While Chavez and Correa Laugh on VTV, Venezuelan's Are Crying on the Inside

I agree with Boq that there won't be a real war, but I do not feel like laughing for the Venezuelan people who, I suspect, are about to really suffer some serious government engineered famine.

"We aren't interested in Colombian investments here," Chavez said. Noting that Colombia traditional supplies food to Venezuela, he said that now "we can't depend (on Colombia) not even for a grain of rice."

The standard operating procedure for "socialist" tyrants around the world "submission by starvation":

The government also controls the food. Since other areas will be devoid of food and the new distribution of land is guaranteed to provide subsistant living for the new "tenents", the government will be forced to take food and send it to other areas or will have to use government revenues to purchase food to distribute (particularly since it will have cut off as many ties with free, outside, private markets for import). Since the government will control the food through either of these scenarios, any area that may be considered "rife with opposition" (or, in the speak of totalitarian governments, "traitors"), will have its food supply cut off and the people will be starved into submission just like the Soviet model.

Daniel at News and Views from Venezuela on "The War at Home": Please send me milk, chickens and eggs.

Because thsi is the real mood here, the real war, how to find ALL the basic food staples that you need and that are imported in increasing amounts.[snip]

nother indictment as its veiled implication is whether Chavez is in fact doing war on us

And, agreeing with Boq again:

The president intends to convert the Colombian government in the "enemy" because it desperately needs to appeal to nationalism to divert attention from Venezuelans from the real and urgent domestic problems and seeks to bring all together around him, as a figure of power.

Daniel announces Chavez's announcement that trade will, indeed, be cut off with Colombia. Based on Daniel's near panic, I suspect there will be a run on a lot of commodities.

Gateway posts that FARC blew up a Colombian oil line (driving up oil again?) Pretty much taking a book out of all modern "insurgent"/terrorist organizations that continue to focus on destroying important revenue making infrastructure. From Iraq to Saudi Arabia to Nigeria and places in between, attacks on oil lines and production sites takes revenue out of the hands of the government, energy out of the public sector and raises the price on the market that not only effects the local government's economics, but increases the price to allied nations, weakening the economies that provide financial and military support.

Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador may not go to physical war, but it is "war" none the less.

Update: What Colombia wants from its allies in the "war" - free trade