BBC Breaking News - Hugo Chavez has died

[quote]#Venezuela President Hugo #Chavez has died, country's vice-president says

https%3A//twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/309059401044615168



• He was a monster - I am glad to see him go...

• 1. Bonnie Franklin 2. Hugo Chavez 3. ???

• R1 = CIA

• r1 = not a fan of personality cults neither am I

• He was not any worse than any puppet regime CIA propped up in El Salvador, Guatemala, etc.

• Who gives a shit about the CIA? Chavez was a lying narcissist with too much money and a chip on his shoulder against us. May he rot in hell.

• What resounding words of praise, r5.

• How was he a monster, R1? Specific examples.

• R6 is ignorant of history

• Well that's too bad. I always liked him. Okay, not always but most of the time. Being vilified by right wing, Faux Noise watching assholes is more of a badge of honor than an actual insult.

• He lowered poverty, improved housing, and increased the number of people with access to running water.

• "Hugo Chavez" ...it has a deluxe, upmarket, luxury goods ring to it.

• RIP

• "Joe for Oil" Kennedy is in mourning I'm sure. He's publically name-checked Chavez as a main contributor of low cost oil for Citizens Energy for years.

• [quote] Chavez was a lying narcissist with too much money and a chip on his shoulder against us. Same could be said for most US presidents.

• Any word yet from Mackenzie Phillips?

• Did he ever win any Hugo Awards? If not, he was nothing.

  Robert%20Heinlein

• @15. Especially the last 3 Presidents.

• I loved him, I'm sad he is gone. He beat the CIA...how many leaders actually do that?

• The united states tried so hard to get him out of office, it didn't work. Now (again) the USA will try to get the people to elect a puppet.

• RIP

• R2 - Kim Kardashian! I am praying at the alter of the Lady Sybil eclampsia gods as I type.

• Miami Herald

  http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/05/3268408/venezuelas-hugo-chavez-dead.html%20%20%20

• [quote]He beat the CIA...how many leaders actually do that? How do you know that it wasn't the CIA that finally got him?

• I used to drive a Hugo. Worst car ever!

• He showed the world that the American way was the wrong way.

• Ding dong the witch is dead!!!

• Didn't we used to like him?

  USA

• Again?

• R24, why is the CIA still allowed to do things like that in the first place?

• What did Dennis Rodman say?

• Watched a documentary recently. Apparently you can only get free health care in Venzuela if you join Chavez' party. His family is also massively rich all of a sudden, and probably became so with government funds. I consider myself a socialist, but what's the point of having a socialist as president if he's also a dictator who sends people to jail on whim? I hope they elect someone better now.

• R24 has a point. There are apparently known substances which reliably cause cancer, given in small amounts.

• The South Florida media, as usual, are sucking up to the most extreme right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exiles. One station interviewed former GOP Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who parroted the party line that Chavez was a puppet of Fidel Castro.

  Fericito

• This thread is an abomination.

• Liberals loved him in the mid-00s. Now he was a baaaaad man. Yeesh.

• He wasn't all that bad, he at least had a spine... Except for the USA-citizens fee of 100.00 to enter Chile...annoying

• Venezulean oil is my life's blood.

  USA

• [quote]CHAVEZ ON THE BRINK: Venezuela Blames Cancer On Foreign Plot, Expels US Attaché

  http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuelan-state-tv-accuses-us-embassy-officer-of-plotting-against-government-2013-3

• Go fuck yourself r1. Sad news. He was a great man.

• r6, you right-wing faggot piece of shit, seeing as the US has continually plotted against him - he had every reason and right to hate us. Get bashed, faggot.

• I think only Sean Penn and his idiotic followers liked him. Oh and few idiots on Datalounge. He did some good things but then again, so did Huey Long but....

• R42 likes to twitch his butt so his pee pee wags back and forth while he tells us what is what.

  Because%20he%20knows%20best

• The right wing fuck-ups on this thread are disgusting. Who knew gay people could be so ignorant? Chavez tried to protect all the people, not just the rich people.

• Then why have some neighborhoods in Caracas been setting off fireworks in celebration, r44?

• [quote]He showed the world that the American way was the wrong way. That approach to cancer treatment didn't work out so well.

• "Except for the USA-citizens fee of 100.00 to enter Chile...annoying" What does that have to do with Chavez?

• I think he was the best thing about Venezuela. The man tried to help the poor.

• Chavez was a megalomaniac and he didn't do nearly enough for the poor of Venezuela. He was a figurehead who stood for social justice but was more interested in the appearance of class conflict. He was anti-Semitic. He cared little for the Venezuelan infrastructure, provided little security for his people who live in one of the most crime-ridden places on earth and he left Caracas the eighth the most expensive city to live in in the world and the country still a place where the poor are very poor and the rich very rich - some socialist! At the same time he was a folk hero who stood for progress, and who by sheer power of personality made the poor of Venezuela feel that they would finally get a share of their country's wealth (their lot improved but pretty much at the rate of that of the poor all over South America, so it really wasn't his doing). He stood up to Bush when the American "left" and press were afraid to. And when he first took office he represented much needed change in a country desperately in need of it. Let's just hope that Venezuela gets through this scary period and can perhaps finally become a nation that protects and improves the lives of all of its citizens and

• "The right wing fuck-ups on this thread are disgusting. Who knew gay people could be so ignorant? Chavez tried to protect all the people, not just the rich people." Unfortunately, that was not the case. Chavez was a huge disappointment in terms of protecting all the people of Venezuela. A great many people on the left know the truth. Others like to think of him as something he was not. He represented so much good; but he was in so many ways a narcissist, megalomaniac nightmare. I only hope that Venezuela can find a way to true progress and that it's immense wealth can finally be shared equitably and that all its people will live in greater safety. I sincerely hope that this will not be a tipping point for riots, more class conflict and especially for a move to the far right (which is, thank goodness, unlikely).

• This has to be photoshop.

  http://www.dlisted.com/2013/03/05/hugo-chavez-dead

• [quote] He beat the CIA... In the short run. In the long run, I'm sure they beat him. He's dead at 53. Coincidence? I think not.

• What are the monstrous things he's done? Did he snicker and imitate a woman he sent to the death chamber? Did he abandon a major city during and after a major natural catastrophe? Did he not act on intelligence and allow two cities in his country to be successfully attacked? Did he lie about a country having weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to invade it and kill tens if thousands of people?

• He spent Venezuela's oil profits on projects for the poor, who then voted for him. He did not protect the country's oil industry by protecting the industrial infrastructure. He also replaced industry professionals with his cronies. Production levels have been falling steadily. Whoever replaces him will need to take the profits still coming in to rebuild the infrastructure and hire competent executives and managers. And that's just one part of the mess Chavez leaves behind.

• Sounds like a Pussycat compared to BushCheney. Cronies in high positions? Heckuva job, Brownie.

• Being better than Bush and Cheney doesn't make him a good president and doesn't make him worthy of the adulation some are giving him. Ahmadinejad has said that Chavez will reappear when the mahdi comes. (FWIW, according to religious belief, Jesus is supposed to reappear when the mahdi comes, making Ahmadinejad's statement a bit sacrilegious.) Venezuela's crime rate has skyrocketed. The infrastructure is crumbling. Oil production has fallen greatly because of bad management and failure to reinvest in the industry. Yes, feeding the poor was a good thing. But he's left his country in bad shape. And running for president again when he was dying was a very selfish act.

• We like him better than Bush. This is the standard? No. I like Hugo Chavez better than George Bush. But George Bush is a fucking war criminal. The fact that one could consider Chavez a better human being than George Bush in no way equates with an endorsement of Chavez. What Chavez is in the American imagination - both right and left - is very different than what the man really was. Not merely imperfect, but inept, a man who grew popular by pitting the poor against the rich while keeping the poor poor and the rich rich, and a complete disappointment in achieving any real change for Venezuela.

• I'm actually getting a kick out of the right wing comments at some media sites. They are bemoaning the fact that Citgo was allowed to do business here because Chavez was a "socialist dictator who didn't allow free elections so I will never buy gas from them". Not a peep though about those Saudi sheikhs we get oil from. When was the last time they held free elections again?

• Gustavo Dudamel skipping L.A. concert for Chavez funeral By David Ng | 9:39 a.m. The Venezuelan-born conductor will fly to Caracas for the funeral on Friday instead of leading the L.A. Philharmonic in a scheduled performance.

  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-gustavo-dudamel-hugo-chavez-funeral-20130307%2C0%2C5771082.story

• He cut poverty in half and he raised the standard of living for three quarters of the population who were living in the worst conditions. He helped the people and THAT was his job. Republicans here in the USA, think they are suppose to make the lives of the rich, better. The middle class and the poor are of no importance to them.