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BOGOTA — Colombia's defense chief joked Monday that Venezuelan troops might have mistaken Santa's sleigh for a spy plane, dismissing accusations by President Hugo Chavez about drones flying over Venezuela. Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of violating Venezuela's airspace with an unmanned spy plane and ordered his military to be on alert and shoot down any such aircraft. The Pentagon has declined to comment on Chavez's accusations. Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva and armed forces commander Freddy Padilla told reporters Monday that Colombian aircraft couldn't fly the kind of espionage mission described by Chavez. "Colombia doesn't have that...

Colombia has announced it will build a new military base near its border with Venezuela, in a move likely to further strain its tense ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said Friday that the base, located on the Guajira peninsula near the city of Nazaret, would have up to 1,000 troops. "It is a strategic point from a defense point of view," Silva said. Army Commander General Oscar Gonzalez meanwhile announced Saturday that six air battalions were being activated, including two on the border with Venezuela. Venezuela shares a ...1,250-mile border with Colombia . In November...

THE Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when Penny Wong's speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation. President Chavez brought the house down. When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause. When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was...

ONE of President Hugo Chavez's top collaborators will resign from his post following the arrest of his brother as part of a brewing banking scandal. Jesse Chacon, who currently serves as Science and Technology Minister, offered his resignation after his brother, Arne Chacon, turned himself in to the Venezuelan secret police on Saturday as part of a widening probe by prosecutors into the financial system. Chavez moved to distance himself from the scandal ... Chavez also said that he told the Venezuelan secret police to swiftly imprison Arne Chacon... "I'm very sorry that he is the brother of a minister,...

BOGOTA – In a private, low-key ceremony, the U.S. ambassador and three Colombian ministers on Friday signed a pact giving American personnel expanded access to military bases in this drug-producing country, a deal that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has called a threat to the region's security. Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said the 10-year deal takes effect immediately and restricts U.S. military operations to Colombian territory — alluding to fears expressed by leftist leaders in the region that it would make Colombia a base for asserting U.S. power in South America. Details of the pact, which aims to boost drug and counterinsurgency...

Tyranny: In his latest absurdity, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dictating three-minute showers and no singing. Claiming it's to save water, his act is nothing but a "green" fig leaf to cover his socialist mismanagement. 'Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour," Chavez ranted on his Sunday TV show "Alo Presidente." "No, kids. Three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes and I don't stink." His words echo those of environmental extremists, blaming shopping malls, El Nino, tourists and sabotage. But the water and electricity shortages are his own doing, and the scope of...

President Hugo Chavez has ordered the "acquisition by force" of a landmark Hilton Hotel on Venezuela's Margarita island, the government's Official Gazette announced Tuesday. The facility, on the Caribbean resort island of Margarita in Nueva Esparta state, was targeted for state takeover less than a month after it was used to host the Africa-South America Summit. It is not the first time Chavez's government has checked into a Hilton and stayed for good. Caracas has already seized the Hotel Hilton in Caracas, rechristening it the Hotel Alba, a reference to the Venezuelan-led leftist regional alliance Alianza Bolivariana para las Americas...

Global Security: Radical chic hit its zenith in Europe Monday as Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez strolled the red carpet to adoring crowds at the Venice Film Festival — just as he was plotting with Iran to destroy the West.It was the thuggish Venezuelan dictator's moment of glory, just two days after thousands of Latin Americans bitterly marched against him in "No Mas Chavez" demonstrations on Friday. The humiliation of that was over when the film industry crowds at the Venice premiere of Oliver Stone's "South of the Border" heaved forward to touch his clothes and the paparazzi begged him for...

BARILOCHE, Argentina (AFP) – South American presidents attacked plans for US bases in Colombia at a summit on Friday, and issued a statement warning "foreign military forces" against threatening national sovereignty. The meeting, in the Argentine mountain resort of Bariloche, heard fears from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and his leftwing allies that the bases were part of a US strategy to act freely in Latin America, possibly against his oil-rich country. The final summit declaration warned that "foreign military forces must not... menace the sovereignty and integrity of a South American country and in consequence regional peace and stability." Its...

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If you can stand 10 minutes of a rambling Chavez without dramamine, listen to the nugget at the end of this video, (9 minutes 30 seconds). Chavez admits infiltrating CNN even before becoming president in 1997! He said he wanted to take over CNN back then, failed, but that "the people are still there. CNN, we have them infiltrated."

President Hugo Chavez says he has a new book for President Barack Obama: "What is to be Done?" by communist Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state. Chavez says he'll "give it to Obama at the next meeting." "What is to be Done?" is Lenin's political treatise on the role of intellectuals and the proletariat in promoting revolution, written more than a decade before he led the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela's garrulous President Hugo Chavez on Thursday began a marathon four-day edition of his trademark television show to mark 10 years since the influential and widely watched program first hit the airwaves. Chavez is a tireless talker who uses frequent television appearances to make policy announcements, berate opponents and even sing during rambling speeches often delivered in the florid vernacular of working class Venezuelans. Normally transmitted on Sundays from a different corner of the South American oil exporting nation each week, 'Alo Presidente' is the boisterous socialist's favorite forum, with the program once running to eight hours....

1) Venezuela’s non-oil GDP is back down to 1977 levels according to Toby Bottome of Veneconomia. I guess this is a backwards revolution, 35 years lost, proving once again the IVth. was bad, but the Vth. is worse. 2) Two weeks ago, I was telling people I did not understand why the parallel swap rate was not soaring given that CADIVI is simply not giving much (Even if we don’t have statistics for March). Now that the rate has soared in two weeks, I am concerned that there are no more shortages out there. One notices shortages in paper products...

Reporting from Mexico City -- The book that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, has long been regarded as a bible for the Latin American left, found on the bookshelves and university reading lists of a generation of students in the region. "Open Veins of Latin America" recounts, as its subtitle says, "Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" -- the harvesting of the region's cotton, rubber, coffee, fruit and other resources by U.S. and European powers. It argues, from a Marxist viewpoint, that such exploitation is the root cause of Latin American poverty.

CARACAS, Venezuela – A leading opponent of President Hugo Chavez has decided to seek political asylum abroad rather than face a corruption charge in a trial he says would be stacked against him, an ally said Monday. Opposition leader Manuel Rosales, who went into hiding three weeks ago, decided not to appear in court Monday because the case against him is being used for "political persecution," said Omar Barboza, who heads Rosales' political party. "He won't present himself before a court that's been turned into a political tool," Barboza told reporters. "When there's a state of law in Venezuela, Manuel...

Democracy: In a little-noted agency hearing, the CIA admitted that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez rigged his recall referendum in 2004. So why does he still merit global recognition as a democratically elected leader?Anyone who steals an election has no claim to democracy. But somehow there's an exception for Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who's still recognized as a "democratically elected" leader by the U.S. and others. It now comes to light that the CIA cybersecurity experts know he fixed his 2004 recall referendum. Two weeks ago, at a field hearing before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in Orlando, Fla., CIA's Steve Stigall...

A day late, a petrodollar short; we’re well on our way. CHAVEZ CALLS ON OBAMA TO FOLLOW PATH OF SOCIALISM Caracas - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday called upon US President Barack Obama to follow the path to socialism, which he termed as the “only” way out of the global recession. “Come with us, align yourself, come with us on the road to socialism. This is the only path. Imagine a socialist revolution in the United States,” Chavez told a group of workers in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolivar.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Cuba's ailing former leader Fidel Castro, not seen in public for almost three years, walked the streets of Havana in a "miracle" that made people cry, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday. Chavez, a close friend of the legendary revolutionary, spent several hours with Castro in Cuba last weekend and said he was in his best health since falling ill in July 2006. Other regional leaders have also described Castro as looking well in recent weeks. Chavez's account of the walk and a trip to visit farmland may indicate an improvement in Castro's health. Castro's frail...

HAVANA (AFP) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in Cuba on Saturday, paying a surprise visit to the island after a major poll win last Sunday. It is the Venezuelan leader's first trip abroad since winning a referendum on February 15 that removed term limits on his presidency. Standing arm-in-arm with Chavez on his arrival late Friday, Cuban President Raul Castro raised the Venezuelan leader's fist in victory, declaring "I do this in Fidel's name" -- a reference to his brother, a long-time friend of Chavez.

Obama, with control of the Press, the Census, the Congress, the Senate, the nationalization of EVERYTHING, can this happen in America too?..... CARACAS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez removed a key obstacle to his plan to remain in office for life, convincing voters Sunday to approve constitutional amendments designed to allow indefinite re-election.

CARACAS: President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela's growing opposition and President Hugo Chavez's left-wing party shared the spoils from weekend elections, jostling for political advantage in the OPEC nation Monday. The multi-party opposition eroded Chavez's dominance of regional politics, winning six top posts that govern almost half of the population, although his Socialist Party took a 17 state races -- a clear majority. The results complicate Chavez's plan to change the law to run for reelection in 2012. The opposition defeated that move in a referendum last year and gained further ground Sunday on the popular anti-U.S. president who came to power in...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, renowned for colorful insults of world leaders, called U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a confused "beauty queen" on Friday after she said he was a dictator. Chavez, a leftist who often mocks U.S. President George W. Bush, invoked the advice of Jesus Christ on how to handle the slights by Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska and a former beauty pageant winner. "I saw the vice presidential candidate, there she was talking about 'the dictator Hugo Chavez.' The poor thing, you just feel sorry for her," he said during a televised broadcast....

The United States stopped trying to be polite Friday in an escalating diplomatic shoving match with the populist leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia. Washington slapped new sanctions on three aides close to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and called him weak and desperate. The Venezuelan ambassador got the boot for good measure, a move that was purely for show. Chavez had already brought his man home.

The Bush administration is facing a new headache, this time in Latin America, as two leftist governments it can't ignore booted the U.S. ambassadors this week. Simmering ideological tensions between President Bush and the populist presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela boiled over this week in twin diplomatic spats that threaten U.S. counternarcotics operations in the region and possibly American energy supplies. The administration says it wants to get along with the growing number of leftist leaders in the Western Hemisphere, but Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are having none of it, essentially responding with the time-honored...

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says two Russian bombers have arrived in the country to carry out training flights. The Russian Air Force said the bombers would be based in Venezuela for several days and fly over neutral waters. Earlier this week Russia confirmed that it would send a Navy squadron and long- range patrol planes for joint exercises with Venezuela in November. Mr Chavez has developed close relations with Moscow, including the purchase of Russian arms and co-operation on oil. Hugo Chavez announced that two Tu-160 bombers would carry out manoeuvres, saying that it was part of a move towards...

CARACAS: President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela. "Russia has informed us they intend to visit Venezuela, that is, the intention that a Russian fleet should come to the Caribbean," Chavez said on his weekly radio program. "I told the president (Medvedev), 'If you're coming to the Caribbean, we'll welcome you,'" Chavez said, adding that the Russian naval fleet would pay "a friendly and working" visit to Venezuela. Under leftist President Chavez, Venezuela has been seeking closer relations with Moscow, in part to buy military hardware,...

CARACAS (Reuters) – Washington-foe Venezuela plans to launch an observation satellite within five years to map its territory, President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday. Venezuela's first satellite, named after independence hero Simon Bolivar, is for broadcast and telecommunications purposes and is due to be launched from China in November, Chavez said. But major oil explorer Venezuela is seeking to build a second satellite to help map the vast South American country, Chavez said on his weekly television show. "Who has got great multicolored maps of Venezuela? The Yankees," he said. "Now we are going to have our own. We have...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Riot police used tear gas Wednesday to block hundreds of Venezuelans protesting the latest moves by President Hugo Chavez to concentrate his power. The demonstrators said a blacklist of opposition candidates and a series of socialist decrees are destroying what's left of their democracy. Though the protest of about 1,000 people chanting "freedom!" was small compared to past marches, there is a growing public outcry over the sidelining of key government opponents ahead of state and local elections in November.

President Hugo Chavez's Venezuela has become the key trafficking route for most of the cocaine sold on Britain's streets, anti-drugs officials believe. Last year, about 250 tons of cocaine are thought to have passed through Venezuela - up to a five-fold increase on 2004. Much of this ended up in Britain. Anti-drugs officials estimate that more than 50 per cent of all the cocaine consumed in Britain has been trafficked through Venezuela - under the "revolutionary" regime of Mr Chavez. The figure could be as high as two thirds. Senior commanders in Venezuela's security forces are thought to be profiting...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Saturday he wants to work together with the next U.S. president and that Venezuela and the United States should cooperate to resolve problems including world hunger, energy shortages and climate change. But Chavez also warned that George W. Bush "will be much more dangerous during the last months that he has left" in the White House, and accused the outgoing U.S. president of attempting to orchestrate his assassination or spur a military rebellion in Venezuela. "Whoever is the next president of the United States, I'd like start preparing the way to start working...

Files linking Hugo Chavez to rebels 'not faked' Last Updated: 11:22PM BST 15/05/2008 Computer files that Colombia claims prove President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a state sponsor of terrorism have not been faked, Interpol has said. Colombia insists that data seized during a raid on a guerrilla camp show that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a rebel group trying to overthrow the government, planned and launched operations from Venezuela against Colombian security forces. The computers and hard drives also contained letters. In a communication from early last year, Farc allegedly asked Mr Chavez for a loan of...

BOGOTA, Colombia - Documents that Colombia says it recovered from a slain guerrilla leader give the clearest indication yet that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to arm and finance insurgents across the border. The documents — more than a dozen internal rebel messages — detail several years of close cooperation between top officials in Venezuela's government and military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including the construction of rebel training facilities on Venezuelan soil. They also suggest Venezuela was preparing to loan the rebels at least US$250 million (euro190 million), provide them with Russian weapons and possibly...

MIDI - MICKEY MOUSE - scroll down to Children section

President Hugo Chavez ordered the nationalization of Venezuela's cement industry, saying his government cannot allow businesses to continue exporting raw materials needed to help tackle a domestic housing shortage. Speaking during a nationally televised address Thursday, Chavez said the affected cement companies, which include Mexico's Cemex SAB, France's Lafarge SA and Switzerland's Holcim Ltd, will be paid fair compensation in the state takeover. "We are going to prepare a plan to modernize these cement plants," he said. Chavez, who says he is leading Venezuela toward "21st century socialism," said the nationalization would take place in the "short term," but did...

HOLLYWOOD — FOXNews.com readers may remember the film "Team America: World Police," a puppeteer's parody about the American government, its foreign policy and its home-grown critics in Hollywood. One of the puppets lampoons Oscar-winner Sean Penn, who, in the film, laments the invasion of Iraq by harking back to the time it "was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate." Penn was so angry about the film's message that he wrote the film's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, a blistering public letter signing off with a scatological reference.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's National Assembly opened an investigation Wednesday into a congressman's accusations that two of President Hugo Chavez's brothers acquired 17 ranches in recent years — if true a potential stain on the image of Chavez's socialist movement. Lawmaker Wilmer Azuaje detailed his allegations in a closed-door committee session, presenting documents that he says show how an assortment of ranch lands were obtained by Chavez's brothers Argenis and Narciso. Azuaje said afterward that he asked the congressional audit commission to visit the haciendas for an inspection and to summon those who sold the properties for questioning. Azuaje, of...

Prominent Cuban author and dissident, Armando Valladares, has predicted the collapse of communism in Cuba after the death of former president Fidel Castro. Valladares said that people in Cuba were tired of 'acquiescing to state terrorism' like others had in communist Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Valladares said that the young "sons of the revolution, are becoming ever more politically active... The author who spent 22 years in prison was in Italy to present a new edition of his most popular work, Against All Hope: a Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulags, in the Italian capital in Rome. He also critised...

In a speech given during the swearing in of the new national leadership of the Socialist United Party of Venezuela (PSUV), president Chávez announced the nationalisation of the country's largest chain of slaughterhouses and of a milk company, as part of a plan to struggle against food sabotage. "We nationalized, through an acquisition, a large chain of (slaughterhouses) that makes up 70% of the installed capacity in Venezuela" Chavez said. "We're also acquiring milk-products company 'Los Andes' that represents 30% of the milk-processing capacity in the country," he added. In his speech Chavez insisted that one of the lines of...

Venezuela's justice minister declared that war "has already begun." Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa called his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, a "baldfaced liar." Uribe demanded the International Criminal Court try Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for genocide. President Bush accused Chavez of "provocative maneuvers." Colombia said documents found at the base showed rebels wanted to make a radioactive dirty bomb. But the documents it shared with reporters didn't support the allegation, indicating instead that the rebels were trying to buy uranium to resell at a profit. Uribe said Chavez should be prosecuted for allegedly financing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Uribe...

In December, the world began counting down the days to the end of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Claiming he was chastened by the defeat of constitutional amendments that would have made him president for life and enabled him to quash his opponents with impunity, Chris Dodd's Comrade in Caracas promised to leave office in 2013 when his term expires. We didn't buy that then and don't buy it now. When he should be quacking like a lame duck, Chavez is threatening to nationalize more industries in response to economic woes brought on by communism. To avoid government controls on food...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez switched from coffee to another stimulant during a speech on Saturday -- he popped a coca leaf into his mouth and chewed it while defending the use of the plant. Bolivian President Evo Morales, an advocate of the Andean nation's indigenous coca growers, brought Chavez coca leaves while in Caracas for a summit of Latin American leaders allied with Chavez. "I knew you wouldn't let me down, my friend, I was running out," Chavez said as he received the leaves from Morales during the televised summit. He broke one in half and chewed...

CARACAS -- and Wire Reports President Hugo Chávez said Friday he will try again to change Venezuela's rules to allow unlimited presidential reelection -- a proposal rejected by voters just last month. Making his annual address to the legislature, Chávez said he would call a referendum in 2010 with two questions: Should the president be recalled and should the president be allowed ``indefinite reelection?'' Chávez's proposals for 60-plus constitutional reforms to allow, among other things, indefinite reelection and officially declare Venezuela to be a ''socialist'' nation were narrowly defeated in a Dec. 2 vote. Chávez's six-year term of office is...

By PABLO BACHELET McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government eagerly reached out to Venezuelan presidential candidate Hugo Chavez in 1998 and moved quickly to denounce a rumored coup plot against the man who's become one of the Bush administration's archenemies, newly declassified State Department documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers reveal. State Department officials initially appeared dazzled by Chavez's oversized persona and his promise for sweeping reforms, and seemed sincere in their efforts to help him, the documents show. Some of those overtures drew positive responses from Chavez, who said he wanted U.S. help in fighting corruption and drug trafficking....

Hugo Chavez invents new half-hour time zone By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent Last Updated: 3:35pm GMT 09/12/2007 Venezuela has created its own, unique time zone on the orders of President Hugo Chavez, setting clocks back half an hour and putting the oil-rich nation out of step with its neighbours. "I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead," said Mr Chavez. Hugo Chavez has already changed the national flag and coat of arms The president said the change would improve health, as the sun will rise before most Venezuelans get up ensuring all go...

CARACAS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez did not go gently into the night Sunday as vote tallies showed he was losing a vote on his proposals for radical constitutional revisions, military and opposition officials say. Military officers and opposition leader played a crucial role in averting a possible attempt by the furious Chávez to refuse to recognize his defeat, the officials, familiar with the events, told El Nuevo Herald. Some early exit polls Sunday predicted a victory for Chávez, but as the day progressed the indications swung toward a victory for the vote against the revisions -- which included allowing...

CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday he will govern until 2013 when his mandate ends, now that voters rejected constitutional reforms that would have allowed him to seek endless reelection. "The shouting is one thing, the reality another ... The reform was not approved, so I have to leave the government in the year 2013. I will work tirelessly until the last day I have left here," Chavez said at an event in the capital. He also told his supporters: "You have a debt with me, you will tell me if you will repay it or...

CARACAS -- A defiant President Hugo Chávez Wednesday repeatedly used a harsh expletive to describe his opponents' victory in a crucial vote Sunday, and suggested that if he had not conceded he might even have won. Chávez's comments came as the president's supporters and foes traded bitter accusations over the vote, which narrowly defeated his proposals for radical changes to the Venezuelan constitution. The vote's result, which had initially promised to restore faith in the country's much-maligned electoral system, is now the subject of dispute, with some on both sides suggesting that a fair count would have produced figures different...

A la página de VenezuelaPress.com nos han llegado los siguientes resultados: NO: 6.534.648 SI: 5.864.560 Dif: 670.088 (5,4%)