(CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is living up to his promise to radicalize his Bolivarian Revolution after his re-election.

In fact, Chavez has stopped referring ambiguously to some sort of socialism and openly announced that Venezuela will become a socialist country, albeit with a "Socialism of the 21st Century."

But, how modern really is the socialism that Chavez proposes for Venezuela?

Given the announcements made last week, when he was inaugurated for a new term and named a new Cabinet, we can say that Venezuela is heading towards the old communism of the last century, and more in the Cuban or North Korean style than the Chinese.

The decisions announced by Chavez are very similar to those taken in the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

Saying that these were strategic sectors from the point of view of national interests, Chavez announced the nationalization of CANTV, Venezuela's largest telephone company which is controlled by Verizon, as well as the production and distribution of electricity.

Although in the latter case he did not mention names, one of the most important electric power companies in Venezuela is Electricidad de Caracas, which belongs to the U.S. company AES.

And although the government has said there will be compensation for investors, it is far from clear that this compensation will be by market rules -- that investors will be compensated for the real market value of the properties they are being forced to hand over. And, of course, it is even more doubtful that a company that belongs to a government will offer even an adequate level of service and efficiency.

At the same time President Chavez announced that the license of Radio Caracas Televisión, a national television network, would not be renewed. He accuses the company of having backed an attempted coup against him.

While Chavez is not the only openly leftist Latin American president, he is proving to be the most radical.

Bolivia's Evo Morales also "nationalized" that country's gas industry, but it was little more than a change in the rules that allowed the country to increase its income from the extraction and sale of gas.

Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil have similar ideologies to Chavez but don't share his statism.

And among the newly elected left presidents, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega was just sworn in but has promised to respect private property and encourage foreign investment. He supported an already negotiated free trade agreement with the United States, but one of his first actions as president was to join ALBA, a Venezuela-initiated bloc that seeks to limit U.S. influence and also includes Cuba and Bolivia.

On January 15, Rafael Correa was sworn in as President of Ecuador. He is another left of center socialist who has promised a series of radical measures against open markets, but how much Correa will be able to do is an open question, since Congress is entirely in the hands of the opposition.

Chavez, on the other hand, has succeeded in increasing his power within Venezuela in a way no one else has been able to do in recent years in Latin America.

That is why it's likely that, like Cuba, Venezuela will remain an economic island, at least in the medium-term. And even that is open to question, because despite his personal popularity, the polls indicate the big majority of Venezuelans oppose the idea of their country becoming another Cuba.

As for the rest of Latin America, Hugo Chavez is as unpopular as his favorite nemesis, U.S. President George W. Bush, according to polling firm Latinbarometer.

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Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants...... William Penn....Founder of Pennsylvania

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Matt (SD,CA)

1984 300SD.. White/Chrome Bunts..Green

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Fight the good fight!......

Note to self: switch out Fidelity Latin American Fund...

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

Hugo Chavez is no more a dictator than George Bush. I'm not saying GW is a dictator, but if you're going to be calling Hugo a dictator then there are probably lots of other people in this world you would call a dictator.

Edit: That article may be from CNN, but you must of found it in the op-ed section because there's hardly a single non-biased, fact laden statement in the lot of it.

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-justin

1987 300TD, 1987 300TD
2008 R32, 2000 Passat Wagon

It's just a convenient ploy to call him a dictator. Notice, there's nothing in the piece to support that view. Did people call the British Prime Minister a dictator when the Labor Party nationalized the coal mines?

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
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1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Well, he's sure as hell not a Republican! So, he must be something bad. Dick-Tater's as good a name as any.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

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Bunch of cold chalupas.

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I remember when they said Castro wasn't a dictator.

Ed Sullivan, for example, put his arm around Fudd-Dell (on live TV), and said he was "The George Washington of Cuba".

Guess they were wrong......

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Palangi

2004 C240 Wagon 203.261 Baby Benz
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2006 Toyota Prius, Saving the Planet @ 48 mpg
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TRUMP .......... WHITEHOUSE
HILLARY .........JAILHOUSE
BERNIE .......... NUTHOUSE
0BAMA .......... OUTHOUSE

Chavez wants to change Venezuela's constitution so that he can be president for life. That's what Chavez said, following his recent landslide re-election.

Chavez threatened to shut-down opposition newspapers and radio because they were undermining his reforms.

Chavez is not a dictator, yet. He's evolving in that direction.

B

You mean state-run (aka government propaganda) media? Yeah, he *does* want to shut them down.

Do we have state-run media in the US? No. Hmmm, let's see, which governments have state-run media? North Korea, China, Cuba, Burma, yes.

Venezuela had state-run media BEFORE Chavez took power, not after.

Let's just not even talk about the coup attempt.

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-justin

1987 300TD, 1987 300TD
2008 R32, 2000 Passat Wagon

Abuse of Power
The dangers of a demogogue who is too often depicted as a savior of the poor.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

On Feb. 2, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will celebrate a decade in power. But it is unlikely that a majority of his compatriots will toast his long run. In the latest referendum on Mr. Chávez -- Venezuela's gubernatorial elections, on Nov. 24 -- government-anointed candidates won most of the country's 22 states, but the six challengers to chavismo who managed to prevail will now head some of the country's most populous states as well as the capital district of Caracas. A tally of total votes cast that day shows that more Venezuelans opposed the Chávez machine than endorsed it.

Mr. Chávez came to power in 1999 promising to lift the Venezuelan underclass out of its misery, but he has failed badly so far: The country, in fact, is less democratic under Mr. Chávez, decidedly poorer and immensely more crime-ridden. Yet the Chávez narrative that we have been told in recent years is almost always a triumphant one. As Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan show in "The Threat Closer to Home," many journalists, nongovernmental organizations, American politicians and Hollywood stars have fallen in love with Mr. Chávez, treating him as a savior to the poor and tribune of the people. Messrs. Schoen and Rowan depict him, persuasively, as something quite different: a dangerous demagogue. They are less persuasive when it comes to recommending specific American policies for containing Mr. Chávez's ambitions.

In its 2007 index, Transparency International, an organization that ranks countries from the least corrupt (Denmark, at No. 1) to the most (Somalia, at No. 179), put Venezuela far down on the list, at No. 162. More disturbing is Mr. Chávez's growing authoritarianism. Just after he was first elected -- as Messrs. Schoen and Rowan remind us -- a pro-Chávez constituent assembly rewrote the constitution in a way that weakened the checks and balances on his power. From there Mr. Chávez wrested control of the judiciary and the national electoral council, the body charged with the electoral process. Then he began rigging elections.

A crucial vote came on Aug. 15, 2004, when Venezuela held a referendum on whether to recall Mr. Chávez from the presidency. Polling places were suddenly relocated for 2.6 million voters (mostly in areas known to oppose Mr. Chávez and favor the recall), and unaudited electronic machines were used to tally the votes. To the American polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, monitoring the recall effort -- Douglas Schoen, the co-author of "The Threat Closer to Home," is one of the firm's partners -- the heavy voter turnout suggested "dissatisfaction with the incumbent." And the firm's exit polling in Venezuela confirmed the hunch: Mr. Chávez, it predicted, would lose, 59% to 41%.

In the wee hours of the following day, the head of Venezuela's electoral council announced the vote results as Mr. Chávez's government had tallied them: They were the mirror image of what Penn, Schoen and Berland had found: 59% in favor of keeping the president and 41% backing the recall. Despite a complete lack of transparency -- and good reasons for believing that governmental pressure had affected vote-counting -- international "observer" Jimmy Carter blessed the result, and Mr. Chávez remained in office.

How does Mr. Chavez deploy his increasing power? Among much else, Messrs. Schoen and Rowan observe, he uses Venezuela's oil wealth to fund militant political projects in neighboring countries and to buy K Street propaganda in Washington. He makes alliances with Islamic fundamentalists and Colombian rebels. He confiscates property and takes over whole companies and industries, crushing the private sector and thwarting political pluralism.

The true nature of Mr. Chávez's rule -- as opposed to the fairy-tale version we so often hear -- is neatly presented in "The Threat Closer to Home," and the authors' narrative is heavily footnoted. (I must quibble with one of their claims, however. Messrs. Schoen and Rowan say that The Wall Street Journal editorial board, in 2003, "upbraided" Jack Kemp for his business relationship with the Chávez government. In fact, the editorial board did not declare itself on the subject; Mr. Kemp was taken to task in a column I wrote for the Journal.) America must act to oppose Mr. Chavez, the authors go on to say, but they do not suggest the sorts of steps that would go to the heart of his power: e.g. ending the "war on drugs" or stopping the devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

No, what the authors have in mind starts with . . . contrition. The U.S., you see, has harmed Venezuela over the years with Cold War intervention, corporate dominance and cultural arrogance. "We are largely unaware," Messrs. Schoen and Rowan write, "of how Latin Americans at home feel about our government's overbearing influence in the wrong ways." (And yet, a few pages later, we are told that America has a 70% approval rating among Venezuelans.) The U.S. might be forgiven, the authors say, if we were to institute something they call The Alliance of the Americas, an effort that would "invest in the tools of wealth creation for the 200 million poor people of Latin America." In such a way, inequality will end, Venezuelans will become productive and the lion will lay down with the lamb.

The idea behind this proposal is that Venezuela, one of the richest countries in the hemisphere, needs a Marshall Plan. But this is absurd. Venezuela's pain has nothing to do with a shortage of resources; it has everything to do with an absence of property rights, fair competition and equality under the law. Venezuelans have been stripped of their rights not by Americans but by Venezuelan politicians. Mr. Chávez is only the latest, and perhaps the worst, in a long line of corrupt and abusive leaders. Fortunately a good number of Venezuelans have figured this out. They are known as the "ni-ni" because they back neither Mr. Chávez nor his opposition. Instead, they are waiting for the arrival of a Venezuelan political class that will, at long last, accept democratic limits on its own power.

Ms. O'Grady writes the Journal's weekly Americas column.

hmm, no mention of the u.s. backed coup? gee, how did that get left out?

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

What US backed coup? Or rather, which US backed coup?

when your elected by a popular vote your not considered a dictator.

This tripe is straight out of some conservative talking points blog.

idiots that dont even know what socialism is, trying to rail aginst it.

If you dont like socialism then,,,
dont drive on the roads
dont send your kids to school
dont use the police or fire departments
close down the va and abandon the us military system
dont drink the water or flush your toilet
send your social security check back

Or you might become one of those Hugo like, communist, amerkan haters.

Give it a rest ! ok,

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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

I can't belive it was u, who dug out this old salami skin. Must be an annual thing. Kind of.

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I must object. Hoaxus populusque.

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