Posted on 04/14/2002 4:01:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
bump
Venezuela's tightened grip on oil companies will have little impact on oil prices in the short term, but it will add to pressure for prices to remain high in the long term because foreign investment will likely be weaker than under a free-enterprise policy, Mr. Tissot says.
James Williams, energy analyst at US-based WTRG Economics, warns that Venezuela's track record of changing contracts before they expire could put future production at risk by making companies reluctant to invest in multi-billion-dollar heavy oil projects.
Mr. Molchanov says recent takeovers of private and corporate property encouraged by the Chávez government have heightened oil company fears. "If companies have to choose, they might pick another country," he says.
And with increased risk in Venezuela, some investors are turning to the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, where free- enterprise policy and political calm has sparked an investment bonanza in the Western Hemisphere's other great long-term oil supply.
"Even though the cost of development is very high, even compared with Venezuela, [companies in Canada] are confident that they are going to recuperate their investments in the long term," Tissot said. "In Venezuela, I sense that they're not sure that's going to be the case." ………***
Speaking at a stadium packed with supporters in central Lara state, Chavez said he would hold a referendum to put the question of his remaining in office to Venezuelans if the opposition pulls out of upcoming presidential elections.
"I am going to ask you, all the people, if you agree with Chavez being president until 2031," he said. ....................***
"The government should just keep its mouth shut," said Mazhar al-Shereidah, an Iraqi who teaches oil economics at Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. "Can you imagine the oil minister of Saudi Arabia talking so much to the press?"
Loyalists at PDVSA
Although ChevronTexaco signed a letter of intent to invest $6 billion in a new heavy oil project in the Orinoco basin, Venezuela has showed little interest in the project. No new petroleum deals have gone forward since Chavez took office.
Questions also surround PDVSA, which used to be considered one of the top state-run oil companies in the world.
.......A 30-year employee, Salazar is one of the few veterans left at PDVSA. During the nine-week national strike that tried to force Chavez from office in 2003, the president fired 19,000 oil workers for joining the work stoppage. The strike failed, mainly because key PDVSA supervisors remained on the job, including Salazar.
Chavez then packed PDVSA with loyalists.
"We are the new Venezuelan heroes," said Armando Lopez, who helps runs an offshore platform that loads oil tankers at Venezuela's port of Jose.
Today, some PDVSA workers wear Lance Armstrong-style wristbands with the phrase "Bolivarian Revolution," a reference to the Chavez movement named for Simon Bolivar, the 19th-century South American liberator.
Even pipelines carry pro-Chavez graffiti.
Trouble for joint ventures?
But political fervor sometimes seems to outstrip technical know-how, said Victor Poleo, a Caracas oil analyst.
PDVSA workers used to average about 15 years on the job, but since the strike, that number has dropped to about four years. A recent report in the Caracas daily El Nacional said that nine PDVSA workers had been killed in fires and explosions at refineries over the past six months, an unprecedented number, Poleo said.
"This country lives on oil, but its best people are gone," Poleo said. ..........
Shannon, addressing a seminar at George Washington University, said the U.S. government made the determination, in part, because Chávez ''has a relationship with Cuba and Iran, two state sponsors of terrorism that we find worrisome, especially in terms of intelligence liaison relationships.'' Both nations are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
''If you have a reasonable or rational expectation that somehow information that you share with them might make its way to just the groups that you're trying to combat, that's certainly negative,'' added State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. He also cited U.S. concerns over Venezuela's ''interactions'' with two Colombian leftist guerrilla groups, but gave no details. .......................***
None of the worst in the Western Hemisphere -- from Vicente Fox to Nicaragua's Danny Ortega now starring in Nicaragua's Sandinista Revival -- seem bad enough to be worthy of a disparaging word or two from the White House. Chavez is emboldened by the lack of response. Chavez recently visited Iran to stand with the mullahs and warn that oil shipments -- we get about 18 percent of our oil from Venezuela -- would be interrupted if America hits the Iranian nuclear facilities. He's done everything he can think of to provoke us, from replacing the Soviet Union as Castro's bankroller to allying himself with China. He's working hard to create a "Bolivarian axis" of anti-American governments in Central and South America, and China is the immediate beneficiary. ......................***
Utilities to be nationalized
The companies that apparently would be nationalized include two utilities that were privatized in the 1990s. They are Electricidad de Caracas, which provides power to the capital, and C.A. Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV, the country's largest publicly traded company.
The New York Stock Exchange halted trading in CANTV's shares. Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. owns the electric company.
Chavez also pledged to seek an end to the autonomy of the Central Bank and to rename the country the Socialist Republic of Venezuela……….***
Many Venezuelan immigrants also plan to go back to Venezuela someday and view local politics as a waste of time.
HOPE BEGINS TO FADE
IVAC leaders say those obstacles are fading in South Florida as Venezuela's reality sets in.
''There was hope among Venezuelans here that they might be able to return one day to Venezuela, but now it looks like they will have to focus on putting their feet firmly on the ground here,'' said IVAC vice president Victor Luengo.
``There is an awakening happening now that wasn't there before.''
Chávez set off alarms when he recently announced an accelerated push toward his ''21st century socialism'' that calls, among other things, for the nationalization of Venezuela's power and telecommunications companies.
''The question Venezuelans are asking themselves now is: `When do you decide you can't influence your home country anymore?''' said Dario Moreno, associate professor of political science at Florida International University. ``They're like the Cubans in the early '60s, before things like the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis made it clear that [Fidel] Castro wasn't going to leave anytime soon and was taking the revolution in a radical direction.''.......***
Accusing private companies of hoarding beef and other foods, Chavez warned supermarket owners and distributors that he would nationalize their facilities as soon as they gave him "an excuse."
"If they remain committed to violating the interests of the people, the constitution, the laws, I'm going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalize them," Chavez said during a televised broadcast. "So prepare yourselves!"
Chavez has been intent on nationalizing "strategic" sectors of the economy since winning re-election in December. He has moved quickly to buy out private interests in leading electricity and phone companies since the National Assembly gave him authority to enact sweeping measures by decree and accelerate the country's socialist transformation.
Earlier this week the government signed deals to buy stakes in local companies owned by two U.S. corporations - Verizon Communications Inc and CMS Energy Corp. There are no major U.S. interests, however, involved in the supermarket or food storage business in Venezuela….***
But Perez, a Cuban physician who fled to Colombia from Venezuela last year, faces one final hurdle: U.S. bureaucrats.
That's because Perez and dozens of other Cuban defectors who have fled from Venezuela have been waiting for months for permission from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota to emigrate to the land of their dreams.
"I want to be free," said Perez, 36, who lives in a slum in the Colombian capital with two other Cuban defectors. "But I don't know how long it will take."
Dispatched by Fidel Castro's government for humanitarian work in exchange for oil and other badly needed supplies, a small but growing number of Cuban medical personnel are using their foreign postings as stepping stones to the U.S.
The Bush administration is encouraging the defections. Last year, the Homeland Security Department, which oversees immigration services, modified rules to speed the doctors' requests for political asylum.
Experts say the number of Cuban health workers abandoning clinics in Venezuela and other countries could rise as word spreads of the U.S.program, which began in August. So far, at least 45 Cubans have made their way to Colombia.
"The floodgates will definitely open," said a spokeswoman for Solidarity Without Borders, a Miami-based group that helps Cuban physicians emigrate. "We've had calls from Cubans as far away as Namibia."
About 360 doctors, dentists and physical therapists have applied under the new Cuban Medical Professional Parole program. About 160 have been accepted, while most other cases are pending, said Ana Carbonell, chief of staff for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a longtime advocate for Cuban exiles……..***
Venezuelans have long gobbled up condos and preconstruction deals in Florida as investments, but the latest buyers want homes where they can live and business properties that will help them earn a green card.
"First the people who come are the businessmen in the highest circles, then the losing politicians, then the military and then the professionals," said Miami immigration lawyer Oscar Levin. "You're beginning to see the professionals."
This latest and largest potential group of emigrants say they fear the effect Mr. Chavez's socialist policies will have on the economy and on proposed educational reforms that could mirror the ideology of Mr. Chavez's ally and mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro.
"There is so much insecurity, political insecurity, economic insecurity," said Venezuelan Miguel Medina, a business executive who moved to Miami in August. "You don't know if a contract you signed today will be honored by the government in the future. ... It was time to do the 'Plan B.' "….***
What happens when we radically transform a country or a person? Would a socialist America still be America? And could this process occur without violence? I recently rediscovered a fascinating discourse on unity and continuity by a philosopher who turned away from socialism.
In his book The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations Miguel de Unamuno began his discourse on unity and continuity by marveling that a man should want to be someone else. "I can understand one's wanting to have what someone else has, his wealth or his knowledge," wrote Unamuno. "But to be someone else: that's something I don't understand." After all, being someone else signifies the death of oneself. This violates the inborn desire of every person to continue as themselves. Notice how defensive a person becomes when someone attempts to change them. The same is also true of nations subjected to radical reform. Such nations typically resist.
"Every man defends his personality," wrote Unamuno, "and will agree to a change in his way of thinking or of feeling only insofar as the change can fit into the unity of his spirit and mesh with its continuity...." Change is natural, of course, and happens to us all. But natural change, or evolutionary change , is something that respects the subject's past as well as his identity. Unamuno wrote: "A man can be greatly changed, but only within the stream of his continuity."
If some person or nation experiences a radical change of personality, that change may be described as "pathological." Such a change signifies the destruction of memory, of continuity. "For the victim," noted Unamuno, "this ... is the equivalent of death...." The statement of Jozef Mackiewicz on the transformation of Poland into a Communist state, in which Poland is no longer Poland, therefore asserts that the transformation from non-Communist to a Communist state signifies a total dissolution of one thing in favor of another. The old thing perishes from the change, from a violation of its identity. In consequence, a new thing takes its place.
Unamuno says that any attempt to tamper with a fundamental element in a living thing (e.g., giving a fish wings instead of fins) threatens that particular living thing. Every fundamental part is necessary to the whole. Subverting one element also subverts the other elements, breaking the unity of its being. According to Unamuno, "Everything that conspires in me to break the unity and continuity of my life conspires to destroy me and, therefore, to destroy itself." This formulation leads directly to Unamuno's punch line: "Every individual who conspires among a people to break the spiritual unity and continuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself as a part of that people."
Here we have, undoubtedly, one of the most profound formulations in the history of conservative thought. It reveals a genuine concern for all things breakable; for we all are, as individuals and nations, entirely breakable. The thought that we are not breakable is childish. The child, having no history, does not realize what can happen (because he has no idea of what has already happened). Of course, one might ask why individuals or nations should be preserved at all. Why does the individual matter? Why should a nation matter? Because, says Unamuno, "Man is an end, not a means. All civilization is directed toward man...." Even when a man sacrifices himself for others, even when he dies for his country, he merely sacrifices his life. He does not sacrifice his soul. "And the less a man believes in the soul ... the more the worth of this poor transitory life is exaggerated. And this exaggeration is the source of all that effeminate mawkishness against war."
In this formulation Unamuno is not glorifying war. Instead, he strikes a blow against mawkishness and effeminacy. "If a philosopher is not a man," wrote Unamuno, "he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man." In Unamuno's philosophy, such is also a coward who is afraid to acknowledge the essential tragedy of existence; namely, that the body must die; that the world is full of discontinuity and disunity (i.e., fragility); that the kingdom of truth and beauty, the realm of the soul, is not of this world. Only then do we have the courage to defend those things that are truly permanent, granting authentic unity and continuity to men and nations.
As a postscript, by way of illustration, let us consider an actual occurrence in the life of Miguel de Unamuno. The story is recounted in Antony Beevor's history of the Spanish Civil War, The Battle for Spain, that Unamuno, having initially supported the nationalist rising was grieved to see the savage butchery and abuses of the nationalists. Upon the platform of his own Salamanca University (of which he was rector), he stood before a crowd of nationalist dignitaries (including Gen. Franco's wife) and said: "All of you await my words. You know me and are aware that I am unable to remain silent. At times to remain silent is to lie. For silence can be interpreted as acquiescence." He then referred to the preceding speaker, Professor Maldonado, who had recommended the "scalpel of fascism" as the national cure. In response to this, the one-eyed and one-armed General Millan Astray had shouted "Long live Death!" About this Unamuno said, "And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes, must tell you as an expert authority that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General Millan Astray is a cripple. Let it be said without undertone.... General Millan Astray would like to create Spain anew, a negative creation in his own image and likeness; for that reason he wishes to see Spain crippled as he unwittingly made clear."
Gen. Astray screamed in response, "Death to the intelligentsia! Long Live Death!" According to Beevor's account, the general's body guard pointed his submachine gun at Unamuno's head. The Falangists and army officers drew their side arms, and took aim. Unamuno calmly continued to speak: "This is the temple of the intellect and I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right in your struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain."
Realizing that Unamuno was about to be lynched, Gen. Astray directed the philosopher to take the arm of Gen. Franco's wife and depart under her protection. Later Unamuno was placed under house arrest and executed. "If a philosopher is not a man," he had written, "he is anything but a philosopher...." The defense of unity and continuity is, in part, a defense against violence. It is also a militant stand, speaking truth to power; that is, to preserve the unity and continuity of ourselves.
To change a country into something opposed to what that country once was, formerly, is to break with the necessities of continuity. Such is the prerogative of revolutionaries, fanatics, and raging social misfits. Disciples of violence all, they talk of a better world, but they affect only death. They bring only destruction and loss; especially, they affect a loss of soul. This is not only true of violent revolutions. If America has already experienced a loss of soul it is due to the social revolution which began in the 1960s, and continues today. For some of us, this loss of soul is evident. For others, it is something "cool" with which they identify. [end text]
We are slipping into that which we despised. English law was better than Spanish law because it was contract law. In our southern hemisphere to do business you bribe everyone up the chain. We had a superior system of laws. But honest, moral men need to be vigilant or that will slip away. I see it slipping away.
Thank you for circulating this essay. It pretty much lays it out. It diagrams the road to our destruction.
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financialsense.com ^ | February 18, 2011 | JR Nyquist A Philosopher's Warning [full text] This week I had the pleasure of interviewing the Brazilian philosopher, and president of the Inter-American Institute, Olavo de Carvalho. During the conversation I suggested that something is wrong with our thinking today; that we don’t worship in the same way, or obey the rules in the same way, or observe common courtesy as we once did. “To someone like me,” he began, “who visited this country in the 1980s, and came back to live here in 2005, the changes that the American mind has undergone in recent decades are really shocking.”
Carvalho recommended that I read Tamar Frankel’s book, Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at the Crossroad, which, he explained, “describes the alarming decline of moral standards in the American business world....” According to Frankel's book, the erosion of trust and honesty has to do with a rising acceptance and justification of fraudulent practices. "What has changed," she writes, "is the attitude towards dishonesty and breach of trust. Today, there is a greater acceptance and more justification of dishonesty." How did this come about? With the removal of certain barriers to fraud, temptation has increased.
Carvalho has his own insights into the causes of moral and intellectual deterioration in America: “One of the factors that has brought about this change, with its highly corrosive consequences in the daily lives of Americans, was the fashionable ‘neo-liberalism,' which saw the business world as a self-regulatory power, able to override morality, religion, and culture and to dictate standards of conduct based on the supposedly miraculous power of market laws. What made the greatness of America was not just the free market economy, but a synthesis of this with Christian morals and with a culture that included love of country and family. Separated from these regulating forces, the capitalist economy becomes an engine of self-destruction, which is exactly what is happening today.”
Undoubtedly, there is truth in the assertion that traditional American society has collapsed, being replaced by “the open society,” so named by George Soros and Karl Popper. According to Carvalho, the open society defines itself as “not recognizing any transcendent values and by leaving everything at the mercy of economic conveniences – conveniences that are something alleged even to justify the very demolition of the free market and its replacement by the welfare state, based upon taxation and debt.” In other words, Carvalho is saying that the free market doesn’t make men good. It does not train them to be moral. It does not bother to defend itself against socialism. Those elements in society that previously instilled moral values are no longer as effective, if they are effective at all.
It is Carvalho’s view that the “open society” concept has been used by the nation’s enemies to destroy “everything that is good and great in this country.” He then pointed to the Russian geopolitical thinker, Alexander Dugin, and “the emerging Russian-Chinese scheme....” Using a subtle propaganda, noted Carvalho, the “open society” becomes a pretext for fostering widespread global hatred against the United States. For the “open society” produces moral degradation that is subsequently blamed on the American way of life, which supposedly demonstrates the special wickedness and decadence of the American people. This leads directly to a discussion of the evils of American cultural imperialism -- the rallying cry of Russian and Chinese strategists whose goal is the elimination of the United States as a world power. The effectiveness of this approach should not be underestimated. As Carvalho explained, “The Russian-Chinese influence has been growing more and more in Latin America. The U.S. Government has missed this because it still sees Russia and China as allies, in spite of the fact that they are the two largest weapons suppliers to terrorism around the world. One must remember that the Putin government’s foreign policy is today guided by the so-called ‘Eurasian’ strategy, invented by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who proposes that Russia, China, and Islam ally with all the anti-American forces in Western Europe, Africa and Latin America, for the purpose of laying final siege to the United States. This strategy already has strong military support in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a kind of eastern version of NATO, which brings together Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.”
I asked Carvalho about recent reports of a deal between Islamic Iran and communist Venezuela to build a strategic missile base aimed at the United States. I asked if the Marxists of South America were allied with al Qaeda and Tehran. “Yes, they are,” he replied. “They are also allied with the ETA, which is a Basque terrorist organization. There are lots of agents of these organizations in Hugo Chavez’s entourage. This fact is not unknown to many Latin American governments, but most of them are committed to remaining silent about it because of the agreements they signed as members of the Sao Paulo Forum, the spearhead of the communist movement in Latin America.”
I then asked Carvalho to name the countries working with the terrorists worldwide for the destruction of the United States. He replied as follows: “Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and especially China are the main ones. In Latin America, Venezuela is the most obvious example, but Venezuela would be nothing without the support it gets from all the governments of the Sao Paulo Forum, the leader of which is Brazil.”
According to Carvalho, the Left continues to consolidate its position in Latin America. “It has been following a strategy explicitly presented in a Chinese communist congress a few years ago: to take power by means of legal elections and then erode the democratic system from the inside to prevent the opposition from ever coming back to power in future elections,” he explained. “This is to say: they win a first match and then proceed to change the rules of the game. In Brazil this strategy has led to spectacular results. First, the idea was to limit the political field to only two contestants: radical Left and moderate Left. All other forces were dismantled by means of targeted tax audits and corruption charges which did not even need to be proved, since they destroyed reputations once and for all as soon as they were trumpeted by the media.”
Could America’s traditional ally in South America be under the control of a totalitarian movement? How could we miss such an astonishing development? “American opinion-makers have a wrong view of Brazil,” said Carvalho, “because the Brazilian government has always acted in a two-faced and camouflaged way. On the one hand, it has been courting American investors to strengthen the Brazilian economy, but on the other, it has been taking advantage of economic success in order to consolidate the Leftist sway at home, to make impossible any political opposition which is not that of the moderate left, and to give effective support to the rise of the Left in neighboring countries, while protecting openly terrorist organizations like the FARC and the Chilean MIR, which thus have ended up controlling the local criminal organization and getting the monopoly of the drug market in Brazil. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has also dismantled the opposition, but using more blatant methods.”
Since Brazil harbors the core of the communist movement in Latin America, how is the anti-American campaign progressing? According to Carvalho the Left is not always able to move forward. “It follows an alternating rhythm,” he explained, “according to whether the important thing at the moment is to flatter foreign investors or to unify and strengthen the Latin American Left.”
“For more than ten years,” Carvalho noted, “I have been warning that the Worker’s Party [in Brazil] is not an organization like the others; that is, willing to alternate with the opposition in power. The Worker’s Party is a revolutionary organization committed to reshaping the state and the entire society after its image and likeness, by using, for this purpose, the vilest and most corrupt resources. Since no one has ever believed any of this, everyone has kindly disarmed himself in the face of this rising party, and now that it controls everything, no one can do anything against it. Brazil is governed by a single party which has several names. I see no prospect of changing this situation in the short or medium term.”
I asked Carvalho about Chile, which turned away from the Left in its last elections. Of all the countries in South America, what is the secret of Chile’s apparent conservatism? “The Chilean elite is infinitely more educated and better morally prepared than the Brazilian elite,” he replied. “When things start to move towards the abyss, the Chileans are able to understand what is happening and change course before disaster occurs. You cannot imagine the intellectual laziness of Brazilian businessmen, politicians and military people. Even when the situation becomes alarming, they cling to their comfortable and usual beliefs and refuse to inform themselves on what is really happening. The wealthy classes in Brazil are presumptuous and helpless. They do not know how to resist the subtle game of blandishments and threats played by the Leftist government that controls them. Not only in Chile but also in Argentina, the elites are much better prepared to face such a situation.”
And what is the most important thing Americans should know about the present political situation in South America? “The most important thing,” said Carvalho, “is the deep and solid unity of the local Leftist movements across national borders, the unity of the revolutionary strategy that lies behind seeming and misleading differences of national character. There are no ‘two Lefts’ in Latin America. There is only one Left, which has so much solidarity with itself that it never loses control of the two faces it employs to fool American observers.”
Hearing Carvalho characterize the Brazilian business and political elite as intellectually lazy, I could not help thinking of the American elite. They have also refused to changed course in the face of approaching disaster. Even as the situation becomes alarming, they spend more and more money. They court enemies and betray allies. It is true, as well, that they "do not know how to resist the subtle game of blandishments and threats played by the Leftist" power. [end text]
...“I’m proud,” he said, “very proud, because the public forces came into the community, gave us support and order.” [end]
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".....Dilma Rousseff is the daughter of an exiled Bulgarian Communist Party activist and a wealthy Brazillian ranching family, Rousseff joined Marxist anti-government guerillas in the 1960s in armed struggle against the then military government.
Taught Marxism in high school, Rousseff joined several revolutionary groups as a young woman, including Command of National Liberation (COLINA).
In early 1969, the police invaded the group’s house and the militants responded by using a machine gun, which killed two policemen and wounded another.
Dilma went underground, later participating in the formation of the Revolutionary Armed Vanguard Palmares. After that group split , Dilma was sent to Sao Paolo , where she was charged with guarding the groups weapons-which she hid under bed.........
....In March 2010, leading Communist Party USA member Emile Schepers, writing in the Peoples World, observed that “the the Rousseff victory in powerful and wealthy Brazil will be very welcome to the Latin American left and working class.” He also stated that Rousseff’s victory will continue the policies of the wildly popular former President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, “including the push for the horizontal integration of Latin American economies to make them less dependent on their relationships with the United States.”
In July this year Schepers wrote again on the upcoming Brazil election. Speaking of foreign policy, he stated “at stake is whether Brazil will continue on a progressive and independent course, or whether it will be brought back in line with U.S. desires.” and later on, “Brazil also annoyed the United States by joining with Turkey in trying to come up with a peaceful solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear policy.”
“In foreign policy, Brazil, under the leadership of Lula… has played a bold role that has been applauded by left-wing governments such as those of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.”
The election of Rousseff has served to strengthen the “Lula”/Cuban instigated “Red Tide” that has swept most of Latin America.
U.S. patriots would do well to keep an eye on their southern neighbor, and ensure that their own U.S. legislators do not cave in to whatever socialist foreign policy agendas Dilma Rousseff and her new government may propose……” Source
Sept 30, 2010: Ex-Guerrilla on Cusp of Power in Brazil
March 19, 2011Obama says US to be major purchaser of Brazilian oil [excerpt]......Mr Obama spoke of the US's desire to secure more of its oil from Brazil in future after talks with his counterpart, President Dilma Rousseff, in Brasilia at the start of a two-day visit to Latin America's biggest country. "I have told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which can be a win-win for both our countries," he said.
Brazil possesses some of the world's biggest offshore oil reserves in the pre-salt area off its south-east coast. Ms Rousseff has stated her desire to export the vast majority of oil from the fields as the country concentrates on using renewable sources of energy such as hydroelectric power and ethanol for domestic needs.
Speaking in a newspaper interview just before Mr Obama's arrival, she made what seemed a clear sales pitch, asking “which other country in the world has the oil reserves that Brazil has, that is not at war, that does not have an ethnic conflict, which respects contracts, has clear democratic principles and vision, is generous and in favour of peace?”
Mike Froman, a senior White House adviser on international economic affairs, also spoke of a "natural potential strategic partnership"with Brazil.
Much of the money raised from deals to sell oil to the US and other countries could go towards infrastructure improvements as the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro approach. Mr Obama's visit to Brasilia also saw the US sign an agreement to help Brazil in its preparations for the sporting events, which could see America training security teams and helping with planning and infrastructure challenges.....[end excerpt]
March 19, 2011: In US-Brazil Joint Statement, World Cup, Energy and Brazil’s UN Hopes[excerpt] ".......President Obama expressed appreciation for Brazil’s aspiration to become a permanent member of the Security Council, and acknowledged its assumption of global responsibilities. The two leaders agreed to continued consultation and cooperation between the two countries to achieve the vision outlined in the UN Charter of a more peaceful and secure world....." [end excerpt]
[excerpt] ".....Some analysts said that the purchases made so far add up to about $30 billion, a figure Chávez himself has said he wishes to spend to modernize the country’s armed forces.
A report by the Association for Citizen Control for the Security and Defense of the Nation, a Venezuelan NGO that follows this issue closely, says the country has received or is about to receive a long list of equipment and military installations supplied mostly by Russia, China and Spain.
The list includes 92 mid-size T-72B1V tanks, about 240 bulletproof infantry vehicles (BMP-3 and 8x8 BTR-80), nine submarines, nearly 50 vessels of different sizes, dozens of Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighting airplanes, an undetermined number of Chinese J-10 fighter airplanes, and close to a hundred Russian helicopters, a good part of which were designed for combat operations.
The information also includes S-300 anti-airstrike missile systems, known by NATO as SA-20 Gargoyle, capable of following 100 objectives at the same time, including cruise missiles, while trying to down six of them simultaneously from a distance of 125 miles.
Venezuela has also obtained commitments to build weapon plants in the country, including a powder factory with Iran’s help, a plant to build AK-103/AK-104 assault rifles and a plant to build 7.6 by 39 mm ammunition.
Chávez has also acquired about 100,000 AK-103/AK-104 assault rifles, and 5,000 high-precision Dragunov SDVS rifles for snipers, besides 1,000 portable RPG-7V2 anti-tank rocket launchers, plus another 1,000 portable anti-air Igla-S missile launchers. The latter ones, of similar characteristics as the U.S. Stinger, have generated unrest within the U.S State Dept., which fears that some might end up in the hands of Colombian guerrillas with devastating results against the helicopters their neighbor country uses to fight rebel forces.
Washington has watched closely the purchases Venezuela has made in recent years. State Department officials have expressed concerns to their Russian counterparts about the massive sales of weapons to the South American country...." [end excerpt]
Adan Chavez's statement came as speculation mounted about the health of the president, who has been convalescing at an undisclosed location in Cuba after reportedly undergoing emergency surgery 16 days ago.
Chavez's older brother said Venezuela's ruling party wants to retain power by defeating foes in elections. But he told government supporters that they should be ready to take up arms if necessary.
[snip]
"No one else is really ready to step in and take charge," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. "The current situation shows how precarious one-man rule is: Everything hinges on the whims of a single individual."
"A search for a successor to Chavez would significantly scramble the country's politics," Shifter said. "A fierce power struggle within Chavismo would almost certainly ensue."
Infighting also would likely break out within Venezuela's loosely knit opposition, which plans to hold a primary to pick a presidential candidate for next year's election.
"The opposition would also be thrown off balance," Shifter said. "Their single-minded focus on Chavez has kept them more united in recent years. [end excerpt]
The prominence of Adán Chávez reflects his brother’s dominance of Venezuelan politics since he was first elected president in 1998. Over the years, Hugo Chávez has consistently winnowed other top advisers and potential rivals who rose from his own political movement. Some who remain, like Vice President Elías Jaua, a former director of land expropriations, exhibit total loyalty...
Still, no one in the government, including Adán Chávez, has displayed the president’s visceral ability to connect with poor Venezuelans. That may not have mattered too much in Cuba, where the Communist Party holds unrivaled authority over the nation’s political system. But if Hugo Chávez is unable to quickly return to power in Venezuela, it remains to be seen how effectively his brother can hold off the spirited, if divided, opposition here and build support in a governing movement...centered around the president himself.
...biographers of Hugo Chávez attribute the president’s political evolution, if not his bruising political style, in part to Adán’s influence and ties in the 1970s with guerrilla leaders like Douglas Bravo, who advocated using Venezuela’s petroleum reserves as a tool for radical change.
While Hugo Chávez grew close to Mr. Bravo and then broke with him, as he has done repeatedly with other mentors, the president still incorporated such thinking into his own ideology, using oil revenues as the driving force in his socialist-inspired revolution.
Now, Mr. Bravo, 79, who is a critic of what he describes as Venezuela’s new dependence on countries like China and Russia, said Adán Chávez was clearly “in the line of succession.”...
........It was a little over two and a half months ago that Chávez, during a national television address, told stunned Venezuelans that he'd undergone two surgeries in Cuba to remove a pelvic abscess and cancerous tumor. Speculation has been rife since then about what a post-Chávez Venezuela will look like. Last month, early elections for next year were called for October as opposed to December.
To date, however, Chávez has no credible successor. But he does have his fanatic supporters, Chavistas, along with plenty of help from Cuba. Large numbers of Cuban intelligence agents now operate in Venezuela in support of Chávez's regime.
Venezuela has provided Cuba with economic largess and regular shipments of oil; accordingly, Cuba can be counted on to do all it can to make sure Venezuela remains an ideological and economic alley.
Unfortunately, Chávez has so completely polarized his country that it will be difficult for Venezuelans to repair the damage he has done. He has taken three bad ideas from Venezuela's past -- statism, authoritarianism, and populism -- and taken them to epic levels. Anti-Americanism has become more prevalent than ever. And large swaths of Venezuela's economy have been nationalized.
The opposition will have much work to do to find a candidate to appeal to Venezuela's poor majority; and even if an opposition candidate prevails, a new government will face an epic task to undo Chávez's damage -- soaring levels of corruption, crime, and dysfunctional governance. Venezuela's state oil company, critical to government revenues, is a shadow of itself thanks to Chávez's mismanagement.
Even without Chávez (or a Chávez clone), Venezuela will take years to recover from the damage Chávez has done with his leftist and anti-American agenda."
The decision would mean relaxing the 19-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, which generally bars American commerce with the nation and caps the amount of American-made components in offshore drilling vessels and other equipment at 10 percent.
The federal government is “taking measures to ensure that the appropriate private industry parties are able to respond quickly in the event of an oil spill in Cuban waters,” said Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich. That includes issuing licenses that would allow U.S. companies to deploy “booms, skimmers, dispersants, pumps and other equipment and supplies necessary to minimize environmental damage in the event of a spill.”
Bromwich said the Treasury Department also is weighing whether to issue licenses to companies that own and operate containment equipment that is designed to capture crude from blown-out underwater wells. Two U.S. firms developed such subsea containment systems in response to last year’s Deepwater Horizon disasters, but there are no others that would be readily available in case of a well blowout near Cuba.
Under the embargo, individual companies can ask the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for licenses to travel to or do business with Cuba. At least two U.S. companies specializing in spill response already hold such permits."........
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