Venezuela Names Brother of 'Carlos the Jackal' to Top Energy Post

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela named the brother of terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" to a top position at the powerful oil ministry, a ministry spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

Lenin Ramirez Sanchez, who has an electrical engineering degree from the Central University of Venezuela, became director of energy last month, the spokeswoman said on customary condition of anonymity.

Ramirez Sanchez previously held a management post at the state electricity company Cadafe.

An assistant to Ramirez Sanchez said he was not in Caracas on Friday and couldn't be reached for comment. The ministry didn't immediately respond to faxed questions about the appointment.

In 1999, President Hugo Chavez wrote a letter to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, addressing the Venezuela-born terrorist as "Dear Compatriot."

Carlos is serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of two French secret agents and a suspected informer. He was arrested in 1980 in Sudan and is under investigation for three terror attacks in the 1980s.

Chavez was criticized for writing Carlos but insisted he did so out of "human solidarity" and not "political solidarity."

Ramirez Sanchez replaced Luis Villanueva, who was transferred to another position in the ministry. A ministry source told Dow Jones Newswires some ministry employees protested the move "not because (Ramirez Sanchez) is the Jackal's brother but because they removed Luis Villanueva as director for no reason."

You think that reads like the Onion, wait til you see this...

Letter from Chavez to "The Jackal":

Miraflores, 03 de Marzo de 1999

Citizen
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez
Present
Distinguished Compatriot:

Swimming in the depths of your letter of solidarity I could gather something of your thoughts and feelings; everything has its time: to gather stones, to throw them.... to give warmth to the revolution or to leave it aside; to advance dialectically uniting what must be united among the classes in the struggle or promoting confrontation among them, according to the thesis of Iván Ilich Ulianov. Time to be able to fight for ideals and time when you can do nothing but appreciate the struggle itself... Times of opportunity, of sharp perception and an instinct for reaching the most propitious psychological moment in which Ariadne, robed in the law, spins the thread that will allow her to escape from the labyrinth…

The Liberator Simón Bolívar, whose theory and praxis inform the doctrine that is the foundation of our revolution, in an enigmatic invocation to God, used this phrase when approaching his physical death: How can I get out of this labyrinth...! This phrase, .... recorded by his chief doctor, the Frenchman Alejandro Próspero Reverend in his Memoirs, is a profound flame to light the path we follow.

Another Frenchman, Alexander Dumas, closed his novel The Count of Montecristo with this line by Jesús: «The life of man is written in two words: Trust and Wait, inducing one to think that at the end of the battle there will appear some Supreme Someone who, robed in wisdom like the Abbot Faría who showed the way out, wrapped in the new revolutionary synthesis, approaching the God that each one carries in his heart.

We will say with Bolívar that time will work miracles only to the extent that we remain pure in spirit and we observe those necessary relationships that are derived from the nature of things. Humanity is one, and there space-time dimension that can stop the thoughts of the Heroe of Caracas. We say with him:

I feel that the energy in my soul rises, broadens, and becomes equal to the size of the dangers. My doctor has told me that my soul needs to feed on danger in order to preserve my sanity, in that when God made me he allowed this stormy revolution, so that I could live engaged in my own special destiny.

With profound faith in the cause and in the mission, for now and forever!
HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS

Venezuela might be ripe for another crisis:

Unions to Chávez: Call elections
Posted October 11 2002
Caracas, Venezuela · At a giant anti-government rally Thursday, the leader of Venezuela's largest union federation delivered an ultimatum to President Hugo Chávez: Resign or call new elections by Wednesday, or face an open-ended national strike.
"If Mr. Chávez has not resigned or convoked an immediate electoral process, the great national civil strike will begin on Monday the 21st," said Carlos Ortega, the leader of the 1 million-strong Venezuelan Labor Confederation, known as CTV.

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