For the many older American who have been warmed by Valenzuela’s oil, while American oil companies fucked US, thank you HC. History will show HC was vilified by the US government because he did not want to play ball with Western Oil monopolies and actually may have benefited Valenzuela, unlike a Shah, Saddam Hussein or Hosni Mubarack, who killed hundreds of thousands to squash dissent to western oil intetestss

RIP, Mr Chavez. I am going to miss the enjoyment you brought every time you thumbed the eye of the US oligarchy. May your country continue on the path you set them on.

Amen JJ. Hope Maduro can keep the CIA and Venezuelan right off his back and continue the revolution.

¡lo lamento mucho!

Hugo said it would take 2-3 decades to build the poor and middle class institutions necessary to properly support the Bolivar ideal. He damned near got his countrymen and women 1/2 way there. My condolences to his children and family. Sad day for those in the world who think the people’s welfare and the common should come before corporate profits. Damn.

I am sincerely sorry to learn about Mr. Chavez’s untimely demise. Condolences to his family and his Venezuelan constituents. I was concerned that Mr. Chavez’s days were numbered. It’s a shame.

Duly noted that National Propoganda Radio has been running slanted reports about Chavez, mainly by only interviewing so-called Venezuelan citizens who were critical of Chavez and claimed that Chavez shouldn’t be President, blah blah…

Chavez did what he could to thumb his nose at the BigOil monopoly and how’s grinding under the growing poor populace in El Norte.

Thanks, Mr. Chavez for your valient battle on behalf of the 99%! Sure as heck wish we had more politicians like you here and elsewhere. Hope tht Maduro can do a similar job; I wish him all the best. He’s gonna need it.

Oh my he gave the oil revenues to the people of Venezuela and not let the big 7 take them to off shore tax havens. Good for him. RIP

In Venezuela under Chavez those in poverty were reduced by fifty per cent. Those in extreme poverty were reduced by seventy per cent. The poor had access to health care. Little wonder that they loved him, and that the plutocrats hated him.

His Misión Barrio Adentro (mission inside the neighborhood) clinics should be models for healthcare in the US

If you get the chance watch

“The Revolution will not be televised”

amazing movie, about the coup, and the return of Chavez, made while it was happening. Actual footage of the rats scurrying out the the palace, when the coup failed.

Sad day this is.

movie is on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c

O did not offer condolences.

But UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon did, that is, condolences to Chavez’s family. Normally, of course, one offers condolences to the entire nation on the occasion of the death of its leader.

Well said comrade,it’s a very sad day as we have lost a significant
pillar in the leftist struggle.

Yep. IIRC O looked forward to renewed relationship with Venezuela. Dog whistle for U.S. fixing election or overthrow of Maduro after the election.

ThinkProgress has gotten it’s talking points from the WH.

The name of the country is Venezuela, not Valenzuela.

The official name of the country is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

From Greg Palast’s obit:

“Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions – and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted, and congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela’s politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his “Alliance for Progress.”

Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn’t like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz’ plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn’t realize that he’d just squeezed the tomatoes of America’s powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz’ husband, Senator John Kerry, now U.S. Secretary of State.”

Nice find.

There is an academic paper that can be found out on the web that explains that Hugo Chavez was getting great support from the middle class voters in elections. This is not even possible to discuss in regular media.

FYI, Kerry’s ancestry, background & outlook.

Chavez won recent election by sizable majority (54% iirc), considering monied interests & U.S. were plotting against him.

Thanks for the link, eCo. The article is really disgusting, with no hint of respect for a country’s loss of its leader. Even Chavez’s domestic opponent Capriles was more reserved.

Reading the comments on such sites at HP is truly disgusting. Many Americans have lost all sense of humanity and decency, all in the name of ideological purity. The day will come when the world will celebrate the downfall of the real evil empire.

O’s a politician first, a human being? not so much.

I fear we are doomed to watch the passing of history and great men from the sidelines. We are saddled with third rate leaders who pale in comparison with the likes of Hugo Chavez. Our leaders are murderous thugs while those like Chavez serve the People.

One of those moments in history was when I watched Chavez return to Miraflores Palace, in the middle of the night, after the coup. This was the beginning of the end of US hegemony in South America

CAP are full time workers in Madam O’s capitalist whorehouse.

RIP Chavez’ image, as if it were reality.

But who was he, really? How does a 99.999 percenter in a poor society, which ought to be be rolling in dough, become a 0.0001 percenter billionaire himself? And all the while sustaining a legend. . .

$2 billion is what I heard out of one ear, maybe it’s wrong.

He should be remembered as what most of us really wished he were. We’ve made similar errors about our own forebeareres in the US, and it makes a lot of us comfy, but unjustly.

It will be the same with Fidel before too long.

@Matthew Detroit, thank you for posting the Palast quote! Here is Palast’s full article for anyone interested:
Vaya con Dios, Hugo Chàvez, mi Amigo

Also, Greg Palast is giving free access to his short (24 minute) documentary, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.

The last great political leader ,Chavez ,leaves behind a world of moral midgets to lead us into fascist annihilation. When Obama is barely remembered as a failure who betrayed his country to be a servile broker of a global bankster coup d’Etat ,Chavez will be celebrated as the first Black leader of his nation ,one who loved his people and instilled a revolutionary spirit in them that ensures no return to to the peasant mentality that now navigates us .

Heartfelt condolences to the Chavez family, to the citizens of the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela, and to all those mourning the loss of a leader who showed the way to escape the yoke of the Imperio del Norte.

May the future bring more leaders of his caliber and fewer of the present crop of kleptocrats damning the planet from the Empire.

Hugo Chavéz was no saint (after all, he was a politician), but he will be going down in Latin American history with other less-than-perfect heroes like Benito Juarez and Simon Bolivar (and Eva Peron)- Two things he did that I think are of much more importance than tweaking the U.S. imperialists. First, by opening up his country’s political system to the non-European majority, he paved the way for a more inclusive system, not just in Venezuela, but throughout the Americas. Secondly, he redefined the terms of Bolivarianism, turning what had been a pro-Spanish, elitist, “more Catholic than the Pope” intellectual attitude into a populist movement that allows for inclusion of all Latin Americans in a common front against foreign interventionism.

The LA Lefties also benefited from U.S. wars in ME sucking all the wind out of U.S. mucking about south of the border. Chavez, Morales, Lulu, Correa, etc. were ablt to get footholds before U.S. shoved them off the cliff.

Hugo Chavez (HC) has been far and away the most inspirational leader in the world over the past 30+ years. Other than Nelson Mandela (and some would include Fidel Castro), no other national leader comes close in terms of courage, vision and determination in embarking upon a path to bringing stability, opportunities and fairness in Latin America, free from the long-term depredations of Western imperialism.

I have been consistently impressed by his singular grit and resolve, his taking on the imperial behemoths, and his identification with the poor and exploited around the world, including right here in the US. He has been a rare beacon of hope in the midst of perpetual war and perpetual genocide at the hands of the warmongering West. He united these goals across the continent, and helped develop a counterbalance to the Wall Street-controlled oligarchy that has, and continues to deplete the earth of its resources, and to marginalize the poor by producing increasingly rarefied groups of robber barons. Thanks to Chavez, Latin America has a special political identity today that is unlike anywhere else in Asia, Africa or other former colonies, and one that most nations that wish to free themselves from the clutches of the ruthless Superpower would do well to parallel.

Chavez will be extremely hard to replace, and the greatest concern would be the effort by Wall Street and its robbers and gangsters to derail the great movement that he put into place. My only hope is that Venezuelans will unite to prevent fresh imperial incursions to destroy the fair society they have started to establish under the tireless leadership of HC.

X3 what you said! Chavez was an inspiration to all of Latin America. He demonstrated that there could be a different path than carnivorous capitalism, a path that uses resources for the benefit of people rather than corporate monsters.

My deepest condolence go out to the Chavez family and to all of Venezuela. This is such a tragic loss.

So many people wish so much for the wrong to be right. BTW, RIP.

I’ve been watching the Russia-China-Iran-Venezuela-Brazil-Ecuador-Bolivia-etc. axis as a possible foil for the evil Anglo-American financial capitalism empire. China is the oldest continuous (allow me some leeway) empire on the planet, Iran too. Neither have in recent times been belligerents. Their cultures seem so richly developed and ingrained that they seem to have a self-confidence that the fear mongering and fear controlled western cultures did not develop. Perhaps that’s a Judeo-Xtian characteristic.

I exaggerate, not to make one white and the other black, but to emphasize the contrast, rather than do nuance. Framing.

I fear if the AAE has its way, feudalism will look like a picnic.

In that context, Chavez is a huge loss.

Alliance for Progress ( Kennedy ), Food For Peace ( McGovern ), The Peace Corps ( Kennedy ), and then; some very nefarious deeds by our permanent gov’t ended a chance at a real Western Hemisphere Union ( including Canada ), of sorts. All the possibilities, never realized, brought down by greed.

Detroit now taken over by fascists. Is ruled by nonelected “emergency” dictators.

I will continue to buy my gas at Citgo and sadly pay a thought for this great man.

I read that and it was disgusting. Chavez was a more democratic leader than most of the Democratic Party.

Sorry, did not have my reading glasses on at the time. Thanks for the spelling lesson. Some may thinks that holding corporations accountable is leftist?

America’s founders dealt with corporations understanding the threats to liberty. They were not leftists.

Bend over America as you are screwed by our own!

Being a friend to the poor, one necessarily becomes the enemy of the wealthy; the wealthy will have it no other way. And they will spend their wealth to create propaganda mills under benevolent, even protective titles like Criminal Justice International Associates to maintain the status quo of the financial elite in the region and spread vicious rumors against those who try to help the downtrodden. Now that the cat is dead, the rats will proclaim how terrible a menace the cat was, while redoubling their efforts to quash any further rehabilitation; and the US government, populated and controlled by those moneyed interests, will use their propaganda to denounce the fallen champion of the poor and seek to resume its rapacious and oppressive activities in Venezuela and throughout South and Central America.

…And trolls here will insinuate aspersions while weeping crocodile tears.