Chavez is my favorite international leader, because I do enjoy someone who thumbs his nose at America every chance he gets -- we need to be teased

Goal No. 1: Make the World Safe For Oil Companies -- by David Rossie

News item: "CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela had a blunt message this week for Exxon Mobil, one of the world's most powerful oil companies: Get off my crude-rich turf."

All right, what do we have to do, wait for a pack of crazed Latinos to crash a hijacked airliner into Disneyland before we realize that Venezuela and its power-crazed presidente cum dictator Hugo Chavez have declared war on the United States?

And don't try to tell me that Venezuela's threatening an oil company and not the United States. Exxon Mobil is the United States. Just ask Dick Cheney. If you can find him.

Venezuela poses a clear and present danger to this country and has for some time. First, its people thumbed their collective noses at us when they restored Chavez to office after evicting him for a couple of days, thereby undoing all the good work our CIA had done.

Then Chavez, out for revenge, poked fun at our beloved president when they were down in Argentina and got several thousand other USA-hating Latin Americans to join in the fun. But it wasn't until last winter when Chavez demonstrated the depths to which he was willing to stoop in his Communist-inspired attempts to thwart our efforts to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world.

What did he do? For those who don't recall, he offered cut-rate heating fuel to needy people in the Northeast who were facing a cold winter and skyrocketing fuel oil prices at home.

Think about it: Here was a foreigner using his resources to undercut upstanding, patriotic American oil companies who were simply trying to make ends meet by exercising their Cheney-given, price-gouging rights.

The most embarrassing part of that sordid episode is that some states, Massachusetts, for one, actually took Chavez up on his offer. But then what can you expect from a state that would elect Ted Kennedy to the U.S. Senate time after time?

Exxon Mobil, to its credit, has vowed to stand firm against a country it has been exploiting for years and says it will not pull out, as those spineless bleeding heart liberals would have us do in Iraq.

I realize that our government, especially the departments of Defense and State, don't need any advice from me, especially considering the splendid job they've done in Iraq, but I think Chavez' belligerent attitude offers us a chance to solve two problems in one fell swoop.

With democracy in full bloom in Iraq and with the insurgents on their last legs and civil war a mere figment of the cut-and-run crowd's imagination, what better time to announce Mission Accomplished II and bring our troops home to prepare for another pre-emptive strike against a potentially deadly enemy much nearer our vulnerable shores.

As we know, Condoleezza Rice's Threat of the Month Club is prone to change. For a long time it was Iraq, until we went in there and got rid of all those weapons of mass destruction. Then it was North Korea and most recently, Iran. So why not move Venezuela up to Numero Uno?

Laugh if you will, but Chavez is rolling in oil money. How long do you think it would take him to assemble an invasion fleet of bum boats and invade Key West? Or he could invade Mexico and then send his hordes across our undefended border before Tom Tancredo and Jim Sensenbrenner can get their fence built.

I say fight him now on that crude-rich turf of his before we have to fight him here.

Besides, we have a pretty good win-lose record against fifth-rate Latin American opponents. Remember Grenada? And Panama?

On to Caracas!

(David Rossie is associate editor; his column is published on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email to: drossie@pressconnects.com)


2. THE NEW WORLD OIL ORDER:
HUGO CHAVEZ TELLS BBC, WE HAVE MORE OIL THAN SAUDI ARABIA
Greg Palast Reporting for BBC Newsnight TV


If you thought high oil prices were just a blip think again. In an exclusive interview with Greg Palast for BBC Newsnight the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has ruled out any return to the era of cheap oil.

The colourful Venezuelan leader hosts the OPEC meeting on June 1 in Caracas and he will ask OPEC to set $50 a barrel - the average price last year - as the long term level. During the 1990s the price of oil had hovered around the $20 mark falling as low as $10 a barrel in early 1999.

Chavez told Newsnight "we're trying to find an equilibrium. The price of oil could remain at the low level of $50. That's a fair price it's not a high price". Hugo Chavez will have added clout at this OPEC meeting.

US Department of Energy analyses seen by Newsnight show that at $50 a barrel Venezuela - not Saudi Arabia - will have the biggest oil reserves in OPEC. Venezuela has vast deposits of extra heavy oil in the Orinoco. Traditionally these have not been counted because at $20 a barrel they were too expensive to exploit - but at $50 a barrel melting them into liquid petroleum becomes extremely profitable.

The US DoE report shows that at today's prices Venezuela's oil reserves are bigger than those of the entire Middle East including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Iran and Iraq. The US DoE also identifies Canada as another future oil superpower. Venezuela's deposits alone could extend the oil age for another 100 years.

The US DoE estimates that Chavez controls 1.3 trillion barrels of oil - more than the entire declared oil reserves of the rest of the planet. Hugo Chavez told Newsnight's Greg Palast that "Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. In the future Venezuela won't have any more oil - but that's in the 22nd century. Venezuela has oil for 200 years." Chavez will ask the OPEC meeting in June to formally accept that Venezuela's reserves are now bigger than Saudi Arabia's.

Chavez's increased muscle will not go down well in Washington. In 2002 the Bush administration welcomed an attempted coup against Chavez. He told Newsnight that the Americans had organised it in an attempt to get hold of Venezuela's oil.

Ironically by invading Iraq George Bush has boosted oil prices and effectively transferred billions of dollars from American consumers to Chavez. Up to $200 million a day - half of it from the US - is flooding into Caracas. Chavez is spending this on building infrastructure and increasing the minimum wage and improving health and education in the poor ranchos which surround the cities. As a result even his opponents accept that Chavez is extremely popular and will easily win the next Presidential election in December.

Chavez is also spending billions in the rest of Latin America - exchanging contracts for oil tankers and infrastructure projects and buying up loans in Argentina and Brazil. He has made cheap oil deals with Ecuador and the Caribbean.

He has also spent some of the dollars which have come in from the US supporting Fidel Castro in Cuba. In return Cuba has supplied the thousands of doctors and teachers who are transforming conditions in the barrios of Caracas. Washington accuses Chavez of buying influence in Latin America.

The Newsnight team had to endure the long speeches and marathon six hour TV shows which Hugo Chavez delights in. Chavez posed for Newsnight posing with the sword of Simon Bolivar the 18th century liberator who drove out Spanish imperialists from South America. The symbolism was clear but behind the showman is a clever political brain.

Chavez has not invaded any foreign countries. He does not have secret prisons at home or abroad. Chavez has repeatedly won democratic elections and the opposition operates freely although some members have been charged with accepting illegal foreign donations. Nonetheless George Bush's administration repeatedly targets Chavez on human rights and finances his opponents.

Earlier this year US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Hitler - because he was elected democratically - and last year the influential American evangelist Pat Robertson called for his assassination. Robertson later apologized and said that he did not "necessarily" have to be killed so long as he was kidnapped by American special forces.

Chavez told Newsnight that he was still concerned that George Bush had not learnt the lessons of Iraq and would order an invasion to try to secure Venezuela's oil. "I pray this will not happen because US soldiers will bite the dust and so will we, Venezuelans". He warned that any such attempt would lead to a prolonged guerilla war and an end to oil production. "The US people should know there will be no oil for anyone".

Chavez does not accept Tony Blair's criticism of him for lining up with Fidel Castro. He told Newsnight "if someone is sleeping together it is Bush and Blair. They share the same bed."


3. Latin America’s Leftist Mirage
By Julio Maria Sanguinetti (former President of Uruguay -- 1985-1990, 1995-2000, so maybe he's part of the rightist mirage)

Ever since Deng Xiao Ping’s remark that “it’s not the color of the cat that matters, but whether it catches mice,” it has been clear that the old Cold War divisions of left and right, communism and democracy, were obsolete. Indeed, the China that Deng began to build in 1978 is now communist politically and capitalist economically. But the tendency to apply old labels remains strong, so that everyday we hear gross simplifications like the current one that holds that Latin America is now undergoing a powerful leftist wave.

The basis for this idea is that the rise to power of Lula da Silva in Brazil, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Tabaré Vásquez in Uruguay, and, most recently, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Michelle Bachelet in Chile show a socialist trend . But are all of them old-style leftists? Or do they practice old style populism? Just what is happening in Latin America?

To start, we can rule out Chile from the supposed leftist surge, for it is a country ruled by a centrist coalition of Ricardo Lagos’s European-style socialists and the country’s historic Christian democrats. That President Bachelet comes from socialist roots does not change the nature of her government, which will follow the parameters of its predecessors, and will preside over the most open economy in the region, one integrated into the global market by free-trade agreements that extend from the United States to China.

Nor can one argue that Brazil’s government under President Lula has not been characterized by moderation, following a more orthodox economic policy even than that of its predecessor, one based on fiscal discipline, budget surpluses, and an anti-inflationary monetary policy. In contrast to old leftist slogans against repaying foreign debt, Lula’s government has hurried to settle all of its IMF obligations in advance.

The rallying call against paying foreign debt, which was ubiquitous in Latin America in the 1980’s, was buried when the Argentinean government did the same thing, committing one-third of its reserves to pay in advance its debts to the IMF. Even Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has questioned whether these countries’ debt payment measures represent an exaggerated concession to neo-liberal orthodoxy.

Uruguay’s government, too, has not deviated from the basic tenets of the policies of the conservative government that preceded it. It maintains the country’s improved relations with the IMF, and it has even approved an agreement with the US to guarantee investments.

Even Bolivia’s government should not be regarded as a reincarnation of the continent’s old populism. President Evo Morales’s rise to power was inspired by historic discrimination against the indigenous majority, with the coca leaf as an emblem of an ancestral grudge.

Although Morales campaigned on a promise to nationalize mineral resources, this has not happened yet, and, indeed, he now seems to be leaning towards partnerships with big state-owned energy companies, in the manner of Venezuela’s Pedevesa or Brazil’s Petrobras. Morales might yet turn more radical, but, for now, he represents a deep, ethnically inspired demand for historic justice, not a hard-left ideology.

None of these governments openly speaks of socialism, much less Marxism. There is no planned collectivist economy, foreign investment is still sought, and, in general, the rules of liberal democracy still apply. Leaders may still think that “another world is possible,” but, while they use anti-globalization rhetoric, they pursue serious economic policies, even if more out of resignation than conviction.

What all this means is that Latin America is not shifting left, but settling in the center. Even traditionally leftist parties like Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores or Uruguay’s Frente Amplio have abandoned old Marxist ideals. Naturally, they declare friendship with Fidel Castro and seek his embrace to prevent old comrades from accusing them of betraying their legacy. But they go no further: Castro is fine for photo opportunities, but not for policy advice.

Venezuela’s Chávez is another story. No doubt, his regime revels in all the historic forms of populism: messianic leadership, anti-American rhetoric, disregard for constitutional forms, drunken spending, and state-orchestrated popular mobilization to fill squares and jeer at supposed enemies. Chávez is riding a wave of high oil prices and is determined, with torrential verbosity, to exercise some sort of continental demagogic leadership. But, while Chávez-style populism appears to have made some headway in Peru, it is far from succeeding.

In Colombia, everything indicates that President Álvaro Uribe, erroneously labeled a rightist because of his fight against his country’s guerrillas, will be re-elected. Oscar Arias is winning in Costa Rica. In Mexico, the presidency is up for grabs.

In the meantime, Latin America’s economies will continue to benefit from the world boom in commodity markets, elections will remain normal, and life will go on in the political middle of the road.