Ken scores Oil off Chavez for London Buses!

[TeeJay]

Someone only stole half my money. Hey, they left me with half so that's a good thing!

People are only stealing, wasting or generally pissing away 90% of the oil money instead of 100%! Wow aren't we lucky, no need to complain.

You have got to be joking right?

 

[Cobbles]

they are getting back transportation and environmental expertise, presumably provided by GLA-funded experts.
erm, it says so in the beeb link

Expertise? - like - Ummmm before you set up the bus fleet, some roads would be useful.....
Even though the oil price has dipped, you'd need to provide man years of consultancy at top rates to offset a couple of tankers worth of diesel so it's not really a value based exchange, just showboating.

 

[Fruitloop]

Someone only stole half my money. Hey, they left me with half so that's a good thing!

People are only stealing, wasting or generally pissing away 90% of the oil money instead of 100%! Wow aren't we lucky, no need to complain.

You have got to be joking right?

Well, he's not keeping any of it for himself, as far as I'm aware, and definitions of what consitutes a genuine waste seem to vary, as evinced on this very thread.

However, I suspect that on this issue as on others there's really no convincing you, although what your motivation is other than the pure jouissance of typing escapes me entirely.

 

[TeeJay]

...what your motivation is other than the pure jouissance of typing escapes me entirely.

I have friends living in Caracas and I have been there. I care about poor people in poor countries and I don't like to see people abusing their power to waste resources that should go to helping the poorest people. I am impressed by good policies and pissed off by crappy ones - Chavez has had both. I don't support or oppose him purely from theoretical or ideological reasons and I am willing to look at his actual actions on the ground and assess them on their own merits. I dislike all this anti-US showboating and the way Chavez is kissing up to some really nasty, disgusting human-rights-abusing murderous dictators ... playing footsie with the Iranians and North Koreans etc. I find it utterly pathetic that some people who describe themselves as left wing and/or progressive think this is funny or cool - I can only conclude thaqt they are fuckwits of the highest order and don't really know that much about the real world, preferring to strike poses and mouth off ideological shite than actually apply consistent and coherent principles to actual evidence from reliable sources.

What about you?

 

[JoePolitix]

There’s nothing about this deal with London that is particularly new for the Venezuelan government. In an interesting recent interview with Greg Palest Chavez stresses that the Bolivarian vision of international trade is counter posed to the neo-liberal model arguing “We do not believe in free trade. We believe in fair trade and exchange, not competition but cooperation”. Compare this to the imperialist arrogance of the Lib dem in the GLC who was complaining that the deal with London reduced Britain to a “barter economy”. Chavez’s vision is closer to the socialist one of each according to his ability to each according to his needs:

Q: Are you replacing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as “Daddy Big Bucks”?

Chávez: I do wish that the IMF and the World Bank would disappear soon.

Q: And it would be the Bank of Hugo?

Chávez: No. The International Humanitarian Bank. We are just creating an alternative way to conduct financial exchange. It is based on cooperation. For example, we send oil to Uruguay for their refinery and they are paying us with cows.

Q: Milk for oil.

Chávez: 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.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1818

 

[JoePolitix]

I have friends living in Caracas and I have been there. I care about poor people in poor countries and I don't like to see people abusing their power to waste resources that should go to helping the poorest people. I am impressed by good policies and pissed off by crappy ones - Chavez has had both. I don't support or oppose him purely from theoretical or ideological reasons and I am willing to look at his actual actions on the ground and assess them on their own merits. I dislike all this anti-US showboating and the way Chavez is kissing up to some really nasty, disgusting human-rights-abusing murderous dictators ... playing footsie with the Iranians and North Koreans etc. I find it utterly pathetic that some people who describe themselves as left wing and/or progressive think this is funny or cool - I can only conclude thaqt they are fuckwits of the highest order and don't really know that much about the real world, preferring to strike poses and mouth off ideological shite than actually apply consistent and coherent principles to actual evidence from reliable sources.

What about you?

Who thinks it's really "cool or funny" that Chavez is "kissing up" to dictators? The truth is a little more complicated. Chavez doesn't have much of a realtionship with North Korea and given Iran is a major player in OPEC it is in Venezuela's own interests to have diplomatic relations with it and to oppose threats of a US lead invasion.

And given that the amount to the US state department has done to destablise Venezuela, including backing a military coup I think a bit of "anti-US showboating" is justified on Chavez's part, though it would be more accurate to say anti-US *imperialist* showboating.

 

[Fruitloop]

Well, I think that there's no substitute for self-organistation, and anyone who acts like a groupie to a prime minister is not an anarchist or progressive in any way that I recognize those terms. But on the other hand; fuck me, he's better than most of the bastards that have held power in central and south america for the last quarter century, both in material terms and in terms of fostering the self-reliance and self-organisation of the working class. Whether he can maintain ths level of openness when and if his power starts to be challenged by this same organisation remains to be seen.

Economically obviously he falls far short of what I would regard as a desirable end-game - a lot of the bluster from the West has to a large extent been based on a comparison to the relatively tax-free environment that the petroleum companies had enjoyed in latin america since the 70s, as far as I'm aware Ven's tax take is still less by percentage than Canada's.

One thing on his side is that he favours regional self-determination fro Latin America as a whole, rather than getting caught up in a too-narrow nationalism that could have unpleasant side-effects in the future.

 

[Fruitloop]

A bit of anti-imperialist showboating here wouldn't go amiss, IMO.

 

[JoePolitix]

A bit of anti-imperialist showboating here wouldn't go amiss, IMO.

 

[Fruitloop]

point taken

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Interesting piece on oil, Chavez' offers etc: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11035

Venezuela, Chavez told me, has more oil than Saudi Arabia. A nutty boast? Not by a long shot. In fact, his surprising claim comes from a most surprising source: the U.S. Department of Energy. In an internal report, the DOE estimates that Venezuela has five times the Saudis' reserves. However, most of Venezuela's mega- horde of crude is in the More...form of "extra-heavy" oil -- liquid asphalt -- which is ghastly expensive to pull up and refine. Oil has to sell above $30 a barrel to make the investment in extra-heavy oil worthwhile. A big dip in oil's price -- and, after all, oil cost only $18 a barrel six years ago -- would bankrupt heavy-oil investors. Hence Chavez's offer: Drop the price to $50 -- and keep it there. That would guarantee Venezuela's investment in heavy oil.

But the ascendance of Venezuela within OPEC necessarily means the decline of the power of the House of Saud. And the Bush family wouldn't like that one bit. It comes down to "petro-dollars." When George W. ferried then-Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia around the Crawford ranch in a golf cart it wasn't because America needs Arabian oil. The Saudis will always sell us their petroleum. What Bush needs is Saudi petro-dollars. Saudi Arabia has, over the past three decades, kindly recycled the cash sucked from the wallets of American SUV owners and sent much of the loot right back to New York to buy U.S. Treasury bills and other U.S. assets.

 

[exosculate]

Interesting piece on oil, Chavez' offers etc: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11035

Good article - well worth a read. I think I've read part of that before somewhere else though???

 

[JoePolitix]

Good article - well worth a read. I think I've read part of that before somewhere else though???

Yeah I posted it on the last page. Well worth posting again though.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Yeah I posted it on the last page. Well worth posting again though.

My apologies, didn't check in my enthusiasm to share.

 

[exosculate]

Yeah I posted it on the last page. Well worth posting again though.

Lol (don't use that much but it is appropriate here) - I actually didn't realise it was that recently.

 

[JHE]

Livingstone snubbed

According to tonight's C4 News, Livingstone has called off his visit to Caracas (and has had to delay the signing of the deal), because Chávez has not been able to fit the Mayor of London into his busy schedule.

Poor old Ken, eh? He'll just have to make do with his holiday in Cuba.