Free Republic

After routing the opposition at the polls last year, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez has signalled an escalation of his offensive against the country's elites with a "war" on latifundio, big rural estates that he blames for rural poverty. This is a mistake. Land reform is likely to weaken the farm sector. It has regularly failed Latin America in the past and is especially pointless in Venezuela, where nine out of 10 people live in urban areas. Land reform that gives the government the ability to expropriate land that is idle or unproductive or where owners are unable to prove legal...

The war to the death against big estates decreed by President Chávez in the Poliedro put paid to the illusions held by many who still believed that the government was going to act rationally and within the confines of the law. ... This Commission will have a “constitutional mandate” to incorporate the land it considers “idle, abandoned or underused” into “the productive process of the country,” according to the Decree on the Reorganization of the Ownership and Use of Land Suitable for Agricultural Use. The land so considered will be handed over to groups of the population and organized communities...

The Government of Cojedes state took over as proimised the British owned cattle ranch Hato El Charcote. The Goveror stil claims they are respecing private property, but "it is not absolute" whatever that means. You can read more about it here, here and here. The people at the bottom are not part of the intervention, they are the invaders of the ranch, who are protesting because the Government apparently is not going to give them the intervened land, but it will be handed over to 28 cooperatives of farmers.

I have mentioned Carlos Machado Allison in this blog before. He is retired from Universidad Central de Venezuela, was President of the Venezuelan National Fund for Agrarian Research .... He is just finishing a book called “Agriculture in Venezuela”. Today he is interviewed in page 3 of El Nacional ... here are some excerpts: “The agricultural states are the poorest of the country” On the state being the biggest landowner: “This is true; it has so much that it does not even know what it has. Some say it has 8 million hectares, other say 20 million. But there is...

08.01.05 | Various sources report that El Charcote ranch, owned by British Vestey group, was seized this morning by Venezuelan authorities and the army. This is the first illegal seizure that the Chavez regime conducts against private property owned by foreign groups. With this precedent, will anyone be intrepid enough to invest in Venezuela?

Venezuelan authorities backed by troops are on Saturday expected to seize a 32,000-acre ranch owned by Lord Vestey, an English aristocrat and meat tycoon. The move, the first in what is likely to be a number of Zimbabwe-style expropriations of big estates, appears to signal a renewed radicalisation in the leftwing government of President Hugo Chávez. Lord Vestey, known as “Spam” to friends because his family's wealth comes from the meat trade, is one of Britain's richest men and a close friend of Prince Charles. With interests that have ranged from overseas cattle ranches to a chain of butchers' shops,...

"El Charcote," a cattle ranch owned by the British Vestey Group, is to be seized on Saturday "with state machinery, to settle a first group of men participating in the Mission Land and Mission Free Men," said Alexis Ortiz, solicitor general of rich farmland Cojedes State. After a meeting at the Executive Vice President's Office, he explained that the move is to be supported by "the National Armed Force and local police corps, as well as officials from Governor Johnny Yánez Rangel's Office."

Share-cropping became common in the United States after the Civil War. Back then, many Southern plantations had ample land, but little money to pay wages. At the same time, a large segment of the population was left impoverished, with little prospect of earning an adequate living. So, it was little surprise that the landed people -- those with the means of producing a product -- contracted with the poor, who had labor to offer, to produce a product from which both might profit. Share croppers normally received a home, the necessary tools, farm animals, and sometimes even some education, for...

State Police Seize Marijuana Plants, Take DNA Samples By Dina Kaplan (CAMPELLSBURG, Ky., July 28th, 2004, 11:30 a.m.) -- State police found more than $200,000 worth of marijuana Tuesday, thanks to an unusually large batch spotted from a police helicopter. But because troopers are so aggressive in finding marijuana, the growers are getting much better at hiding it. WAVE 3's Dina Kaplan reports. Besides a helicopter ride, finding weed in Kentucky involves offroading through an Old Country Farm, then a rough walk through the wilderness. That's because police say growers try to plant patches as far away from people as...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Customs authorities in Istanbul seized a radio-controlled missile and launcher as well as other weapons from a ship that was headed for Egypt from Ukraine, a government official said Thursday. The weapons, which also included a number of rockets and warheads, were discovered in two containers after customs officials searched the ship that had docked at the port of Ambarli, 20 miles from Istanbul, said Kursad Tuzmen, the minister in charge of foreign trade and customs. "The cargo declared by the ship's captain did not match what was inside the containers," Tuzmen told reporters after meeting...

<p>Alaska State Troopers seized dozens of bottles of alcohol and thousands of grams of marijuana in September that were bound for Western Alaska, officials said Friday.</p> <p>Troopers with the Western Alaska Alcohol and Narcotics Team at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport seized 95 750-milliliter bottles and one 375-milliliter bottle of alcohol, troopers said in a press release. They also seized 2,371 grams, about 5.2 pounds, of marijuana.</p>

Armed Men Seize Manila Commercial Center AP to My Yahoo! MANILA, Philippines - Dozens of armed men stormed a major commercial center in Manila's financial district early Sunday, hours after the president ordered the arrest of mutinous soldiers believed to be plotting a coup. Men in camouflage uniforms were seen setting up explosives in the parking lot of the Glorietta complex, which includes one of the capital's largest shopping malls, and in front of the adjacent Intercontinental Hotel. The incident came hours after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had ordered a group of junior military officers arrested for mutiny Saturday after...

U.S. Cautiously Begins to Seize Millions in Foreign Banks By ERIC LICHTBLAU ASHINGTON, May 29 — The Justice Department has begun using its expanded counterterrorism powers to seize millions of dollars from foreign banks that do business in the United States, creating tensions with the State Department and some allies. Law enforcement officials say the tool has proven invaluable in seizing ill-gotten money that criminals hide overseas and that was once out of the government's reach. Under the counterterrorism measures approved by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors are not even required to trace the money back to the...

Rouen police have seized two 'mobile phone' guns in a drugs-related raid in Elbeuf, Seine-Maritime, reports Agence-France Presse. The devices, which can fire four .22 bullets in the approximate direction of a victim, appear to be the ones of mysterious Eastern European origin which turn up every now and again. These are just about passable these days as not very attractive or state of the art handsets, as used by poor people (one really would expect drug dealers to have more of a sense of style). Except they're heavier, thanks to the four barrels and bullets. Except they've got a...

Russians 'seize clouds and make them rain' September 06 2002 at 07:10PM Moscow - A day after acrid smoke from forest and peat fires blanketed Moscow, a light rain on Friday cleared the air - and the government claimed credit. The Emergency Situations Ministry said it drew rain clouds to the smog-shrouded capital and created artificial showers by switching on a large ionizer atop a ministry building in western Moscow. "Yes, we did it," ministry spokesperson Viktor Beltsov said proudly of the drizzle that brought long-awaited relief after several rainless weeks. He said the ministry kept the device working on...