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CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez has turned to his friends in Cuba for help in tackling Venezuela's energy crisis, drawing criticism for seeking advice from the communist-led island that has struggled with its own electricity woes. Chavez gave few details on Wednesday about what is expected of Cuba, but insisted that "it's valuable experience that's serving us well." He said that he spoke for hours Tuesday with Cuban Vice President Ramiro Valdes after his arrival in Venezuela to lead the consulting team. The decision to seek help from Cuba bewildered Venezuelans coping with the nation's power shortage. "It's laughable...

Russia Today: Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it's Haiti's disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is ... destroying and taking over Iran.

CARACAS – President Hugo Chavez called on his supporters over the weekend to stop stores from raising their prices as a result of the devaluation of Venezuela’s currency, which went into effect Monday amid widespread criticism and uncertainty. “Some of the bourgeois, the oligarchs ... are saying that because of the measures announced Friday, they have to raise all their prices. There’s no way we’re going to accept that!” Chavez said during his weekly program. “The first thing I’m doing is calling on them not to do it, and on the people not to let themselves be robbed. There’s no...

Empire Strikes Back Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had some choice words in response to Newsweek magazine's prediction that he would be ousted in a military coup in 2010. Chavez called the publication "the empire's magazine," saying in a televised address that: "They feed on hatred and the wishes of the imperialism that they represent — big money, big newspapers, the TV stations of the global bourgeoisie."

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...