The Irony of International Politics
From SpinWatch.org:
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Sometimes international politics throws up a delicious sense of irony that just cannot be ignored. We have just witnessed one such occasion. After twenty five years of being branded a supporter of international terrorism, last week Libya was welcomed back into the club of accepted nations.
The US announced that it was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and removing it from the State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Gone were the memories of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight that crashed over Lockerbie, in Scotland. Colonel Gaddafi was no longer an international paiah, but Washington’s friend.
But who should be visiting Gaddafi at the time of the announcement? None other than the West’s new bogeyman: no not Saddam Hussein – nor the Iranian President (who the West would love to get rid of), but Hugo Chávez from Venezuela.
On the same day as the Gaddafi announcement, the US said that it was imposing a full arms ban on Venezuela, claiming the country had failed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. The main reason, the State Department said, was that Venezuela had forged close relations with Iran and Cuba, which are both classified by the US as state sponsors of terrorism. So just as Gaddafy became Washington’s new friend, Gaddafi’s friend Chávez, became Washington’s enemy.
It was the latest move in an escalating diplomatic spat between the two nations. Bush would love to go further but is constrained by one very simple economic truth: the US imports around 15 per cent of its oil from Venezuela.
The tirades to describe Chávez from Washington are becoming more extreme. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has labeled him “Hitler”; whereas Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls him "one of the most dangerous men in the world" . In response, Chávez says that attacking him as supporting terrorism is the latest attempt by Washington to smear him and discredit his government.
In retaliation, Chávez does not mice his words either. He has called the Bush Administration the “greatest threat to this planet .” Earlier this month Chávez said that the “final hours of the North American empire have arrived ... Now we have to say to the empire: "We're not afraid of you. You're a paper tiger”.
As the war of words escalates between Washington and Caracas, where does London fit in? As usual, Tony Blair is tugging the coat-tails of the Americans. Blair says Chávez is "ignoring the rules of the international community, " due to his close relations with Castro. Chávez, in turn, calls Blair “an ally of Hitler” and "a pawn of imperialism" .
Relations between London and Caracas are now severely strained. Tony Blair recently attacked Chávez for abusing his power. How different it was just four years ago, when Chávez was invited for tea at Buckingham Palace with the Queen, an occasion he remembers with “great affection”. He then met Tony Blair.
Last week on a visit to London, Chávez met neither. But he was the guest of London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who is a Chávez fan. Livingstone argues: “For many years people have demanded that social progress and democracy go hand in hand, and that is exactly what is now taking place in Venezuela” .
Despite Livingstone’s support for Chávez, the British press has been hostile, accusing him of supporting terrorism. To coincide with his visit, The Times ran an article that asked: “Which international leader publicly threatens to blow up his country’s oilfields, supports Iran’s nuclear programme, says that the Falklands belong to Argentina and believes that Robert Mugabe is a “true freedom-fighter”? The answer is none other than Hugo Chávez” .
The Conservatives meanwhile have compared Chávez to the Russian despot Stalin. But Stalin was a leader who betrayed his people. Not so Chávez. When the military tried a US-sanctioned coup against him in April 2002, it was the people who came to his rescue. A million demanded his release.
Here is another irony of the Chávez story. It is not really Chávez’s support for Castro or Iran or even Mugabe that really annoys the US. Washington's hostility to Chávez began when he sought to take control of his country's oil industry and stopped it being privatised. What is also worrying Washington is that this kind of revolutionary act is now spreading. Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, recently nationalized Bolivia's gas fields.
The oil industry is worried. Earlier this month the influential Business Week magazine ran a front page article complaining that how “Big Oil” was “surprisingly vulnerable”. Big Oil, it seems, is running out of oil. Many of the “mature” fields such as the North Sea off Britain and Gulf of Mexico are running dry. Some of the remaining reserves are politically off-limits. The stark reality for the Western oil companies is that in the 1960s 85 per cent of oil reserves were open to them, but today the figure is only 16 per cent. Nearly two-thirds of reserves are now owned by national oil companies. A further 19 per cent are seen as having “limited international access”.
One of these countries where access is now limited is now Venezuela. Business Week complained that it had been “brutal year” for oil executives in Venezuela. In March this year, Chávez signed a document that brought much of Big Oil’s existing production in Venezuela under state control. The Big Oil men hated it. “Its left a bad taste in my mouth” said one.
How times have changed. In the early nineties Venezuela opened 32 fields up to the international majors, who rushed in investing billions of dollars. Now the country is taking back control of its oil reserves and the international oil companies stand to lose billions. Chávez has also increased taxes and royalties to an estimated 80 per cent, much to the dismay of oil companies such as Shell, BP, and Chevron.
But there is one brutal truth that Big Oil and Bush and Blair will find hard to swallow. Historically oil revenues have been squirreled away by western oil companies, to line the pockets of their executives or the Wall Street or London banks. But the opposite is now happening in Venezuela. Using oil revenues that are inflated due to high oil prices, Chávez is fuelling a petro-revolution to fund not the rich, but the poor.
Maybe for the first time in history, black gold is being put to good use. He has funded an anti-poverty drive, a literacy drive and build health clinics in slum areas. There are also promises of aid to single mothers, and free treatment of HIV / AIDs sufferers. The London Mayor, Ken Livingstone explains why he is such a fan of the South American President. “For the first time in a country of over 25 million people, a functioning health service is being built. Seventeen million people have been given access to free healthcare for the first time in their lives. Illiteracy has been eliminated. Fifteen million people have been given access to food, medicines and other essential products at affordable prices. A quarter of a million eye operations have been financed to rescue people from blindness. These are extraordinary practical achievements,” he argues.
The veteran investigative journalist, John Pilger, has just spent three weeks filming in the slums of Caracas, and witnessed first hand the Chávez revolution. One 95 year old told Pilger that before Chávez came to power "We didn't matter in a human sense. We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died … Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it."
This may be the ultimate irony of the Chávez era. For once oil is actually benefiting the people of the country it was found in. Unlike other countries that continue to suffer. The front page of Time Magazine in Europe this week has a picture of the oil-rich but dirt-poor Niger Delta descending into chaos. The people of the Niger Delta have campaigned for over forty years to see a greater share of the oil wealth that is being drilled from beneath their feet, but have little to show for it apart from poverty and pollution. Iraq, with the world’s second largest oil reserves, is slowly descending into chaos too.
Globally, we are now entering the twilight era of the oil industry. Declining oil reserves and climate change mean that the world is moving away from fossil fuels to alternative and cleaner sources of energy. This will take decades to happen, and whilst it does, Hugo Chávez is funding his petro-revolution for the benefit of his people. How long will it be before the US decides that Chávez should be overthrown? Not long, I fear.
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What do you think? My support of Chávez has been growing, not merely because of his fluffy anti-US rhetoric but also because it seems to me that he is actually helping his country. How about you?
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Originally Posted by Garbarsardar
It has to find outside funding who would now be insane to put one penny into the country so *drum roll please* that leaves Chavez! So now Bolvia can trade being the ***** of one 'master' for another. What ever happened to moderation for EVERYONE left, right, American and non american.
