Merged Hugo Chavez Esta Muerto

[WildCat]

Hmmm...

 

[Cylinder]

So, how long does it take to put a track suit on a corpse?

 

[geni]

Chavez may or may not be dead, but the Venezuela he leaves behind is.

Not remotely.

Chavez's lunatic socialist rubbish turned what should be a prosperous oil-rich country into a country riddled with dysfunction, violence and food shortages.

Err you don't know your economic history. The correlation between resources rich and prosperous is near zero in South America.

No Venezuela should be home to a poor but carefully oppressed population with a small group growing rich on oil wealth. And if the last group to launch a coup hadn't screwed it up it would be.

He's spent billions on Russian arms on the loopy pretext that America is going to invade and steal all their oil.

Ever bothered looking at what he's buying? No of course you haven't and I doubt they would mean anything to you anyway. The purchases are pretty much dead on what you would buy if you were looking to make a future military coup difficult.

And let's not forget that Chavez holds all the political cards.

Not really. There are some very powerful players in the area who aren't about to start worrying about minor issues like courts. No Chavez could have been removed by a number of means but well things didn't work out too well for that last group that tried that and at this point its more straightforward to wait for him to die.

Hopefully Chavez's death shakes the cultists and sycophants out of their stupor and paves the way for democratic and free market reforms.

Unlikely. There are simply no players of significance with interest in either of those.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

...so says CNN Chile.

Chavez may not be dead, but the link you provided, is

 

[Cylinder]

Chavez may not be dead, but the link you provided, is

Yup - they moved the story to a new location sans redirect.

 

[dudalb]

Is Hugo Chavez really the emobodiment of Orwellian totalitarianism?

I'm no fan of his and think he's a pretty bog-standard populist with buffoonish rhetoric. But he's not comparable to Stalin or Kim Il-sung.

Agreed....he is Just another Latin American Dicatator. Only difference between he and most of them is his use of Left Wing rhetoric.

 

[angrysoba]

Agreed....he is Just another Latin American Dicatator. Only difference between he and most of them is his use of Left Wing rhetoric.

I was thinking about looking into the comparative histories of various South American countries on Wikipedia, but unfortunately the first I looked out, Chile, demonstrates why Wikipedia is not always a reliable guide:

After Salvador Allende had sex with multiple sluts & had multiple stds, he was overthrown by the 11 September 1973 coup d'état, Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship that lasted up until 1990. The regime, led by General Augusto Pinochet, was characterized by the systematic suppression of political parties and the persecution of dissidents to an extent that was unprecedented in the history of Chile. Scholars now consider it an example of a police state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_under_Pinochet

 

[ohms]

Chavez is receiving more chemotherpy according to his VP.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21639726

 

[angrysoba]

What's the name of that newspaper he is reading in one of the photographs that has been released? (Gionma? Gronma? Granma? Gramma?) Does anyone know if the date on it corresponds to when it was supposedly taken?

I don't see any reason from the photographs to think he is dead and that the photographs are posed. How sick he is and whether he will recover is a completely different matter. It seems irresponsible to continue ruling in that condition, but then again, if he was voted in then why not?

What is the consensus among the anti- and pro-Chavistas on this board?

(I speak as someone who is almost completely indifferent to Hugo Chavez but find ability to polarize interesting.)

 

[Cleon]

Granma. It's a Cuban newspaper.

 

[Caustic Logic]

True, he's not, but he is (or was) using the same principles to maintain power.

How many elections did Stalin win? How many successful coups did the people defy to effectively vote him in again, etc.?

Angrysoba, hilarious find re: Chile.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I will give the guy credit for one thing... he put his money where his mouth was. There's been more then a few Canadians who have spoke out against American health care and then when they have got sick (cancer) decided to skip the lines at go to the states for treatment.

Ol' Hugo, I'm sure, would have been a lot better of he had gone to the best doctors in the states then in Cuba....... but he went to Cuba.

It's a known fact most Canadians live so far south to be closer to the excellent and reasonably priced American medical system.

Cuba also is known to have the worst doctors and health care system in the world, because Castro and Chavez are communist *******s with multiple STDs.

Wildcat - you may have a point.

 

[balrog666]

He's pining for the fjords ...

 

[WildCat]

How many elections did Stalin win? How many successful coups did the people defy to effectively vote him in again, etc.?

How many opposition newspapers and television stations did Chavez shut down? How many journalists dd he arrest? How many opposition supporters were killed without consequence by Chavez supporters? How many people lost their jobs because they didn't support the correct Chavista politicians?

Do you think you can have free elections without a free press and free speech?

 

[Caustic Logic]

How many opposition newspapers and television stations did Chavez shut down? How many journalists dd he arrest? How many opposition supporters were killed without consequence by Chavez supporters? How many people lost their jobs because they didn't support the correct Chavista politicians?

Do you think you can have free elections without a free press and free speech?

Potential problem at least, to be sure.

How many of those papers and reporters were on the CIA/State De't/USAID Payroll? We don't know. Maybe they did. IMO it's better to expose their funding and document their bias and ruin their credibility anyway than to lock them up. At least in most cases. Some foreign agents might deserve to be made an example of.

So it's + whatever, - whatever.

Still no confirmation he's dead, huh? Google news search says no. We have Spanish CNN refering to Mr. Cochez, central accuser and no fan of Chavez. Here's Venezuelanalysis in English.

 

[WildCat]

How many of those papers and reporters were on the CIA/State De't/USAID Payroll? We don't know.

Why would it matter if they were? Should the US shut down access to al Jazeera and PressTV and Russia Today and other foreign-funded media??

 

[Orphia Nay]

Must be frustrating for anyone who runs a dead pool - how can you bet on someone's passing when you've no idea when they went?

Maybe you can have a dead pool dead pool, and bet on which Schrodinger's President will be confirmed dead first? Mubarak; Sharon; Castro; Chavez.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Well, according to the Wayback Machine, the Russians had the under for February '13 and the Cubans had the over.

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/02/hugo_chavez_will_die_in_less_t.php#more

 

[geni]

Do you think you can have free elections without a free press and free speech?

The recent data from italy suggests that to an extent at least yes. Of course the recent data from italy tends to show why this may be a bad idea.

Indecedently I think you underestimate the importance of Chavez's attempts to setup parallel systems of government. Elections aren't that important if power has shifted.

 

[geni]

Why would it matter if they were? Should the US shut down access to al Jazeera and PressTV and Russia Today and other foreign-funded media??

Err none of those are funded by people who have historicaly overthrown the US goverment.

Hmm coming up with a US equiv is difficult. I guess confederat funded newspapers in the north might be the closest concept.