Buzzflash Interview: Nikolas Kozloff Looks at Oil, Democracy, Chávez, and U.S. 'Interests'

[demobabe]

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

I wouldn't be surprised if we continue to aid opposition groups, and maybe even destabilize the country. But I basically think that the outlook looks very positive for Chávez.

-- Nikolas Kozloff, author, Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S.

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To a lot of progressives, Hugo Chávez is a delight because he is such a thorn in the side of Bush and is willing to basically tell the Busheviks to do what Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor a couple of years ago: "Go F**k Yourself!"

Although Chávez has never been that vulgar.

Chávez has also drawn the admiration of progressives because he is a very creative populist. His efforts to provide heating oil to poor New Englanders, for example -- while Bush let the oil companies get away with scandalous and gross profiteering -- was an ingenious act of benevolence that also was a punch in the snout to the oil industry White House.

However, Chávez is a complex person (not without his flaws), a flamboyant international figure who is very much a product of Venezuela's complex politics and class conflict.

It can't be emphasized enough that Chávez's charismatic streak of hemispheric defiance aimed at the Busheviks is not the main reason that the White House tried to overthrow him in a coup attempt a few years back. Keep your eye on the oil, because Venezuela has plenty of it. What's more, as Greg Palast explained in a BuzzFlash interview a while back, Venezuela is believed to have one of the largest undeveloped offshore reserves of crude oil, a bit heavier than the Saudi Arabian oil, but nonetheless usable.

As with Bushevik politics in the Middle East, when it comes to Hugo Chávez, you can never forget the oil when it comes to White House policy.


Interview here: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/073