Greg Palast: Hugo Chávez interview

[seafan]

Hugo Chávez interview

By Greg Palast
July 2006 Issue, The Progressive Magazine

You’d think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez’s behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, “not too high, a fair price,” he said—a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.

But our President has basically told Chávez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chávez has the power to pull it off—and the method in the seeming madness of his “take-my-oil-please!” deal.
Venezuela, Chávez told me, has more oil than Saudi Arabia. A nutty boast? Not by a long shot. In fact, his surprising claim comes from a most surprising source: the U.S. Department of Energy. In an internal report, the DOE estimates that Venezuela has five times the Saudis’ reserves.

snip

But the ascendance of Venezuela within OPEC necessarily means the decline of the power of the House of Saud. And the Bush family wouldn’t like that one bit. It comes down to “petro-dollars.” When George W. ferried then-Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia around the Crawford ranch in a golf cart it wasn’t because America needs Arabian oil. The Saudis will always sell us their petroleum. What Bush needs is Saudi petro-dollars. Saudi Arabia has, over the past three decades, kindly recycled the cash sucked from the wallets of American SUV owners and sent much of the loot right back to New York to buy U.S. Treasury bills and other U.S. assets.

The Gulf potentates understand that in return for lending the U.S. Treasury the cash to fund George Bush’s $2 trillion rise in the nation’s debt, they receive protection in return. They lend us petro-dollars, we lend them the 82nd Airborne.

Chávez would put an end to all that. He’ll sell us oil relatively cheaply—but intends to keep the petro-dollars in Latin America. Recently, Chávez withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve and, at the same time, lent or committed a like sum to Argentina, Ecuador, and other Latin American nations.

snip

Bush’s reaction to Chávez has been a mix of hostility and provocation. Washington supported the coup attempt against Chávez in 2002, and Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have repeatedly denounced him. The revised National Security Strategy of the United States of America, released in March, says, “In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region.”

snip

(Much more)

[robinlynne]

1. k&r k&r k&r spread this info!!!

[seafan]

2. More of this not-to-be-missed interview:

It's really no wonder at all why * despises this leader. President Chavez is everything * is not. A champion for the people of his country.

Chávez: Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. In Florida, his brother Jeb deleted many black voters from the electoral registers. So this President is the result of a fraud. Not only that, he is also currently applying a dictatorship in the U.S. People can be put in jail without being charged. They tap phones without court orders. They check what books people take out of public libraries. They arrested Cindy Sheehan because of a T-shirt she was wearing demanding the return of the troops from Iraq. They abuse blacks and Latinos. And if we are going to talk about meddling in other countries, then the U.S. is the champion of meddling in other people’s affairs. They invaded Guatemala, they overthrew Salvador Allende, invaded Panama and the Dominican Republic. They were involved in the coup d’état in Argentina thirty years ago.

Q: Is the U.S. interfering in your elections here?

Chávez: They have interfered for 200 years. They have tried to prevent us from winning the elections, they supported the coup d’état, they gave millions of dollars to the coup plotters, they supported the media, newspapers, outlaw movements, military intervention, and espionage. But here the empire is finished, and I believe that before the end of this century, it will be finished in the rest of the world. We will see the burial of the empire of the eagle.

snip

Q: What happens when the oil money runs out, what happens when the price of oil falls as it always does? Will the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez simply collapse because there’s no money to pay for the big free ride?

Chávez: I don’t think it will collapse, in the unlikely case of oil running out today. The revolution will survive. It does not rely solely on oil for its survival. There is a national will, there is a national idea, a national project. However, we are today implementing a strategic program called the Oil Sowing Plan: using oil wealth so Venezuela can become an agricultural country, a tourist destination, an industrialized country with a diversified economy. We are investing billions of dollars in the infrastructure: power generators using thermal energy, a large railway, roads, highways, new towns, new universities, new schools, recuperating land, building tractors, and giving loans to farmers. One day we won’t have any more oil, but that will be in the twenty-second century. Venezuela has oil for another 200 years.

snip

[bobbolink]

10. re: "collapse of the revolution"

I was speaking with a Brit who told me a story about a friend who was in Venezuela during the coup, when the generals deposed Chavez and jailed him. She said that the people didn't take to the streets, or raise general hell (pun intended), but instead, made sure the generals couldn't do anything.

Those who worked for the phone company would unplug here and there to make sure the generals couldn't get calls through. Same with the utilities, etc. In short, finally the generals had to admit they couldn't do anything, and released Chavez. They held another election, Chavez was re-elected, thanks to the will of the people.

Would that we could be so cooperative with each other!

[seafan]

13. We can't count on the media, the phone companies, the utility

companies, the Wall Streeters or the energy companies to force the issue against *Co.

But we can stop driving the trucks, stop unloading the ships, stop running the trains, stop going to work in offices and severely curtail our purchases. We can also refuse to drive the war machines or fly airplanes.

We can hold a national strike if we do not have pen and paper ballots that are hand-counted in November.

The people have done these things in stunningly poor countries.

It's our turn now.


Great story, bobbolink, thanks.

[bobbolink]

18. We could, if we had the will. The Venezuelans did.

That's why they didn't have to resort to violent overthrow. Same with the Czechs against the Communists.

We lack the sense of community to do what it takes. "Everyone for themselves" is very limited.

Glad you enjoyed the story!

[redqueen]

3. how odd that the so-called "liberal media" doesn't jump all over the fact

that the bush administration backed the coup against chavez.

K&R

[Master Mahon]

4. If they did that

they'd have to maybe discuss the umpteen other nations we sponsored
coup attempts/successes against over the last 100 years.

[redqueen]

6. Oh, that wacky liberal media! n/t

[bananas]

5. Milk for Oil!

Chávez: No. The International Humanitarian Bank. We are just creating an alternative way to conduct financial exchange. It is based on cooperation. For example, we send oil to Uruguay for their refinery and they are paying us with cows.

Q: Milk for oil.

Chávez: That’s right. Milk for oil. The Argentineans also pay us with cows. And they give us medical equipment to combat cancer. It’s a transfer of technology. We also exchange oil for software technology. Uruguay is one of the biggest producers of software. We are breaking with the neoliberal model. We do not believe in free trade. We believe in fair trade and exchange, not competition but cooperation. I’m not giving away oil for free. Just using oil, first to benefit our people, to relieve poverty. For a hundred years we have been one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world but with a 60 percent poverty rate and now we are canceling the historical debt.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Wow. I wonder if he was at all influenced in his prinicple of

cooperation by the great US business consultant who helped make Japan a great manufacturing power, after WWII, J Edwards Demming.

He would have liked to introduce it in the US, but knew of course that it was anathema to the systematised, open-ended greed we know as Western capitalism. Not so much the Rheinland model, perhaps, as the US one.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. We do not believe in free trade.

We believe in fair trade and exchange, not competition but cooperation.*



:wow:




* What's this "cooperation" I hear tell of?

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. I didn't realize that Chavez liquidated US treasuries when he bought

those Agrentinian bonds. Goota chafe lil pissypants even worse.

[lumpy]

9. Saw the interview on public access TV

Chavez is convincing and, in comparison with GWBush, actions speak louder than words. Chavez appears to be putting money where his mouth is. Venezuela has the second largest oil deposits in the world. Now why else would GWBush be so interested in Venezuela? Oil represents power in Bushco's playbook.

[Greyhound]

11. What do you think the odds are that the US will allow this rampant

justice to go on? Will we simply kill him, or will we invade and conquer Venezuela "for its own good"? Or maybe they are who Saddam sold his WMD to, thus explaining the clusterfuk in Iraq and justifying our next oil war.

ARE WE REALLY THAT STOOPID?!?

[LaPera]

12. But, Chavez paid off Argentina's debt to the IMF...so he must die

before he pays off other surrounding nations debt's and gets them out from under the thumb of the IMF & the World Bank, the IMF & WB are furious, so Chavez must die!

Chavez also makes American oil companies pay their fair share of taxes in Venezuela...so he must die.

Chavez sells oil cheaply to the poor, and "third world" countries, so he must die.

Chavez defies the oil company's controlled collusion of oil flow, so he must die.

Chavez was legally elected, so he must die.

Chavez mocks Bush, so he must die.

Chavez avoided BushCo's failed coup and assassination attempts in 2002, so he must die.

Chavez offered cheap oil to poor Americans for heating & wanted to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, so he must die.

Venezuela's economy is booming & inflation is low, so he must die

Venezuela sits on huge oil reserves that the oil companies want for themselves, so Chavez must die.

Chavez has threatened to go to the euro-petro instead of the US dollar so he must die.

Chavez has avoided assassination attempts by the US & made them look bad, so he must die.

Chavez is beloved by the poor & working class in Venezuela, so he must die.

Chavez has said: "I am a Catholic and a Christian and a very committed Christian", so he must die.

Chavez is a progressive liberal, so he must die?

Viva Hugo Chavez! Bravo!!

[1932]

17. If he died now, he'd become a huge martyr. The project is to discredit him

I suspect.

[seafan]

14. We have so much to learn from our brothers and sisters.

The story that cries out to be told to the American people

*José Pertierra is an attorney, practicing in Washington, D.C. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of Luis Posada Carriles.


(Emphasis added)

The story of (Flight) CU-455 cries out to be told to the American people. If the American people hear the true story of how those 73 people were murdered in cold blood by terrorists whom the United States prefers to shelter rather than prosecute, they'll not stand for it.
Few people in this country know that Orlando Bosch was released from immigration custody by President George Bush Sr. in 1990, and that he now sits on the dais whenever President Bush Jr. delivers speeches in Miami. Bosch's lawyer, who happens to be Fulgencio Batista's grandson, was appointed four years ago by Jeb Bush to Florida's Supreme Court.


The fate of the Cuban Five is in the hands of 12 judges, but the judges must be put under the microscope of public opinion. Despite your best efforts, Americans still don't know who the Five are or why they went to Miami. It's important that you continue to make sure that their story is told: that the U.S. prosecutes and condemns anti-terrorists, yet shelters and protects terrorists.


It's up to the American people to put a stop to impunity, and it's up to you to make sure the American people learn the truth about these cases and this government.
It's up to you to bring the truth to the American people about Cuba and about Venezuela.



The US government conducts a hypocritical war on terror, while it shelters and rewards the terrorists it prefers. Washington lectures other governments about human rights, while it blockades Cuba, using hunger as a foreign policy tool, in order to try and starve 11 million people into submission.
We cannot sit idly by while the U.S. government blockades and invades countries that have never attacked it, tortures prisoners and takes their pictures as if the victims were curiosity pieces rather than human beings, as it spies on Americans without a warrant, and tramples the civil rights of its citizens with a law whose authors dared title "Patriotic."



In 2002, Washington helped organize a failed coup against a democratically elected government in Venezuela in order to prop up a typical puppet government in Caracas. Thanks to the Venezuelan people, the coup failed and President Chávez was restored to office.
The blockade against Cuba didn't work and neither did the coup in Venezuela. Cuba and Venezuela are now stronger than ever.
The Bush Administration's policies at home and abroad have woken a sleeping and silent giant throughout this continent. And, yes: America is one continent and not two as some U.S. textbooks would have us believe.



We are in the midst of a new social movement that is shaking this continent to its core. On the 30th anniversary of Operation Condor's bloodiest year, we are witness that the people Latin America have taken back their countries from the grip of terror. Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia have governments that respond to the needs of their own people, rather than to the interests of US corporations. Other countries in will soon join them. This is an election year in America. The people of Latin America are taking back their governments.



It's high time that the people of the United States did the same.

[Canuckistanian]

15. What an intelligent man

And what a new concept - using massive natural resources to enrich the people, not just a few foreign oil companies.

And in South America, too!

I'd love to see Venezuela as a new Saudi Arabia. With a totally different model, based on the welfare of all South Americans, independent of any US influence.

I was particularly moved by this quote:

What’s happened is that in Latin America there is a turn to the left. Latin Americans have gotten tired of the Washington consensus—a neoliberalism that has aggravated misery and poverty.

So true. There's been such massive US intervention in Central and South America with so very little done to improve the average Latin American's life.

Viva Chavez!

[Ishoutandscream2]

19. The more I read about this man, the more I like him

His philosophy is my philosophy, so to speak. While Bush's administration calls this man a "demagogue," they might want to rethink what would Jesus do. Guarantee you, Chavez is walking the walk, unlike the faux Christian in the White House.

[Doctor_J]

20. He sounds really sharp

Frankly, Smirk doesn't stand a chance in a battle of wits and will power with this man.

[Vidar]

21. So Hugo's bailing out Argentina & Ecuador to--not unlike Bolivar.

It's nice to see a hero winning somewhere.

[Greyhound]

22. Kick for hope

:kick:

[Blue_Tires]

23. ttt n/t