Hugo Chavez // Current TV

Worldwide Hippies News Briefs Tuesday

What’s in that OJ? Tropicana is sued Ice threatens shipment of fuel to Alaska... more

joeeddy
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Benetton Pulls Pope-Imam Kissing Ad after Vatican Protest (PHOTOS)

Clothing company Benetton is under fire this morning for its latest controversial... more

StewSteve
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3 months ago
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Priests, plots … and Hugo Chávez

WikiLeaks cables have revealed that Catholic bishops played a key role in 2002's abortive military coup in Venezuela

In 1997 Eamon Duffy, president of Magdalene College, Cambridge, brought out the best one-volume history of popes that has ever been written. He called it Saints & Sinners.

In the light of the latest news from Venezuela I would respectfully urge him to set about writing a companion volume about the leaders of the church in Latin America. I suggest that he calls it Saints, Traitors & Sinners.

The church in that region has of course produced some remarkable saints – some of them unrecognised in the upper reaches of the Vatican. Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador; the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter slain by the western-supported Salvadorean army on the campus of the Central American University; the prelates and clergy killed by the repulsive military regime in Argentina and Cardinal Raúl Silva, archbishop of Santiago de Chile at the time of Pinochet's putsch, were and are among the brightest stars in the church's firmament.

Yet the clergy had – and still has – its villains.

Among the latest revelations to emerge from WikiLeaks is that, in 2002, as plotters in Venezuela's capital Caracas were liaising with the US authorities about the conspiracy to topple President Hugo Chávez, the leaders of the Catholic church in that country were defying the instruction of Pope John Paul II to desist from having anything to do with the coup d'état. Instead they threw their lot in with Pedro Carmona, the extremist rightwing businessman, who took office for less than 48 hours during a brief military coup in April 2002.

The cables reveal that Cardinal Antonio Ignacio Velasco, the Salesian archbishop of Caracas, was on hand to sign papers purporting to legitimise the ridiculous Carmona as he dismissed the congress and the judges, and briefly sent Venezuelan politics back into the dark ages. Happily, the genuine popularity of the legitimate head of state was such that the Carmona gang and their military accomplices were routed and Chávez was restored to power.

In doing what he did, Velasco, who died in 2003, and the majority of his fellow bishops, betrayed not just the papacy but their compatriots at the instance of a foreign power – in this case, the United States. This added to the prelates' marginalisation in Venezuelan life by the majority who, unsurprisingly, see them as firm upholders of the establishment in a major oil-producing country, where half of the population live below the poverty line.

Velasco and his successors are remembered now as part of the camarilla that opposed the reform programme of the Chávez government, which, in the 12 years it has been in power, raised a quarter of the country's population out of poverty.

The US government's – not to mention the western media's – condemnation of Chávez has, for years, done much to blank out the successes of a government which is still not just legitimate but popular. Few in the west realise that extreme poverty has been cut drastically and unemployment has been halved so that no more than 7% of the population is out of work.

On 19 November 2002, several months after Velasco's catastrophic mistake, the US envoy to the Vatican, James Nicholson, reported to his masters in Washington that the Holy See was alarmed at the outlook for further civil violence in the coming months. "The pope himself has insistently asked the Venezuelan bishops to cool their political activism and instead encourage dialogue," he said.

But by that time it was too late. Despite the fact that a mass was reported to have been offered in Caracas on Wednesday for Chávez as he recovers from his emergency operation in Havana, leaders of Venezuela's Catholics are seen to be on the wrong side, the side of the rich. But wasn't there something in the gospels about rich people, camels and the eyes of needles?WikiLeaks cables have revealed that Catholic bishops played a key role in 2002's... more

Vierotchka
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Chavez given power to rule by decree by outgoing National Assembly

His critics said the move turns the country into a near-dictatorship. It comes just... more

UrbanGypsy
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After Floods, Hugo Chávez Invites Venezuelans to Palace Sleepover

There's been devastating floods in Venezuela leading to at least 25 deaths and... more

Mcellie
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1 year ago
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Wikileaks: Cuban spies have "direct access" to President Hugo Chavez

Then-US Ambassador William Brownfield wrote that Cuban spies had "direct... more

UrbanGypsy
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1 year ago
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'The Empire is naked' declares Chavez after WikiLeaks

I was wondering how long it would take for Hugo Chavez to crawl out of his digs and... more

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1 year ago
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Venezuela & Iran, the perfect nuclear couple...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez admitted last week that his government is "carrying out the first studies" of a nuclear program. He attempted to portray it as an innocuous program designed solely for peaceful purposes.

On Sept. 21, I held a briefing for journalists and regional experts where I revealed for the first time information about Chavez's nuclear program and his troubling and substantial collaboration with Iran. This research -- conducted during the past 12 months by a team of experts who analyzed sensitive material obtained from sources within the Venezuelan regime -- paints a far darker picture of Chavez's intentions.

Chávez has been developing the program for two years with the collaboration of Iran, a nuclear rogue state. In addition to showing the two states' cooperation on nuclear research, these documents suggest that Venezuela is helping Iran obtain uranium and evade international sanctions, all steps that are apparent violations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions meant to forestall Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program.

Chávez's suggestion that he is merely studying the idea of a nuclear energy program is misleading. In fact, in November 2008, Iranian and Venezuelan officials signed a secret "science and technology" agreement formalizing cooperation "in the field of nuclear technology." (The text of the agreement, available in Farsi and Spanish, is available here.) The week after the agreement was signed, Venezuela's Ministry of Energy and Petroleum prepared a presentation for the International Atomic Energy Agency documenting the establishment of a "nuclear power programme" in Venezuela. That presentation, obtained from sources within the Venezuelan government, reveals that an "Atomic Energy Committee" has been managing the nuclear program since 2007.

All countries have the right to a peaceful nuclear energy program under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Venezuela is a signatory. However, Chávez's decision to rely on one of the world's worst proliferators to help develop his country's capabilities in this sensitive technology sets alarm bells ringing. And his recent public declarations understating the nature of his nuclear program raise more questions than they answer.

It's not only Venezuela's cooperation with Iran on its own nuclear program that raises questions -- other documents provided by sources within the Venezuelan government reveal a suspicious network of Iranian-run facilities in that South American country that could contravene Security Council sanctions.

For example, a November 2008 contract between a Venezuelan state-run firm, CVG Minerven, and the Iranian government firm Impasco grants the Iranians a "gold mine" concession in the heart of the Roraima basin in the southeastern state of Bolivar, which sits along the Venezuela-Guyana border. Although gold mining in Venezuela goes back decades, the basin is also home to one of the world's largest deposits of uranium, according to a survey by the U308 Corp., a Canadian uranium exploration company.

There is nothing illegal about the commercial mining of uranium -- unless it is conducted by Iran. Security Council Resolution 1929, passed this June after an aggressive diplomatic effort by the United States, ordered all governments to prohibit any Iranian involvement in "uranium mining, production or use of nuclear materials and technology." If Iran's Impasco has struck gold in Venezuela, that is nobody's business. If it is mining uranium, that is quite a different matter.

In addition to acquiring a mine strategically located above substantial uranium deposits, Iranian firms have taken over nearby industrial facilities and seem to be using them for purposes other than those publicly stated. For example, a "cement plant" produces little if any cement, a "tractor factory" produces few tractors, and both facilities are well situated for supporting Iran's shadowy activities in an area that is far from everything but uranium.

two page article, with a very truthful end paragraph. READ MORE:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/05/chavez_s_secret_nuclear_programVenezuelan President Hugo Chávez admitted last week that his government is... more

pandaman2105
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1 year ago
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Chavez Loses Supermajority in Venezuelan Parliamentary Elections, Opposition Gains 52% of Popular Vote

Results from the voting centers finally came out early in the morning of September 27... more

UrbanGypsy
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1 year ago
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A farmer in Venezuela taken to a military hospital against his will died | In Christ Free

http://wp.me/pGUz6-id

OnTimeTruth
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1 year ago
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The Killing Fields Of Caracas, Venezuela! | In Christ Free

Don't let current tv sensor it now!

OnTimeTruth
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1 year ago
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Venezuela, more deadly than Iraq

CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in... more

UrbanGypsy
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1 year ago
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105 comments

Venezuela sending troops to Colombian border

Full time crazy man Hugo Chavez has mobilized troops and sent them to the border with... more

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1 year ago
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BBC News - Venezuela's Hugo Chavez orders review of Vatican ties

President Hugo Chavez has ordered a review of Venezuela's ties with the Vatican... more

irishlonewolf
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1 year ago
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Venezuela Seizes U.S. Oil Rigs

Venezuela has nationalized a fleet of oil rigs owned by a US-based company which had... more

The_Global_Report
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1 year ago
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Venezuela's Chavez offers cure for kids' imsomnia

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is offering parents a cure for children who... more

CarolineS
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1 year ago
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Hugo Chavez is a Twitter Superstar

Chavez loves twitter...

mygoditsfullofdoom
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Chavez asks Venezuelans to tweet on speculators

President Hugo Chavez urged supporters to use Twitter to blow the whistle on... more

tiosipper
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1 year ago
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Hugo Chavez Hires 200 People to Manage His Twitter Account

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who only recently signed up to Twitter, has... more

cclark_productions
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1 year ago
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Hugo Chavez decides to Tweet

Hugo Chavez is chirping differently about Twitter. In late January, Chavez... more

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