Remember that it all depended on your definition of is ? Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is pissed at reports that the US will increase its troop strength in Colombia and acquire military bases there. Oh poo, says the President, as quoted by Reuters : "There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric. This is not accurate," Obama told Hispanic media reporters.... "We have had a security agreement with Colombia for many years now. We have updated that agreement. We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia," Obama said. "This is continuation of assistance that we had been providing them. We have no intention of sending large numbers of additional troops into Colombia, and we have every interest in seeing Colombia and its neighbors operate peacefully." Fisking the President [albeit unintentionally, I suspect], Reuters then examines the new security agreement with Colomb...

You gotta love it when Al Jazeera runs a piece covering the lastest Chavez reforms in Venezuela, and gives all the comment space to his opponents: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, has pushed through 26 new laws, covering changes in areas ranging from the military to small businesses. The package of laws, which were published in the official gazette on Monday, were enacted on July 31, the final day of an 18-month period during which Chavez had been granted special legislative powers. The new laws includes measures which would set up neighbourhood-based militias, move the country towards a socialist economy and increase state control over agriculture. The decrees met with opposition from Fedecamaras, the Venezuelan federation of chambers of commerce. Jose Manuel Gonzalez, a business chamber leader of Fedecamaras, said: "We ask the president: Why does he fear democracy?" He said that the package of laws included socialist concepts that voters rejected last year as part ...

I was reading an article in Foreign Policy in Focus to get an idea of the considerable US Military footprint of 700 bases and just what that means to the world. I think you may appreciate the insights offered in one article called "Yankee's Head Home" and think it is worth a good read because it clearly expresses how we need to withdraw from Latin America and re-open good bilateral relationships with the nations there under a good neighbor policy of non-intervention : Yankees Head Home John Lindsay-Poland March 6, 2008 Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco Foreign Policy In Focus http://www.fpif.org/ Absent in the discussion of the conflict brewing in the Andes over a Colombian military incursion into Ecuador to kill a guerrilla leader is the role of U.S. military in the conflict. It goes well beyond providing satellite intelligence on the location of guerrilla camps: the two countries have opposing responses to Washington’s attempt to militarize the hemisphere. Ecuador’s constitu...

This from Fausta's Blog : Brazilian state oil company Petrobras is studying a block in deep Cuban waters for possible exploration as part of broader cooperation with the Caribbean island, a top advisor to the company said on Friday. "We are planning to cooperate not only in exploration and production, but lubricants, refining and training," Andre Ghirardi told Reuters in Havana at a one-day meeting of Brazilian and Cuban businessmen.... The US Geological Survey estimated the North Cuba basin could contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil, with a high-end potential of 9.3 billion barrels, and close to 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. China and Venezuela have already initiated the first stages of drilling in the North Cuba basin. Facts about foreign drilling immediately off our shores: 1) We have no control over the environmental impact of these operations as they take place in international waters. 2) All three nations pursue oil with State-owned companies, which generally ...

You may have seen my expose on Yon Goicoechea. If not scroll down and read it. It was my machismo moment of outrage at CATO for awarding this extraordinary right wing non-libertarian big state rightist the Milton Friedman award for liberty. Not only has Yon been linked to student violence in Venezuela , but he calims in his interview with Playboy that he has been "promoting human rights" which I guess is a good thing even if he is only paying lip service to them, but still he has not really offering any solutions to the problems in his country like the Libertario. In fact there were so many contradictions in his positions that the students of the European Congress in Belgium rejected him going there . Look, this guy is no Bolivar, and is no libertarian. Which again makes CATO's award all that much more inexplicable. I am still looking for that video of the students in your movement throwing the gas at the national guard Yon and invite you to explain how vio...

International terrorists with nukes or dirty radiological bombs are the stuff of nightmares and Harrison Ford movies. So when they get tied with a known terrorist group (FARC) and one of Washington's favorite bad boys (Venezuela's Chavez), people get really nervous. Hence, Fausta's Blog : During Saturday's raid against the FARC in Ecuador, the Colombian army seized three computers loaded with incriminating information against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The computers belonged to Raul Reyes, the FARC's #2 man. The Colombian Government's Official Website (in Spanish) details the findings: The Venezuelan government paid $300 million to the FARC on February 14 this year. Venezuela had agreed to ship old rifles to the FARC during that same meeting. The computer files show the acquisition and sale of 50 kilograms of uranium. The Colombian government has created a task force to locate this uranium. The information in the computers reconfirm...