Hugo Chavez - DEAD!!
xmacro
Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 3,402
'Bout damn time too. Hopefully the oil to Cuba will be cut off as well, accelerating the fall of the Castro regime.
WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577265460960140008.html
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21679053
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/05/hugo-chavez-obit/1956067/
WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577265460960140008.html
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21679053
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/05/hugo-chavez-obit/1956067/
Comments
He essentially nationalized the largest oil company, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve healthcare, education and living conditions among the poor whom had been totally ignored by previous government, and made foreign oil companies pay higher costs for drilling. Yet, as autocratic as he became over time, he never turned Venezuela into a military dictatorship or rejected capitalism in general. He stayed in power for as long as he did because he enjoyed overwhelming popularity from the poor people who benefited from his policies, not through policies of terror. Indeed, near the time of his death he was also in danger of losing the next presidential election to a more conservative opposition candidate. While he did control the TV stations, freedom of the press was never stifled in Venezuela.
And the Venezuelan oil company, Citgo, was the only oil company that agreed to provide low-cost oil to needy American families through Joe Kennedy's Citizens Oil company. Chavez could have cut off this subsidy at any point, but didn't.
Awesomest Chavest deed I heard of was when he swapped a supply of oil to Cuba for 30,000 Cuban doctors.
Chavez revised the Venezuelan constitution to empower himself, destroying the power of the opposition. He used a constitutional assembly to re-engineer the Venezuelan Supreme Court and stack it with his loyalists, turning an independent judiciary into a rubber stamp
He then stripped independent TV and radion stations of their licenses, and passed libel laws so harsh that you could be thrown in jail for telling an unflattering truth about Chavez. Many journalists were thrown in jail; many others fled the country.
Though elections were held on schedule, he always tilted the playing field. Opposition candidates were restricted to 3 MINUTES of advertising per day, whereas Chavez could (and did) commandeer the air waves any time he wanted for as long as he wanted. 3 hour speeches by Chavez on all radio and tv stations were common.
No public debates were allowed, and public sector workers were told if they didn't vote for Chavez, they'd be fired
And life for the poor wasn't any better. Prices spiked - prices for food and medicine are now 20 times (not 20% - 20 TIMES) higher than they were in 1999 when Chavez took power. The murder rate in Caracas is the highest in the entire world. Bridges and roads are broken and falling down; rolling black outs are common place, and untreated sewer water mixes with drinking water.
Oil production has fallen by a million barrels over the course of Chavez's rule, decreasing the nations wealth. Yet Chavez still used what wealth he had to forge alliances with Irans Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Basshar Assad in Syria. He also provided shelter and sanctuary to the Columbian narco-terrorists, FARC
So you see, Chavez really didn't care about the poor. He was the classic socialist dictator - he loudly declared his love for the poor and impoverished, then ground them underfoot on his way to power. It's the same story with Stalin, Hitler, Moussolini, and Chavez's hero, Fidel Castro, and every other despot in history, and it's a shame the world still hasn't learned how to separate out the rhetoric from reality. Not in this case. May he share the same fate as every other dictator and rot in Hell
I'm not mourning his loss, but I'm not celebrating his death either.