{"id":31746,"date":"2018-03-01T06:54:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T11:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31746"},"modified":"2018-03-01T06:54:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T11:54:01","slug":"americas-democracy-hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31746","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Democracy Hypocrisy"},"content":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s Democracy Hypocrisy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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In late February, Venezuela\u2019s government began accepting presidential candidate registrations and announced a snap legislative election for April. The country\u2019s opposition denounces the process as a sham and Maduro as a dictator, both of which may be true.<\/p>\n

Oddly,\u00a0 a third voice \u2014 the US government \u2014 also weighed in. Per US state media outlet Voice of America, \u201cthe United States, which under President Donald Trump has been deeply critical of Maduro\u2019s leadership in crisis-torn and economically suffering Venezuela, on Saturday rejected the call for an early legislative vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the perpetual public pearl-clutching over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, that\u2019s some major league chutzpah.<\/p>\n

The US State Department wants \u201c\u2018a free and fair election\u2019 involving full participation of all political leaders, the immediate release of all political prisoners, credible international observation and an independent electoral authority.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take that one at a time.<\/p>\n

Participation of all political leaders? In some US states, it\u2019s harder for a third party to get on a ballot than in, say, Iran.<\/p>\n

The immediate release of all political prisoners? Last I heard, US president Donald Trump hadn\u2019t pardoned (among others) Leonard Peltier.<\/p>\n

Credible international observation? The US proper committed to admitting international election observers in the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe\u2019s 1990 Copenhagen Document, but many US states forbid international observers or, for that matter, local observers who aren\u2019t affiliated with one of the two ruling parties.<\/p>\n

Electoral authorities? The two ruling parties control them all and routinely use them to suppress threatened competition, as do pseudo-private entities like the Commission on Presidential Debates, which makes giant illegal (but government approved) in-kind contributions to the Republican and Democratic candidates in the form of televised candidate beauty pageants which exclude the opposition parties.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s Democracy Hypocrisy In late February, Venezuela\u2019s government began accepting presidential candidate registrations and announced a snap legislative election for April. The country\u2019s opposition denounces the process as a sham and Maduro as a dictator, both of which may be true. Oddly,\u00a0 a third voice \u2014 the US government \u2014 also weighed in. Per US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[5493,18724,253,19013,1236,11716,827,843,851],"class_list":["post-31746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-election-meddling","tag-elections","tag-government-interference","tag-hypocrisy","tag-thomas-knapp","tag-united-states","tag-us-government","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31747,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31746\/revisions\/31747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}