80 Articles

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
In next week's exciting chapter of the Las Cristinas Saga, does Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz jump off the cliff's edge?
(1 comments) I guess I was a trifle premature on Thursday, November 6 when I postscripted an article Phew! Another sweaty day in Caracas, Venezuela! What tremors will Friday bring... with "Do we wait for bated breath to discover what fantasies Reuters. Bloomberg, Dow-Jones et.al. will (mis)construe from THAT!"

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Venezuelan gold mining? God alone knows! For the Russians have packed their bags and gone home...
Was it yet another example of how Venezuelan government officials simply love to play the big arena for public approbation and then shy away from admitting failure when the inevitable ball bounces back in their faces? Or was it a calculated play to con impoverished and unemployed mine workers into thinking that the central government is actually doing SOMETHING to relieve their plight?

Sunday, November 9, 2008
"Chavez doesn't even rise to the status of 'dictator' ... he's now exposed his nature to be that of a common thug!"
"Who in their right mind will deal or negotiate with a 'government' that denies employment to people who vote against the government in democratic referendums? ...and this while this 'revolutionary' government is co-opting more and more industries so there'll be no jobs left anywhere for people who vote against government positions!"

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Venezuela's diplomatic professionalism has gone clean out the window and right down the toilet!
The dilemma with which the US State Department (for which I have no sympathy whatsoever!) is faced is, however, one where the 'Beverly Hill Clampetts' are proving to be quite too much too for the Washington Beltway mandarins to cope with! In true NASA style it's "Houston ... we have a problem!"

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Phew! Another sweaty day in Caracas, Venezuela! What tremors will Friday bring...
A radio interview for 'La Voz de Guayana' (The Voice of Guayana) was most probably aimed at a very local audience in the remote southeastern State of Venezuela, but was picked up by rabid newshounds from Reuters and Bloomberg in Caracas with all the frailties of provincial communications that the wide open expanses of under-developed Venezuela inevitably brings with it.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Does anyone REALLY care a jot or tittle about what Vanessa Davies has been up to ...
The already enriched "activists" within the President's PSUV are, of course, enraged by Miguel's exposure of their pecuniary foibles ... it is not without reason the 'sifrinas' (nouveaux riche) in the President's proximity are generally also described as the 'sin verguenzas' (those without shame!) ... and like pigs being rounded up for slaughter in the November 23 elections, they're squealing their heads off!

Friday, October 31, 2008
Like the American Revolution, Venezuela's in the name of Liberator Simon Bolivar is NOT going to be a walk-over!
(1 comments) We must first recognize that President Hugo Chavez Frias' original dream for a more egalitarian Venezuela, away from the crass inhumane abuses and exploitations of the previous fifty or more years, has gone completely off the rails ... NOT by any lack of ambition on Chavez' part, although he has been thwarted hour by hour and day by day through every living minute of the last ten years since he was elected overwhelmingly.

Monday, October 27, 2008
Chavez Frias talks of plurality in Venezuelan politics ... but is it just another canard (Duck for non-francophones)!
The problem is though that if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and looks like a duck ... it's reasonable to assume that it is in fact a DUCK! Call it a clone of 'Alo Presidente' ... or simply televised coverage of the "inauguration of an eastern gasline project" as my esteemed friend in Caracas would have me believe ... it's still a DUCK!

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Once upon a time... Yeah, yeah! Has Andres Izarra only just woken up from a state of Rip Van Winkle comatose?
Once upon a time... Yeah, yeah! I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but once upon a time there was a dashing young 'prince' who had idealism, journalistic integrity and the 'cajones' to tell multi-millionaire RCTV mogul Marcel Granier to stuff it! But, hey, you gotta wake up sometime and the dreams flit away as easily as the darkness of night gets swallowed by the daylight that just as surely follows.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Halloween is nigh! Spooks round every corner, where none exist ,,, perhaps Chavez should shed a tear or two too!
How do we fathom that Izarra actually uses words like "democratic" to qualify the actions of his own department, never mind the 20+ other ministries in Venezuelan government that are staggering under the overload of graft and porcines squabbling over the public trough ... and, proving truth in the old adage, that the pigs are squealing when they're cornered on their way to slaughter at the November 23 polls.

Sunday, October 19, 2008
I think Izarra was referring to UK Channel 4's Sandra Jordan ... although it could quite as easily have Corina Machado!
There was something distinctly distatsteful in the way that Granier ordered him to broadcast Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons when so much was happening in the streets of Caracas to celebrate the jubilation, and the sheer force of the democratic power of the people to have Chavez brought back from isolation on the Caribbean island of La Orchila.

Saturday, October 18, 2008
Roy S. Carson: I've been torn off a strip by my good friend Patrick J. O'Donoghue
(1 comments) Patrick's and my own Irish backgrounds put particular accents on the militarization of colors -- the green or the orange of our homeland's particular sectarian divides which transcend any latent thought of the softer military-type organizational structures in, let's say, something as broadly understood as the Scouts.

Saturday, October 18, 2008
Branded a renegade by rampant Chavez radicals, former UN Ambassador Milos Alcalay remains a man of principle!
(2 comments) Why is Alcalay the patriot now harassed by nit-picking Venezuelan border controllers who must, by now, have amassed a shed-load of photocopies of passport pages from Ambassador Alcalay's busy schedule of trips abroad as guest of international organizations who want to know the nitty-gritty of what is REALLY happening in Venezuela.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Molina says President Hugo Chavez is a political coward
(1 comments) Molina is calling for a full parliamentary debate on the President's unilateral decision and says that there's something sinister how continuing daily power blackouts, food shortages and out-of-control crime figures afflicting Venezuela are suspiciously part of what he believes to be a plan by Chavez and his administration to bring about a "self-coup" in which a state of national emergency could be declared

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Dear Mr. Geoffrey, get off the griddle before you burn a hole in the rear end of your blue jeans!
Oh Dear! Yet another victim of the US mainstream media's gluttony for all things negative that happen in the land of despicable strongman, dictator Hugo Chavez Frias ... and then some! How come?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Andres Izarra's true intent to STARVE(?) the opposition media into submission to his edict?
I very vocally defended him in London when a typically disinformed member of his conference audience virulently attacked him in claims that he (Andres) had the blood of many dead on his hands as a direct result of the US-funded coup d'etat against President Hugo Chavez Frias!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Brown shirts are simply exchanged for red - in Venezuela
(2 comments) Millions of Venezuelans had put their trust in Hugo Chavez Frias in December 1998 when they went to the polls to elect him as their president on a ticket he claimed would rid the country of the endemic corruption which had plagued the country's development for at least the previous forty-fifty years.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Chavez was elected in 1998 to fulfill Venezuela's dreams ... why has his administration become such a nightmare?
Such is the crap situation into which Venezuela has fallen today -- with only weeks away to local and regional elections -- which surely must transmit a huge, if not knock-out slap in the face to President Chavez Frias to have him understand that the corrupt bunch of lunatics in charge of his dishonored administration are assassinating everything good that he ever stood for.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
A certain degree of schadenfreude in news of Chavez' announced budget cuts and bureaucratic austerity plans...
To the home-based pen-pushers in Caracas diplomatic staffers are envied with a degree of jealousy that is often unreasonable considering the fact that the selfsame pen-pushers back home are generally enjoying the assumption of prestige in public office that belies the general dogsbodies further down the food chain so seemingly serve their every bureaucratic whim thinking that they hold the keys ... to what?

Friday, October 10, 2008
Chavez' government mismanaged? Well, yes, it is but what about the mite in USA's own eye?
The writer insists that the Venezuelan revolutionary leader and his clique are foolishly sticking to bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois legality in their "peaceful [christian] revolution."

Thursday, October 9, 2008
Do Venezuelans really want a Fox News copycat with unmitigated bias to pathetic bootlicking?
(1 comments) Of recent date, ABN reports have been distinctly politicized -- generally in favor of the Chavez government but increasingly showing an abject hostility towards anything and everything to do with the political opposition which, whether ABN editorial managers wish to believe it or not, DO represent a significant section of the Venezuelan populace.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Honor? Really? Well that's a subject of another editorial...
Regretably it's part and parcel of the rampant sectarianism that's polluted Venezuelan politics with either side equally as guilty of excesses as the other. THE TRUTH -- as always -- has been the first victim in the battle of opposing ideologies with the anti-Chavistas claiming that they, and they alone, are the exclusive interpreters of what is well and good; and the pro-Chavistas claiming exactly the same.

Friday, October 3, 2008
On coup d'etat fears, army raids police to confiscate "weapons of war" leaving cops defenseless against criminals
(2 comments) The police department purge, took place in a top-secret move, Tuesday, during which army personnel sealed off Sucre Police HQ and went through all records of rapid-fire Austrian-manufactured Glock handguns and more held by individual police officers as well as hundreds of heavier weapons in the considerable police armory

Friday, October 3, 2008
CVG-Bauxilum's 'interim' president Alfredo Arcila says that he and CVG president Rodolfo Sanz "are alive and kicking!"
An array of labor unions have totally rejected the new CVG-Bauxilum president's "final final" offer of roughly US$40 million to pay-off suppliers, contractors and labor liabilities that currently amount to well over $300 million ... "our jobs must not be allowed to die, because we will no longer give in to this situation -- it would be irresponsible of us to be accomplices to what is happening!"

Saturday, September 27, 2008
North American investor says he will NEVER, ever, invest in Venezuela again!
(3 comments) As a boy, I sat transfixed as, with tears welling in his eyes, an old-timer -- had himself only recently been out of short pants -- told me of the abject horrors he had personally experienced when the Titanic went down in April 1912.

Thursday, September 25, 2008
President Hugo conveys the impression of being a compulsive liar, capable of lying, even where there is no necessity!
(3 comments) Covert adherents of the "Chavismo without Chavez" movement in Latin America make an over profession of faith in Chavez as their leader, but deceptively they are waiting to watch his downfall ... Chavez knows this and has taken background precautionary measures ... but open threats emanating from (mostly opposition) media executives are taken very seriously indeed.

Thursday, September 25, 2008
If some unruly brat tries to steal from your candy store, do you not have the right to call the cops?
(1 comments) If Venezuela were to pose an immediate threat to the security of the United States of America ... more than the current resident of the White House has already achieved all by himself ... that, at the very least, strategic planners at the US State Department and/or in Langley, would be within their patriotic rights to make preparations against such an eventuality!

Thursday, September 25, 2008
Venezuela's Ambassador Samuel Moncada and/or his Charge d'Affairs Felix Plasencia won't be tailed any closer by MI5!
VHeadline's radio anchorman John Sanchez caught the 'nicety' nicely on Monday's VHeadline Venezuela Newshour on the American Voice Radio Network (AVRN) when he questioned President Hugo Chavez Frias patent paranoia over the A-word!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Izturiz' Statement - is Chavez Regime Digging its Own Grave?
It's all part of the geography, unfortunately, to receive emailed comments to one's writings ranging from the more obviously pleasurable plaudits and roses to the more sublime and ridiculous ... usually peppered with expletives and invariably ending up telling me "to go burn in Hell!"

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Dear Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro: "Oh, the sheer criminality of it all! Oh, dearie me!"
(1 comments) No greater gift could have been given to the dissemination of untruths and lies about Venezuela's system of participative democracy than to qualify the Bush dictatorship's unfounded prejudice against Venezuela as a "Banana Republic" home to a "tin pot Dictator" by the name of Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias! What on earth was Maduro thinking?

Saturday, September 20, 2008
Yawn ... it's just another Friday night in the jungle! Let's get back to sleep!
It can be soul destroying, especially in the realization that, just after 7:00 p.m., most of the news services' morning newspaper subscribers will already have locked up their business pages, flooded as they are with the inevitable fallout from the week's cataclysmic financial crashes way up north.

Thursday, September 18, 2008
Venezuela's President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias is NOT stupid when it comes to military matters ... AND politics!
(2 comments) Those who, having seen the ruthless way in which "the natives" have been exploited over the past five hundred years, seem to think that they can mimic the same corruption against their fellow citizens with impunity ... and, unfortunately, the residue of Spanish colonial administration that was abandoned by the Spanish but re-worked and developed by their warlord successors through dictatorships and quasi-democracies

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Coup d'etat and assassination of President Hugo Chavez Frias was scheduled for last Thursday as Venezuela's own 9/11
The Venezuelan conspiracy was foiled when Chavez decided to modify the regional military command structure and the retired military would-be coupsters found they did NOT have the critical support or strength of force necessary to enact a successful coup. Otaiza says that Chavez' strategic thinking, and internal changes to the military hierarchy have achieved a complete transformation of the Venezuelan Armed Forces.

Monday, September 15, 2008
Chavez should first seek out enemies in his own administration's inner circle
Tascon was expelled from Chavez' United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) earlier this year for having denounced current IRS/Seniat superintendent, Jose David Cabello on a series of corruption allegations of diversion of resources from the Infrastructure Ministry, a portfolio that Cabello had previously held.

Friday, September 12, 2008
A squadron of pigs parked at a Venezuelan air base instead of a couple of Russian bombers (even without nukes aboard!)
(2 comments) Of course, certain allowances must be given for the fact that Chavez Frias is indeed the constant object of covert and not-so-covert plotting against his socialist government... The United States, Fox News and George W. Bush -- in their exhumation of Joseph McCarthy -- see red and redder under the bed and equate Chavez' version of 21st Century socialism with Stalin's slaughter of the Ukranians in 1932.

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Venezuela has simply become a mirror image of what went before ... corruption and malfeasance is at an all-time high!
(7 comments) What a way to run a country! Dare I say, that it gives credence to the terminology often used against Latin American countries = Banana Republic! since its clear that one or more of the presidential advisers is, quite frankly, "bananas"!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Venezuelan journalists are either pro- or anti- Chavez and that's the way it will remain for quite a long time to come!
The problem is that everyone with even only half an ounce of brain power who witnesses what is happening in Venezuela, will see that even if the Venezuelan government is rightly or wrongly feeling the intense sting of international critique, its track record of the last ten years is NOT conducive to any naive belief that everything will turn out in the end.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Fanatics who want to help that great "Christian," Pat Robertson to "eliminate" Chavez from the face of the earth!
... and there are those who have the religious fanaticism to help that great "Christian, the Reverend Pat Robertson to "eliminate" Chavez from the face of the earth, never mind the suits with the shades from Langley in all their diversity of subterfuge.

Saturday, September 6, 2008
Storm in a provincial tea-cup as British 'bobbies' go extra-judicially ballistic over alleged 'kiddie porn'
(1 comments) The challenge, which is presently under review by the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire (England) has its origins in a claim by a community administrator in a rural riverside community on the border between Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire that a local photo-journalist had "pandered to pedophilia" by taking a photograph during an award ceremony at the local community center to which the "press" had been invited...

Saturday, August 30, 2008
Why I'm NOT taking up an offer of a job to clean the lavatories at Gold Reserve's Spokane HQ...
Certainly, there was more than an urgent need for President Hugo Chavez Frias to deal firmly with its worst excesses in the area of mining for gold and precious stones as soon as he became President in February 1999 ... but it is now more than nine long years since then and the surface has only just been scratched!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Comparisons with the debacle over South Ossetia and East-West posturing on phallic prominence are schoolyard at best!
You need first to recognize that in an effort to release Venezueala from the shackles of United States influence ... plus the fact the the United States reneged on its solemn contractual undertaking to provide spare parts for USA-built military hardware in a clear effort to subjugate the Chavez government to the Washington dictate that had been enjoyed and manipulated by previous presidencies.

Friday, August 22, 2008
Venezuelan Guayana Corporation insolvency brings 300 small- to medium industries to the brink of financial meltdown!
Camcaroni estimates CVG and subsidiary debts to be in the order of at least Bs.F 300 million with each subsidiary having defaulted on an average of Bs.F 600,000 ($280,000) in payments ... some of which have remained unpaid for more than a year, largely affecting small- to medium industries, many of whom have had to default on state taxes, social insurance and other payments.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
East/West? Obama/McCain? It's about time that the gringos understood that Venezuela is for Venezuelans...
(1 comments) The 'clash of cultures' has taken a compass swing to an off-kilter West (loosely seen as anglosaxon America, Europe and some former imperial colonies) and the East -- now represented not only by some sectors of the former Soviet and Asia, but South and Central America as well as the North American hinterland to the south of the Rio Grande and other non-British, Spanish-Portuguese-speaking former coloni

Thursday, August 21, 2008
McCain, Bushes I and II - the same complicity of dictatorship that served Hitler with the means to horrible genocide!
But Danny wants to deny everyone else in the world except Republican (United States) Americans the right to pick and choose their own friends among the nations of the world. If McCain says the Vatican is bad, well then there's nothing left to do but to condemn the autocratic leader of the Roman Catholism to Evil Axis status as an autocratic Dictator. What after all is a Papal Bull other than an edict/decree that must be ob

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Safeguarding Venezuela from foreign pillagers is not enough ... thieves in the house pose a greater danger!
It's such a scary word for capitalist-controlled wage-slaves across America and the world ... like SOCIALISM, it's another adjective used by the FOX News duplicity to conjure up McCarthy-istic bogeyman paranoia in the complacent masses who are purposely kept uninformed about what is REALLY happening in the Big Bad World far beyond the location of nearest McDonald's hamburger joint.

Monday, August 18, 2008
Venezuela's Bohemian Rapsody ... "Is this the real life, Is this just fantasy?"
To hell with the fact that Venezuela is such a multiplicity of ethnics, political persuasions and individualities ... it's a replay of George W. Bush's 'you're with us or your're against us!' plagorization of Stalin's political departmentalization ... and we all know where that led millions of Georgians and Ukranians in a previous era.

Saturday, August 16, 2008
Mass media's amateur dramatics that scream "Vampire bats" in the latest re-enactment of "Jaws" hysteria
(1 comments) Personally, I do not give much truck for US-based mass media reports that scream dictator, strongman, authoritarian etc., in revivalist ad hominen rhetoric against Venezuela's elected President Hugo Chavez Frias. I seriously regret the kind of journalism that ignores the civilian fatalities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia and whatever other theater of United States warfare around the world that the Bush maniac wishes to involve.

Monday, August 11, 2008
Fears for historical buildings as 5.6 earthquake rocked Venezuelan Caribbean region at 2.49 a.m. this Monday morning
(1 comments) Sucre State Governor Ramon Martinez says the earthquake was located locally at Punta Arenas and could not have lasted for more than 25 seconds. He says officials are assessing damage to houses and buildings, but stresses that there are no reports of people injured or loss of life. In a 5.00 a.m. interview on national radio he said "at this moment we all taking measures and the army and police are patrolling the streets to prov

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Industry & Mines Ministry's broken promises leave Venezuela's industrial Guayana region in terminal strangulation!
(2 comments) Local newspaper reports say that Minister Sanz has been unable to deal effectively with a challenging crisis which has seen CVG subsidiaries decline to virtual paralysis with the follow-on result that the region is seeing the greatest degree of labor unrest, whereas--elsewhere in Venezuela,Caracas and Maracaibo--there is increased economic activity and security for the state-run corporation's workforce.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
President Hugo Chavez Frias plows a runaway freight train into the buffers of anti-Venezuelan media euphoria!
In less time than it takes to shake a donkey's tail the USA-biased international wire services were all over the story gloatingly headlining "another nationalization" ... "Chavez' grab for more power" etc., etc., etc.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Southern gold miners occupation of Mibam offices precipitates Thursday meeting with Minister Rodolfo Sanz
(2 comments) Raul Leoni miners representative Alfredo Villanueva says many projects have been promised by Minister Sanz with attendant jobs for local workers but they are fed up waiting for payments and/or compensation that was promised as part of the deal reached with Mibam TWO YEARS ago ... and all the while, people are left without jobs.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Venezuela is quite another kettle of fish! 'Sinverguenzas' (those without shame) may be very much 'guilty as hell!'
Effectively the 'inhabilitaciones' mean that anyone who is charged with a criminal offense (most notably an act of corruption, malfeasance or similar) is prevented from running for political office until such times as the charges are dropped or the defendant has been found 'not guilty' by a court of law.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A silly old fuddy-duddy who thinks that cuddly pets are more productive to society than dogs of war!
(4 comments) This is why I believe that some people must learn that other dogs may be just as useful and sometimes more clever than the trained-to-serve-the-master dogs because they have been brought up in a loving family and have learned not to be as aggressive as the trained-to-serve-the-master dogs. They often have a kindlier nature than the German Shepherds.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
100+ people to organize each edition of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias' +5-hour 'Alo Presidente' TV show
The bonus for the production staff, of course, is that VTV cameramen, sound technicians etc., can count on as much as 58 hours x8 times paid overtime in a routine week's work, plus travelling expenses and hotel accommodation thrown in.

Monday, August 4, 2008
Premature ejaculations that have less to do with concern impoverished Venezuelan workers than an incessant lust for gold
(1 comments) Venezuelan government officials are getting browned off by the flood of emails, telefaxes and English-speaking telephone calls they receive on a daily basis from North American gold-mining investors with reportedly arrogant and sometimes abusive demands for information

Sunday, August 3, 2008
It's not unusual to hear US citizens address the often inebriated lunatic in their White House as 'Commander-in-Chief'
(15 comments) To suppress or censor the fact of Chavez' military background or his current position as the supreme leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela would, of course, be an anathema to everything that Venezuela stands for ... truthfulness, honor and the democratic destiny of all of the Venezuelan people!

Sunday, August 3, 2008
London Mayor Boris Johnson blackballs Venezuela; insists sending back US$14 million to sever deal with Caracas
(3 comments) The big upset in Venezuela-London relations came when Johnson defeated Livingstone at the polls and suspended the Venezuela agreement the minute he took office saying that Londoners should feel uncomfortable with the fact that their buses operate with discounted fuel from "a country where many people live in extreme poverty."

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias promotes himself to Commander-in-Chief with rank of 4-star General...
(2 comments) Local newspaper reports published today, Saturday (August 2) say the military degree is a Constitutional rank given to the Presidency of the Republic "as a symbol of the subordination of military power to civilian authority."

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Chavez urges opposition activists to mind their tongues! PSUV debate should not serve to give flesh to the vultures!
(3 comments) Chavez says he wants to encourage internal debate in the Patriotic Alliance of associated left-wing parties that have recently become amalgamated with PSUV but insists that it should be conducted "away from the microphones."

Friday, August 1, 2008
Impatient locals say go-ahead must NOW be given to the Las Cristinas gold-mining project!
"It is high time now that the government should grant all the permits to Crystallex for them to start-up the Las Cristinas project. Here in Venezuela we have undertaken a long process to stimulate comprehensive development ... if the government believes that Crystallex is part of that development, the south (of Bolivar State) will come out the winner!"

Thursday, July 31, 2008
Crystallex addicts in total confusion as international media catches up on month-old PR on Las Cristinas
(2 comments) It was in fact a month ago that Crystallex informed that the Venezuelan government had ordered the Environment Ministry (MinAmb) to reconsider issuance of the Las Cristinas project environmental permit. Since then, a series of open-ended discussions have been held between Crystallex and MinAmb officials to agree on a resolution of issues highlighted at the June 19 meeting.

Saturday, July 26, 2008
Anti-Venezuelan media "used lies and manipulation of reality as their preferred weapons!" So what's new?
Venezuela's Foreign Minister (MRE) Nicolas Maduro is complaining bitterly in his country's pro-government media that 'El Comandante' was "the target of media lies" throughout the European tour. He opines that the anti-Venezuelan media at home and abroad "used lies and manipulation of reality as their preferred weapons."

Friday, July 25, 2008
President Hugo Chavez Frias: Right on! Words well spoken -- now let us see the deeds!
While I am not an aviculturalist and could scarcely be described as a culinary expert, the sage words of my mother come to mine that there are more ways than one to cook a goose. Another way of looking at it is that you can always say "Booh!" to a goose but you've got to be aware that it will generally respond with a hiss and a cackle that otherwise has no productive outcome.

Saturday, July 19, 2008
Perhaps it is there that Chavez and his closest theorists in the administration have lost the plot?
I guess you could call me naive, but I've always maintained a certain distance from party politics. Perhaps I am a purist inasmuch as I believe in the right of one man/woman one vote and the obligation of the elected representative to represent the totality of his constituency blinded to all other influences. To my mind that's true democracy.

Thursday, July 17, 2008
Nepotism an accepted practice and implies that employing people one knows and trusts is of primary importance!
(3 comments) While a Venezuela Country Profile published on the Internet also advises that "nepotism an accepted practice and is considered a good thing, since it implies that employing people one knows and trusts is of primary importance", the new climate of dog-eats-dog in Venezuela's black versus white political madness doesn't let established custom get in the way of blatant butchery.

Saturday, July 12, 2008
Nothing has changed since the days of Caesar and Brutus! Et tu!
In a final analysis the 117 countries aligned in the non-aligned pact said it should resolve to ensure "enhanced media freedom" to serve as a common ground in "the quest for a new world information and communication order." WOW!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Yes! The Venezuelan government is NOT wholly corrupt, indolent and incapable!
The fact that his ministers may or may not be the most brilliant bananas on the boat is an unfortunate reality ... but what are the alternatives?

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Why was VHeadline reporter John Sanchez blackballed by the Venezuelan Ambassador and CITGO VP ?
The allegation from reliable sources within the Venezuelan government administration, flies 100% in the eyes of President Hugo Chavez Frias' vehement rejection of the United States National Endowment for Democracy (NED) financing of the Venezuelan opposition NGO Sumate!

Thursday, June 26, 2008
How Venezuelan Independence (and South America's) was won by the Irish 187 years ago!
Let's get it right, right from the start! The BRITISH Legion honoured at each year's Anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo (June 24, 1821) was mostly IRISH! -- it had started out in 1812 - 1815 as the IRISH LEGION, under the command of The Liberator, Simon Bolivar.

Monday, June 23, 2008
Will Chavez be deviated from his presidency by the Praetorian Guard of sychophants and on-the-make officials?
Several weeks ago, I wrote a private letter to a close associate of President Hugo Chavez Frias conveying my concern over a series of security-related issues and asked if my impressions were correct, namely, that it appears that Chavez is increasingly losing control over his own government!

Thursday, June 19, 2008
Just think! What to do with $20 million never mind the additional $36,412...
Well you would, wouldn't you? Just think! What to do with $20 million never mind the additional $36,412...

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Impunity seems to be the order of the day in Venezuelan politics ... if it isn't one thing it's another!
The President's executive team, he says are "merely puppets of a ventrilouist" since Chavez does the talking and none of the hearing.

Sunday, June 15, 2008
Venezuela rotting from inside
Venezuelan diplomacy has always been a power-playu, but reports now claim that the mice are rampant while the cat is most times away!

Saturday, June 14, 2008
Smoke signals! No smoke without fire as Venezuela's Chavez fights domestic political blazes
(1 comments) In fact the 'false revolutionary' phenomenon may be plumbing deeper depths than Hugo Chavez wants to contemplate even in his darkest monents...

Friday, June 13, 2008
US$37,260 a day is 'peanuts' to Jimmy Carter compared to what it costs to keep 'El comandante' Hugo Chavez secure!
(3 comments) The amount is 'peanuts' when compares with Secret Service expenditure-for-life on US ex-president Jimmy Carter and a reported $4 million a montth on Dick Cheney

Thursday, June 12, 2008
"Promises" ... with inverted commas!
Promises, promises, promises. In Venezuela "promises" are just that ... with inverted commas!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
November 23 may well go down in history as Venezuela's 'Night of the Chamelions' when true colors are struck to the mast
(1 comments) Admonished to "be careful" what he says or writes, since no one knows on what blacklist he could end up!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
At the risk of repeating ourselves we ask: where in Venezuelan politics did logic ever count for anything?
The tropical sun is scorching the pants of Venezuela's Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz this week as he tackles a tumbleload of crises that left his predecessor, Jose Khan a physical wreck, forced into early retirement for the sake of his health.

Sunday, June 8, 2008
Anti-Chavez Media in Venezuela
The more important question is rather: should the Venezuelan government -- even by extension through its Washington agency -- be seeking to impose restraints on ANY MEDIA?

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Viewed against a backdrop of draconian US Homeland Security provisions, Venezuela's efforts are but a pussy-cat!
(6 comments) Headlines claiming Chavez is setting up a spy organization were the Stateside order of the day ... but, as usual when taking a closer look at the US mainstream media, what is REALLY the truth?