Hugo chavez is dead

[Dino Velvet]

R.I.P.

I'm with 'ya, kid. South America smells better now.

Larga vida al conductor del autobús!

[explorerchick]

Ding Dong the Wicked dick is dead

[robertlouis]

He was certainly on his way to dictatorship.

Indeed. How quaint to have a leftist leader in South America after all the hideous fascist thugs propped up by the CIA over the decades.....

[RallyCola]

maybe now Venezuela will stop selling all its oil to china and joe kennedy.

[robertlouis]

maybe now Venezuela will stop selling all its oil to china and joe kennedy.

How awful that another - independent - country doesn't put the US first. SMH.

An alternative view.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-poor-leftwing-figurehead

[GroobySteven]

Indeed. How quaint to have a leftist leader in South America after all the hideous fascist thugs propped up by the CIA over the decades.....

Yet not original. The saddest part of these people who original aim to give the country back to the people is that power almost always corrupts (see Castro for good example) and their ego-mania takes over their morals.

"There was Chávez the dictator who jailed opponents, sponsored terrorists and left his people hungry. And there was Chávez the hero who empowered the poor, deepened democracy and stood up to the US.The reality was more complex and fascinating. Chávez was a hybrid, a democrat and autocrat, a progressive and a bully. His "Bolìvarian revolution", named after the 19th-century revolutionary Simón Bolìvar, embodied these contradictions. He created a personality cult, abolished term limits, curbed private media and put the armed forces, legislature, judiciary and state oil company, PDVSA, under his personal control. He turned a blind eye to Farc guerrilla camps near the Colombian border and hailed the likes of Mugabe, Gaddafi and Assad as brothers."


While no fan of the US propped dictators and the US certainly over-reacted to Chavez's digs at them, in much the same way they've over-reacted for decades to Cuba (and made themselves look fools to the rest of the world) - Chavez seemed to become fairly similar to those same dictators and spent too much time just trying to snub the US, instead of working with them.


The most interesting part of the article is that we'll never know what his overall plan or legacy would be, I don't he could have written his death by natural causes at 58.


PS - so much for Cuba's miracle cures?

[Prospero]

Perhaps he should have taken a leaf from Fidel's book and made longer speeches. Castro sometimes spoke for seven or eight hours.

[Bigshot88]

How awful that another - independent - country doesn't put the US first. SMH.

An alternative view.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-poor-leftwing-figurehead

I love the UK and have lots of friends there, and as a man of English descent I consider myself a kinsman to them. But I notice that Brits seem to feel incredibly entitled to bile spititing hatred of US foreign policy considering that we learned at the feet of the masters. 90 percent of the ethnic and political struggles in the middle east and africa exist because some Englishman took a pencil and drew a line on a map during the colonial period, cynically seeking to divide groups to prevent them from forming strong national identities. Or how about when they flooded China with opium in order to control tea prices, nearly causing the whole country to collapse into ruin as a result
I don't feel we're any better than the UK where these matters are concerned, because I'm not one of those Americans who likes to ignore the ugly parts of our history. So I suppose my question is, where do UKers get this selectiive memory issue when it comes to imperialistic foreign policy? Secondly, why is it so strident and intense? I don't understand why despite history, Americans have a generally positive view of the UK, but it seems like the British never pass up the chance to point fingers and call us scum
Just a civil, reasonable question. I'm not attacking anyone.

[Prospero]

And Bigshot that is a a good question.

The trouble with this is that many of us Brits, RL and myself included, certainly DO accept the crimes of the past by the British Empire. nd to a considerable extent this shapes much present day thinking by those of us on the Liberal-Left part of the political spectrum.

But that does not exonerate the world's largest and only real superpower from its own foolish and sometimes criminal behaviours on the international stage. The invasion of Irq, for instance, with UK support. There are other instances but this will do as an example. I don't think it is inappropriate for an Englishman, or frenchman, or german or Japanese to criticise US foreign police - or engage in debates about the nature of US domestic politics - simply because we all have, largely ackowledged, skeletons in our wardrobes. What the US does, internationally and externally impacts on us all.

I love the US - visit several times a year - have family and many friends there. A second home to me really. But I cannot and will not stay silent about its geopolitical behaviour - and feel we have every right to speak out.

The fact you do not hear much here from other parts of the world is almost certainly because of the demographics of this site... with Americans and Brits dominating the discourse.

[Prospero]

And I have never called the USA or its people scum. My strongest criticism - as you'd see if you read my many posts in the politics section - is for those on the Right Wing of US politics who are, in my view, guilty of betraying the US people in manifold ways.

You don't see much discussion of UK politics here because -- well I doubt if most people here would read it. And there don't seem to be too many UK Conservatives who post to this site.

But wait until Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair die. You'll certainly see a fair bit of discussion about their records.