Now, if you'd said crazy Red Commie, I'd know you were talking about Bush and his Party Elite comrades with their daschas stolen from our taxes.

Ah, old man Keck's buddy Simon, posted down south once again. Make sure to get his number if you're planning a trip to Caracas.

I like it that Chavez has resisted American attempts to topple him, and that he continues to be a firebrand. I'm less enthusiastic about his nationalization scheme, but I'd say it's much more skepticism there than discomfort, and more power to them if it works.

But getting the legislature to grant him an 18-month autocracy, doing away with the term limits on his office (which he helped establish, before he was in that office), planning to move lots of city dwellers out to the middle of nowhere, and consolidating control over the military... yeah, those all make me uncomfortable.

If they don't make you at least a little uncomfortable, Angela, then I'd say it's less because you're not "North American" and more because you're either unfamiliar with or ignoring the several bits of history where governments have begun with exciting mass movements and socialist idealism but somehow wound up with repressive dictatorship instead.

I had/have a lot of high hopes for Chavez as well. I'm all about socialism until you start acting like perhaps you might be a dictator. I don't think the term-limit thing is so bad as long as he can prove his elections in the future are valid if he wins. The autocracy is weird as hell though.

The term limits will only be removed if there is a sufficient majority of the population in favor of that. So far the elections in Venezuela have been exemplary, so whatever happens I'm pretty confident that it will reflect the popular will.
If the alternative is a puppet holding office with Chavez holding the power, I'd rather see him president.
As long as Venezuelan politics is dominated by the obscenely rich right and the obscenely poor populace to the left, it will be governed by a single socialist party. Division within the left is just too dangerous, given the power the obscenely rich still hold over the press and infrastructure.

Chavez's ongoing attempts to purchase international status with oil are just silly, but more importantly he's an autocratic thug, per Human Rights Watch:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/venezu12258.htm

You're both right. Chavez is a thug, but Venezuela's long ago threw away whatever chance they had at an alternative. When Kinaidos says "obscenely rich", he leaves out the most important part: it's literally A HUNDRED FAMILIES that own all the wealth. The middle class is very small, and screwed, and getting screwed-er. It's all oil; whatever else Venezuela has, or had, going for it, it's all dying, and there's nothing left but oil. So you get a dictator controlling the whole pie, because it's a really easy pie for one person to control. But the oligarchy have no one to blame but themselves.

I think Fnarf is right on. Chavez is a kook, a brutal, egocentric, powermad kook - but Venezuela isn't 1930's Europe, and while his investor-alientating behaivor may be hurt some of his people, he at least has established a relatively stable and united country. I don't neccessarly like him, but I think that country has made him their best alternative to mass corruption.