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But then, have a look around at your average 50-something football fan,imagine them in a high stress situation, getting all worked up and stuff and then 2 heart attacks doesn't seem that unreal.

On a slightly related note, my grandfather used to work for the coroner's office in the '80s. He once told me that on the first really cold day of winter, they'd be really busy with the bodies of middle-aged men who'd died from heart attacks. This was because cars were shit and would refuse to start in the cold, so men who'd done no exercise all year suddenly leap into action and tried to push half a tonne of metal up a hill, first thing in the morning, in the freezing cold.

so I didn't feel it was appropriate.

is an entirely reasonable response to this just because they had been put through intensive training by ExxonMobil or whoever as part of the PSA Venezuala had in place.

Eye for an eye is a great political methodology of course.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/03/05/venezuela-chavez-s-authoritarian-legacy

I don't really see what else his government could have done. You can't just withdraw unilaterally from the global capitalist market and go it alone because that would be economic suicide - socialism in one country is a non-starter. Despite pretences the Soviet Union didn't go it alone and its economy was largely integrated into the global capitalist system. The North Koreans sort of tried it but obviously that was a disaster and even then they had to be propped up by Soviet/Chinese subsidies.

Plus, there are lots of economies which are largely dependent on oil exports (just look at the Middle East). Okay, it's not ideal, I don't really see any other country besides Venezuela being criticised for that. To be honest I doubt the Venezuelan economy would be any more diversified if Chavez had never been in power. But you're right that crime rates are still astronomical in Venezuela and that has to be seen as one of Chavez's biggest failures.

The high inflation rate indicates that the oil money isn't being sensibly invested, like Holland in the 1970s and 80s

i laud Chavez for What he started out as, but what he ended up as, for whatever outside factors, was not particularly pretty

i thought he was saying that it is possible to take a different political direction on a national scale and still be successful (dependent on all sorts of country-specific factors which will obvi be tied to the fact that the rest of the world is a capitalist economy) which is different, and important in the sense that the very notion of anything resembling a non-capitalist economy is still almost exclusively framed as an inevitable road to stalinism/being north korea

idk that much about venezuela but. uruguay is obviously the coolest SA country atm anyway http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493

But his response was not exactly measured or appropriate. I just don't think Chavez is anything near the saint that certain members of the liberal left in this country would like you to believe.

I think there's far more shades of grey. We won't be able to success as to whether he really had an impact for a good few years; if he's provided long term stability or if he cashed in. In economic and political terms, 14 years is a very long time and a very short time all at once.

Not the meaning so much. His language was not that of a democratic leader as far as I can tell. I've spent a lot of time looking at Venezuela, due to afore mentioned friends studying it, the number of (definitely biased) expats in Paris, and because its of specific interest to anyone studying energy and economics. But I don't think I'm an expert. These are just my views and opinions. But I like to think I have a little bit more grounding in the actual policies than the standard whitewash left liberal who praises Chavez as this generations Guevara without really looking at the concrete evidence, just because he gave Ken lots of money to pay for bus travel for the unemployed in London.