Crackpot on earthquakes
Via Babalu, Capitalism ’causes natural disasters’

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has blamed global capitalism for earthquakes hitting India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as for mudslides that have struck Central America and Mexico.

On his weekly radio and television call-in program, “Hello, Mr. President,” Mr Chavez said these catastrophes were nature’s answer to the “world global capitalist model”.

Too bad Hugo didn’t Blame Bush!

In his spare time, Hugo’s still doing some shopping, ‘Hot potato’ reaction to Chávez reactor

Venezuela has asked to buy a nuclear reactor from Argentina, throwing officials in Buenos Aires into a fluster because of President Hugo Chávez’s frosty relationship with Washington, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Venezuela’s request for a medium-strength reactor has been passed from one government office to another “like a hot potato,” one diplomat was quoted as saying by the Clarín newspaper.
Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm PDVSA made the proposal in a meeting with Argentine officials in Buenos Aires in late August, saying it wanted to develop alternative energy sources in its Orinoco oil region, the newspaper said.
Officials were not immediately available to confirm the report on the request by Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and a key energy supplier to the United States.
Despite President Néstor Kirchner’s close ties to Chávez, officials in his government are divided over the wisdom of selling nuclear technology to the firebrand Venezuelan, who Washington sees as a destabilizing force in the region, Clarín reported, citing unnamed Foreign Ministry sources.
Some officials are thought to fear that Chávez, a self-proclaimed revolutionary socialist, secretly aims to develop nuclear arms while others simply prefer not to irk Washington. Talks between the two countries are still in the preliminary stages.

Let’s hope there won’t be any seismic activity.

Update, Tuesday October 11: Publius Pundit on Nuclear Venezuela:

The Argentine officials say they will conduct the transaction with utmost responsibility. Really? This coming from Argentine officials who blame shopkeepers for their snowballing inflation? It’s like ‘love’ from the mouth of a whore.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Hugo’s awarded the next Norwegian Badge of Uselessness.