Edmundo Gonzlez, likely winner of Venezuela election, flees to Spain
Source: Washington Post
Edmundo González, likely winner of Venezuela election, flees to Spain
González fled days after the attorney general for Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, filed a warrant for the arrest of the former diplomat.
Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the country for Spain. (Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters)
By María Luisa Paúl and Niha Masih
Updated September 8, 2024 at 3:12 a.m. EDT | Published September 8, 2024 at 2:30 a.m. EDT
Edmundo González, the Venezuelan opposition candidate and likely winner of the July 28 presidential election, fled the South American nation on Saturday and has received asylum in Spain, his attorney confirmed.
“Unfortunately, the pressure against him was too strong,” said González’s lawyer, José Vicente Haro.
González’s departure comes five days after the attorney general for Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, filed a warrant for the arrest of the 75-year-old former diplomat as part of what he said was an investigation into the opposition’s publication of voting machine receipts showing its candidate won more than twice as many votes as the socialist leader.
{snip}
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/08/edmundo-gonzlez-flees-venezuela-spain/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Your post is so ridiculous it's laughable.
But you go ahead and keep defending the tyrant Maduro.
It's the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia. I was very shocked to see this. I thought it would rank about the same as Honduras etc...But no. It's at the bottom! It's scary because it's so close.
He probably got more than twice as many votes as Maduro, according to a Washington Post review of precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition — a sample that represents nearly 80 percent of voting machines nationwide.
The United States — along with the European Union and several Latin American countries — has refused to accept Maduro’s claim of victory and instead demanded that the government release precinct-level voting results, as required by the country’s laws.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/08/edmundo-gonzlez-flees-venezuela-spain/
Venezuela
Score
13/100
What does the CPI score mean?
Rank
177/180
Score change
-1
since 2022
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023/index/ven
Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Sweden are perceived as the least corrupt nations in the world, ranking consistently high among international financial transparency, while the most apparently corrupt are Syria, South Sudan, and Venezuela (scoring 13), as well as Somalia (scoring 11).[5]
It's more corrupt than Yemen, Afghanistan and North Korea. That's a real scary thought. I trust Transparency International more than I trust a comment on a message board. It's not corrupt media.
Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global[1] corruption with civil societal anti-corruption measures and to prevent criminal activities arising from corruption. Its most notable publications include the Global Corruption Barometer and the Corruption Perceptions Index. Transparency International serves as an umbrella organization. From 1993 to today, its membership has grown from a few individuals to more than 100 national chapters, which engage in fighting perceived corruption in their home countries.[2][3] TI is a member of G20 Think Tanks,[4] UNESCO Consultative Status,[5] United Nations Global Compact,[6] Sustainable Development Solutions Network[7] and shares the goals of peace, justice, strong institutions and partnerships of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG).[8] TI is a social partner of Global Alliance in Management Education.[9] TI confirmed the dis-accreditation of the national chapter of United States of America in 2017.[10]
For some reason too many DU members support Maduro. I don't know why. I don't consider Transparency International as "US corporate media". It's based in Germany and works with the United Nations.
it's laughable at best, tragic at worst.
Really makes one warm all over, doesn't it?
Invigorating reading from released communications between Kissinger and Nixon:
The Kissinger Telcons:
Kissinger Telcons on Chile
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Posted May 26, 2004
KISSINGER TO NIXON: "WE HELPED" COUP FORCES IN CHILE
New Telephone transcript records conversation with President
TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon (pages 1,2)
Washington D.C. May 26, 2004 - In one of his first conversations with President Richard Nixon following the bloody military coup in Chile, Henry Kissinger stated "we helped them," according to declassified transcripts of a telephone conversation obtained today by the National Security Archive. "That is right," Nixon responded.
The transcript records a call made by President Nixon to Kissinger's home on the weekend following General Augusto Pinochet's violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Kissinger reports to the president that the new military regime was "getting consolidated" and complains that the press is "bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown." When Nixon notes that "our hand doesn't show on this one though," Kissinger responds that "We didn't do it" [referring to the coup itself]. I mean we helped them….created the conditions as great as possible."
The September 16, 1973, "telcon" was found by the Archive's Chile analyst, Peter Kornbluh, among thousands of pages of transcriptions of Kissinger's telephone calls dated between 1969 and 1974, declassified today at the initiative of the Archive. Kornbluh, the author of The Pinochet File, called the new document "damning proof, in Kissinger's own words, that the Nixon administration directly contributed to creating a coup climate in Chile which made the September 11, 1973, military takeover possible."
In his confirmation hearings as Secretary of State that very week, Kissinger denied that the U.S. Government played any role whatsoever in Allende's overthrow. A year later, after details of a CIA destabilization program had leaked to the press, he again testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the intent of the United States was not to destabilize or to subvert [Allende]….Our concern was with the election of 1976 and not at all with a coup in 1973 about which we knew nothing and [with] which we had nothing to do…."
In his conversation with Nixon, Kissinger suggested that the press should be "celebrating" instead of being critical of the coup. "In the Eisenhower period we would be heroes," he tells the President. "But listen," Nixon replies to his national security adviser, "as far as people are concerned let me say they aren't going to buy this crap from the Liberals on this one."
More:
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/chile.htm
for decades to grasp what kind of people it must take to demand Democratic citizens regard organizations like Transparency International as above reproach, for chrissakes!
Have watched and read about them so long, and their views are anything but balanced.
Even the quickest reference from Wikipedia gives one a clear idea of what they are and what they've been doing throughout their history.
Wiki examples:
- snip -
Organizational structure
According to its 2012 Annual Report, Transparency International is funded by western governments (with almost €5 million from the UK government) and several multinational companies, including oil companies Exxon Mobil and Shell, hedge funds KKR and Wermuth Asset Management, Deloitte and Ernst & Young.[39] Exxon Mobil itself was ranked in 2008 as the least transparent of 42 major oil and gas firms.[40]
. . .
Controversies
According to the newspaper Le Monde: "In its main surveys, Transparency International does not measure the weight of corruption in economic terms for each country. It develops a Corruption Perception Index (CPI) based on surveys conducted by private structures or other NGOs: the Economist Intelligence Unit, backed by the British liberal weekly newspaper The Economist, the American neoconservative organization Freedom House, the World Economic Forum, or large corporations. (...) The IPC ignores corruption cases that concern the business world. So, the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008) or the manipulation of the money market reference rate (Libor) by major British banks revealed in 2011 did not affect the ratings of the United States or United Kingdom." The organization also receives funding from companies that are themselves convicted of corruption offences.[42] CPI's reliance on opinions of a relatively small group of experts and businesspeople, has been criticised by some. Alex Cobham, fellow at the Center for Global Development, states that it "embeds a powerful and misleading elite bias in popular perceptions of corruption". Others argue it is not plausible to ever measure the true scale and depth of a highly complex issue like corruption with a single number, and then rank countries accordingly.[43]
. . .
2017 USA chapter disaccreditation
In January 2017, the TI Secretariat confirmed that its International Board of Directors decided on 10 January 2017 to strip its US affiliate – Transparency International USA – of its accreditation as the National Chapter in the United States.[10] The stated basis for the dis-accreditation was the board's recognition of differences in philosophies, strategies, and priorities between the former chapter and the Transparency International Movement. Elsewhere, it was reported that TI-USA came to be seen in the United States as a corporate front group, funded by multinational corporations. TI-USA's funding was provided by Bechtel Corporation, Deloitte, Google, Pfizer ($50,000 or more), Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Fluor, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Marsh & McLennan, PepsiCo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Raytheon, Realogy, Tyco ($25,000–$49,999), and Freeport-McMoRan and Johnson & Johnson (up to $24,999).[58] TI-USA previously awarded an annual corporate leadership award to one of its big corporate funders. In 2016, this award went to Bechtel. In April 2015 the Secretariat defended the decision by TI-USA to give Hillary Clinton its Integrity Award in 2012.[59] Since January 1, 2020, Transparency International has an office in the United States.[60]
. . .
Transparency International's political impartiality, as well as its own transparency, have been called into question over hacked conversations of prosecutors in Operation Car Wash, leaked to The Intercept.[70][71] In these, chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and head of TI Brazil, Bruno Brandão, discuss a "backstage campaign" to "disarm resistance on the left", fund selected candidates, and target others, seen as adversaries, using social media. Plans extended to preparing a series of false accusations ("denúncias sem materialidade"
intended to damage the reputation of former president and potential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and lead up to a chat in which participants celebrate the election of Jair Bolsonaro.[72][73]
In April 2022, Brazil's auditing court announced that it had opened an investigation against Transparency International over the illegal imprisonment of Lula da Silva.[74]
ETC., etc., etc.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_International
Of course this report is superficial, could easily be far more complete and detailed.
I can notice you have been very mindful of history as it has played out, and I'm so glad you took the time to comment, regardless of meeting angry but always underinformed reaction.
I don't have time to take screenshots for every reply. But we are 24th in the world.
https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/united-states
Screenshot for those who are too lazy to click. Screenshot says were 25th.
Last edited Tue Sep 10, 2024, 07:44 PM - Edit history (1)
