More Colombians massacred in Venezuela
By GONZALO GUILLEN
EL NUEVO HERALD

Two new massacres in Venezuelan territory could raise the number of Colombians killed in recent weeks in Venezuela to at least 20, according to officials in both countries.

On Saturday, the bodies of two men were found in the Colombian town of Arauquita, at the foot of the border with Venezuela. On the other side of the border in the Venezuelan state of Apure, two more bodies were found. The deaths occurred at the same time and under the same circumstances, officials said.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan officials and a Colombian consul were in Barinas, where the bodies of six Colombians, killed by mechanical asphyxia, were found in graves, according to relatives and friends.

Also on Saturday, Venezuelan authorities found 10 corpses (eight Colombians, a Venezuelan and a Peruvian) at four sites in the municipality of Fernandez Feo. They had been kidnapped about a week before from a soccer field in Chururu.

Witnesses said armed men traveling in pickup trucks kidnapped 15 people. Four remain missing and a wounded survivor identified as Manuel Cortez Jr. was transferred to Caracas. The Colombians killed in the Fernandez Feo kidnapping worked as street vendors selling peanuts in Tachira state.

Both of the men killed in Arauquita appeared to have been killed at close range. One was identified as Edgar Garcia, who was born in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. Authorities believe the men who were shot in Venezuela on Saturday were also Colombian citizens.

According to Cortez Jr., who survived the kidnapping at the soccer field, heavily armed men kept the group in chains under a bridge guarded by 18 other heavily armed men. About 7 p.m., "They said they were going to liberate us, but instead they took us to different places to kill us.''

Relatives of Edgar Garcia have stated he also lived in Fernandez Feo and knew the other men who were killed. Authorities have not explained why the killers divided the group of four and crossed the border to kill the other two in Colombia.

In a press conference held the same Saturday in the Venezuelan city of San Cristobal, to announce the finding of the 10 corpses, Leomagno Flores, government secretary of Tachira, said authorities believe there were about six more unidentified Colombians killed whose remains have not been found.

Flores attributed the deaths of the peanut vendors to a group of Colombian rebels known as the National Liberation Army (ELN), active in Venezuela.

They are "acting like hyenas, like animals marking their territory,'' said Flores.

Venezuela's vice president, Ramiro Carrizalez, argued that "there are many clues that lead to identify them [the dead] as paramilitaries.'' He also said their jobs as street vendors did not reflect their lifestyles.

As for the six dead from asphyxiation in Barinas state, according to witnesses, their deaths occurred in late August.

Colombia's consul in the area, Moses Jairo Martinez told reporters he will lead an expedition to the site of the deaths.

http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2009/october/27/latam-091027-03.htm Colombia, US May Sign Military Pact

BOGOTA - Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister Jaime Bermudez stated today the government may sign a polemic military agreement with the US without passing it to Congress.

Bermudez, who is taking part in an event promoted by the Organization of American States (OEA), stated the Executive Power has the arguments to sign the agreement without passing it to the Legislative.

He also said the government is convinced that all requirements are carried out and there's no need to pass it to Congress.

Regarding military agreement between Bogotá and Washington there'll be at least 1 400 US soldiers at Colombia; eight hundred permanently and other 600 under contracting conditions.

Colombia and the USA sustain this agreement is aimed to fight drug trafficking in Colombia. This argument is considered by other countries of the region as a pretext to cover Pentagon geopolitical real intensions.

On the other hand, the US Congress approved last week the Department of Defense's budget of 680 billion dollars for 2010. From that amount the Pentagon will use 46 million dollars to refurbish the Colombian military base of Palanquero, 111.85 miles from Bogotá.

Colombian minister of Defense Gabriel Silva is in Washington in an official visit to discuss with US aouthorities this polemic agreement.

possibly why uribe and washington are a match made in hades. allowing foreign troops without the blessing and approval of the will of the people or of elected congress. politics as usual between what is now certainly a military dictator and washington and a sign of american aggression. narcoterrorism my arse

come on you guys lets invade Venezuela and get rid of nutty hugo .....what do you say Coco ?

For para-military read CIA - infiltrating legitimate organizations to wreck havoc......... CIA is the greates employer of criminals and assasins.... US troops should get out of the region....
S.

abc,
we are waiting for your input on the article regarding your euro friend. go for it

so much attention......
S.

the same could be said about mexicans killed in US haitians killed in DR afghanis killed in pakistan..etc etc. is there any point to this thread other than the fact that people from nearby countries often get killed while visiting their neighbors doing illegal or subversive actions??? is this thread to villify hugo and say you had best beware or this could begin happening in the DR?? it already is. it is about drugs. money and power or all of the above. the athorities are the last to know(on the record) and the first blamed. if these people were innocent and killed then my heartfelt condolences to there prospective families and shame on venezuela for their actions. but call me a sceptic until proven and you a propagandist.

Those Venezuelans are racist for murdering the Colombians because they want to deny that they have Euro/Indio/Afro roots as well!. Besides those selling drugs just wanted to make a living, they are starving in home.


RAYCIZZUM!!!

Weasels, skunks and jackals: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez loves vermin of all kinds
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has his heroes, and a nasty-as-hell lot they are.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, exporter of terror, nuclear madman and anti-Semite? Check.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, brutal, racist dictator?

Check.

Idi Amin, late of Uganda, complicit in the deaths of 300,000?

Check.

"We thought he was a cannibal. I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot," Chavez said of Amin in a speech that rallied to the defense of men who, in Chavez's estimation, have been wrongly labeled "bad guys."

Atop his most-admired list this weekend was Carlos the Jackal, once the world's most wanted terrorist, currently jailed in France.

This murderer confessed to leading a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters and has been linked to bomb and grenade attacks, a jet hijacking and the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Oh, and he has praised Osama Bin Laden as a "shining" example of "revolutionary Islam" and the 9/11 attacks as a "lofty feat of arms."

The axis of evil lives.

"Boliburgueses," or" Bolivarian Bourgeois ",are even at Risk with Nutty Hugo
By JOSé DE CóRDOBA, DARCY CROWE and JOEL MILLMAN

CARACAS -- Venezuela said Monday it will liquidate two banks owned by businessman Ricardo Fernandez and temporarily shut two others, intensifying a showdown between President Hugo Chávez and a billionaire long considered a close ally.

Mr. Fernandez, who made an estimated $1.6 billion largely through government contracts, was seen by many Venezuelans as the epitome of the crony capitalism they say has flourished under Mr. Chávez.

It is unclear why the government moved against him. Some analysts here believe Mr. Chávez wants to be seen as tough on corruption amid an economic downturn. Others suggest the arrest and bank closures represent a behind-the-scenes battle over this oil-rich state's lucrative spoils.

On Sunday, Mr. Chávez suggested it was the former, taking to the airwaves to attack Mr. Fernandez and others who have profited from government connections. "There are people out there that say that they are revolutionary and are doing business. A true revolutionary is not going around doing business for profit," he said on his weekly television show.


Mr. Fernandez, 44, turned himself in to Venezuela's secret police on Nov. 20, hours after the government took over the management of four failing banks that he and a group of investors had bought over the course of the past year. He faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of illegally using depositors' money, self lending and criminal association.

The government says Mr. Fernandez's banks made illegal loans for as much as $846 million. The alleged violations were on record for months before the government's financial watchdog moved on them.

Antonio Guerrero, Mr. Fernandez's lawyer, says his client's legal problems are the result of an inaccurate audit of the banks books. "The charges are totally false and without foundation," he says.

In Caracas, depositors lined up outside the four banks, which were acquired by Mr. Fernandez and partners over the past year and account for about 6% of deposits in the country's banking system. About 750,000 people are affected by the announced liquidation of Banco Canarias de Venezuela CA and Banco Provivienda CA. The government says it wants to rehabilitate the other two, Bolivar Banco CA and Banco Confederado SA.

Many analysts and bankers in Caracas believe Mr. Fernandez's troubles signal a struggle between powerful factions in the Chávez government. "Something changed in his relationship with the Chávez power structure," said José Guerra, a former Venezuelan central bank director.

Mr. Chávez, who has been in power for more than a decade, has expanded the state role in the economy at the expense of the country's traditional business class. But his rule has created a class of connected businessmen who have won big government contracts -- derisively called the "Boliburgueses," or Bolivarian Bourgeois, a play on Mr. Chávez's self-styled Bolivarian revolution.

Mr. Fernandez was the most powerful of these, analysts say, and Mr. Chávez's favorite banker. State institutions account for more than 42% of Banco Canarias's deposits, or $2.13 billion.

These people also say Mr. Fernandez was close to power brokers including Diosdado Cabello, the public-works minister, and Mr. Chávez's older brother and mentor Adan, currently the governor of Barinas state. Spokesmen for Mr. Cabello and Adan Chávez declined to comment.

Mr. Fernandez, the son of a Spanish immigrant who owned parking lots in Caracas, became the prime provider of food products to Mercal, a government-run store chain that sells subsidized foods to poor Venezuelans. Now known as the "King of Mercal," he employs some 18,000 people.

He broke into the inner circles of Mr. Chávez's government in 2002 after Venezuelan business leaders backed an ill-fated general strike in a bid to topple Mr. Chávez. Mr. Fernandez offered his trucks to the government to help distribute foodstuffs.

He expanded his investments in food producers to meet government contracts. The government backed his group, which was a rival to Venezuela's largest private company, food producer Empresas Polar SA, which Mr. Chávez has threatened to nationalize.

By 2005, his net worth was $1.6 billion, according to a "statement of financial condition" drawn up by Caracas accounting firm Alcaraz Cabrera Vasquez, KPMG's Venezuela affiliate. The firm declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

Orlando Ochoa, an economist critical of Mr. Chávez's economic policies, says Mr. Fernandez's arrest could suggest rising influence of Socialist ideologues within the government who disdain the Boliburgueses. The nod for intervention in Mr. Fernandez's banks came from Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez, a former leftist guerrilla and self-described Marxist.

Others in Caracas believe Mr. Fernandez's arrest is a pre-emptive strike by Mr. Chávez against legal moves by U.S. authorities against the businessman.

In 2007, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confiscated a private plane belonging to one of Mr. Fernandez's businesses because it was incorrectly registered in the U.S. In an affadavit, the DEA said such registrations were typical of people involved in illegal activities who sought to minimize searches, letting foreign owners "use the airplane to traffic drugs, arms, or cash."

In 2008, Miami prosecutors fined Mr. Fernandez's U.S. company $1.1 million, saying the confiscation had been solely due to the faulty registration, and not because the aircraft was involved in illicit activities. Mr. Fernandez has also had his U.S. visa revoked, says Mr. Guerrero, his lawyer.

"Mr. Fernandez has been subject to sanctions because he is identified with President Chávez," said Mr. Guerrero.