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Some gasoline station owners in Oklahoma are dropping the Venezuelan state owned Citgo brand, saying sales have dropped significantly since the VenezuelanPresident Hugo Chavez criticized President George W. Bush in a speech last month. The president of Tulsa based Arkansas Valley, a wholesale distributor which delivers Citgo gas to about 30 stations in Oklahoma and Missouri, said sales fell 10 percent to 15 percent after Chavez's United Nations speech in which he referred to Bush as “the devil.” “We started losing business at our stores,” company president Weister Smith told the Tulsa World newspaper. “Some of our independent retailers came...

This story might speak for itself through its photos - what looks like millions of people - have marched across the 15-mile length of Caracas, from shantytown outskirt to big city skyscrapers to shantytown outskirt, on behalf of Manuel Rosales, who’s destroying Hugo Chavez at the polls. At long last, democracy may be coming to Venezuela, assuming no cheating goes on in the electronic voting machinery. Today, it becomes harder for that to happen. This is one heck of a massive rally.

EDGAR Fajardo is a proud member of Venezuela's new military reserve. He does not know much about handling guns, but he knows who he will vote for in December's elections: the president, Hugo Chavez.The United States and neighbours have accused Mr Chavez of using his oil windfall to spark an arms race in the region, buying Russian rifles, fighter jets and helicopters. But the invigorated military is more about political control than national defence. "We are creating national resistance and awareness," said General Alberto Muller Rojas, a military adviser to the president. "Should anyone think of invading us they will...

PRI members ask Segob to investigate financing of APPO The National College of Adherent Organizations of the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] calls for the clarification of those who have supported the more than 160 days of protests which were carried out in Oaxaca Jorge Teherán El Universal (Mexico City) Tuesday 31 October 2006 6:31 p.m.   Organizations of the PRI demanded today of the Governmental Secretary, Carlos Abascal Carranza, to make publicly known who they find behind the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), since it is known that "these movements cost." In a press conference, organizations adhering...

Hugo Chavez's tub-thumping tirade against President George W Bush and the United Nations at the General Assembly last month has backfired in a humiliating way for the demagogic Venezuelan president.Venezuela's campaign to win a seat on the UN Security Council — key to Mr Chavez's aim to secure influence on the world stage with his country's petrodollars — seems doomed after a series of votes ended in deadlock last week. Venezuela trailed Guatemala, its Washington-backed rival for the Latin American position to be vacated by Argen-tina in January, in 40 of the 41 ballots of the 192-nation -General Assembly last...

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist government of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. The federal inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said. The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in...

(CNSNews.com) - Venezuela is removing itself from consideration for the open seat on the United Nations Security Council and is now backing Bolivia. Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday his country has agreed to be a candidate for the Security Council as a non-permanent member. Morales said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez acknowledged to him in a telephone conversation that his country would not be able acquire the two-thirds majority needed to secure the seat. The U.N. General Assembly has already elected Belgium, Indonesia, Italy and South Africa to serve as non-permanent members on the Security Council for the two-year terms...

More than 10,000 former workers of Coca-Cola's subsidiary in Venezuela are blockading bottling plants and depots. They say a Mexican-based subsidiary of Coke owes them a large amount of money in unpaid social benefits. But Coca-Cola representatives in Mexico have roundly condemned the blockade as an illegal act. The protesters are being backed by a special parliamentary commission consisting of leftist legislators loyal to President Hugo Chavez.

Government compiles proof of the presence of the FARC in Ecuador The Foreign Minister, Maria Consuelo Araujo, and the Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, say they will have shown in brief that the insurgents are taking refuge in Venezuela and Ecuador Sunday, 22 October 2006 Last Thursday, President Alvaro Uribe denounced [the fact that] the guerrillas Raul Reyes, the alias of Luis Eduard Devia, is hiding in Ecuador, and Ivan Marquez, whose true name is Luciano Marin Arango, is doing so in Venezuela. After the statements, Ecuadoran authorities asked the Colombians for evidence that Reyes, the FARC's principal...

The US has stopped Spain selling 12 military aircraft to Venezuela by refusing to allow American military technology to be used in the planes. Venezuela planned to buy the aircraft from the Spanish company Eads-Casa but US determination to prevent Hugo Chávez building up his armed forces wrecked the deal, according to the deputy president, José Vicente Rangel. ... Venezuela's decision to drop the order for 10 C-295 transport planes and two CN-235 patrol planes came the day after Spain declined to back its effort to be a temporary member of the UN security council.

Billed as justice for landless peasants, policy is yet to be put into practice To reach the heart of Venezuela's agrarian revolution you drive west of Caracas towards the Andes, deep into tropical countryside where it is always hot, and stop at the end of a dirt track where a sign says Mixta Aracal. As far as the eye can see rolls a patchwork of fields, maize, bananas, black beans, tomatoes, dotted with some stooping figure in red T-shirts, and some tractors from China and Iran.

According to Fedeindustrias and other business panels, Venezuela’s inflation is expected to soar to 19% by the year’s end, 7% higher than the central bank anticipated. Inflation climbed to 15.3% in Sept., the highest and fastest in Latin America. Central bank President, Gaston Parra, blames the inflation on the government’s sharp increase in spending. “Until now, we have adopted the prudent, necessary measures to combat inflation,” says Parra. Enrique Alvarez, an economist with IDEAGlobal, says “The message is clear: there's little policy coordination between the government and the central bank and that's where the failure to control inflation lies.”

Latin America: Defying the polls, Ecuador's voters have surprised everyone by choosing a free-market presidential candidate over a radical leftist for a November runoff. It happened because Alvaro Noboa got the message out. Before Sunday's election, front-runner Rafael Correa, slick, photogenic and way left, didn't even try to hide his puppy love for Hugo Chavez. On Ecuador's campaign trail, he extolled Chavez's "Bolivarian" ideology and openly called the Venezuelan strongman his "good friend." Correa vowed to consolidate power as Chavez did, eliminating congress and halting free-trade talks with the U.S. "He ran a hate-U.S. campaign, calling it 'the empire,' "...

United Nations: Whatever the outcome of the contested Security Council seat for the Western Hemisphere, one thing's likely: Hugo Chavez is not going to be on it. The U.N. should be ashamed he got as close as he did. As we went to press, the marathon vote for a two-year rotating Security Council seat had moved into a ninth round, with Guatemala ahead of Venezuela 102-85. At that point, the best Venezuela could hope for was a compromise candidate subject to the approval of the non-Chavez votes. If it comes to that, it would be humiliating for Chavez, who spent...

Caracas 16.10.06 | Imagine abject poverty. Imagine people scavenging for food on stinking rubbish piles. Now try and imagine a very poor person in such a setting saying "and to top it all off he is losing the UN vote to Guatemala..." Such is the surreality of this country. Hugo Chavez lost the vote today, and as Manuel Rosales aptly said moments ago in Montalban (west Caracas) Venezuela did not lose anything, rather it was Hugo Chavez who received today a democratic whipping in spite of having wasted millions in lobbying and outright vote-buying.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) Oct. 12 sent a letter to Thomas Dryer, the General Services Administration’s Acting Associate Administrator for Congressional Affairs, asking him to consider a new rule that would prevent government employees from using government credit cards to purchase CITGO gasoline to protest Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez’s recent speech at the United Nations. “Chávez’s now infamous delusional outburst was an insult to the entire country,” said Tancredo, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. “It is time for taxpayers to stop pouring money into the pockets of this despot.”

Guatemala topped Venezuela in the first round of voting Monday for a U.N. Security Council seat, but it failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority to win a two-year term on the decision-making body. Guatemala, whose candidacy had been backed by the United States, received 109 votes, 15 short of the necessary 124 and triggering a second round. Venezuela trailed with 76 votes. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez had campaigned on the argument that his nation would use its seat on the council to speak out against the United States. The United States and its allies claimed that Venezuela's stance could...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Armed with petrodollars, Venezuela has made a major push to defeat Guatemala in Monday's elections for five open U.N. Security Council seats. While Venezuela is expected to get a majority in secret balloting in the 192-nation U.N. General Assembly, Caracas may not achieve the required two-thirds vote, leaving open the possibility of a compromise candidate. "This is a real wrestling match. This is a heavy-weight encounter," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "If they vote with their head they're voting against Venezuela because, the United States is certainly going to make...

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights deplores the killing of journalist Jesús Flores Rojas and other raids on the media PEDRO PABLO PEÑALOZA EL UNIVERSAL The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed "concern about the physical aggressions and threats against (Venezuelan) reporters" in July-September this year. The institution subordinate to the Organization of American States (OAS) made its statements in a survey conducted in the third quarter. Upon analysis of the situation of freedom of the press in the hemisphere, the Office of the Special Rapporteur warned...

WASHINGTON DC. - Brazilians, Bolivians, Colombians, Cubans, Chileans, Ecuadorian, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Salvadorian and Venezuelans residing in the United States will protest “against the intervention of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in other countries of the region and against his aggressions against national institutions:” Robert Carmona-Borjas, president of the Arcadia Center, announced that the protest against the intervention of Hugo Chavez in the internal affairs of Latin American nations would take place Friday October 13, from 10 am. to 12:30 pm. in front of the Organization of American States, OAS. “There, we will protest before the regional organization that appears to...