Duck, Hugo

As those of you who were communicating with me pre-blog know, I am a huge fan of Hugo Chavez. His great crime that prompted the US attempted coup against him was that he wanted to divert a larger proportion of Venezuela's oil money to schools and local clinics. As this would amount to rewriting the existing crude deals with the oil companies, the Bush administration felt obliged to intercede with the coup to prevent the precedent it would set.

I mean, what would happen if the the Saudi or the Nigerian officials actually looked out for there own people? Can't have that.

Now, I gotta say, Chavez has done some things that I think are pretty nutty, his 6 hour Castro-esque marathon speeches, this strange new americas fund where Venezuela will channel some of the oil money to a questionably oversighted fund to be distributed for health and welfare throughout South America. Oh, and there's a land reform movement that I'm not particularly familiar with, but they can range from the cronyism of Zimbabwe to the equalizing of South Africa, so the judge is still out.

But overall, the man has serious cojones and is actually working for the welfare of Venezuelans, and, in this world of corrupt second and third world leaders, I think that's pretty cool.

Oh, and in the last week, he also threw out the US military/DEA presence cancelling the program that was their version of Plan Columbia. He accused them of spying Can you imagine that?

Anyhow, for some reason, perhaps it was the attempted coup and murder, the relationship has gotten a bit prickly. Here is the latest hype, and I emphasize that it is hype/propaganda, see below.

Oil exports to the US could stop amid growing tensions between the two countries, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.

He described recent US government actions as "aggressive" in a speech at a youth festival in Caracas.

As a result, Venezuelan oil "instead of going to the United States, could go elsewhere," he said.

Venezuela exports about 1.3 million barrels a day to the US and is the world's fifth largest oil producer.

Tensions between the two countries have escalated since President Chavez accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of spying on his government.

Washington denies the charge and has accused Caracas of failing to co-operate in the fight against drug-trafficking.

On Friday the Venezuelan government withdrew diplomatic immunity from DEA agents working in the country in response to a US decision to revoke the visas of six Venezuelan officials based in Washington.

Venezuela is an important transport route for cocaine from neighbouring Colombia, which produces 80% of the world's supply.

First off, if Venezuela did cut off it's supply to the US, shipping it instead to, let's say, China, the 1.3 mbpd that China was getting elsewhere would then become available on the market, and the US could buy those instead. Simple swap.

Second, the majority of the Venezuelan crude is heavy in sulphur and requires specially fitted plants to process it, which are currently in production in the US and would take years and years to replicate elsewhere.

So, in the big picture this is a pretty empty threat except as it might impact on the futures cost of crude on the US markets.

And as to why these "boy, this Chavez is crazy" articles keep appearing in the western press, well, it's propaganda. It is an elevation of threat. The main trait in the US policies towards Latin America since the CIA sposored coup in '54, (Trujillo, Pinochet, Sandinistas) is to maintain these nations as semi-impoverished raw material providers governed by compliant rulers. And any group which rises to challenge the massive export of resources or the continued health/wealth/education inequities in any of these countries is labelled socialist/communist and targeted for regime change.

That's one reason to keep an occasional eye on the new BRIC alliance, Brazil, India, China, which has formed both in the WTO, killing the last round of talks, and in the UN, looking for permanent security council seats for the BRI portion. I mean, after all, these countries are all at roughly similar "second-world" development and comprise between 40-45% of the world's population.

Sorry, I'm stopping there. That's a long entry that was just gonna get longer.