Chavez: 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.
Q: Speaking of the free market, you've demanded back taxes from U.S. oil companies. You have eliminated contracts for North American, British, and European oil companies. Are you trying to slice out the British and American oil companies from Venezuela?
Chavez: No, we don't want them to go, and I don't think they want to leave the country, either. We need each other. It's simply that we have recovered our oil sovereignty. They didn't pay taxes. They didn't pay royalties. They didn't give an account of their actions to the government. They had more land than had previously been established in the contracts. They didn't comply with the agreed technology exchange. They polluted the environment and didn't pay anything towards the cleanup. They now have to comply with the law.
Q: You've said that you imagine the price of oil rising to $100 dollars per barrel. Are you going to use your new oil wealth to squeeze the planet?
Chavez: No, no. We have no intention of squeezing anyone. Now, we have been squeezed and very hard. Five hundred years of squeezing us and stifling us, the people of the South. I do believe that demand is increasing and supply is dropping and the large reservoirs are running out. But it's not our fault. In the future, there must be an agreement between the large consumers and the large producers.
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 Chavez simply collapse because there's no money to pay for the big free ride?
Chavez: 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.
Q: But the revolution can come to an end if there's another coup and it succeeds. Do you believe Bush is still trying to overthrow your government?
Chavez: He would like to, but what you want is one thing, and what you cannot really obtain is another.
Greg Palast, winner of the George Orwell Courage-In-Journalism Prize, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."
Will we see, as former third world nations emerge from the abysmal poverty and hopelessness we (our corporations) have kept them in so as to reap more profits from their reources, more leaders like Hugo? I understand that his nations wealth allows this action to subvert the power of the US in Latin America but will we see more of this albeit on a smaller and cheaper scale? I sure hope so.......
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 7:51:56 PM
I watch Free Speech TV everyday. I've recently seen an interview with him, by Amy Goodman. He certainly has a handle on the situation. The US has been underming Latin and South America for a very long time. We help leaders be elected, whom we feel we can control, and to stick with the status quo. If the U.S. fails in that attempt, there'll be a coup, or an 'accident' (assasination.)It's our past history.
Greg Palast has been a favorite at my house for a long time. I loved his book, 'Armed Madhouse.'
by
Pat Herrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 166 comments)
on Friday, September 22, 2006 at 9:52:51 AM
It is time that someone publicly denouced the war criminal Bush on the international stage, although I do not think what Hugo smelled was sulpher; it was probably methane from Texas chili beans.
by
gramps (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments)
on Friday, September 22, 2006 at 11:40:04 AM
3 comments
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