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Editorial
See other Editorial Articles

Title: Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton’s Band
Source: Greg Palast's website
URL Source: http://www.gregpalast.com/dick-chen ... -chavez-and-bill-clintons-band
Published: Aug 16, 2004
Author: Greg Palast
Post Date: 2006-09-24 11:40:16 by jessejane
Keywords: Cheney, Chavez, oil
Views: 209
Comments: 20

There’s so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let’s begin with this: 77% of Venezuela’s farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the ‘hacendados.’

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I’ve ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, “Chavez - dic-ta-dor!” The plantation owner griped about the “socialismo” of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the “socialist” manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela’s Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela’s dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

But Chavez won’t forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a “negro e indio” — a “Black and Indian” man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela’s history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.

So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in elections and today with a nearly two-to-one landslide victory in a recall referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our democracy-promoting White House?

Maybe it’s the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq’s. And it’s not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a ‘Goldilocks’ plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry’s (and Saudi Arabia’s) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.

Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House, “runs energy policy in the United States.”

And what seems to have gotten our Veep’s knickers in a twist is not the price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another oil law, the “Law of Hydrocarbons,” which changes the split. Right now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.

Chavez wanted to double his Treasury’s take to 30%. And for good reason. Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez promised to do something about that.

And he did. “Chavez gives them bread and bricks,” one Venezuelan TV reporter told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said the words “pan y ladrillos” with disdain, making it clear that she never touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line.

But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn’t do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton’s ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney’s — and therefore, Mr. Bush’s — enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to “Floridate” the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn’t matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez’ government “legitimate.” Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called ‘Endowment for Democracy,’ to the Chavez-haters running today’s “recall” election.

A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez’ supposed unpopularity and “dictatorial” manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

But some facts just can’t be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush can appoint the government of Iraq and call it “sovereign,” the government of Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in this slum-choked land don’t drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most look in the mirror and see someone “negro e indio,” as dark as their President Hugo.

The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation’s farmers own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez, land redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But today, the landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man may not, against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. But they are convinced he would never forget them.

And that’s a fact.

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 17.

#15. To: jessejane (#0) (Edited)

I really believe that the Patriot/Libertarian movement is making a BIG MISTAKE in lending its support to Chavez. I have studied the mechanations of the New World Order since the 1970s and this Chavez vs. Shrubya act STINKS of another of their dog and pony shows. (Basically it is another version of the get the Patriots to support one brand of ultra stateism against another while totally ignoring the FreeMarket and Freedom alternative entirely that the NWO always practices when they want to nutralize the Patriots.)

Coral Snake  posted on  2006-09-24   19:44:35 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: Coral Snake (#15)

Which why I'm concerned about Chavez playing both side of the fence.. just as the Ford foundation (etc.) does. You have to ask yourself, who benefits from his actions? jmho

jessejane  posted on  2006-09-24   19:49:53 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: jessejane (#16)

I have to admit that I thought of Chavez as some kind of hero myself UNTIL he showed himself as an admitted deciple of Noam Chompsky, a known gun grabber and New World Order SHILL disguising himself as an "Independent" Leftist. My "Bites" in fact are being given to these kinds of persons this week rather than the Shrubya crowd that usually get them.

My contention is that now that with the coming end of the era of Shrubya and his Neo-Cons (Shrubya is INELLEGIBLE to run in the next Presidential election so his era is actually at an end) these NWO alliences that the Patriot/Libertarian movement has made with the "independent" Left (Noam Chompsky, Michael Moore, Hogo Chavez, CounterPunch, DailyKos, Mother Jones, etc) will come to be the biggest threats for both continued warmongering and bringing about the end of the Constitutional Republic precicely because the Patriot/Libertarian movement has given them their "seal of approval" in the fight against Shrubya and the Neo-Cons.

Coral Snake  posted on  2006-09-24   20:10:30 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 17.

#18. To: Coral Snake (#17)

CS.. I don't see it like you do, but then, I'm rather a new student at all of this. I would say this though.. I think, many find themselves without a 'party'.. lefties, righties... what was middle is now, NOT MIDDLE. So, to make assumptions that many are casting themselves in whole fashion to yet another belief system they are not familiar with, could be a leap of underestimation in orders of unmeasured magnitude.

Many are just now waking up to what is. Shaking off the old chains doesn't necessarily mean jumping into new ones.

People need time to assess and digest what has happened and not be forced into new boxes so soon. A dem is not a dem. A pub is not a pub. A liberal is not what it was, and neither is a conservative.. The language has been changed on us, and many are catching up.. I think its time for people to be allowed to think without being boxed.

I mean no insult to anyone by saying this.. I just know, I was late to the party to begin with and it's been one hell of a roller-coaster in 5 years. And sadly, the cars are dumping us over a cliff. It's time to pick your parachute, but choose wisely.

I think people are trying very hard to do that.

jessejane  posted on  2006-09-24 20:22:07 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


End Trace Mode for Comment # 17.

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