Do you speak Spanish? Or read French? Chavez sang quite a little song about the mutual lack of love between him and the lady in red. I think it's as funny as hell. He's not mean about anything as he responds to some nonsense Hillary said about how the Venezuelan people were suffering so, but he doesn't mince his response either.
And Heinz... The grudge Kerry and his wife have isn't going away until they get all their lucrative holdings back. You probably know this already but posting it for the record
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Chavez's Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further - too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.
Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions - and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez's congress passed a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela's politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his "Alliance for Progress."
Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn't like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized the Heinz plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn't realize that he'd just squeezed the tomatoes of America's powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz' husband, Sen. John Kerry (now, Obama's nominee for US Secretary of State).
Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.
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http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13800-big-oil-big-ketchup-and-the-assassination-of-hugo-chavez
Venezuelan Authorities Seize Idle Heinz Ketchup Plant
By GREGORY WILPERT – VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM
Caracas, Venezuela, September 9, 2005—Venezuelan military seized a Heinz Ketchup plant in Venezuela’s Monagas state last Monday. Heinz company representatives complained that the seizure represented, “a violation of property rights and free trade as well as due process.” Venezuela’s Minister for Agriculture and Land, Antonio Albarrán, argued, though, that 80% of the plant actually belongs to the workers and that Heinz bought the plant illegally in 1996. The plant has been closed for nearly a decade, according to Albarrán.
The take-over of the Heinz plant in the town of Caicara, Monagas, was carried out by Venezuelan troops at the request of the pro-Chavez state governor, José Gregorio Briceño. The move comes at a time that the Chavez government is investigating over 700 closed enterprises, evaluating them for their suitability for worker takeovers, via expropriation.
Workers at many other factories and businesses have begun taking matters in their own hands, not waiting for the government to act in the expropriation of idle factories.
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According to Máspero there are currently eight businesses in Venezuela that workers have occupied, to which belongs the Heinz plant in Monagas. Others include Probamasa, a corn processing plant owned by the food and beverage company Polar; a plant belonging to the dairy company Parmalat, in Machiques; Parmalat in Barquisimeto; Sideroca Proacero in Cabimas; the valve factory Inveval in Los Teques; the paper plant Invepal in Morón; and the meat-packing company Fribarsa in Barinas. Only two of these, Inveval and Invepal, have completed the full legal procedure for turning the plants over to the workers.
Máspero explained, “First we occupy and then we resolve the issue of ownership, as there is always a reason for the occupation.” As an example she cited the recently occupied Promabrasa, where “the workers told us that for over six months now the business owes them back pay. We requested an inspection by the Ministry of Labor and they are carrying out all the legal procedures.”
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PUBLISHED ON SEP 9TH 2005 AT 1.00AM
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/1352
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