RIP(or is it RIH?) Hugo Chavez

Loser Araysar

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What sticks out most in my mind were his idiotic comments. I remember his UN address calling Bush a devil, quoting Chomsky and generally carrying on. Obama was a "clown" according to him. Some nonsense about the US spreading cancer to Latin America. Oh and something about capitalism being responsible for destroying life on Mars. Wasnt he also buddies with Ahmadinejad and Castro... and Sean Penn? I rest my case.

As for the "man of the people" image, the guy was worth a couple of billion dollars supposedly.
Oh you mean he quoted one of the most respected linguists and political scientists in the world who has been writing about US imperialism for decades? And the guy who has been trying to overthrow him for a decade, he called him a "devil"?

wacky stuff!

P.S. Ever actually read a Chomsky book?
 

Numbers_sl

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As far as I know, that confrontational rhetorical stance taken by Chavez was a hallmark of the Soviet communist "revolution", no? It is arrogant and dismissive of other ideas, but a confrontational position certainly can be attractive to the uneducated poor and middle class.
 

Loser Araysar

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Im not sure what confrontational position you are referring to.
 

Eomer

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I'd put friends in important positions to minimize betrayal as well. Should he have put total strangers when he is surrounded by enemies? Additionally, what proof do you have that this is the reason their petroleum exports "declined by half"?
This isn't some hardly known secret. PDVSA is a fucking disaster:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle4550316/

PDVSA?s wealth has also been used to back multibillion-dollar loans from China and to buy arms from Russia. It supplies, almost single-handedly, Venezuela?s foreign exchange market. It is also a source of patronage: the number of employees, hired on the basis of their loyalty to the ?Bolivarian Revolution,? has tripled since 2003 to more than 121,000.

?[The Amuay disaster] is not a random occurrence. It is the consequence of PDVSA?s transformation from an efficient and effective company into a profoundly politicized institution,? says Diego Gonzalez, president of the Caracas-based Centre for Energy Orientation. It is ?a reflection of what is happening in the rest of the country.?

A decade ago, PDVSA was considered one of the best-run oil companies in the Americas. Today, inefficiency and incompetence have led to a string of accidents, causing 77 deaths before the Amuay explosion since 2003. The company?s annual report admits a lack of funds has hurt maintenance.

?The only maintenance they have done is to paint things red,? says Francisco Luna, a PDVSA union leader. ?They make everything look nice and pretty but underneath it is all rusted. They don?t replace parts until they break,? he said, describing worker conditions as ?disastrous.?

With fewer resources and attention dedicated to oil, it is no surprise that, according to BP, production has fallen from 3.1 million barrels per day to 2.7 million b/d in the past decade. Higher oil prices have masked that decline. When Mr. Ch?vez came to power, oil was less than $10 a barrel, now it is more than $100. Much of this windfall has also been spent on social projects, helping to reduce poverty from 44 per cent in 1998 to 27 per cent in 2011, according to government statistics.

But investment has been scrimped on, and the cost to PDVSA?s operational ability has been huge. Last year there was even a moment when markets feared for PDVSA?s solvency; its bonds still yield a hefty 11 per cent.

Indeed, Gustavo Coronel, a former board member, likens the company today to ?a toothless tiger resting on its haunches before a huge slice of raw meat.? Venezuela might have the largest oil reserves in the world, some 300 billion barrels, according to BP?s statistical review. Yet these remain undeveloped because of ?severe management, technical and financial constraints driven by the application of a rigid statist ideology for what should be a commercial enterprise.?
Although Mr. Chavez has remained untarnished ? his loyalists see him as innocent of the clientelism around him ? he faced a particularly embarrassing incident in 2010 when the Aban Pearl offshore drilling rig sank just days after it was inaugurated. Mr. Coronel has shown that PDVSA was paying an intermediary $730,000 a day for the rig?s services, when they normally cost $358,000 a day. The intermediary turned out to be a shell company owned by Venezuelan businessmen identified by opponents as close to the government.

?No matter where you look you see evident signs of waste and corruption,? says Mr. Coronel, who believes that transparency and accountability are at all time lows in PDVSA?s ?black box.?
And even now that he's dead, we're seeing a continuation of his complete disrespect for democracy and the constitution:http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...n.html?cmp=rss

Venezuela's constitution mandates an election be called within 30 days, but it is currently unclear when an election will be held.

The constitution specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly, currently Diosdado Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president can't be sworn in. But Maduro ? who will be the governing socialists' candidate in the upcoming election after being named Chavez's successor by the late president ? is filling the post instead.

"The lines are really kind of blurry right here," freelance reporter Andrew Rosati told CBC News from Caracas. He said constitutional discrepancies have been present ever since Chavez was unable to attend his inauguration ceremony Jan. 10.
Maduro should not even be assuming the interim presidency, and an election should be held within the next 30 days. It'll be interesting to see if that happens. If not, the presidency will be completely illegitimate.
 

Numbers_sl

shitlord
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Janos Kornai wrote inForce of Thoughtabout his intellectual journey to becoming a communist party warrior. In it he described how he and his contemporaries in Hungary were seduced, in part, by the the confrontational rhetoric found in the works of Stalin and Marx in particular. It was only later when he was able to study the works of other authors like Adam Smith, among others, that he was able to critically assess the works he came to champion for a time and see the contradictions found in Communist Party ideology.
 

Loser Araysar

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That article reeks of bukllshit.

1. I cant find this Caracas-based "Center for Energy orientation" anywhere online. The onyl time its mentioned is when its quoted exactly the same way in some other articles.

2. The articles itself says that production fell from 3.1 to 2.7 million BPD (which is only 10%, not 50% even if this article is accurate). On top of that, it also known that Chavez himself reduced production because he was a price hawk and wanted to reap higher oil revenues per barrel.

3. And now its Chavez's fault that the constitution after his death isn't being followed?

Man, there's just so much bullshit in these Chavez accusations. Some minor graft goes on and somehow its supposed to completely overshadow the fact that he dragged tens of millions of his own people out of poverty and gave them back the control of their resources instead of letting Phillips and Exxon keep that 60 year drilling deal where they paid Venezuela ONE PERCENT TAX on the tens of billions of dollars of oil that they were pumping out of Maracaibo.
 

Eomer

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Araysar_sl said:
1. I cant find this Caracas-based "Center for Energy orientation" anywhere online. The onyl time its mentioned is when its quoted exactly the same way in some other articles.
I didn't see much either in a quick search, but I highly doubt that the Globe and Mail (which is a left leaning paper in Canada) would make shit up out of thin air to try to make Chavez look bad.

Araysar_sl said:
2. The articles itself says that production fell from 3.1 to 2.7 million BPD (which is only 10%, not 50% even if this article is accurate). On top of that, it also known that Chavez himself reduced production because he was a price hawk and wanted to reap higher oil revenues per barrel.
I said exports. Not total production. Exports have declined by half because of a decline in overall production, and an increase in consumption due to heavily subsidizing the cost of gasoline, diesel and the like. Exports are important because that brings in foreign exchange with which a country can buy/trade with. Venezuela's economy has been damaged pretty badly by the decline in exports even while the price of oil sky rocketed under his watch.

Araysar_sl said:
3. And now its Chavez's fault that the constitution after his death isn't being followed?
He set the tone that if you don't like the constitution you can just ignore it or better yet, change it. And he also anointed Maduro as his chosen successor. Chavez did not leave a legacy of strong democratic institutions, and yes, he can be blamed for that.

Here's another article (similar headline is coincidental):http://www.economist.com/blogs/ameri...s-oil-industry

The sector's decline began in 2003, following a strike by the employees and managers of Petr?leos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, in protest against Mr Ch?vez's leftist policies. When the conflict ended, the president had almost 20,000 workers sacked. Since then, PDVSA's chairman, Rafael Ram?rez, has steadily replaced them with loyal chavistas: he has made it an explicit company policy to employ only supporters of the president. He has also allowed Mr Ch?vez to use the company as a piggy bank for his "socialist revolution": last year, PDVSA spent twice as much on off-budget government programmes as it did on taxes, royalties and dividends.

With so little attention paid to the actual business of extracting oil, it is little wonder that PDVSA's production has fallen from 3m barrels a day in 1999 to 2.4m today, according to OPEC. In the same period, its foreign debt has risen fivefold. Moreover, oil union leaders say PDVSA's industrial-safety procedures have deteriorated sharply. The petroleum and mining ministry's annual report shows that maintenance work is frequently postponed for lack of cash. Residents of the Amuay area have told reporters that the gas leak was apparent hours before the blast, though the government denies this.
I'm sure the Economist is just making shit up too. Araysar, you sound every bit as ridiculous as those who try to portray him as some sort of evil dictator by defending his every action. He did some good for his people in standing up to the oil companies perhaps, but in many other respects he was an incredibly incompetent leader and left the country and it's institutions in shambles.
 
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As far as I know, that confrontational rhetorical stance taken by Chavez was a hallmark of the Soviet communist "revolution", no?
lolwut

Are you saying Chavez was a bolshevik?

It is arrogant and dismissive of other ideas, but a confrontational position certainly can be attractive to the uneducated poor and middle class.
The socialist critque of capitalism would only be arrogant and dismissive if it weren't right. That correctness is what's attractive to the poor (who've been better educated than you by the realities of their daily lives).
 

Numbers_sl

shitlord
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Simply making the comparison between Chavez's confrontational rhetoric with the rhetoric of the old school communists.
 
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Simply making the comparison between Chavez's confrontational rhetoric with the rhetoric of the old school communists.
1. The Soviets were hardly communist (they weren't even socialists).
2. The confrontational rhetoric has to do with the shared (not to mention justified) confrontation with the US.
 
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Take up your objections with Janos Kornai.
The only contradiction his works have with my beliefs is his adoption (like yours) of totally incorrect definitions of what socialism actually means. Moreover, my argument is parroting russian (actual) communists going back to directly after the bolsheviks took over. You cannot out-insider me on this.
 

chaos

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Someone really started a thread to mourn the death of a dictator?
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Loser Araysar

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They only become "dictators" and "terrorists" after they stop bending over for America.

All swell guys in the beginning, all "dictators" and "terrorists" later.

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Chris

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I read the coverage on BBC and on balance (obviously not perfect) he seems quite good.