Another celebrity romance falls to pieces:

By Guy Adams

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

He’s crossed swords, over the years, with all the usual right-wing suspects, from car-makers to gun owners to Wall Street executives, health companies, and George W Bush. Now Michael Moore has picked a fight with a hero of the international left.

The documentary-maker has caused outrage among Hugo Chavez’s supporters by using a late-night chat show to tell a humorous anecdote about meeting Venezuela’s socialist President in a luxury hotel suite during the recent Venice Film Festival.

His two-minute yarn, told to ABC host Jimmy Kimmel earlier this month, seemed harmless enough. Moore alleged that he and his wife had been woken at 2am by a racket coming from Mr Chavez’s room and ventured upstairs to ask him to quieten down.

“A bottle and a half of tequila later,” Moore claimed, he had helped the President to write the speech he recently delivered to the UN. “At the very least, the guy owes me a year’s worth of free gasoline!” he joked.

But there was a problem with the story. A big one. The meeting that Moore so confidently described never happened. And tequila certainly wasn’t consumed: Mr Chavez is teetotal.

The duo did meet in Venice, but only in the daytime. Moore, in town to launch his new film, Capitalism, sat with Mr Chavez, who was there to promote Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border, for three hours. The US press were excluded from the meeting.

Supporters of Mr Chavez now suspect that Moore fabricated his anecdote to gloss over the chummy nature of that encounter. They have taken to the airwaves in a Monty Python-style PR offensive, to accuse Moore of betraying a supposed comrade.

“Michael Moore is a most unfortunate coward,” declared blogger Eva Golinger. She dubbed him “the worst of yellow journalists, a liar and storyteller on the big screen”, and said his yarn was “offensive and insulting” and a clear sign of his “hypocrisy and lack of ethics”. Franz JT Lee, a Marxist academic and blogger, claimed that the film-maker’s comments were “part of the United States’ ‘war of ideas’” against Venezuela, and said similar “propaganda” led to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

They didn’t just spark outrage on the left, though. Critics of Mr Chavez have called the level of invective against Moore – some of which was aired on Venezuelan state television – disproportionate. They believe his anecdote was intended to be a harmless, tongue-in-cheek joke. The socialist movement failed to grasp the nuances of his intended irony, they claim, because they lack a sense of humour.

Quite what the affair says about the integrity of Moore and his documentaries remains to be seen. The film-maker has declined to comment or apologise for misleading TV viewers, save for a brief message posted on his Twitter feed on Monday: “For the record, the President of Venezuela doesn’t drink.”

To go along with this break up, Moore’s office responded to Guy Adams’ article. Below is the following exchange of emails, according to Mr. Adams (to be updated, I’m sure):

Less than hour after that article had appeared on our internet site, I got an email from Mr Moore’s office. It is printed below (with email addresses and phone numbers redacted). My reply to that email is also carried in full.

“Hamdan, Basel” *****@michaelmoore.com 28/10/2009 00:49
To: “g.adams@independent.co.uk”
cc: “Weinrib, Eric”
Subject: Michael Moore

Hi Guy,

I’m Basel Hamdan, a producer in Michael Moore’s office. There is something inaccurate in the below piece:

The long meeting did, in fact, occur extremely late in the evening. I’m not sure who told you otherwise (daytime), but they are wrong. I was present, as was my colleague Eric Weinrib (cc’d).

Could you please correct the piece, if not retract it, as you use the time of day to question the veracity of the story. Please get back to me soon – we don’t want this falsehood to spread…

Thanks,
Basel Hamdan

———————
Basel Hamdan
Dog Eat Dog Films
Producer
231-922-**** X240

Guy Adams/Editorial/Independent News and Media 28/10/2009 02:02
To: “Hamdan, Basel”
cc: “Weinrib, Eric”
Subject: Re: Michael Moore

Hi Basel

It feels a little rich to be castigated for a very minor inaccuracy, given the extent of the whopper that Mr Moore has apparently told!

I will, however, happily clarify that element of the piece – on one condition.

In the interest of giving our readers a full and accurate picture of what actually went on, I would like either Mr Moore, or someone in his office, to offer an on-the-record explanation as to why he went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and claimed to have both drunk tequila with Mr Chavez and written a significant portion of his speech to the UN.

Provided you’re able to do this (and it would surely represent staggering hypocrisy if you were not) then I will of course make the correction you desire.

Yours
Guy

Guy Adams
Los Angeles Correspondent
The Independent

+1 310 396 ****

So, what happened? Well it may not surprise you to hear that I am still waiting for Mr Moore to agree to my request.

He is, we must therefore assume, happy to broadcast what appear to be substantive lies about someone, without ever explaining, apologizing or issuing proper clarification.

However journalists who write about him are expected to immediately correct any slight – and, I might add, alleged – inaccuracy in their piece, however minor. They are even invited to retract the entire article.

Mr Moore expects, therefore, to apply one rule for himself, and another for everyone else. This is surely the essence of hypocrisy. I can’t speak for what this tells us about his journalistic technique, or the reliability of his very moving documentaries. But (at risk of sounding like a tosser) I fear that it speaks volumes about his sense of entitlement.

UPDATE – Wednesday, 2pm GMT

Mr Moore’s office have emailed with what journalists among you will recognise as the “Alastair Campbell” response…

“Hamdan, Basel” *****@michaelmoor
Subject RE: Michael Moore

You are clearly not a journalist, so we will take the matter up with your editors.

Oh, that is just sooo rich!

Love at First Sight
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) greets Venezualan President Hugo Chavez in Tehran July 29, 2006. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN)

Last November, MataHarley mentioned about how Russia was planning to help Hugo Chavez build a nuclear energy program. Of course, like the typical power-hungry dictator that he is, all he claims to want is to acquire nuclear power for clean energy and peaceful medical purposes.

At this point, they are still in the planning stages, with Chavez explaining, “not to worry, folks”:

“I say it before the world: Venezuela is going to start the process of developing nuclear energy, but we’re not going to make an atomic bomb, so don’t be bothering us afterward … (with) something like what they have against Iran,” Chavez said Sunday.

The socialist president is closely allied with Iran and defends its nuclear program while the U.S. and other countries accuse Tehran of having a secret nuclear weapons program.

What, what, whaaaat?! Countries accusing Tehran of ambitions to deceive the “international community” on nuclear programs? No way!

Iran’s deception (no surprises there) and the failure of the international community to curb its nuclear ambitions, is inspiring the Viper of Venezuela to emulate the defiance of Iran. Equally troubling, is news of nuclear collaboration by this budding “Axis of Unity“:

the label that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez have themselves chosen for their alliance. The rise of this partnership, according to Morgenthau, dates from Ahmadinejad’s election as president of Iran in 2005. At that point, said Morgenthau, what had been relatively routine ties between the two countries “changed dramatically.”

Over the past four years, the two despotic rulers have exchanged multiple visits, struck extensive military and business deals between their two countries, supported each other in cultivating policies and practices hostile to the U.S. and introduced each other to like-minded actors in their respective regions of Latin America and the Middle East.

Morgenthau cited reports that Iran has been building and running mysterious factories in parts of Venezuela so remote that they lack such basic amenities as restaurants and grocery stores. He added that since 2006, Iran has been embedding advisers with the Venezuelan military–which has thrown out its old U.S. army field manual and replaced it with instructions in asymmetric warfare as taught to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-backed terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran has also opened a bank in Venezuela, the Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, or BID. With Iran already under a long list of U.S. sanctions, as well as under a number of targeted sanctions by the United Nations, the U.S. Treasury last October added the BID to its blacklist. But Venezuela itself is under no broad sanctions. Its banks enjoy access to the U.S. financial system. Morgenthau warned that this is a “perfect” sanctions-busting setup for Venezuela to help Iran process dollar-denominated purchases of materials needed for making missiles, nuclear weapons and roadside bombs.

Morgenthau highlighted two investigations, publicly announced by his office this past year, that have uncovered “a pervasive system of deceitful and fraudulent practices employed by Iranian entities to move money all over the world without detection.”

One of these investigations, for which Morgenthau said further results may be announced within the next 30 days, already led to a deferred prosecution agreement this January. In that instance, a British bank, Lloyd’s TSB, agreed to $350 million in fines and forfeitures for stripping out details that would have identified as illegal more than $300 million worth of Iranian transactions running through the U.S. financial system. Another investigation led to the indictment this spring of a Chinese company, LIMMT, and its manager, Li Fang Wei, for using aliases and shell companies to get around U.S. sanctions meant to block payments involved in “shipment of banned missile, nuclear and so-called dual-use materials to subsidiaries of the Iranian Defense Industries Organization.”

Morgenthau warned that “based on information developed by my office, the Iranians with the help of Venezuela are now engaged in similar economic and proliferation sanctions-busting schemes.”

The international body seems adept at issuing “serious threats”, “harsh warnings”, “strong reprimands”, with military action (although unstated) off the tables. The IAEA appears inept at preventing illegal nuclear proliferation. Sanctions did not deter the nuclear ambitions of Saddam; nor have they deterred North Korea or Iran- the other two nations in President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” triumvirate. Nations undermined sanctions against Saddam by doing business with the Butcher of Baghdad.

The most chilling line in Morgenthau’s talk is hypothetical. But set amid a wealth of detail about mysterious factories, disturbing shipments, covert illicit finance and shared interests of “two of the world’s most dangerous regimes”–by which he meant Iran and Venezuela–it sounds like no idle comment. Morgenthau noted that Venezuela’s location “Is ideal for building and storing weapons of mass destruction far away from Middle Eastern states threatened by Iran’s ambition and from the eyes of the international community.”

This is a different picture from the congeniality implied by President Barack Obama’s handshake with Chavez in April at a Summit of the Americas.

So why is Morgenthau going out on a limb to sound the alarm? He’s no Republican cowboy. He’s a Democrat, whose credentials include a ringing endorsement of President Obama’s pick of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor when he testified at her confirmation hearings in July. Now 90 years old, still spry, but planning to retire at the end of December, Morgenthau as New York District Attorney has spent 34 years pounding one of America’s most vital law enforcement beats.

What this legendary DA has discovered about growing ties between Iran and Venezuela has evidently left him so concerned that he specifically asked for a Washington venue to deliver his public briefing on the subject. He spoke at a lunch at the Brookings Institution, hosted by a think-tank program called Global Financial Integrity, and The American Interest magazine. The full text of his remarks is now posted on his office’s Web site.

Morgenthau noted that his office and other law enforcement agencies “can play a small but important role” in trying to stop the flow of illicit funds, which he called “the lifeblood” of Iran’s nuclear and weapons programs. But he also spelled out that “Law enforcement in the U.S. alone is not enough to counter the threat effectively.”

That sounds like a plea to federal authorities, all the way up to President Obama, to get serious about stopping the rise of the Iranian-Venezuelan “axis of unity.” If this is to be tried via sanctions, then the going has evidently been far too slow and erratic. Morgenthau did not make a direct call for broad sanctions on Venezuela, but he certainly made a terrific case for doing so before the clock strikes midnight.

While Morgenthau was speaking in Washington, Chavez was continuing an 11-day tour that further underscores Venezuela’s fast-growing role as a hub in Latin America for interests deeply hostile to the U.S.

This included Chavez’s stopover last weekend in Iran; this was his eighth visit there since Ahmadinejad became president. This time, making no secret of a shared interest in nuclear technology, the two tyrants declared their intention of setting up an Iranian-Venezuelan “nuclear village.”

And while the U.S. administration has been pondering options such as more stringent efforts to squeeze Iran’s regime by way of sanctions on its imported gasoline, Venezuela and Iran have been forging ahead on ways to counter such measures. From Iran, Chavez announced a deal in which Venezuela later this fall would start exporting 20,000 barrels of gasoline per day to Iran.

AP News:

Iran is helping Venezuela to detect uranium deposits and initial evaluations suggest reserves are significant, the South American government said Friday _ the same day world leaders criticized the Islamic republic of secretly building a uranium-enrichment plant that could be used to make an atomic bomb.

The Economist:

The foreign-policy section of Venezuela’s “First Socialist Plan—2007-2013” (dubbed the “Simón Bolívar National Project”) assigns an “integral political alliance” with Iran, Syria, Belarus and Russia the highest priority outside the Latin American and Caribbean region. The rationale for this curious hotchpotch of alliances is the “common anti-imperialist interests” of those five countries—the imperialist in question being America.

Among the scheme’s aims is the strengthening of national defence and sovereignty. Not only the tanks but sophisticated anti-aircraft systems make up the order to Russia. Mr Chávez, a former lieutenant-colonel in Venezuela’s army, says these weapons will make it “very difficult for foreign aircraft to come and bomb us”. Having already spent at least $4.4 billion on Russian weapons, he has now secured an additional $2.2 billion credit-line from that country to lavish on more military hardware. Three submarines are among other possible purchases, press reports say.

In pursuit of his goal to “break North American imperialist hegemony”, the Venezuelan president has deployed to the full his prime asset—the country’s oil reserves. Thus Iran was promised 20,000 barrels of petrol a day, in potential defiance of sanctions advocated by America and despite Venezuela’s current problems supplying its own markets with fuel. Russia’s national oil consortium was also assigned a patch of the Orinoco heavy oil belt.

~~~

His avowed calculation is that by helping to stir up trouble for America in many places simultaneously, he can bring about the collapse of “the empire”. The regimes he is so assiduously cultivating are, by this account, the nucleus of a new world order. Although this seems far-fetched perhaps the world should start to take him a little more seriously.

Chavez clearly wants to play in the big leagues and as a counter-force to the United States.

No?

Well…check him out.

Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.

Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press).

In the book, Lloyd also said that public broadcasting should be funded through new license fees charged to the nation’s private radio and television broadcasters, and that new regulatory fees should be used to fund eight new regional FCC offices.

These offices would be responsible for monitoring political advertising and commentary, children’s educational programs, number of commercials, and content ratings of the programs.

Frequently referencing one of his heroes, left-wing activist Saul Alinsky, Lloyd claims in his book that the history of American communications policy has been one of continued corporate control of every form of communication from the telegraph to the Internet.

~~~

Government, Lloyd said in his book, is the “only” institution that can manage the communications of the public, arguing that Washington must “ensure” that everyone has an equal ability to communicate.

“The American republic requires the active deliberation of a diverse citizenry, and this, I argue, can be ensured only by our government,” he says. “Put another way, providing for the equal capability of citizens to participate effectively in democratic deliberation is our collective responsibility.”

~~~

With Alinsky as the political guide, Lloyd outlines nine “lessons” that people can draw on when trying to combat international businesses.

~~~

To combat the control of international business and restore government to what he sees as its rightful place in managing public communications, Lloyd calls for a “confrontational movement” to protest the present order and organize a political movement that could force government to rein the businesses in.

“If our republican form of government is perishing because communications – the infrastructure of that republic – is under the yoke of international business how, at last, do we save it?” he asks. “We must build a confrontational movement to reclaim our democracy, a movement committed to active and sustained protest against the present order.”

To do this, Lloyd draws on his experience lobbying the FCC during the Clinton administration, counseling would-be revolutionaries to follow the tactics used by other left-wing movements, such as the followers of Saul Alinsky and the people who ran the campaign to block Republican Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

“We understood at the beginning, and were certainly reminded in the course of the campaign,” wrote Lloyd, “that our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic or morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters ….”

“We looked to successful political campaigns and organizers as a guide, especially the civil rights movement, Saul Alinsky, and the campaign to prevent the Supreme Court nomination of the ultra-conservative jurist Robert Bork,” wrote Lloyd. “From those sources we drew inspiration and guidance.”

Oh, it get’s better:

Lloyd proposes six initial goals for wresting control of communications from the corporate interests he claims control it. As his book details:

1. “End the federal subsidy of commercial media, particularly cable and broadcast television. Broadcasters should pay for the great privileges of a federally protected license to operate a business by using the publicly owned [radio or television] spectrum.”

2. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded at a substantial level. The CPB board should be elected, [with] eight members representing eight regions of the country (New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Plains States, Southwest, Mountain States, and the Pacific Coast) and a chairman appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

“Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” said Lloyd.

“This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. … Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs. … Spectrum allocations should be established that create clear preferences for public broadcasters ensuring that regional, local, and neighborhood communities are well served,” he added.

3. “The FCC should be fully funded with regulatory fees from broadcast, cable, satellite, and telecommunications companies. The FCC should be staffed at regional offices, matching those CPB regions, at levels sufficient to monitor and enforce communication regulation.

“Clear federal regulations over commercial broadcast and cable programs regarding political advertising and commentary, educational programming for children, the number of commercials, ratings information about programs before they are broadcast, and the accessibility of services to the disabled should be established and widely promoted.”

4. “Universal service support provided by all commercial telecommunications providers (whether they are classified as information services or not) to fund access to advanced telecommunications services should be expanded to all nonprofit organizations, including higher-level academic and vocational schools, community centers, and 501(c) (3) organizations unaffiliated with either business or government.”

5. “Postal subsidies should be fully restored to small independent nonprofits presses. Postal subsidies should be reduced for commercial and business operations. The postal service should be returned to congressional control with the central mission of ensuring that all Americans have access to the post.”

6. “Public secondary schools should be required to include civics and media literacy as part of their core curriculum. Testing on civic, media, and computer literacy should be required and national standards set.”

For those who think any or all of these recommendations might infringe on the free speech rights of broadcasters, Lloyd says his concern is not the “exaggerated” concerns over the First Amendment.

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press,” he said. “This freedom is all too often an exaggeration.

And just today Glenn Beck aired some footage of Lloyd speaking about the great change that happened in Venezuela with the dictator Chavez coming to power:

In Venezuela, with Chavez, really a incredible revolution. A dramatic revolution. To begin to put into place saying that we’re going to have impact on the people of Venezuela.

The property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media rebelled, work frankly with folks here in the US government, worked to oust him and came back and had another revolution and Chavez started to take the media very seriously in this country.

Get that? The “property owners” didn’t want a dictator, didn’t want Communism, and that’s bad. Our government even helped them fight against Communism but Chavez, Lloyd’s hero, came back fighting and took over the media…..which is a good thing to our new FCC czar.

He is completely opposed to any privately owned communications.

Read that again.

He want’s a government takeover of our media!

Here’s Glenn with Seton Motley:

Where is the MSM? Why are they not freaking out? Hell, this guy just said that freedom of speech is “exaggerated.”

But the left and the MSM hide.

“Now more than ever I will be the first one out the door,” Honduran Pedro Martinez told Canada Free Press tonight. Pedro Martinez is the pseudonym we gave to the young Honduran professional that Canada Free Press (CFP) walked through Twitter hookup last week.

“Tomorrow might be a bad day,” Pedro tipped off CFP on twitter. “People are infiltrating Honduras thru (sic) Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua with the intention to create chaos.”

It was only yesterday that ousted Chavez bud, and treasonous ex-President of Honduras threatened bloodshed to regain power, while speaking from neighboring Nicaragua.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya gave his rival, Roberto Micheletti, one week to step down, saying he was prepared to risk bloodshed to recapture the presidency, which he lost on June 28.

~~~

Zelaya and Micheletti’s negotiating teams are expected to resume talks in Costa Rica on Saturday. But if those talks do not produce results, Zelaya said he would pay ”any cost” to reclaim the presidency.

“Let me come back – me with the people and you with your bayonets,” he said. “And instead of shooting innocent kids, shoot me.”

As Alec Rawls noted in an FA Reader Post on July 5th, Chavez has been strutting his stuff, making noises about invasion. If Zelaya is looking for a partner in bloodshed, he has no farther to look than the man who helped him print up the illegal ballots for an illegal referendum, and the Chavez minions who were among Zelaya’s back up when he stormed a Honduras Air Force base to recollect those confiscated ballots. It was then Zelaya was escorted out of the country.

Chavez has been laying some pretty convincing groundwork for an invasion… labeling the Honduras situation as “explosive” on Sunday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the political situation in Honduras is “explosive,” and some members of the Central American country’s military may take action to restore deposed President Manuel Zelaya.

~~~

“The situation is an explosive situation,” Chavez said today during his Sunday television program “Alo, Presidente.” “Don’t be surprised if a patriotic current comes out” of the military, he said.

Chavez said U.S. President Barack Obama should take control of the “Yankee empire,” which he said includes the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency. The socialist Venezuelan leader said the “empire” was behind Zelaya’s overthrow on June 28 because Honduras was strengthening ties with Chavez.

“The new specter that the bourgeoisie and the Yankee empire have invoked throughout the continent isn’t socialism and isn’t communism, it’s Chavismo,” he said, referring to a label used to describe Chavez’s ideology.

Apparently it doesn’t matter to the lefist one that Obama has not only sided with Chavez, but actually meddled in Honduras’ affairs prior to Zelaya’s ouster. Even the Eunuch in Chief can serve as a convenient “Great Satan” patsy.

Within 24 hours of Chavez’s thinly veiled threats, he was demanding Obama remove “gringo” US troops from the Honduran US airbase.

“If the U.S. really was against the coup it would have already withdrawn its troops from the Palmerola military base,” Chavez said in his Sunday TV program, Hello President.

The U.S., which has repeatedly condemned the coup, has some 350 soldiers deployed at an airbase in Honduras.

“Obama, pull your gringo soldiers out of Honduras, deprive the rebels of aid, freeze their accounts, stop giving them visas, and you will see how their rule ends,” Chavez went on.

In response to the increased chatter of threats, a curfew has been reimposed in Honduras from midnight to 5AM.

But the Hondurans aren’t easily intimidated.

Zelaya’s ultimatum to the interim government ordering it to relinquish power within the week and the demands for his immediate restitution has only raised the peoples’ dander.

People like Pedro expect only the worst from Zelaya.

This is a sturdy resistance that predates the July 28 bum’s rush, and one that sees Zelaya as a dictator who is giving their country and all it stands for over to “socialist rule under Chavez.”

“Long before the so-called coup d’etat, we watched as Chavez’s shiny new tractors were given like carnival candy to Honduran farmers,” Pedro told CFP in an earlier telephone call. “The tactics are the same ones used by Communists everywhere.”

“While his own people, whose children go hungry were out of work, Zelaya was swaggering under his 10-gallon cowboy hats and 100% tooled leather cowboy boots.

“We were told that big-spending Zelaya had been whooping it up in Costa Rica, where he blew his way through $80,000 in his first few days in exile.

“I was there at Tegucigalpa airport on July 6 when our interim government refused to let his plane touch down from Costa Rica. Zelaya and supporters, whose bullets killed my two countrymen, lied when they said the bullets came from the Interim Government side. Our side used rubber bullets. Zalaya supporters used real bullets on real people.”

Pedro, who speaks perfect English, says Zalaya “thugs” and “militants” have been threatening Honduran journalists. “We know what supermarket your wife uses. We know which school your little boy attends. That’s what they have been telling journalists,” Pedro says.

~~~

Meanwhile, Pedro and his many countrymen are in defending Honduras mode: “God bless Honduras. God bless Canada and the Free World. Nobody is going to take our Freedom and Democracy away. Nobody.”

Sounds like some old fashioned American spirit is alive and well… even if not in our borders.

I wish the Hondurans well… and very much hope a naive POTUS with misplaced loyalties does not hamstring our troops to aid in their defense.

This is not just some planned military exercise that has been canceled. Honduras is a close military ally and a base of operations for the United States in Central America. We will continue to use our bases, but as of now, the Hondurans are on their own.

Obama knows better than anyone that the arrest of Zelaya was completely legal and was not a coup

When AP calls the military arrest of Zelaya a “coup,” they are just following Obama, but the Obama regime was fully informed all along of the details of Zelaya’s attempted usurpation and fought vigorously to forestall his arrest:

The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said the U.S. Embassy in Honduras was “consistently and almost constantly engaged in the last several weeks working with partners” and that U.S. officials were “in contact with all Honduran institutions, including the military.”

What were the Hondurans telling Obama? That the Honduran constitution REQUIRED the arrest of a president who tries to engineer a second term, and that it specifically empowers the Honduran Supreme Court to issue to the Honduran military an arrest warrant in such a case. Honduran Supreme Court justice Rosalinda Cruz describes how Zelaya had already started illegally shutting down checks and balances and how his arrest was immediately necessary to stop him from usurping the Honduran democracy:

“The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” said [Honduran Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz] in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.”

Cruz said the court issued a sealed arrest order for Zelaya on June 26, charging him with treason and abuse of power, among other offenses. Zelaya had repeatedly breached the constitution by pushing ahead with a vote about rewriting the nation’s charter that the court ruled illegal, and which opponents contend would have paved the way for a prohibited second term.

She compared Zelaya’s tactics, including his dismissal of the armed forces chief for obeying a court order to impound ballots to be used in the vote, with those of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“Some say it was not Zelaya but Chavez governing,” she said.

Having been “consistently and almost constantly engaged” for weeks “with all Honduran institutions,” the Obamaistas knew that Zelaya was trying to end the rule of law, yet they fought furiously against his removal, and when he was removed, dishonestly called Zelaya’s arrest “not legal“; declared Zelaya to still be the legal president of Honduras; and insisted on his immediate return to power.

OAS extended membership to communist Cuba last month

To ratchet up the pressure on Honduras, Obama is joining the call for Honduras to be ousted from the Organization of American States if it does not knuckle under to Zelaya. Exactly one month ago, the OAS voted to grant membership to the communist dictatorship in Cuba. Usurpers in. Rule of law out.

Check out AP’s picture of Hillary and Zelaya laughing over Cuba’s rehabilitation:

Actually, those should be thought balloons. Here is Zelaya’s actual commentary:

“The Cold War has ended this day in San Pedro Sula,” said Honduran President Manuel Zelaya immediately following the announcement.

Yes, we are all communists now.

UPDATE

Hugo Chávez said that he supports the return of deposed President Zelaya to Honduras by means of “a set of actions,” including contacts with military officers. Zelaya could return home “by land, air or water,” said Chávez in an address on Thursday in a state-run TV station, AFP reported.

“We are supporting his return to Honduras and we are planning several actions. (We are) contacting social leaders that are heading the resistance movements. We have contacted military leaders who disagree with what is happening in their country,” Chávez said.

If Chavez succeeds in creating violent chaos and undermining the Honduran congress and supreme court, expect Obama to continue to support Zelaya’s return to the presidency, regardless of popular opposition. Restoration of Zelaya is already Obama’s declared objective, and as with Chavez’ initial threat of to invade, Obama is saying nothing to counter this latest Chavez threat.

That’s the amazing thing. Longshot as it would be for Chavez to pull off a coup in another country, he is openly talking about it, and the United States is saying nothing in response. After Chavez’ initial threat to invade, Obama terminated cooperation with the Honduran military, so we have already left the way free for Chavez to find a violent path to power for Zelaya.

Like two peas in a pod:

In this video clip which is making the viral rounds in the Spanish-speaking online world, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez says “The rich are not human, they are animals in human form.”

Expounding on his campaign promise to promote equality, Obama assured America’s foes that the United States is no better than any third world country. “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership,” Obama said to Venezuela dictator Chavez. “There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.” He then proceeded to, once again, apologize for America’s arrogance.

Obama’s much vaunted tolerance was proudly on display as he politely endured a 50 minute anti-US diatribe from Nicaragua dictator Daniel Ortega. He then graciously, and publicly accepted a book from his new buddy, Venezuela dictator Chavez. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, a virulently anti-American book, instantly skyrocketed to #6 on Amazon.

The left is rejoicing at the apparent instant friendship between President Obama and thug Chavez, celebrating the vindication of their long-held belief that dialogue is better than war and that apologizing for America is a cool way to win friends and influence people.

Mea culpa is now official U.S. policy. In Mexico earlier last week, Obama took the occasion to blame America for all the gun violence in Mexico. Despite the fact that the report he was echoing has been thoroughly discredited, Obama stoically echoed the ‘fake but accurate’, theme made popular by the likes of (discredited) Dan Rather, (discredited Nobel prize winning author) Rigoberta Menchu, (discredited sex researcher) Kinsey…, well, you get the idea.

President Obama promised he would reach out to the rest of the world. One of his main campaign pledges was a vow to make everyone like us. Never mind that that kind of thinking is usually seen only among school kids. Obama wants us to be popular. And now we are. Just as long as we’re humble and continue kowtowing to despots.

The problem is, our new best friends are not very savory characters. From Castro to Kim Jong Il to Achmadenijad to Chavez, these guys are the school yard bullies. They routinely kill their own citizens, they impose law by fiat, they jail or kill any dissidents and generally impose their will on all citizens unfortunate enough to reside in their countries. But hey, it works for them.

Liberals, oops, progressives, hold the belief that dialogue, not guns, will cause third world dictators to realize and then remedy the error of their ways. Totally absent from their equation is any recognition of past history. Namely, the last 20 or so years that produced lots of words and dialogue yet spectacularly failed to influence or change any actions or policies.

Believing that his charm can trump reality, President Obama remains intent on changing the world. But first, America has to be brought down to size. We must acknowledge yet again the sins of our past and, like celebrities who hit bottom, apologize profusely and publicly and then enter rehab to assure the world we are, indeed, sorry.

Obama is a great communicator who convincingly tells the world what they’ve yearned to hear. Namely, that America is arrogant. And we’re sorry. And by the way, our system of, gasp, capitalism, despite being the engine that has fed the world, is flawed. And we’re sorry.

Our culture is responsible for all the world’s ills, and we’re sorry about that too. Mea culpa, mea culpa. On the bright side, now that the Obama administration has branded most conservatives as extremists and terrorists, maybe Obama will apologize to them too. Ya think?

America’s new president is well suited to displaying America’s humility. That’s because he really believes what he is saying. One need only look at his 20 year attendance at a church that preached hatred of America. One need only look at his (now former) associates, domestic terrorists Bill Dorn and wife. One need only listen to Michelle Obama’s own words on her ‘pride’ in America. One need only read Obama’s own book. America is to blame for everything wrong in the world. Case closed. Let’s move on. Oh, and we’re sorry.

When I asked my beautiful and smart, yet decidedly liberal niece, Sarah, why she voted for Obama, she thought a moment and then said, “He believes in the same things I do.” When asked to expound, she said, “Equality.”

68 million Americans voted for Obama based on the same lofty ideal. Equality, inclusion, tolerance, multiculturalism and the ‘fake but accurate’ belief that America is a racist, arrogant and imperial nation that needs to atone to the world for its sin of freedom and greatness.

The left, as exemplified by Obama, firmly believe all of life is a zero-sum game i.e.: if someone is rich, its always at the expense of the poor. A person, business or country is only successful because they hijacked success from those less fortunate. They view America as a nation of victims, oppressed by those that have the audacity to become successful and/or rich (without government help).

The 62 million Americans who didn’t vote for Obama think differently. They believe, based on history, that kowtowing to dictators is interpreted as a sign of weakness. They believe, based on reality, that all the carrots in the world will not change the minds of enemies dedicated to America’s downfall. They know from experience that accepting or rewarding bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. They know, and Reagan proved, that America’s strength, real and perceived, is the single largest factor in avoiding war with recalcitrant dictators.

Equality is a wonderful concept. But, as Laurence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) says, “Citizens of free countries are not equal. And countries where citizens are equal, are not free.” That is a reality that no amount of rhetoric or mea culpas can change. Sorry.

A kinder, gentler PotUS:

Defending his brand of world politics, President Barack Obama said Sunday that he “strengthens our hand” by reaching out to enemies of the United States and making sure that the nation is a leader, not a lecturer, of democracy.

Obama’s foreign doctrine emerged across his four-day trip to Latin America, his first extended venture to a region of the world where resentment of U.S. power still lingers. He got a smile, handshakes and even a gift from incendiary leftist leader Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and embraced overtures of new relations from isolated Cuban President Raul Castro.

“The whole notion was that if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness,” Obama said, recalling his race for the White House and challenging his critics today.

“The American people didn’t buy it,” Obama said. “And there’s a good reason the American people didn’t buy it _ because it doesn’t make sense.”

Of course Chavez and Castro would embrace Obama… why shouldn’t they be happy about this? It’s in their best interest. But are we gaining anything back in return? Is this “Obama doctrine” really a strength or a show of weakness?

Newt Gingrich on Sunday:

“This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter. Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead.”

Maybe he’d care to extend that “reaching out/turning enemies into friends” policy to non-states as well, and not just lefty dictators- er, I mean presidents (no I don’t)?

WaPo/Reuters:

Al Qaeda’s second-in-command told Muslims not to be fooled by U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies which, he said on an Islamist website on Monday, are no different to those of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

“America came to us with a new face, with which it is trying to fool us. He is calling for change, but (he aims) to change us so that we abandon our religion and rights,” Ayman al-Zawahri said in an audio recording on the website.

Zawahri said Obama’s election was an acknowledgement that Bush’s policy had failed.

“Obama did not change the image of America among Muslims…America is still killing Muslims,” said the Egyptian militant leader.

Uh huh… a country a’wash in oil and it’s profits is focusing on nuke energy. Okay… I suppose it’s possible. But somehow, I don’t get the idea the world will be any more comfortable with Chavez using a peaceful energy program to potentially mask an undercover WMD program than they are with Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

Right along with that “peaceful” nuke energy was $4 billion in Russian weaponry, fighter jets and choppers.

Bad time for the DNC and our President-elect to continue snubbing our Latin American ally, Columbia, over protectionist trade issues, don’t you think?

ISLAMABAD, Sept 20 (Reuters) – A suspected car bomb caused a huge explosion outside the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital on Saturday and the Dawn television station said at least 17 people had been killed.

A reporter at the scene told CNN that as many as 200 people were feared to be inside the building.

Television images showed flames and smoke pouring out of the hotel and bodies being carried away.

“The explosion happened as a car reached the barricade outside the hotel,” a senior police official said, adding that it appeared to have been a suicide attack.

A Reuters witness said he could see fires in at least two places in the hotel and at least 20 cars parked on the street outside had been destroyed.

Television pictures later showed flames spreading to other parts of the 290-room hotel, located close to the city centre and very popular with tourists.

Witnesses reported that ceilings in the hotel lobby and dining area had collapsed.

The attack came soon after Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, had made his first address to a joint session of parliament, pledging that Pakistan would not tolerate any infringement of its territory in the name of the fight against militants.

Zardari is close to the United States and had earlier promised to maintain nuclear-armed Pakistan’s commitment to the U.S.-led “war on terrorism”, even though it is deeply unpopular. (Reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore and Robert Birsel, Editing by Robert Hart)

Please Hopechange Man, talk to the mean al-Qaeda men.

On a side note, Pakistan went from having an Army General in charge to a lawyer.  See what happens when you put lawyers in charge of things?  Isn’t Obama a lawyer?  Maybe he can bring the bad men to America and sue them for three sheep and 72 virgins.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, has begun talks with rebel state governors in an attempt to end political turmoil that sparked violent protests last week.

Several people were killed as anti-Morales protesters battled the president’s supporters in four opposition-controlled provinces seeking greater autonomy last week.

Morales has accused the Catholic church of siding with the governors and the US, which he says is inciting protests against him.

“This may be the last chance to solve the country’s problems in peace,” warned  Mario Cossio, governor of the southern Tarija province, as he arrived for the talks in the city of Cochabamba on Thursday.

Roman Catholic church officials and international envoys, including Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organisation of American States, are to observe the talks.

Ivan Canelas, a government spokesman, said “the government thinks an accord in four or five days of continuous work is possible if there is sincere will for dialogue”.

Please Hopechange Man, go talk to them!

Interesting comment from Kazee VerBees in the above article:

As an American from the US, I am sorry for the interference of my government all over Central and South America. I am keeping an eye on the events taking place in Bolivia and the rest of the Americas, and if/when I see unjust interference by the US, I will tell everyone I know and we will protest and/or riot here in the US. Bolivia should be free from US influence (as should so many other countries around the world).

Someone definitely should go talk to him.

(CNN) — In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda’s top leader in Afghanistan vows more “large-scale” attacks against the United States and its allies.

In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies.

“We inform the forces of the Cross and their apostate agents that the Mujahedeen’s policy in the coming stage, God permitting, is going to be more major, large-scale attacks like the Kandahar prison operation, the Nuristan raid, the Sarobi ambush and Khost airport operation in which approximately 50 Americans and 100 apostates were killed and four helicopters were hit and destroyed,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid says.

Please Hopechange Man, go talk to them.

Nigerian militants say they have attacked another pipeline in their so-called “oil war” in the southern Niger Delta.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta announced Saturday that its fighters destroyed an oil pipeline run by the local branch of Royal Dutch Shell in Rivers state late Friday.

The claim has not been independently verified.

In an e-mailed statement, the group said it will continue to “nibble” every day at the oil infrastructure in Nigeria until oil exports reach zero.

Royal Dutch Shell said Saturday that it has extended a “force majeure” (declaration of uncontrollable events) on crude oil shipments from one of its terminals because of a series of recent attacks on its facilities. The “force majeure” allows the company to suspend its contractual obligations to buyers.

Fighters from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have attacked oil facilities in southern Nigeria nearly every day for the past week, cutting the country’s daily oil production by more than 100,000 barrels.

Please Hopechange Man, go talk to them.

SANNA (AFP) — The British embassy in Sanna has been closed until further notice, a British diplomat told AFP on Saturday, days after a rebel attack on the US mission killed 16 people.

“The embassy has closed its doors until further notice and has suspended all the services that it provides,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

The decision comes as the Yemeni authorities tighten security around foreign diplomatic facilities after an Al-Qaeda-linked group, the Organisation of Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack and threatened more.

Militants detonated a booby-trapped car before firing a volley of rockets at the heavily fortified US mission killing six soldiers, six assailants and four others, including an American and her Yemeni husband.

The group vowed to continue attacks “against Western interests,” Yemeni public figures and the Saudi embassy unless militants being held by Yemeni authorities were released.

Please Hopechange Man, go talk to them.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Sept. 20 (UPI) — Two staffers from Human Rights Watch were forcibly expelled from Venezuela after they issued a report critical of President Chavez, the group says.

Jose Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson were confronted by Venezuelan officials at their Caracas hotel Friday, accused of anti-state activities, taken to airport and put on a plane to Sao Paulo, Brazil, Human Rights Watch told CNN.

The confrontation came shortly after the group issued a 267-page report linking Chavez’s presidential activities with an erosion of democratic institutions in the oil-rich South American nation.

“This is the first time this has happened in the Americas,” Conor Fortune, a Human Rights Watch spokesman, told the broadcaster. “The events basically prove many of the points made in the report: that Venezuela is still a very repressive country under Chavez.”

Please Hopechange Man, we know you see eye to eye with Chavez on most everything, surely you can talk to him, no?

When asked about his plan to address this world wide silliness, Hopechange Man responded with his usual grace.

Thank you Hopechange Man, surely the Nirvana your idiot ideology seeks is on the horizon.

If we could just get past the fact that America is racist.

The Colombian Army rescued safe and sound ex presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US citizens and 11 military officers held as hostages by the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), on Wednesday announced Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.”They were rescued in an operation aimed at infiltrating the FARC first squad, the same that has held a large number of hostages for years.

Through several procedures, we also could infiltrate the FARC Secretariat. Since hostages were divided into three groups, we managed to have them gathered at one single place and then moved to the south of the country, where they would supposed to report to (new FARC top leader) Alfonso Cano,” said Santos.

Wow, FARC holding political and political hostages? How very terrorist of them.

What was it that Chavez said about FARC?

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) –Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Friday for Europe to remove from its list of terrorist organizations two Colombian groups — including FARC, the group that freed two hostages Thursday in a mission Chavez organized. During his televised State of the Union speech, Chavez — an outspoken enemy of the Bush administration — insisted Europe includes the two groups on its terror list only because of “pressure” from the United States,an which also names them on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. “I request from the governments of the continent that they will remove the FARC and the ELN,” Chavez said.

The only people clinging to the validity of chavez and his appeal to remove FART from the list of terrorist organization are John Grant and a representative of the former mayor of Macon, Ga:

Faced with shortages of food, building materials and other staples, President Hugo Chávez is intensifying state control of the Venezuelan economy through a new wave of takeovers of private companies and the creation of government-controlled ventures with allies like Cuba and Iran.

The moves come just months after voters rejected a referendum to give the president sweeping constitutional power over the economy and public institutions, leading to new accusations that Chávez is more interested in consolidating power than in fixing Venezuela’s problems.

And while he has argued that aggressive action against the private sector is needed to correct social injustices and fight soaring inflation, his critics say his moves are instead compounding those troubles.

Above are excerpts from an Int’l Herald Tribune article – Chávez tightens reins on Venezuelan economy - just a month ago. It has some disturbing rumblings of familiarity… most especially that final sentence.

Obama, the likely DNC candidate, has tax incentive proposals on his possible Oval Office desk for $50 billion into energy venture capitalist funds, $150 billion for more biofuel issues, doubling existing science and research for clean energy products, doubling existing federal funding for research on job creation, more federal workforce training programs, distressed home owners funds, quadrupling Early Head Start funding and increasing existing Head Start funding, $5 billion for transitional jobs for the low income, and creating an Affordable Housing trust fund.

And… oh yeah, all of rural America should have high speed internet. Hasn’t he heard of Directway?? And is he proposing we put a new satellite in orbit for those that those who do not have a shot at the southern skies?

Then of course, we can’t leave out the most overt large scale government creation – universal health care.

The above programs are merely a drop in the bucket for a President Obama spending frenzy, in conjunction with his merry bank of progressives leading the House and Senate. It has to be obvious even to the blissfully oblivious that Obama will be one expensive President to maintain. With cronies in charge of Congressional purse strings, what way is there to stop America from becoming a total welfare state, such as Cuba or Venezuela?

We hear little of the big spending Obama plans in the media. Instead, mesmerized by his appealing baritone, we’re to get all a’twitter about a middle class tax cut. So do we get the new x% tax cut on the amount we’re at now *with* the Bush tax cuts? Or will Obama increase our taxes by letting the Bush cuts expire, *then* give us our x% cut? Makes a difference, don’t you think? We might just come out in the wash with it all. But it sure makes for good campaign fodder amongst the true believers.

Reality is Obama’s cuts won’t mean much difference in the large scheme. The taxes to be added on for all his desired programs have yet to be tallied for the public. By the time he’s done with his socialist program reforms we will have redefined a large portion of America’s economic class – combining raised lower classes with the lowered middle class, and creating a newer, larger lower-middle class. Whether that’s good comes from where you are sitting now.

Reading thru a President Obama’s plans of a socialist USA on his website, I have to wonder just how long will it be before we see excerpts, like above, about the US and Obama instead of Chavez and Venezuela? The propositions of both leaders are eerily parallel in substance and end goals. They share the belief that the fix all for economic problems is by government seizing profits – whether by de-privatization, or by taxes – and redistributing to the masses. And certainly Obama’s youthful adulation of Frank William Marshall is just one more troublesome association to add to his other collection of raging pastors, US terrorist bombers, sleazier than usual real estate investors, and a magically, squeaky clean mortgage CEO from the financially troubled Countrywide Mortgage.

Before we step hastily into an Obama socialist quagmire, we would be wise to observe, in real time, some serious lessons from Venezuela. Chavez – despite serious financial woes – is not abandoning his Marxist dream. Instead, he continues to consolidate ultimate state power by going after productive private businesses. Even using his own version of the US’s “eminent domain” by offering some, if not low, compensation.

Still, Chávez is pressing ahead with the takeovers of companies big and small. These include Sidor, a large, Argentine-controlled steelmaker; cement companies owned by Mexican, Swiss and French investors; more than 30 sugar plantations; a large dairy products company; and a sprawling cattle estate on the southern plains.

Chávez has avoided outright confiscations of private companies, by offering some compensation, but the terms of these deals are growing increasingly contentious, with the president threatening to withhold payments. In Sidor’s case, the company had asked for up to $4 billion in compensation; Chávez is giving it $800 million.

Needless to say, Venezuelan business owners aren’t feeling comfortable these days. Even small business are feeling the pinch. From an AP article just two days ago:

Mirina Kakalanos has been forced to double prices at her family’s shoe store in the last year. Customers turn away after browsing the pumps and sandals, but Kakalanos says she has no choice.

“There is less money coming in, and more costs to cover,” said the 40-year-old mother of three, whose Greek immigrant father opened the shop after moving to Venezuela in search of a better life. Now she barely makes enough to get by.

Like most oil producing countries, the gas is cheap in Venezuela. Most consider that their birthright. But before you get too envious, that’s only a part of the story. Or, as Rory Carroll, reporting from Caracus, put in in his Jan 2008 article in the Guardian:

Venezuela, a major oil producer which introduced the subsidy as a populist measure in the 1940s, is probably the most extreme case of a gas-guzzling dream becoming a policy nightmare.

A lack of rigs and other problems has reduced the output of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, just as domestic consumption has soared to 780,000 barrels a day. The subsidy costs the government around £4.5bn annually. It also encourages a brisk trade in contraband petrol across the Colombian border, where prices are higher.

snip

Some economists call the subsidy “Hood Robin”, because it steals from the poor and gives to the rich by favouring relatively wealthy car owners above the poor who rely on public transport.

Oil revenues to the state has tripled since 2004 to $63.9 bil, and account for 50% of the nation’s budget. Chavez has also taken over the electricity and phone utilities in the name of the state. There is no doubt the palace is awash in govt cash. This should be good for a socialist nation, right?

Wrong. What Chavez didn’t pump of govt cash into his neighborly FARC terrorists, political buds, and other similar human scum, he funneled into welfare/social programs. Fresh with “free money”, the population went into a spending binge and banks increased lending… all atop the booming new car purchases (500,000 sold last year alone, population of 25.5 mil)

But time has marched on, and the fruits of socialism are coming home to roost. With massive govt constraints and constantly morphing laws, business foreign investments have fallen to record lows. There’s food shortages, high unemployment, and serious inflation. Six years after Chavez came to power, the nat’l poverty level still was standing at 37%. Historically poor, it’s not hard to understand Venezuelan’s ran amok with free cash in fist.

In a desperate attempt to fix what is, and was inevitably going to, go wrong, Chavez’s govt giveaway of oil money continues. Last month Chavez increased the minimum wage 30% (about $372 US). Still, only half of the Venezuelan’s will see that raise in wages. Including a woman selling vegetables in an open market. Yorbelis Suarez says she pays three times what she did just two months ago for her stock.

Now Chavez plays with the currency to gain the upper hand.

As prices now climb again, Chavez’s government has tried to tame the trend – issuing US$4 billion in bonds in April to absorb excess cash, enforcing price controls on basic foods and holding the currency to a fixed exchange rate. It introduced a new monetary unit in January to boost confidence in its sagging “bolivar,” and changed the way inflation is measured, incorporating data from smaller cities with less cash on hand.

The Central Bank embraced a more traditional anti-inflationary measure in March, raising interest rates on credit cards to 32 percent and on savings deposits to 10 percent to slow consumer spending.

But inflation is galloping, with rates of roughly 30 percent after running at nearly 20 percent a year earlier. And some of Chavez’s tactics have backfired.

Price caps have caused sporadic shortages, as some food producers sought other, more profitable work. And foreign exchange controls make it harder for businesses to get dollars to buy imports, driving them to buy the U.S. currency on the black market, where it has sold at times for twice the official rate – further inflating prices.

Investors complain that these restrictions – not to mention the fear that their lands or companies could be taken over by the government – are making it harder to do business in Venezuela.

It’s no historic secret that communism/socialism/Marxist regimes are short lived failures that lead to poverty for unpriviliged masses. But still some leaders persist in bucking history.

Stanford’s Terry Karls says oil booms always results in rapid growth… until they reach what she calls “absorption crunch”.

You just can’t absorb that huge influx of money properly,” Karl said. “You get problems with your prices, you get problems of supply. … All those bottlenecks slow down growth and eventually create inflation.”

And so it comes down to the very real economic unstability of socialism – internally and externally. It is a concept that only works in smaller, personal units, and where the resources are boundless. But the catch 22 is they have created a state where there is no incentive for foreign investment, and the production of Venezuala’s wealth – oil – slows. There is no incentive for private enterprise from within to increase the govt socialist network. Much easier to sit back and “take”. So the money supply is dwindling, and the consumption is rising.  As in previous historic models, the gap will only widen until ultimate failure.

If socialist principles can not work in a country with 16% of our population, and one of the 10 largest oil reserves in the world, how can we expect a socialist America to survive with our consumption, our advanced technology, and our out of control immigrant population? Especially when you consider the largest percentage of our exports is commodities like transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment? All of which require importing of oil to manufacture.

And so we come to see what well be America’s future under a President Obama, as reflected in Venezuela under Chavez’s govt giveaway policies – or perhaps better described as life in Obama’s proposed United States Socialist Republic.

Also found was the last letter from Raul Reyes to FARC which had this paragraph:

6. The gringos will ask for an appointment with the minister to solicit him to communicate to us his interest in discussing these topics. They say that the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support “Plan Colombia” nor will he sign the TLC (Colombian Free Trade agreement). Here we responded that we are interested in relations with all governments in equality of conditions and that in the case of the US it is required a public pronouncement expressing their interest in talking with the FARC given their eternal war against us.

Obama gets in and they believe they will be sitting pretty.

What does Obama say about Hugo and the terrorists?

More recently, Obama as he traveled through Florida seemed to give some contradictory statements about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the Colombian terrorist group FARC.

On Thursday Obama told the Orlando Sentinel that he would meet with Chavez and “one of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about.”

OK, so a strong declaration that Chavez is supporting FARC, which Obama intends to push him on.

But then on Friday he said any government supporting FARC should be isolated.

“We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments,” he said in a speech in Miami. “This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and – if need be – strong sanctions. It must not stand.”

So he will meet with the leader of a country he simultaneously says should be isolated? Huh?

Obama said later that its not unusual to call for talks with a country that is being isolated, citing North Korea as an example. Only problem is that there is NO Presidential meetings going on with North Korea.

Jake updates:

So, I just spoke to an Obama campaign foreign policy adviser and this is how he explains any confusion.

Obama, he says, believes that Chavez is supportive of the FARC, both ideologically and tangibly. The Obama campaign disagrees that Obama’s language — “if, in fact, it (Chavez) is trying to ferment terrorist activities in other borders” — is hedging language at all. Obama has been very clear that he believes that Chavez is supportive of the FARC, the adviser says.

As to the question of whether one can pledge to isolate a country while also proposing a presidential-level meeting, the adviser says that I was inaccurate in characterizing Obama as proposing such a meeting — the reality was that Obama was merely acknowledging a willingness to meet.

But “if we are going to isolate the Venezuelans, it may be that we have to engage in a full-on diplomatic strategy with them,” the adviser says. Obama was not saying he, himself, would propose such a meeting, nor that he would necessarily participate in that meeting. When Obama referred to “my talks with President Hugo Chavez,” he did not mean “my talks,” literally (necessarily) — he meant his administration’s talks — “though it could be him engaging in this diplomacy directly and personally,” the adviser says. The point is, all the tools need to be in the diplomacy kit — isolation, willingness to hold presidential meetings, and everything in between.

Got it?

Yeah, I think we got it and it explains why that letter was found on the laptop. Obama gets into the White House Venezuela and the terrorists will in fact be sitting pretty.

He wants to talk with Iran without preconditions. He wants to talk with another terrorist sponsor in Venezuela without preconditions. Basically it comes down to replacing cowboy diplomacy with appeasement diplomacy.

These terrorists must be shaking in their boots.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
-President George W. Bush

National

An article on Saturday about Senator John McCain’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama’s Middle East policy incompletely described Mr. Obama’s position on negotiating with the leaders of countries, including Iran, with which the United States currently has little contact. While Mr. Obama and his aides have indeed described various conditions and limitations on such negotiations, Mr. Obama himself, in a Democratic debate in July 2007, also said he would be willing “to meet separately, without precondition” with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Nice of The Times to come around.

Readers may recall that in March, Venezuela and Colombia were on the brink of war with sabre rattling from crazy man dictator Hugo Chavez leading the charge. It was at that time that Colombia engaged in a cross border raid on FARC terrorists that have been using Ecuador for sanctuary (most likely with the complete approval of that Chavez oriented government).

It was also at that time that we learned that documents captured on the FARC leader killed in that raid indicated a preference among FARC terrorists for the election of Barack Obama. Like similar statements by Hamas terrorists and Iranians, Obama seems to represent the right sort of change to people who use violence, terror and murder to bring change about.

Now, with this article in the Wall Street Journal (top selection)we’re finding out just exactly how closely tied Venezuela’s Chavez is to the terrorists who have killed hundreds of poor peasants in Colombia.

Chávez Aided Colombia Rebels,
Captured Computer Files Show
By JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA and JAY SOLOMON
Wall Street Journal
May 9, 2008

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A cache of controversial computer files closely tying Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez to communist rebels seeking to topple Colombia’s government appear to be authentic, U.S. intelligence officials say.
…
These documents indicate Venezuela appears to be making concrete offers to help arm the rebels, possibly with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles. The files suggest that Venezuela offered the FARC the use of one of its ports to receive arms shipments, and that Venezuela raised the prospect of drawing up a joint security plan with the FARC and sought basic training in guerrilla-warfare techniques.
…
The FARC itself has suggested the files are fake. A FARC statement published on the Web site of Venezuela’s Information Ministry ridiculed Colombia’s claims about the computer files, saying computers couldn’t have survived the Colombian army attack “even if they had been bullet-proof.”
…
There have been some recent indications that the computers contain accurate information. Police in Costa Rica staged a successful raid on a home belonging to alleged FARC sympathizers, and recovered $480,000 in cash, guided by information from the documents suggesting the money would be located there.

In addition, Ecuador’s interior minister confirmed that he had met with Mr. Reyes, after an email describing the previously secret meeting was found on the laptops and made public by Colombia.

The FARC, which has been fighting for control of Colombia for nearly a half-century, funds itself mostly through drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom. The U.S. considers it to be one of the world’s main cocaine suppliers.
…
The documents suggest Mr. Chávez is personally involved in helping the guerrillas. In a September 2007 message to the FARC’s ruling body, a commander wrote: “Chávez is studying our documents and has said that just like Fidel [Castro] has decided to delegate his other responsibilities to concentrate on the Venezuelan situation, he [Chávez] is ready to do the same to dedicate more time to Colombia.”
…
One email, apparently sent by a FARC commander known as “Timochenko” to the guerrillas’ ruling body in March 2007, describes meetings with Venezuelan naval-intelligence officers who offer the FARC assistance in getting “rockets.” The Venezuelans also offer to help a FARC guerrilla travel to the Middle East to learn how to use the rockets.

Colombian military analysts believe the reference is to shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, a weapon that the guerrillas desperately need if they hope to blunt Colombia’s recent gains. “The FARC realizes that its military problem is air power,” says Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who heads the country’s national police.

In another email dated early 2007, FARC commander Iván Márquez describes meetings with the Venezuelan military’s intelligence chief, Gen. Hugo Carvajal, and another Venezuelan officer to talk about “finances, arms and border policy.” Mr. Márquez relates that the Venezuelans will provide the guerrillas some 20 “very powerful bazookas,” which Colombian military officials believe is a reference to rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
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Another email describes a November meeting between two FARC commanders and Mr. Chávez. The commanders, Ricardo Granda and Iván Márquez, report back in the email that Mr. Chávez gave orders to create “rest areas” and hospital zones for the guerrillas to use on the Venezuelan side of the border.

Many documents talk about how to fit generous offers of Venezuelan aid to the FARC’s long-term “strategic plan” of taking power in Colombia. In one document dated January 2007, one top FARC commander speaks of a “loan” for $250 million to buy arms which the FARC will pay back once it has reached power. “Don’t think of it as a loan, think of it as solidarity,” says Mr. Rodríguez Chacin, the interior minister, in another document.

One wonders how self loathing leftwing peaceniks feel about embracing a man like Hugo Chavez who is responsible for spreading death and mayhem in Colombia?