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According to IncaKola News (economic analyst), Venezuela has $140 billion in international cash reserves. This means that, due to the excellent financial management of the Chavez government, Venezuela, which gets about 90% of its revenue from oil, can ride out $60-70/barrel for several years, without even touching its cash reserves, and has maximum flexibility in how to structure use of their cash reserves, to survive the current slump ($40-50/barrel) without any significant cuts in its various social or other programs.
Now think for a minute where Venezuela would be at, if the previous rightwing governments, or the fascist putsch that the Bushwhacks supported, had been running Venezuela instead of the Chavez government. Previous rightwing governments were giving away Venezuela's oil profits to the multinationals, in a 90/10 split favoring the multinationals, with the rich oil elite padding their own pockets and utterly neglecting even basic sensible needs of their own country, such as infracture and manufacturing development, not to mention utterly neglecting the vast poor majority, as to education and other bootstrapping. The Chavez government, as soon as it was elected, began negotiating a better deal for Venezuela, with the most recent round of negotiations providing a 60/40 split favoring Venezuela's social programs.
Venezuela would be up shit creek right now, if rightwing/fascist governments had been in charge. Instead, they are one of the most solvent countries in the western world. They have furthermore helped other South American countries to achieve or maintain solvency. For instance, they helped Argentina pay off its ruinous World Bank/IMF debt some years ago--after the World Bank/IMF had driven Argentina's economy belly up--with a combination of easy term loans and barter arrangements (such as oil for beef). Argentina immediately started turning around, and is now a healthy trading partner for Brazil, Venezuela and other countries. Venezuela's notions of this kind of regional cooperation led to creation of the Bank of the South--which is elbowing the World Bank/IMF loan sharks out of the region--to barter trade groups like ALBA, and ultimately to the recently formalized South American 'common market,' UNASUR.
This is why the fascist shits at the AEI, the Bushwhacks, collusive Democrats and the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies hate Hugo Chavez. Because he has good ideas, that benefit most people. One of the ways they dis him is by calling Venezuela's aid--to Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries--"checkbook diplomacy." Yeah, well, it would really 'benefit' Venezuela to have failing economies all around it, wouldn't it? Chavez is a smart man, who attracts smart people to his government. He enjoys an on-going approval rating of 60%, has been elected--in elections that put our own to shame for their transparency--three times (counting an initial short term before the current Constitution was written and voted on)--and also won a Bushwhack-instigated/U.S. taxpayer funded recall election--and is well-liked throughout the region, even by leaders who are not direct beneficiaries of Venezuelan aid (because they don't need it), such as Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, who said, of Chavez, "They can think up all sorts of reasons to criticize Chavez, but not on democracy!"
That is the other goddamn lie about Chavez--that he is, somehow, some way, or is soon to be, or wants to be--a "dictator." A total lie--a lie in the face of all of the facts. And crude lie, worthy of the crude people who have hijacked our own government.
Chavez and da Silva are good friends, and together with all the many other leftist leaders of South America, are transforming South America into a powerhouse economic block with the clout to protect its own interests, resources and people. This peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution is moving north, as well, with the Sandinistas elected in Nicaragua, Guatemala electing its first leftist government ever, Honduras leaning left, the FMLN about to be elected in El Salvador, and the Mexican left poised to make a comeback (they lost by only a hairsbreadth--0.05%--a couple of years ago and the rightwing government has fucked up in many ways, under Bush Jr's tutelage).
The government that is "running out of money" is our own--and any who have followed the Bushwhacks over the "neo-liberal"/NeoCon cliff, urged on by the likes of the AEI. I think we have to realize that we have the same kind of traitors in our own rich elite as the ones who were selling Venezuela down the river, before Chavez. They have a lot of nerve calling themselves "American" or even giving themselves the adjective "Enterprise" (Capt. Picard would be appalled!). They are looters and brigands, in league with global corporate predators and war profiteers--an international cabal of super-rich, anti-democratic fuckwads who have loyalty to no country or people, and who are destroying this one.
IF democracy, solvency and prosperity are to be restored in the U.S., it will be by following the South Americans' example, and, in particular, Venezuela's example, starting with transparent elections, and with difficult, long term, courageous, grass roots work on all of our democratic institutions. Chavez did not turn Venezuela around overnight or by himself. It took a vast collective effort over about a decade of time. It took turning back a Bush-instigated coup, by peaceful action of the Venezuelan people (Chavez had been kidnapped, and the Constitution and all civil rights suspended; see "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the Irish filmmakers' documentary on that seminal event). And it took the collective, cooperative effort of people in many countries, creating a leftist tide throughout the region, which provides strength to each country. The Bushwhacks, for instance, recently funded and organized fascist rioters and murderers in Bolivia, in an attempted coup against Evo Morales. UNASUR intervened with unanimous action in support of Bolivia's democratic government.
South America has never been so unified nor determined upon collective action in support of democracy, good government and social justice. Chavez is a key leader of this amazing, historic development. The AEI doesn't want you to know this. Nor does ABC News, the generator of this piece of shit article.
"That's good news (continued Citgo free heating oil) for the 200,000 households in 23 states that got free fuel but the suspension of the program -- if only for two days -- signals to some a decline in power by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez." --ABC News (emphasis added)
It would be funny, if it weren't so very, very ugly. How can so-called journalists lie like this, in support of the greedy and the murderous?
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