Venezuela's embattled Chavez warns foes against taunting "giant" - troops are on his side *** Venezuela's embattled President Hugo Chavez issued a stern warning to his foes, insisting the armed forces were on his side and would not hesitate to intervene in defense of his revolution. "This is the time when there is an army to battle for Venezuela," he told thousands of cheering supporters gathered in a Caracas arena. His latest warning came as the opposition called for a march Sunday to a military complex in Caracas, even though a similar protest on January 3 ended in clashes with Chavez supporters that left two people dead and over a dozen wounded. It also came on the heels of his threat to deploy military troops to seize any food processing plant idled by a six-week-old strike aimed at forcing him from office.
Flanked by soldiers in camouflage gear, the leftist-populist president warned that his opponents were taunting "a giant." "The revolution will not be defeated, it will be strenghthened," the former paratrooper said of his program of social reforms his opponents claim ruined the economy and failed to improve the lot of the millions of impoverished Venezuelans. Chavez also said that if public schools closed in support of the strike did not reopen, their directors would suffer the same fate as about 1,000 striking employees of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) fired in past weeks.***