Viva Venezuela!

bompington

MaxwellBygraves wrote:

Comrade Chavez has been receiving emergency cancer treatment in Cuba. As a result he was unable to attend his own inauguration. See more here.

Here's wishing the Comandante a full and speedy recovery and a swift return to power.

Fascinating to see how the cult of personality can extend way beyond the borders of where domination of the media makes it easier ;-)

dylanfernley

judge him by his deeds not his words-- if you were a poor person in venezuela, i imagine you would look on things in a different way....

DesB3rd

It boils down to your political perspective,if you lean to the left then you would be broadly in favour of chavez-- if you are in the other camp-- then you would not.

Broadly I'd second that. However I'm somewhat agnostic about his economics (in principal, a degree of ineptitude in application e.g. attempts at price controls, is fairly unarguable) - while I'm economically liberal I see the virtues of economic centralism are far more clear cut in the simple, well mapped terrain of developing economies.

Regardless of the political economics is that he has quite clearly "outgrown" the office - the legalistic authority infered by being president is moot - Chavez' own charismatic, populist power exists without & above it. I suspect he hasn't overly, & certainly not overtly, abused that situation to date but whether this is a matter of a comittment to democracy, a desire to avoid the bad press or a simple lack of need - we'll only know when a genuinely threatening opposition arises and the ballot box ceases to be a reliable means of maintaining and exercising power.

pinno

The CIA - Inglorious basterds:

Nice section about Gehlen (ex Nazi) and his involvement with the the Americans in their too

Of course the West is going to chastise the likes of Chavez and Castro because they don't extol the virtues of 'democracy'. Which in US terms means you sell us your oil and you allow our companies to come in and take over your sh1t and then sell the sh1t back to you.
Haiti is a great example of US interference - not only did the US support Papa doc (one horrible dictator). They also pledged $350m in aid after the Haitian earthquake of which less than $22m went to the people of Haiti, the rest went to US contractors to assist in rebuilding the place. Thats democracy for you. Disasters are great for creating employment aren't they ? *
Chavez is no angel but US foreign policy has been directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and they are purveyors of the most incidious empire - obligating people into capitalism and poverty.

An eclectic shortlist of yankee interference and interferers, f*ck ups and tragedies:
Bhopal disaster (Union Carbide)
Vietnam
WTO
Monsanto - (makers of Agent Orange and Round up weedkiller, GM wheat that the 3rd world buys mistakenly because it is hybrid and yields nothing when re-seeded)
Nicaragua - Colonel North and that lot of w4nkers
Reds under the bed - J Edgar Hoover/McCarthy, which drove people like Bob Dylan and Ernest Hemmingway abroad.
Interference in Italy post WW2 with their anti-communism push that theoretically Italy has never really recovered from.
* On that note, over 1000 US contractor companies in Iraq currently...

tiredofwhiners

dylanfernley wrote:

judge him by his deeds not his words--

Thats how the Greeks ended up sh*t alley - promises from the politicians, the deeds being unending cash for everyone albeit from a different source and then one day, the cash stops and everyone realises they are still living in the same corrupt dump, but that the nameplate on the town hall has changed and that nothing else has.

ben@31

Anti-US Chavez + Venezuelan oil reserves = Call me cynical but I wonder how long before "the west" claims he is evil, has weapons of mass destruction or terrorist training camps and takes him out in an USA World Police airstrike a.k.a Libyairaqistan. Then send in the US contractors to repair the place / oil wells.

You're only a good guy if the USA say's you are.

markos1963

tiredofwhiners wrote:

dylanfernley wrote:

judge him by his deeds not his words--

Thats how the Greeks ended up sh*t alley - promises from the politicians, the deeds being unending cash for everyone albeit from a different source and then one day, the cash stops and everyone realises they are still living in the same corrupt dump, but that the nameplate on the town hall has changed and that nothing else has.

Unfair to compare with Greece, the Greeks don't have large reserves of anything(other than Olive Oil!) and are therefore unable to earn their way out of penury.

hipshot

markos1963 wrote:

The interesting thing about Chavez's use of oil revnue is that it has been by and large for the benefit of his people, something tangible. What happened to our oil wealth? By and large paid for Thatcher to put 3+ million on the dole so she could persue her politcal ideoligy.

This

Really hoping he has a speedy recovery.

tiredofwhiners

markos1963 wrote:

Unfair to compare with Greece, the Greeks don't have large reserves of anything(other than Olive Oil!) and are therefore unable to earn their way out of penury.

Actually its a very fair comparison from the point of view of the dangers of unrestricted cash with little or no structural reform. Your point is well made, but if the money in Venezuela is simply buying votes, without modernising its economy so that votes cannot be bought as easily, then you have Greece all over again. the Greeks partied, gave themselves unaffordable benefits and jobs, spent money on creating very little, pumped up the broken public sector and destroyed the private sector. Venezuelas emphasis on creating a 'socialist paradise' where the private sector is weak and nobody wants to invest, bodes poorly for the future.

You can see the same in Argentina where the government cannot get anyone to invest in the country, and its slowly going to the dogs again for the second time under what started out as a populist government - until they had spent all the other peoples money.

dylanfernley

thats why its imperative to have worldwide revolution--trosky identified this long ago-- socialism in one ( or two ) country is doomed to failure--capitalism will deny you any oxygen ..

pinno

Greece is a great example of capitalism gone wrong. For too long the rich paid little or no tax and syphoned off all they could which then undermined the foundations. The average Greek didn't earn particularly much.
There is nothing wrong with capitalism per say. What has happened in the last 30 years (Thatcher and Reagan helped fuel the hedonism) is that capitalism has become the b all and end all. It is immoral because its too powerful - some MNC's are more powerful than governments and that is a dangerous precedent.
When people criticise socialism and quote Trotsky, Marx etc they are going from one extreme to the other as if there is not a huge grey area between those extremes of political ideology and its either one thing or the other and I am fed up of those purveyors of capitalism who see everything in terms of Left or Right.

DesB3rd

Greece is a great example of capitalism gone wrong.

Loathed as I am to use the maxim loved by many of the more loathsome US right commentators - its more a form of corporatism at its worst. And just bad government; roll over for interest groups, kick the reform can as the long as the money keeps coming.

When people criticise socialism and quote Trotsky, Marx etc they are going from one extreme to the other

True; and the practical politics we have to deal with are very narrow & moderate, the possibility of a European govt that's anything but a measured shade of social democratic (yes, even the Tories, well most of them) is quite remote and I dare say even those on the European right would not relish the prospect of a society quite as safety-net-free as the US. Even Chavez isn't exactly madcap, he talks the red platitudes but its steady, and rather modest, reform rather than revolution.

MaxwellBygraves

Chavez shows signs of progress, situation still delicate.

MaxwellBygraves

Venezuelans celebrate as Chavez returns to Venezuela from Cuba to continue receiving treatment - future is still unclear as Chavez's health remains in the balance.

hipshot

Such sad news. RIP Hugo Chavez. I still had hopes he might recover.

Viva Venezuela.

desweller

Yes I wonder how the Venezuelan political landscape will change with this news?

Hopefully they will manage a peaceful transition - I have a cycling tour planned there in November!

markos1963

Sad day for Venezuela and a sad day for Socialism. I suspect the poor in his country will be more worried than most. I also suspect the CIA will be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

MaxwellBygraves

Saddened to hear of the death of Hugo Chavez today. He was 58.

Like all of us, the man had his flaws, but everyone in the world who opposes poverty, injustice and exploitation has today lost a big ally in that fight.

I had still hoped there was a chance of full recovery...



Viva Hugo Chavez, Viva Venezuela, Viva Socialism!

MaxwellBygraves

Couldn't resist:

"If the climate were a bank, it would have already been saved" - Hugo Chavez

AchillesLeftKnee

MaxwellBygraves wrote:

"If the climate were a bank, it would have already been saved" - Hugo Chavez

...says the leader of a heavily indebted oil producing nation.

hipshot

MaxwellBygraves wrote:

Couldn't resist:

"If the climate were a bank, it would have already been saved" - Hugo Chavez

Brilliant. I think his legacy will speak for itself.

The western media's main criticism of him at the moment (note only hours after his death) seems to be he was "divisive" unlike Obama or Cameron or the Venezuelan opposition or any other politician. Makes a change from the barefaced lie that he was a dictator.

The poor people of South America know who and what he was, that's all that matters.

EKIMIKE

AchillesLeftKnee wrote:

...says the leader of a heavily indebted oil producing nation.

Testicles! As if anyone can take the moral high ground where oil is concerned. By your logic we're all hypocrites. Oil is too much of a necessity at the moment.

Chavez's point raises worthy questions.

AchillesLeftKnee

EKIMIKE wrote:

AchillesLeftKnee wrote:

...says the leader of a heavily indebted oil producing nation.

Testicles! As if anyone can take the moral high ground where oil is concerned. By your logic we're all hypocrites. Oil is too much of a necessity at the moment.
Chavez's point raises worthy questions.

Agreed that oil is a necessity. Most of us would be dead in short order if the world's supply suddenly stopped. However, I merely use the stuff because I have to, I don't subsidise it's consumption for personal political reasons, and my agenda for the next couple of decades doesn't include "rip up large swathes of the country to get my mitts on the tar sands".

Playing the environment card when your country offers petrol at Venezuelan prices*, and also sells the stuff around the Caribbean at a substantial discount, is a bit rich to put it mildly. Had the same statement been made by the Republican governor of Alaska it would have been derided by the left as massive hypocrisy (because it would be massive hypocrisy), but because it's coming from a Socialist it's somehow viewed as okay.

Quite apart from that, the suggestion that the challenge to humanity of developing a replacement for oil (as opposed to sodding about with golf carts for higher earners) is about the same in terms of difficulty as the great flashing neon Elastoplast that is typing a few very big numbers into a computer and declaring it a solution to the banking crisis is, itself, completely crass.


* http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-is-cheapest-place-in-the-world-to-buy-petrolat-8p-a-litre--compared-to-135p-a-litre-in-the-uk-8069667.html

Daz555

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/inte ... 3030661944

EKIMIKE

And Venezuela merely sells the stuff 'cos it has to! Again, there is no moral high ground to be taken.

I should make it clear that I don't think Chavez was correct in that statement (it's clearly meant for provocation of thought) but it raises worthy questions.

Oh and surprise, surprise the cheapest places on earth to buy petrol are oil producers. It doesn't mean much. It speaks for itself. Surely you can't think for a minute that we tax petrol to the heavens for environmental reasons? The reasons are the same as in Venezuela - hard-nosed economic policy.

AchillesLeftKnee

Must admit, I was only having a pop at the statement as an example of the tripe he seems to come out with. Clearly they're going to sell oil. Good job, to. They've got buckets of the stuff, and we'd all be buggered without it. Doesn't stop his verbal output from being rather comedy stuff. I mean, even the Grauniad can't quite work out what to make of him...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/chavez-venezuela-mobile-phone-vergatorio

rodgers73

Not sure why people make so much of a fuss over this guy, other than he seems to indulge their need to have someone annoy the aspects of the West they hate.

Lula in Brazil seems to have done a much better job of alleviating poverty, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, and growing his country's economy without dividing his society as much as Chavez has done. No one mentions him much though - perhaps because he's more moderate and isn't clowning around saying President Bush is a tw*t or whatever.

hipshot

rodgers73 wrote:

Lula in Brazil seems to have done a much better job of alleviating poverty

They both deserve credit. Remember the alternative to Chavez is the opposition who were content to do nada for the poor. Zilch. Noone gave a damn before him.

MaxwellBygraves

Jimmy Carter pays his respects to Chavez. I'm glad that he acknowledges Chavez's commitment to his fellow Latin Americans.

ballysmate

Vote Wolfie!!
Power to the Peeeeeeeeeeeeopie