That dictator Hugo Chavez is taking over all the media, including stations that don't agree with his Communist ideology.

If free people (and esp. Americans) had any sense of self-interest, they'd boycott Citgo.

From wikipedia:

"Citgo Petroleum Corporation or Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company..."

I do not know a great deal about Hugo Chavez but anyone who antagonises Pat Robertson and George W as much as he does can't be all bad!

I've forgotten where I read this and haven't time presently to research it but I think it was the BBC who conducted a poll of what people inside and outside of Venezuela think of Chavez. Most interesting reading if I remember correctly. A mixed bag of responses but certainly nothing like cast-iron certainty that Chaves is a bad'un. In fact if it is considered that the Venezuelans with computers and who responded in English are probably the very affluent and educated - you know what? - old Hugo didn't do so bad!!

The categorisation as downright bad'un seems to come very freely, very frequently and in very doctrinaire vocabulary (close to dictator speak and fascism)from a certain lobby in the US. Oil and evil regimes seem to go together a lot in some US parlance. Is it proximity to oil-fields that makes political leaders evil? Is it enormous riches that turn them into ogres? Do oil and enormous riches not have the same effect on other leaders?

Why do oil and communism (which is not a crime after all) cause such a furore? Is it that oil and communism (like oil and water) should not / should not be allowed to mix? Is it the possibility of economic and, therefore, ideological imperialism that is so appalling as not to be contemplated? Such desire to interfere and foist a specific ideological stance on another country is, of course, unknown to anyone who inhabits / who has inhabited our civilised societies!