tagged w/ Webmash
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News of the World has come under fire for allegedly hacking the phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler. As technology offers more ways, both ethical and unethical, to obtain information, where should the press draw the line when it comes to gathering information?
News of the World has come under fire for allegedly hacking the phone of murdered... more
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By downloading ShopSavvy, a free smartphone application, consumers can scan the GS1 barcode and instantly link with the grower’s profile, website, production practices and a map of the farm -- right at the point of purchase.
http://www.thegrower.org/readnews.php?id=7p1t2o4x6k5tBy downloading ShopSavvy, a free smartphone application, consumers can scan the GS1... more
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OR - "Where has all the good porn gone / long time passing . . . "
When I was a young teen, porn was quite the precious commodity. You couldn’t just grab your iPhone out of your pocket and go to XXXBigButtHoneysFuckySucky.com and have two women licking each other’s unmentionables at a moments notice. You had to work for it. It came down to either shoplifting it from the local newsagents, finding what used to be known as “forest, or woods porn” (more on this later) or nicking some from your mate’s dad’s stash.
The late 90’s was all about sitting up late at night with SBS on mute, waiting for Weather Woman or Chinese Ghost Stories. That moment where all the waiting was finally rewarded with a brief flash of tit or – no way – is that vag? That moment was always spectacular and well worth the effort.
Let’s travel forward through time a little. . . . .
- continued - - - - ( duh )
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http://blog.nickcoad.com/2010/01/the-internet-has-ruined-porn/OR - "Where has all the good porn gone / long time passing . . . "
When I... more
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Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation. Are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation. Are... more
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His critics said the move turns the country into a near-dictatorship. It comes just two weeks before a new national assembly is sworn in with a larger opposition bloc that could have frustrated some of his plans to create a socialist state.
The firebrand leader had only asked his allies for the right to govern without referring to congress for a year. Instead, they handed him the powers for 18 months as proof of their "revolutionary commitment", said Cilia Flores, the national assembly president.
The official reason for the move was to allow Mr Chavez to deal with the devastating aftermath of weeks of floods by fast-tracking tax increases and funding for construction of new homes.
But amid a fresh wave of nationalisations of farms and businesses, he has already outlined a long list of new laws that extend far beyond relief and reconstruction.
He taunted the incoming opposition congressmen in a television address.
"You won't be able to make a single law, little Yankees," he said, deploying one of his favourite insults, which depicts his opponents as American stooges.
"We're going to see how you make laws now."
The 18-month period means the opposition will be blocked from any significant role in Venezuelan politics until just months before the 2012 presidential election.
The lame-duck parliament dominated by Chavez allies is also planning a revised "Social Responsibility Law" which would impose tough regulations on the internet and ban online messages "that could incite or promote hatred," create "anxiety" in the population or "disrespect public authorities". The country's broadcast media already faces similar controls.
The law granting presidential decree powers – for the fourth time in his nearly 12-year presidency – also will allow him to enact measures involving telecommunications, the banking system, information technology, the military, rural and urban land use and the country's "socio-economic system."
His foes accused him of taking advantage of the floods to stage a crude power grab by violating the constitution as he tried to impose a Cuban-style system.
Julio Borges, a recently-elected congressman, said the opposition will keep fighting and that "the Cuban project is going to fail."
The new congress takes office on Jan 5 with 67 of the 165 seats controlled by the opposition – which would have been enough to remove the two-thirds majority needed to approve some types of major legislation and to confirm Supreme Court justices.
Anticipating that shift, pro-Chavez lawmakers earlier this month appointed nine new Supreme Court justices, reinforcing the dominance of judges widely seen as friendly to his government.
Lawmakers on Friday also approved a separate law that describes banking as a "public service" and clears the way for increased state intervention in the sector. Venezuela's private banks make up about 70 per cent of the industry, while the government controls the rest.
The moves seem aimed at intimidating opponents and neutralising potential obstacles ahead of the presidential race. In September's parliamentary elections, the pro- and anti-Chavez camps emerged with a nearly even split of the popular vote.His critics said the move turns the country into a near-dictatorship. It comes just... more
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Dear friends,
The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free press advocates everywhere.
Legal experts say WikiLeaks has likely broken no laws. Yet top US politicians have called it a terrorist group and commentators have urged assassination of its staff. The organization has come under massive government and corporate attack, but WikiLeaks is only publishing information provided by a whistleblower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel etc) to carefully vet the information it publishes.
The massive extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!
http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/97.php?cl_tta_sign=8a081bd92642c2e797ad0265c6923b0a
WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it's partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corporate corruption.
The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues it has to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that's exactly why it's so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks and the leading newspapers it's partnered with are releasing more information than the public should see. Whether the releases undermine diplomatic confidentiality and whether that's a good thing. Whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click below to join the call to stop the crackdown:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/97.php?cl_tta_sign=8a081bd92642c2e797ad0265c6923b0a
Ever wonder why the media so rarely gives the full story of what happens behind the scenes? This is why - because when they do, governments can be vicious in their response. And when that happens, it's up to the public to stand up for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so.
With hope,
Ricken, Emma, Alex, Alice, Maria Paz and the rest of the Avaaz team.
SOURCES:
Law experts say WikiLeaks in the clear (ABC)
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3086781.htm
WikiLeaks are a bunch of terrorists, says leading U.S. congressman (Mail Online)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333879/WikiLeaks-terrorists-says-leading-US-congressman-Peter-King.html
Cyber guerrillas can help US (Financial Times)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15-11df-956b-00144feab49a.html#axzz17QvQ4Ht5
Amazon drops WikiLeaks under political pressure (Yahoo)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101201/tc_afp/usdiplomacyinternetwikileakscongressamazon
"WikiLeaks avenged by hacktivists" (PC World):
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212701/operation_payback_wikileaks_avenged_by_hacktivists.html
US Gov shows true control over Internet with WikiLeaks containment (Tippett.org)
http://www.tippett.org/2010/12/us-gov-shows-true-control-over-internet-with-wikileaks-containment/
US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee
WikiLeaks ditched by MasterCard, Visa. Who's next? (The Christian Science Monitor)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1207/WikiLeaks-ditched-by-MasterCard-Visa.-Who-s-next
Assange's Interpol Warrant Is for Having Sex Without a Condom (The Slatest)
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2276690/
graphic
http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/China/ChinaPosterBook/FreedomOfpress.jpgDear friends,
The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a... more
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David Lynch: revered film-maker, avant-garde visionary, artist. But pop star? The suggestion is not as far-fetched as it may seem, as the legendary American director tomorrow makes an unexpected departure from his previous work and launches himself on an alternative career path as a writer and singer.
The creator of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive is releasing two debut singles, Good Day Today and I Know, through a British independent label. After a film career spanning more than four decades, Lynch told the Guardian that music has become a powerful inspiration in his life.
"I've always loved sounds and so I built a studio where I can experiment with sound, and gradually I started experimenting with music. I'm not a musician, but I love to experiment and try to make music," he said, speaking from his home in LA.
It is 20 years since Twin Peaks hit the small screen, a fact celebrated by the first UK Twin Peaks festival yesterday, but these days the 64-year-old likes to spend a part of every day in his custom-built studio. His first solo single, Good Day Today – a dreamlike electronic soundscape with a surprisingly poppy chorus, which features the director's vocals – came to him unprompted.
"I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that," he said. Unlike his famously ambiguous and non-linear films, the song is accessible and, he readily admits, has a catchy "feel-good chorus", with undertones of angsty electro-popsters Crystal Castles or veteran dance act Underworld. Why did he turn to electro for his first solo single? "Well, I love electricity so it sort of stands to reason that I would like electronics," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/28/david-lynch-turns-pop-singer-songwriterDavid Lynch: revered film-maker, avant-garde visionary, artist. But pop star? The... more
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Hatsune Miku has topped the pop charts in Japan, sold out stadium concerts and become a legitimate cultural phenomenon. The interesting thing is that Miku doesn't exist -- at least not in any traditional sense of the word. Miku is a computer-generated avatar that performs songs with the help of a live band. But unlike say, Gorillaz, a cartoon band that merely serves as the public face of an artistic collective, everything about Miku comes from a computer. She is the product of a company called Crypton Future Media, which synthesizes Miku's voice using Yamaha's Vocaloid software.
Creating the character -- which appears as a girl with blue pigtails and a cyberpunk version of the traditional Japanese school-girl uniform -- was a meticulous process. First, the creators recorded voice actress Saki Fujita making individual phonetic sounds at a specific pitch and tone. Then, they recombined the samples and fed them through the synthesis software to produce an almost endless number of words and sounds. Users can actually purchase a copy of Miku to run on their home PCs, and have her perform songs of their own creation.
Despite Miku's availability for private performances on home PCs, crowds still shell out for live concerts, where Miku is able to whip her legions of fans into a frenzy (as seen in the video below). At these sold-out shows, Miku is materialized, so to speak, as a 3-D hologram. She parades and dances around the stage as she belts out pop-rock songs, while her human band provides a musical backdrop for her J-Pop crooning.
The tech behind both the vocals and the public displays is impressive, but we have a feeling this will remain a distinctly Japanese phenomenon. American consumers don't seem like they're ready to shell out the big bucks to watch a 'Final Fantasy' character robotically plow through second-rate Avril Lavigne knockoff tunes.Hatsune Miku has topped the pop charts in Japan, sold out stadium concerts and become... more
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News Corp has put MySpace on notice, letting the company know it needs to show some improvement.
There was a time when MySpace was the social network to join--but more and more networks have gotten into the game in recent years. From Facebook to Twitter, there are new options for staying connected.
How can older social networks stay active and appealing as new ideas come on the scene? Or have we reached social network overload, and it is time to let some go?News Corp has put MySpace on notice, letting the company know it needs to show some... more
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Results from the voting centers finally came out early in the morning of September 27 starting at around 2:00 am after the parliamentary elections on Sunday went deep into the night. The results that have been announced by National Election Center (CNE) revealed that Chavez's PSUV has suffered a reversal to the opposition and lost the two-thirds supermajority that allowed his party to pass legislation without opposition.
The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) or United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its allies controlled a total of 139 of 167 seats in the National Assembly before the elections.
The current election results now show that the opposition controls a total of 62 seats to the 94 by the PSUV, a huge pickup of seats for Chavez' opponents. The loss of the super majority now means that the opposition in Venezuela will effectively be able to oppose Chavez' agenda, which up until now, had been essentially unopposed.
The opposition also won the popular vote with 52% of the vote. However, gerrymandering on the part of Chavez' government has given more power to rural areas while dividing the opposition into different regions, preventing them from gaining an overall victory in delegates.
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What does this mean for Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution?
Feel free to leave comments.Results from the voting centers finally came out early in the morning of September 27... more
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Is this happening in your Locale? Find out at www.KYF2.com
"Is the produce you buy at your local farmers’ market really grown locally?"
"A surprising investigation by the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles discovered several examples of false claims at various Southern California farmers’ markets, including a vendor who purchased boxes of produce from wholesale produce warehouses, including items grown on big commercial farms as far away as Mexico."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39319593/ns/local_news-los_angeles_ca
KYF2.comIs this happening in your Locale? Find out at www.KYF2.com
"Is the produce... more
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Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba announced on Monday it would lay off "at least" half a million state workers over the next six months and simultaneously allow more jobs to be created in the private sector as the socialist economy struggles to get back on its feet.
The plan announced in state media confirms that President Raul Castro is following through on his pledge to shed some one million state jobs, a full fifth of the official workforce -- but in a shorter timeframe than initially anticipated.
"Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities and services with inflated payrolls and losses that damage our economy and result counterproductive, create bad habits and distort workers' conduct," the CTC, Cuba's official labor union, said in newspapers.
Castro had announced layoffs in August, but said they would occur over the next five years.
At the time, he said the government "agreed to broaden the exercise of self employment and its use as another alternative for the employment of those excess workers."
The drastic and unprecedented economic changes have many Cubans worried that jobs they had long taken for granted under the Communist government will no longer be guaranteed.
Others are hopeful that they will have more freedom to set prices and earn more than the average state wage of $20 a month.
The state currently controls more than 90 percent of the economy, running everything from ice cream parlors and gas stations to factories and scientific laboratories. Traditionally independent professions, such as carpenters, plumbers and shoe repairmen, are also employed by the state.
State media on Monday did not give details about where private enterprise would be allowed to grow or which sectors would suffer layoffs, but did talk about which areas are still strategic.
"Within the state sector, it will only be possible to fill the jobs that are indispensable in areas where historically the labor force is insufficient, like agriculture, construction, teachers, police, industrial workers and others."
The announcement avoided the word "private," but said alternative forms of employment to be allowed included renting or borrowing state-owned facilities, cooperatives and self employment and that "hundreds of thousands of workers" would find jobs outside of the state sector over the next few years.
Castro has launched a few, small free-market reforms since taking over from his brother Fidel Castro in 2006.
In April, for example, barbershops were handed over to employees, who pay rent and tax but charge what they want. Licenses have also been granted to private taxis.
For a couple of years, fallow land in the countryside has been turned over to private farmers. The more they produce, the more they earn.Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba announced on Monday it would lay off "at least"... more
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CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.
In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.
Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.
Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities.
Then a front-page photograph in a leading independent newspaper — and the government’s reaction — shocked the nation, and rekindled public debate over violent crime.
The photo in the paper, El Nacional, is unquestionably gory. It shows a dozen homicide victims strewn about the city’s largest morgue, just a sample of an unusually anarchic two-day stretch in this already perilous place.
While many Venezuelans saw the picture as a sober reminder of their vulnerability and a chance to effect change, the government took a different stand.
A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer.
“Forget the hundreds of children who die from stray bullets, or the kids who go through the horror of seeing their parents or older siblings killed before their eyes,” said Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of another newspaper here, mocking the court’s decision in a front-page editorial. “Their problem is the photograph.”
Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).
There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.
Caracas itself is almost unrivaled among large cities in the Americas for its homicide rate, which currently stands at around 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Roberto Briceño-León, the sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela who directs the violence observatory.
That compares with recent measures of 22.7 per 100,000 people in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and 14 per 100,000 in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. As Mr. Chávez’s government often points out, Venezuela’s crime problem did not emerge overnight, and the concern over murders preceded his rise to power.
But scholars here describe the climb in homicides in the past decade as unprecedented in Venezuelan history; the number of homicides last year was more than three times higher than when Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998.
Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say. While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.
Police salaries remain low, sapping motivation. And in a country with the highest inflation rate in the hemisphere, more than 30 percent a year, some officers have turned to supplementing their incomes with crimes like kidnappings.
But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.
More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.
Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, a state encompassing parts of Caracas, told reporters last week that Mr. Chávez had worsened the homicide problem by cutting money for state and city governments led by political opponents and then removing thousands of guns from their police forces after losing regional elections.
But the government says it is trying to address the problem. It recently created a security force, the Bolivarian National Police, and a new Experimental Security University where police recruits get training from advisers from Cuba and Nicaragua, two allies that have historically maintained murder rates among Latin America’s lowest.
The national police’s overriding priority, said Víctor Díaz, a senior official on the force and an administrator at the new university, is “unrestricted respect for human rights.”
"I’m not saying we’ll be weak,” he said, “but the idea is to use dialogue and dissuasion as methods of verbal control when approaching problems.”
Senior officials in Mr. Chávez’s government say the deployment of the national police, whose ranks number fewer than 2,500, has succeeded in reducing homicides in at least one violent area of Caracas where they began patrolling this year.
Still, human rights groups suggest the new policing efforts have been far too timid. Incosec, a research group here that focuses on security issues, counted 5,962 homicides in just 10 of Venezuela’s 23 states in the first half of this year.
Meanwhile, the debate over the morgue photograph published by El Nacional is intensifying, evolving into a broader discussion over the government’s efforts to clamp down on the news outlets it does not control.
The government says the photograph was meant to undermine it, not to inform the public. The authorities are also threatening an inquiry into “Rotten Town,” a video by a Venezuelan reggae singer that shows an innocent child struck down by a stray bullet. For all the government’s protests, the video has spread rapidly across the Internet since its release here this month.
Given the government’s stance in these cases, many here worry it is focusing on the messenger, not the underlying message.
Hector Olivares, 47, waited outside the morgue early one morning this month to recover the body of his son, also named Hector, 21. He said his son was at a party in the slum of El Cercado, on the outskirts of Caracas, when a gunman opened fire.
Mr. Olivares said Hector was the second son he had lost in a senseless murder, after another son was killed four years ago at the age of 22. He said he did not blame Mr. Chávez for the killings, but he pleaded with the president to make combating crime a higher priority.
“We elected him to crack down on the problems we face,” he said. “But there’s no control of criminals on the street, no control of anything.”
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I would like to thank my Venezuelan friend and fellow Currenteer voxaustralis for pointing me to the article.CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in... more
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Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip. Though housed in a CD jewel case like his first circuit album (1-Bit Music 2004-05), 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it literally "performs" its music live when turned on. A complete electronic circuit—programmed by the artist and assembled by hand—plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case itself. The project is set to be released on Cantaloupe Music on August 24, 2010.
http://www.1bitsymphony.com/Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony is an electronic composition in five movements on... more
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Citing a German news report, Techeye.net reports that Google has purchased small UAV "microdrone" aircraft manufactured by Germany's microdrone GmbH, perhaps for use to augment the company's Street View mapping data. Techeye says:
The UAVs being flogged are mini helicopters with cameras attached that can be flown about all over the place. They're quiet and resemble sci-fi UFOs for the vertically challenged alien.
They can fly up to 80km per hour, so Microdrone CEO Sven Juerss suggests they'll be brilliant for mapping entire neighbourhoods really quickly and relatively cheaply.
Even before Google started data mining on open web networks its Street View operations were controversial, with Google Maps picking up on people who didn't exactly want their faces plastered all over the internet. With the kind of high-angle aerial shots this sort of kit can achieve, it boggles the mind as to the sort of images that may be accidentally captured.
Our take: Skepticism is warranted, and outrage is probably premature.
Our understanding is that FAA certification procedures for civilian UAVs operating in domestic airspace are not yet in place, so it is not clear that the regular operation of such UAVs would be legal -- never mind prudent from a privacy or public-relations point of view.
http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2010/08/does-google-plan-to-fly-its-own-uav-spies-in-the-sky.htmlCiting a German news report, Techeye.net reports that Google has purchased small UAV... more
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday said his country will stop exporting oil to the United States if there is a military attack stemming from escalating tensions between Venezuela and Colombia.
Speaking at a political rally, Chavez warned of a military attack from Colombia, and accused the United States of being behind such an attack.
"The Yankee empire has no limit to its manipulation," Chavez said.
Colombia and Venezuela are at odds over accusations that Colombian rebels have found refuge in Venezuela. Colombia called an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States last week, in which it provided photos that it said were evidence of camps belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known by its Spanish abbreviation, FARC -- in Venezuela.
Venezuela denies the accusations, and in response broke off diplomatic ties with the neighboring country.
If there is an attack from Colombia, Chavez said Sunday, Venezuela would stop supplying oil to the United States, "even if we have to eat rocks" because of the repercussions.
"That would be a response of dignity and high caliber," Chavez said.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Venezuela is the fifth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, delivering an average of 894,000 barrels of oil per day.
He also warned there would be "internal measures" in Venezuela against the opposition and media in case of a war. He accused opposition governors of being in contact with the Colombian military.
Chavez said Venezuela rejected the possibility of any foreign guerrilla or paramilitary group to operate in his country.
Colombia has accused Chavez of supporting the rebels, and Chavez has said Colombian officials and right-wing paramilitary units have plotted his assassination.
Security analysts say FARC guerrillas operate mostly in Colombia but have carried out extortion, kidnappings and other activities in Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador.
FARC is said to traffic in cocaine to finance its insurgency.
Colombia has also accused another neighbor, Ecuador, of giving refuge to rebels. In 2008, Colombia carried out a raid in Ecuadorian territory that resulted in the killing of a top FARC leader.
Last week was not the first time Chavez cut off diplomatic ties with Colombia.
A year ago, Chavez "froze" the nations' relationship over Colombian accusations that Venezuelan weapons had made it into the hands of rebels.
Colombia said it had evidence that shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons recovered from FARC guerrillas were of Venezuelan origin. Venezuela denied the allegations and said the rebels may have stolen the weapons from a Venezuelan base.Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday said his country will stop exporting oil to... more
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