Log in  
Sign up

Play online chess!

From	Message
dmaestro 05-Mar-13, 15:01	RIP Hugo Chavez As everyone expected he died. A mixed bag like most charismatic leaders. The poor are better off with the fairest income distribution in Latin America. But he left an economic and political mess by holding on to power too long despite a fatal malignancy. Rated betted than his corrupt predecessors but too authortarian and erratic, so fell short of what he could have done.
softaire 06-Mar-13, 13:40	RIP Hugo? Spoken like a true Marxist/Communist authoritarian dictator.
astinkyfart 06-Mar-13, 14:03	I have seen better people in this country die for sure. RIP?? more like burn in hell.
dmaestro 06-Mar-13, 14:56	He was popular and reelected. RIP...not burn in hell.
astinkyfart 06-Mar-13, 15:15	dm He was one of the top enemies of YOUR country. You are still part of this country right?
dmaestro 06-Mar-13, 16:21	I have criticized him as a mixed bag. At the same time he was not a monster he did some good as well. He does not deserve to burn in hell. That kind of attitude is only going to make the people there even more against us. You do not agree?
dmaestro 06-Mar-13, 16:24	Stinky See the more balanced discussion at 1A. Chaz was in Venezuela. It isn't as simple as you would think.
thumper 06-Mar-13, 16:55	He is dead. He's in heaven or he's in hell or he's nothing. He took nothing with him.
tat3225 07-Mar-13, 20:11	DM No, it's really simple actually. Hugo Chavez died with billions of dollars that he collected for himself and his family by selling oil that wasn't his. In addition, he allowed Venezuelan government officials take what is estimated to be around 110 billion dollars from oil sales. All while he claimed to care about the poor and criticized capitalism. Chavez destroyed any integrity in the Venezuelan government and caused economic crumbling as well as a mass exodus from Venezuela. Many Venzuelans are here in the United States. They were cheering when they heard of his death. THIS IS WHAT SOCIALISTS DO. It's not new. They have to tell their citizens lies and they have to be larger than life and posess charisma. Otherwise, people would pay more attention to what is actually happening, versus what the charasmatic person says is happening. Chavez also prevented the development of a thriving tourist industry on Venezuela's coast on top of helping drug runners and drug smugglers which he was, no doubt, paid for doing. I'm guessing he also probably snorted quite a bit of blow himself considering the early death, reports that he hardly slept-ever, and the fact that the man behaved like he snorted lines all day long. Everyone talks about how Chavez gave away oil or didn't capitalize on oil. Um, first of all, IT WASN'T HIS OIL TO CONTROL OR GIVE AWAY and 2. HE DID CAPITALIZE ON IT. I wouldn't trust Hugo Chavez to hold a bag of dog sh**. He is most certainly in hell. Hopefully living in poverty.
tat3225 07-Mar-13, 20:15	Btw Maestro, through what grapevine did you hear that Chavez was legitimately re-elected? Was it one that involved smoking a bowl?
changeling 07-Mar-13, 20:29	www.reuters.com
tat3225 07-Mar-13, 21:01	Exactly. That article is dated from October of 2012. Which is like fifteen years after Chavez was initially elected. I seem to remember Venezuela having restrictions on re-election back in the 90's when Chavez first took office, before he took it upon himself to change those laws. For the good of Venezuela and the people of Venezuela, of course.
changeling 07-Mar-13, 21:17	Changing the rules of elections is also done elsewhere. Gerrymandering springs to mind. He did win the last one by around 1.5 million votes (not bad from a population of 30 million).
tat3225 08-Mar-13, 04:50	Deleted by tat3225 on 08-Mar-13, 04:51.
tat3225 08-Mar-13, 05:06	Changeling This is funny.   So gerrymandering, a legal loophole allowing for redistricting (which is based on population and happens anyway in response to population growth or decline) to potentially give a party an advantage in a couple districts when it comes to congressional seats (of which the United States currently has 535), is equivalent to changing the constitution using corrupt practices to allow a president to run indefinitely where previously he was restricted to one or two terms? LOL I suppose you also believe that government officials who would change the constitution in such a way as to give them power indefinitely as long as they win elections, would then turn around and allow themselves to lose an election to a person who now has the power (thanks to them) to stay in power indefinitely with no accountability? I bet you also believe that government officials led by chavez, who took nearly $200 billion dollars from the Venezuelan government for their own personal bank accounts and families, all while pretending to support wealth distribution, socialism, and the poor, can be trusted not to tamper with election results? I bet you also think that there is freedom of the press in Venezuela too. I would love an opportunity to try to sell you a bridge covered in flaming dog poo. You're so easy that I bet I could convince you that the flaming poo is a new advanced scientific method of creating a permanent impenetrable surface on the bridge, and charge you more for it.
tat3225 08-Mar-13, 06:19	m.us.wsj.com "Any transition to democracy faces two enormous hurdles. The first is the myth that Chávez was on track to make the poor rich and simply ran out of time. Amid a largely uneducated population and with a government skilled in propaganda, class conflict will still be easy to whip up and chavismo will haunt Venezuela for a long time to come. The second reason is that any election that Vice President Nicolás Maduro calls, as required by the constitution, will be neither free nor fair. It will be merely a formality designed to legitimize the next dictator." www.israelnationalnews.com "Anti-Semitism in Venezuela sky-rocketed in recent years, resulting in a dramatic reduction in Jewish population. Before Chavez came to power, the Jewish community amounted to approximately 30,000, while today its numbers reach a mere 9,000. Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism noted in September that Venezuela has witnessed a rise in "anti-Semitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions." Most recently, there were revelations that Venezuela"s intelligence service, SEBIN, was spying on the country's Jewish community. During the 2012 presidential campaign, state-run media urged Venezuelans to reject "international Zionism" and vote against Chavez"s opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski. Government media had described Capriles as having "a platform opposed to our national and independent interests" and a "Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie." Chavez had also alleged that the Mossad, Israel's secret service, was plotting to kill him and accused the Jewish state of financing Venezuela"s opposition." touch.sun-sentinel.com "To exchange one socialist and authoritarian clown for a socialist, authoritarian former bus driver is not going to make a difference. You can have Chavismo without Chavez. Much of what Chavez wanted to see has been institutionalized.” blogs.wsj.com " He expropriated more than 1,000 businesses, sundry farmlands and urban properties, often without compensation, arguing that the seizures were justified either because the owners were in various ways corrupt or the seizures would improve the lots of the poor, usually both. In the process, he engaged in class warfare, demonizing the country’s middle- and upper classes as the “Squalid Ones.” www.hrw.org “Over the years, the Chávez government has built a legal regime that allows it to censor and punish its critics, in clear violation of international norms,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Now it is using these laws to limit public discussion on issues of national importance.” mobile.bloomberg.com "The authoritarianism extended into the economy. While he didn’t, contrary to popular myth, nationalize the oil industry (it had been government-owned since 1976, and he merely devastated its productivity and output by packing it with cronies and failing to maintain its infrastructure), he did manage to trash most of the non-oil economy. In a country that should be one of the great agricultural exporters of the Americas, he turned farming into a non-viable business by subsidizing consumption and controlling prices, and converted large swathes of commercial-agriculture land back into subsistence-level peasant farms." www.ibtimes.com "Worse, Chavez nourished strong ties to the radical regime in Tehran, assisting Iran’s state and terrorist allies. He visited Iran more than nine times, helped Tehran evade global financial sanctions over its nuclear program, allowed Iran to mine for uranium in his country, signed numerous agreements with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and allowed plane flights to shuttle terrorists between Tehran and Caracas." www.vancouversun.com "There is no denying the impact of the charismatic ex-paratrooper, a plotter and survivor of coups who demolished Venezuela’s political power structure, won three elections with wide support and used the wealth from the world’s largest oil reserves to advance, across the Andes and beyond, his home-brewed ideology of “Bolivarian socialism.”
dmaestro 08-Mar-13, 11:13	Class warfare is inevitable. It is just a question of whether the masses benefit or the capitalists exploit them. Right now the masses are losing.
changeling 08-Mar-13, 17:08	tat It was simply a point I made on election rigging in one form or another tat, no more, no less. Please cease with the faux history rants, they are not necessary. I do know a little of world affairs, and history, I am not so easily blinded as you seem to think). Simply put some people's bad guys are others good guys, that is all. US history and politics is not exactly squeaky clean either. The holier than thou attitude and postings are getting very tiresome.
dmaestro 08-Mar-13, 17:37	Venezuelans supported Hugo Chavez as did much of the world. The USA needs to accept that.

GameKnot: play chess online, online chess puzzles, chess clubs, monthly chess tournaments, Internet chess league, chess teams, free online chess games database and more.