[AmericaAirline 111]

Venezuela may ask U.S. envoy to leave

By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer
January 26, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez warned Thursday that the U.S. ambassador could be asked to leave the country if he continues "meddling in Venezuela's affairs."

The outspoken Venezuelan leader lashed out after William Brownfield said U.S. companies and investors must receive a fair price for their shares of Venezuela's largest telephone company when Chavez's government nationalizes it.

"If you continue meddling in Venezuela's affairs, first of all, you are violating the Geneva agreements and getting yourself involved in a serious violation and could ... be declared a persona non grata and would have to leave the country," Chavez.

The top American envoy to Venezuela told Caracas' Union Radio the planned takeover of CA Nacional de Telefonos, or CANTV, should proceed "in a transparent, legal manner" and that Venezuela's government must offer "fair and quick compensation to the people who are affected or the owners."

"These are the only obligations that a government has when it decides to nationalize an industry," Brownfield added.

Thursday's exchange is the latest demonstration of tensions between Caracas and Washington.

U.S. officials have accused Chavez of becoming increasingly authoritarian and of being a destabilizing force in Latin America. The Venezuelan leader has repeatedly accused Washington of scheming against his left-leaning government.

Virginia-based Verizon Communications Inc. holds the largest minority share of CANTV, which was privatized in 1991. The takeover jeopardizes an agreement by Verizon to sell its 28.5 percent stake in CANTV to a joint venture of America Movil and Telefonos de Mexico SA, controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

The sale had been awaiting Venezuelan government regulatory approval.
Chavez, a self-proclaimed "revolutionary" who is steering Venezuela toward socialism, has said he wants an immediate state takeover of the telephone company and will not pay shareholders the market value. The Venezuelan leader has said the price for CANTV would take into account debts to workers, pensions and other obligations to the state.

Brownfield said he was optimistic that shareholders would be fairly compensated.

"I think it can be a process that concludes in a satisfactory manner for all those involved, that's my hope," he said.

Chavez _ a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro _ also has said he plans to nationalize the electricity sector, and take state control of four lucrative oil projects and the natural gas sector.

Relations between Caracas and Washington have been tense since Chavez was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup that he claimed the U.S. played a role in. The Bush administration has repeatedly denied involvement, although it recognized an interim government established by coup leaders.

Brownfield said he wanted to improve relations through "a serious and pragmatic dialogue between the two governments, to identify issues of mutual interest and to look for solutions to those issues."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070126/...a/venezuela_us

[tmobmobfil]

Venezuela Spending on Arms Soars to World’s Top Ranks

By SIMON ROMERO
February 25, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 24 — Venezuela’s arms spending has climbed to more than $4 billion in the past two years, transforming the nation into Latin America’s largest weapons buyer and placing it ahead of other major purchasers in international arms markets like Pakistan and Iran.

Venezuelan military and government officials here say the arms acquisitions, which include dozens of fighter jets and attack helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, are needed to circumvent a ban by the United States on sales of American weapons to the country.

They also argue that Venezuela must strengthen its defenses to counter potential military aggression from the United States.

“The United States has tried to paralyze our air power,” Gen. Alberto Muller Rojas, a member of President Hugo Chávez’s general staff, said in an interview, citing a recent effort by the Bush administration to prevent Venezuela from acquiring replacement parts for American F-16s bought in the 1980s. “We are feeling threatened and like any sovereign nation we are taking steps to strengthen our territorial defense,” he said.

This retooling of Venezuela’s military strategy, which includes creation of a large civilian reserve force and military assistance to regional allies like Bolivia, has been part of a steadily deteriorating political relationship with the United States.

The Bush administration has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to attack Venezuela, one of the largest sources of oil for the United States.

But distrust of such statements persists here after the administration tacitly supported a coup that briefly removed Mr. Chávez from office in 2002.

Venezuela’s escalation of arms spending, up 12.5 percent in 2006, has brought harsh criticism from the Bush administration, which says the buildup is a potentially destabilizing problem in South America and is far more than what would be needed for domestic defense alone.

The spending has also touched off a fierce debate domestically about whether the country needs to be spending billions of dollars on imported weapons when poverty and a surging homicide rate remain glaring problems. Meanwhile, concern has increased among Venezuela’s neighbors that its arms purchases could upend regional power balances or lead to a new illicit trade in arms across Venezuela’s porous borders.

José Sarney, the former Brazilian president and a leading senator, caused a stir this week when he was quoted in the newspaper O Globo as describing Venezuela’s form of government as “military populism” and “a return to the 1950s,” when Venezuela was governed by the army strongman Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

“Venezuela is buying arms that are not a threat to the United States but which unbalance forces within the continent,” Mr. Sarney said. “We cannot let Venezuela become a military power.”

Still, officials in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil have been hesitant to publicly criticize Venezuela’s arms purchases.

The issue remains delicate after the Brazilian company Embraer lost a deal to sell military aircraft to Venezuela because the planes included American technology.

After turning unsuccessfully to Brazil and Spain for military aircraft, Venezuela has become one of the largest customers of Russia’s arms industry.

Since 2005, Venezuela has signed contracts with Russia for 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, 50 transport and attack helicopters, and 100,000 assault rifles. Venezuela also has plans to open Latin America’s first Kalashnikov factory, to produce the Russian-designed rifles in the city of Maracay.

A report in January by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency pegged Venezuela’s arms purchases in the past two years at $4.3 billion, ahead of Pakistan’s $3 billion and Iran’s $1.7 billion in that period.

In a statement before the House Intelligence Committee, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, called attention to Mr. Chávez’s “agenda to neutralize U.S. influence throughout the hemisphere,” contrasting Mr. Chávez with the “reformist left” exemplified by President Michelle Bachelet of Chile.

Beyond Russia, Venezuela is also considering a venture with Iran, its closest ally outside Latin America, to build a remotely piloted patrol aircraft. Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel, the Venezuelan defense minister, recently told reporters that the project to build 20 of the aircraft could be used to bolster border surveillance and combat environmental destruction in Venezuela. Venezuela is also strengthening military ties with Cuba, sending officers and soldiers there for training.

Supporters of the arms buildup contend that under Mr. Chávez, who has been in power for eight years, Venezuela has spent proportionately less on its military in relation to the size of its economy than the United States or than other South American countries like Chile and Colombia.

In 2004, the last year for which comparative data were immediately available and before Venezuela’s arms buildup intensified, overall defense spending by Venezuela, including arms contracts, was about $1.3 billion and accounted for about 1.4 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 4 percent in the United States and 3.8 percent in Colombia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks military spending.

Doubts persist as to how powerful Venezuela’s armed forces have become in a regional context, even as they acquire new weapons. Military experts here say pilots in the air force still need training to start flying their new Russian fighters. And in terms of troop strength, Venezuela’s 34,000-soldier active-duty army still lags behind the armies of Argentina and Brazil, with about 41,400 and 200,000 members respectively, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a Web site that compiles data on military topics.

Pro-Chávez analysts also say the president is less adventurous in relation to military policy outside Venezuela than predecessors like Luis Herrera Campíns, who supported Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982 to detract attention from a decline in oil revenue and climbing inflation.

But critics of the arms purchases say they are being made with little participation from or discussion with the National Assembly, which recently allowed Mr. Chávez to govern by decree for 18 months.

Ricardo Sucre, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela, said that the lack of transparency of the weapons contracts had heightened concern that Mr. Chávez could be arming parts of the army, the new civilian reserve and partisans like the Frente Francisco de Miranda, a pro-Chávez political group, that would be loyal to him in the event of fractures within the armed forces.

General Muller Rojas, the president’s military adviser, said concern about the arms purchases was overblown, pointing to reports that Venezuela was considering an acquisition of nine diesel-powered submarines from Russia for about $3 billion.

He said the navy had “aspirations” for more submarines, but that no “concrete plan” for such a large contract had been developed.

“We simply have an interest in maintaining peace and stability,” General Muller Rojas said, describing the Caribbean as a crucial to its military influence. “We have no intent of using the Venezuelan armed forces to repress human rights.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/wo...l?pagewanted=1

[TorryJens]

^ Another Bush foreign policy triumph.

Not long ago we lived in a world with almost no enemies; now we're surrounded by hornets' nests.

[swissloveone]

The hornet's nests were always there.

Bush just whacked them a few times.

[lidya-sggf]

Good for them.
I happen to love Hugo Chavez, despite the New York Times trying for years now to brainwash against him. Glad I'm fluent in Spanish and read my South American news in the original language.

[eropiereetuekm]

Good for them.

Note to readers: This comment was in reference to Ecuador's changing direction, as posted here in the South America thread.

Venezuela and the rest of South America used to be on one thread.

[dianakroshXX]

Chavez Warns of Resistance War With U.S.

Associated Press
By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER
Associated Press Writer
Jun 24, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

Dressing in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort — Venezuela's military nerve-center — before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: "Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!"

"We must continue developing the resistance war, that's the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday," said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation's immense oil reserves.

U.S. officials reject claims that Washington is considering a military attack. But the U.S. government has expressed concern over what it perceives as a significant arms built-up here.

Chavez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — told soldiers the Washington was trying to weaken and divide Venezuelan society, including the armed forces, without resorting to combat.

"It's not just armed warfare," said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the "Bolivarian Revolution," a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. "I'm also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare."

Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

Last week, Chavez said he is considering arms purchases, including submarines and a missile-equipped air defense system, as he prepares for a tour of Russia, Belarus and Iran.

"We are strengthening Venezuela's military power precisely to avoid imperial aggressions and assure peace, not to attack anybody," he said Sunday.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

[Cerilopasei]

The US should stop lying about "not considering" any action against Hugo.

OF COURSE we ahve been considering it, but the fact is, I do not think we have the resources or support to be able to achieve what we want w/o hurting one of our resource suppliers.

Maybe we should come out and say it like it is. "Hell ye we have considered military action against him, but that would not produce the best solution. We are hoping Hugo sees it the same way and we can come to an amicable arrangement"

Otherwise absolute denial will be seen for what it is.

Lying.

[SingleMan]

Why is the US so bad at picking its friends?

http://wais.stanford.edu/USA/us_supp...ators8303.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US...dictators.html

[arcaniagainee]

Why is the US so bad at picking its friends?

What friends?

[Unlinozistimi]

Last week, Chavez said he is considering arms purchases, including submarines and a missile-equipped air defense system, as he prepares for a tour of Russia, Belarus and Iran.

"We are strengthening Venezuela's military power precisely to avoid imperial aggressions and assure peace, not to attack anybody," he said Sunday. Of course they are, and why shouldn't they? An oil rich state at this point in history, in light of United States agression, needs to be able to protect itself.
You can blame our current (mis)leaders on the fact that every country in the world with any strategic natural resources is in a hurry to arm itself in fear of us.
The US will make any pretext for war that it feels necessary. Manufactured or otherwise.
The US has already attempted to have Chavez murdered.
If I were him, I'd be ordering submarines too.

[Lillie_Steins]

Oh come on give me a goddamn break. Chavez is a basket case loon that is capitalizing on the uneducated majority and it's hatred of the upper class. His military is a small little puppy compared to Colombia's. If Venezuela ever goes to war with Colombia over supporting the FARC, Colombia will whip Venezuela's so called military "might" so easily it will be like a dog eating a pigeon.

Chavez is your basic standard ego maniacal dictator who is only good at embarrassing his country and his people. His statements about the world are amount to his country being more isolated and the economy going nowhere.

He might have oil but it will take a long time for him to be able to properly extract it. Putin is having the same problem, they need western companies but they don't want to give away any money which they want for their own pocket or pocket of their own cronies.

Tyrants always use some dissatisfaction with the status quo to cease power for themselves. They think they are Gods which have a right to do as they please. But their rule always ends the same, with blood and innocents killed.

[nermise]

You could be describing any number of folks currently in power (fill in the blank with whoever might seem appropriate) ...

_________ is a basket case loon that is capitalizing on the uneducated majority and it's hatred of the upper class.

_________ is your basic standard ego maniacal dictator who is only good at embarrassing his country and his people.

_________ might have oil but it will take a long time for him to be able to properly extract it.

Tyrants always use some dissatisfaction with the status quo to cease power for themselves. They think they are Gods which have a right to do as they please. But their rule always ends the same, with blood and innocents killed.

[Loxaeed]

Chavez is a socialist-marxist nutjob. All you have to do is see his so-called "nationalization" of a private industry to understand that. Or, his work to shut down an independent free press.

Hard to understand why so many of his ilk still infest this planet.

[bribiaLaubysdggf]

Chavez is a power hungry dictator who wishes to shut down his opposition. He's now cozying up to Iran's Jew-hating dictator in an anti-US alliance.

I wonder if the same people who are cheering Chavez' Bush bashing tirades will still be cheering when he starts the same mess with the next (likely Democrat) president. I also wonder if they would be such big Chavez boosters if they actually had to live under his regime. Bush will be gone in 18 months. Chavez will still be there, causing trouble no matter who is in the White House.

The hard left is so f#%king predictable. It almost makes me want to vote Republican.

[mirex]

You could be describing any number of folks currently in power (fill in the blank with whoever might seem appropriate) ...

Bush is not a dictator no matter what kind of lame arguments you might have for it.

To even suggest that is ludicrous.

[SantaClaus]

Not all that ludicrous ...
dic·ta·tor n.

1. 1. An absolute ruler.
   2. A tyrant; a despot.
2. An ancient Roman magistrate appointed temporarily to deal with an immediate crisis or emergency.

Perhaps "Emperor" would be more fitting (although it basically means the same thing) ...
em·per·or n.

1. The male ruler of an empire.

[Middle English emperour, from Old French empereor, from Latin imperātor, from imperāre, to command : in-, in; see en–1 + parāre, to prepare.]Which brings to mind the following ...

Wrapped in the Star-Spangled Toga

Roman Candles


Michael Bierut

NY TIMES
By ADAM GOODHEART
July 1, 2007

This Fourth of July, millions of ordinary citizens across the land are planning to celebrate our nation’s birthday with that most distinctively American tradition: the backyard toga party.

Well, O.K., not really. But the idea might not be so farfetched. Recently, it has seemed that ancient Rome is everywhere — and especially comparisons of modern America to the ancient empire. Moreover, it is one of the few things on which all segments of the political spectrum — left and right, Christian fundamentalists and Islamic radicals, Ivy League professors and renegade bloggers — seem to agree.

Most recently, a book by Cullen Murphy, titled, plainly enough, “Are We Rome?” begins with an extended comparison of President Bush to the emperor Diocletian from the third century A.D. Everything from their respective foreign policies to their retinues of courtiers comes under scrutiny. (It’s a bit of puckish humor that the author, whose sympathies are decidedly of the liberal sort, chooses that particular Roman ruler, who was famous for feeding Christians to the lions.)


Hulton Archive/Getty Images, left;
Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
FLIP SIDES President Diocletian and Emperor Bush?
No, but Roman parallels are a perennial temptation.
Mr. Murphy, especially, draws parallels between Rome’s imperial predicament and what he sees as ours: the problems of a vast, multiethnic nation with a messianic view of itself and an often simplistic view of the rest of the world, stretched too thin beyond its borders and facing mounting challenges within them.

He finds echoes of the emperors’ reliance on legions of Visigothic mercenaries in the country’s outsourcing of security contracts to Halliburton and Wackenhut.

He describes corrupt imperial bureaucrats as the moral forebears of K Street lobbyists:

“I don’t know how it would be phrased in Latin, but one of Jack Abramoff’s e-mails (‘Da man! You iz da man! Do you hear me?! You da man!! How much $$ coming tomorrow? Did we get some more $$ in?’) captures the spirit of public service in the late empire.”

Meanwhile, other commentators have their own comparisons. Conservative bloggers thunder about illegal Mexican immigrants as latter-day versions of the Vandals and Ostrogoths. Fundamentalist pastors like Pat Robertson warn of Neronian moral decay — pornography, abortion, gay marriage — that, they say, is hollowing out our society from within. And it seems as if everyone who watched the HBO series “Rome” has a pet theory on which ancient warlord resembles which modern pol (Pompey as Al Gore, anyone?).

Even Middle Eastern jihadists have joined in. Last November, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, released an audiotape in which he vowed: “We will not rest from our jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have destroyed the dirty black house — which is called the White House.” The reference to “Rumieh” puzzled translators at first. It is Arabic for the Roman Empire.

What few remember is that America has always been compared to Rome. It’s only the nature of the comparisons that are constantly changing. Nearly a half-century ago, in the aftermath of the McCarthy era, Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” was a thinly veiled attack on the Hollywood blacklist. In 1979, Tinto Brass’s notorious “Caligula” gave us ancient Rome as a Saturday night at Studio 54, with togas.

But it all started long before that, and the comparisons began as positive ones. America’s early leaders thought about Rome quite a lot, comparing themselves to statesmen whose names, unlike those of Nero and Caligula, are all but forgotten today: the noble freedom fighters like the Gracchus brothers, or the virtuous legislators like Cato the Younger. Their emphasis was usually not on the Roman Empire, but rather on the republic that preceded it.

In fact, George Washington’s favorite literary work was a play about Cato by the 18th-century English author Joseph Addison. So fond was he of Addison’s “Cato” that one of the first things he did at the end of the winter of 1778, when his men had scarcely recovered from the frozen misery of Valley Forge, was to arrange a performance by his troops. In the 19th century, an immense marble statue of Washington in the guise of a Roman god — naked except for some strategically placed drapery — actually stood in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. Thomas Jefferson, meanwhile, was painted in a Roman laurel crown by his friend and fellow Revolutionary hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

With few modern examples of successful republics to inspire America’s founders, ancient Rome provided an indispensable role model. Overlooked, however, is that the generation that fought the Revolution was not simply interested in creating a republic. From the beginning, many American patriots were out to build an empire.

In the summer of 1776, an edition of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” referred to “the rising empire of America” on its title page. In the same year, William Henry Drayton of South Carolina gave a speech in which he recalled that the once-mighty Roman Empire, which had lasted a millennium, had been supplanted by the British Empire — which, in his estimation, had lasted a mere decade or so. Now, he continued, “the Almighty ... has made choice of the present generation to erect the American Empire.”

The question was: could America’s republican aspirations flourish in harmony with its imperial ambitions? The two were not necessarily wholly incompatible. After all, Rome’s dominions had spanned the Mediterranean even while it was still ruled by a senate. And the United States did not need to look overseas for territories to conquer: an entire continent stretched westward.

So the founders decided they could have it both ways. Benjamin Franklin himself, during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, would refer to the nation he was helping create as both a “republic” and an “empire.” Franklin’s strongest endorsement of America’s God-given imperial destiny appears today on many conservative Web sites: “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” As Mr. Murphy notes, that quotation also appeared on Dick and Lynne Cheney’s 2003 Christmas card.

Franklin and his contemporaries were all too aware, however, that in setting up their nation as a latter-day Rome, they were also all but ensuring centuries of paranoia to come about whether America was destined to go the way of its imperial predecessor. The eventful year 1776, after all, had seen the appearance not just of the new United States but of the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Indeed, the fretting began almost immediately. In the early 19th century, one Maryland politician, lamenting his countrymen’s increasing love of “public shows and spectacles,” warned: “History records that the declining days of the Roman republic, upon which the throne of the Caesars was erected, was attended by banquets and revels, and marked by the exhibition of rhetoricians and gladiators.” The occasion of debauchery and depravity that inspired this outburst was, naturally, the 1817 inauguration of President James Monroe.

There’s one warning sign from ancient Rome’s history, though, that everybody, past and present, seems to have ignored. The juggernaut of Roman conquest stalled in only two places. One, of course, was along the Rhine, where warlike German tribes held the course of empire in check. The other place was the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, or ancient Mesopotamia — roughly, modern Iraq.

For centuries, one would-be conqueror after another marched his legions into the east, only to return in disgrace, or not at all. A few decades before Diocletian, there lived a Roman emperor named Valerian, a man from a fine old senatorial family. His army was annihilated not far east of the Euphrates.

Valerian was taken as a captive back to the enemy capital, where the Persian king, according to one ancient historian, amused himself by using the Roman emperor as a footstool for mounting his horse. When the erstwhile master of the known world finally died, his skin was stuffed with straw as a trophy.

Adam Goodheart is director of Washington College’s C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
***

[Zysyewgg]

Not all that ludicrous ...Perhaps "Emperor" would be more fitting (although it basically means the same thing) ...Which brings to mind the following ...

Wrapped in the Star-Spangled Toga


***

There is a clear and distinct difference between Hugo Chavez and the President of the United States. Hugo Chavez operates in a moral and lawless vacuum with principles that go something like this "Whatever it takes to stay in power". While President Bush has to abide by many rules and laws designed to limit his power, Chavez simply gave himself the power to rule by decree.

America was always an expansionist power, read "Manifest Destiny" and almost every president has been an expansionist president. But America is a liberal republic that holds human life sacred above all else. Whatever you might say about it, it's the only "Empire" in history that respects human life.

We should be so lucky to have the American "empire" live as long as there's an Earth for us to inhabit. Because the Chinese empire or a Iranian Empire or Russian empire wouldn't place the same value to human life as we do.

The Roman Empire was a period in human history that provided us with great examples of power and civic lessons. It showed us exactly the evil of dictators and the good of rule of law and separation of powers. It's only natural that America values the symbols and lessons of the Roman period.

[parurorges]

Moderator Note:

The name change for this thread which now includes the possessive "Venezuela's" (rather than the simple "Venezuela") does NOT show up when searching "Venezuela".

To a facilitate a beneficial search could it be changed to read ...

"Venezuela and Its Foreign Policy via Hugo Chavez"

A note in the "Search" thread (or somewhere appropriate) regarding the use of plural / possessive forms and how that effects a search wold also be helpful.

Thanks,
L1

[zoneouddy]

... America is a liberal republic that holds human life sacred above all else. Whatever you might say about it, it's the only "Empire" in history that respects human life.

In words, yes ...

But check your history ... it's never been that simple nor that clear.