¡Chavismo!

Matt,
It surely has not escaped your attention that Venezula controls a lot of oil? And that Mr. Chavez has stated that he will use it to influence world events? You might want to read up on the history of what has happened to any nation that has ever threatened the access to oil of the UK, US, or Russia.

Cranky

Even more specifically, to add to cranky, if there is a war with Iran, and we are very close to it right now, 1)Oil including Venezuela's may be cut off, and b)Venezuela and Iran claim to be very close allies and have played with setting up a cartel in competition with OPEC.

It is very hard to imagine any plausible justification for attacking Venezuela, OTOH. It would be unambiguous aggression.

What's he gonna do with that oil, Cranky? I mean, besides sell it to fund the unsustainable but highly popular social programs that help keep him in power? Maybe he'll stop selling it to US, but oil is a global commodity. That merely means someone else gets to sell it at us at a somewhat higher price, while he has to vend it to someone else at a slightly price than he'd get from us, therefore depriving himself of some of the revenues required to shore up his political base. Maybe this circumstance is the reason he's not used oil as a weapon so far, even when he implied the United States supported a home-grown coup attempt. All this is why Chavez is a clown. He talks big, but won't turn off the spigot because it would be politically damaging to him at home. We know he won't turn off the spigot, so we generally, officially, write him off as clown. Of course, sane treatment of clowns by the United States is not guaranteed these days, if one judges American action against Iraq and (maybe) Iran.

Go to Democracy Now and read the text of Chavez' remarks.

He wasn't acting the buffoon. He was presenting a lacerating critique of the Busheviks (and Murkins in general), in a wonderfully sophisticated, literate, inveterately snarky tone, using ridicule to show the Chimp and his pretensions for what they were and are...

The tone of excoriating ridicule is the ONLY weapon we have against the fascist fux who control things as they are...Hugo Chaves is ten times the man the simpering, scampering, smirking, strutting, swaggering pseudo-sSimian-in-Chief will ever be...
.

Correction: "vend it to someone else at a slightly lower price than he'd get from us"

Oil-rich countries don't really withold oil from the world market as a punitive measure. It's a really stupid thing to do. He's actually been the Petroleum Santa Claus for a lot of poor neighborhoods here.

Do you defend Peretz's "menace 2 society" formulation?

I smell sulphur.

It is fairly clear we (the USA) already had one proxy coup on Chavez. Why shouldn't he be angry? I think he is a fascinating character as can be seen on this BBC documentary...

http://tinyurl.com/mqmkt

Chavez is making tons of money. You forget how Bush treats oil companies with regard to lease rigyts and taxes.
*Nudge, Nudge
Winky, Wink*

Chavez is in on the joke. He could undress Chimp even further if he cared to expand the dialog and open up the books for people to see what the money is really like.

While I'm not an expert on Venezuela, it seems pretty clear that under Chavez a much larger share of oil revenue has gone to the poor majority of Venezuelans than under previous governments. Whether this is "sustainable" or not, I don't know (for how long? compared to what?) but it strikes me as a good thing. Whereas the criticism of Chaez seems based entirely on (1) his lower-class abckground & manners and (2) the really insane anxiety over our foreign "enemies" that so much of the country is suffering from.

McManus, Cranky: There is nothing Venezuela or Iran has ever done, or can or will ever do, to hurt you. If you're frightened or unhappy (and you may well have good reason to be) the reasons are clsoer to home.

Peretz --

One way of denying these is to place responsibility for these phenomenon on George W. Bush, as if--had John Kerry been elected--we'd not have heard of either Ahmadinejad or Chávez or the new alliance between terrorism and populism.

But we've only heard of Ahmadinejad because of Bush's call for an Iranian election boycott.

> Oil-rich countries don't really withold oil
> from the world market as a punitive measure.

Well now, that is an interesting problem in economic strategy, game theory, and long-term thinking now isn't it? If the price of oil goes up to $150/bbl due to non-market factors (say, a war), would a large oil-producing nation be better off to sell as much as they can now? Or sell just enough to bring in, oh, 40% more real revenue than they were at $80/bbl and keep the rest in the ground for later? When the industialized nations REALLY start fighting over it?

The simplistic "fungible oil must be sold" analysis is pretty naive, IMHO, and Iran, Venezula, and the western oil companies are none of them naive.

Let's keep in mind that everything beyond extraction cost and the average industrial gross profit margins (15-30%) added to the cost of oil is pure economic rent. There is no economic law that says where rent has to go; in fact basic economics says that rents will most likely be distributed through the political process.

Cranky

> Cranky: There is nothing Venezuela or Iran has
> ever done, or can or will ever do, to hurt you.

Well, Venezula has its own set of problems. And Mr. Chavez has his own problems too; I would compare him more to Santa Ana than Bolivar. Which isn't to say that North Americans are perfect or that it isn't Venezula's business to sort out its own problems.

I never felt any political fear travelling on business in Venezula as an American (as opposed to random crime fear which is significant), but that was before 9/11. If I were going there any more I think I would order some business cards and a briefcase from our Canadian or Austrialian branch.

Cranky

"Sustainable"? Of course it is. The heavy-oil refineries will be up and running at full speed long before Venezuela's conventional petroleum reserves run dry. The only reason they weren't tapped before was because the price of oil on the world market had to be above $30 a barrel to make it economically feasible. With oil currently trading at well over twice that figure -- thanks in no small part to Bush's invasion of Iraq, which according to some traders is responsible for $38 of the price of every barrel of oil -- India and China are rushing to help Chavez build heavy-oil refineries.

Oh, and guess what? Venezuela's heavy-oil reserves are so big that they'll suffice to fuel the entire world, at current consumption rates, for the next hundred years, by which time Chavez -- who has already saved Argentina from the clutches of the IMF -- will go down in Latin America as the man who saved Latin America from the neoliberals and neoconservatives.

And as Bush has sunk the US military hip-deep into Iraq with no way out, there's not a damn thing he can do about it short of nukes -- and that way lies Armageddon.

or the new alliance between terrorism and populism.

Wha-?

So are we supposed to declare the GWOP now? How many wars does Peretz intend for the US to fight?

"what has happened to any nation that has ever threatened the access to oil of the UK, US, or Russia."

You mean like Saudi Arabia in 1973?

Re; Marty Peretz

Al Gore took advice from this guy?

He listened to this bozo and picked Joe Lieberman as his VP?

He completely shunned advice from Clinton and listened to Marty Peretz about election strategy?

What was he thinking?

Ha, ha, ha. I just love hearing citizens of the U.S. pontificate about other countries. Just listen to yourselves. And look at your so-called liberal democracy. It's hardly liberal and only nominally democratic. And if the last five years is any indiction, it's good at spreading only one thing: misery.

And you talk about Hugo Chavez? So tell me, how many countries has "second-rate" Venezuela brought death and destruction to in the past few years? Also, how much of "second-rate" Venezuela's revenues have been transferred from the poor to the rich? Damn, if only it was "first-rate."

Chavez doesn't make war. He feeds, houses and educates people with Venezuelian oil revenues. What does Bush do with U.S revenues?

The Venezuelian people will deal with their own problems. You deal with yours. If you want to have a positive influence on world affairs, you can start by keeping the U.S. out of other peoples' business. The United States of America at present has nothing to offer and nothing to teach anyone anywhere. For examples of why this is true, see Baghdad, Iraq and Kabul, Afghanistan.

Venuezuela has a freely and fairly elected president who is directing resources towards those in need. And what is it again that you have?

After all, nobody looks back at the events of 1937-39 and says "if only the West's leaders had been more alarmist about the USSR."

Venezuala and Iran are profiting handsomely from the crises they create. When the price of oil goes up they reap in many millions. Possibly this is why there are so many crises?

Take the profit out of destabilizing the world economy and many millions of poor people all over the world will be better off. Everybody else will be better off too.

"If you're frightened or unhappy (and you may well have good reason to be) the reasons are clsoer to home."

Good grief, Pitkin, the one & only nation I am frightened of is my own. I don't know how you got any other impression.

As a Jew, I can't tell you how offensive it is when people (and I don't care what their political leanings are) compare what's happening now with Nazism, Facism, WWII, or Hitler. It is especially offensive when Jewish writers like Peretz and Krauthammer, who know better, do it. Let's stipulate: 9/11 was truly awful. But to compare anything happening today with what took place in the 30's and 40's is ridiculous and idiotic:

Over 50 million dead, including 6 million Jews. The complete destruction of major cities like Berlin and Tokyo. Tens of millions of refugees. Economies completely destoyed. On and on.

How do people -- especially Jews -- have the nerve to trivialize WWII (and the Holocaust) by comparing those things to today. It's unconscionable. What happened in the 30's and 40's was the worst human castrophe in the history of planet earth.

Matt,

I assume that those who claim Chavez is a menace to liberal society are not particularly worried about Chavez and Venezuela actually attacking anybody. They are worried about his charimatic influence on his neighbors, and his ability to export his Yanqui-Go-Home Bolivaran leftism to surrounding countries and beyond. Red scare glossary: Liberalism = The American Way = Interests of American Capital.

This is like deja vu all over again. American liberal capitalists hungry for Latin American markets and fanatically opposed to socialism in all its forms, lined up against Latin American socialists with a somewhat authoritarian and charismatic populist bent and no love for the Norteamericanos. Seems like old times - makes me feel young. Washington must be dusting off the old volumes in the once thriving Bureau of Latin American Coups and Invasions.

I guess "unsustainable" should be read as "inconsistent with my neo-liberal ideology."

Oil isn't going to be $20 per barrel again, and Chavez has increased public spending from 22% of GDP to a whopping 29%. Great Britain's at 42%.

I guess to be "sustainable," a country can't exceed the U.S.'s lean, and very mean, 20%, right?

The Ahmadinejad cosmic threat to liberalism is a bit more obscure than the Chavez one. The contemporary Cassandras rarely articulate their new domino theory in explicit form - you have to piece it together. But it seems to involve a monstrously fused Khomeinist-Salafist revolution that first sweeps the Middle East, and then overwhelms Europe by riding in on the backs of the immigrant fifth column. Finally, the feckless Europeans, languishing in their weary, decadent relativism, hand over the keys of their once estimable states to the Mohammeden hordes. Then the filthy Euro-Saracens, awash in oil money and armed to the teeth with the latest European military technology, come after us.

We'te totally fucking doomed.

Sometimes you just have to laugh. On the one hand, Colombia, where the paramilitaries have been lining up for their got-out-of-jail free cards, where a labor leader is murdered each week, and a journalist each month, where U.S. troops help poison the countryside...and on the other, Venezuela, a country that recently has survived incredible social stress and transformation with almost no killing, and spends huge amounts of the oil revenues (by any previous standards) on education, food, and medical care for the poorest.

Sooo...naturally it would be Venezuela with the leader who is a "thug" and the economy that's "unsustainable".

What a glum view of human nature- that Colombia, where the social contract is murder by paramilitary, and the economy is cocaine exports (also by paramilitaries) is the "model democracy". God save us all.

Posted by: Warren on September 25, 2006 03:07 PM:

Venezuala and Iran are profiting handsomely from the crises they create. When the price of oil goes up they reap in many millions. Possibly this is why there are so many crises?

Take the profit out of destabilizing the world economy and many millions of poor people all over the world will be better off. Everybody else will be better off too.

Wow that's a 10 out of 10 on the speechwriting scale.

I agree with Kervick and catowner. However, it's a little unfair to criticize Matt on this score, since (unlike most writers) when he writes "arguably" (as in "arguably unwise and unsustainable") it's not a weasel-word but an indication that he genuinely hasn't given the subject much thought and is using the liberal consesus as a placeholder. In this particular case, it's also a rhetorical concession to Peretz et al.: even if you think Chavez's policies are unwise, they are still no threat to the US or "liberalism."

On the other hand, if Kervick's gloss is right, Peretz is more correct than Yglesias. Chavez is no threat to our interests if by us you mean ordinary Americans, and by interests you mean security and standard of living. But he is a threat to our interests if by us you mean capitalists (it's just a word!) and their apologists, and by interests you mean extracting the maximum profits from the third world.

Both perspectives have their place, I guess.

Yes yes, Matt, Chavez is implementing "unwise" and "unsustainable" policies. You might also mention that when he was elected in 1998, Venezuela's poverty rate was variously pegged between between 60% and 80% (!) of the population. Now, in 2006, the CIA says it's at 47%. Not bad for a "second-rate" caudillo.

Speaking of "unwise" and "unsustainable," what about Elliott Abrams' and Otto Reich's careers in foreign policy? After Iran-Contra and the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela, in which both were involved, what exactly would these two have to do to get permanently axed? Eat Cuban babies on live TV?

and were the economic policies of Chavez' predecessors so wise and sustainable ? which ones? did they really alleviate the crushing poverty? why is it necessary to add a throw in bullshit line like that? if you really have something to say about Chavez' economic policies, why not say it instead of playing the game of "trying to appear sensible" for idiots like Peretz?

Whether Venenzuela is Third World or Second Rate, it has my respect for one simple reason: it is not a client state. For a camparison read some of Greg Palast's work on Ecuador's situation. What the U.S. under the flag of the IMF and World Bank has do to those South American economies is truly twisted, and the source of Chavez's popular appeal. If you thought Castro has been a thorn in the side of America, just imagine if his ideals were propped with untold oil wealth.

Which is what I really wanted to mention: untold wealth. According to the Department of Energy's, Chavez's crude oil reserves are FIVE times that of Saudi Arabia. As long as oil stays over $30 a barrell, it is cost effecient to pull it out of the Earth. So that is what is going on here. This isn't just a showman rattling cans on the global stage. This is the kind of country we need to have in our back pocket. That is the reality.

p.s. The people of Venezuela have free health care. I like that.

Maybe if the next administration makes nice with the socialists in Venezuela, Canada, and Norway we won't have to import so much oil from Saudi Arabia.

Whatever. We only find Hitlers these days in countries with oil. Bottom line. We could give a flying fuck about thugs running oil-less countries, unless they have nukes. Why everybody insists on pretending that US policy runs on spreading democracy or some weird vision-thing, I just don't understand.

Another point of humor here- imagine for a minute that Chavez appeared at the podium in top hat and tails, and delivered in impeccable Etonian English a Galbraithian analysis that flayed and filleted the flawed development of the typical 'petroligarchy', such as the PRI in Mexico or the former petroligarchy of Venezuela.

Why then, of course, we'd have the contrast with the 'plain-speaking' Bush, wearing blue jeans as he manages to grunt out a few sentence fragments about 'evil'.

Context is everything.

> imagine for a minute that Chavez appeared at
> the podium in top hat and tails, and delivered
> in impeccable Etonian English a Galbraithian
> analysis that flayed and filleted the flawed
> development of the typical 'petroligarchy',
> such as the PRI in Mexico or the former
> petroligarchy of Venezuela.

Would love to see a 2-hour, no-holds-barred, open-response debate between Chavez and W. Bush. Even with Chanvez not speaking his native language my bet would be that George would be a sobbing puddle of goo after the first 30 minutes.

Or better yet, W, could use his extensive knowledge of Spanish and hold the debate in that language. Then I would give him 15 minutes before collapse.

Cranky

In answer to Matt's original query, now that he's been thoroughly smacked down by those with no need to appear "respectable" to Washington insiders and apologists for Empire:

How did Chavez go from "a guy whose too socialist" to "a menace to liberal society"?

A concise answer can be found tucked deeeeeeeeeep in an editorial written by Nancy Soderberg in the L.A. Times a few weeks ago.

"Last year, Chavez lent Kirchner's cash-strapped government close to $3 billion, enabling it to pay off Argentina's International Monetary Fund debt. Now, in a warped version of 19th century liberation hero Simon Bolivar's dream to free the hemisphere from foreign domination, Chavez and Kirchner want to create a regional competitor to the IMF."

There you have it.

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