Oh lordy, here we go again. One Delores Williams, writing for Associated Content, horks up a hairball composed of some of the most poorly reasoned propaganda I’ve seen yet:
At Midnight, President Hugo Chavez took control of privately run oil fields in order to gain control over the four Orinoco Belt crude projects. These oil fields were held by American companies such as Chevron, Exxon mobile, BP PLc and ConocoPhillips. This means that Chavez’s government can decide tomorrow not to send any more oil to America, and there would be little these companies could do.
Well, well. Only one paragraph in, and already the urge to shout BULLSHIT! overcomes me. That’s gotta be a new world record.
Hey Delores, that oil is under Venezuelan soil; that makes it Venezuelan oil. Not the oil of US corporations–got that? That means that it is Venezuela’s to SELL to whomever Venezuela deems to be an acceptable customer, one who is willing to trade in good faith. It does not mean “Chavez’s government can decide tomorrow not to send any more oil to America, and there would be little these companies could do.” That’s just absurd, considering how much unearned, untrammelled power they’ve enjoyed ever since oil was first discovered in Venezuela.
So’s this:
Americans should be concerned with about a man that hates this country controlling our oil companies.
Once more, with feeling: BULLSHIT! He’s not controlling your oil companies, Delores! He’s refusing to let them control his country as they have done to date. There’s a big difference there.
And then there’s that “hate-America” charge. Isn’t that old, boring refrain getting tired yet? Or are you people simply not capable of thinking past the ends of your noses? Chavez has repeatedly said, and SHOWN, that he does not hate the US; he hates the way its president is waging wars all over the world for profit and corporate gain, at the expense of its own people and those of every other country. And unless you’re completely benighted or cognitively impaired, you have to admit he has a point. Bush has no good intentions for Latin America, as his choice of policymakers has repeatedly made clear. So Chavez is right to denounce him.
But if Chavez really hated the US, he wouldn’t negotiate joint ventures with US companies, not even with Venezuela holding the controlling interest over its own oil. He’d simply refuse to do business with them at all. That hasn’t happened. And it won’t happen. Why would Chavez stop selling oil to a customer, let alone his richest one? He’s not being dictatorial by making those oilfields sovereign and insisting on Venezuela’s terms rather than those of the oilmen; he’s simply asserting a legal right that has long been there and was simply ignored by the greedheads who preceded him in office. That oil has always belonged to Venezuela, by rights, and was actually nationalized in 1976. It’s just that US oil companies basically took for granted that the oil was theirs for the sucking, while PDVSA, the state oil company, was on the verge of being illegally privatized just before Chavez came to office. Chavez halted the privatization and has basically taken back Venezuela’s right to decide who buys the oil, and at what rate, and oh yeah, he’s also making them pay their taxes. If you think that’s an oil cutoff, let alone evidence that he hates America, you’ve had way too much Kool-Aid.
And here’s another tidbit that insults the intelligence–not only of the unwary reader, but of the Venezuelan people themselves:
One of the problems for Chavez is will the people with the know-how stay to help him build, or will they take their money and run?
Now, that’s really dumb. Delores, do you seriously believe US oilmen are the only ones with “know-how”? You forget that one of the Bolivarian projects all that oil money is funding is free PUBLIC education–and Chavez has made science and engineering special priorities. Before long, they won’t need the “know-how” of foreign oil people at all.
And speaking of “take the money and run”–what do you suppose the foreign oil people used to do before Chavez put the kibosh to that, hmmm? It’s hardly likely they’ll get away with that anymore.
And then there’s this:
“Although Venezuela claims output of more than 3 million bpd, analysts reckon it strains to pump 2.6 million bpd. U.S. data peg it as the world’s No. 8 exporter.”
Good thing you put that in quotes, Delores–it’s bullshit too, and Oil Wars has the proof.
And this sentence is simply laughable…
The New York Daily News referred to him as an “oil pimp,”
…not merely because it ends with a comma (what’s a period, Mommy? Do I only get to use it once a month?) but because it irresponsibly gives no source link. I had to wade through some real raw sewage to find it. Here it is–grab your nose plugs, folks, it’s a stinker. Overwritten, overwrought, and–phew!–overripe. It claims (falsely) that those nations whose delegates side with Chavez at the UN are paid cronies, but overlooks utterly the fact that the US is the true guilty party in that arena, and has long been rigging things there in its own favor. Who’s the pimp, again?
One expects nothing better from the editorials of a paper which is mainly a gossip rag, and which is shamefully guilty of burying its real news in the back pages just because BushCo doesn’t like it. (And speaking of buried real news, here’s a gem from the pages of the same paper. Juan Gonzalez seems to be the only true journalist the paper has on staff!)
But an editorial is not real news; it is one person’s unsigned opinion, and in this case, the person is a misinformed, far-right lunatic. If you want real facts, you’d better start looking somewhere else.
I suggest that you start here. Read, read, and read some more. Do your homework, Delores.
Then tell us with a straight face that you still believe that Hugo Chavez is some kind of anti-American menace, worthy to be the object of Pat Robertson’s death threats. The fact that you can repeat such murderous words but that they don’t seem to trouble you, tells me something about you that troubles me greatly.
