hugo chavez... dead... days after protests asking wheres hugo

"Where's Hugo?" - a completely unrelated but rather memorable quote from one of my favourite films, "Shallow Grave":
 
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

-Elmer Fudd
 
redrumloa said:
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

-Elmer Fudd
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Only problem is, "cream rises to the top, even if its the turd on the top of a pile of shit" meaning that historically speaking, someone worse than him will rise to take his place...

Hey, just realized that applies to presidents and piles of politicians as well...

Wayne

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Scribbled furiously on my iPad using Tapatalk HD. I reserve the right to blame all mistakes, whether spelling, grammar, or logic on Siri..
 
Wayne said:
Only problem is, "cream rises to the top, even if its the turd on the top of a pile of shit" meaning that historically speaking, someone worse than him will rise to take his place...

Hey, just realized that applies to presidents and piles of politicians as well...

Wayne

---
Scribbled furiously on my iPad using Tapatalk HD. I reserve the right to blame all mistakes, whether spelling, grammar, or logic on Siri..
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what does worse than him look like? he nationalised his nations oil income and dumped it on the poor in the form of schools and hospitals... his human rights record is better than obamas and he's a friggin dictator... so please do tell... what does worse look like exactly? just curious... and flabbergasted... all rolled up in one...
 
I can't say I have strong feelings for him either way. For the most part he was harmless to the US, although clearly very controversial in his own country. Not everyone loved him, but he did have a majority support. I think a lot of his anti-US rhetoric was politic theater mostly intended for internal consumption. He early on re-invented himself as an anti-capitalist, but he wasn't always that way. Back in 1999 he visited the NYSE and ceremoniously rang the closing bell. Obviously his hate for capitalism, and the US in particular, was an acquired taste that served him well.

The one thing I never liked about him however was his support for other leaders who were far nastier. Saddam Hussein comes to mind. Whatever you may think of the US invasion of Iraq, there's no question about it that Saddam was a psychotic leader responsible for many deaths and the oppression of the majority of the people in his country. Of course, the US also supported Saddam but two wrongs don't make a right. Chavez also had good things to say about Robert Mugabe, Alexander Lukashenko, Bashar al-Assad and even Carlos the Jackal. He even praised FARC, the Colombian terror group. How far his support for these people and groups go I'm not sure about. If the CIA really was planning to kill him then I would argue that his association with these colorful characters and groups might be the motivation rather than his political and economic policies.
 
robert l. bentham said:
what does worse than him look like? he nationalised his nations oil income and dumped it on the poor in the form of schools and hospitals... his human rights record is better than obamas and he's a friggin dictator... so please do tell... what does worse look like exactly? just curious... and flabbergasted... all rolled up in one...
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It's quite obvious you do not watch enough television Robert. Most Americans have been carefully insulated from those facts.
 
Glaucus said:
I can't say I have strong feelings for him either way. For the most part he was harmless to the US, although clearly very controversial in his own country.
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He damaged the Koch brothers and other powerful people and that means he damaged the US and had to go. The XL pipeline taking bitumen from Alberta down to the Koch refineries on the Gulf Coast is all about the fact the Harper (being a "good guy") is willing to sell our heavy crude to Kochs heavy refineries at $30 less abarrel than Chavez was willing to sell to Kochs heavy refineries. As far as they are concerned they lost billions (which are the billions the people of Venezuella gained and Canadians don't).

Chavez also had good things to say about Robert Mugabe, Alexander Lukashenko, Bashar al-Assad and even Carlos the Jackal. He even praised FARC, the Colombian terror group. How far his support for these people and groups go I'm not sure about. If the CIA really was planning to kill him then I would argue that his association with these colorful characters and groups might be the motivation rather than his political and economic policies.
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Many of these colourful characters have harmed the "US" in similar ways. FARC is a terror group because the US says so but the death squads the US backed are freedom fighters and soldiers. The difference between terrorist and freedom fighter is whether or not you are fighting to give your natural resources to Americans or fighting to keep them for yourself. This is all gang turf war not moral crusade - but it's hard to get taxpayers to buy in if you tell it like it is.
 
If you haven't seen it you really really need to watch "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
This is a pretty low quality copy but I'm sure a better one could be torrented.
This documentary was made by a team of film makers that had gone to Venezuella to document Chavez and ended up being in the middle of the coup that briefly overthrew Chavez and the popular counter-coup that brought him back. If the people didn't want him as president they why would they risk their lives to get him back?
 
Speelgoedmannetje said:
In what way is he bad rubbish? Because he opposede to the big banks of the USA?
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Yup - he hated all the things that Red hates, but Red can't be allowed to know that despite his insistence that he isn't marinated in corporate propaganda.
 
I found this article rather interesting:

The Ghost of Hugo Chávez

What has Chávez bequeathed his fellow Venezuelans? The hard facts are unmistakable: The oil-rich South American country is in shambles. It has one of the world’s highest rates of inflation, largest fiscal deficits, and fastest growing debts. Despite a boom in oil prices, the country’s infrastructure is in disrepair—power outages and rolling blackouts are common—and it is more dependent on crude exports than when Chávez arrived. Venezuela is the only member of OPEC that suffers from shortages of staples such as flour, milk, and sugar. Crime and violence skyrocketed during Chávez’s years. On an average weekend, more people are killed in Caracas than in Baghdad and Kabul combined. (In 2009, there were 19,133 murders in Venezuela, more than four times the number of a decade earlier.) When the grisly statistics failed to improve, the Venezuelan government simply stopped publishing the figures.
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And further down...

As with Che Guevara, Chávez’s face may appear on T-shirts for decades to come, but Chavismo as a political project is not possible without Chávez.* As a guiding force, there was no real substance to it beyond the man at the center. What does it stand for? Populism, socialism, militarism, xenophobia, nationalism, Marxism, anti-Americanism, class warfare, Bolivarian revolution, lawlessness, corruption, financial collapse—it depends on where you stand. It was always an amalgam, never something pure, clear, or fixed. If it had any staying power, it wasn’t because it helped Venezuelans build something sustainable. Again, the country is in near ruins. Rather, Chavismo served only to showcase the man who propounded it. A man whose humble origins and charismatic personality helped forge a connection with the country’s poor, a population who had long been excluded from politics. A man whose style, voice, and methods were so unpredictable that it took his opponents more than a decade to even understand whom they were opposing.
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Sorry Fluffy, I'm far from convinced that there ever was a CIA plot to get Chavez. All I see are assertions based on the premise that the CIA is behind all of the world's problems. It certainly mucked a lot of things up, but most of that was in the cold war.

At any rate, for me, the fact that the leader of a large, oil rich nation needed to go to Cuba for medical care speaks volumes. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't Cuban's be going to the oil rich nation for medical care? Even Iran with all those sanctions has managed a lot better. Something's not right and you can't blame the CIA as they'd be targeting Iran and many other OPEC nations as well. More likely than not, Chavez himself was Venezuela's biggest problem as it seems he really had a poor understanding of how to run a country. Much like most extreme left wingers.
 
He damaged the Koch brothers
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the enemy of my enemies is my friend ??

well, maybe not a friend, but this makes me like just a little bit
 
Glaucus said:
Sorry Fluffy, I'm far from convinced that there ever was a CIA plot to get Chavez.
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The CIA works for the business interests of US corporations, however, CIA is an umbrella term and they would have worked through NED, USAID and through business and criminal contacts. The CIA was certainly aware of the coup while it was being plotted. And if you read that all the way though despite State department insistence that it was warning Chavez it seems likely that the Bush administrations quick siding with the plotters moments after the coup (and before the popular counter-coup) indicates that they were at least prepared in advance to throw their support behind the plotters. And since the failure of the coup the plotters have been working to undermine the government economically.

At any rate, for me, the fact that the leader of a large, oil rich nation needed to go to Cuba for medical care speaks volumes. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't Cuban's be going to the oil rich nation for medical care?
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Cuba has great doctors. It's something that they've been working on for decades. And Cuba is an ally. Cuba has been exporting medical expertise to Venezuela in exchange for oil and oil money but the Venezuelan upper classes still hated Chavez for redistributing wealth and Cuba was safer.
Something's not right and you can't blame the CIA as they'd be targeting Iran and many other OPEC nations as well.
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Really? The CIA isn't involved in Iran? They would be derelict in their duty if they were not. Someone has to write the viruses. Someone has to gather the intel. Someone has to fund and arm the MEK. Someone has to back foreign jihadis in Iran's allies like Syria. The CIA would plain old not be doing it's job if it wasn't. I don't agree with what they do, but that is what they are for.

Watch the documentary for an inside look at the coup as it took place.
 
cecilia said:
the enemy of my enemies is my friend ??

well, maybe not a friend, but this makes me like just a little bit
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Did you watch the documentary. I know it's long but it's a pretty unique and fortuitous account of actual events as they happened.
 
Obviously I can't watch the documentary here at work. I did however skim the wikipedia article on the coup.

It seems that there was a lot of tension leading up to the coup, involving mass protests, street shootings and open criticism of Chavez coming from the Venezuelan military itself. So if you tell me that the CIA had some idea of a coup, well, so what? Chavez probably had a clue about it as well, after all he orchestrated a coup himself not that long ago.

The wikipedia also states that the US initially sided with the plotters but eventually condemned the coup. I wish it went into more detail on this. Later on it states that the coup members had complete control of the state media and the media reported (initially) that Chavez resigned. Washington may have been positive about a voluntary resignation but not about a forced resignation. The devil is in the details and one really shouldn't jump to conclusions.
 
Glaucus said:
Obviously I can't watch the documentary here at work. I did however skim the wikipedia article on the coup.
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Here's a higher quality version. Watch it when you get home. Watch the tension, watch the shootings, watch the coup, watch the US reaction, watch the aftermath.

(Just noticed the FARA disclosure at the start - isn't that a nice coincidence, we were just talking about FARA)
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Yup - he hated all the things that Red hates, but Red can't be allowed to know that despite his insistence that he isn't marinated in corporate propaganda.
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Sorry Fluffy, but your views here are too shallow. Just because Chavez was a commie who made inflammatory statements about the USA and called George Bush "the devil" doesn't make him a great guy.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Yup - he hated all the things that Red hates, but Red can't be allowed to know that despite his insistence that he isn't marinated in corporate propaganda.
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It's surprising how forgetful people are considering the bailouts and things like that.
 
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