RE: Have you ever been to Venezuela?
Actually, no, I haven't. But I can read and obviously do so more widely than yourself.
"Matt your incoherent rant sounds like that of an American right-wing talk radio shock jock...." Hmmm, I'm guessing you label anyone right of your POV as incoherent and ranting. And the radio shock jock angle is so Noughties, haven't you got a hip and new abusive tag thought up for you yet? Aren't you all supposed to be accusing anyone right of Stalin of working for Fox News?
"....Hugo Chavez is popular in his own country precisely because he has spent some of his countries vast oil wealth on his own people...." Debateable. His programs have shown little effect on the levels of literacy and actual healthcare for the poorest, but he has made himself and his friends very rich and comfortable. He came to power by the usual popularist policy of promising the land of milk and honey to the poor and promising to duff up the rich, a tactic that hasn't changed since Lenin's day. That was after he'd tried and failed several military coups, the first as long ago as 1992. Since gaining office he has done everything he can to make sure there couldn't be a fair and democratic election, to such an extent that the opposition parties boycotted the 2005 elections. Instead of declaring the result void as it so obviously was, Chav simply claimed victory in all the parliamentary seats and dissolved all his allied parties, forming one new party under his rule with all 167 seats in the National Assembly. Since he has effectively run a one-party state, using his pet Assembly to re-order the judiciary so he can use it for further attacks on his opponents and cut and change the constitution to suit his purposes. That's called a dictatorship, not democracy.
".....He is facing an increasingly hostile superpower to his north...." Historically, Venezuala has enjoyed very good relations with the US in the last century. The recent decline was most marked after the 2002 coup attempt and Chav's policy of painting the US as some bogeyman in an attempt to appeal to anti-US sentiment in such countries as Cuba. Chav didn't like the idea that Venezualans actually might not want him and so blamed the 2002 coup on the CIA. But long before 2002 he was happilly courting such nice people as Saddam Hussein and Castro, and making ludicrous anti-US statements. He even accused the US of killing his friend Raul Reyes, the FARC leader killed by Colombian jets in Ecuadorian territory, live on his TV show. Now, you surely can't be so naive as not to know what kind of people FARC are?
"....The fact that he can be relied upon to make apparently non-sensical and borderline nutcase statements like this only serves to spice up his otherwise interminably boring public addresses which can go on for many many hours by all accounts." Yes, he actually has given himself his own weekly TV show, "Alo Presidente", during which Chav gets to broadcast whatever he likes for often up to five hours. Of course, he offers the same facilities to his political opponents - not! Maybe you should skip a trip to Venezuala and go down your local library, you have some history reading to catch up on.
Chavez decries evils of PlayStation
