We’ve been watching F22’s flying in and out of Homestead air base in the past weeks, and wondering what they are doing. I always wonder where the fighters are going when I watch them take off and wonder where they’ve been when they come back. It’s fascinating to me to listen to and watch them come and go.

From the BBC:

Venezuela has denounced an alleged violation of its airspace by an American military aircraft.

Defence Minister Gustavo Rangel said the jet had been tracked by country’s air defences over the Venezuelan-owned island of Orchila on Saturday.

He said the US ambassador would be summoned to provide an explanation.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of Washington, has in the past accused the US administration of destabilising his country.

Mr Rangel told a news conference that the US aircraft “practically flew over” Orchila and another Venezuelan island before turning back.

“We ordered the airplane to identify itself,” he added.

“We have recorded proof of the conversation between ground control in Venezuela and the aircraft pilot.”

The minister said the incident was “the latest step in a series of provocations” by the US.

Asked about the accusation, US embassy spokeswoman Robin Holzhauer told the Associated Press news agency: “We’re looking into any possible accidental incursion of Venezuelan airspace.”

By Sibylla Brodzinsky
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Venezuela’s leftist leader is now working to release the 45 hostages, including three Americans, held in Colombia.

Bogotá, Colombia - Juan Sebastián Lozada tries not to get his hopes up too high. His mother has been a hostage of Colombia’s leftist rebels for six years, one of 45 pawns in a deadlocked political game between the government and guerrillas.

Time and again, Mr. Lozada and the families of other captives (including three Americans) have seen their dreams of being reunited with their loved ones dashed. A string of international diplomats, church officials, and local personalities have failed to broker a deal for the hostages in exchange for the release of jailed guerrillas.

But there’s a new player in the game now. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has offered to mediate between the government of conservative President Álvaro Uribe and the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). So Lozada’s hopes are up again. “This is a huge step, for Chávez to become involved,” says Lozada.

During the past two weeks, the charismatic, left-leaning Venezuelan leader has held a bilateral summit on the issue with Mr. Uribe, the FARC has agreed to meet with Chávez in Caracas, and he has visited the families of the hostages and families of rebel prisoners. Most significantly, the FARC appear open to the idea of holding formal negotiations in the neighboring country.

But Chávez knows making concrete progress won’t be easy. “People tell me that I’ve gotten myself into a mess. I don’t care. If I had to go to hell and back to achieve peace in Colombia, I would go,” Chavez said in Caracas Saturday after returning from a one-day visit to Bogotá.

Among the captives held by the FARC are three Americans who were working for Northrop Grumman Corp. on a drug surveillance mission when their plane crashed in 2003. Also being held are former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship, Colombian governors, senators, and 37 police and military officers. Some have been languishing in hostage camps for nearly a decade.

read more HERE

By ROGER HERNANDEZ
from NorthJersey.com

I know Sean is purposely pissing off the administration by cuddling up with the likes of Chavez and Castro. He’s also passionate about these topics and is a damn good writer - JS

Sean Penn spent last week playing journalist in Venezuela. He was in the company of Hugo Chávez, a man with such abiding respect for journalism that he tries to shut down any news operation critical of his move toward tyranny.

Chávez did manage to shut down RCTV, the country’s oldest and most popular television network, by denying the renewal of its broadcast license. RCTV then switched to cable. And now Chávez is trying to close it down there, too.

But for now RCTV is still in operation, even if with a greatly reduced audience and under threat. Its status is indicative of where Venezuela is under Chávez: a nation whose democratic forces sometimes win and sometimes lose in a struggle to prevent a president from governing with unrestricted powers and without public challenges to his policies.

How much of that is going to end up in whatever story Sean Penn writes?

Penn claimed that he was in Venezuela to take in what was going on and then write about it. Nothing wrong with that, ostensibly. It’s what journalists do. He even tried to play I’m-not-a-movie’star.

read more HERE

Damascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.

In cooperation with Syria, the Venezuelan government is also planning to build an olive oil and a textiles factory. A joint Syrian-Venezuelan commission will in May review progress on bilateral projects.

Al-Assad is due to make a “historic” visit to Venezuela in July, Venezuela’s foreign ministry announced. The trip is to “accelerate the development of several bilateral cooperation accords,” Bolivia’s state news agency reports.

Maduro will on Wednesday and Thursday attend a meeting of an VenDamascus, 6 March (AKI) - Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro is this week visiting Syria and Iran with the aim of firming up several bilateral projects, as Venezuela’s leftwing president Hugo Chavez continues to strengthen ties with the likeminded anti-American states. In meetings with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Maduro will discuss a planned 1.5 billion dollar oil refinery to be built with Syrian, Venezuelan and Iranian capital, as well as other projects.

Read more at Global Research

Ahhhhh this one must really piss off Cheney and Bush and their oil buds.

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez ordered by decree on Monday the takeover of oil projects run by foreign oil companies in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region.

Chavez had previously announced the government’s intention to take a majority stake by May 1 in four heavy oil-upgrading projects run by British Petroleum PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total SA and Statoil ASA.

He said Monday that has decreed a law to proceed with the nationalizations that will see state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, taking at least a 60 percent stake in the projects.

“The privatization of oil in Venezuela has come to an end,” he said on his weekday radio show, “Hello, President.” “This marks the true nationalization of oil in Venezuela.”

By May 1, “we will occupy these fields” and have the national flag flying on them, he said.

Read more at YahooNews

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.

Read more at the New York Times

It’s nice when countries can come together and form a unity in times of worldly turmoil. It’s a God-damn shame that the U.S. (hijacked by Bushco) is the prime instigator of said turmoil.

Venezuela, Iran to finance opposition to U.S.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — fiery anti-American leaders whose moves to extend their influence have alarmed Washington — said Saturday they would help finance investment projects in other countries seeking to thwart U.S. domination.

The two countries had previously revealed plans for a joint $2 billion fund to finance investments in Venezuela and Iran, but the leaders said Saturday the money would also be used for projects in friendly countries throughout the developing world.

“It will permit us to underpin investments … above all in those countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the [U.S.] imperialist yoke,” Chavez said.

“This fund, my brother,” the Venezuelan president said, referring affectionately to Ahmadinejad, “will become a mechanism for liberation.”

“Death to U.S. imperialism!” Chavez said.
…

Chavez and Ahmadinejad have been increasingly united by their deep’seated antagonism toward the Bush administration. Chavez has become a leading defender of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, accusing the Washington of using the issue as a pretext to attack Tehran.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has called Chavez “the champion of the struggle against imperialism.”

Source: CNN.com

Great read here…..

By Pepe Escobar

Dig that red VW Beetle showing up this past Sunday morning at a Caracas barrio. Behind the wheel is none other than Hugo Chavez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (as it has been officially designated since 1999), global South working-class hero and scourge of the Washington Consensus, on his way to one more red-Ferrari’style landslide electoral victory.

The historical metaphor came with a Bob Dylan blowing-in-the-wind swing: while Chavez - who is seducing the global South with his attempt to prove another world system is possible - was having his mandate renewed by an overwhelming majority of voters in a free, fair, transparent election, in Santiago the aging former US-backed Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet - the ultimate, sinister Latin American dictator from central casting - was suffering a heart attack.

In the absence of credible, untainted opposition, Chavez was actually, once again, running against George W Bush. “Against the devil [George W Bush], against the Empire, vote for Hugo Chavez,” proclaimed red flags scattered all over Caracas. While Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, the top two powers in Mercosur alongside Venezuela, celebrated Chavez’ victory, no tears were shed for for Pinochet (Evita Peron was much cooler).

Continue reading at Asia Times Online

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez snubbed a U.S. overture for dialogue on Tuesday, saying he is always willing to talk but doubts Washington sincerely wants to improve relations.

Chavez, who overwhelmingly won another six-year term in elections Sunday, said if the U.S. really wants to take meaningful steps, it would halt the war in Iraq and extradite a jailed Cuban militant who is wanted in Venezuela for a 1976 airliner bombing.

“They want dialogue but on the condition that you accept their positions,” Chavez said at his first news conference since Sunday’s vote.

“If the government of the United States wants dialogue, Venezuela will always have its door open,” he said. “But I doubt the U.S. government is sincere.”

Read more at Chron.com

Chavez: New ‘defeat for the devil’

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) — Anti-American socialist Hugo Chavez said his claimed victory in the Venezuelan presidential election was “another defeat for the devil” after the bulk of returns showed him leading challenger Manuel Rosales by a wide margin.

With 78 percent of the votes counted by Sunday night, the National Electoral Council reported Chavez leading Rosales by a margin of 61 percent to 38 percent. Rosales, a provincial governor from the country’s oil patch, conceded defeat late Sunday but disputed the margin of his loss.
…
An outspoken opponent of U.S. policies in Latin America, Chavez was seeking a second full term as leader of oil-rich Venezuela. He was first elected in 1998, re-elected under a new constitution in 2000 and survived a recall attempt by opponents in 2004.

“It’s another defeat for the devil, who tries to dominate the world,” Chavez told his adoring masses. “Down with imperialism! We need a new world!”
…
The 52-year-old former paratrooper, once jailed for leading a coup attempt himself, has bolstered ties with Cuba and supported other leftist leaders in South America during his presidency.

And in September, Chavez rankled U.S. officials by telling the U.N. General Assembly — a day after President Bush addressed the session — that “The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today.”

Article here

Going to be an exceptionally bad day at the White House… or Crawford… someplace. I can hear the teeth gnashing now.