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Venezuela’s Chavez May Lose Election Next Week

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The crowds are bigger, his speeches slicker, and Venezuela’s young opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, is on a roll in a final, frenzied push to end President Hugo Chavez’s socialist rule. With just one week left before the Opec nation’s presidential election, the 40-year-old state governor is whipping up crowds like never before, creeping up in the polls and becoming increasingly aggressive in his attacks on Chavez’s policies.

“We’ve never had a candidate like him,” gushes shopkeeper Andrea Gomez, 42, screaming at Capriles like a teenage fan at a pop concert, as the passing politician blows kisses from an open-top cavalcade on the Caribbean coast north of Caracas.

Capriles has made big inroads among the working class where Chavez has his power-base, but still faces suspicions that he is too much of a rich kid and will end Chavez’s popular welfare programmes.

The 58-year-old incumbent remains a formidable campaigner and has a strong connection with many Venezuelans, especially the poor. Yet while a majority of big pollsters still put Chavez in front, two – Consultores 21 and Varianzas – have Capriles just ahead.

Opposition activists insist the poll numbers are distorted by a “fear factor” – government employees wary of reprisals if they show support for Capriles, for instance – and therefore underestimate their man’s real popularity. Either way, Capriles seems certain to have the best tilt at Chavez that anyone has managed during his 14-year rule.

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Iran Cementing Relations With Venezuela & Bolivia While Obama Looks On

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With little notice in the main stream media, Iran has been cementing it’s relationships with regimes in Venezuela & Bolivia, both countries under the control of strongmen friendly to communism. Iran is the main funder of terrorism throughout the world, For them to gain a foothold in Latin America, does not bode well for peace in our hemisphere.

Recently I spoke with Bolivian Senator Ms. Carmen Gonzales. She has had the courage to stand up and speak out about the repression besetting her country and it’s ever closer alliances with Iran. She has been the object of continual harassment by the government for her vocal opposition; including being buried in lawsuits (18) designed to silence her.

Tell us about Iran’s influence in Bolivia?

The influence of the Iranian theocracy in Bolivia is very wide and deep. Iran has inked many agreements with Bolivia, both known and unknown to the Bolivian people. I have demanded to know the extent of these agreements, but as of yet there has been no response from the leadership. Iran is interested in our mining industry, gas and uranium. Iran is interested in expanding its influence in Latin America, to provoke the United States. It is very advantageous to Iran to have the friendship of the Bolivian regime, with all of its natural resources, including uranium and being strategically placed in the center of the continent.

But most people of Bolivia repudiate the Iranian regime: They abuse human rights, they do not respect their women and are dangerous to world peace and stability. Recently Canada withdrew its embassy in Tehran in a clear sign that the civilized world will not tolerate the authoritarian practices of undemocratic and abusive Iran.

I am also worried as a Bolivian Senator ,what may happen to the Jewish community here. Recently, the Iranian defense minister was with our ruler, Evo Morales. That same minister is under orders for international prosecution, accused by an Argentine federal judge to be part of the deaths of hundreds of Jewish-Argentine AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in 1994).

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More Pentagon incompetency: Hugo Chavez “does not represent a threat to US security”

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U.S. Gen. Douglas Fraser on Tuesday backed up President Obama’s appraisal that Venezuela does not represent a threat to U.S. security. The only thing that statement proves is that both men refuse to acknowledge a menace that has grown worse on their watch.

Gen. Fraser is the last in a long line of regional commanders who have refused to mud-wrestle with Hugo Chavez. I have profound respect for men and women who are willing to risk their lives fighting our enemies or ordering others to do so, and I understand fully why they want to keep such conflicts to a minimum. However, the best way to prevent such confrontations is to kick over rocks to find the hidden threats and to take careful measure of our foes.

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez has consolidated a narco-state in Venezuela. U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecutors have gathered fresh, compelling evidence implicating Venezuela’s National Assembly president, minister of defense and Mr. Chavez himself in narcotics trafficking. If a foreign military using its personnel, vehicles and aircraft to shovel cocaine onto U.S. streets and schoolyards is not a national security threat, what is? If such activities by Venezuela’s government are not a threat, why do we spend billions of dollars to counter the problem? Why does Gen. Fraser’s own command website call drug trafficking “a significant threat to security and stability in the Western Hemisphere”?

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez and his senior military commanders have provided material, financial, logistical and political support for Colombian drug traffickers who are branded terrorists by the U.S. government. American authorities know Mr. Chavez’s regime has issued Venezuelan passports or visas to thousands of Middle Eastern terrorists and offered safe haven to Hezbollah trainers, operatives, recruiters and fundraisers. During a March visit to Southern Command headquarters in Miami, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey said, “[W]e recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport — terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction.”

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, a half-dozen Iranian companies sanctioned by United Nations, U.S. or European authorities have built suspicious industrial installations at various sites in Venezuela. Those facilities were important enough to attract secret visits by Iranian Maj. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace commander, who previously headed Iran’s missile program, in July 2009 and November 2011.

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Venezuela’s Chavez weighs in on US Presidential Race – in favor of Obama

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CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has signaled a preference in the U.S. presidential campaign by comparing Mitt Romney to his own challenger.

Chavez, who is up for re-election a month before U.S. President Barack Obama, has in recent weeks expressed a clear preference for the man currently in the White House.

In a campaign speech Saturday night, Chavez equated the agenda of his challenger, Henrique Capriles, with that of Romney, saying both men represent the callously selfish capitalist elite.

Chavez claims Capriles, a moderate former governor, is trying to trick Venezuelans into believing he genuinely cares about the poor, the core of Venezuelan president’s constituency.

“I believe the person to best explain the loser’s agenda isn’t Barack Obama but rather Romney, because it’s the extreme right-wing agenda that borders on the fascism of the United States,” Chavez told tens of thousands of supporters in the western city of Maracaibo.

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Photo credit: vaXzine

Romney slams Obama’s pandering statement to Spanish TV that Chavez is no threat to US interests

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Republican Mitt Romney chided President Barack Obama on Wednesday for playing down “the threat” posed by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as he sought to portray the Democrat as soft on national security, an issue that may resonate with Latino voters in November’s election.

Romney was reacting to remarks Obama made to a Spanish language television station that Chavez’s actions over recent years had “not had a serious national security impact” on America.

“This is a stunning and shocking comment by the president. It is disturbing to see him downplaying the threat posed to U.S. interests by a regime that openly wishes us ill,” Romney said in a statement. “President Obama’s remarks continue a pattern of weakness in his foreign policy, one that has emboldened adversaries and diminished U.S. influence.”

Pushing back, Obama’s campaign team accused Romney of playing into the hands of the leftist Venezuelan leader by granting him the international attention that he craved.

“Hugo Chavez has become increasingly marginalized and his influence has waned. It’s baffling that Mitt Romney is so scared of a leader like Chavez whose power is fading,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

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Photo credit: William Hernández

40,000 Iranian agents on American’s Doorstep, Awaiting Orders from Tehran

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Iran has expanded its terror network and now has tens of thousands of agents in Latin America, according to a former Iranian official who has witnessed the regime’s crimes against humanity inside Iran and has knowledge of its terror network targeting the West.

In interviews with the opposition outside Iran, the official revealed that more than 40,000 of the regime’s security, intelligence and propaganda forces successfully have been placed over time in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela.

These forces consist mostly of former interrogators, torturers and security forces along with the members of the Quds Forces.

Many of them, according to the source, are other nationalities, such as Afghans, Lebanese, Iraqis and Somalis.

Hassan Rahim Pour Azghodi, a member of The Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution in Iran and a noted ideologist and theorist of the Islamic regime who visited Ecuador, Venezuela and several other Latin American countries last year, is a former interrogator and a torturer who is now a close adviser of Ghassem Soliemani, the chief commander of the Quds Forces, the source said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  Stop the Inhumanity