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Now that you've finished:

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

Chavez is currently taking state ownership of all corporate entities down there so he can give them to the "People".

The magic word here is "all". That's a grave mistake. While investments in industries expropriated by Chavez have relocated elsewhere (for the most part to Columbia, Brazil and Chile), the flux of Brazilian investments in Venezuela and the trade, considered in numbers, money or volume, has not only remained stable, with an expectable decline in his first years indeed, but as of the last year and this year has steadily increased. Never before so much Brazilian money poured into Venezuela. Chavez needs the Brazilian state and the Brazilian economy to cover some of the holes he ran out of oil to fill for himself, projects like the subway of Caracas, a dam, a refinery he split 50/50, possibly oil tankers and of course the consumer goods only a foreign economy can provide and the other commodities necessary to keep the machines operating.

You shouldn't be fooled so easily by rhetoric. Do you think the Oil companies that helped him drill in Orinoco didn't knew they were going to get robbed sooner or later? If I'm not mistaken, all of these companies, but for sure at least some of them, had already experienced expropriation in Azerbaijan and elsewhere before. They knew what they were getting into perfectly well and they went ahead because Chavez is not mad to assume full control of them. He will only steal a big chunck of their profits and take the jobs for himself as he needs every job he can get to distribute among his supporters to satisfy them, but never make the business of the corporations he needs unprofitable.

Some sectors or some companies were and will continue to be expropriated, others will not. How do you expect him to feed the people? He's already tight on Oil, he needs capitalism both to run the economy and to pay taxes. What he does is assume control from the top down. What's already there will continue to exist, imports from Brazil, as I mentioned, have risen, the difference is that no more new companies should appear or grow without his consent and control. A few days ago he just lost a massive investment from a food company that has decided to relocate to Brazil. No biggie, it will produce in Brazil and export to Venezuela from there. It's easy for a generation that was born in misery not to know the difference between what they have and an American super-market, but the current generation in Venezuela knows it full well and won't accept having to live with one flavor of everything, from toothpaste to meat to fruits. The poorest in Venezuela are blackmailed into accepting this worsening in quality of life under the false promise of a better future. Don't worry, it's only temporary (off scene) not. So the only thing he's "giving to the people" is a worse life.

I don't know how anybody could be happy in such a place

The protests, the strike of the PDVSA, speak for themselves. Alot of people sure aren't. There were reports about the "happiness" of the Venezuelan poorest in Brazilian newspapers and two magazines, I haven't done the clipping and they're sitting somewhere in a pile of boxes. The point is, Chavez can't provide benefits for everybody. Some people will get money, some will get a job, others won't get anything and will only see their little wealth dissolve in a sea of inflation. The larger the state grows, the smaller the slices of the remains of the cake become. Those who fell for the blackmail but didn't get their part of the deal regret having committed to it. Elsewhere in the continent people don't want "such a place" either, to a greater or lesser extent, he was rejected in Mexico and Peru, Bolivia is chaotic and unstable, an opinion poll from last year pointed that Chavez support in Brazil to be of 14% and support for his actions at 17% ([url]http://clipping.planejamento.gov.br/Noticias.asp?NOTCod=275689[/url]) and this isn't taking into account everything he has done or that has happened since then. The problem is, now it's too late. The electoral exit has been shut and the mouth of the opposition is being shut aswell. He can only be overthrown by force and he's alot stronger than isolated poor people pressured from above by Chavez and from below by crime. Which brings us to the future.

I only wonder when Chavez will start building the fences to keep the masses from escaping.

To put things in perspective now, these "masses" aren't that massive. Venezuela is an irrelevant small country with an irrelevant small economy in a forgotten part of the world with an interesting history that is just as forgotten and which has only temporarily appeared before the rest of the world because, once again in recent history, a dictator has used the income from the monopoly of monoculture to trick the crowds, both in and outside of his country. Don't expect drama. You'll continue to see clashes with the police, you'll continue to see protests, but you won't see the Berlin wall or the Cuban rafts because if Venezuela isn't surrounded by a wall or by water it is surrounded by dense jungle. Don't laugh, the Amazon makes the Mexican border look like a walk in the park, except for the price of raising a fence which is just as high or more for a small nation. But yes, there are already people moving out. Both political refugees and regular people. For all its problems, there are other economies in the region that offer a a better life.

What Chavez would like to do is create a larger Cuba but since he hasn't eliminated the opposition and he can't afford to keep his oil bubble full without foreign money he needs to take the steps he can take, not the steps he would like to take, he must obey the speed limit, not hit the pedal to the metal. His perspectives are pretty good. He needs to stop the rioting and disorganize the opposition. He will need a police state to keep things in order and as Syria does with Mosques (have a snitch listening to any possible subversive conversation), he has been taking a double approach with Churches: on one hand attempt to infiltrate them to use them as a resounding box of obedience to the regime, on the other simply start opposing Christianity, perhaps before it becomes too much of a refuge for the consciences.

They may not be free or happy, but hey, at least they won't be exploited by the corporations...right?

Exploited by corporations? Chavez sells virtually all his Oil to the US. That's complete economical submission, full dependency. Is that how you stop this exploitation thing?

Chavez is the exploiter. When he takes the richness of Venezuela and dumps it in Bolivia, Argentina, in the TeleSur or in crappy movies, when he uses it to subsidize useless employees or bribe his supporters, at the same time that he perverts history, attacks the Church and trumps over freedom of speech he's fitting the glove.

I've said pervert history because he has abused of the name of Simón Bolívar. Bolívar inspired himself in the American revolution, defended freedom, reason, order and the free-market and fought for the unity of the Hispanic America in a Republic modelled after the USA (http://www.mre.gov.br/portugues/noticiario/nacional/selecao_detalhe.asp?ID_RESENHA=291891).