After two judges freed several protesters arrested last week during street demonstrations against Chávez, the judges lost their jobs.

When a Venezuelan court ruled last year that Cuban doctors helping the poor here lacked the required accreditations, Chávez disbanded the court and kept the Cubans.

And when the pro-Chávez majority in the legislature wanted to ram through a controversial bill changing the debating rules in Congress, the National Assembly convened in a park in an unfriendly pro-Chávez neighborhood -- where the opposition dared not go.

So when the National Elections Council last week cited a technicality to set aside more than one million signatures on petitions seeking to recall Chávez, critics said it was just the latest of a long string of actions that illustrate the real problem with the president -- he cheats. [snip]

''We are dealing with an illegitimate government,'' said Miguel Díaz, an analyst with the Center for Strategic International Studies. ``Can you imagine if U.S. Democrats met in southeast Washington to keep white Republicans from voting? Those are the street-gutter politics this government has been playing.''

The challenge now, Díaz said, is for the international community, particularly Washington, to figure out how to handle democratically elected leaders who become undemocratic.
Chávez's legal shortcuts were no secret to Venezuelan voters. He led a failed military coup in 1992 and after his first election in 1998 called for a constitutional convention that his supporters dominated and produced a document almost tailor-made to his leftist populist ideology.

The new Constitution also allowed the president and his allies to put their backers in charge of independent powers like the Supreme Court and the prosecutor's office. After the 2002 coup attempt, he also dismissed dozens of senior officers and replaced them with loyalists.

More than 350 protesters remain in police custody, opposition leaders said. Venezuela's Caracas Stock Exchange called on police to respect the civil rights of its vice president, who is among them.

The Caracas Stock Exchange said in a statement that Vice President Santiago Monteverde was arrested Sunday during protests, and hasn't been released. The exchange said it ``deplores'' the treatment of Monteverde who heads La Primera stock brokerage.
[ snip]
Venezuela suspended the right of the country's 24 million people to carry firearms in a bid to damp violence that has claimed the lives of at least 10 protesters in the last week, Defense Minister General Jorge Garcia said

The government's action came as opponents of Chavez sought international support to pressure the country's electoral council to hold a recall referendum on Chavez. Venezuela's Ambassador to the UN Milos Alcalay resigned yesterday, saying Chavez is failing to respect the country's laws and constitution.

``We want to guarantee the safety of all people,'' Garcia said in a televised news conference.

CARACAS The perception that a massive electronic fraud led to President Hugo Chávez's mandate not being cut short in the recall referendum on Sunday is rapidly gaining ground in Venezuela. All exit polls carried out on the day had given the opposition an advantage of between 12 percent and 19 percent. But preliminary results announced by the government-controlled National Electoral Council at 3:30 a.m. gave Chávez 58.2 percent of the vote, against 41.7 percent for the opposition.
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At first people scratched their heads in disbelief, including many Chávez supporters, but accepted these figures after César Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, and former President Jimmy Carter said their own quick counts coincided with the electoral council's figures. Two days after the referendum, however, evidence is growing that the software of the touch-screen voting machines had been tampered with.

On Aug. 27, Venezuelan electoral authorities confirmed President Hugo Chavez's victory in the referendum. Though there were accusations of fraud by the opposition, the final official results totaled 59.25 percent for Chavez, 40.74 percent against. The Carter Center participated in an audit of the votes (see final report above) and concluded the results were accurate.

Venezuela's state-owned oil company wants to offer deep discounts on home heating oil to American Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest, The Herald of Everett reported Saturday. Chavez said the program brings a better life to the poorest and most vulnerable people. "This program fulfills a promise I made to the people of the United States, and it is a gift warmly given to our American friends," Chavez said. Citgo officials say the program is a response to a letter that U.S. lawmakers - including Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; John Kerry, D-Mass.; and others - sent to oil companies, seeking relief from high fuel costs for America's poor. "The only company that responded was Citgo,"

President Hugo Chávez has announced that foreigners who visit Venezuela and criticise his government will be escorted to the airport and expelled.
In a televised address the Venezuelan leader ordered cabinet ministers to monitor statements by visitors and deport them if they "denigrated" his leadership.

"How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" he said. "No foreigner, whoever he may be, can come here and attack us. Whoever comes, we must remove him from the country. Here is your bag, sir, go."

put away for more than 20-year sentences for the crime of giving Cubans access to books and other publications forbidden in state libraries...independent librarians were, however, at the center of a protest at an American Library Association conference in Washington in June. These protesters are themselves long-term members of the ALA and call themselves Freadomistas, in contrast with Fidelistas (Castro admirers) on the ALA's governing council. That council steadfastly refuses to demand the immediate release of Cuban freedom-to-read librarians, whom Amnesty International designates "prisoners of conscience." Indeed, the council voted down an amendment calling for their release.

Bearing such signs as "Book Burning Is NOT A solution to Cuba's Energy Problems" and "Ray Bradbury (author of "Fahrenheit 451") Says: 'Free The Jailed Librarians,' " the Freadomistas also handed out fliers that quoted the core ALA policy: "The American Library Association believes that freedom of expression is an inalienable human right... vital to the resistance of oppression... and the principles of freedom of expression should be applied by libraries and librarians throughout the world." Another ALA policy cited on the flyers "deplores the destruction of libraries, library collections and property." Yet, as I have reported previously, the ALA ignores the fact that Cuban court documents (validated by Amnesty International and the Organization of American States) reveal that the entire collections of at least six independent libraries were ordered destroyed.

Among the burned publications are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (not surprisingly); a book on Martin Luther King Jr.; the U.S. Constitution; and a volume by Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence, who was killed by the Spanish during that struggle to free Cuba.

Despite these facts, the delegates to the June ALA conference were told in the flyer that the American Library Association, on its Web site article "Book Burning in the 21st Century," repeatedly refuses to post the lists of books Mr. Castro burned after the Independent Libraries were started in 1998. They were started in a courageous and perilous answer to Mr. Castro's shameless lie that year at the International Book Fair in Havana: "In Cuba, there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy."

One passerby wearing an official ALA identification tag looked at the Freadomistas signs, refused to take a flyer and snarled, "I am on the other side."

Late last year, 16 U.S. congressmen voiced their approval for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Representatives Barney Frank, John Conyers, Chaka Fattah, Jan Schakowsky, Jose Serrano, and others complained in a letter to President Bush that the United States was not adequately protecting Chavez against a groundswell of internal opposition to his increasingly authoritarian rule--an upsurge that might lead to his ouster. Elected to power in 1998, Lt. Col. Chavez has hijacked democracy in Venezuela and is openly moving the country toward totalitarianism. Beyond Venezuela's borders, he celebrates, protects, and does business with terrorists.

A day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Chavez declared that "The United States brought the attacks upon itself, for their arrogant imperialist foreign policy." Chavez also described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as "terrorism," claiming that he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

While the United States considers Saddam Hussein a threat to world peace, Chavez has hailed Saddam as his "brother" and business "partner." In the past two years Chavez has continued to cultivate relationships with the governments listed in the State Department's roll of state sponsors of terrorism--he has been particularly vocal in his support for the Iranian regime.

Last December a high-level Venezuelan military defector gave sworn testimony that terrorist links exist between al Qaeda and the Chavez government. The defector, President Chavez's personal pilot, alleges that one operation involved the transfer of close to $1 million in cash to Osama bin Laden.

In January, Judicial Watch, a public-interest legal organization based in Washington, filed a $100 million suit against Hugo Chavez on behalf of a victim and survivor of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The lawsuit alleges that Chavez provided material, financial, and other support and assistance to the al Qaeda terror network.

In February, a Venezuelan Muslim, Hasil Mohammed Rahaham-Alan, was detained in London's Gatwick airport for stashing a grenade in his luggage. He was apprehended after disembarking from a British Airways flight that originated in Caracas. The British Mail reported that al Qaeda operates a training camp on the Venezuelan island of Margarita. The Venezuelan ambassador in London has obtained a "legal stop" preventing the newspaper from commenting on the article.

...

Venezuelans waited to buy subsidized food last month in San Antonio de Tachira. The nation is facing food shortages.

These should be the best of times for Venezuela, blessed with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and oil prices near record highs. But this country’s economic and social problems have become so acute lately that President Hugo Chávez is facing an unusual onslaught of criticism, even from his own supporters, about his management of the country.

In a rare turnabout, it is Mr. Chávez’s opponents who appear to have the political winds at their backs as they reverse policies of abstention and prepare dozens of candidates for pivotal regional elections. Mr. Chávez, for perhaps the first time since a recall vote in 2004, is increasingly on the defensive as his efforts to advance Venezuela toward socialism are seen as failing to address a growing list of worries like violent crime and shortages of basic foods.

...

In fact, some economists see a slow-burning economic unraveling playing out in a country flush with oil revenues. But as Mr. Chávez embarks on his 10th year in power, it is becoming harder for him to blame previous governments for the malaise.

...

Meredith Vieira: What do you take away from the president's visit to Latin America? What do you think his goals were and in your estimation, was it a successful trip?

Newt Gingrich: Well I think first of all the importance of the Chavez smile and handshake is illustrated by your report just now on the jump in the book sales from number 54,000 to number 2. Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and being with the president as proof that Chavez is now legitimate, that he's acceptable. He is a dictatorial figure. He is an anti-American figure.

But what I find distressing is that this administration is opposed to looking for oil off shore, but the president bows to the Saudi King. The president is friends with the Venezuela, whose biggest impact on us is that they sell us a lot of oil.

And I just think there's a shallowness about how they analyze this. It does matter to the world if the United States tolerates a vicious anti-American propaganda campaign and then smiles and greets the person who's systematically been anti-American for his entire career.

MV: But Newt you heard what the president said, that he does not believe that the man's hand will endanger the strategic interests of the United States. So you disagree with that.

NG: First of all I think stopping us from [inaudible] oil is dangerous to our strategic interest. But I think we've had weakness in the last two weeks with North Korea, we have weakness with Iran, we have bowing to the Saudi King, we have weakness with Hamas, we have weakness with Cuba - and Cuba has not released a single political prisoner. And I think we have to recognize that if the administration wants to look at facts, that the record is even worse than the smiles and the handshakes.

MV: But do you think he should not be trying to mend relationships with other world leaders?

NG: How do you mend relationships with somebody who hates your country, who actively calls for the destruction of your country and who wants to undermine you?

MV: We certainly have mended relationships with countries that have hated us in the past. Russia comes to mind, China comes to mind.

NG: But we didn't rush over, smile and greet Russian dictators. We understood who they were. Yeah, you could talk, I'm not against him talking to Chavez, but you have to talk to Chavez in a cold and distant way because Chavez openly, constantly attacks the United States. Just as the Iranians are building a nuclear weapon every day. And smiling at them doesn't slow them down a bit.

MV: You have called the Obama Administration, "the most radical left-wing administration in American history with a fantasy foreign policy that has no connection to reality." Do you believe we are headed straight for a major foreign policy crisis?

NG: I think inevitably, sooner or later, we're going to have a big problem. And what I said is based on what I just said to you. The North Koreans fire a missile: nothing happens. The Iranians announce their 7300th centrifuge to build nuclear weapons: nothing happens. Hamas fires another missile at Israel: nothing happens. Cuba releases zero prisoners: we make nice to Cuba.

There's no sign that Chavez has become any less anti-American. And I think we have to be honest about the dangers in the world. I am for doing methodically and calmly as Ronald Reagan did, the things that will work. But I'm not for deluding myself about whether or not words and smiles are a substitute for real strategies.

We believe that organized bolivarian criminal groups within the Chávez administration have subtracted around $100 billion out of the nearly $1 trillion in oil income made by PDVSA since 1999.” - According to Jerry Brewer, president of Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA)