson's idea of a truly cultured individual -- a Renaissance Alien, capable of both action and learning.

While lightweight, these stories show what Anderson was capable of and pointed where he would eventually go.

See also my other Anderson reviews: The High Crusade, War of the Wing-Men, Satan's World, Starfarers, Agent of the Terran Empire, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Going for Infinity.

It does seem to fit the appropriator's sense of self.

http://www.nesfa.org/reviews/Olson/AgentOfTheTerranEmpire.html

One other conspicuous characterizing thing about police states - to me anyway - has been the cultural integration of citizens informing on each other.

I guess you've never heard of the "drug tips hotline"?

I have. Hard to read your intent. Are you saying in rebuttal that informing is not a police state characteristic?

Exactly the opposite.. Informing is a very obvious characteristic of police states.

On another thread Silenced pointed out that the drug war has become the state religion of the USA. I find this a brilliant piece of analysis since, like religion, the drug war is based on faith in the absence of evidence.

Likewise, just as every politician finds it necessary to proclaim their religious faith, they must also proclaim their support for the drug war.