BBC: Sign of hope in US-Venezuela ties

[Eugene]

Last Updated: Friday, 15 December 2006, 04:44 GMT

Sign of hope in US-Venezuela ties

After several years of rising diplomatic tension, Venezuela and the United States
say they have made a positive start to improving relations.

The announcement came from the US ambassador in Caracas and Venezuela's
foreign minister after a special meeting lasting several hours.

-snip-

'Small steps'

Thursday's talks could be a first step to thawing the icy relationship between
Washington and Venezuela.

When the US ambassador, William Brownfield, and the Venezuelan Foreign Minister,
Nicolas Maduro, emerged from their talks, they were cautiously optimistic about
the future of bilateral relations.

Both men stressed the need to start a dialogue.

-snip-

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6181785.stm

[EFerrari]

1. We tried to kill and oust Chavez -- that's icy?!

:rofl:

[David__77]

2. US out of Venezuela's internal affairs. Problem solved.

No need for any ruckus. The US should be a normal country minding its own affairs, like Albania or Papua New Guinea.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Woman gets first Maine delivery of discounted Venezuelan oil

Woman gets first Maine delivery of discounted Venezuelan oil

The Boston Globe
December 12, 2006
By Jerry Harkavy

PORTLAND, Maine -A Venezuelan-funded program that provides discounted heating oil for thousands of needy Mainers kicked off its second season Tuesday, this time without the blessing of Gov. John Baldacci.
The first delivery arranged through Citizens Energy Corp., a Massachusetts-based nonprofit company, went to Elece Leonard, a 55-year-old woman who lives alone and is unable to work because she suffers from diabetes.

"This is awesome," Leonard said before the oil truck pulled up outside her four-room apartment in the Munjoy Hill neighborhood. "I think this is what the state of Maine needs because there's a lot of us who can't afford the cost of heating oil."

The chairman of Citizens Energy, former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, was scheduled to drive the truck but was forced to change his plans because of an injury, said Brian O'Connor, the corporation's vice president who filled in as speaker at the event.
(snip)

O'Connor said Kennedy, whose company has been providing energy assistance to the poor for more than a quarter century, had approached every oil company and every oil-exporting nation to see if they would be willing to help.

"The only company and the only country to respond was Citgo, and the people of Venezuela," he said.
(snip/...)

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/4415.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We read the reports last week of the season's first heating oil being delivered to a Baltimore home.

Poor citizens in 16 states, and 163 Native American tribes are in line to receive assistance (not free oil) from Venezuelan oil people over this winter. We've also read that there are arrangements made to give away oil to some American homeless shelters.

[geek tragedy]

4. Uh oh. Look for Hugo's popularity at DU to plummet. eom

[Judi Lynn]

5. Why is that, geek tragedy? You don't score points if you don't make sense. n/t

[geek tragedy]

8. Well, some have hypothesized that foreign leaders who

actively oppose Bush get treated more favorably around here.

But, maybe I imagined all of that "Ahmadinejad was mistranslated" nonsense.

[Judi Lynn]

9. What does "Ahmadinejad" have to do with this thread?

Is this a stream of "consciousness" message board?

It was my impression threads are separated from other threads because they deal with different subjects.

Either speak what's on your mind, or wait until there's another "Ahmadinejad was mistranslated" thread would be good advice.

[geek tragedy]

14. People here have a tendency to support foreign

leaders because they oppose Bush.

If Chavez stops calling Bush the devil and hugs him like he hugged Mugabe, well you'd see people calling him a sellout.

[w4rma]

15. You can't really be that clueless, geek tragedy. (nt)

[Judi Lynn]

18. Was the hug a big, greasy slime, like yet another McCain/Bush's embrace?

Did one appear to completely defile himself? That would have been memorable.



Some posters are so predictable. You have a hard time staying on topic, don't you?

What does Mugabe have to do with this thread?

[geek tragedy]

19. Anyone who hugs Mugabe and Ahmadinejad

has rendered himself incapable of further defiling.

[Judi Lynn]

6. U.S. ambassador says Washington hopes Venezuela's socialist plan won't hurt trade

U.S. ambassador says Washington hopes Venezuela's socialist plan won't hurt trade
The Associated Press
Published: 2006-12-19 09:30:31

~snip~
U.S. officials are seeking a thaw in relations with Venezuela and congratulated Chavez on his Dec. 3 re-election victory, which the former paratroop commander handily won on a pro-socialism platform.

Brownfield has also suggested that efforts to improve bilateral relations should start with talks on anti-terrorism and other issues that are viewed as a priority by both governments.

Chavez has said his government is willing to seek better relations, but has also voiced skepticism that Washington is sincere about improving ties.

Relations between Caracas and Washington have been tense since a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez, who accused U.S. officials of playing a role in the military rebellion. The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly denied involvement, but recognized an interim government installed by coup leaders.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/19/america/LA_GEN_Venezuela_US.php



_Bush's U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield



William O'Reilly

[Say_What]

7. Meanwhile, what the MSM doesn't tell you...

While the 19th century belonged to Europe and the 20th century to the USA, the 21st century belonged to socialism and to the working people of the world. --Hugo Chavez

<clips>

...AMY GOODMAN: We return now to Noam Chomsky, who spoke a few days ago in Boston.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I’ll start with last weekend. Important city in South America, Cochabamba, with quite a history. There was a meeting last weekend in Cochabamba in Bolivia of all the South American leaders. It was a very important meeting. One index of its importance is that it was unreported, virtually unreported apart from the wire services. So every editor knew about it. Since I suspect you didn't read that wire service report, I’ll read you a few things from it to indicate why it was so important.

In last Saturday, the South American leaders agreed to create a high-level commission to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union. This is the presidents and envoys of all the nations, and there was the two-day summit of what's called the South American Community of Nations, hosted by Evo Morales in Cochabamba, the president of Bolivia. The leaders -- reading just now --agreed to form a study group to look at the possibility of creating a continent-wide union and even a South American parliament. The result, according to the -- I’m reading from the AP report -- the result left fiery Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, long an agitator for the region, taking a greater role on the world stage, pleased, but impatient -- normal stance. They went on. It goes on to say that the discussion over South American unity will continue later this month, when MERCOSUR, South American trading bloc, has its regular meeting that will include leaders from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay.

There is one -- has been one point of hostility in South America. That's Peru, Venezuela. But it points out that Chavez and Peruvian President Alan Garcia took advantage of the summit to bury the hatchet, after having exchanged insults earlier in the year. And that was the only real conflict in South America. So that seems to have been smoothed over.

The new Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa proposed a land and river trade route linking the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest to Ecuador's Pacific Coast, suggesting that for South America, it could be kind of like an alternative to the Panama Canal.

Chavez and Morales celebrated a new joint project, the gas separation plant in Bolivia's rich gas-rich region. It’s a joint venture with Petrovesa, the Venezuelan oil company, and the Bolivian state energy company. And it continues. Venezuela, as I’m sure you know, is the only -- it which points out -- is the only Latin American member of OPEC and has by far the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East, by some measures maybe even incomparable to Saudi Arabia. Well, that’s very important in the general global context. I’ll return to a couple of words about that.

There were also contributions, constructive, interesting contributions by Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, Bachelet of Chile, and others. All of this is extremely important.

This is the first time since the Spanish conquests, 500 years, that there has been real moves towards integration in South America. The countries have been very separated from one another. And integration is going to be a prerequisite for authentic independence. I mean, there have been -- I’m sure you know -- attempts at independence, but they've been crushed, often very violently, partly because of lack of regional support, because there was very little regional cooperation, so you can pick them off one by one.

That’s what happened since the 1960s. The Kennedy administration orchestrated a coup in Brazil, the first of which happened right after the assassination was already planned. It was the first of a series of falling dominoes. Neo-Nazi-style national security states spread across the hemisphere. Chile was one of them, but only one finally ended up with reaching Central America, with Reagan's terrorist wars in the 1980s, which devastated Central America, similar things happening in the Caribbean. But that was sort of a one-by-one operation of destroying one country after another. And it had the expected domino effect. It’s the worst plague of repression in the history of Latin America since the original conquests, which were horrendous. It’s only beginning to be understood how horrendous they were.

But integration does lay the basis for potential independence, and that's of extreme significance. The colonial history -- Spain, Europe, the United States -- not only divided countries from one another, but it also left a sharp internal division within the countries, every one, between a very wealthy small elite and a huge mass of impoverished people. The correlation to race is fairly close. Typically, the rich elite was white, European, westernized; and the poor mass of the population was indigenous, Indian, black, intermingled, and so on. It's a fairly close correlation, and it continues right ‘til the present.

The white, mostly white, elites were not -- who ran the countries -- were not integrated with -- had very few interrelations with the other countries of the region. They were Western-oriented. You can see that in all sorts of ways. That's where the capital was exported. That's where the second homes were, where the children went to the universities, where their cultural connections were, and so on. And they had very little responsibility in their own societies. So there’s very sharp division.

more....

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/19/1433244


(L-R bottom row ) President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, President of Bolivia Evo Morales, President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, (L-R top row) Secretary for South American Affairs of Mexico Jorge Chen, Representative of Surinam Robby Ramlakhan, Vice-president of Argentina Daniel Scioli and Foreign Minister of Colombia Consuelo Araujo pose for an official photo at the South American Community of Nations summit in Cochabamba December 9, 2006. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo


Supporters of social unions participate at the closing act of the Social summit for the integration of the nations, simultaneously to the South American summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia December 9, 2006. REUTERS/David Mercado (BOLIVIA)

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thanks for the great material. I'm coming back later to study this.

Thanks for mentioning that Summit in Bolivia. I hope to find out more about that.

[Amused Musings]

11. Someone correct me if I am wrong

but I think the US is the only country with the capacity for refinig Venezuela's particular type of peroleum, which is not very clean. We need Venezuela but Venezuela needs the US too.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Someone should remind Venezuela they can only get their oil refined

in the United States! They'll probably be shocked. They may have tried to suck up to _Bush far more than they have, had they only known.

No doubt Hugo Chavez would have allowed them to go ahead and kill him during the coup if he had known how much he needed the help of the right-wing idiot President. Maybe he would have committed suicide to save them the trouble.

[Amused Musings]

13. I don't think I suggested that

And most americans are not Bush, just as Venezuela is not all Chavez. I dont really see why it is a bad thing to have good relations. Building better relations prevent war and help international crises to be solved diplomatically.

Or are you suggesting that this relationship was engineered by Bush?

Maybe I dont understand what you are saying

[goforit]

17. Very true.

[w4rma]

16. Very good. (nt)