I've been watching your debate from the barrier for a while. I have to say this debate on how open the building of a truly democratic public sphere should and can be, is lacking something: Power. Attitudes towards engaging "the other" in a democratic way can not be really assessed without the factor of how much power you have. Is like an acid test, in the same sense a society of justice is defined the treatment of the least-advantaged members of such society (in Rawls terms), a true democrat is ultimately tested when he/she grab power, power to suppress (even physically) your opponent or just to completely dismissed what he has to say. Therefore the main responsibility on building a truly democratic public sphere lies on who has power, and to reestablish a democratic dialog is very little you can do if you don’t have any.

Corollary: Chavez (and chavismo) might be one now he has ilimited power, and forced be a totally different persona (as he has showed to be) if powerless. So should we reach power sometime soon, our main responsibility will be to force chavismo into the public sphere, our second will be suppress him if he refuse it.

Conventional politics is still the only way in current Vzla, quico. Any grandiloquent gesture ala CNR was laughable then and still laughable today. Coordination an unity efforts are, meanwhile, positive for the resistance time to come. Only a trigger event (a massive fraud or a massive repression) is a game changer, and that, has not happened (yet)

With inflation around 30% even with the type of economic decline observed in 3Q, I will pray for not recovery of the gdp. (I do not expect you to understand the relationship between inflation and gdp growth, thou)

I guess the pic was taken by the CANTV guy monitoring who is accessing CaracasChronicles

If I were Bill, I'd let Juan do his thing, while I keep playing with my cigars...

That'd be a twist!

Zelaya is a outcaster in his own party. His candidate lost the primaries against Santos (and so did Micheletti), so in principle Santos is not Zelaya's boy. There is another candidate from the ultra-leftist Partido de Unificacion Democratica, un tal Cesar Ham, that rumors has as Zelayas candidate for Nov elections.

"The 'change-we-can-believe-in' crowd just made things worse by calling golpistas the ones defending their laws"
along with all the countries in the hemisphere and I believe in the world, from right-wing Colombia to Chavez...so Hillary was not alone. Failing to do that would make appear USA isolated and acting, ermmm, unilaterally. But I guess you do not dislike that style of 'diplomacy', do you?

Yes, please email Maye Primera this post...

everybody knows arithmetics is an instrument of the empire and CIA to keep our people on the misery...