Cuban Embassy in Venezuela Besieged

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - About 500 Venezuelans, chanting and blowing whistles, demonstrated outside the Cuban Embassy on Friday, angered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of ousted President Hugo Chavez and claiming four of Chavez's lieutenants were hiding inside.

Riot police stood between the protesters and the embassy, its turquoise walls spattered with eggs. Demonstrators vandalized at least three cars in front of the embassy - breaking windows, puncturing tires and pouring white paint inside - thinking the vehicles belonged to the former members of Chavez's government.

The protesters also reportedly cut telephone and electrical wires leading to the embassy.

In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told journalists the Cuban diplomats had been instructed to protect the mission "with their very lives." He also denied any Venezuelans were seeking refuge at the site.

He said he expressed concerns to the United Nations about the safety of the embassy and its diplomats and blamed the protests on "coup leaders" backed by Cuban exile groups in Miami.

Henrique Capriles Radonski, mayor of the upper-middle class suburb of Baruta where the embassy is located, stood on a 10-foot wall surrounding the compound and urged to the crowd not to storm the mission - though he encouraged protesters not to leave.

Chavez and Castro were good friends. Castro even celebrated his 75th birthday with Chavez last year in Venezuela.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wave to a crowd while touring Canaima National Park in eastern Venezuela in a canoe in this Aug. 12, 2001 file photo. Chavez, the former army paratrooper who polarized Venezuela with his strongarm rule and whose friendship with Cuba and Iraq irritated the United States, resigned under military pressure Friday, April 12, 2002 after a massive opposition demonstration ended in a bloodbath. (AP Photo/HO, Miraflores Presidential Palace, Egilda Gomez)

Already the media is inferring this happened because the U.S. was angry with Chavez's rule.
They never resist taking pot-shots at us. No wonder our international PR is so rotten.

Venezuela's Power Shift Condemned*** Security forces conducted house to house searches Friday for members of so-called "Bolivarian Circles," citizens' groups said to have been armed by Chavez's government. Anti-Chavez politicians said they still feared assassination by the "Chavistas." Police searched the home of Chavez supporter, Caracas Mayor Freddy Bernal, who was missing.***

Houston Chronicle CHAVEZ'S REVOLUTION: Egomaniacal power grab disgusted most Venezuelans [Full Text] When Hugo Chavez won a landslide election victory to the presidency three years ago, he enjoyed the good will of the vast majority of Venezuelans and many democratically minded people throughout the world. Finally, it was hoped, here would be a leader who would improve the lot of all Venezuelans, most of whom lived in terrible poverty despite the fact that Venezuela is a rich nation by virtue of being the world's fourth-largest exporter of oil.

But the charismatic former paratroop colonel, who had staged a failed military coup in 1992, betrayed the voters and proved to be more of a pompous, left-leaning egomaniac than a true democrat. His international friends were Fidel Castro, to whom he agreed to ship oil at a cut-rate cost, Saddam Hussein and very probably Colombia's leftist guerrillas. He turned his back on the United States, although Venezuela remained this country's No. 3 supplier of imported oil.

Friday Chavez either resigned his presidency or was forced from power by Venezuelan military commanders following a national strike and mass march in Caracas that resulted in at least a dozen demonstrators being killed and an estimated 250 wounded. His approval ratings had plunged from 80 percent to 30 percent, even among the poorest of Venezuelans who had once been his strongest supporters.

In effect, the revolution had eaten its young. Power had corrupted. Domestically, Chavez grabbed for power with both hands. He put his old military friends into high positions. He muzzled and intimidated Venezuela's free press, got rid of honest judges along with some corrupt ones, rewrote the constitution and attacked middle-class businessmen, the Roman Catholic Church and labor leaders. He set the nation's state oil monopoly on a path to ruin.

Chavez's revolution turned out to be a lost chance to fix the many wrongs that plague the ordinary citizens of Venezuela. But the former colonel betrayed the people, as do most leaders who seek absolute power.

It is unclear where Venezuela will go from this point. Pedro Carmona, the interim leader who heads the country's largest business association, has promised new presidential and legislative elections within a year.

The future of Venezuelans depends on the rule of law, honest judges, a free press, a more transparent government and a renewed dedication to the principle that all Venezuelans should be treated fairly and humanely and with dignity. On this, history must wait. [End]

Travis sweet indeed.

This brave action to dispose of the Commie in charge of Venezula has resulted in 12 to 14% price reduction of bulk gasoline. Those decreases will be showing up at our pumps next week>

Also, this may be the end of the vile Opecker Princes and their cartel Opec. The new government will supply the oil to meet market demands.

Shermy, would you please go to Drudge to get an article on what is happening re maybe the end of Opec, and post a thread on what is happening down in Venezuela. I will be leaving to do Grampa things and to help my DIL to plant flowers and other green things in her new back yard.

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