VENEZUELA: The first contingent of Venezuela's new citizens' defence force, the Guardia Territorial or Territorial Guard, has been sworn in.
The guard consists of 130 office workers from the office of the mayor of Caracas. In their new khaki uniforms and boots, some of them on parade looked a little fat, but in a short demonstration they showed how after a few weeks training by the army, they could use light arms "for the defence of the nation".
They have no doubt against whom they would be defending it.
President Hugo Chávez and President George Bush, who does not like the Venezuelan's plans for "21st-century socialism", have exchanged very hard words.
The US has strongly criticised Venezuela's arms purchases from Spain and Russia, its attitude on drugs and its differences with the government of its neighbour Colombia, a big recipient of US military aid.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans are worried when they see US warships docking in the Netherlands Antilles, the Dutch-owned islands a few kilometres off the coast. The Pentagon maintains a large base in this little piece of the Europe in the Caribbean, although little such US naval activity had been noticed there before.
The premiere at last month's documentary festival here of a film on the overthrow of president Salvador Allende of Chile with US help in 1973 gave some people pause for quiet thought. When asked the question "Could it happen here?", many members of the audience replied yes.
Nevertheless, Venezuelans - and most others - are fairly sure that there will be no invasion. The US is seen as too dependent on the free flow of 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a day from Venezuela, one of its most important suppliers, to risk that supply being disrupted.
US forces are also supposed to be fully stretched in Iraq, Afghanistan and now New Orleans.
Nevertheless, nerves were frayed here at the end of August when the American millionaire conservative businessman and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called for the assassination of President Chávez, which was followed by the weakest possible disclaimer from the US government.
President Chávez, a former parachute colonel, is using oratory and well-funded diplomacy to his advantage in what he says might break out into an "asymmetrical war", where Venezuelans would have to use their wits against a very powerfully armed foe.
As a speaker, he will never use one word when a thousand will do. His oratory flows on - and sometimes floods out - like the mighty Orinoco or Mississippi.
He has a way with language which leaves his listeners alternately elated and exhausted.
What is almost impossible is to ignore him. His energy is abundant. As the son of two schoolteachers of modest means, he vibrates with a desire to communicate that's so great that one is virtually compelled to pay attention.
In default of a powerful army, Venezuela is using its status as one of the world's great energy suppliers and its massive cash reserves from oil sales to make firmer friends and strengthen its defensive position.
Cut-price Venezuelan oil is being offered to those many western hemisphere countries who are finding it harder and harder to pay the present high prices. Poor people in the US are to be offered cheap fuel through a big oil company Venezuela operated in the US.
Eventually, Mr Chávez wants a regional energy pact in which all would be assured of their minimum needs. The micro-states of the West Indies are to meet in Jamaica shortly to sign up for Petrocaribe, a first stab at a regional pact. Petrolatino, a more ambitious scheme, is round the corner.
But oil is not the only arrow in President Chávez's diplomatic quiver.
In an extraordinary move, he and Cuba's Fidel Castro are offering free eye treatment for all inhabitants of the western hemisphere in a bid to save the sight of no fewer than six million people in the next 10 years.
The treatment and travel are free and each patient can bring along a friend. That should bring him some popular support abroad.
Farther down the line President Chávez says he wants to launch a mass literacy scheme throughout the West such as both Cuba and Venezuela run, which would be open to people from the US as from any other country in the region.
He is getting some response from a region where globalisation and the removal of former barriers to foreign businesses in Latin-American markets have done little, if anything, for the lot of the poorest in a region.
The region is still marked by the world's worst distribution of income between the rich minority and the hungry majority.