Uruguay's new leader strengthens ties with Chavez

Uruguay's new leader strengthens ties with Chavez
Comments Apr 7, 2010 11:29 PM (24 days ago) By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, AP

CARACAS, Venezuela (Map, News) -
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered Wednesday to help Uruguay expand a refinery and supply it with crude oil.

Chavez and visiting Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, popularly known as "Pepe," signed accords pledging to deepen trade and energy ties between the two South American nations.

Venezuela's president expressed admiration for the 74-year-old Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla leader who took office last month. Chavez embraced Mujica when he arrived at the presidential palace, affectionately calling him "a mentor."

Chavez presented Mujica with the Order of the Liberator - Venezuela's highest honor - and gave him a replica of a sword used by South American independence hero Simon Bolivar - the namesake of Chavez's socialist-inspired "Bolivarian Revolution."

Chavez said Venezuela will renew a deal to sell Uruguay up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day under preferential terms.

"The entire consumption of Uruguay doesn't surpass 40,000 barrels a day," Chavez said before he met with Mujica at the palace.

Chavez said he and Mujica also would discuss Venezuelan help in expanding Uruguay's La Teja refinery. He said it should be upgraded with equipment allowing it to refine heavy crude from Venezuela's eastern Orinoco River basin.

Under the accords, Uruguay will export 1,000 vehicles to Venezuela and help the oil-dependent country develop agriculture projects. The two nations also plan to cooperate in building glass and cement factories, producing software and establishing construction companies.

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(just the other week), to help develop the Orinoco Belt (largest oil reserve on earth--twice Saudi Arabia's). Companies and countries are literally flocking to Venezuela in Exxon Mobil's wake. Exxon Mobil refused fair terms for Venezuela and its social programs, and lost out--to the gain of these others. The Italian company that benefitted was thrilled to get the business and said so in the press conference. Meanwhile, the Chavez government has been making deals all over Latin America--including this one with Uruguay--and the world. All they want is FAIRNESS--recognition of Venezuela's sovereignty and its right to set the terms of business in and with Venezuela. The U.S. government. does. not. want. fairness! That is why it is surrounding Venezuela with war assets--to bully, to threaten, perhaps even to kill and to take. That is why it relentlessly demonizes and lies about the Chavez government. That's why it hates the Chavez government and the people who keep electing it, in an election system that is far, FAR more transparent than our own. They want Exxon Mobil to be able to dictate terms to Venezuela--all the profit goes to Exxon Mobil's execs and rich investors; nothing for Venezuela (except maybe a little off the top for Venezuela's coup-prone, rich elite--to buy them off and induce them to utterly betray and neglect their own country).

WHILE the Chavez government makes all of these fair deals with everybody else, what is the U.S. doing? Larding Colombia's vastly corrupt, murderous government and military with $7 BILLION in military aid, to BUY "free trade for the rich" in Colombia and to kill off/terrorize union leaders, community organizers, human rights workers and political leftists. Helping to ferret the kidnapped president of Honduras out the country at gunpoint, via the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras, in order to free our multinational corporate retailers and Chiquita of any requirement to raise the minimum wage in one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere and to STOP the leftist democracy tide that has swept South America on into Central America*. Killing people in Afghanistan for what reason nobody knows, any more than we knew why 2 million Southeast Asians and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers had to die in the 1960s-1970s--another ten year, senseless war, that benefits only war profiteers (and there's the clue to why). (At least with Iraq--for all its one million dead--we knew what is was FOR.)

I'm glad to see yet another country COOPERATING with Venezuela on various development projects and FAIR trade. I would like to see our own country do the same but I have little hope that it will.

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*One of the coup generals in Honduras (quoted in a report by the Zelaya government-in-exile) stated that their coup was intended to "prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." "Communism," in this case, means universal health care, cutting poverty in half, doubling high school and college enrollment, transparent elections, use of the nation's resources to benefit the people who live there, economic growth and development, low unemployment, responsible money management (low debt, good credit, high cash reserves) and national sovereignty. And one could say that, by inference, capitalism--or at least the predatory capitalism we see today--means the opposite: health care profiteering, half the population with no health care, cutting all educational programs, corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' code election machinery, use of the nation's resources to benefit the rich, outsourcing of jobs, downsizing of companies, high unemployment, utterly irresponsible money management, and rule by multinational corporations. I.e., the USA and its client states such as Honduras.

There's no activity in the field. Those companies are doing zero. PDVSA wants a majority stake in the JVs, and they don't have the personnel, tyey also seem to lack the money it takes, and financing is going to be very difficult if PDVSA is the operator.

:-)

It's very simple. I monitor the international scene to see if any large engineering firms are being contracted. They are not. This means there's no real activity contemplated. And this means nobody is really chewing anything. They are coldly looking at Venezuela as one would look at a wounded animal. Sorry to pop your balloon, but the Venezuelan economy is cratering, and there's no sign the government will put in place the measures it'll take to put it on a better track.

Today I read the Brazilians repairing the Guri generators aren't getting paid. So why would you expect anybody in their right mind to do much in Venezuela? This has to be one of the most incompetent governments to ever rule, I would rank them way up there with the Ugandans under Idi Amin, the USA under Bush, and the Icelanders under who ever was the dummy who let their banks play the European mortgage bubble.