You are being very very silly.

The coup leaders broadcast the coup ceremony on TV, they hugged and kissed the newly installed dictator. And just in case you think they were all actors disguised as coupsters, they signed (with their ID numbers) the decree that abolished democracy.

Machado joined the coup, rushed to the illegally occupied presidential palace, signed the decree, and then concocted what must be one of the most ludicrous excuses in international political history: “I was only there to drink tea with Mrs Dictator and I signed by mistake”

I mean, purleeze!

Not to prosecute the coup leaders was indeed a political decision. There were almost 400 of them, representing all sectors of the oligarchic elite, from the Catholic Church to billionaires, army generals, and US funded NGOs. The government decided to let them off, rather than to take them all on.

Lucky them!

(and you’re complaining about their good fortune!)

Because the evil Hugo Chavez gave her an amnesty, along with all the other coup plotters. Why? Because they had already been exposed and then removed from all positions of authority and influence in the state. A political judgement was made that it was better to be magnanimous than to seek revenge.

They were punished before they were even tried? That seems a bit odd. There’s nothing magnanimous about punishing people while denying them their right to due process. Does justice not exist in Venezuela? Or does it only apply to Chavez and his supporters?

I mean surely the evidence was there to indict? Yet, no trial was forthcoming and the government cut its losses and issued a face -saving measure that would allow it to malign innocent opposition activists.

On her own admission she was in the illegally occupied home of the elected president on the day of the coup, drinking tea with Mrs Dictator. And her signature is on the coup decree, for goodnessake!

Being in the company of an alleged criminal does not make one guilty of a crime. That’s common sense, Calvin. And as I noted earlier, she argues that the paper she signed was not the decree but rather a sign-in form. Had she been given a trial, her claims could have been tested, but no such trial took place.

Why was her trial delayed? She obviously could have been tried before the amnesty order was issued, so why wasn’t she? Why deny her a chance to clear her name? And why was she singled out when others were not?

Maybe we should consult the Venezuelan Constitution:

Article 49
(2) Any person shall be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

Machado is innocent until proven otherwise. Because she was never found guilty, the amnesty order would not have applied to her or any others. In fact, that order was a violation of their rights as enshrined in the constitution. That’s why it was a political rather than legal decision.

Gene didn’t “report” on this lady. He ran a mini internet campaign on her behalf, in the full knowledge that she had directly and personally participated in overthrowing the democratically elected president, abolishing parliament, the legal system and the constitution.

Two posts reporting on Machado does not a internet campaign make. Nor does it prove he supported the coup. If reporting on someone makes them a supporter of said person, than that would mean Harry’s Place is a supporter of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

Instead of condemning her involvement, Gene declared the coup plotter to be a democracy activist and wrote about “how pleased” he was that she was meeting with George Bush. Bush, as you know, openly backed the coup.

He cannot condemn her for something that was never proven. We went over this, remember? As for his comments about being pleased, here is what he said:

Last week I posted about a meeting between President Bush and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado which, I was pleased to note, infuriated the Chavez regime.

He was pleased the meeting infuriated the Chavez government not that she was meeting with Bush. I have no doubt that he probably hoped it infuriated one Calvin Tucker, too.

Gene’s claims to have opposed the coup are contradicted by his strident support for the people who carried it out.

Not really, in fact, not at all. He has never expressed support for the coup or those who carried it out. He has been very critical of the Chavez government, which is enough to convict him it would seem. I have proven the extent of his support does not support the claims you are making. The sum total of your total argument is that we should ignore the facts and accept on faith alone that Gene and Machado are both guilty of crimes that have never been proven.

Bearing false witness is wrong, Calvin, please do the right thing and apologize to Gene.

Because the evil Hugo Chavez gave her an amnesty, along with all the other coup plotters. Why? Because they had already been exposed and then removed from all positions of authority and influence in the state. A political judgement was made that it was better to be magnanimous than to seek revenge.

how does reporting on this woman (who we know has never been convicted of anything) make Gene a supporter of the coup against Hugo Chavez?

On her own admission she was in the illegally occupied home of the elected president on the day of the coup, drinking tea with Mrs Dictator. And her signature is on the coup decree, for goodnessake!

Gene didn’t “report” on this lady. He ran a mini internet campaign on her behalf, in the full knowledge that she had directly and personally participated in overthrowing the democratically elected president, abolishing parliament, the legal system and the constitution.

Instead of condemning her involvement, Gene declared the coup plotter to be a democracy activist and wrote about “how pleased” he was that she was meeting with George Bush. Bush, as you know, openly backed the coup.

Gene’s claims to have opposed the coup are contradicted by his strident support for the people who carried it out.

Even you must see the contradiction here. It’s like supporting vegetarianism by eating a steak. Or promoting celibacy by having a shag.

That amnesty order sure was convenient. But for whom?

To bring this back, how does reporting on this woman (who we know has never been convicted of anything) make Gene a supporter of the coup against Hugo Chavez?

“Asked why she was in the presidential palace hours after the coup, Machado insisted she was only accompanying her mother, who’d wanted to visit her “very good friend” – the wife of coup leader Pedro Carmona. As for her signature on the decree suspending or dissolving the Supreme Court, National Assembly and Constitution, Machado claimed she innocently put her name and national identity number on a blank paper she assumed was a reception sheet”

So what does this “democracy activist” do on the day of the coup? Does she protest outside the presidential palace? Write a letter of protest to the Guardian? Throw herself in fron of tank?

Nope, she does not.

Instead she saunters down to the illegally occupied presidential palace to pay a social call on Mrs Dictator, whom, she tells us, “is a very good friend” of her mother.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if one of my mum’s friends broke into Gordon Brown’s house at gunpoint and then invited me to a housewarming party, I’d probably give it a miss just is case anyone got the the wrong idea. You know how suspicious some people can be. But back to the story (and what a story it is!).

Coincidentally, whilst the democracy activist was drinking tea in Hugo Chavez’s living room with her mother and Mrs Dictator, there just happened to be a big meeting downstairs attended by Mr Dictator and all the coup plotters who were busy abolishing democracy.

But what of that embarrassing signature of hers on the coup decree that abolished parliament the supreme court and the constitution? Machado claims it was all a dreadful mistake. “I thought I was signing a reception sheet”, she protests.

It’s the sort of innocent little mistake any demcracy activist could make, isn’t it?

You try to a good daughter by taking your old mum to see one of her friends in the middle of a military coup, and before you know it, you are being accused youself of being one of the coupsters!

On the basis of this Machado’s convincing tale, I think we can all agree on the following slogans:

FREE THE NON-IMPRISONED DEMOCRACY ACTIVIST!

DOWN WITH THE CHAVISTA FRAME-UP!

DON’T SIGN IN AT RECEPTION!

SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO DRINK TO TEA WITH DICTATOR’S WIVES DURING MILITARY COUPS!

‘Whereas you have no intellectual achievements whatever to your name, other than that you post comments on blogs. Comments full of spelling mistakes at that.’

ha ha ha ha ha what a total twat don’t worry everyone can see you clearly now.

Theology I don’t have formal level degree or post graduate level qualifications from ‘prestigious universitie’ in that. all the other subjects I do.

As for ’spelling mistake’s oooh hit me with your pedants satchel one more time oooooh.

You do reveal perfectly, however why you never deem it necessary to actually engage in any intellectual exchange with the lower forms of life in blogolandia.

You obviously feel that the blog ‘hoi polloi’ should simply be grateful for your patronising presence.

As for ‘wannabe’ ha ha ha, no its more a case of been there done that.

Some of us, those of us who left know what a nasty little sanctimonious, shameless, mean and cruel little backstabbing world the life of the prestigious ‘professional academic’ is.

We know, as you probably are only just becoming fully aware, now you have left the post graduate funding womb of the Henry Jackson Society (or have you?) (prestigious? in your dreams sweetie darling) of how teaching at the ‘University of Cambridge’ only makes you sound prestigious to a naive outsider.

To the diploma for cash industry that you call professional academe, you are just one more, not particularly gifted or outstanding, highly derivative , ‘piece rate’ jobbing labourer trying to make ends meet.

You know when i was much younger than you I coordinated for a few years some UN multi centre world global research studies and i worked in the research division of the World Health organisation.

I have been responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of funds much of it going to professional academics.

It was at times amusing but often completely unedifying watching ‘prestigious academics’ from prestigious academic centres of excellence competing (and offering me all kinds of ‘proffessional academic’ inducements) desperately for the even more prestigious and decideldy bankable imprimature of being an official UN agency accredited prestigious Collaborating Centre.

UN missions (yes we still call them that) to academic centres to see if they might qualify for collaborating centre status made the BBC expenses scandal look like a picnic in the park by comparison.

I was never seduced and never corrupted and can proudly state that I never unfairly favoured or blocked or overlooked genuine academic competence and conscientiousness, irrespective of what I thought of the person.

This even applies to you and i can see that in some areas you are clearly very able.

You are obnoxious in this forum though and given your readily articulated condescending snobbery, which has been pointed out by other commenters, on several occasions, the question has to be asked what purpose you think you serve?

Each time you have engaged in your peculiarly deluded, but spiteful, fantasy that I am a racist you have been told by staff posters at HP or long term regulars, quite categorically that I am not.

After your last ignoble efforts i was written to by a couple of people expressing dismay and remorse that you accused me of racism.

Its OK, I can take the absolutely gob smacking puerility of your attempted character assassination, only in academe is this pure poison of false accusation allowed to go unchallenged.

Here you make yourself look extremely silly.

But what is absolutely totally out of order with your behaviour and i am very disappointed that some let you get away with a pernicious crime infecting progressive discourse.

In conflating any distinction between someone who merely disagrees with your ludicrously childish and ill thought through preferred policy of ‘no categorical limits on mass immigration’ with actual violent and dangerous racists, by accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being indistinguishable from a member of the BNP, you reveal yourself as a fundamentally immoral person.

You accept no moral responsibility for your own words and their consequences.

The more that you hysterically and incontinently scream ‘racist’, triggered by God knows what psychological flaws you so obviously manifest, the more you both harden liberal opinion against caring any more, if everything they say is denounced as racist, and the more you leave the terrain to real fascists and Neo-Nazis and dangerous racists who will act on their evil views.

I don’t trust you. I believe that your notional ‘anti-racistm’ beingly purely rhetorical is wafer thin.

It encrusts your ego as an academics flag waving, a pompously paraded superior virtue, that is in fact a minimum job requirement.

You would wet your kickers before some seriously nasty Neo-Nazis so you absolve yourself of the need to fight real racists by fabricating targets that you can attack in what you think is a cost free exercise.

I have tried repeatedly to make peace with you, because i foolishly thought you were on the same side and I have an otherwise intact record of not making enemies of the good guys.

You are not interested and prefer to stalk these threads calling me a racist.

Now I find you are quite stomache churningly odious and make my flesh crawl.

This ability to makes yourself appear totally repellent has nothing to do with any inherent or fixed attribute that you may exhibit.

It is just you I find obnoxious.

The chosen and voluntary wretchedness of character that you have evidently put so much of your self regard into creating.

I hope you are proud of yourself. you are certainly your own greatest fan.

I am bored and i apoligse to HP commenters who must be even more bored.

I have a responsibility to HP so I will not address you directly again.

If you insist on hijacking threads to direct your skulking petulant ur sulk at me I shall post the comment.

>>Marko’s obsessive disorder again. Reply submitted to voluntary moderation in HP’s interests.<<<

Now take your puckered lips and cloistered sphincter and get thee gone you cloistermouth.

You are not someone with whom it is possible to have a civilised discussion, because lacking the literary and intellectual skills necessary to formulate a convincing argument, you will always abandon the debate and resort to personal abuse – skin colour, ethnic background, mothers – pretty much nothing is too low for you, is it ?

Though it is funny how desperately and insistently you try to patronise me intellectually, and try to assert, again and again, just how much more you know than me, and how much cleverer you are !

Only trouble is, I have had my research recognised, funded and promoted by some of the world’s leading centres of learning; my work published by some of the world’s leading academic publishers; my books invariably reviewed favourably by the leading academic journals in my field. Whereas you have no intellectual achievements whatever to your name, other than that you post comments on blogs. Comments full of spelling mistakes at that.

Accusing me of not having read ‘Imagined Communities’ :-))) really, dear boy. I’ve taught the history of nationalism to students at the University of Cambridge.

‘you calim specialist knowledge in because your words show a willful ignorance of; sociology, anthropology, archeology, linguistics, philosophy, theology, comparative religious studies, and psychology’

Do please list your own academic publications and qualifications in any one of these fields. Any one at all :-)

So when I see someone like you trying so hard to patronise intellectually a professional academic like me, all I can think is: ‘What a sad little wannabe – he must have a terrible intellectual inferiority complex.’

The only intellectual qualification you have is an MPhil in Verbal Diarrhoea.