A coup can be made against the people running a government, or one can be made against the forms of the government itself. After failing at the first type of coup, Hugo Chavez has succeeded at the latter type. Hugo Chavez's government has seized people's land, shot demonstrators protesting it, and closed down a five-decade-old television station for insufficient support for it. Are socialism and democracy incompatible? Journalist W.H. Chamberlin, after investigating Stalin's Russia, felt his illusions shatter. He wrote, "socialism is certain to prove, in the beginning at least, the road NOT to freedom, but to dictatorship and counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the fiercest kind. Socialism achieved and maintained by democratic means seems definitely to belong to the world of utopias." Hugo Chavez, the military leader who attempted to seize power by coup in 1992 and bitterly complained when military leaders tried to do the same thing to him ten years later, is certainly shattering the illusions of many of his U.S. supporters. Either that, or they're rethinking their support of a free press to maintain the Chavez illusion.

None of this will matter to Mass. lib weenies Rep. Bill Delahunt and Joe Kennedy. They love the guy and are frequently his welcomed guests.

Speaking of his US supporters, Danny Glover will be producing Venezuelan propaganda. See: http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2084331,00.html

It's high time the US imposed economic sanctions, at least on financial transactions with the senior Venezuelan Government officals. The State Department has already designated Venezuela as a country "not fully cooperating with US anti-terrorism efforts". This sounds like soft language, but the other countries in that group are US allies like Iran, Sudan, Cuba, etc.

Yet this asshole is makin' movies for 'em.

As long as they're pumping that black gold down there, it won't happen.

Nor should it. Sanctions serve only to keep tyrannical regimes in power longer than they normally would be, by cutting off access to goods, services, and ideas from the outside world.

The US Navy should probably stop running Citgo gas stations on it's bases.

I do my part by boycotting Citgo stations. I guess I'm not surprised that the government still continues to support Chavez by enabling his bad behavior. When it comes to knowing what the right thing to do is, they seem to be lost or so caught up in power that they don't care.