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Romney's El Salvador financier's spiritual leader actually led a military unit a few years prior to Romney taking their money, which assassinated the catholic arch-bishop of the country, whilst he was doing the Eucharist, spilling the wine which mixed with his blood and cascaded all over the altar. Because he spoke out against massacres. A week later they did a grenade and machine gun attack on the people at his funeral. This was all very well-known in the American press (including which families backed the assassins) by 1981, well before Romney accepted their money.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html

Carlos Antonio Gomez Montano was a paratrooper stationed at Ilopango Air Force Base. He claimed to have seen eight Green Beret advisers watching two "torture classes" during which a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were tortured. Montano claimed that his unit and the Green Berets were joined by Salvadoran Air Force Commander Rafael Bustillo and other Salvadoran officers during these two sessions in January 1981. A Salvadoran officer told the assembled soldiers, "[watching] will make you feel more like a man.''

Here's the above story but a dated 1982 nytimes archive version. The nytimes one notes that the 2 children were murdered after the torture training, but not within sight of the Green Berets, though other accounts note that US advisors were fully aware but made it clear actual deaths should not occur within their vision.

Here's another one from the first link:

Rene Hurtado worked as intelligence agent for the Treasury Police, one of the three Salvadoran paramilitary forces. After a falling out with an officer, he fled to Minnesota, took refuge with a Presbyterian Church congregation, and began describing routine torture methods used by paramilitary forces. These included beatings, electric shock, suffocation, and mutilation. He described techniques such as tearing the skin from " interrogation" subjects, sticking needles into them, or beating them in such a manner that lasting internal injuries but no telltale external marks would be sustained. According to Hurtado, CIA employees and Green Berets taught some of these torture techniques to the Treasury Police in Army staff headquarters.

General John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was particularly disturbed by the implication of the Green Berets and initiated an investigation. The investigator from the Army Criminal Investigation Division stated, "My job was to clear the Army's name and I was going to do whatever [was] necessary to do that." Hurtado refused to cooperate with the investigator on the advice of a member of Congress whom the church parishioners had called upon. When the investigator was told this by the minister, he responded, "Tell Mr. Hurtado that the Congressman has given him very costly advice. When I went to El Salvador to investigate his allegations, at the advice of the U.S. Ambassador, I did not talk to members of the Salvadoran military. If I go again and talk to the military, we don't know who will be hurt, do we?''

I mean in the sense that the National Assembly is firmly in his pocket and has been for a long time. That's something that doesn't generally happen in a functioning democracy.

That's because the Venezuelan opposition lead a violent coup in 2002 and massacred a lot of people, including THEIR OWN GUYS so they could blame the socialists. All this is on video with alarming amounts of evidence. They just didn't hide their tracks because they didn't expect the lower-rank soldiers to rebel and put the elected government back into power.

Since then, the opposition hasn't had any credibility. It's kind of hard to do when your guys shot civilians on camera.

also, look it up, the opposition deliberately boycotted the 2005 parliamentary elections because they knew they were going to lose, Chavez's party won a lot of seats, then the Bush administration who were allied with the opposition used the fact of their parliamentary dominance to claim he was a dictator / rigged elections somehow.

Plus, the 20% are the well-off whites and the 80% were the oppressed mixed-race peasant majority, who now pretty much all vote socialist because they remember the old days of police massacres and beat beaten and shot. That's one thing Chavez can boast since he got in. 100% less government-ordered massacres.

this is the most famous massacre before Chavez got in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracazo
It happened the same year as the Tienamin Square massacre in China, funny the West never covered this in the news:

The Caracazo or sacudón is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting and ensuing massacre[1] that occurred on 27 February 1989 in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and surrounding towns. The riots — the worst in Venezuelan history — resulted in a death toll of anywhere between 275 and 3,000 deaths,[2] mostly at the hands of security forces. The main reason for the protests were the neoliberal, pro-market reforms imposed by the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, who had recently been elected in a campaign where he promised the opposite of such reforms.[1]

The clearest consequence of the Caracazo was political instability. The following February, the army was called to contain similar riots in Puerto La Cruz and Barcelona, and again in June, when rising of transportation costs ended in riots in Maracaibo and other cities. The free-market reforms programme was modified. In 1992 there were two attempted coups d'état, in February and November. Carlos Andrés Pérez was accused of corruption and removed from the presidency. Hugo Chávez, an organiser of one of the coups, was found guilty of sedition and incarcerated. However, he was subsequently pardoned by Pérez's successor, Rafael Caldera, and went on to be elected president after him.

In 1998, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the government's action, and referred the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 1999, the Court heard the case and found that the government had committed violations of human rights, including extrajudicial killings. The Venezuelan government, by then headed by Chávez, did not contest the findings of the case, and accepted full responsibility for the government's actions.[3]

276 is the "official" death toll. most accounts say ~2000. but idk about the following massacres of the next few years.

Now, you might have heard Chavez himself led a coup in 1992. But consider that he lead a coup against a psychotic regime that had a bazillion massacres of civilians over the preceding 3 years ... and consider that the party which conducted those massacres is still one of the biggest opposition parties.

dude, all the TV channels and newspapers hate Chavez. There is one single state owned channel which has fairly small market share.

Read el Universal, their leading paper

The corporate media there is constantly thinking up anti-chavez conspiracy theories, daily.

I just had a theory that you can judge how interesting a potential President by how well their last name forms a portmanteu with "economics".

Reaganomics (the only one the spellcheck likes btw)
Nixonomics
Clintonomics
Obamanomics

...all sound ok, and all were linkable on wikipedia.

Carternomics - not even in wikipedia
Bushonomics - not even in wikipedia
Romneynomics or Romnomics - not even in wikipedia

...all sound crap, and none had a wiki page.

I was actually thinking of an article which worked a little different to the methodology of "stereotype threat" i think i read on science2.0 or some such science news aggregator. It specifically was not "stereotype threat". I already know about that.

Part of the way to alleviate any stereotype threat if you still want demgraphic data is as simple as ensuring that you collect any gender/race info after the test, not before it.

Apparently they're up to ~36 states "wanting" to secede. Let's make that 50. And they can all form a NEW nation and have new elections

"I'm not Satan! I'm... Santa. Yes, that's it. Santa. Ho ho ho, merry 666mas, and all that!"

FTFY

It's also suspicious that Santa's last name is "Claws" and he likes the color red, and horned animals. And he demands sacrifices, whilst coming down the chimney in winter (with the fire going I imagine). Saint Nicholaus is the old name for Santa, whilst Old Nick is a name for the devil. The list just goes on and on.