The Gaming Den

deaddmwalking wrote:

Kaelik wrote: Every time a moron says "you can't CHANGE THE RULES whole you are in office!" It demonstrates a total ignorance of bolivia where the MAS ran on a platform of changing the rules and then did it.

When you change the rules and apply it to your successor, things tend to go well. When you change the rules and apply it to yourself, they tend not to.

That just happens to be a matter of historical fact. Bolivia happens to be one more example of that playing out.

I'm not claiming that the coup is justified or justifiable. But it definitely happened and I think that changes in term limits contributed. If nothing else it makes other people suspicious of the motives of the people eliminating the term limits. Since it is so often associated with an authoritarian anti-democratic turn, it sidelines support from pro-democracy groups. Example A - this thread. Example B - actual events.

This is really bad and you are doubling down on being wrong.

They ran in 2005! on a platform of changing the rules. They changed the rules AS SOON AS THEY GOT IN OFFICE in 2006. None of those rules were only to be applied to successors in the 2009 elections. Bolivia somehow managed to struggle along with "the rules changed but applied to the current people in power" for TEN YEARS. A decade. It was the best decade Bolivia has ever had.

If Morales "applied the rules to his successors" then HE WOULD HAVE NO TERM LIMITS BECAUSE HE WON OFFICE WHEN THERE WERE NO TERM LIMITS.

Everything you say demonstrates that you know literally nothing about the situation in Bolivia.

You are literally complaining that Nelson Mandela should have kept ruling under the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act of 1983 with separate houses representing white, coloured and Indian people but without representation for black people because it would be wrong for him to "change the rules for himself" instead of his successors.

This is a non starter. But also, even as non starters, Evo would have HAD NO TERM LIMITS under the old constitution because there were no term limits for the fake president during the military dictatorship from the 1960s and 70s when that constitution was written and used to justify the military dictatorship in Bolivia.

deaddmwalking wrote:But it definitely happened and I think that changes in term limits contributed.

There were, and I cannot stress this enough NEVER ANY TERM LIMITS. There were no term limits before Evo took power. There were no term limits after Evo took power. No one was unable to run for election in Bolivia because of Term limits ANY TIME SINCE BEFORE THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT PASSED IN THE US.

deaddmwalking wrote:it sidelines support from pro-democracy groups.

Pro democracy groups are always opposed to socialists and it has nothing to do with term limits because they are CIA funded implements of american economic exploitation.

The OAS which said "actually we found some errors and we think Evo cheated in the election (but also we agree that he DEFINITELY GETS TO RUN BECAUSE THERE ARE NO TERM LIMITS)" gets 70% of it's funding from the United States of America and was created to serve US interests of anti socialist influence during the cold war. It ALSO supported the coup on Allende (a democratically elected socialist who was not facing any term limits) and supported Pinochet's murderous regime as a democracy.

deaddmwalking wrote:When you change the rules and apply it to your successor, things tend to go well. When you change the rules and apply it to yourself, they tend not to.

Not being Bolivian myself and from the outside looking in? This is literally second dumbest thing you could possibly say, just above, "the military coup is because term limits were exceeded."

Like literally in this thread, Evo campaigned on rewriting the constitution. And he did rewrite that racist document into something where the indigenous people counted as people who could vote. And all those reforms were to just wait until they applied to his successor nearly a decade from their ratification?

You and Frank can winge on their supreme court abolishing term limits, but all that is the biggest of nothing burgers when the fascist coup is actually shouting about non-existent election fraud. Like, for real here. Term limits have literally nothing to do with the coup, and going on about how governments can't make or challenge laws with the process democratically ratified to make or challenge laws in their own epoch is baffling.

Hicks wrote:going on about how governments can't make or challenge laws with the process democratically ratified to make or challenge laws in their own epoch is baffling.

Technically the 2006 constituent assemblies and 2009 constitution were SUPER ILLEGAL under the 1967 white supremacist constitution written by the military dictatorship that took over 1964 after a coup.

The just choose to do totally illegal shit that violated that constitution because IT WAS BAD AND SHOULD HAVE NO LEGAL FORCE.

Out of curiosity, when MAS took power in Bolivia, how many members of opposition parties did they murder? Is that number more or less than the current fascist coup?

I'm curious as to which pro-democracy groups were mad about the term limits thing. As far as I can tell it's just the OAS (not a pro-democracy group) and a bunch of op-ed writers who are paid to hate socialists in the media.

violence in the media wrote:Out of curiosity, when MAS took power in Bolivia, how many members of opposition parties did they murder? Is that number more or less than the current fascist coup?

Can't tell if you are serious, but zero.

Kaelik wrote:

violence in the media wrote:Out of curiosity, when MAS took power in Bolivia, how many members of opposition parties did they murder? Is that number more or less than the current fascist coup?

Can't tell if you are serious, but zero.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks] Too close to wishing death on someone for my tastes[/TGFBS]

You know what this discussion of term limits sounds like by now?

Benghazi.

Yeah. Fucking hell. It hits all the marks: Ignorance to the point of dishonesty. Complete disproportionality. And complete and utter irrelevance.

Frank Trollman wrote:Chamomile, what exactly am I wrong about here?

Not Chamomile, but I’ll bite. You’re wrong because your initial response to hearing about a left-wing leader (who slashed poverty and inequality in his country while boosting the economy and promoting racial equity) being deposed by a right-wing coup was to say he deserved it. I mean, I get it. This was before reports got out about the coup government massacres and lots of columnists were writing basically the same thing.

“It’s complicated.”
“There are legitimate protestors.”
“Let’s face it, he was no angel.” Wait, that’s for unarmed black men who are shot by cops.

Yes, shit is complicated. Especially when a socialist movement is trying to dismantle a settler-colonialist power structure while dealing with counter propaganda from the forces of capital, both domestic and international. However, when your first response (also the first response to the topic in this thread) is to equivocate, you’re carrying water for the bad guys.

You’re a self-avowed communist man! Critical support for peoples trying to get the boot of capital off their necks.

Edit - your/you’re fixes.

Yeah, I mean obviously, like, he was gunna nationalise the Lithium mines, and uh, the US has pretences about making batteries out of that stuff to do basically everything with, so no, there has been a fascist coup.

Term limits, lol. Too many y'all are supporting a fascist coup. Don't do that. You know what gets bad? Fascist coups. Like 100%. You know what doesn't normally end in tears? Minor changes to electoral laws to comply with international human rights treaties.

Stop supporting the fascist coup. Just like that. Just stop. Be all "oops, yeah, that coup is bad" instead.

It is briefly worth mentioning that the UK election is shaping up to be absolutely horrible like always.

The government made up it's own fake costing for the Labour policies and released it as the "real" costing, basically using the current government as a propaganda arm of the Tory party. Then the Tories created a fake website with a fake Labour Manifesto and pushed it hard by releasing the fake manifesto after the debate in a super fucked up way. Now BBC is basically doing the propaganda run for the Tories by writing up pieces like:

Literally calling bullshit no deal "enacting the referendum" and avoiding mentioning the no deal part by just calling it "at speed."

Meanwhile Lib Dems have restated for the 400th time their commitment to never coalitioning with Labour, but have lowered their already low standards for coalitioning with Tories to "any Tory that isn't Johnson, and then we will support their brexit deal after maybe a referendum." which if that were the compromise position would probably be okay because any actual deal presented as the referendum is going to fail, but since it's the no commitment pre compromise position like the democrats bidding against themselves to see how much they can compromise before the Republicans get involved, it will probably be limited to a 5 cent plastic bag tax and Swinson as Minister by the time they finish negotiating.

EDIT: Oof the image was much larger than I thought.

On that note:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ckuk-brand

Twitter said in a statement that it had rules in place to prohibit misleading behaviour.

“Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information - in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate - will result in decisive corrective action,” it said.

Yeah, "now that they've already done it and basically got away with it, anybody else who parodies it in an effort to draw attention to the wrongdoing will suffer the consequences".

Because Jack loves fascists.

Now to post an actual Non-US News Story that makes me laugh in this thread:

A rugby enthusiast, a Polish chef, and a convicted murder on day release are crossing the London Bridge at the same time........

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... e-attacker

https://time.com/5741867/london-stabbing-narwhal-tusk/

WTF?

Only $349
Buy now https://www.EscobarInc.com/Fold1
Pablo Escobar's brother's company Escobar Inc Official video of the foldable smartphone

I'm tempted....


Edit: Also NSFW

Josh_Kablack wrote:Now to post an actual Non-US News Story that makes me laugh in this thread:

A rugby enthusiast, a Polish chef, and a convicted murder on day release are crossing the London Bridge at the same time........

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... e-attacker

https://time.com/5741867/london-stabbing-narwhal-tusk/

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun, is another bad guy with a narwhal horn.

@Korwin
It's a rebranded Royole Flexpai

Stahlseele wrote:@Korwin
It's a rebranded Royole Flexpai

Yeah, still ~ $ 1000,-- cheaper.

And an strange (suspicious) disclaimer on the website:

DISCLAIMER: BY PURCHASING THIS PHONE THE BUYER IS IN AGREEMENT THAT ESCOBAR INC WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR LOSS OF PROPERTY AND/ OR ANY LOSSES CAUSED BY THE USE OF THE PHONE.

@Korwin
Think it's gonna pop up on amazon or something like that?

Don't think so. Maybe second hand?

What?
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/int ... 1218191932

Korwin wrote:What?
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/int ... 1218191932

It's a joke.

-Username17

Took me a little while to spot that isn't satire when I saw that in the Brexistentialism thread. I am going to claim that it says more about current events than me.

Also, they are apparently talking about doing that with power lines for real

EDIT: Too slow.

Is that story about the French teenager killing a priest who used to molest him legit? A quick search only seems to bring up Daily Mail or further right sources.