President Hugo Chavez said the U.S. ambassador has 72 hours to leave Venezuela and that he’s recalling his ambassador from Washington.

By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez said the U.S. ambassador has 72 hours to leave Venezuela and that he’s recalling his ambassador from Washington.

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Chavez said Thursday night that he is asking U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy to leave in part to show solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expelled Washington’s envoy in La Paz.

“They’re trying to do here what they were doing in Bolivia,” Chavez said.

“That’s enough … from you, Yankees,” he said, using an expletive.

The socialist leader said Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, would return to the U.S. “when there’s a new government in the United States.”

The move by Chavez brings relations with Washington to a new low and raises questions about whether the diplomatic clash could eventually hurt trade. Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States, which is the country’s No. 1 client.

Chavez announced the decision during a televised speech, hours after saying his government had detained a group of alleged conspirators in a plot to overthrow him.

Chavez accused the group of current and former military officers of trying to assassinate him with backing from the United States. He didn’t offer evidence.

U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Chavez’s accusations that Washington has backed plots against him.

Asked about Chavez’s remarks, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Jennifer Rahimi said: “We saw the speech and we’re investigating, but we haven’t seen anything official.”

Chavez warned last month that Duddy could soon be “packing his bags” after the diplomat lamented that U.S. and Venezuelan officials have not been cooperating in the war on drugs.

Duddy has said that deteriorating diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington were giving drug smugglers the upper hand.

Debate Not Relate

By

Jamie Lee Curtis

The scariest thing I hear about the Palin nomination was that she would appeal to voters because they would be able to relate to her and she to them. I get that. There are many places where relatability is key. I am a recovering addict alcoholic and finding another group that relates to my struggles is/was key to my sobriety. When I am at school I find myself grouping with others whose kids share the same issues, interests. People tell me all the time that the More magazine article where I showed what my real body looked like in comparison to the air brushed images most women are fed, was important and made me relatable. That too is great. The problem is I may be relatable and share some of your experiences and concerns but you don’t want me as president of United States. Relatability gets you nothing in a complex financial crisis. Relatability doesn’t help you understand the Gordian knot of trouble in the Middle East. Relatability doesn’t help you untangle the obscenity which is our health care and insurance system and relatability doesn’t train the hundreds of thousands of new teachers and repair and rebuild the smashed infrastructure and schools where they work.

Venezuelan Journalist a Target of Violence and Threats: Marta Colomina is “Caracas Nine” Dissident #4

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NEW YORK (August 26, 2008) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) released a report today detailing the case of Marta Colomina, a Venezuelan journalist and academic who has faced death threats and several attempts on her life over the past five years. Her case exposes the Venezuelan government’s persecution of independent journalists and continued assault on freedom of expression. Colomina is the fourth case in HRF’s Caracas Nine campaign.

Colomina, who has worked for both state and privately-owned media outlets and served as a professor and an administrator for the past 40 years at one of Venezuela’s largest universities, has been the subject of intimidation and threats for her outspoken criticism of the policies of the government of Hugo Chávez. Colomina was one of the four female journalists who initially exposed the links between the Venezuelan government and the FARC.

OAS Head Faulted for Inaction

OAS Head Faulted for Inaction
Insulza Allows Human Rights Violations – HRF

NEW YORK (August 20, 2008 ) —The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) launches the “Inter-American Democratic Charter and Mr. Insulza” program today with an open letter to José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), decrying his unwillingness to enforce the charter’s mandate to protect democracy in the Americas. HRF will send monthly digests to Insulza detailing violations of human rights and democracy in the continent, with the hope that the secretary general will take note and do his job.

The letter, cosigned by HRF President Thor Halvorssen and Chairman Armando Valladares, observes that under Insulza’s watch at the OAS, the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have acted in clear violation of the democratic principles set forth in the Charter.

Such violations include infringements on fundamental rights, ranging from freedom of the press and expression to freedom from torture and tyranny – the shutting down of an independent television station in Venezuela and the recent state take-over of media in Ecuador; the government-sanctioned lynchings and political violence that have resulted in 40 deaths in Bolivia; the obliteration of judicial independence in Venezuela and Bolivia and the dissolution of the congress in Ecuador; and political persecution in all three countries.

The letter reminds Insulza that on September 11, 2001, every nation in the Americas approved the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document that recognizes the need to defend democracy not only from unelected dictatorships but also from popularly-elected governments on the continent. The democratic clause found in Article 20 of the charter establishes a formal response mechanism that the OAS secretary general may initiate when democracy in a member state is under threat.

CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THE PEOPLE OF VENEZUELA

The U.S. Conference of Mayors
76th Annual Meeting
June 20-24, 2008
Miami

2008 ADOPTED RESOLUTIONS

CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THE PEOPLE OF VENEZUELA

WHEREAS, Articles 23, 24 and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights govern the Right to Participate in Government, the Right to Equal Protection, and the Right to Judicial Protection; and

WHEREAS, Article 23 of said Convention, “Right to Equal Protection, ” states that every citizen shall enjoy the right and opportunity “to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives”; “to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the voters”; “to have access, under general conditions of equality, to the public service of his country;”, and that, “The law may regulate the exercise of the rights and opportunities referred to in the preceding paragraph only on the basis of age, nationality, residence, language, education, civil and mental capacity, or sentencing by a competent court in criminal proceedings”; and

Schwarzenegger and McCain Lead America’s Yacht Party

Venezuela’s desperate housewives

Venezuelan armed forces are patrolling the streets of Sabaneta in President Hugo Chavez’s home state of Barinas after crowds looted a warehouse used to stockpile basic food items sold in the government-run Mercal grocery store chain.

Mercal The episode is an embarrassment for Chavez, whose brother is Sabaneta’s mayor, and highlights public rage over the ongoing shortages of milk, pasta, chicken, cooking oil, tuna and other basic foodstuffs.

Local authorities declined to estimate how many tons of goods were stolen but said some 200 uniformed police and military personnel were guarding local stores.

Mayor Chavez told the El Nacional newspaper, apparently with a straight face, that the United States and “its henchmen” were responsible for the looting.

Looters “broke in violently and demanded milk,” town council chief Helena Angulo told Reuters. “They took everything.”

She made no apparent reference to gringo malevolence. Economists blame scarcities on Chavez’s price controls that have made staples uneconomical for farmers to produce.

— Chris Kraul in Caracas

Karl Rove, The White House And The Rule Of Law

If this were happening in our homeland countries (Argentina, Venezuela, Chile or Brazil); would be understandable. But it is happening in the land that is supposed to flag for the democracy, human rights, civil and criminal laws and systems working for you.

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Today was the deadline for a Judiciary Committee subpoena issued to Karl Rove, demanding his appearance before the Committee to testify on his role in the politicization of the Department of Justice and the politically selective prosecutions of Democrats. Unfortunately, Mr. Rove chose not to show up.

The claim that Mr. Rove and the White House make is that high-level aides to the president are totally immune from compelled congressional testimony. Not that there are certain subjects they cannot discuss in a public hearing, nor that the White House has a right to review questions that are asked, but that they are in a class entirely by themselves — a separate group that is above the reach of a subpoena and, consequently, above the law.

Over the past 18 months, congressional inquiries have uncovered a level of politicization that runs the breadth of the administration and profoundly threatens one of the core elements of our democracy — equal justice under law. We have seen it in the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys for partisan political purposes, in the hiring practices at the Justice Department, and apparently in the politically selective prosecution of Democrats like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Thorough investigation of these abuses of power requires that Congress get answers from the Executive Branch. By ignoring the Judiciary Committee subpoena, Karl Rove and the White House once again showed their utter disregard for our system of checks and balances, for Congress as a co-equal branch of government, and ultimately for the American people.

The question that now confronts the Judiciary Committee and, ultimately, the full House of Representatives, is what action to take in the face of such blatant defiance of the rule of law. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I am considering all options. Regardless of the path we take, the end result must be the same: the full restoration of our Constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no one — not Karl Rove and not the president — is above the law.

Four Reconciliations

The pattern is clear. Words of reconciliation are followed by surprise attacks. What’s being offered looks like a peace pipe but is probably a stiletto

BY MICHAEL ROWAN
SPECIAL ARTICLE FOR EL UNIVERSAL
Caracas, Tuesday June 17 , 2008

Four times in over nine years President Chavez has appeared to reconcile with his enemies but each time he was preparing to attack.

In 1999, after a bitter and polarizing campaign where he demonized the opposition, Chavez delivered a grand inaugural speech about the horrors of poverty especially among the beggar children in the streets, and 90% of Venezuelans favored his presidency. But later he went on to issue 47 controversial edicts that dictated his control over public and private life and his popularity plummeted.

In April, 2002, arrested by his own military and returned to the presidency after two days of chaos, Chavez said he had made a mistake in not negotiating with the striking PDVSA workers, which had led to huge demonstrations, the shootings, and ultimately his arrest. But then he went on to fire 18,000 PDVSA workers and to deny many of them citizen services and civil rights.

In 2006, faced with opposition abstention in the national assembly election of the previous December, which made him look like a dictator de facto in a world where he was trying to look like the antidote to war, poverty and terrorism, he convinced the opposition to participate in what he promised would be a transparent, fair presidential election. But then he spent billions of dollars in political handout money, threatened government and military employees to vote red or lose their jobs, and commanded a 22-to-1 communications advantage over opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales.

And today, in 2008, with many in the world now convinced that his government is mixed up with the FARC, terrorism, money-laundering, illegal arms-dealing and secret uranium transfers to Iran, all to the frustration of Venezuela’s military traditions, he has rescinded the Getsapo edict, thrown the FARC to the wolves, and announced a new partnership with the private sector that has been disappearing because of his government’s nationalist-socialist economic policies.

The pattern is clear. Words of reconciliation are followed by surprise attacks. What’s being offered looks like a peace pipe but is probably a stiletto.
michaelrowan22@gmail.com

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