Word: venezuelanizing
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...needs diplomacy and all its excruciating politeness? Not even the traditional "Yankee Go Home" was enough to convey the pique of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Thursday as he announced that he had given U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy 72 hours to leave Venezuela. "Shithead Yankees, go to hell!" Chávez thundered at a campaign rally in Carabobo state Thursday, announcing that he had also asked Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, to return home until a new government is elected in the U.S. that will "respect the peoples and governments of Latin America...
...said he was taking the action in solidarity with Bolivia's President Evo Morales, who had expelled his own country's U.S. ambassador a day earlier. But he also accused the U.S. of being part of a plot to assassinate him, a scheme allegedly involving retired Venezuelan generals and opposition politicians...
...this does turn out to be a kind of Watergate for Chavez, it will have started under similarly clumsy circumstances. Antonini, 46, now claims the suitcase wasn't his - that he was carrying it for another Venezuelan passenger on the Cessna Citation that landed in the wee hours of Aug. 4, 2007, at Buenos Aires' Aeroparque Jorge Newberry - and that he wasn't aware of its contents. But Maria del Lujan Telpuk, the agent who stopped Antonini inside Newberry's VIP sector, says he became visibly nervous when she asked him to open the bag. "I had to insist," says...
...days later Antonini joined them at a reception in the Casa Rosada. Argentine officials dispute that. Either way, Antonini returned home to Key Biscayne, Florida, scared enough to cooperate with FBI agents. For the next four months they monitored his meetings and calls with Duran, 40; Kauffman, 35, a Venezuelan partner of Duran's in oil products and drilling equipment firms; Maionica, 36, a Venezuelan lawyer; Antonio Jose Canchica, 37, an agent of the Venezuelan intelligence service, DISIP; and Rodolfo Wanseele, 40, an Uruguayan and Canchica's driver. Maionica and Kauffman face a maximum five years each in prison; Canchica...
Court documents allege Maionica confided he was "brought into the conspiracy by a high-level official of DISIP." They say Kauffman and Duran - who own ritzy Florida homes, enjoy racing Ferraris and are part of what Venezuelans call the revolution's "Boli-bourgeoisie" - issued thinly veiled threats. They warned that "foreign government authorities would pursue Antonini" if he talked, and that it was in his children's best interest that he have "no problems" with Venezuela. At one cloak-and-dagger gathering, Canchica, using the name "Christian," allegedly told Antonini that PDVSA (the Venezuelan oil corporation) and the Chavez government...