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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dies

RIP Hugo Chavez. I can not forget his speech at the UN.

Remarkable leader. A strong anti-imperialist voice.
 
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If showing the middle finger to the American/Zionist corporate mafia and thier pet poodles in western Europe,while doing whats right to the masses of your country makes you a dictator..So be it..R.I.P Hugo Chavez..An inspirational leader
 
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MARCH 6, 2013
Hugo Chavez – socialist showman who transformed Venezuela
REUTERS


(CARACAS) – At two defining moments of his rule, Venezuela’s theatrical leader Hugo Chavez took a small silver crucifix from his pocket and held it above his head.

Both marked a quasi-religious “return” for the socialist ex-soldier whom supporters loved with messianic fervor – first from a 2002 coup that saw him jailed on a tiny Caribbean island, and then from cancer surgery in Cuba in June 2011.

As he held aloft the crucifix from a balcony of his Miraflores Palace after returning from surgery, the maverick president of South America’s biggest oil exporter said he was putting his fate in the hands of God and the Virgin Mary.

“Today, the revolution is more alive than ever. I feel it, I live it, I touch it … If Christ is with us, who can be against us? If the people are with us, who can be against us?” he said, working his supporters into a frenzy.

“But no one should think my presence here means the battle is won. No,” he cautioned, turning the screams of joy at his homecoming to tears at the fragile state of his health.

Chavez died in hospital on Tuesday, finally succumbing to the cancer after four operations in Cuba. His death ended 14 years of charismatic, volatile rule that turned him into a major world figure.

Ever the showman, Chavez would jump from theology to jokes, and from Marxist rhetoric to baseball metaphors in building an almost cult-like devotion among followers.

Throughout his presidency, he projected himself in religious, nationalistic and radical terms as Venezuela’s savior, and it largely worked. While his foes reviled him and portrayed him as a boorish dictator, Chavez was hailed by supporters as a champion of the poor and he won four presidential elections.

He took over from his mentor Fidel Castro as the leader of Latin America’s left-wing bloc and its loudest critic of the United States, winning friends and enemies alike with a cutting and dramatic frankness that no one could match.

When the cancer first struck, Chavez could have stepped aside to fight it.

Instead, he stretched his physical limits by staying at the front of his government while running a successful but hobbled campaign to win a new six-year term at an October 7 election.

RURAL ROOTS

Born the second of six sons of teachers in the cattle-ranching plains of Barinas state and raised by his grandmother Rosa Ines in a mud-floor shack, the young Chavez first aspired to be a painter or pitcher in the US Major Leagues.

Attracted by the chance to play baseball, he joined the army at 16 and was eventually promoted to lieutenant-colonel.

Though mixing with left-wing rebels and plotting within the military from long before, Chavez burst onto the national stage when he led a 1992 coup attempt against then leader Carlos Andres Perez.

The coup failed and Chavez surrendered, but he cut a dashing figure dressed in green fatigues and a red beret for a famous speech live on TV before being carted off to jail.

His comment that the coup had failed “por ahora” (“for now”) electrified many Venezuelans, especially the poor, who admired Chavez for standing up to a government they felt was increasingly corrupt and cold to their needs.

The hint of more to come, plus the unashamed acceptance of responsibility by Chavez, made him a hero in some sectors.

“I thank you for your loyalty, your valor, your exuberance, and I, before the country and before you all, assume responsibility for this Bolivarian militant movement,” he said, instructing his fellow rebels to lay down their arms.

Pardoned in 1994 by Venezuela’s next president, Rafael Caldera, Chavez left jail and began a grassroots political campaign, eventually defeating a former Miss Universe to win a presidential election four years later.

By doing so, the former paratrooper ended the grip of Venezuela’s traditional parties and launched his self-proclaimed “Bolivarian Revolution” – named for Venezuela’s 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Chavez changed the nation’s name to the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” and appeared in front of huge paintings of Bolivar, sending a subliminal message to Venezuelans that he was the modern reincarnation of their historical idol.

SLUM HERO

In the early days of his rule, Chavez enjoyed runaway popularity levels of 80 percent or more, especially in the sprawling slums of the capital Caracas.

His first big test surfaced three years in when he faced huge street protests and a buildup of withering criticism from political foes, business and labor leaders, Catholic bishops and even dissident soldiers.

But when military officers briefly pushed him out in their own coup in 2002, Chavez proved himself to be a survivor and bounced back to power after two days incommunicado and under arrest, some of it at an island military base.

In what he frequently refers to as his darkest moment – matched only by the cancer diagnosis he said his friend and ally Fidel Castro broke to him in 2011 at a private Havana hospital – Chavez thought he was going to be assassinated.

In an incredible 72 hours for Venezuela, a counter-coup by loyalist troops and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of outraged “Chavista” supporters forced Pedro Carmona, who had briefly seized power, to resign and restored Chavez to the presidency.

That led to his first “crucifix moment”.

The stocky, wiry-haired Chavez – whose favorite attire remained the paratrooper’s red beret and dark green uniform or a bright red shirt – became Latin America’s most colorful and controversial leader.

He soon became a household name from Middle America to the Middle East.

CALLED “MUSSOLINI, CASTRO”

Allies say Chavez was misunderstood abroad, the victim of an unstinting US-led propaganda campaign.

“They’ve called me a Mussolini or Fidel Castro or said I sleep with a book by Hitler for a pillow,” Chavez once said. “But the people know the truth. They know who I really am.”

He combined traditional left-wing tenets of equality and wealth distribution with a fervent nationalism inspired by Bolivar.

His critics regularly accused him and his government of being corrupt and inept, and of steering the country towards a Cuban-style authoritarian regime. Certainly, a clutch of opponents ended up in exile or jail, normally on graft charges they said were trumped up.

Business detractors said his socialist reforms, including the expropriation of rural estates and the nationalization of much of the economy, including multi-billion dollar oil projects, destroyed jobs and scared off investors.

A decade of high oil prices allowed Chavez to spend huge amounts on social programs that became the linchpin of his support among poor voters.

They included his famous slum “missions” that provided free healthcare and education, plus subsidized food, clothes and even electronics, and are likely to be his biggest legacy.

All of his political opponents have vowed to continue them, in some form or other.

Chavez defended his “revolution” as a long-overdue crusade to close the yawning gap between rich and poor in Venezuela, which combines huge oil and mineral wealth with grinding poverty, widespread unemployment and rampant crime.

His praise for communist Cuba and Fidel Castro, combined with his courting of other anti-U.S. states like Iran, irritated Washington, which has long been the main foreign buyer of Venezuelan oil.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in 2006 a day after then-US President George Bush, he called Bush the “devil”, triggering shocked gasps and wry smiles around the hall.

“Yesterday the devil came here. Right here,” Chavez said, crossing himself. “And it still smells of sulfur today.”

In mid-2011 he was the only vocal supporter of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi on the world stage, calling him a “beloved brother revolutionary” and condemning the Nato air strikes.

“Bombing the brave Libyan people to save them? What a brilliant strategy by the mad empire,” he mocked. “Where are the international rights? This is like the caveman era.”

He used similarly colorful language to condemn his domestic political opponents, calling them ruthless capitalist speculators, traitors and “los escualidos” – a squalid, bitter minority linked to the traditional political parties, which he said were venal and corrupt, that he defeated in 1998.

MARATHON TV SPEECHES

A garrulous public speaker, Chavez was perhaps best known for his famously rambling television broadcasts that mixed serious affairs of state with songs, folksy anecdotes, quirky behavior and other antics like bashing on his infant daughter’s xylophone.

His “Alo Presidente” (“Hello President”) program on Sundays routinely lasted eight or nine hours or more, exhausting weary cabinet ministers sitting alongside him, as well as journalists and others required to follow it.

Supporters hailed what they saw as his rare gift for communication – especially with Venezuela’s poor majority – and even detractors conceded that he displayed an uncanny charisma. Others said his aggressive leadership style was confrontational and counterproductive.

Towards the end of his rule, his illness made him more philosophical. Chavez said he had ignored his doctors at his peril and he quoted the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, while also invoking the “spirits” of the plains of his youth.

At times, he sounded much more conciliatory towards his political foes; at others he remained defiantly scathing.

And he never lost his flair for the theatrical. When a US newspaper quoted unnamed sources in September 2011 saying he had been rushed to a military hospital with kidney failure after a fourth session of chemotherapy – prompting speculation around the world that he was at death’s door – he summoned the foreign press corps to Miraflores the following morning.

He emerged wearing a tracksuit, cap and catcher’s mitt, and tossed a baseball back and forth with aides while cracking jokes with several sportswear-clad ministers.

Next, he stood unaided on the palace steps and took questions for more than an hour, chuckling as he read aloud from the Miami-based newspaper’s report and holding forth on world politics, the war in Libya, the failings of the international media and the scourge of global capitalism.

“I’m fine. Those who don’t love me and wish me ill, well bad luck!” he said.

Hugo Chavez – socialist showman who transformed Venezuela | The Daily Star
 
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Among the last of the leaders who bucked the trend & did what he felt was right.

Not sure how successful he was though. Ran things like a dictator.
 
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Now that he is dead and the economic reality will have to slap the Venezuelans hard in their faces, rest assured that a new clown will stand on a soapbox blaming the west, israel, the media etc for their woes whilst erecting huge statues of Chavez. In a few years from now when they realise what he really did to their country, they will start looting and rampaging and tearing down his statues. Third world economies are so damn predictable
 
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Chavez: Another CIA assassination victim

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

The Venezuelan president himself, before he died yesterday, wondered aloud whether the US government - or the banksters who own it - gave him, and its other leading Latin American enemies, cancer.

A little over a year ago, Chavez went on Venezuelan national radio and said: “I don’t know but… it is very odd that we have seen Lugo affected by cancer, Dilma when she was a candidate, me, going into an election year, not long ago Lula and now Cristina… It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America. It’s at the very least strange, very strange.”

Strange indeed… so strange that if you think Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Paraguayan Fernando Lugo, and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - Latin America’s top anti-US empire leaders - all just happened to contract cancer around the same time by sheer chance, you must be some kind of crazy coincidence theorist.

Am I 100% certain that the CIA killed Hugo Chavez? Absolutely not.

It could have been non-governmental assassins working for the bankers.

But any way you slice it, the masters of the US empire are undoubtedly responsible for giving Chavez and other Latin American leaders cancer. How do we know that? Just examine the Empire’s track record.

Fidel Castro’s bodyguard, Fabian Escalante, estimates that the CIA attempted to kill the Cuban president an astonishing 638 times. The CIA’s methods included exploding cigars, biological warfare agents painted on Castro’s diving suit, deadly pills, toxic bacteria in coffee, an exploding speaker’s podium, snipers, poison-wielding female friends, and explosive underwater sea shells.

The CIA’s assassination attempts against Castro were like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with the CIA as the murderously inept cat, and the Cuban president as a clever and very lucky mouse. Some might even argue that Castro’s survival, in the face of 638 assassination attempts by the world’s greatest power, is evidence that El Presidente’s communist atheism was incorrect, and that God, or at least a guardian angel, must have been watching over “Infidel Castro” all along.

Theology aside, the CIA’s endless attempts on Castro’s life provide ample evidence that US authorities will stop at nothing in their efforts to murder their Latin American enemies.

John Perkins, in his bestselling book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, supplies more evidence that the bankers that own the US government routinely murder heads of state, using private assassins as well as CIA killers.

Perkins, during his career as an “economic hit man,” gained first-hand knowledge about how the big international bankers maintain their empire in Latin America and elsewhere. Perkins’ job was to visit leaders of foreign countries and convince them to accept loans that could never be paid back. Why? The bankers want to force these nations into debt slavery. When the country goes bankrupt, the bankers seize the nation’s natural resources and establish complete control over its government and economy.

Perkins would meet with a targeted nation’s leader and say: “I have a fist-full of hundred dollar bills in one hand, and a bullet in the other. Which do you want?” If the leader accepted the loans, thereby enslaving his country, he got the payoff. If he angrily chased Perkins out of his office, the bankers would call in the “asteroids” to assassinate the uncooperative head of state.

The “asteroids” are the world’s most expensive and accomplished professional killers. They work on contract - sometimes to the CIA, sometimes to the bankers, and sometimes to wealthy private individuals. And though their specialty is causing plane crashes, they are capable of killing people, including heads of state, in any number of ways.

This isn’t just speculation. John Perkins actually knows some of these CIA-linked professional killers personally. And he has testified about their murders of Latin American leaders. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is dedicated to Perkins’ murdered friends Gen. Torrijos of Panama and President Jaime Roldos of Ecuador. Both were killed by CIA-linked “asteroids” in engineered plane crashes.

Do CIA-linked killers sometimes induce cancer in their victims? Apparently they do. One notable victim: Jack Ruby (née Jack Rubenstein), a mobster who was himself a professional killer, and whose last hit was the choreographed murder of JFK-assassination patsy Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. Ruby begged to be taken to Washington to tell the real story of the JFK murder, but instead died in prison, of a sudden and mysterious cancer, before he could reveal what he knew.

Have the CIA-bankster “asteroids” ever tried to kill Latin American leaders with cancer? The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

Edward Haslam’s book Dr. Mary’s Monkey proves what JFK assassination prosecutor Jim Garrison had earlier alleged: Child-molesting CIA agent David Ferrie, one of President Kennedy’s killers, had experimented extensively with cancer-causing viruses for the CIA in his huge home laboratory. The purpose: To give Fidel Castro and other Latin American leaders cancer. (Ferrie himself was killed by the CIA shortly before he was scheduled to testify in court about his role in the JFK assassination.)

To summarize: We know that the bankers who own the US government routinely try to kill any Latin American leader who refuses to be their puppet. We know that they have mounted thousands of assassination attempts against Latin American leaders, including more than 600 against Castro alone. We know that they have been experimenting with cancer viruses, and killing people with cancer, since the 1960s.

So if you think Hugo Chavez died a natural death, I am afraid that you are terminally naïve.

PressTV - Chavez: Another CIA assassination victim
 
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Last of the great revolutionary socialist autocrats.. And a fantastic sense of humour..

Brilliant speech at the UN... Still smells of sulphur.. RIP...
 
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Dude why are u getting all charged up?? You said Venezuelans are suffering , I just asked for proof. Because in vital socio economic indices Venezuela is far ahead of most developing countries . Far ahead than my own motherland .
Keyword search use too difficult? Sorry you have this condition.

What is the need for bringing India into this??
To show the fallacy of your argument. If the US is not immune from criticism, neither is Venezuela and neither is India. So if you believe that negative criticisms of Venezuela must be only from some sort of conspiracy by the Western media, same must be about India, right?

Why do u hate Chavez so much what attrocities have he committed against USA?
I hate all dictators.
 
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do you hate him this much the man is dead but this reaction must be because he really did some damage when he was alive and you amiricans support many dictators if you love democracy so much you can start with your allies
ideas don't die and history will always mention him as a great leader
 
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