Venezuela is an oil rich country. A counter intuitive result of natural wealth (think "unearned" or "found" money) for a country is that they develop at best an atrophied middle class. There are only administrators and workers. As a counter example are the island countries of modest means, Taiwan and Japan, fight way way above their weight simply because they have to. England (I include the Scottish here, who invented or at least perfected banking) literally invented the middle class and is in a class of its own[1]. England's outcasts landed in the New World with their frugality and customs intact. The US is the exception that proves the rule, massive natural resources that were exploited as scrupulously as they would have been on an isle resulting in a multiplier. Russia has done her best to hang out with the rule, her massive natural resources (on par with the US) are squandered by whatever particular ruler they have at any given time.

A majority of the Venezuelan economy is oil and it is owned by the government (keep thinking "found money"). A middle class economy feeds itself in a virtuous cycle - more small business [ed: can we start saying that instead of "middle class?"] means more effieciency means more stuff means accumulating enough stuff to beecome "middle class" becomes cheaper (upper class gets redefined too) and then around again. Oil economies (to be generic dig-em-up-and-ship-it-out economies) are zero sum economies. That means money you get doesn't feed an upward spiral - you just buy a pair of Levis and I got squat. Were we still talking about Venezuela? Yes, a zero sum economy is fertile ground for populist movements and Marxism is a ready made populist philosophy. As a bonus it preaches that all economies are zero sum, so to folks that are raised in a dig-em-up country it rings doubly true.

Okay, lets get down to brass tacks[2]. If the above didn't sell you on the idea, or you aren't a regular, I'm a right wing bastard and I hate Chavez because he is a commie bastard. You don't have to trust me, there are people I wouldn't normally trust to spot a despot from a thousand yards on my side. Chavez is such a huge, gigantic, oozing boil on the ass of humanity I will quote, in support of my position .. The French

Venezuela Repression Condemned by World's Press, The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers
The government of President Hugo Chávez Frías, ignoring his obligations and his commitment to respect the freedom of speech and the free press in accordance with the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999, has once again threatened to apply military measures and repression against the media and to enact new and pending legislation limiting the freedom of the press;
..
the creation of government controlled watchdog committees to regulate the contents of news broadcasting; and, besides, it has re-opened discussions on the reform to the penal code, which would punish with prison those who transmit false information through the media or protest against public officials as well as further criminalizing the current libel statutes;

Repression In Myanmar, China, Colombia, Venezuela [ed: good company]
In Venezuela, 19,000 workers had been dismissed for trade union activities and one member of the Federation of Construction Workers had been murdered. The ILO Committee called on the government to institute an independent investigation into allegations of detention and torture.

Not stunning denunciations, but considering the sources that should at least get your spidey sense tingling. Here is a piece on a bloody crackdown on the opposition[3] and a nice account of an 80 year old woman gunned down by Chavez thugs during a peaceful protest. Non-approved media was first banned in 2003 and a couple articles Venezuela Erupting, Horror in Venezuela. The last two are from National Review and The Weekly Standard - but if the UN can speak ill of a country it is unsurprising that NR and TWS got there first.

Detailed oriented Readers of SRWU will note I haven't proved my assertion that "more Venezuelans were shot in the recent election than were in Iraq." Not many were shot or dead in either place, so I'll throw myself on the mercy of the court. That there is at least near parity makes Venezuela suspect as a country (even if it didn't get the news coverage that Iraq did).

I'm hitting the post button now[4].

[1] England was in a class in its own, and every man woman and child in the western world owes them a debt for being the lucky bastards that stumbled accross something that worked. Who is the current king? I'm tempted to say Taiwan, but I'll take the safe way out and say the US. With its historical and ongoing embrace of large numbers of immigrants the US gets undercounted statistically (the poor aren't always the same people from census to census).

[2] Oddly google shows only 86k hits for "brass tacks" - I had to actually check the dictionary to make sure I hadn't misspoken something else.

[3] date unkown, a software glitch has the title using Dec 31 midnight 1969 minus timezone, which is the date all unix machines start counting from. If it isn't a software glitch the author has a time machine.

[4] This post would have been better if it weren't the last out of a post-vacation backlog. If you have any criticisms mail us at blog@jackdied.com, all sensible points will be addressed as an addendum to the post.