Chavez to sell cheap oil to U.S. poor

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Venezuela to sell cut-price heating oil to U.S. poor
Aug 29 10:39 PM US/Eastern


CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Monday his government plans to sell as much as 66,000 barrels per day of heating fuel from its U.S. Citgo refinery to poor communities in the United States.

The offer, made after populist Chavez held talks with U.S. civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, would represent 10 percent of the 660,000 bpd of refined products processed by Citgo. The deals would cut consumer costs by direct sales.

Venezuela's Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said officials were still working on the details on how the oil would be sold from Citgo, a unit of the state oil firm PDVSA.

"We are going to direct as much as 10 percent of the production, that means 66,000 barrels, without intermediaries, to poor communities, hospitals, religious communities, schools," Chavez told reporters at a press conference.

The world's No. 5 oil exporter, oil cartel OPEC member Venezuela is a key supplier to the United States, providing about 15 percent of all U.S. energy imports.

But relations between Caracas and Washington have become strained since left-winger Chavez was elected in 1998 promising social reforms.

Chavez, a former army officer who survived a coup in 2002, frequently accuses the U.S. of backing efforts to kill him or topple his government. U.S. officials dismiss those charges but say Chavez has become a threat to regional stability.

[R00k]

He makes our officials look very bad.

[losCHUNK]

top fella

[Freakaloin]

lol...i like him more and more everyday...

[[xeno]Julios]

is it true that he was convicted of attempting to organize the assassination of one of his opponents' families in the past?

i saw that on one of the pat buchanan vid clips

[[xeno]Julios]

here we go:

HALVORSSEN: Well, he in fact tried to use that. Chavez, in 1992, attempted to assassinate the democratically elected President Carlos Andrés Pérez and his family and he failed, and for that he went to jail. The person who began this, who started the concept of assassination for political reasons, was in fact Hugo Chavez, and his foreign minister is a former guerrilla terrorist. They basically have no standing to criticize anyone who made remarks that like -- you know, that were misinterpreted like the ones you made.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200508240005

[[xeno]Julios]

more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chavez

Chávez was born to a mestizo family, like 67% of Venezuelans, in Sabaneta, Barinas State. His father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, was a former regional director of education and a former member of the conservative Social Christian Party, and is currently the governor of Barinas.

At the age of 17, Chávez joined the paratroop legion of the Venezuelan armed forces, and began studies at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences. He graduated in 1975 in military sciences and engineering. He did further graduate work in political sciences at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, but left without a degree.

Chávez was fascinated by Simón Bolívar, an important independence figure in Venezuela and Latin America. On July 24, 1983, the 200th anniversary of Bolívar's birth, Chávez founded the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (MBR-200, "Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200").

In 1989, President Carlos Andrés Pérez had presided over unpopular IMF austerity measures that led to the "Caracazo" protests in 1989 which left at least 400 dead. On February 4, 1992, Chávez and the MBR-200 led a failed military coup against President Pérez, which left 18 dead and 60 injured. [1] Chávez was permitted to read a statement on television in order to tell his co-conspirators to stand down. Famously, he said that they had not achieved their goals por ahora ("for now"). A second coup attempt in November 1992, whilst Chávez was still in prison, also failed, although the plotters did succeed in capturing a TV station. After spending two years in prison, Chávez was pardoned by President Rafael Caldera. He reconstructed the MBR as a political movement called the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR).

Chávez justified the coup on the evident discontentment of the majority of the population on the economic measures adopted by Pérez, inspired on recommendations of International Monetary Fund. These measures of a neo-liberal nature, badly communicated to the population, fomented significant cuts in public expenditures and opening to the market the prices of goods and services which for many years were subject to price controls. Among these measures, there was an increase in the price of gasoline and public transportation that sparked on February 27, 1989 the worst riots (Caracazo) that the country had experienced for many years in Caracas and other cities of Venezuela. The riots were put down by the army. 400 people died. But the government of President Pérez never recovered from the aftermath of the riots and his fall was precipitated by the coup of Chávez.

Chávez was incarcerated but his coup was cunningly used by former President Rafael Caldera, the head of the christian-democratic party, COPEI, to promote himself for the next presidential elections. While all the political leaders outright rejected the "coup d'état" of Chávez, Caldera, addressing the Congress, justified it on the basis of the corruption of the Pérez government. This move, plus subsequent actions by Caldera and a group of intellectuals that backed him, achieved its goal of removing Pérez from the presidency on charges of corruption by an act of Congress on May 2, 1993.

[shadd_]

don't forget where the guy lives. there is no way you would ever make it to the top without being very aggresive.

so even a good guy would have to pull off some shady shit to make a difference there.

[JulesWinnfield]

Mucking with Corpublican America? Now he's really going to be an assasination target

[tnf]

heh...way to stick it to the administration...

[seremtan]

some more on Carlos Andrés Pérez from wikipedia:

Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (born October 27, 1922) was President of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993.

A member of Acción Democrática, in his first term he was praised by the country's leftist groups for taking steps to nationalize the petroleum and iron ore industries in order to control profits. He denounced advocates of globalization as "genocide workers in the pay of economic totalitarianism". He lashed out at institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, claiming that it was the equivalent of a "Neutron Bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing." As a result he nationalized Shell Oil, Exxon, U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel operations in the country.

In February 1989, at the beginning of his second term as President, he accepted an International Monetary Fund proposal known as the Washington consensus. In return for accepting this proposal, the International Monetary Fund offered Venezuela a loan for 4.5 billion US dollars. Poor economic conditions during his tenure led to massive popular protests in Caracas, the capital. These protests resulted in the deaths of many and resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency. The protest is now referred to as the Caracazo.

In February 1992, his government survived a bloody coup attempt by then-Army officer Hugo Chávez, who was later elected President of Venezuela. Pérez was impeached in 1993, following a scandal on the mishandling of US$17 million, used to help Violeta Chamorro's government in Nicaragua.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_And ... P%C3%A9rez

i thought the washington consensus sounded familiar, so i checked it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_consensus

basically the standard US-inspired 'liberalisation' program that has fucked over latin america bigtime

[prince1000]

anyone see this yet: http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/home.htm

it ran for only 3 or 4 days before getting pulled, at least in boston. no availability date for netflix yet either...

[R00k]

It's funny that anytime media - even wikipedia - mentions IMF "loans," they never go into the details, like the stipulations that are put on countries' economies in order to get the loan. Basically things that say "We'll give you 4 and a half billion dollars, as long as you don't spend it on infrastructure that will help the poor - and as long as you spend a large percentage of the loan in contracts with US-based multinational contractors, such as Halliburton."

It's like, in order to give aid to a country, we throw a ripe orange to the IMF to say that we're helping. Then the IMF - with our foreknowledge - keeps the orange, throws the country a piece of rotten fruit instead, and says they can only have it if they give all the seeds back to us before they use it. Then later our officials and pundits can say "Hey, look, we gave them what they asked for - it's not our fault if they're too stupid to use it - why do you think they're poor in the first place?!?!"

[seremtan]

yes indeed. trickle-down economics are alive and well. make the rich even richer and a few more crumbs will fall off the table

[[xeno]Julios]

nice analogy rook

[seremtan]

the IMF is basically a money-laundering operation, recycling taxes into private bank a/cs