Hugo Chavez passes away

[Kirkland Laing]

Venezuela under Chavez :


Mark Weisbrot of CEPR points out that real GDP per capita in Venezuela expanded by 24 percent since 2004. In the 20 years prior to Chávez, real GDP per person actually fell. Venezuela has low foreign public debt, about 28 percent of GDP, and the interest on it is only 2 percent of GDP. Weisbrot writes: "From 2004-2011, extreme poverty was reduced by about two-thirds. Poverty was reduced by about one-half, and this measures only cash income. It does not count the access to health care that millions now have, or the doubling of college enrollment - with free tuition for many. Access to public pensions tripled. Unemployment is half of what it was when Chávez took office." Venezuela has reduced unemployment from 20 percent to 7 percent.
Venezuela is making rapid progress on other measures too. It has a high human development index and a low and shrinking index of inequality. Wealth inequality in Venezuela is half of what it is in the United States. It is rated "the fifth-happiest nation in the world" by Gallup. And Pepe Escobar writes that,"No less than 22 public universities were built in the past 10 years. The number of teachers went from 65,000 to 350,000. Illiteracy has been eradicated. There is an ongoing agrarian reform." Venezuela has undertaken significant steps to build food security through land reform and government assistance. New homes are being built, health clinics are opening in underserved areas and cooperatives for agriculture and business are growing.
Venezuelans are very happy with their democracy. On average, they gave their own democracy a score of seven out of ten while the Latin American average was 5.8. Meanwhile, 57 percent of Venezuelans reported being happy with their democracy compared to an average for Latin American countries of 38 percent, according to a poll conducted by Latinobarometro. While 81 percent voted in the last Venezuelan election, only 57.5 percent voted in the recent US election.


This is worth reading to give you an idea of what the country was like before Chavez, peace be upon him, took power.


http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1...tury-democracy




Let's not forget Chavez was a democratically-elected leader and was returned to power several times with massive majorities. The only reason Americans have even heard of him (who is President of Ecuador wothout googling? Yeah) is because he booted US oil companies out of the country because they were paying buttons for the oil via contracts they'd negotiated with previous corrupt leaders.


October 19, 2006 00:04 EDT

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's plan to take control of oil production joint ventures run by Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips may lead to defaults on $1.6 billion in bonds.



[.]


Chavez has already changed the terms of agreements that cover the four ventures located in the Orinoco Belt, where crude is extracted from deposits of heavy oil. In October 2004, he raised their royalty rates to 16.66 percent from 1 percent. The fee was raised again this year, to 33.3 percent. The four will also face a higher income tax rate of 50 percent starting Jan. 1, up from 34 percent.


Chavez Risks $1.6 Billion Bond Default in Oil Venture Takeovers - Bloomberg












So American oil companies wanted Chavez gone and the liberal US media started the job, turning an ioncredibly popular democratically elected lesder into a dictator. I'm surprised that during the Bush administration we didn't discover he had weapons of mass destruction.

[Mars_ax]

@Kirkland Laing,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

[El Kabong]

@Kirkland Laing,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

...ummm he "wanted to help the poor" ...DUH! it's completely erroneous that the man simply pocketed the cash from nationalizing oil fields, he wanted to help the poor.....he had good intentions man...and by God that counts for something eh comrade?

[El Kabong]

How I Spent My Time in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

An interesting read from a former radical

[Mars_ax]

@Kirkland Laing,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

...ummm he "wanted to help the poor" ...DUH! it's completely erroneous that the man simply pocketed the cash from nationalizing oil fields, he wanted to help the poor.....he had good intentions man...and by God that counts for something eh comrade?

What you've got to remember is, it's all Bush's and/or America's fault that Chavez stole 100's of millions that never funneled down to the poor.

[El Kabong]

What you've got to remember is, it's all Bush's and/or America's fault that Chavez stole 100's of millions that never funneled down to the poor.

.....BILLIONS....2 of them

[Mars_ax]

Hopefully Venezuela will get a new less corrupt leader, with an IQ above room temperature.

[VictorCharlie]

It will be interesting to see if the VP is able to have the same cult of personality

[Kirkland Laing]

@Kirkland Laing ,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

...ummm he "wanted to help the poor" ...DUH! it's completely erroneous that the man simply pocketed the cash from nationalizing oil fields, he wanted to help the poor.....he had good intentions man...and by God that counts for something eh comrade?

What you've got to remember is, it's all Bush's and/or America's fault that Chavez stole 100's of millions that never funneled down to the poor.

I'm not sure Chavez stole hundreds of millions. He certainly set his family up with various lucrative business opportunities in the part of Venezuela he comes from. And there was defnitely massive corruption in the Chavez government. But this is Venezuela we're talking about, a banana republic that used to be run by a few dozen families who used to keep all the dough, it's not going to become Switzerland in five minutes is it? Two-thirds of Venezuelans didn't even have electricity when Chavez came to power. Now the country has electricity, education, healthcare and so on. That would never have happened under the previous regimes.

So you're unaccountably hating a guy who did absolutely immense good in his own country because of stuff you read in the liberal media. It's amazing how powerful those guys are.

[Mars_ax]

@Kirkland Laing ,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

...ummm he "wanted to help the poor" ...DUH! it's completely erroneous that the man simply pocketed the cash from nationalizing oil fields, he wanted to help the poor.....he had good intentions man...and by God that counts for something eh comrade?

What you've got to remember is, it's all Bush's and/or America's fault that Chavez stole 100's of millions that never funneled down to the poor.

I'm not sure Chavez stole hundreds of millions. He certainly set his family up with various lucrative business opportunities in the part of Venezuela he comes from. And there was defnitely massive corruption in the Chavez government. But this is Venezuela we're talking about, a banana republic that used to be run by a few dozen families who used to keep all the dough, it's not going to become Switzerland in five minutes is it? Two-thirds of Venezuelans didn't even have electricity when Chavez came to power. Now the country has electricity, education, healthcare and so on. That would never have happened under the previous regimes.

So you're unaccountably hating a guy who did absolutely immense good in his own country because of stuff you read in the liberal media. It's amazing how powerful those guys are.

Why do you think, me Lyle and Charlie, et al, are just parroting what the liberal media barfs up, and not expressing our own opinions? That's seems especially lame, since none of us are liberals?

As for hating Chavez, not really, I just have no respect for cock-waving dictators who are sworn enemies of the U.S.

[El Kabong]

OK, allow me to get this straight. Venezuela is a "Banana Republic", There was "Massive corruption in the Chavez government", but there he was "democratically elected"? So this guy in a corrupt country with a corrupt regime got elected and it was 100% on the up & up


As for the economy....5 Ways Chavez Has Destroyed the Venezuelan Economy - ABC News

[Kirkland Laing]

@Kirkland Laing ,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

...ummm he "wanted to help the poor" ...DUH! it's completely erroneous that the man simply pocketed the cash from nationalizing oil fields, he wanted to help the poor.....he had good intentions man...and by God that counts for something eh comrade?

What you've got to remember is, it's all Bush's and/or America's fault that Chavez stole 100's of millions that never funneled down to the poor.

I'm not sure Chavez stole hundreds of millions. He certainly set his family up with various lucrative business opportunities in the part of Venezuela he comes from. And there was defnitely massive corruption in the Chavez government. But this is Venezuela we're talking about, a banana republic that used to be run by a few dozen families who used to keep all the dough, it's not going to become Switzerland in five minutes is it? Two-thirds of Venezuelans didn't even have electricity when Chavez came to power. Now the country has electricity, education, healthcare and so on. That would never have happened under the previous regimes.

So you're unaccountably hating a guy who did absolutely immense good in his own country because of stuff you read in the liberal media. It's amazing how powerful those guys are.

Why do you think, me Lyle and Charlie, et al, are just parroting what the liberal media barfs up, and not expressing our own opinions? That's seems especially lame, since none of us are liberals?

As for hating Chavez, not really, I just have no respect for cock-waving dictators who are sworn enemies of the U.S.

What I'm saying is the media isn't liberal. Anybody that goes against US corporate interests is demonised by all US media. Thus Cyhavez, a democratically elected leader becomes a dictator who is a deadly enemy of the United States. Again, if he hadn't fucked with the 1% oil thing you'd never have heard of him. Without googling, who was the previous Venezuelan leader? How much US media coverage did he get? Who is the current president of Peru? Yeah.

[Kirkland Laing]

@Kirkland Laing ,

If I could, i'd piss on Chavez' grave, as well as any other South American anti-American dictator. What makes Chavez any different from Cuba's Castro, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any other sworn enemy of the U.S?

For one thing he won a popular election with a gigantic majority and then got re-elected every four years. As a general rule dictators don't hold democratic elections.

And like I said, Chavez is only known to Americans because he tried to get something close to a fair price -- more than 1%! -- of the oil they were pumping out of the country. If he'd left the oil situation alone you'd never have heard of him.