I've just sent those articles to my Rog and also our business partner and friend who was kidnapped and held at gunpoint during the recent melee in Caracas. They also shot one of his engineers. Fortunately, they were released, the engineer will be okay, and our partner is safe at home on the island of Magarita. Thanks for posting them.

He and Rog have done freelance for a lot of the TV stations down there and the Toronto writer is right on the money about the stations being owned by some of the richest people in VZ. Those people don't pay their bills. We were told, repeatedly, that the richer they are, the less they pay their bills. This was mostly before Chavez came into rule. When I called our State Dept. about help in collecting on a signed $20,000 contract, they sent me 20 pages of lawyers' names, in 6 point font, all of them in Caracas and willing to work with English-speaking people who needed help with the VZ "business community." It was overwhelming and seemed futile, so we finally gave up. This was just a small taste of what was happening all over the country, not only to foreigners who did business there, but also their fellow citizens.

This site has good, daily news from VZ: Venezuela Online News

For a little musical content, this is one of our favourite sites, with music of the "llanera" or cowboy: www.llanera.com