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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...

World War III: Al-Qaida's new threat against oil facilities has opened a new front in the war on terror. Mexico and Canada recognize the enemy, but Venezuela doesn't. It could be a disaster. The Saudi al-Qaida organization announced its next campaign to target America's oil suppliers in the Western Hemisphere. With a warning on the Sawt-al-Jihad Web site, al-Qaida vowed to attack three of the top four oil suppliers to the U.S. — Mexico, Canada and Venezuela — on the logic that the economic disruption would drive the U.S. from Iraq. It's a credible threat, not only because the Saudi...

<p>Charity: Joe Kennedy is back, praising Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and urging Americans to take his cheap oil by calling 1-800-JOE-FOR-OIL. Like Rep. Connie Mack, we'd like to know what Joe really owes Hugo.</p> <p>Mack, a Florida Republican, told Kennedy in a letter to quit pushing Chavez's agenda by recruiting charity recipients for his distributorship of cheap Venezuelan heating oil.</p>

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to the national spotlight on Valentine's Day to tell U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he misses her verbal attacks. "It had been days since she had given me any attention. How are you, Condoleezza?" Chavez asked in a speech Wednesday to pensioners in the capital of Caracas. It was Chavez's first response to Rice's testimony last week to a U.S. congressional committee that the Venezuelan leader was "destroying his own country" economically and politically — an apparent reference to a centralization of power in Venezuela and moves to nationalize key...

Treasurer Peter Costello has sparked a diplomatic row with his criticisms of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a parliamentary attack on Labor. Venezuela's top envoy to Australia last night told The Age that Mr Costello had "offended the people of the nation of Venezuela" with his broadsides. The Treasurer first criticised Mr Chavez two days ago in an attack on Labor over the Australia-US alliance, noting that several Labor MPs and unionists had invited the Venezuelan President to visit Australia, despite his strident criticism of US President George Bush. Mr Costello also accused the socialist Mr Chavez of threatening to...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez's government has drafted a decree allowing officials to take control of food distribution chains, including supermarkets and storage depots, if services are interrupted, officials said Sunday. Industry and Commerce Minister Maria Cristina Iglesias said the decree would help curb supply problems that have caused severe shortages of meats, milk and sugar in recent weeks. Industry officials blame the shortages on price controls that oblige retailers to sell at a loss, while the government says the fault lies with unscrupulous speculators, including supermarket owners and distributors, who hoard food or boost prices. The National Assembly,...

WASHINGTON - A Florida congressman ripped into former Rep. Joe Kennedy for airing television commercials promoting his Citizens Energy Corp. that heap praise on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, "a sworn enemy of the United States." In the ad, Kennedy, founder and president of Citizens Energy Corp., a nonprofit energy company, lauds Venezuela and Citgo, a Houston-based oil company owned by the Chavez government, for contributing heating oil to low income senior citizens. "I am Joe Kennedy. Help is on the way. Heating oil at 40 percent off from our friends in Venezuela at Citgo," Kennedy says in the commercial. In...

The Venezuelan Government success in the social area needs to be replicated, said Monday Ecuadorian Vice-President Lenín Moreno.

Energy: Could lowly switch grass mow down the petropower tyranny of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez? A U.S.-Brazil ethanol pact signed this week may supply the fuel to do just that. Chavez's hostile anti-American dictatorship grows worse as his oil earnings pile up. With the U.S. as his best customer, buying about a quarter, or 1.1 million barrels, of Venezuelan crude oil each day, the bitter coda is that every barrel we buy fuels his anti-U.S. actions. These range from crazed speeches to colonial acquisitions like Bolivia to rogue-state alliances with Iran and Zimbabwe to menacing moves against neighbors like Dominica, Guyana...

RUSH: Also, this $2.9 trillion federal budget? I want you to think back to last week. Mrs. Clinton, at the Democrat National Committee Winter Meeting in Washington, was just beside herself that ExxonMobil had earned a record profit of $40 billion. Forty billion is nothing compared to 2.9 trillion! The Congress did not earn one dollar last year! The Congress, the Senate and the United States government didn't earn a dime. They take every dollar they get from taxation. They do sell some assets, I guess, now and then, but the vast majority of it comes from you and I,...

The Hemisphere: Two democracies fell in Latin America this week, heralding a new era of dictatorship not seen since the '70s. Regional leaders are silent. What will it take for them to notice? A mere month after the Organization of American States declared itself "very satisfied" with last year's string of elections in the hemisphere, democracy's going down in flames. It's not only in Venezuela, but in Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Suddenly, a small-but-growing coterie of dictatorships has formed in Latin America. It threatens us all. Every one of these regimes is characterized by the consolidation of power into permanent...