And why not? Ingrid Betancourt is finally free, albeit under very sniffy circumstances. But since the objective of all his work was peace in Colombia and a release of all hostages, not scoring political points, and since she's safe, he can still say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. After all, it was his success in freeing others, such as Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, that helped spark this happy reunion between Ingrid and her family. And it was his words to the FARC that sparked this major release, as subsequent news will show (and I'll blog it if the lamestream media goes on failing to report!)

Here's Hitchens in his own words:

Uruguay says it may have found a large natural gas field that would change it from an importer to an exporter of gas.

The announcement of the possible find, which could also contain oil, was made by President Tabare Vazquez in a note on his official website.

Local reports say that the field could contain as much as three trillion cubic feet (85bn cubic metres) of gas but there has not yet been any drilling.

Link added.

The Beeb goes on to note that the gas field could provide for as much as 827 years' worth of domestic needs, based on the amount of gas Uruguay used last year. This means Uruguay will not only become a net exporter; it could become to natural gas what Venezuela is to petroleum. If Tabare Vazquez is as smart as I think and hope he is, he'll copy Chavecito and put the proceeds from that gas to use serving the Uruguayan people, who have been hit hard by the vagaries of the markets over the last 40 years. All in all, it looks very good for Uruguay.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with the Media Luna in Bolivia?

Talk about desecrating the day. Can we please leave the political bullshit out of it and just interview someone who came from a REALLY unstable place next time, CBC? Like, oh, I dunno, COLOMBIA?

At least, that's the impression I got last time I thumbed through any of the four Gospels. Too bad this site, calling itself the Catholic World News, hasn't gotten that message...and apparently, neither has a politically uncelibate Venezuelan archbishop, who routinely violates his vows with the opposition:

Oh noes, indeed. What is it lately with all these otherwise decent independent news sites going over to the stinky? In the case of the latest from WW4 Report, it seems that a number of Tibetan prayer flags have landed on the eyes of the editors, blinding them to the obvious. They've gotten real snotty with their readers who take exception to them for uncritically publishing Nik Kozloff's "revolutionary" hit piece on Chavecito.

In all the back-and-forth between the WW4R snotballs and those who rightly take them to task, I found this...

From Russ Hallberg, somewhere in cyberspace (who slugs his e-mail "don't repudiate chavez"):

Hugo Chavez should be criticized for his support of China's occupation of Tibet. However, Tibetan nationalists and the Dali Lama are backed by the CIA. It is unlikely a "free" Tibet would be anything more than a puppet for Western interests. Tibetan nationalism is a psyops to solicit the support of the US left for CIA agendas.

World War 4 Report replies: You know, that's pretty paranoid, dude. But we're heartened that at least you think Chávez should be criticized (if not "repudiated").

...which made me wonder: Is it really paranoid to suspect such a thing, considering the CIA has had its tentacles around just about every anti-communist "freedom fighter" in the world since the end of World War II--many of them downright unsavory? In other words, could Russ Hallberg be onto something?

At home, however, Mr Chavez is in trouble. State elections are due in November and Venezuela's opposition, which now includes former followers of South America's standard-bearer for socialism, is expected to perform well.

"Expected" by the State Dept. and the blinkered likes of David Blair, perhaps. But to anyone who's seriously paying attention, this opposition is a joke. The turncoats Blair is lauding here, who are expecting to siphon off the "pro-Chavez, BUT" vote, didn't do so well in the last referendum; it was won by abstention, not a resounding majority of anti-Chavistas. Given that there have been so many votes in Venezuela since Chavez came to power, that's kind of understandable. Voter fatigue can so easily set in--especially since voters have to get up early and queue up for hours before they can drop their ballots in the box. Still, one can't deny that there has been a democratic process--in fact a democratic surfeit.

But Blair hasn't been paying attention, so of course he can't be expected to know that.

What has he been paying attention to? Well, seriously silly stuff like this amateur psychoanalysis from one of the turncoats:

It's not been a good month for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. He had to do an about-face and call on the Marxist guerrilla group FARC to stop trying to overthrow the government of neighboring Colombia, lay down its arms and release its 700 hostages. But that head fake came only after evidence surfaced that Mr. Chávez had actually offered FARC leaders $300 million to support their terrorist operations and had even given them their own nameplate on an office in Venezuela's Pentagon.

Now Mr. Chávez has trouble on the domestic front. Marisabel Rodríguez, the former first lady of Venezuela whom Mr. Chávez divorced in 2004, announced she will run for mayor of one of Venezuela's most important cities in November local elections. She will run as an opposition candidate because she wants to "change the face and way of doing politics in this city and this country," she told reporters.

The candidacy of Ms. Rodríguez, a public relations executive, will no doubt revive stories about the couple's messy divorce. She is apparently a past master at psychological warfare against her ex-husband. "Marisabel doesn't hesitate to talk about Chávez on TV while holding their daughter, and that is the kind of tactic the opposition likes because to fight a media figure like Chávez you need to shock people in some way," says Arturo Serrano, a political scientist, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Idiocies in italics.

Memo to Rush Limbaugh's ghostwriter: Gawd, you suck. Let us enumerate the ways...

Anyhow, there's only one pic, showing Evo as he normally dresses: baseball-type jacket, button-down shirt, black jeans, sneakers--and a whackload of confetti overtop of it all. Boring. But I guess they just didn't want to supply y'all with Evo-cheesecake. For which onerous task there is Yours Most Sincerely, showing how Evo got to be cautiously termed "a man of some charm" by the Geographic's writer:

Okay, so his cute legs aren't in it (damn AP photogs!), but we can see the charm, can't we?

(Bonus: More Evo on the Geographic's website, here. And yes, he puts his charm on display for the photographer who wrote about him, too.)

The Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Diaz, informed that the Public Ministry has opened an investigation against the mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo Lopez, for allegedly attacking an agent of the National Guard at the International Airport at Maiquetia.

The incident allegedly took place in the early morning hours on last Wednesday, in the hours after Lopez returned to Venezuela from New York.

Translation mine. Link added.

And in other bad news for Pretty Leo, we have this item from Venezuelanalysis, which shows that he's no match for...A BLACK MAN!

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's candidate for mayor of Caracas, Aristobulo Isturiz, is the front-runner ahead of the November election, according to the first poll of city voters.

Isturiz, a former education minister who now hosts a show on state television, had the backing of 39 percent in the June 6-19 poll by Caracas-based Hinterlaces. Leopoldo Lopez, a Harvard-educated opposition leader who met with Barack Obama on June 21 in Miami, trailed with 30.1 percent.

The show in question is Dando y Dando, on VTV. Aporrea occasionally shows clips of it, and it's always an enlightening treat for me. Too bad it's not subtitled and more widely distributed on the Internets. Then you'd see why Aristobulo Isturiz is such a terrific candidate, and why Prettyboy has no chance against him...even assuming his disqualification doesn't hold up (which it will).

U.S. Ambassador James Cason's singing isn't music to the ears of one Paraguayan senator.

Cason released a CD two weeks ago of himself singing Paraguayan folk songs in the local Guarani indigenous language.

Cason tells the newspaper ABC Color he recorded the CD titled "The Field of Promises" because his wife says he has a beautiful voice.

But opposition Sen. Domingo Laino begs to differ and has asked Paraguay's Congress to denounce the diplomat.

Laino told Uno Radio on Thursday that the ambassador "sings horribly and his pronunciation of Guarani words is stammering. It is an offense to the Paraguayan people."

Cason's term as ambassador ends in August.

Which will undoubtedly be a great relief to Guarani ears. Just as no longer having to listen to John Ashcroft's croonings was a great relief to my US friends.

On Thursday, Mario Silva, host of the VTV show "La Hojilla", showed some video footage taken at Maiquetia Airport that refutes the accusations made by the mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo Lopez, who recently claimed he had been held illegally and been physically attacked by five or six members of the DISIP (Venezuelan federal police) in the airport.

The events occurred last Wednesday, when Lopez returned from a trip to the United States where he went, among other reasons, to denounce his political disqualification for receiving illicit donations when he worked at the state oil company PDVSA and received money from the company on behalf of the party Primero Justicia, which was then a "civil society" organization. Lopez also claimed he met with presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Looks like the Colombia problem is heating up on more fronts than one. Here's what's going on in Correa-land:

Colombian rebels in northern Ecuador are an old problem that previous governments failed to confront, Ecuador's defense minister told The Associated Press, announcing additions to a growing arsenal aimed at securing the Andean nation's borders.

Defense Minister Javier Ponce said in an interview that the government is buying six Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles and new radar so it can get a better handle on its borders, especially the troubled frontier with Colombia.

The acquisitions are in addition to 24 Super Tucano warplanes announced in May.

He said he does not consider Colombia a national security threat, though the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that dominates the northern border zone — and the illegal drug trade that fuels its insurgency — are a danger.

"We are not able to impede the establishment of guerrilla camps or drug labs, but to the degree that we have been dismantling a series of labs and camps we are establishing a certain capacity to prevent this from getting out of control," Ponce told the AP on Tuesday evening.

Incidentally, Colombia and Ecuador are still not talking to each other over the illegal bombing of a FARC camp on Ecuadorian turf this past March 1. But hey, at least Manta will soon be a thing of the past, at least as far as gringo incursion forces go.

And here's a cool factoid: Minister Ponce is also a poet! A few satirical verses excoriating El Narco would therefore be in order, yes?

Colombia's president on Thursday called for a referendum to decide if new presidential elections should be held in the wake of a court decision that is questioning the legitimacy of his 2006 re-election.

President Alvaro Uribe said he will ask the country's congress to approve the referendum.

Uribe's demand came after the Supreme Court called Thursday for the re-evaluation of the congressional act that changed the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term. The Supreme Court questioned the act after a former representative was found guilty of having changed her vote in 2004 to support the president's bid for re-election.

Yidis Medina, who was sentenced to 47 months, claimed senior members of the government offered her supporters jobs in exchange for her key vote. Uribe's administration has denied the charges.

But of course, he IS looking to change the constitution and run. Even his own defence minister, the most likely successor, is being blocked by El Narco, who wants to hang onto power, it seems, for life.

The ghost of Pablo Escobar must be rolling around the bowels of hell, laughing his ass off.

Conrad Black's conviction on fraud and obstruction of justice charges has been upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The court said today that defence lawyers' arguments weren't strong enough to topple Black's conviction.

Black has been at a minimum-security prison in Florida since March serving a 6 1/2-year sentence.

Minimum security, such a light sentence--and he still appealed it? What a self-important wanker.