UANI

"A billboard of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst. The tractors, lined up in shiny red phalanxes on the grounds of Veniran, a joint venture between Venezuela and Iran, are for peasants and socialist cooperatives across Latin America.

The influence, less visible but real enough, is for Mr Chávez and Mr Ahmadinejad, two presidents who hope this and other ventures will project their prestige and power.

The angst, if all goes to plan, is for Washington. Veniran might be tucked away in the backwater provincial capital of Ciudad Bolívar but it is part of a wider attempt by Mr Chávez to forge a common front against the United States." (The Guardian, "The Holocaust denier, the radical socialist, and their axis of unity," 7/24/2007)