Pat Robertson Calls for Assassination of Hugo Chavez!!!

dlowan wrote:

Nope.

I don't think he has to apologize. He is a private citizen and used his freedom of speech. I think what he said was stupid and I don't agree with him but I don't think he should have to apologize.

Venezuelans were hardly surprised by an American preacher's call to kill their President. After all, the US funded a coup attempt against him

Venezuela is living in the shadow of the other 11 September. In 1972, on a day synonymous with death, Salvador Allende - the democratically elected left-wing President of Chile - was bombed and blasted from power. The CIA and the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had decided the "irresponsibility" of the Chilean people at the ballot box needed to be "rectified" - so they installed a fascist general, Augusto Pinochet. He "disappeared" at least 3,000 people and tortured 27,000 more as he clung to power right up to 1990...

The coup, the coup. Everybody here has their stories about the 2002 coup d'état, and the strange 47-hour Presidency of Pedro Carmona Estanga, the head of Venezuela's equivalent of the Confederation of British Industry. (Pat Robertson's call caused a cascade of memories to burst across the streets of Caracas.) That April, Chavez was kidnapped and removed from power in a decapitation of democracy orchestrated by the media, a few generals and the wealthy. Carmona dissolved the Supreme Court, the Constitution and the elected National Assembly and assumed control of the country. This was immediately welcomed by the Bush administration.

Washington was eager to ensure the largest pot of oil outside the Middle East - providing 10 per cent of US domestic imports - was placed back under the control of US corporations, rather than a left-winger with his own ideas about oil revenue. It later emerged the US had been funding the coup leaders. Only the story didn't end there. Venezuela refused to be Chile. Judith Patino, a 57-year-old grandmother and street-seller who lives in one of the shanty-towns in the west of Caracas, explains: "We would not let our democracy be destroyed. We refused. Everybody from this barrio [district], everybody from all the barrios, went on to the streets of Caracas. We were afraid, we thought there would be massacres, but we had chosen our President and we were governing our own country and we would not surrender."

More than a million people took to the streets, surrounding the Miraflores Palace - the President's residence - and calling for Chavez to return...

How much of the division in Venezuela is based on race? Although there are exceptions, the wealthy elite tends to be white, and the skin tone gets darker the farther you go into the barrios. In the newspapers - which are all anti-Chavez - the depictions of the President in cartoons look like Ku Klux Klan propaganda, wildly exaggerating the thick curliness of his hair and the indigenous slant to his features.

Under Title 18 of US Code Section 1116, "whoever kills or attempts to kill a foreign official, official guest, or internationally protected person shall be punished." Section 878 of the same title makes it a crime to "knowingly and willingly threaten" to commit the above crime.

The US government is also obligated under international law to prevent and punish acts of terrorism against foreign heads of state, if those acts are conceived of or planned on US territory. The 1973 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons makes it a crime to commit a "murder, kidnapping, or other attack upon on the liberty of an internationally protected person;" [including] a "threat to commit any such attack."

The US is also a signatory to the 1971 Convention to Prevent and Punish Acts of Terrorism Taking the Form of Crimes Against Persons and Related Extortion that are of International Significance of the OAS, Article 8a of which obliges "[t]he contracting states undertake to cooperate among themselves by taking all the measures that they may consider effective, under their own laws, and especially those established in this convention, to prevent and punish acts of terrorism, especially kidnaping [sic], murder, and other assaults against the life or physical integrity of those persons to whom the state has the duty according to international law to give special protection, as well as extortion in connection with those crimes." This includes foreign heads of state as internationally protected persons.

The Christian Broadcasting Network should also be investigated for the potential illegality of using federally licensed airwaves to call for an assassination. In light of the $550,000 fine against CBS for the accidental airing of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," it would be extremely ironic if the CBN were not similarly punished for airing a call for terrorist homicide.

The US is also a signatory to the 1971 Convention to Prevent and Punish Acts of Terrorism Taking the Form of Crimes Against Persons and Related Extortion that are of International Significance of the OAS, Article 8a

The initial denial was a complete affront to truth. But it really is the case that 'truth' - for Robertson, and the christian right movement generally, and certainly for this administration - is as malleable as the gaining or maintenance of power appears to necessitate.

I would guess that someone came down on him. That someone seems likely to have been Rove or Norquist/Reed, or all three and more. A fundamental task for the RNC and cronies over the next three years will be the prevention of dissent and factionalism leading to a serious split between the religious interests and the remainder of the party.

I think C.I. has a point, there are a great many people who will see this entire incident not as the idiocy of a crackpot demagogue, but the martyrdom of an honest "man of god" for speaking the truth. For all that it may dismay and sadden thinking people to contemplate such a situation, it is real nonetheless.

I think C.I. has a point, there are a great many people who will see this entire incident not as the idiocy of a crackpot demagogue, but the martyrdom of an honest "man of god" for speaking the truth. For all that it may dismay and sadden thinking people to contemplate such a situation, it is real nonetheless.

In other news, the Dhali Lhama has called for the overthrow of the Chinese government, and a free Tibet.

cjhsa wrote:

In other news, the Dhali Lhama has called for the overthrow of the Chinese government, and a free Tibet.

I note the Dhali Lhama hasn't called for assasination of anyone.