Hugo Chavez

The United States and Venezuela will now serve together on the United Nations Human Rights Council, after both countries won elections today to serve together. Venezuela received 154 votes and is in the Latin American group, while the U.S. received 131 and is in the Western group.

The Campaign for American Values PAC is out with a new ad that asks, "Obama Secured the Dictator Vote, Does He Have Yours?"

We are now less than two weeks away from an election that could either save or destroy what remains of Venezuelan democracy.

There’s been an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, a Rose Revolution in Georgia, and a Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that helped launch last year’s Arab Spring. Is democracy sweeping the globe at last? Well—not yet, according to our author, a former editor at Foreign Policy who has been doing some globe-sweeping of his own (93,000 miles, give or take) over several years spent reporting for this volume.

In a recent speech, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez had praise for President Barack Obama and criticism for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The Associated Press reports:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney responded to President Obama's comments on Hugo Chavez with this statement:  

In an interview with Oscar Haza, a Spanish-speaking Miami journalist, President Obama was asked whether he's "worried with that alliance between Iran and Venezuela--and Hugo Chávez."

In April 2009, four months after taking office, President Obama wooed Latin American leaders and liberal elites at the Summit of the Americas by apologizing for decades of U.S. foreign policy and promising a new era of cooperation. Obama said:

Much like Fidel Castro, his ideological soulmate, Hugo Chávez is fond of denouncing his critics as “fascists” and “Nazis,” regardless of whether those critics are U.S.

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez is seeking a seat on the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, the group U.N. Watch reports. The independent watchdog group also says that Pakistan is additionally “slated to run unopposed for seats on the UN’s 47-nation Human Rights Council this year.”

However poor his health condition, Hugo Chávez must have enjoyed a certain measure of satisfaction earlier this month when leaders from across the Western hemisphere gathered in Caracas for the first meeting of the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a hemispheric forum that explicitly does not include the United States or Canada.

It is by now a familiar story: A Bolivian government has sparked massive street protests, and it has subsequently caved to the pressure.