“Patria o Muerte!” - “Fatherland or Death!”

How much longer are we to allow this cancer to grow in South and Central America?

Anti-U. S. rhetoric is reaching new highs but now the discontent is much closer to our southern border.
Ecuador and Nicaragua are the newest members of the Venezuelan/Iranian alliance.

Chavez noted the deep relationships between the two countries and said one can speak of a “single fatherland” when speaking of Iran and Venezuela.

The Fatherland? Hitler would be proud of these two thugs.

Chavez is so blinded by his hatred for America that he doesn't see the threat posed to his country from Islamic fanaticism. His socialist goals have no place in an Islamic theocracy and when the time is right Ahmadinejad will do to him what Hitler did to Stalin.

The only positive is that both countries are wasting their natural resources without building the infrastructure these nations will need when the oil runs out.

Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Venezuela - his second in less than four months - comes as he seeks to end the international isolation over his country's nuclear program and make new allies in Latin America.

Caracas was the first stop on a tour that will take him to the newly elected left-wing governments in Nicaragua and Ecuador, led by Daniel Ortega and Rafael Correa respectively, which, like Venezuela, are seeking to reduce US influence in the region.

Venezuela and Iran are ready to spend up to £1 billion to help other countries free themselves from domination by the United States. The £1 billion investment fund set up by the two oil-rich countries would be used to finance projects in friendly third countries. Money that would be better spent to help the poor in their own countries. 40% of Iran is below the poverty level while 47% of Venezuela is also below the poverty level.

"It will permit us to underpin investments ... above all in those countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the [US] imperialist yoke," Mr Chavez said, as the two men met in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

"This fund, my brother," Mr Chavez said, referring to Mr Ahmadinejad, "will become a mechanism for liberation. Death to US imperialism".

The Iranian leader called it a "very important" decision that would help promote "joint co-operation in third countries", especially in Latin America and Africa.

The two anti-American leaders have united in their defiance of President Bush. Their goal is to diminish American influence in the region. Chavez has pledged billions of dollars of help to the region in foreign aid, bond buy-outs and preferentially financed oil deals.

Chavez has also become a leading defender of Iran's nuclear ambitions, accusing the US of using the issue as a pretext to attack a regime it opposes and pledging to stand with Tehran.

Iran, meanwhile, is allegedly bankrolling militant groups in the Middle East, as well as insurgents in Iraq, in an effort to extend its influence.

The wise Hugo Chavez and oil blackmail

Mr Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has called Mr Chavez "the champion of the struggle against imperialism". He congratulated the Venezuelan leader on his re-election last month and said the people had been wise to choose "a person as important on the world stage, a person so wise as Hugo Chavez".

Critics of Mr Chavez have accused him of pursuing an alliance that does not serve Venezuela's interests and which jeopardises its ties with the US, its main oil export market.

Both Venezuela and Iran are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Mr Chavez said that they had agreed to back a call for an oil production cut in the cartel to stem a recent fall in crude prices.

All that was missing was Cindy Sheehan.