Hugo Chavez Croaks

[Lord Jim]

One could argue that the help for the needy justifies this, but I can't agree. Chavez was a brutal thug, and deserves no cudos.

[Guinevere]

Citgo it is; for some reason Joe Kennedy Jr is the spokesman for this effort.

Joe Kennedy is the CEO of Citizens Energy, which provides free heating oil for about 200-3000k families in the winter. Citgo provided much of that oil (83 million gallons according to wiki). And in the meantime State and federal assistance for similar programs has been cut, and US companies don't step up, despite record profits.

Point taken Guin, but the TV commercial does give him the appearance of being a stooge for Chavez. One could argue that the help for the needy justifies this, but I can't agree. Chavez was a brutal thug, and deserves no cudos.

I was making no point, other than to provide some facts. I neither endorse nor condone Citizens Oil for working with Venezuela to get the oil for its efforts, but I suppose I'm glad someone has stepped up.

What does it say, that a "brutal thug" is willing to give Americans so much free heating oil, but our own oil companies are not.

[Rick]

As always it says be careful who you go to bed with...

[Gob]

Brutal thug?

He ran the economy largely according to guidelines set down by the International Monetary Fund and made a positive effort to encourage investment from global corporations.

He also began a programme of social reform, investing in the country's crumbling infrastructure and setting up free medical care and subsidised food for the poor.

In order to stay in touch with his people he set up weekly shows on radio and television where he explained his policies and encouraged citizens to phone in and question him directly.

In 1999 he proposed setting up a new constitutional assembly, gaining overwhelming support for the idea in a public referendum, itself an unheard of feature in Venezuelan politics.

In subsequent elections to the new body, Chavez supporters won 95% of the seats and set about drafting a new constitution which was approved by an overwhelming majority of the population.

[Big RR]

He may have been popular, but he crushed dissent and trampled on rights; see the Amnessty International Report for 2012 alone:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/venezuela/report-2012

He was funny when he attacked W; but a repressive, brutal jerk is still a oppressive brutal jerk. Lots of brutal strong men were popular, or appeared to be so, and many achieved some good, but so what?

[Gob]

I hardly think a bit of police brutality and bent judges, qualifies Hugo as "brutal thug" BigRR.

[Lord Jim]

In subsequent elections to the new body, Chavez supporters won 95% of the seats and set about drafting a new constitution which was approved by an overwhelming majority of the population.

In elections that were boycotted by the opposition....

Where are you getting this slanted revisionist crap? (I noticed there was no link) More bull-stuff from the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation?

Say Strop, since you seem to think that Venezuela is such a garden spot, have you considered moving there?

Of course if you do, you might want to re-think your position on owning a firearm for self defense:

Venezuala, with a population smaller than Canada's, suffers more homicides than the United States. Robberies at gunpoint -- "express kidnappings" as they are called -- are regular occurrences in middle-class neighborhoods. And if middle-class neighborhoods evince any disaffection from the regime, they lose what little police protection they have, or even discover the police suddenly abetting and aiding the criminals that prey upon their community.

Call me cynical, but I'm beginning to think that your defenses of the indefensible Chavez regime have more to do with chain jerking us Americans than actual sincere support....

[Jarlaxle]

I hardly think a bit of police brutality and bent judges, qualifies Hugo as "brutal thug" BigRR.

Then you are blind, willfully ignorant, or both. Chavez was every bit as vicious as Castro or Pinochet...he was just more charismatic. He was a vile, despicable thug and the world is a better place without him.

[Lord Jim]

Then you are blind, willfully ignorant, or both.

No, he's just winding us up....

(Took me a bit of doing to sort that out....it should have occurred to me earlier....)

Okay Strop, fun's over....

[Gob]

I've still yet to see any evidence of him being a thug.

[Gob]

Chavez was every bit as vicious as Castro or Pinochet.

Pinochet?

The U.S. provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.

CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras (paid asset from 1975 to 1977 according to the CIA in 2000). Some have alleged that the CIA's one-time payment to Contreras is proof that the U.S. approved of Operation Condor and military repression within Chile. The CIA's official documents state that at one time, some members of the intelligence community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected based on Contreras' poor human rights track record, but the single payment was made due to miscommunication.

On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."

In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in U.S. interest."

The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... het_regime

[Lord Jim]

Nice try...

[Rick]

From an OpEd and I hate OpEds but....

On Aug. 22, 2010, at Iran’s suggestion, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hosted senior leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in a secret summit at military intelligence headquarters at the Fuerte Tiuna compound in southern Caracas. Among those present were Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, who is on the FBI’s list of most-wanted terrorists; Hamas’s “supreme leader,” Khaled Meshal; and Hezbollah’s “chief of operations,” whose identity is a closely guarded secret.

Hamas and Hezbollah hate our Pagan Easter Hams...

Makled has admitted his ties to the drug trade in a series of media interviews from jail. He claims to have documents and videotapes proving the complicity of Chavez’s military commander, Henry Rangel Silva, and other Chavista cronies in cocaine smuggling.

The threat posed by globe-trotting terrorists is ever-present. A U.S. security official told me in mid-January that two known al-Qaeda operatives were in Caracas planning a “chemical” attack on the U.S. embassy; on Jan. 31, the embassy was closed, and reports at the time cited “credible threats.”

From 2011...

[Gob]

US propaganda, where were Iraq's WMD eh?

[Lord Jim]

I'm not going to play this game anymore...

Though we've never met, I believe I know Strop well enough to know that he's too intelligent a man to really not understand what Chavez was up to, (especially given all the evidence on offer from numerous posters from numerous sources in this thread, if he wasn't aware of it already)

He is simply not that clueless....

Apparently he's decided to do an impersonation of rubato for amusement purposes....

And see how many of his Yank mates he can wind up in the process...

[Lord Jim]

US propaganda, where were Iraq's WMD eh?

LOL

That's more proof of my point...he's tryin' to get a rise, and for awhile he succeeded...(well played sir... )

But the game's over...

Hey Strop, why don't you post about how Ronald Reagan was guilty of treason?

[Lord Jim]

Where he jumped the shark and showed his hand was when he posted that dictator list...

He knows damn well why the US (and every other major Western country) worked with those regimes throughout the Cold War, so why post it?

Unless the intent was simply to push buttons?

(Another 'tell" is the way he's posting very few of his own words...lest the sarcasm show through... )

[Sean]

As a tribute to Chavez I've had his initials inscribed onto all of the taps in my house.

[Rick]

Very nice...

[Gob]

As a tribute to Chavez I've had his initials inscribed onto all of the taps in my house.

Love it!!