His buddy, former Venezuelan Defense Minister Raul Isaias Baduel, has been the biggest name to defect but the polls aren’t looking great either:

President Hugo Chavez is trailing ahead of a key vote on constitutional reforms, according to a new poll Saturday that shows opponents of the changes ahead by a strong margin.

The survey was conducted by Caracas polling firm Datanalisis, whose polls ahead of past votes have consistently matched Chavez’s electoral victories. It found about 49% of likely voters oppose Chavez’s reforms, well ahead of 39% who favor the changes.

“Chavez has never gone into an election without being an overwhelming majority from the beginning,” Datanalisis pollster Luis Vicente Leon told The Associated Press. “This is the first time it’s reversed.”

The sad reality is that there’s little hope that Chavez will respect the constitution, or the will of the people, whatever the results may be.

All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, a Latin American dictator to hang with, and I’m fine.

“Sean Penn is in Venezuela,” Chavez said over national television. “I spoke with him by telephone and will see him” tomorrow.

“He came by himself on a commercial airliner,” he said. On Tuesday, Penn “walked the neighbourhoods of Caracas,” Chavez said.

He said that tomorrow, the 2003 Oscar-winning actor of “Mystic River” visited Barlovento, 100 kilometres east of Caracas.

Penn “is moved by his conscience, in search of new pathways,” Chavez said.

Snuggling up to Chavez is profitable – dictators know how to handle friends and enemies:

Chavez also recently welcomed US actor Danny Glover to Venezuela and gave him 18 million dollars to finance a film on Haitian independence leader Toussaint Louverture.

This happened a few days ago but people keep telling me they haven’t seen it. In the video you’ll see that Barron’s support of Chavez doesn’t sit too well with Housley.

Some background on Barron from Wikipedia:

He is often regarded as a racist and radical leftist, holding to beliefs he formed while in the Black Panther Party, which is no longer in existence. Some critics have called Barron a die-hard rebel fighting for black issues that are no longer relevant. He claims that criticisms of him being a “revolutionary” or “over-the-top” on black issues are simply the result of ignorance on the part of his white colleagues; he has, however, used the term “elected revolutionary” to describe himself[9]. He is adamant on his issues, claiming that they are still important today, such as the issue of reparations for slavery:

“America—from 1789 to 1865, America—American government supported the institution of slavery. You don’t tell Jewish people to forget about the Holocaust. We don’t tell the Japanese people to forget about their oppression. When you are engaged in those kinds of crimes, you have to pay the debt. They don’t mind inheriting the riches from slavery. Nobody says, ‘Well, all of this money that was generated by the government, by private corporations, by private estates’—if you can inherit the wealth from slavery, then you must inherit the crime and responsibility from slavery.”[10]

Barron received reprimands and a certain amount of notoriety[11] for a remark he made during a 2002 reparations rally:

“I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.”

He has also shown support for Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, calling him a “Humanitarian”.

venstudent Venezuela: Movimiento Estudiantil by Miguel Weil

 
Check out the entire album.

This is just beautiful:

Radio Caracas Television, the station silenced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has found a way to continue its daily broadcasts — on YouTube, the popular video Web site.

Although the station is officially off the air, CNN’s Harris Whitbeck said its news department continues to operate on reduced staffing, and the three daily hour-long installments of the newscast “El Observador” are uploaded onto YouTube by RCTV’s Web department.

In addition, RCTV’s Colombia-based affiliate, Caracol, has agreed to transmit the evening installment of “El Observador” over its international signal. The program, which will run at midnight, could reach about 800,000 people in Venezuela.

Although this is drastically reduced from RCTV’s previous audience, its continued presence is a sign of hope for the staff.

“We’re just doing our job as journalists,” said an employee of RCTV. “As long as somebody is seeing us, we consider what we are doing to be valid.”

Daniel Duquenal believes that the RCTV closure may signal the beginning of the end for Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution:

It does not matter whether Chavez remains at Miraflores Palace until he dies of old age in his sleep: this week his revolution died.

The students might succeed in overthrowing Chavez, or might go home when they get bored, or might end up in a blood bath. But in three days they have nailed the coffin of the pseudo revolution that has been tormenting us for too long.

When Chavez closed RCTV he made the fatal mistake that all revolutions, real or spurious, make, that mistake that sooner or later will bring them to their end. In some revolutions it is easy to point that turning point, even if they are still running.

More video can be found here.

Their praise for Hugo Chavez reveals a more ambitious plan:

According to a report of the Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, Hosseini said the Iranian government and people had high praises for the free and competitive atmosphere in which the Venezuelan election was conducted.

“The victory of freedom seekers and independent-minded figures in Venezuela and Latin America points to the love of the people of the region for real independence and their hatred for US officials’ arrogant attitude,” he reiterated.

Commenting on the impact of the election on Tehran-Caracas relations, Hosseini said Tehran hopes the positive development would lead to further expansion of wide-ranging ties between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Venezuela and other states of the region.

Hosseini also hoped Tehran-Caracas relations would serve as an example for regional states as well as countries of the South.