You might as well be killing puppies.

The tyrannical FEIND!!!

shall not perish from the earth."

Slight modernization of Lincoln, but amazingly accurate as a predictive model when trying to figure out what Congress is really up to. After all, that's their base.

that is what the end game is all about. Every law that passes ultimately benefits the corporations at our expense, no matter what the title or original intent may have been.

Rec

MUST SEE:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Chavez: Inside the Coup

and what luck to be in that place at that time. Most of the time truth is lost after the facts have transpired.

in some shape or form? I long for the days when the powerful multimedia wasn't relegated to a subforum that's nowhere near as visible, judging by the small number of recs there.
Just saying, wish I could rec this.

And don't forget - he didn't like the Koch brother's either - and wasn't going to sell THOSE TWO - heavy crude.


There is so much disinformation around Chavez. My dad was absolutely correct - Your country does things it WANTS you to believe only OTHER countries do. Never ever believe them.


Thanks for the tip dad.

The USA is "the haves" because they take resources from the entire world, consuming grossly more than their percent of global population. This is why the USA spends more on their military than the rest of the world combined, and why the lower class has to live below poverty in the USA, so the rich classes in the USA can live like kings and queens. Chavez understood this and gave assistance to poor people in the USA.

has nothing to do with the freedom most Americans want. But it's the perfect buzzword because it gets the Teaparty/NRA/Christian extremist peeps riled up every time. It's a dog whistle and the politicians know it and milk it for all it is worth. Sad sad sad sad sad.

Meanwhile, as you say, our gov't commits atrocities in our name, with our military as their toy soldiers killing people who just want us the hell off their backs and off of their land.

nationalized its oil has had the United States try, sometimes successfully like in Iran and Iraq, to overthrow the sovereign government. Congress likes those oil lobby bribes. Our oil addiction has pushed us to the brink of a different reality. We either change our primary choice of transportation or go the way of the Roman Empire.
Chavez raised living standards for the majority of his citizens by using the funds from nationalized oil. Exposing oil cartel greed by setting an egalitarian example is a sure fire way to become an enemy of the United States.

... drop to their knees and fellate the Oil Royalty, MUST be dealt with severely!

Seems that even among supposed "Democrats," there is no shortage sycophants for the industry that fucks us every chance it gets, is there?

it doesn't matter if a particular leader is a saint who craps gold or a guy who literally boils his enemies in oil... or anything in between.

If you put a dent in the profits of a corporation with ties to the US gov, you become evil incarnate. IF not, you are just dandy.

We don't have to have Chavez be perfect (he wasn't) because even he if had been the dictatorial monster the US claimed he was, the US would have been fine with that if he hadn't gotten in the way of someone making lots of money.

I'm not surprised.

Look how they are acting over a 3% rise in the top tax rate.

Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added,
[font color=RED]"Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters."[/font]

[font color=BLUE]"But also by the Supreme Court!"[/font]
Should have been the next sentence.

Things that make you go "hmmmmm"!

enough to remember the way this country was treated by Standard Oil (Exxon) and we understood the need for this kind of action which Chevez is still blamed for and that was before we ever heard of Naomi Klein's "Disaster Capitalism".

K & R

Looks like Chavez had been doing succession planning for quite awhile.

http://www.nationofchange.org/vaya-con-dios-hugo-ch-vez-mi-amigo-1362580182

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers."

Chavez' Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the U.S. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further…too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.

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. Chavez' 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.

Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon "presidency," even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America's least forgiving billionaires: The Koch Brothers.

<snip>

Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.

Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela's negros e indios would lose their king—but still stay in the game.

Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn't bet against Hugo Chavez.

How just repeating how Chavez is a dictator and monster who tortures opponents and rules with an iron fist etc. etc....catches on, and is adopted as TRUTH by so many. Sure he wasn't perfect. But his heart was in the right place. And he understood what US President FDR did, that bringing up the standard of living for the poor and middle class is the best path to create a strong society and economy. That approach is demonized by the Republicans of course, but it is also dismissed by the so called "third way" Democrats. The perpetually failing "trickle down theory" introduced by Thatcher and Reagan is alive and well. Make the rich richer and the poor poorer and somehow that's supposed to be good for society.

So our lackey Gov't and Media dually treated him with lies and contempt. The vast majority of sheep-le bought with crock of crap. We need the Truth by reporters like Greg Pallast!