The Venezuelan media is reporting tonight that a judge has ordered the immediate release of the political prisoner Eligio Cedeño - a client of Robert Amsterdam.  The trial judge has not yet responded to the order, and other decisions in this case have been routinely ignored by lower courts under political instructions from the government, so we will have to see if rule of law will prevail in the case.  As we have written here many times, the two years and eight months of pre-trial detention without any conviction of a crime represents a serious violation of local and international laws.  The following is my translation of an article published in El Universal:

Appeals Court Rules for Trial in Freedom for Eligio CedeñoThe Eighth Court of Appeals ruled today that the businessman Eligio Cedeño should be ...

Robert Amsterdam has an opinion article published in The Moscow Times today:

The recent visits to Moscow and Tehran by Hugo Chavez raise a number of concerns about the deepening relations between Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

The motivation behind the Russia-Iran-Venezuela alliance is often misunderstood. On the one hand, there is the narrative that these governments are pursuing national interests, seeking to deepen their security against ever-present external threats and accrue regional power. Others argue that the alliance is driven by an attempt to build an "alternative architecture" of global relations, one that is conveniently unconcerned with democracy and human rights and bound solely by the common value of anti-Americanism.

Both these assumptions are dangerously misleading. In reality, the foreign policies of these three states are driven by the personal interests

...

The $300 Trillion “Money Bang” Keith Fitz-Gerald and his team have just produced a groundbreaking report that shows how this historic “Money Bang” is gaining steam. You’ll find out why China is investing $200 billion in one company – and why it’s expected to gain 356%… Why the Dept. of Energy is “backing” one solar company – and why it’s 506% revenue jump is a “smidgen”… And why one recently IPO’d water company is headed for a 600% run. Just go here for details.

It wasn’t long ago that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to nationalize state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) resulted in a failed coup that very nearly cost him his post.

Now, Chavez’s aggressive economic policies are again being called into question, this time as the country slides into what could be a protracted period of stagflation, which is …

Did you know that Igor Sechin allegedly worked with the famous arms dealer Viktor Bout back in Mozambique in the 1980s?  Neither did I, but you probably already know we have been watching all these orders coming for more Russian tanks from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez while at the same time more and more FARC links to Caracas are surfacing.  It's just so strange to think that the key individual who somehow allegedly ties together Russian weapons to the Venezuelans and then onward to FARC is in a Thai jail, where, apparently, the authorities are under the impression that FARC is not even a terrorist organization but rather a political party.  According to this editorial in the Washington Post, the ...

Superblogger Matt Yglesias thinks that we should start calling a spade a spade in terms of U.S. military training for Georgia - why bother pretending like it is for operations in Afghanistan?  That first point is well taken (clearly the training has more to do with the fact that they were steamrolled by invading tanks about a year ago), but where they go from there is a bit nutty (like comparing Georgia and Mexico, and other classic U.S. liberal pitfalls and faulty thinking on Russia).Isaac Chotiner at TNR has already posted a sharp response to this one, but I think we can already point to how Washington is dealing with Russia's burgeoning military relationship with Venezuela - which despite the growing proof that Caracas is leaking these Russian weapons to FARC, the yanks are still relaxed, sober, ...

From RIA Novosti:Russian President Dmitry Medvedev congratulated Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his 55th birthday on Tuesday, the Kremlin press service announced.Medvedev's letter was passed on to Chavez by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who was in Caracas on Monday to discuss plans for a bilateral Intergovernmental Committee meeting in St. Petersburg in August and President Hugo Chavez's next visit to Russia.Medvedev also called for a further strengthening of relations with Venezuela."The head of state emphasizes the importance of holding another high-level Intergovernmental Committee meeting in mid-August, which will give an additional impulse to expanding mutual ties, primarily in the trade and economic spheres," the letter reads. ...

If you want to know what Russia's energy ambitions are in the emerging markets of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, I used to tell people that all you had to do was carefully track the travel schedule of Vladimir Putin.  Nowadays, the same can be said of the Energy Czar Igor Sechin, as his itinerary is bound to be connected with the signing of major deals.Case in point, yesterday afternoon, Russia's RIA Novosti Spanish wire service reported on the arrival of the Deputy Prime Minister and Rosneft Chairman to Caracas, Venezuela.  The reason for the trip, as duly reported by the state news agency, was to prepare for Hugo Chavez's upcoming visit to Moscow and a high-level inter-governmental ...

Robert Amsterdam has a new blog post up over on Huffington Post about Obama's approach to Iran and Venezuela.  Here is a short excerpt:

There are two reasons why both the authoritarians of Persia and the Orinoco Belt represent a common foreign policy challenge to the United States. Firstly, they both lean upon a brand of populism that is heavily dependent upon an outdated conception of anti-Americanism. They have woven a narrative, backed only by selective scraps of facts combined with myths, that the United States is a hostile, hateful, and aggressive power which is responsible for nearly every social problem of their country. Oh yes, and they also want to invade us, so we had better arm ourselves to the teeth.

This narrative makes for efficient

...

Having recently completed a week-long trip to the cities of São Paulo, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I am struck with several observations that relate to relations with Venezuela, Russia, and the international business community.  The title of this post I borrow from Professor Marshall Eakin of Vanderbilt University, whose 1998 book does much to capture the country's long-standing hope of ascendency in global relations - this nearly permanent sensation that the country is on the cusp of major change, only to see the opportunity escape due to unfortunate coincidences and mistakes.  There are many who believe that this time Brazil's rise might be for real.I had the opportunity to meet Professor Eakin last week at lunch, ...

Alex#8217;s Notes: Ouch#8230; Tue Jun 2, 2009 10:27pm EDT CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela#8217;s President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp. During one of Chavez#8217;s customary lectures on the #8220;curse#8221; of capitalism and the [...]div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=KCXH259HNtY:WPO2vqYclD8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /div