Free Republic

War On Terror: We have a new "axis" to worry about — the "Axis of Unity" just formed by Iran and Venezuela. Time to pay attention: Iran is openly fighting us in the Mideast. Now it's getting ready to fight us here, too. We've talked a great deal about Iran's threat. Simply put, we think Iran is at war with us, and has been since its revolution in 1979. We just haven't noticed. Recent events only bolster our conviction. Most alarmingly, Iran's mullahs have become so emboldened by our inaction they're going from making mere threats to actively killing our...

Latin America: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has expropriated $4.5 billion in assets from two U.S. oil firms. It's an ugly loss, but they will live. What's in doubt is Venezuela's future. No one knows what exactly will take over the mighty Orinoco-region investments that ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil will likely vacate as Chavez declares yet another "people's victory." But there's little chance the country will be able to match what those two companies could add to oil output and national development there. And the loser will be Venezuela.

Diplomacy: President Bush invited Russia's leader to Kennebunkport this week, but he's hardly our good amigo. His latest provocations should be enough for Bush to cancel the trip and re-evaluate this friendship. On July 1, President Bush will honor Russian President Vladimir Putin with access few other world leaders experience. He's heading to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport to dine on lobster and view the beautiful Maine scenery, as only a few distinguished world leaders, like Poland's Lech Walesa and Jordan's King Hussein, have done. Sure there are differences, the media kits say, but the rationale is that the...

Leadership: For the musty World Bank, president designee Robert Zoellick already seems like fresh air. He's not only standing up for the bank's real purpose — economic development — he's even challenging tyrants. Last Sunday, while visiting Mexico City, Zoellick threw a first punch at, of all people, Venezuela's bullying dictator, Hugo Chavez. Chavez has tried to cow the World Bank into taking a softer stance on his dictatorship after the bank's leadership crisis last spring. Although Venezuela paid off its debts to the bank in April, Chavez denounced the bank as "imperialist" and threatened to drop his country's membership....

This week we got delicious moments of chavismo ridicule, and of all reasons, a fight against Spain and Spaniards. It seems that the days of love and ideological lust of the early days of the Zapatero government are a thing of the past. It all started with some concern expressed over the RCTV closing by Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister who has presided over a recent warming up of Spain's icy cold relations with the US (most links in English, for a change). Chavez totally miffed said that he was taking distance from Spain even if "it hurt". Ah! The...

I like sizzling meat on the grill. Wild, huh? Anybody? Now, we all know ol' Nuge isn't by any stretch of the imagination a weirdo when it comes to an omnivorous diet. Especially here in the great Republic of Texas, a smiling, drooling preference for succulent, protein-rich, nutritious backstrap over aromatic mesquite coals is as American and natural and right as Mom, apple pie and the flag. It's beautiful, really. But a culture war rages against such universal, self-evident truths. It would be laughable if it were not so deranged. Some weirdos actually are on a crusade to outlaw the...

Private television station RCTV Monday summoned The Carter Center to make the Venezuelan government comply with its commitments under the so-called Roundtable of Negotiations and Agreements in 2003. In a public letter, signed by RCTV chair Marcel Granier, The Carter Center is asked to act with "firmness" in this sense, following its "shy" and "tardy" statement on President Hugo Chávez' refusal to renew the broadcast license for RCTV.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Robert Zoellick, almost certain to be the next head of the World Bank, on Saturday took aim at Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, warning that his oil-fueled socialist revolution was headed for trouble. "It's a country where economic problems are mounting, and as we're seeing also on the political and press side it's not moving in a healthy direction," Zoellick told reporters during a visit to Mexico.

Freedom: As protests in Venezuela carry into a second week, it's clear Hugo Chavez crossed a line by shutting down a big TV station. With his legitimacy ebbing fast, he'll repress more. A kind of Rubicon was crossed when the communist dictator, ignoring the pleadings of even loyal supporters, including his poverty-stricken political base and much of the international left, bulled forward to shut down the popular RCTV television station May 27. He lost political capital in a way he never had before. His absurd justifications were a sign of a dictator on the defensive. The move against RCTV, he...

Leadership: As unrest over freedom's end grows in Venezuela, out comes Jimmy Carter's Center, expressing "concern." That's rich. Carter played a leading role in trashing the press there, making dictatorship possible. Jimmy Carter often wins praise as an international mediator, but it was precisely his mediation in two events in August 2004 that led to the turmoil now seen across Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets crying "freedom" for two reasons: they're ruled by a dictator who's gathering absolute power, and they can't even complain because he's effectively ended free speech. On May 27, dictator...

Michael Ramirez's take on Hugo Chavez's dictatorship is here.

Scott Stantis has his take on Hugo Chavez's shutdown of Venezuela's RCTV here.

CARACAS, Venezuela - National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday into a crowd of protesters angry over a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a critical television station off the air. University students blocked one lane of a major highway hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV's broadcast license, accusing it of "subversive" activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him. Two students were injured by rubber bullets and a third was hit with a tear gas canister, said...

Energy: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez put on a big show for May Day, expropriating the last big foreign oil company project assets. But neither oil supplies nor the oil firms will go under. Venezuela may be a different story. Oh, it was a big show all right for the communist dictator, almost like a military conquest. Chavez sent soldiers charging in to "re-take" four large foreign-oil installations, planting the Venezuelan flag. And this being May Day, red-shirted mobs chimed in with Chavista slogans, making the whole scene movie-perfect. Only the pitchforks were missing. In reality, it was just a $30 billion...

Forcing Big Oil to give up control of Venezuela's most promising oil fields this week will be relatively easy for President Hugo Chavez, but he will face a more delicate challenge in getting the world's top oil companies to stay and keep investing. If Chavez can persuade companies to stick around despite tougher terms, Venezuela will be on track to develop the planet's largest known oil deposit, possibly to surpass Saudi Arabia as the nation with the most reserves. If he scares them away, the Orinoco River region could end up starved of the investment and know-how needed to transform...

President Hugo Chávez wants the private sector to invest in Venezuela, by arguing that the government is not at odds with businesses. "Are you willing to invest in Venezuela? Here, we are. This government is not an enemy of Venezuelan businesses. We are ready to give them a stake, as we are doing it in different ambits." "Nevertheless, domestic businesses should not lend themselves to attack their own homeland, as it was the case five years ago, to cause the collapse of the government and the democratic system," the ruler clarified.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani called for a national campaign to achieve energy independence during a Missouri campaign stop Saturday. The former New York mayor said a national program to tap new energy sources, akin to the 1960s technological race to beat the Soviets to the moon, would give Republicans a positive issue to stand for in the 2008 White House race. "Too much of our party is defined by what we're against. Too little is defined by what we're for. When you start being for something, millions and millions of people start to follow you,"...

Energy: Venezuela's oil exports to the U.S. are falling sharply. But that won't make Hugo Chavez less of a problem for us. Without his oil earnings, the communist dictator is likely to be more trouble than ever. The latest figures from the U.S. Energy Department show a long slide in imports of oil from Venezuela, a nation that as recently as 1998 was our top energy supplier. In January, Venezuela's exports to the U.S. fell below the 1-million-barrel mark. Only 955,000 barrels a day were shipped that month, far less than the 1.2 million barrels sent in January a year...

Today began the tender by the Venezuelan Government for all of the shares of two well run companies, Electricidad de Caracas and CANTV. By May 8th. these two companies will become Government owned, will begin to deteriorate and will be a burden on the Government's finances. Thus in a country with huge crime rates, poverty rates at 40%, a failed state health system, malnutrition and all sorts of problems, ideology domiantes reality and the Government will spend some US$ 3 billion in purchasing two companies it does not need (That is $ 120 per citizen). Meanwhile, the prison observatory reports...

Marcel Granier is one of the directors of RCTV, the oldest TV network in Venezuela. Marcel Granier is also an articulate opponent of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, who Granier likes to call "el teniente coronel", for the last grade in the army Chavez held before trying the bloody coup of 1992. In 2002 during the April events RCTV had a perturbing moment of silence while the Carmona ill fated adventure was collapsing. There are many possible explanations for this silence but to date no impartial inquiry has been launched. In fact, as we are nearing the 5 anniversary...

Give morons or fanatics enough rope and eventually they'll hang themselves. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez apparently wants to be the next dope on a rope. He announced last week plans to push his nation further toward communism by creating "collective property," to seize control of large ranches and redistribute "idle" land owned by someone he doesn't like. He would define collective property as state-owned assets managed by workers who share profits. In a word: collectivization. His proposal indicates that on his frequent junkets to Cuba, he has kept his eyes and mind firmly closed. Cuba has plenty of arable land...

London 03.04.07 | Daily El Progreso reported yesterday that 31 US citizens have been detained in the Gran Sabana region, close to Santa Elena de Uairen in the Venezuela - Brazil border. Accusations of illegally practising medicine purportedly caused the arrest. Regional media were informed by an allegedly trustworthy source. >>

CARACAS, Venezuela: A former opposition governor has escaped from a prison in northwestern Venezuela, authorities said Sunday. It was the second high-profile jail break by a foe of President Hugo Chavez in less than a year. Eduardo Lapi, ex-governor of Yaracuy state, was reported missing by prison authorities early Sunday from the San Felipe jail, where he was being held on corruption charges.

RCTV is under fire. The big television station, which has been broadcasting under license in Venezuela for 54 years, sort of the equivalent of FoxNews or CBS, officially loses its right to broadcast at the end of today. But that wasn't all that happened. Like furies, red tshirted Chavista mobs gathered and bayed liked wolves in the days leading up to this end of an era, graffiting and spray-painting the TV station with words like 'expropriacion' along with filthy slogans that if you know Spanish, you can see the equivalent of 'f word' among, racism charges, campesino movement slogans, anti-Vatican...

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela's bank deposit protection fund to transfer its assets "to the poor," the latest move threatening to undermine one of the country's autonomous financial institutions. Venezuela's Fogade insurance fund holds properties and other assets, which guarantee deposits in the banking system, much like the U.S. government's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. "I want all the assets held by Fogade to be passed to the Republic," Chavez said Thursday on his "Hello, President" TV talk show. "Fogade has many warehouses, it has many properties. All that I am going to give to the people, to...

Latin America: Venezuela's self-declared communist leader Hugo Chavez said he's seizing ranches for 'collective property.' But his apologists claim he has no totalitarian agenda. When's he going to be taken at his word?

Bono has developed a reputation as a rock star with a conscience. The leader of the band U2 has cofounded two lobbying groups that raise awareness about Africa’s afflictions, created a fair-trade clothing company, and brokered a deal with several major American companies to donate millions of dollars to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. But now he is caught up in a controversy over one of his own ventures. Dozens of organizations are asking Bono to stop production of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, a violent video game in which players become hired mercenaries who invade Venezuela, where a...

SAN FERNANDO DE APURE, Venezuela ? As dusk fell on the tropical wetland crawling with iguanas and small crocodilian caimans, Jos? Ismael Jim?nez pointed his harpoon at a rodent about the size of a Labrador retriever. With aim that comes from years of practice, he landed his spear on the back of its head. Farmhands turned hunters stalking the wild capybara, reputedly the world?s largest rodent, on Saturday on Hato Santa Luisa. One of them hurled a harpoon at a wounded capybara. The meat is then salted and dried. But this hunt was not about ridding the country?s southern plains...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Gov. Bill Richardson said Monday that if he?s elected president, he?d meet with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Richardson was in Austin, Texas, in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chavez taunted and protested President Bush during Bush?s recent tour of Latin America. Richardson also says he would meet with Iran and Syria. He says peace in the Middle East and a resolution to the Iraq crisis require regional thinking. In his words: ?You don?t make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.?

The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) regard Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as an ideological leader, identify with him and admire him, said Tuesday Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fernando Araújo, a former hostage. "The FARC guerrilla I met, views Venezuela's President Chávez as an ideological leader," Araújo asserted. Last December 31st, the minister tapped into a military incursion and managed to escape from captivity after almost six years in the Colombian jungle. "I was much interested to see that they (the rebels) constantly study Chávez' biography, see documentary films of Chávez on TV. There is a feeling of excitement among...

Last Friday, Barbara Walters embarrassed herself conducting a fawning interview with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Marxist budding dictator. This is a more serious mortification than Rosie O'Donnell spouting nonsense on ABC's The View, which Walters hosts and partly owns. Not since Herbert Matthews of the New York Times wrote about the Fidel Castro the humanitarian, just as his fortunes were flagging in the late 1950s, have we seen a major American journalist go so gaga over a would-be Latin dictator. Walters' offering on Hugo Chavez on ABC's 20/20 went far beyond the garden-variety media bias seen so abundantly in print news...

Orlando Pérez, head of the Bolivarian Teachers' Association, Thursday in a news conference proposed deleting article 106 of the Venezuelan Constitution providing for private education. "Since education is a human right, the State cannot delegate private institutions to teach. The State has to take full responsibility for the education process, and this process should be comprehensive, beginning with pregnant women." Pérez, who is also the vice-president of the Institute for the Prevention and Social Assistance for the Employees of the Ministry of Education and Sports (Ipasme), claimed that decentralization has failed to improve teaching. Therefore, they are proposing greater centralization...

Diplomacy: If there's any question about the success of President Bush's Latin America tour, check out the aftermath: Friends of the U.S. say they're strengthened, while allies of Hugo Chavez are seeing new turmoil. It probably wasn't Bush's intent, but his tour seems to have had the effect of a hurricane. He visited Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, talking trade and immigration, while Venezuela's dictator went to Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica and Haiti, trying to make Bush's visit all about him. But it didn't work. Bush ignored Chavez and did serious business. Now Argentina's opposition has sprung to life,...

Latin America: Contrary to forecasts, President Bush's trip to the region is drawing friendly welcomes. Hugo Chavez, by contrast, is making a laughingstock of himself by shadowing Bush's tour. It'll probably cost him. As TV cameras focus on anti-U.S. street protests, off-camera, Bush seems to be doing fine on his Latin American trip. Chavez, by contrast, is the one making mistakes, ones that work to Bush's favor and will likely reduce Chavez's influence. Unable to stand Bush's invitations from Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico to visit, Chavez organized a tour of his own, bullying Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica and...

Claiming he was losing customers who objected to the politics of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, Jim Steil has not renewed his contract with Citgo and re-branded his two gas stations along U.S. 1 as Steil Gas. Venezuela owns Citgo, which refines gasoline in the United States. Citgo stations are not owned by the Venezuelan government.

The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, on a tour of Latin America, has launched a stinging attack on the US. Visiting Bolivia, the firebrand leftist leader said that capitalism was "the road to hell". Mr Chavez underlined the billions of dollars of aid Venezuela is ploughing into Bolivia's economy at a time when the US is reducing its contributions. US President George W Bush has avoided discussing his rival's regional trip during his own visit to Latin America. Heaven and earth "Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism," Mr Chavez said in the town of...

US and Venezuela presidents George W. Bush and Hugo Chavez, both on Latinamerican tours are the leaders with the lowest standing in the region according to a public opinion survey from Latinobarometro released at the end of 2006. Top of the list figures Brazil’s Lula da Silva with 5.8 points, followed by Michelle Bachelet from Chile, 5.5 and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, 5.4. They are followed by Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Uruguay’s Tabare Vazquez with 5 points each. Chavez and Bush rank seven and eight with 4.6 points each and bottom of the list is Fidel Castro from...

The National Assembly (AN) will urge the Attorney General Office to request the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) pretrial on the merits against Zulia Governor and major opposition leader Manuel Rosales. During a plenary session, the AN agreed on taking action against Rosales for presumed lack of observance, to the detriment of Zulia government staff. According to a press release from the Parliament, in 2006 the Zulia government received USD 203,572,800 in additional lending, part of which should have been used to pay labor liabilities.

TRINIDAD, Bolivia - President Hugo Chavez visited flood-ravaged Bolivia on Saturday to show off the fact that Venezuela has pledged 10 times more aid than the Bush administration. But local leaders gave him a cool reception, accusing him of meddling in Bolivian politics. Bolivia was the latest stop on a Chavez tour intended to upstage President Bush's own trip through Latin America. ... Thousands of Bolivians, joined by Venezuelan aid workers, greeted Chavez at the airport in Trinidad, a city in Bolivia's eastern lowlands where a rainy season supercharged by El Nino has killed 51 people, driven thousands from their...

TEHRAN, (PIC)— The Hamas Movement on Wednesday received an official invitation to visit Caracas during a meeting in Tehran between visiting Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro and a Hamas delegation. Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy political bureau chairman of Hamas, told PIC that the Hamas delegation led by its political bureau chairman Khaled Mishaal conferred with the Venezuelan foreign minister on overall Palestinian conditions in the light of the Israeli aggressions and the western siege.

Q: US President George W. Bush did not include Venezuela in his Latin American official tour. A: Thank God. Q: Don't you think President Bush's tour may weaken the support given to the Venezuelan government? Following his tour, for instance, he will meet with (his Brazilian counterpart) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at Camp Davis. A: I think Bush will receive a cold shower (of reality) in most of the countries he will visit. He must be careful not to catch a cold. Latin American countries are going through an inexorable process that goes beyond what Bush advisers may say....

Latin America: President Bush will encounter loud leftist protests in the region this week, organized by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. He's desperate to mess up Bush's visit, but he won't succeed. As Bush prepares a milestone visit to five Latin American democracies, expected to draw a warm welcome from their leaders, a left-wing clown show is getting ready in the wings, courtesy of the regional bully.

Hugo Chavez’s power equation is based upon two main components: resources and strategy. The resource side of the equation has been based in oil income. For the last five years this income has been of the order of $175 billion, a good portion of which has been utilized by Chavez to build a global alliance against what he calls “the empire”, the U.S. The strategy component has been largely provided by three main advisers: Luis Miquilena, his early mentor, who convinced him to run for president and was the brain behind the manipulations of 1999 and 2000 that actually converted...

Energy: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is spoiling for a fight, but the Bush administration won't give it to him. So now he's trying to provoke U.S. oil firms. This time, he may be in for a surprise. Even Chavez's own energy officials are getting nervous about the dictator's new bid to start a confrontation with the U.S. through its oil firms. Last week, for the 10th time, Chavez announced his plan to confiscate four Orinoco Belt extra-heavy-oil projects run by six Western companies — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the U.K.'s BP, France's Total and Norway's Statoil. "We are taking back our...

“We are an oil producing country and that obligates us to take even more care of the environment—on an extreme level—and to avoid contamination, and to reduce contamination in all areas: earth, water and air.” – President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, February 24, 2007. Did anyone from Greenpeace or Earth First! ever imagine that the world’s first environmental president would come from Venezuela? Many Greens might find such an idea ludicrous considering that the South American nation is one of the largest oil producing countries in the world and a major resource for heavy mineral and coal mining. However, ever...

SANTO DOMINGO.- As evidenced in the last Latin American electoral processes, it’s probable that Hugo Chávez’s political hand is already maneuvering in the Dominican Republic’s 2008 presidential elections. Normally, Chávez’s until now disguised affections have been centered in emergent figures and not in professional politicians who postulate equal or similar ideas to his in the context of the present process of changes in Latin America regarding its dependency on the United States. After Fidel Castro’s handicap in Cuba, the leadership of a new exciting and contagious left seems to a large extent, to be under Chávez’s wing and he has...

YOU KNOW Australia has lost its mind on the green front when the conservative Howard Government starts emulating the communist dictatorship of Cuba. Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's plan, foisted without warning on the nation last week, to ban incandescent light bulbs from 2010 and force us to replace them with more energy-efficient fluorescent ones, was hailed almost unanimously around the world as a bright idea. While the Government billed the switch as a world first the Associated Press soon pointed out that Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro launched a similar program two years ago to make citizens swap incandescent bulbs...

A Spanish-born Jesuit priest, a social activist and the president of Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), Luis Ugalde answers back the accusations made against him by President Hugo Chávez. The President "claims he likes to discuss such ideas. Well, I am willing to do so, publicly or privately," Ugalde said. Q: Setting aside President Hugo Chávez' accusations ("a pro-coup priest who has gone nuts"), does it have any importance at all for mankind by now to discuss whether or not Jesus Christ was a socialist? A: The question should be "for Venezuela" not "for mankind." Chávez is very smart and...

Caracas, Feb 22 (Prensa Latina) The Federation of Venezuelan-Arab Entities on Thursday denied the presence of Al Qaeda in the country, and cast doubt upon the alleged terrorist threat against Venezuelan oil fields. In a declaration, the group accuses the US government of George W. Bush of having declared that Al Qaeda allegedly threatened to attack facilities of nations that supply oil to the US, including Venezuela. The real intention of the US government is to link the terrorist group with the Arab community or harm the reputation of President Hugo Chavez, the text sustains. If Al Qaeda were to...

US President George W. Bush tour in Latin America -Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay and Mexico) is the end of Washington's present diplomatic offensive against Hugo Chávez' Bolivarian revolution, and shows agreement -following years of divergences (2004-2007)- between the Pentagon hawks and the US political-oil strata as to the need to counter the Bolivarian projects' ambitions in the domestic arena (socialism of the 21st century), in the hemisphere (the planned Bolivarian Confederation of Nations) and worldwide (a multi-polar world). The US counterattack is aimed at several targets. First, preventing Chávez from continuing to move southwards. In this sense, Washington intends to...