Hugo Chavez

his people seem to have loved him

Ken Livingstone orchestrated a putsch to overthrow a democratically elected leader of the GLC. He was also an apologist for the IRA.

I know very little about Hugo Chavez, how do you know his people loved him JO8? Is Venezuela democratic enough to let people say what they really think?

The reason he was seriously unpopular with the rich and powerful was that he redistributed oil revenues to help the poor with housing, education and welfare programmes. Anathema to the American right.

he was a supporter of the poor

Even if he has left the country with no money. I think he tried.

And I do like the way he called George Bush a donkey (amongst other things)

Chavez was elected in 1998 with 56% of the vote after promising to utilise the great oil wealth of Venezuela for the benefit of its people - a promise which he kept when he nationalised the oil companies, which had previously been in the hands of US oil companies. He also kept his promise to the poor of Venezuela and dramatically improved their standard of living. The US imposed sanctions against Venezuela.

No doubt he wasn't a perfect person - who is - but at least he tried to protect his country's natural resources and use them for the benefit of its people - and he was very popular with the majority.

Let's hope the US doesn't now try to destabilise the country by funding undercover agitators to create political instability.

Can't believe the Today programme actually dedicated the last few minutes of the programme this morning to whether or not the US could have caused his cancer!

j08 Why ever not? Look at the attempts to spread disease in Cuba, never mind the exploding cigars for Castro. You can never over-estimate the idiocy of the CIA when its playing politics.

If you believe that Absent.

j08 The US has a history of destabilising regimes that don't suit them, and supporting despotic regimes that do.

j08 I didn't say that I believed it and I don't but I was pointing out the ridiculous lengths that the CIA went to in the hope of destroying Fidel Castro and restoring the previous corrupt set-up. So discussing the possibility of the CIA's causing Hugo Chavez's cancer was not as unrealistic a proposition as it might first have sounded. After all, who would have believed death by the poisoned ferrule of an umbrella, courtesy of Bulgaria, and death by a radioactive isotope, courtesy of Russia – both of them in London?

Yes, but you wouldn't think a programme like Today would give it any credence at all.

You can't compare the US to Eastern bloc countries.

Yes do agree Eloethan about US destabilising regimes that don't suit them, if I remember rightly the CIA orchestrated the toppling of democratically elected Allende in Chile in the 1970s and then they got that awful right wing junta headed up by that man Pinochet and like Argentina and dissenters just disappeared.

Some things you can lay at the door of the USA, but I understand that President Chavez was a lifelong heavy smoker.

They are going to embalm his body and leave it on permanent display!

Now that is hero worship.

Yes indeed I thought that j08 when i heard it earlier. And a tad gruesome. Was it Lenin or Stalin they did that with? Or both?

I think Lenin. I heard this morning that they shoved Stalin under the Kremlin. (I think that's right. I was half asleep at the time)

I find it rather humbling. It's impossible to imagine a UK politician being deemed worthy of immortalisation in this way. It seems our adulation is reserved for minor royals and Z list celebrities.

I think they embalmed Eva Peron and she had quite a few adventures after her decease. But I'm going to google it to double check [memory not what it was].

Adventures! Tell us more, Tegan!

It's not in our psyche, vegasmags but if any figure from our past had been embalmed and put on show, surely it would have been Winston Churchill. He had his flaws, but they broke the mould when he died.

I agree with you annodomini and I still remember the solemnity and dignity of his funeral.