Latin America
has in Caracas, Venezuela one of the largest active social groups
of expats (expatriates) in South America. Called the Rincon
Gang or Rinconeers, they publish a regular newsletter, the Rincon
Reminder, which updates their Caracas community web site, www.Expat-Village.com
The Rincon Reminder updates are also issued to ex-Caracas Rinconeers
now living and working in over 25 countries..
The Expat-Village web-site has all the latest Venezuelan news in English.
We publish news stories of interest to expatriates, including world news, sport,
entertainment and business. We have features on travel in Venezuela, Latin
America and the Caribbean, quick food recipes, and Venezuela security alerts.
Caracas social activities are listed in ‘What’s on in Caracas’, and we’ll keep
you amused with the 'Joke of the Day' page.
Expats in Venezuela
:
Contact Us
Connect with Iain Williams in Caracas - Your Humble Social Dictator.
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If you need to connect to your Humble Social Director, Iain Williams, just send an e-mail to;
IainWilliams@gmail.com
or
Iainw@IainWilliams.com
My contact telephone numbers are:
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| Iain Williams in Caracas "I'm getting too old for F1" |
News Section
:
Venezuela News
Venezuela To Erase Middlemen In Gasoline Business -Chavez
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A Dow Jones wire story
CARACAS -(Dow Jones)- Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez confirmed plans Wednesday to do away with
intermediaries in the local gasoline business while expanding the role
of Petroleos de Venezuela SA in fuel distribution.
Foreign and domestic gasoline intermediaries "will simply disappear,
and PdVSA" will directly handle business with service stations around
the country, Chavez said during a live televised address from the
Miraflores presidential palace.
"We have decided to move ahead with this," Chavez said.
Service stations, he said, will remain in private hands, but PdVSA will
assume the role filled until now by companies such as BP PLC (BP),
Chevron Corp.'s ( CVX) Texaco and a number of....................
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Venezuela News
London ex-mayor Livingstone meets Venezuela's Chavez
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 |
| Ex London Mayor , Ken Livingstone meets with Hugo Chavez |
CARACAS (AFP) — The leftwing former
mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, on Wednesday met with Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and agreed to continue to act as an
advisor on municipal matters.
Chavez, Livingstone told reporters after the meeting, had asked him to
keep advising candidates from Chavez's ruling socialist party running
for mayors in November local elections.
Livingstone was mayor of London for eight years, until he lost re-election this year to.................
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Venezuela oil company PDVSA to open sports office
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A Reuters story at www.reuters.com
CARACAS - Venezuelan state oil company
PDVSA will open a sports office to train athletes after a lackluster
Olympic performance, President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday, expanding
PDVSA social efforts that already range from food sales to road repairs.
PDVSA has become the financial engine of Chavez's self-styled socialist revolution, financing and carrying out a broad array of..................
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Venezuela News
Chavez boosts Venezuela's petrochemical sector
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CARACAS (AFP) — President Hugo Chavez
said Saturday he has injected close to one billion dollars in
Venezuela's petrochemical industry to turn it into the second-largest
producer of polyethylene behind Brazil by 2011.
"A few days ago, I approved 950 million dollars to continue boosting
petrochemical development," Chavez said at the opening of a refurbished
polyethylene plant in Zulia state.
The investment and the new production facility are part of the
"Socialist Petrochemical Revolution" program Chavez launched 11 months
ago aimed at making Venezuela self-reliant in plastic products.
A byproduct of petroleum widely used in plastic products including
plastic shopping bags, polyethylene production in Venezuela stood at
60,000 tons a year when Chavez took office 10 years ago. His plan is to
raise it to 500,000 tons per year by 2011.
Chavez said his aim was to....................
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Venezuela News
US drug czar: Cocaine flow through Venezuela grows
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An
Associated Press story Ian James in Venezuela
CARACAS — The U.S. drug czar appealed
to Venezuela's government on Friday to take action against the
flourishing flow of cocaine being smuggled through the country.
 |
| Bales of seized cocaine are displayed on the deck of a merchant vessel inside which they were hidden by smugglers |
White House drug czar John Walters told The Associated Press that
Venezuela has shown no willingness to cooperate with U.S. officials
against drugs.
The flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela has quadrupled since
2004, reaching an estimated 282 tons (256 metric tons) last year, he
said.
"The flow is increasing as dramatically as it is because it is
operating in a condition of impunity," Walters told the AP in a phone
interview from Washington. "The failure of the Venezuelan government to
go after this is a failure to be serious."
Venezuelan officials argue they are taking drug trafficking seriously
and point to large seizures in recent years. President Hugo Chavez and
his foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, have suggested they would be
willing to work with the U.S. against drugs on terms of mutual respect.
But Walters said his attempt to restart cooperation has been stymied as
Venezuelan officials have yet to agree to his request for a meeting,
and as a visa request for him and other American officials has been
held up for more than a week.
"Frankly, this has gotten to the point where they're playing games,"
Walters said. "Usually drugs is beyond a lot of other political
differences. We have a cooperative relationship with Cuba."
But in Venezuela's case, he said, "there just has been no willingness to establish that.........................
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Venezuela News
Chavez Says Cemex `Polluted' Venezuela, Didn't Invest
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A Bloomberg story by Daniel Cancel and Steven
Bodzin at www.bloomberg.com
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
escalated a dispute with Monterrey, Mexico-based Cemex SAB, saying the
company's local unit polluted the environment and failed to invest by
focusing solely on profit.
Venezuela seized the local operations of Cemex, the largest cement
maker in the Americas, as part of a nationalization drive after the
government and the company failed to reach an accord on a forced sale.
Cemex said it would seek arbitration and called the expropriation a
``flagrant violation'' of the law.
``Go see the pollution not only along the coasts and in the trees, but
in the lungs of the children,'' Chavez said on state television.
``Everything is full of powder. Cemex never invested in technology to
eliminate the powder because they took all the money abroad.''
Chavez also said company executives acted in a ``disrespectful'' manner
to Venezuelans and have a ``superiority complex.'' Cemex spokesman
Jorge Perez declined to comment.
Chavez said in April he would nationalize cement companies as part of a plan to..........
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Venezuela News
Venezuelan first-half oil exports bring in 48.5 bln dollars
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Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
CARACAS Venezuela's oil exports
totalled 48.47 billion dollars in the first half of this year, a figure
78 percent higher than for the same period in 2007, central bank
figures released Wednesday showed.
The high number for the country's main source of income reflected record prices for oil over those six months.
Prices have declined sharply in recent weeks, and were currently around 114 dollars on world markets.
Venezuela's oil, which is of lower grade than the light crude fetching
premium prices, was selling for an average 85 dollars a barrel in the
first half of this year, 30 dollars more than..........
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Venezuela News
Venezuela’s televised revolution
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An FT story by Benedict Mander at http://news.ft.com
At 11am on Sundays, Venezuelans turn
on their television sets to watch the most loved and hated programme in
the country. Its charismatic but controversial host holds forth about
politics for hours – his record exceeds eight – preaching and
philosophising, telling personal anecdotes and giving history lessons.
He cracks jokes at one moment and flies into a rage at another, and
rails aggressively at his enemies as often as he tenderly caresses
small children and old women.
The host is none other than Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president and his
weekly chat show Aló Presidente (Hello President) on the main state
channel, Venezolana de Television (VTV), is often the most important
political event of the week.
Not only is it Chávez’s tool for educating and informing the populace
about the progress and aims of his so-called Bolivarian revolution
(named after the 19th-century independence hero Simón Bolívar), and
lecturing on the evils of capitalism and imperialism (read: the US).
It is also an innovative form of government, where significant
announcements are made and public policy explained, as cabinet
ministers diligently take notes in the audience. Ministers are fired
and scolded, companies nationalised, farms exprop- riated, hospitals
and factories inaugurated.
On TV Chávez even ordered tank battalions to the border with Colombia, leaving some fearing war.
Aló Presidente is Chávez’s direct line to the people, and the show
rarely takes place in a television studio. No, Chávez and his team
travel the length and breadth of the country, setting up a dais and
presidential desk anywhere they will fit – on a beach, at the top of a
mountain, in the shadow of a giant oil refinery or in the middle of a......................
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Venezuela News
Red Cross Demands Colombia Explain Emblem Use to Free Hostages
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A Bloomberg story by Ed Johnson at www.bloomberg.com
The Red Cross demanded Colombia
clarify the army's use of its emblem in an operation to release Ingrid
Betancourt and other hostages, after a video showed a soldier wearing
the insignia earlier than previously explained.
Footage shown on Colombian television this week showed a member of the
army team wearing a bib with the insignia before the rescue helicopter
took off, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a
statement yesterday. President Alvaro Uribe last month said the soldier
attached it on arriving at the rebel camp because he feared for his
life.
``If authenticated, these images would clearly establish an improper
use of the red cross emblem, which we deplore,'' Dominik Stillhart, the
ICRC's deputy director of operations, said in the statement. ``We are
in contact with the Colombian authorities to ask for further
clarifications as to exactly what happened.''
Government troops on July 2 rescued former presidential candidate
Betancourt, three U.S. Defense Department contractors and 11 military
personnel by tricking two commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia into believing an.............................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela pushes Trinidad out of Caribbean oil market
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PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's sale of subsidized oil to the Caribbean through
the Petrocaribe initiative is pushing traditional supplier Trinidad and
Tobago out of the region in search of new markets.
Trinidad state oil company Petrotrin's usual Caribbean market sales of
around 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) have fallen by half since the 2005
creation of Petrocaribe, which sells oil and fuel on advantageous terms
to Caribbean and Central America nations.
"We lost market in the (Caribbean) region but the displaced products
are now going into other markets" including the United States, said
Kenneth Allum, Petrotrin Vice President for Refinery and Marketing.
Venezuela is selling around 190,000 bpd of oil and products to
Caribbean and Central American nations through the Petrocaribe
initiative. The Caribbean imports around 450,000 bpd of oil, according
to US Department of Energy data.
Fourteen nations in the Caribbean and Central America signed the
original Petrocaribe agreement, which allows governments to buy
Venezuelan oil and fuel through in-kind payments and to finance..................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela's Chavez imposes new controls on economy
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A Reuters story by Brian Ellsworth
at www.reuters.com
CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez has tightened his grip on the economy with a package of decrees
bolstering government power to take over businesses and control prices
in the run-up to tight regional elections.
The measures, decreed through special powers allowing him to
bypass Congress, resume his aggressive 2007 drive to forge a socialist
state and closely resemble proposals included in a constitutional
reform voters rejected in December referendum.
The laws give the leftist leader new short-term inflation-fighting
mechanisms at a time when supporters are increasingly complaining about
South America's fastest-rising consumer prices, which jumped 22.5
percent in 2007.
Opposition leaders accused Chavez of trying to push force through his
failed constitutional reform and slammed him for not publicly
discussing the package of laws.
"The government on a whim put out these 26 laws, smuggling in the night
a group of measures that the Venezuelan people clearly said no to,"
said opposition leader Julio Borges.
The new legislation lets Chavez name regional political authorities and
provide them funding from government coffers, possibly allowing him to
retain control of key states if his supporters lose the upcoming
regional elections.
The decrees fit Chavez's vision of a centralized economy, giving the
government broad powers to intervene at any step in the supply chain
and even creating committees to decide how much food should be consumed
in.......................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela's top court bars election candidates
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A Reuters story by
at www.reuters.com
CARACAS - Venezuela's top court ruled
on Tuesday that dozens of politicians, among them leading opponents of
President Hugo Chavez, will not be allowed to run in regional elections
later this year.
The measure also blocks some government allies but is guaranteed to
anger figures such as Leopoldo Lopez, the mayor of a wealthy Caracas
neighborhood who had planned to stand for city mayor in November
elections.
He had called for street protests if he was barred.
Other opposition politicians affected by the ruling include candidates
for governor in three states. The elections will measure the popularity
of Chavez's socialist government.
Venezuela's top anti-corruption official was behind the plan to ban close to 300 candidates accused of corruption from....................
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Venezuela News
Banco Santander in talks with Venezuela
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A story from The Associated Press
MADRID, Spain: Banco
Santander bank said Friday it was in talks with Venezuela over the
future of its subsidiary, Banco de Venezuela, which President Hugo
Chavez says he intends to nationalize.
The
Spanish bank said it had planned to sell the Venezuelan financial
entity to a group of investors in the South American country, but had
not reached a final deal.
Banco Santander said in a statement it
had since learned of the Venezuelan government's interest in the bank
and was "in conversations to this end at the moment."
Spain's government said it had no plans to intervene in the announced nationalization.
"There
has been a dialogue and a negotiation and we hope that in a short space
of time an agreement will come about between the government of
Venezuela and Santander," Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez
de la Vega said.
De la Vega said she has spoken with Banco
Santander President Emilio Botin, who had confirmed negotiations for
the sale of Banco de Venezuela were under way.
In a televised address Thursday, Chavez said he decided to nationalize after....................
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Venezuela News
Banned Venezuela mayor stokes democracy concerns
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A Reuters story by Saul Hudson
at www.reuters.com
CARACAS A popular mayor hoping to run
for a top elected office in Venezuela protested a ban on his candidacy
on Tuesday in a case that highlights opposition concerns over weakened
democracy under President Hugo Chavez.
Leopoldo Lopez, 37, vows to stand for mayor of Caracas in November in
nationwide elections for state and municipal posts, where a fragmented
opposition hopes to loosen Chavez's years-old grip on regional power
centers.
But Venezuela's top anti-corruption official has barred Lopez -- and
more than 200 others -- from running on charges the Harvard graduate
says authorities have trumped up to stop him winning a post that
governs about 3 million people.
"We urge the Supreme Court ... to be strong enough to show its
independence and take a coherent, constitutional decision," Lopez said
as he led hundreds of supporters in a rally outside the country's
highest court seeking the ban to be overturned.
A social democrat with a politician's ability to laugh and chat
comfortably with both rich and poor, Lopez has been mayor of the
wealthy Caracas municipality of Chacao for 8 years and now wants to
govern the whole capital.
The ex-oil executive pledged to register next week to run even if the
court fails to overrule the comptroller general, who has blocked
opposition and government candidates while he investigates accusations
of nepotism and budget mismanagement.
The government says the bans are based on rules used in.....................
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Caribbean & Latin News
Man attacked in Antigua to be flown to Britain
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A story from The Associated Press
ST JOHN'S, Antigua: A British man who
remains on life support after he was attacked during his honeymoon in
Antigua will be flown back home, a police sergeant said Thursday.
Benjamin Mullany will be transferred to a hospital in Britain as soon
as an air ambulance is available, Sgt. William Holder said. Mullany,
who doctors say is brain dead, has been at Holberton Hospital in the
capital of St. John's.
His wife Catherine was shot in the head and killed when the couple was attacked early Sunday inside their cottage at...................
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Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas and
Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
Features
:
Joke of the day
Ancient Indian knowledge
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The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After They got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.
Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, 'Kemosabe, look towards sky; what
you see?'
The Lone Ranger replies, 'I see millions of stars.'
'What that tell you?' asked Tonto.
The Lone Ranger ponders for a.................
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Jokes of the Day
Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas and
Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
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Venezuela News
Venezuela says Barbados oil bid violates territory
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A Reuters story by Brian Ellsworth at www.reuters.com
CARACAS Venezuela has complained to
the Caribbean nation of Barbados that a recent offshore oil bidding
round violates the maritime border with Venezuela, the OPEC nation's
energy minister said on Tuesday.
Barbados last year launched an exploration bid for 70,000 square
kilometers of offshore area, a move a top government official has
defended as consistent with.........................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela’s Chavez Approves $566 Million in Infrastructure Project
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An article found in www.Venezuelanalysis.com
 |
| Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stands inside one of the MetroCable cars during his talk show on Sunday. (Prensa Presidencial) |
Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez approved funds for the construction of a series
of new infrastructure projects on his Sunday talk show Aló Presidente
yesterday. The new projects are extensions to the nation-wide mass
transit systems already in progress.
President Chavez called on his ministers to carry out the projects with
“socialist values” and insisted on only giving contracts to companies
that will transfer technology to Venezuela.
The Venezuelan
president opened the show at the construction site of a new system of
Austrian-made cable cars known as MetroCable. The cable car system is
being constructed as a solution for the thousands of families who live
in the hill-side shanty towns of Caracas and whose houses are not
accessible by road. The MetroCable will carry residents up and down the
steep hills to and from various subway stations, relieving them of the
long and many times dangerous walk up hundreds of cement stairs.
“The MetroCable will have an impact on people’s safety, and their standard of living,” said Chavez.
Work began on this project in March of 2007, and the first line is to be completed by.....................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela rescued Cuba with cheap oil - is to be paid back in zebras!
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An Economist article at http://www.economist.com
SOON after Fidel Castro seized power
in Cuba in 1959, goes an old Cuban joke, the signs at the Havana zoo
that read “Please do not feed the animals” were changed to “Please do
not take the animals’ food”.
When the Soviet Union crumbled and withdrew its aid to Cuba, triggering
the so-called “special period” that began in the early 1990s, times
became even harder and the joke changed. The new signs, so the story
went, begged visitors not to eat the animals.
For those who lived through it, the special period was anything but
funny. Domestic cats disappeared from the streets and reappeared on the
dinner table.
The zoo population thinned out.
“The peacocks, the buffalo and even the rhea [a South American bird
that resembles an ostrich] disappeared,” says a Havana resident. “The
hyaenas became vegetarians, the zoo was......................
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Venezuela News
Russia and Venezuela in deal to counter 'US aggression'
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A Daily Telegraph article by Adrian Blomfield in Moscow at www.telegraph.co.uk
 |
| Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin welcomes the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez |
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president,
has called for a strategic relationship with Russia to counter
aggression from the United States.
During
Mr Putin's last term, Russia sold Hugo Chavez's Venezuela over £2
billion in arms, from combat helicopters and Sukhoi fighter jets to
Kalashnikov rifles
With a long shopping list for
state-of-the-art defence equipment under his arm, Mr Chavez did his
best to ingratiate himself with his hosts.
He first signed off
on a deal giving Russia's state-owned energy companies – often accused
of doubling as private piggy banks for powerful Kremlin forces –
exclusive rights to develop new deposits Venezuela's Orinoco Oil Belt.
Then he switched smoothly to flattery, with a call for the...............
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Miss Venezuela crowned Miss Universe
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 |
| Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela celebrates after winning the Miss Universe 2008 beauty pageant. |
Miss Venezuela took the crown and Miss South Africa Tansey coetzee came
out in the top fifteen at the Miss Universe pageant held in Vietnam on
Monday.
Venezuela’s Dayana Mendoza, 22, burst into tears when the presenter, US
talk show host Jerry Springer, announced she had beaten finalists from
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Russia.
The 1, 78m beauty, the favourite of pageant bloggers and online
bookmakers, clinched the diamond-studded gold crown after answering a
question on the difference between men and women.
"Men think that the fastest way to go to a point is to go straight,"
explained the trilingual aspiring interior designer. "Women know that
the faster way to go to a point is to go to the curves."
Mendoza, who was once kidnapped in her home country, later issued a call for....................
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Venezuela News
Chavez comes off a big loser in the Colombian hostage liberation
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A Miami Herald story by Andres Oppenheimer www.miami.com
The biggest loser of last week's
Hollywood-styled Colombian army rescue of 15 hostages in the hands of
the FARC guerrillas, in addition to the rebels themselves, was
Venezuela's narcissist-Leninist President Hugo Chavez.
Judging from Chavez' own public statements and the contents of
thousands of e-mails found in FARC laptop computers seized March 1 when
Colombia's military raided a guerrilla camp inside Ecuador, Chavez was
hoping to use the hostage crisis to become the ultimate power broker in
the Colombian armed conflict and become South America's most powerful
political leader.
Chavez, as well as Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, had been
openly asking for international diplomatic recognition of Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia rebels as a ''belligerent force.''
This would have given the Colombian guerrillas much-needed
political oxygen after a series of crushing defeats by the Colombian
army.
In a speech to the Venezuelan Congress earlier this year, Chavez said
that the FARC guerrillas ''are not terrorist organizations,'' but
''real armies that occupy space in Colombia's territory and deserve
recognition. They are insurgent forces that have a political project, a
Bolivarian project that is respected here.''
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe vehemently rejected the Chavez-Correa
proposal to give diplomatic recognition to the FARC. The United States
and the
27-member European Union have long categorized the FARC as a terrorist
group, based on its widespread violence against civilians.
What exactly was Chavez trying to achieve? According to thousands of
e-mails found in the laptop computers of slain FARC commander Raul
Reyes, which Interpol forensic computer experts certified were not
tampered with by the Colombian government, Chavez and the FARC were..................
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Friendship among Women:
A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house.
The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.
Friendship among Men:
A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house.
The woman called her husband's 10 best friends.
Eight confirmed that he had slept over,.....
....and two said he was still there.
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:
Venezuela News
Venezuela: Army unrest grows over Chávez reforms
↑ Click on this link to see the full article!!!
A Guardian story by Rory Carroll in Caracas http://www.guardian.co.uk
Venezuelan military officers have
expressed growing alarm at attempts by President Hugo Chávez to turn
the armed forces into a political instrument of his socialist
revolution.
One general has been detained and hundreds of other officers reportedly
sidelined for protesting against the ideological drive. Chávez has
ordered the armed forces to adopt the Cuba-style salute "Fatherland,
socialism or death" to put the institution at the heart of his effort
to transform Venezuela.
Pastors from the recently formed pro-Chávez Reformed Catholic church
have been installed as army chaplains to weaken the influence of the
traditional Catholic church, which is hostile to the president. "That's
causing a lot of resentment, a lot of upset," said...........................
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Venezuela News
Chávez in danger in Venezuela
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An article by Stephanie Blankenburg at http://www.newstatesman.com
Chávez
has little more than four months - perhaps even less - to come up with
a solution to a very difficult equation or his Bolivarian project faces
derailment
On 5 July, Venezuelans celebrated the 197th anniversary of their Declaration of Independence from Spain.
On
that day in 1811, a group of rebel criollos (those born in the Spanish
colonies but of Iberian descent), gathered in the Santa Rosa Lima
Chapel in Caracas to found a new Republic, the American Confederation
of Venezuela.
It would take another decade of bloody warfare war
before the republican rebels, famously led by Francisco Miranda and
Simón Bolívar, could declare victory over their Royalist foes.
Almost
two centuries on, another kind of rebel is in charge in Venezuela, a
mestizo (a person of mixed race) this time round, inspired as much by
his criollo ancestors’ determination to rid themselves of foreign
domination, through another, more recent ideal, also partly of European
“descent”: Socialism.
However, victory for Chávez’ Bolivarian
Project is by no means guaranteed. If anything, it is in more danger of
being derailed, both from......
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Caribbean & Latin News
Uribe Poised to Crush Colombian Rebels as Hostages Are Freed
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A Bloomberg story by Helen Murphy and Andrea Jaramillo at www.bloomberg.com
The bloodless rescue of
former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other
hostages puts President Alvaro Uribe within sight of his most cherished
goal: crushing the guerrillas who have spent 44 years trying to
overthrow the government.
The hostage rescue deprived the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
of its last major bargaining chips and proved the wisdom of Uribe's
hard-line policies, analysts said. The FARC, as the group is known, was
already reeling from the deaths this year of three top leaders,
desertion of dozens of its most seasoned commanders and betrayal by one
of its security chiefs.
``The FARC are for all intents and purposes finished,'' said Michael
Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy
research group in Washington. ``There will still be violence in
Colombia, and certain FARC fronts will remain heavily involved in the
cocaine trade, but now nobody is going to care.''
For Uribe, 55, the rescue provides a boost of international prestige at
a time few Latin American leaders have backed him in his confrontation
with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a much sought-after...........
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Features
:
Joke of the day
John West Salmon Advert
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This is a video of one of the hit adverts' of recent years, it's very, very funny,...check it out here
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Venezuela News
Colombia rejects Venezuela border incursion charge
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A Reuters story by Luis Rojas and Greg Brosnan
at www.reuters.com
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian
authorities on Sunday rejected charges from Venezuela that their troops
had crossed the frontier in the latest incident to test fraying
relations between the Andean neighbours.
Venezuela over the weekend accused 60 Colombian soldiers of entering
its territory in what Caracas said was a provocation that aimed to
destabilize the region.
The tension exacerbates sharp divisions in the Andes, where Colombian
President Alvaro Uribe is a close Washington ally and Venezuela's Hugo
Chavez a purveyor of anti-U.S. sentiment.
"There has been no incursion," Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel
Santos told local radio, saying a river in the area would have
prevented troops crossing. "It would have been practically impossible
for it to happen as they say."
Tension has simmered since Colombia raided inside Ecuador and killed a
rebel leader in March. After Ecuador broke off relations, Chavez
ordered tanks to the porous border that cuts through jungle and
mountains to support his leftist ally.
Venezuela said the incursion occurred on Friday, a day after Chavez said he would........................
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Venezuela News
Venezuela's Chavez slams Germany's Merkel comments
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A Reuters story at
www.reuters.com
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday almost told German Chancellor Angela
Merkel to go to hell, but stopped short of insulting the woman leader
on Mother's Day.
Instead he called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism.
"Ms. Chancellor, you can go to ...," he said, pausing for effect and
eliciting giggles from the audience, a group of military officers,
cabinet ministers and government officials. "Because she's a woman I
won't say anything else."
The leftist leader, who famously called U.S. President George W. Bush
"the devil" at a United Nations assembly, slammed Merkel for calling on
Latin American leaders to distance themselves from Chavez.
"She is from the German right, the same that supported Hitler, that
supported fascism, that's the Chancellor of Germany today," he said.
Chavez said he could confront her about the statements if he attends.........
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Venezuela's Chavez withdraws lawsuit against ex-wife over custody of daughter
CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez is withdrawing a lawsuit against his ex-wife
involving their 10-year-old daughter, saying he does not want to become
a spectacle in a legal battle.
Chavez says ex-wife Marisabel Rodriguez has prevented him from seeing
their daughter, Rosines. Venezuela's president says he will attempt to
resolve the dispute without taking Rodriguez to court.
Rodriguez denies that she has not permitted the president to visit their daughter.
Chavez accused Rodriguez on Sunday of trying to put Rosines in the middle of what he called "a media show."
Rodriguez said last week that she was consulting with her lawyer after
a court notified her of the suit. She declined to give details.
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Venezuela News
Colombia shows new rebel documents that link Venezuela -- Update
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An AP story by FRANK BAJAK
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A newly
disclosed set of documents that Colombia's government says were
recovered from a slain rebel's computers indicate senior Venezuelan
officials tried to help arm Colombia's main guerrilla army.
The electronic documents — more than a dozen — were shown to The Associated Press on Friday.
They detail alleged meetings between senior Venezuelan officials —
including that country's chief of military intelligence and interior
minister — and top leaders of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC. Some discuss the procurement of weapons, others
rebel training for Venezuelan home defense forces.
Venezuelan officials maintain that Bogota is manipulating the truth.
"The whole thing is like a movie. Fiction is fiction, reality is
reality," Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, said
Friday.
The documents shown to the AP are among 11,000 that Colombian officials
say they found in laptops, external drives and memory sticks recovered
in a March 1 cross-border raid in Ecuador that killed rebel leader Raul
Reyes and 24 other people.
Some 2,000 of the documents had been erased but were recovered through
computer forensics, a senior Colombian official told the AP.
Colombia released several dozen documents immediately after the raid,
and since then has periodically shown more to reporters. A Washington
intelligence official vouched for the documents' authenticity, saying
they were delivered to U.S. intelligence agencies in March.
The U.S. and Colombian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.
The documents seen by the AP are all allegedly internal communications
between FARC commanders, chiefly messages from Ivan Marquez, the
rebels' main representative in Venezuela. Several discuss what
Colombian officials interpret as an open-ended Venezuelan loan of.....
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