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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.