Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua Options

[Snuffysmith]

Venezuela's unrealized revolution
Many of President Hugo Chavez's supporters are still wondering when his
changes will improve their lives. By Vinod Sreeharsha
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0221/p07s02-woam.html?s=hns

[jeffmoskin]

Venezuela's unrealized revolution
Many of President Hugo Chavez's supporters are still wondering when his
changes will improve their lives. By Vinod Sreeharsha
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0221/p07s02-woam.html?s=hns

from the February 21, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0221/p07s02-woam.html

Venezuela's unrealized revolution
Many of President Hugo Chávez's supporters wonder when his changes will improve their lives.

By Vinod Sreeharsha | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

CARACAS - Seven years after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez first took office, an event commemorated earlier this month, Juan Francisco Rivas is still waiting for the "revolution."

His 24-square-meter makeshift house, currently inhabited by nine people, sits at a 45-degree angle atop one of the city's worst hillside slums, Petare. His roof is a single metal sheet. There is no hot water.

Mr. Rivas voted for Mr. Chávez in 1998 but today, while showing his often-flooded living room, says, "Look at this place and tell me honestly that Chávez is for the poor."

During the 1990s, Rivas worked as a carpenter and even had social security. Today he is grateful to get three days of work per week, all in the underground economy.

Meanwhile, Chávez has spent much of this month warning of a possible US invasion, preparing a citizen army, and lambasting President Bush. His rhetoric has made him a darling of leftists worldwide. Yet, ordinary Venezuelans like Mr. Rivas are growing increasingly frustrated with the country's inadequate housing, under-resourced public hospitals, and damaged roads.

Chávez, who said Sunday he may seek to lift presidential term limits to allow him to run for a third term in 2013, maintains a high domestic approval rating and has no viable challenger in the presidential election scheduled for Dec. 3. But polls show his support slipping slightly in recent months and even some of his staunchest supporters - known as Chavistas - are wondering when they will start seeing more improvements in their daily lives.

"[Chávez] is transferring responsibility for Venezuela's problems to Bush," says Luis Petrosini, an economics professor at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, who has voted for Chávez twice.

In November, cardiologist Juan Carlos De Gouveia resigned from Miguel Perez Carreño hospital, one of Venezuela's largest public hospitals. Dr. De Gouveia was raised in a poor Caracas neighborhood and spent decades serving poor Venezuelans. In his resignation letter, he described interminable battles with hospital administrators to obtain basic supplies such as sterilization equipment.

At another Caracas hospital four patients died in one night last August after its oxygen supplies ran out. This month the Venezuelan Medical Society suspended all elective procedures there, saying conditions had still not improved.

Meanwhile, the government here announced recently that it will help over 50 African countries combat malaria, even though the number of malaria cases in Venezuela in 2004 was the second highest since 1937 and twice that of when Chávez took office.

Marcial Bastitas, who lives in a poor section of Caracas, is also frustrated. Surrounded by six Chavista friends, he says that "we should take care of our problems first." They nod in agreement.

Venezuela also faces a public housing shortage. According to figures from the Venezuela Chamber of Housing, less than 30,000 homes were built in 2005 out of the 120,000 promised by Chávez.

Many of Venezuela's roads are also deteriorating. Last month the highway connecting the capital Caracas with its international airport and second largest port was closed indefinitely due to a collapsing bridge. The closure of this major artery impacts 35 percent of the country's commerce according to Veneconomia, a leading business research publication.

Truck driver Gerardo Crespo says his income has been cut in half due to the reduced number of cargo hauls he can make. He voted for Chávez in 1998 but now asks, "How many years has this government had?"

Chávez insists that he is being made out to be a scapegoat for the infrastructure problems. Last month he called discussion of the highway closure "a media strategy against me." Government officials say it has been more important to allocate funds to antipoverty programs.

To be sure, Venezuelan governments have known about the collapsing bridge for 20 years but have done little. And public hospitals have long been neglected in Venezuela. "They have never been a priority," says Dr. Asia Villegas, Caracas's top health official and a Chávez-appointee.

Dr. Villegas also emphasizes that the Chávez government's priority has been to invest in new social programs for those long-ignored by past governments. In the Barrio Adentro program, for example, Chávez has imported 20,000 Cuban physicians to work in Venezuela's slums. In 2005 alone, the government spent $651 million on this according to Veneconomia.

The Cuban-run clinics are limited to basic practice - prescribing medicine and performing routine checkups. And despite their presence in the barrios, the patient volume at Perez Carreño's Emergency Room has increased in recent years.

Chávez, responding to pressure, announced late last year a $2.5 billion effort to revamp the country's hospitals while integrating them into Barrio Adentro. But the government refuses to say what percent is earmarked for Venezuelan hospitals and how much for the Cuban-run clinics.

The working-class residents of the barrio Catia may be forgiven if they are skeptical of this new initiative. A public hospital was closed here over two years ago in order to be converted into a Barrio Adentro clinic that has yet to open.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

[jeffmoskin]

Chavez is a populist who basically took over the oil industry from the "elites" that used to run it. His intention was to distribute the profits to the poor. The problem is that the oil industry doesn't run as efficiently as it used to (learning curve) even though a barrel now fetches twice as much.

We shall see if this plan works. Putin did the same thing in Russia (although without any intentions of helping the poor people).

That is the age-old problem of socialized industries vs private industries.

[Snuffysmith]

March 21, 2006
Visitors Seek a Taste of Revolution in Venezuela
By JUAN FORERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — The actor Danny Glover has come. Harry Belafonte has also been here. So has the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, the prominent African-American writer Cornel West and Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales.

But most visitors are like Cameron Durnsford, a 24-year-old student from Australia who decided to study at a new government-financed university in Caracas. Mr. Durnsford was, admittedly, put off some by the cult of celebrity around President Hugo Chávez, which he says "seems a little bit Maoist." But Venezuela's revolution, he quickly added, was not to be missed.

"You've got a nation and a leader trying to prove an alternative to neo-liberalism and the policies that have ravaged Latin America for 20 years," he said. "That's why people are coming here. There's a sense that it's a moment in history."

Mr. Chávez is decidedly unpopular with the Bush administration, which he has branded a terrorist regime out to get him. That antagonism, coupled with Mr. Chávez's huge oil-generated outlays for social spending, is drawing a following from all over and turning Caracas into the new leftist mecca.

Evoking other cities transformed by revolutionary leaders, like Managua, Nicaragua, in 1979, or Havana 20 years before that, Caracas is attracting students and celebrities, academics and activists, grandmothers and 1970's-era hippies — a new generation of Sandalistas, as some call them.

Some, including many Americans, have come to stay. But others come for a new brand of revolutionary tourism organized by the government or by private groups.

Venezuela welcomes them all, but rolls out the red carpet for high-profile visitors like Mr. Belafonte, the 79-year-old singer and activist.

In January, he led an American delegation that included Mr. Glover, Mr. West and Dolores Huerta, the farm workers' advocate. They met with Mr. Chávez, toured a neighborhood and visited government-run programs promoted as a way to shift the country's oil wealth to the poor.

"We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution," Mr. Belafonte told Mr. Chávez during the president's weekly television program. He called President Bush, a constant target of Mr. Chávez's barbs, "the greatest terrorist in the world." Then he shouted, "Viva la revolución!"

Other recent visitors have included the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Ollanta Humala, a leading candidate in the election for president in Peru on April 9; the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, and the Argentine Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

For less well-known Americans, the new vacation trail no longer goes through the famed beaches of Margarita Island. Rather, groups like Global Exchange, based in San Francisco, take visitors who pay $1,300 on a two-week jaunt through the tumbledown barrios where support for Mr. Chávez is strongest.

The tours include visits to literacy classes, cooperatives and government-financed media outlets. Visitors chat with government ministers, see "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a documentary favorable to Mr. Chávez, and meet with state oil company officials, who explain how petrodollars are funneled to social programs.

Among the speakers who have met with visitors is Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who is dedicated to unearthing what she claims is evidence of Washington's support for Venezuelan opposition groups, something the Bush administration has denied.

Americans like Pat Morris, 62, from Chestnut Hill, Mass., who never had a good impression of the Bush administration, are usually left speechless. "I thought that our current government was lying and greedy, but I had no idea of the long-term investment in destabilizing the country," she said, tears in her eyes after hearing Ms. Golinger speak.

Reva Batterman, 27, a graduate student, said she had wanted to come to Venezuela to show its people that "we're not all just Bush supporters or imperialists."

"I wish the people in the U.S. would try to understand Hugo Chávez," she said.

Not everyone is as enamored. Julio Borges, an opposition politician, said that while Mr. Chávez certainly had showered aid on the poor, he was also a strongman out to crush dissent.

Instead of lionizing him, Mr. Borges said, visitors should be aware of government ineptitude and growing abuses, like attacks on the press, charges the government denies.

"We always tell people who come with this romantic idea of Venezuela that despite the changes here, the people who carry out the transformation are the armed forces, that Venezuelan democracy is basically a militarized one," he said. "You have to have a profound concern about that. We want to take off the democratic veil the government uses."

Referring to American visitors, an American diplomat in Caracas, who could not speak on the record because of embassy rules, echoed the concerns, saying, "Come down here and get your consciousness raised, absolutely." He added, "My only request of them is that they try to get the other side of the story."

Emily Kurland, a 26-year-old social worker originally from Chicago, said that was exactly what she and the others here were getting.

"They're frustrated with Bush, frustrated with not being listened to, frustrated with Iraq," said Ms. Kurland, speaking in the Caracas house she shares with several foreigners. "They don't trust Fox News. They don't trust the mainstream news. They want to see with their own eyes what's happening here."

She came to Venezuela thinking she would stay just long enough to get a taste for Mr. Chávez's grandly titled "Bolivarian revolution." A year later, she said, she has no plans to leave anytime soon.

She has taught English in government-financed classes for the poor and talks about volunteering at a state-run microcredit bank for women. She spends most of her time, though, leading tours for Americans who flock here for a look at how Mr. Chávez is changing his country.

There is a precedent, of course: Fidel Castro's revolution, which in its early years placed emphasis on "people to people" contacts that enhanced support among vocal members of the American body politic, while neutralizing opponents.

Activists, intellectuals and leftists have gravitated to other governments, from Allende's Socialist Chile in the early 1970's to Sandinista-run Nicaragua in the 1980's, which also declared ambitions to overturn the old order in their countries.

"Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Chile at one point became the mecca for many leftists around the world," said Fernando Coronil, a University of Michigan professor and the author of "The Magical State," a book about Venezuela. "That has been capitalized upon by the governments of these places, in eliciting foreign support but also as a way of focusing on certain elements of foreign policy that have wide appeal, and not focusing on internal problems."

Some of the people who have visited Venezuela or have moved here acknowledge having some doubts. Chesa Boudin, 25, a New Yorker who has worked as a volunteer here, notes that some on the left glorify Mr. Chávez simply because he has positioned himself as the anti-Bush leader in Latin America.

But Mr. Boudin, one of the authors of a book favorable to Venezuela's government, said many people who had been dismayed by the advance of globalization saw the possibility of a better world in Venezuela.

"The fact that we have a country that's trying to create an alternative model is bold and ambitious and unique, and that's why people are wondering, 'Is this possible?' " said Mr. Boudin, whose parents, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert, were members of the 1970's radical group the Weathermen. "The intellectual in me is curious."

Perhaps nothing so illustrates the intertwining of Mr. Chávez's rhetoric about serving the poor and the government's policies as the three-year-old Bolivarian University, which offers free tuition to its mostly poor student body.

Jerome Le Guinio, 23, from France, came a year ago and works in the university's administration. He lives in Catia, a poor neighborhood where support for Mr. Chávez is solid. "The idea is to find an alternative," he said, "and if you don't find it in Venezuela, you won't find it anywhere else."

Jens Gould contributed reporting for this article.



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[Snuffysmith]

Exxon Mobil not welcome in Venezuela anymore:

Venezuela's oil minister said today that Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's second-largest integrated oil company, was no longer welcome in this oil-producing nation.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12561.htm

===
Send in the marines:

U.S. Strike Group Will Head South For "Training":

Some defense analysts suggested that the unusual two-month-long deployment, set to begin in early April, could be interpreted as a show of force by "anti-American governments in Venezuela and Cuba".
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12556.htm

===
Venezuela postpones ban on US airlines :

The decision to postpone the ban was made after talks with US officials and Venezuela's INAC aviation authority said on Wednesday (30 March) that it would suspend the ban until 25 April.
http://www.m2.com/m2/web/story.php/2006944...0257141005775D4

===
S.America pipeline said to exceed estimate:

The cost of building a natural gas pipeline spanning South America would exceed the most recent estimate of US$25 billion (euro20.7 billion), the chief executive of Brazil's state-owned petroleum company said in an interview published Thursday.
http://tinyurl.com/rht38

[Snuffysmith]

Video: Witness To A Revolution:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke to Newsnight about his country's oil reserves. Mr Chavez was bullish over Venezuela's Opec standing and US policies in Latin America. Greg Palast reports from Caracas.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12635.htm

===
Venezuela in Washington’s Sights :

In the face of the left-oriented shift of Latin America’s politics, the Bush administration seems to be determined to block the re-election of the Bolivarian president. It looks like the design of the FTAA, the dream of the White House, will only be a reality over the ashes of a Bolivarian counter-model that they need to destroy.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article136545.html

[Snuffysmith]

Chavez Begins Training Civilian Militia :

President Hugo Chavez constantly warns Venezuelans a U.S. invasion is imminent. Now he's begun training a civilian militia as well as the Venezuelan army to resist in the only way possible against a much better-equipped force: by taking to the hills and fighting a guerrilla war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5764387,00.html

===
Venezuela quits Andean trade bloc :

He told a summit in Paraguay that Venezuela was leaving because recent trade deals between Peru, Colombia and the US had killed off the community
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4925056.stm

[Snuffysmith]

Chavez issues warning to U.S.:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez yesterday warned his government would blow up its own oilfields if the United States ever were to attack -- the latest in a series of warnings to Washington.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Internati...541612-sun.html

===
Chavez says U.S. won't give Morales a honeymoon:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused his arch-enemy Washington on Thursday of trying to destabilize Bolivia's leftist government, which took office three months ago.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20325684.htm

===
Venezuelan president blames U.S. for high oil prices :

“It could reach $100 ... It is up to the United States,” Chavez told reporters as he arrived in southern Brazil on a trade mission. He attributed the already-high price to American “bellicose statements and the American president's threats against Iran.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/2...ezuela-oil.html

[Snuffysmith]

Venezuela Plans to Raise Trade Barriers Against Colombia, Peru :

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he will raise trade barriers against Colombia and Peru because the neighboring Andean countries reached free-trade agreements with the U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/zthku

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Paper_Ch...zuela_0424.html
Paper: Chavez moves toward nationalizing Venezuela oil

RAW STORY
Published: Monday April 24, 2006

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is planning a new assault on Big Oil, potentially taking a major step toward nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry that could hurt oil-company profits, reduce production and put further pressure on global oil prices, the Wall Street Journal reports on Monday front pages. Excerpts:

#
Venezuela's Congress, made up entirely of Mr. Chávez's allies, is considering sharply raising taxes and royalties on foreign companies' operations in the Orinoco River basin, the country's richest oil deposit. Major oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips of the U.S. and Total SA of France have invested billions of dollars there to turn the basin's characteristically tar-like oil into some 600,000 barrels a day of lighter, synthetic crude.

Mr. Chávez, a left-wing populist who favors greater state control of the economy, also wants to seize majority control of the four Orinoco projects and force private companies who run them to accept a minority stake, according to a top executive at state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PdVSA.

The moves would up the ante in Mr. Chávez's long-running battle with foreign oil companies, which he accuses of making outsize profits amid high oil prices at the expense of a poor nation. The stakes are high because Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, holds the world's biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East and is the third-biggest supplier of crude to the U.S.

FULL PAID RESTRICTED STORY HERE

[Snuffysmith]

Venezuela prepares for 'possible US invasion' :

While US warships hold exercises in the Caribbean, Venezuela’s military will mobilise its own training exercises next week with thousands of troops practising to defend the country’s coastline, a top navy official said yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/mzk3j

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Venezuela's Chavez Threatens to Cut Ties With Peru:

Garcia is ``corrupt'' and a ``thief,'' Chavez said in a televised speech in Caracas, after Garcia called Chavez a scoundrel yesterday. Garcia, who was Peru's president between 1985 and 1990, is also the candidate of the country's oligarchy, Chavez said.
http://tinyurl.com/hrmnp

===
Morales and Chavez in Cuba:

Their arrival to Havana coincides with the first anniversary of the signing of agreements between Cuba and Venezuela for the implementation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).: The aim of the visit is to sign documents allowing Bolivia's adherence to that integration model.
http://tinyurl.com/rlcmx

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Video: Dancing with Evo Morales :

President Evo Morales jokes that Fidel Castro, Venezuela's leftist leader - Hugo Chavez - and himself are Latin America's new "axis of good." Filmed during Bolivia's Carnival, David O'Shea spent an enviable fortnight partying with South America's new kid on the leftist block. Evo Morales
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12866.htm

[Snuffysmith]

Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela Reject U.S. Trade:

Bolivia's president signed a pact with Cuba and Venezuela on Saturday rejecting U.S.-backed free trade and promising a socialist version of regional commerce and cooperation.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1905711

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Bolivia Ready to Recover National Resources, Says Evo Morales:

In a keynote address, the Bolivian leader noted it is important to free the country's natural resources from foreign domination, assuring that his government is organized and prepared to recover those resources from the oil companies, which have caused great damage to Bolivia.
http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_cuba/evom042906.htm

===
April 1965 and the unfinished Dominican revolution :

On April 28, 1965, 42,000 U.S. troops poured into the Dominican Republic to put down the beginnings of a democratic revolution in the Caribbean country. That invasion and the repression that followed continue to shape the Dominican people’s struggle for true sovereignty.
http://tinyurl.com/hp7h8

[Snuffysmith]

Bolivian seisure of oil, gas fields worries foreign governments
Moves to nationalize natural resources may further polarize South America.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0503/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu

[Snuffysmith]

Evo Morales Joins Chavez As US Target :

When the heat is turned up against US interests, this country won't go quietly into the night. The plans are well underway now for a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez that may include assassinations and possibly an armed assault by US invading forces.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12932.htm

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Pepe Escobar : The axis of gas :

At a recent summit meeting at a Sao Paulo hotel, presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina further progressed to consolidate the giant gas pipeline following "strategic lines of cooperation, integration and South American unity", in the words
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HE03Aa03.html

===
Indian, Coca Farmer, Bolivian President:

Bolivian President Evo Morales has become a symbol for the left and for anti-American sentiment the world over. But is he really a socialist? A closer look at the peasant in the striped sweater.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/internatio...,414036,00.html

[Snuffysmith]

More Economic Sectors to Be Nationalized
--------------------

From Times Wire Reports

May 3 2006

Bolivia's leftist government said it would extend control over mining, forestry and other sectors of the economy after President Evo Morales nationalized the country's natural gas and oil industry.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...headlines-world

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-B...r=1&oref=slogin

Crisis Feared Over Bolivia Gas Takeover

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 4, 2006
Filed at 12:06 p.m. ET

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- South American leaders scrambled to avert a regional crisis over Bolivia's nationalization of its natural gas sector as Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez flew with Bolivian President Evo Morales to a hastily arranged summit in Argentina on Thursday.

Morales had announced Monday that he had nationalized Bolivia's natural gas reserves and will reduce foreign participants to minority players -- giving the companies six months to sign contracts or leave Bolivia.

The socialist Chavez, a political mentor and ally of the leftist Morales, said he came to Bolivia late Wednesday not to give advice but to offer ''congratulations and learn from Bolivia's wisdom.''

''With good will, Morales will reach the agreements he needs to make with the foreign companies,'' Chavez said after arriving in the capital of La Paz.

Chavez spoke after Brazil -- Bolivia's biggest gas client -- summarily announced it would cut off all new petroleum investment in Bolivia, where it has invested $1.6 billion to boost production over the last decade.

The European Union, meanwhile, expressed concern over Morales' order for army troops to guard more than 50 natural gas installations, most operated by foreign companies since Bolivia privatized petroleum production in the mid-1990s.

Morales and Chavez flew to the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazu along the border with Brazil to join Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner.

Foreign companies now face audits of their Bolivian operations by authorities ahead of the contract negotiations, Hydrocarbons Minister Andres Soliz told a news conference Wednesday in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, where most foreign oil companies have their Bolivian headquarters.

Morales has long claimed that Bolivia's natural gas resources have been ''looted'' by multinational companies.

While Silva said he believes he can negotiate a solution to the controversy, he asserted he will defend contracts giving Brazil rights to Bolivian gas. ''The fact that Bolivia has rights does not deny the fact that Brazil has rights in the matter as well,'' Silva said.

Morales and Chavez also planned to discuss Chavez's idea to construct a 5,600-mile pipeline linking Venezuela's vast natural gas reserves through Brazil to Argentina, Chavez said.

The pipeline, estimated at $25 billion, would also branch to Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay -- though experts have predicted it could cost more and environmentalists say the plan could damage the Amazon.

Chavez confirmed that Venezuela's state petroleum company PDVSA will help finance, with an unspecified amount of money, the construction of an ethane, methalene and propane plant in Bolivia.

Morales reiterated his determination to proceed with the nationalization.

''We've received many telephone calls, been faced with some threats by some companies, but others wanting to cooperate and support this profound transformation process in the country,'' Morales said late Wednesday, without naming specific companies.

While Morales wants Bolivia's cash-strapped state-owned Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos petroleum company to dominate gas production as part of the nationalization plan, the company has functioned as little more than a bureaucracy for a decade since the Bolivia's gas industry was privatized. Experts say it would take a huge infusion of cash to transform the company into a capable operation.

Bolivia wants the company to oversee all aspects of gas production, refining and sales -- but it's not clear how it can come up with the money and expertise it needs to wrest control of the industry from the foreign companies now managing it.

Morales, a populist who won a landslide victory in December, has long vowed to take back control of Bolivia's natural resources. While Bolivia has vast mineral and forestry wealth, the country's most valuable asset is its natural gas reserves -- the continent's second-largest after Venezuela.

Under Monday's decree, foreign companies must sell a majority stake of their participation to YPFB. Yet it remains unclear how Bolivia will come up with the several billion dollars needed for that deal.

[Snuffysmith]

BOLIVIA'S BIG ENERGY BET EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, MAY 4): In an era when the United States' standing in the world is in decline, the Bush team must not make relations with Latin America worse than they already are by falling back on old Cold War patterns of behavior.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...big_energy_bet/

[Snuffysmith]

SHOWDOWN WITH CHAVEZ - PHILLIP D. RIESE/F. ANDY MESSING (WASHINGTON TIMES, MAY 4): It may already be too late for the Bush administration to garner favorable public support from South and Central Americans, but laying the groundwork now could be a necessary and worthy effort to be carried over to future administrations.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/200605...92719-4106r.htm

[Snuffysmith]

Chavez warns US over Iran policy :

Mr Chavez, on a two-day trip to the UK, called for a socialist new world order and said nations were cowards for not standing up to the "American empire".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4771229.stm

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Chávez warns on oil production cuts:

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s radical president, said on Sunday he expected Iran would cut oil production if attacked by the US in the dispute over nuclear technology, adding: “We would do the same if we were attacked. We would cut off our oil.”
http://tinyurl.com/j2uns

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U.S. Imposes Arms Ban on Venezuela :

The United States is imposing a ban on arms sales to Venezuela because of what it claims is a lack of support by President Hugo Chavez's leftist government for counterterrorism efforts, a State Department official said Monday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13049.htm

[Snuffysmith]

http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/200.../15-498618.html

Venezuela Not Fully Cooperating with Counterterrorism Efforts
Designation will end all U.S. arms sales and retransfers to Venezuela

Washington -- The Venezuelan government has shown a nearly total lack of cooperation with the United States' anti-terrorism efforts over the past year, and as a result, the United States will suspend the sale and retransfers of U.S. arms to the Andean nation, according to the U.S. Department of State.

On May 15, the State Department certified to the U.S. Congress that Venezuela is "not fully cooperating" with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, a designation that State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said was well earned.

"They have been placed on this list and they have earned their spot honestly," he said.

McCormack cited Venezuela's cultivation of relationships with state sponsors of terror, such as Cuba and Iran, and he indicated that these relationships have hindered intelligence-sharing and anti-terrorism cooperation with Venezuela.

"Now, if you're developing a much closer intelligence-sharing relationship with a state sponsor of terror, I think it's only reasonable that the United States is going to say, 'Wait a minute.' We don't know if we can reasonably cooperate with that sort of state because we are worried about a variety of consequences, including the sharing with a state sponsor of terror of information that we have provided on that very subject, trying to fight terror," he explained.

McCormack and State Department official Darla Jordan expressed concerns about the Venezuelan government's interaction with Colombia's illegal armed groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN).

"Venezuelan territory continues to be used as a safe area by known narco-terrorists [with the FARC and ELN organizations], many of which cross into Venezuela for rest and re-supply with little concern that they will be pursued by Venezuelan security forces," Jordan said. "Weapons and ammunition -- some from official Venezuelan stocks and facilities -- have turned up in the hands of Colombian-based terrorists."

Jordan added that other U.S. concerns include the corruption and politicization of Venezuelan agencies that control identity documents.

Venezuelan identity documents are easy to obtain fraudulently, making Venezuela a potentially attractive transfer point for terrorists, she said. The State Department official pointed out that Colombia-based narco-terrorists already have been found with validly issued Venezuelan identity documents.

Because of its concern over Venezuela's multi-billion-dollar arms acquisition program, the United States has scrutinized closely all arms transfers to Venezuela, Jordan said. The "not fully cooperating" designation will end all commercial arms sales and retransfers to Venezuela.