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Roy S. Carson is veteran foreign correspondent (45+ years in the business) currently editor & publisher of VHeadline Venezuela reporting on news & views from and about Venezuela in South America -- available for interviews -- call Houston 713.893.1433
SHARE Friday, January 16, 2009 NOT your stereotypical James-Bond type Russian ... Andres Agapov denies being an ex-KGB (SSB) spook!
The young man who greeted me in the foyer of the Lainsborough Hotel on Hyde Park Corner in London was NOT your stereotypical James-Bond type Russian ... in fact he gave a favorable impression as "just an ordinary sort of guy" although after a few minutes conversation, it was obvious that he is something more than just a company executive.
SHARE 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.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 27, 2008 North American investor says he will NEVER, ever, invest in Venezuela again!
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.
SHARE 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?
SHARE Sunday, January 25, 2009 Diamond mines at Guaniamo and gold reserves at Las Cristinas will be taken under Venezuelan sovereign state control
"As for Las Cristinas, managed by (the Canadian trans-national) Crystallex, the state has not given the proper environmental permits for their operation. We have always questioned, and President Chavez has said that Venezuela should be empowered to do what foreign companies have been done since these are Venezuela's sovereign reserves."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 6, 2008 Storm in a provincial tea-cup as British 'bobbies' go extra-judicially ballistic over alleged 'kiddie porn'
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...
SHARE Wednesday, December 17, 2008 Guillermo Adrian: "Not a cat in hell's chance that Crystallex will get the final approval!"
On a flying visit to Caracas, Puerto Ordaz/Ciudad Guayana and El Callao in the south of Venezuela's Bolivar State, I have had opportunity to speak with key government officials, mining executives and labor and indigenous representatives on future prospects for the country's gold mining industry.
SHARE 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.
SHARE Thursday, February 19, 2009 Agapov backing away from clincher deals on Las Brisas, Las Cristinas gold mines...
In an exclusive interview in London, Monday, Agapov told me that, while he's "somewhat disappointed" that his Vancouver (Canada) based mining company, Rusoro Mining Ltd., has been stymied in its efforts to achieve a corporate takeover of Gold Reserve in last week's court decision, it's simply a further milestone in the ultimate destiny of Las Brisas which, like its neighbor Las Cristinas
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 17, 2008 Nepotism an accepted practice and implies that employing people one knows and trusts is of primary importance!
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.
SHARE Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Maria Clelia Spinas -- a candle caught in the wind of Venezuelan corruption!
Grieving grandmother Heidi Spinas Dora weeps as she takes fond farewell of a daughter who was brutally slaughtered by hired assassins sent by corrupt bankers and a construction contractor to ensure "silence" over a raft of corrupt housing deals that ripped-off the public purse for millions...
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 28, 2009 VENEZUELA: Hugo Chavez' big mouth! Woops ... he's gone and done it again!
Years ago it might have taken days for Chavez' rasher statements to reach the disbelieving ears of Europeans, North Americans or even those in Asia and elsewhere in the Pacific who give a damn about what's happening along southern Caribbean shores. The time differential and the cost of reporting trivialities were not unsubstantial and lunacies were kind of expected from faraway places.
SHARE Monday, December 1, 2008 Rusoro: They've been good to us all along ... we're very comfortable in Venezuela and the future looks good!"
So the Minister (Sanz) was talking about the whole of the mining sector rather than a specific area like Las Cristinas/Las Brisas? "That is correct! That is correct! Every mining company in the world is closely looking at the situation, especially in Russia, since there are such significant deposits and it is perhaps the last undeveloped gold resource of that magnitude in the world."
SHARE 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 18, 2008 Venezuela's President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias is NOT stupid when it comes to military matters ... AND politics!
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
SHARE 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!"
SHARE 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.
SHARE Thursday, January 1, 2009 Voracious vultures whose only quest is to "grab the gold and screw the natives!"
Ultimately, all parties concerned should have the exploitation of gold on a rising world market uppermost in their minds but, with the gold already in the ground, gaining market value as the weeks/months/years go by, it is the foreign interests that are conceited enough to believe that they can force the Venezuelan government to "stand and deliver" who will eventually be the losers.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 18, 2008 Branded a renegade by rampant Chavez radicals, former UN Ambassador Milos Alcalay remains a man of principle!
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.
SHARE 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!
SHARE 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 14, 2008 Brown shirts are simply exchanged for red - in Venezuela
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.
SHARE 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!"
SHARE 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!
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 16, 2008 Mass media's amateur dramatics that scream "Vampire bats" in the latest re-enactment of "Jaws" hysteria
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.
SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit?
As thousands marched against climate change ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen (Denmark) next week, world leaders have urged rich countries to cut their emissions by at least 40% by 2020 and to provide US$150 billion a year by then to help the world's poor cope with the impact of climate change while increasing the supply of renewable energy.
SHARE Saturday, April 4, 2009 Venezuela-Iran: Comprehensive Mapping of Venezuela's Vast Mineral Resources
Sanz says that the most significant result from Chavez' visit to Teheran has been a comprehensive mapping of Venezuela's vast mineral resources and that Iran and Venezuela will move in the medium term to explore and certify reserves and to create a joint venture to mine gold, zinc, copper, bauxite, iron and other minerals towards creating a more diverse Venezuelan-Iranian commercial relationship.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Make no mistake about it, there's an all-out war going on out there!
Part of the problem must undoubtedly be laid at the door of President Chavez ... as a military career strategist he will certainly be aware of the intricate patterns of subversion that constantly conspire to inflict substantial damage to each and every move he makes towards his personal dream of an egalitarian Venezuela
SHARE Sunday, March 29, 2009 AD Deputy Demands Immediate Dismissal of Venezuela's Mibam Minister Rodolfo Sanz...
A year after it was nationalized, Siderurgica del Orinoco (SIDOR) production of liquid steel has fallen to 2003 levels with 780,000 tonnes less than in 2007 and US$160 million in losses, although the price of steel on world markets at the time was higher.
SHARE Tuesday, January 13, 2009 VHeadline's wrong dancing partner ... will Venezuela come back to haunt us? ... in pitchforks!
Simply. Simon says "Lie after lie about facts known to be contrary to what you state. You treat your readers as juveniles. You justify Rusoro's offer for GRZ as generous..."
MOI? Scarcely! Simon insists on putting words into my mouth ...
hell, I am only a reporter, NOT a financial adviser and VHeadline's dire financial circumstances is sufficient evidence in itself that a financial manager, I am NOT!
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Dear Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro: "Oh, the sheer criminality of it all! Oh, dearie me!"
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?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 15, 2008 Molina says President Hugo Chavez is a political coward
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
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 3, 2008 On coup d'etat fears, army raids police to confiscate "weapons of war" leaving cops defenseless against criminals
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
SHARE Saturday, May 2, 2009 Venezuela: Pots Calling Kettles Black Immediately Comes to Mind!
The Rev. Vizcaino explicitly regrets the occurrence and that he was writing from the Perija heartland of the anti-Chavez opposition in western Zulia State where, traditionally, the locals view anything and everything emanating from faraway Caracas as alien to their Guaijira antecedents.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 31, 2008 Crystallex addicts in total confusion as international media catches up on month-old PR on Las Cristinas
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.
SHARE 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!
SHARE Friday, December 26, 2008 Venezuela in Process of 'Learning' Which Interests are Prime
Senior diplomat, former Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Milos Alcalay says he is NOT surprised by claims that the involvement of Enrique Tejera Paris -- no matter how transitory it may have been! -- is having a deleterious effect on Crystallex International's prospects of mining gold at Las Cristinas.
SHARE Saturday, November 22, 2008 Venezuela's Ambassador to France: "extraordinary optimism in the air" ahead of Sunday's local and regional elections!
There are many elements coming together that allow us to look forward optimistically on the results ... "there is a mobilization of Venezuelans who have decided to live in democracy and who are decided to vote en masse on Sunday for their preferred candidates and NOT for a return to the past ... they will continue supporting the reforms we began 10 years ago ...
SHARE 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 10, 2008 Industry & Mines Ministry's broken promises leave Venezuela's industrial Guayana region in terminal strangulation!
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.
SHARE Wednesday, December 10, 2008 It's all a matter of interpretation: Is President Chavez to impose himself as "dictator for life" on Venezuela?
It's all a matter of interpretation: Since it was the first time that PSUV had engaged in ANY local and/or regional elections, it's clear that ANY electoral win could be seen as a gain from a starting point of zero; implying, of course, that the collection of other left-orientated parties that had previously held these States and municipalities had lost, inasmuch as they were basically back to zero...
SHARE 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 10, 2009 It's quite amazing how the US media so readily allows itself to be manipulated!
Why am I not surprised by the complete and utter distortions in the mainstream North American media over President Barack Obama's proposal to introduce a form of National Health Service that's been a long time coming to the United States?
SHARE 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.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 3, 2008 London Mayor Boris Johnson blackballs Venezuela; insists sending back US$14 million to sever deal with Caracas
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."
SHARE Wednesday, November 26, 2008 As Russian warships, Medvedev, visit Venezuela, the Maduro/Flores 'Rocky Horror Show' becomes tragi-comedy!
As the Russian destroyer 'Admiral Chabanenko' was first to dock at La Guaira, ahead of the nuclear-powered cruiser 'Peter the Great', Medvedev's high profile visit marks an "interesting" alliance between the two oil producers and their common interest in deflating Washington DC ego-trippers in the eyes of the rest of the world.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 18, 2008 Roy S. Carson: I've been torn off a strip by my good friend Patrick J. O'Donoghue
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.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 11, 2008 Fears for historical buildings as 5.6 earthquake rocked Venezuelan Caribbean region at 2.49 a.m. this Monday morning
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
SHARE 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!
SHARE Saturday, March 13, 2010 The very sad fact is that Cindy Sheehan is misinformed!
In a postscript to an article "Last rites for the USA" published yesterday (March 8) in the (US) national black newspaper, 'San Francisco BayView,' anti-war peace activist made the assertion that the Venezuelan government's Correo del Orinoco English edition [...is...] "Venezuela's first and only English-language weekly newspaper."
SHARE 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
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 25, 2008 President Hugo conveys the impression of being a compulsive liar, capable of lying, even where there is no necessity!
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.
(1 comments) SHARE 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!
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.
SHARE 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.
(2 comments) SHARE 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!)
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.
SHARE 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."
SHARE 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.
(1 comments) SHARE 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?
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!
SHARE 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.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 9, 2008 Do Venezuelans really want a Fox News copycat with unmitigated bias to pathetic bootlicking?
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.
SHARE 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!
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 5, 2008 A silly old fuddy-duddy who thinks that cuddly pets are more productive to society than dogs of war!
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.
SHARE 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?
SHARE 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.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 21, 2008 East/West? Obama/McCain? It's about time that the gringos understood that Venezuela is for Venezuelans...
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
SHARE Monday, April 13, 2009 It's clearly a constitutional coup d'etat on the Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas
On Tuesday, April 7, the National Assembly passed an Organic Law of Decentralization, which takes away all attributions from the Metropolitan Mayor ... this constitutes a true coup d'etat on the Mayor and is in clear violation of the 1999 Constitution since, on November 23 last, voters democratically elected Antonio Ledezma as Metropolitan Mayor.
SHARE Monday, November 24, 2008 USA brutishness and arrogance with a blend of Venezuelan incompetence and corruption is an explosive mix
While politically and militarily, Chavez will soldier on until 2012 when he must necessarily step aside from the presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the country simply cannot wait a moment longer for him to take aboard the responsibilities he pledged in 1998 and swore to uphold when he was formally inaugurated as President in February 1999.
SHARE 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.
SHARE 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?
SHARE 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!"
SHARE 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!
SHARE 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.
SHARE 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.
SHARE 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.
SHARE 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.
SHARE 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!"