Bloomberg.com: Venezuela’s Chavez Considers Sale of U.S. Refineries

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government may sell eight U.S. refineries as part of a strategy by the world’s fifth-largest supplier of oil to reduce dependency on sales to the U.S.

Now you don’t have to be as cynical as me to wince at that sentence.

Or be a student of US escapades in Latin America to wince at this one:

“We have serious concerns,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday at a press briefing when asked about Chavez’s plan to reduce oil business with the U.S. “We have made our concerns known when it comes to President Chavez. We have talked about our concerns with other leaders in the Americas.”

But all this rings bells. Here’s what Greg Palast reported in May 2002:

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month’s coup attempt against him from the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed.

…

The Opec chief warned Mr Chavez that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely to act on April 11, the day a general strike was due to start.

…

Last month the Guardian reported a former US intelligence officer’s claims that the US had been considering a coup to overthrow the Venezuelan president for nearly a year.

Chavez. Oil. Coup. The US.

But then again, Chavez is quite clearly mental and deserves to get the boot. Here’s what the BBC Online’s profile has to say about him:

This admirer of Fidel Castro’s Cuba and avowed anti-globalist…

This populist leader, who never missed an opportunity to address the nation…

Mr Chavez’s “revolution” had little real impact on the lives of ordinary Venezuelans, who still suffer from chronic poverty and widespread unemployment despite the country’s oil wealth.

A contributing factor to that third point might have something to do with the way the country’s oil wealth is dealt with. Take those refineries that Chavez would like to sell:

“Not one Venezuelan works at these refineries,” Chavez said in Buenos Aires yesterday, according to Venezuela’s Communication and Information Ministry. “They don’t give us one cent of profit. They don’t pay taxes in Venezuela. This is economic imperialism.”

It seems to me the BBC profile was clearly written from cuttings from the right-wing, anti-Chavez American press. Here’s Palast again in 2003 with a bit of balance:

I’d recently returned from Caracas and watched 100,000 march against President Chavez. I’d filmed them for BBC Television London.

But I also filmed this: a larger march, easily over 200,000 Venezuelans marching in support of their president, Chavez.

…

Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers in Venezuela. Note their color. White.

And not just any white. A creamy rich white.

I interviewed them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.

And the color of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola nuts — just like their hero, their President Chavez. They wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts.

You’ll notice the “O” word buried in there again.

So, another one to watch. If or when Bush decides it’s finally time for Chavez to go, you can probably expect to see it done in the traditional way - coup, riots, possibly deaths squads - rather than cluster bombs and deleted uranium. And all done with the now customary twist of the right-wing US mass-media weighing in behind the slaughter and illegality. Look for the ratcheting up of what already is a pretty full-on smear campaign.

Salvador Allende, anybody?

Still, it’ll all be in the name of freedom and democracy, of course.

Not oil, you cynic.

Postscript: You have to admire a man who responds to the recent remarks from Condoleeza Rice describing him as “a democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way” and “very deeply troubling”, with:

“It seems that she dreams about me. I can invite her on a date with me to see what happens to her with me. She said that she was sad and depressed because of Chavez. Oh, daddy! She should forget me. What bad luck this lady has. I don’t want to make that sacrifice for my nation”

Although how the writer of this piece, James Morrison, leapt to the conclusion that Chavez was suggesting that Rice had “sexual dreams” about him is probably best left to Morrison’s analyst.