Chicago White Sox player Ozzie Guillen ripped into Sean Penn during this interview. He says Penn is a “loser” who has no right to take the Hugo Chavez tour of Venezuela and then come back to America and say how great it is. Guillen says what Chavez shows Penn is smoke and mirrors. He says Penn should take a trip with him to Venezuela so he can see what it’s really like and how people really feel.

(H/T Breitbart TV)

This article titled “Chávez tackles housing crisis by urging poor to squat wealthy parts of Caracas” was written by Rory Carroll in Caracas, for The Guardian on Wednesday 26th January 2011 19.43 UTC

Hugo Chávez has sent out troops to take over farms and urged the poor to occupy “unused” land in wealthy areas of Caracas, prompting a wave of squats that is rattling Venezuela’s middle class.

The move by Venezuela’s president to step up the campaign to “recover” land and other property follows a housing crisis that has left millions of people in shabby conditions and affected his popularity in the run-up to next year’s election.

Squatters wearing red T-shirts from Chávez’s socialist party seized 20 spaces in a co-ordinated strike in the well-off Caracas municipality of Chacao last weekend, a move which shocked even some government supporters. Additional groups have targeted other cities.

Chávez has also announced a series of laws and deals with China, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Turkey, among others, in a breakneck effort to build 350,000 housing units in Venezuela in the next two years.

“The fundamental goal of socialism is to satisfy human needs … the needs of all, equally, without privilege,” Chávez said in a television broadcast yesterday.

Opponents claim the government has failed to build enough houses over the past decade and has been offering “empty promises”. Previous house-building deals with foreign allies reportedly produced just 10% of the promised number.

Emilio Grateron, mayor of Chacao, described Chávez’s exhortation to seize supposedly unoccupied land as demagogic, and a move that would kill what little private investment remained. “There is irresponsible rhetoric without heed of the consequences. This is a very dangerous game.”

The government has stepped up rural expropriations by deploying 1,600 troops at 47 farms in the western states of Merida and Zulia, claiming the farms were unproductive. The state has taken control of 2.5m hectares since Chávez gained power in 1999.

The government is now looking at cities in response to the housing crisis and to its fading support in the slums, once Chávista heartlands, which have voted for opposition mayors and governors.

Floods last year ruined hillside slums and displaced thousands of families, highlighting the shortage of 2m or so housing units. Residents have had to erect shacks on top of shacks on precarious slopes.

Under Chávez the government has built fewer than 40,000 units a year – some say only 24,000 – in contrast to previous governments, which averaged 70,000. The president admits to problems but rejects accusations of incompetence and corruption. He has said that the rich keep all the best land, especially in the capital, but often leave it idle. The government has closed six golf courses and recently had its eye on the Caracas Country Club, saying thousands of poor families could be settled on its greens.

Such a move would take several years, however, and the presidential election calendar requires speedier results. This month Chávez said the government would take over unoccupied spaces and any incomplete structures. Last weekend he urged the poor to join in, and hours later, at 4am, militant supporters laid claim to 20 areas of Chacao. Police expelled them but the “invasions” caused uproar, with even pro-government newspapers such as Ultimas Noticias voicing concern.

Chávez decided the squatters had gone too far, saying “the middle-class cannot be an enemy of this democratic revolution”. However, the government made clear the squatting would continue, saying the correct term was “occupation”.

Even hotels have become skittish since being asked to host those displaced by the floods. They have obliged, but some proprietors now worry they will be the next industry to be nationalised.

Chacao’s five-star Marriott hotel is hosting about 60 displaced families on its third and fourth floors. It has replaced doors with curtains and removed TVs, lamps and other fittings, but Maria Patino, 52, and her sister Blanca, 55, had no complaints. “We’re supposed to use the service entrance and not go near the lobby, but we get treated well. Three meals a day, everything free,” said Maria. .

“It [was] like being in the desert, and then you get to an oasis.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pontificates on his own cable show called “Alo, President.” The show has no format and no time limit. If Chavez decides to bloviate on the air for 1 hour or 6 hours it’s up to him.

He’s known for making unpredictable and rash decisions while on the air. During his most recent episode of “Alo, Presidente,” Chavez decried golfers. He’s long demonized the game of golf calling it “bourgeoisie.”

Now Chavez has decided to just up and seize golf courses.

“That’s an injustice — that someone should have the luxury of having I don’t know how many hectares to play golf and drink whiskey and, next door, there’s misery and children dying when there are landslides,” Chavez said during his weekly television show, “Alo, Presidente.”

Marxism at its finest. That guy over there has too much so we’re going to take his stuff and give it that other guy who doesn’t have as much.

I’ve actually watched a few episodes of “Alo, Presidente” and it’s pretty funny. By that I mean watching a crazy man with ADD ramble on about anything and everything. He peppers whatever’s he’s talking about with shout-out’s to Fidel Castro. It’s easier to laugh at Chavez when you don’t have to live under his rule.

Here’s a PBS Frontline documentary from 2008 about Chavez’s TV show:

As I was reading Humberto Fontova’s excellent piece on Big Hollywood about Castro spying on the celebrities who love him, an interesting side note caught my attention that I was unaware of.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell is allegedly dating Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Wired has a blurb about it along with media outlets in Italy and elsewhere.

Campbell apparently fell for Chavez while on a trip to Venezuela with other useful idiots from Hollywood to show support for the regime.

I’m anxious to see how Hugo reacts the first time she tries to take his head off with a cell phone. It really is amazing to what degree Hollywood assholes have an obsession with Communism and brutal dictators.

The people who shill for gay marriage and abortion and who profess to be the most tolerant among us are infatuated with the least tolerant among us. Chavez has been outspoken about his dislike of gays who his henchman routinely arrest and beat. Chavez also has a disdain for Jews which he’s made no secret of.

Naomi Campbell has always been a little unstable kind of like her new boyfriend. But she’s clearly one sick puppy to be dating a monster like that.

-Chris Jones

It looks like Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is off his meds again, because he’s talking crazy. Columbia was finally fortunate enough to kill some of the vicious FARC terrorists that they’ve been battling for years and Hugo Chavez thinks it was a “war crime.”

Although new information that Columbia has made public in the last couple of days may help to explain the bizarre reaction of Venezuela’s tyrant. Columbian authorities are claiming that a laptop plucked from the remains of one of the dead terrorists shows that Hugo Chavez has been a FARC “sugar daddy” for quite some time now.

The documents on the laptop reveal that Chavez has been a financial backer of the group for more than a decade, and at one point gave FARC a $300 million dollar gift. The documents also reveal an ongoing plan cooked up by Chavez and the leaders of the terror group to isolate and undermine Columbia’s President and U.S. ally, Alvaro Uribe.

President Uribe is the first leader of Columbia in decades that’s not up to his eyeballs in corruption and is actually angry that Columbia has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. With the help of the U.S., Uribe is hoping to wipe out FARC once and for all.

The recovered laptop reveals detailed communications between FARC leaders and Chavez, in which multiple scenarios are laid out to hopefully get rid of President Uribe.

Hopefully, someone will have Hugo Chavez killed so that we can be rid of this petty dictator. If he’s allowed to live he will destroy Venezuela and live to a ripe old age just like his best friend Fidel Castro.

-Chris Jones 

From the AP:

Venezuela and Ecuador sought Monday to make Colombia pay a high price for killing a leftist rebel leader in the Ecuadorean jungle—expelling its diplomats, ordering troops to the border and cracking down on trade across the border.

But Colombia quickly struck back, revealing what it said were incriminating documents seized from the rebel camp that suggest its neighbors have been secretly supporting the leftist rebels’ deadly insurgency.

And in a tit-for-tat move, Venezuela later displayed the laptop of a slain drug trafficker, which it said contained information implicating Colombia’s national police chief in the cocaine trade….READ THE REST

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States in an “economic war” if Exxon Mobil Corp. wins court judgments to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets.

Exxon Mobil has gone after the assets of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA in U.S., British and Dutch courts as it challenges the nationalization of a multibillion dollar oil project by Chavez’s government.

A British court has issued an injunction “freezing” as much as $12 billion in assets.

It’s likely that the Bush administration will call his bluff, because the Venezuela’s oil only accounts for around 12% of U.S. oil imports, but U.S. is Venezuela’s biggest customer by far. The only thing that keeps the Chavez dictatorship going are the countries oil exports.

It would be financial suicide for Chavez to cutoff his biggest customer, so this sounds like nothing more than the usual reckless, empty rhetoric we usually here from this guy.

-Chris Jones

British supermodel Naomi Campbell has interviewed Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, describing him as a “rebel angel” who is unafraid to speak his mind but poses no threat to democracy.

Campbell was granted an audience with the outspoken left-wing leader as part of her new brief as contributing editor for British men’s lifestyle magazine GQ, interviewing leading figures from politics, sport and entertainment.

“I’d always heard Hugo Chavez was a people’s president and I wanted to see if that was true… I didn’t want to judge Chavez, or probe him for his political views, even though he gave them freely,” she wrote.

She said the Venezuelan people also seemed happier than her last visit 10 years ago for a Sports Illustrated magazine photo shoot.

The outspoken Chavez gave his views on a politics, human rights, as well as pop music, fashion, and the British royal family.

He said Cuba’s Fidel Castro is the most stylish leader in the world.

“His uniform is impeccable. His boots are polished. His beard is elegant”

For some reason celebrities have this obsession with visiting Hugo Chavez. I suspect Chavez didn’t realize he was being interviewed by the world’s most dangerous supermodel.

If he had been made aware of her tendency to use her cell phone as a deadly weapon, he probably would have thought the interview request was another attempt by the CIA to supposedly kill him.

I especially like the part about Fidel Castro being the most fashionable leader. I would call that scraggly beard he wears many things, but “elegant” is certainly not one of them.

-Chris Jones

One of Hugo Chavez’s closest aids recently quit his post as Defense Minister and has become an outspoken critic of Chavez and his policies. He has written an interesting Op-Ed in the NY Times, called “Why I Parted Ways With Chavez.”

ON Dec. 17, 1982, three of my fellow officers in the Venezuelan Army and I swore our allegiance to the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army 2000. We considered ourselves to be at the birth of a movement that would turn a critical eye on Venezuela’s troubled social and political system — and formulate proposals to improve it. One of the officers with me was Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela, whom I have known since I entered the military academy 35 years ago.

Hugo Chávez and I worked together for many years. I supported him through thick and thin, serving as his defense minister. But now, having recently retired, I find myself with the moral and ethical obligation as a citizen to express my opposition to the changes to the Constitution that President Chávez and the National Assembly have presented for approval by the voters tomorrow.

The proposal, which would abolish presidential term limits and expand presidential powers, is nothing less than an attempt to establish a socialist state in Venezuela. As our Catholic bishops have already made clear, a socialist state is contrary to the beliefs of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberation hero, and it is also contrary to human nature and the Christian view of society, because it grants the state absolute control over the people it governs.

Click HERE if you want to read the rest.

President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

Chavez told reporters at the presidential palace that the outcome of Sunday’s balloting had taught him that “Venezuelan democracy is maturing.” His respect for the verdict, he asserted, proves he is a true democratic leader.

“I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense,” he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.

The defeated reform package would have created new types of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map and suspended civil liberties during extended states of emergency. Without the overhaul, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.

“This reform was about democracy or totalitarian socialism, and democracy won,” said opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez said.