Is this news?

I was watching Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising tonight about the US presidential election of 2004 and only later heard that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela (democratically-elected president, I should add) has died after a two-year battle with cancer.

The US government saw Chavez as public enemy number 2 in their backyard, after the Castro brothers in Cuba. Hard to think of the continents of North and South America as the USA's backyard but that's how it is. Venezuela is not just an independent state with Chavez as a left-leaning president but it's an oil-producing state, whereas Cuba is just a potential oil-producing state.

So I switched on the TV. Sky has handed over to CNN, which is trumpeting the all time high in the US stock market. Second item is that mental health facilities are closing all over the US and sick people are ending up in jail as a result. So in the US the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting dumped in jail. No surprise there.

The BBC has handed over to Singapore to talk about the stock market in Japan. Second item: Dame Helen Mirren in a stage version of The Queen. I happen to know there is a huge controversy going on in Singapore about the purpose and form of education there. Not a word on the news.

This is why I watch films like Slacker Uprising: how else would I know what's going on in the world?