Hugo Chavez to visit Belarus in October

[naaman fletcher]

http://law.by/work/englportal.nsf/0/4A9277A2B5AC1016C22576EA005832ED?OpenDocument

CARACAS, 18 March (BelTA) – President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez is set to visit Belarus in October 2010 and Alexander Lukashenko will travel to Venezuela in 2011. The two presidents reached the relevant agreement in Caracas on 17 March.
“Belarus has something to show to the Venezuelan President and get him interested in,” said Alexander Lukashenko. He expressed his hope that by the time of Hugo Chavez’s visit, the two countries will move to a new level of cooperation, and a number of joint companies will be established in Venezuela by summer 2011, so that Venezuelans see that Belarusians have serious intentions.
During Alexander Lukashenko’s visit the two presidents have discussed a lot of ideas and plans. “We have fallen behind recently in terms of implementation of plans. We should make up for lost time and do in two years the things we planned to do in three years, and in a year those that we planned to implement in two.
The two presidents signed 22 documents on cooperation in petroleum chemistry, industry, construction, energy saving, science and technologies were signed in Caracas on 17 March.
Belarus and Venezuela signed an important contract on the supplies of Venezuelan oil. It was a historic visit, according to Alexander Lukashenko. “It is the first time that Venezuelan oil will be delivered to Europe,” he said.
The Belarusian President stressed that Belarusians have come to Venezuela as the closest friends and brothers. “We will not only extract oil and gas, build cities and villages. Our main goal is to train our Venezuelan friends. If we do our job well, Venezuela will have its own experts and major organizations that will develop this beautiful country. We will certainly fulfill what we promised,” said the President of Belarus.
“Venezuela is our home, our land. And Belarus should become a familiar land for Venezuelans,” summarized Alexander Lukashenko.

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Why would a democratic hero hang out with a tyrant?

[DutchLiberal]

1. I don't know. Why don't you ask Obama next time the goes to visit Saudi-Arabia or China?

True, president Chavez would do better to stay away from Europe's last dictator, but I'm getting a little tired about the double standard when it comes to him. Italian prime-minister and full-time clown Berlusconi visited Belarus, but I heard nobody cry foul over it...

[protocol rv]

2. Berlusconi is a full time clown

I agree. So now that we set the record straight...

I am puzzled, I never heard of Belarussian housing prowess. If anybody can explain why should we employ ex-Soviet builders from Belarus, who are used to pre-fabbed Soviet style apartment blocks meant for cold weather...and also discuss why this should be done without taking bids from other parties to make sure their price is right... what are we going to get next, Chavez visits Mugabe and we'll get agricultural consultors from Zimbabwe?

[DutchLiberal]

3. Good side-stepping of the hypocrisy I pointed out!

You must get a lot of practice in it.

[naaman fletcher]

4. What is the hypocrisy?

I think I know, I just would like you to state it clearly so that I can address it, thanks.

[DutchLiberal]

5. Screaming murder over president Chavez visiting Belarus, while Obama gets a free pass...

No problem if Obama goes to China or Saudi-Arabia, both totalitarian dictatorships), but when president Chavez is working together with Lukashenko... all hell breaks loose.

Like I said: he shouldn't do business with Belarus. It's not called "Europe's last dictatorship" for nothing. But it's just politics and self-interest, like America turning a blind eye to the human rights abuses of some of their allies is in its own self-interests. All the detractors of president Chavez do, is trying to paint him as a tyrant with the tactic of "guilt by association". They rarely cite the friendly relations between him and Clinton, for example.

[protocol rv]

6. What self interest are we discussing?

I don't support US foreign policy, so please don't detour by criticizing it to defend this or that. What do you want me to say, that America is run by idiots who can't figure out Iraq never had those WMDs? Or that torturing prisoners is a really dumb idea, on top of being an evil thing to do?

I really don't care if Lukashenka is a dictator, what bothers me is that every time Chavez makes a deal or has a bright idea, we lose. Those Iranian tractors aren't worth the hassle of being Iran's friends - I don't like Israel but one has to be pragmatic, and there are better ways to make them behave - it would make a lot more sense to cut relations with the Israelis and propose a boycott of their sports teams, like was done with South Africa.

I don't see any need or benefit for Venezuela to do business with Belarus. They're a zero in the oil industry, we don't need their outdated weapons, and their housing industry can't compete with ours. So what exactly is the benefit? Lukashenka's houses are a dumb idea, and thus far we don't see any of his buddies from Cuba, Viet Nam, or any of those countries suposedly doing work in the Faja doing anything real to invest in the oil fields, they must be sitting in Los Teques jawing away if they can find somebody from PDVSA who isn't trying to put together a generator. So things are just as bad as ever, or getting worse.

And you ought to be ashamed of defending these guys, they make leftists look bad.

[DutchLiberal]

8. People defending coup regimes in Honduras make leftists look bad...

I explicitly stated not to defend Lukashenko or Belarus. You said you don't care that he's a dictator... (No need to say that, from your stance on Honduras I already figured out you indeed don't care about dictatorships.) But if that's really how you feel, I don't see why you make a federal case out of president Chavez maintaining ties with his government. In the opening post, it was tried to discredit president Chavez by associating him with the "tyrant" Lukashenko. Now you say you don't care he's a tyrant. So what exactly is your point?

[protocol rv]

9. Doesn't make sense to do business with a tyrant

When the business is lousy business, why do business with a tyrant? I would prefer that we don't deal with them at all, but this world is full of tyrants and bad actors, and Venezuela can't afford to discriminate against a country because its government is run by a dictator, unless the guy happens to be really bad.

However, one thing is to have a hands off business like attitude, and the other is to seek these dictators out and make special deals with them, cozy up to them, kiss their behinds, etc.

As I said, Belarus has absolutely nothing to bring to Venezuela. Neither does Iran. But Chavez seems to have the inclination to be friendly with dictators, thus he keeps making these dumb deals.

Good business practice for a government, if it's run properly, requires that deals such as contracting for house construction be done using a tender, whereby many actors are encouraged to bid for the business. Given Chavez' tendency to nationalize businesses in an erratic and somewhat irrational fashion, it may be that businesses aren't willing to bid, but we wouldn't know unless a bid round is carried out and we see the results.

But what we see is a series of negotiated deals with these unsavory characters from abroad, with terms kept in the dark - there is no transparency whatsoever, no audits, and the National Assembly is a rubber stamp, so they don't do their jobs to investigate what is going on. This lends itself to corruption on a massive scale, diversion of funds to unknown destinations (for example, the cash found in the suitcase going to Argentina to back the Fernandez candidacy was likely cash from Venezuelan government funds), and it doesn't give us the assurance the deal is good for the country. My conclusion? The country is led by people who don't know how to manage the country properly, can't do so transparently, and are prone to deal with unsavory characters I would never associate with.

And to top it off, they're preparing to control the internet so that comments like this aren't seen in Venezuela. So you tell me, are you sure you are defending the right guys?

[naaman fletcher]

7. who says that is no problem?

I sure didn't.

[protocol rv]

10. History of Belarus' Oil Production Industry

It seems they drilled a whopping 1000 wells in their whole history - we have a single field with more than 6000 wells

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivar_Coastal_Field

The amount of oil they've produced we used to produce in less than 4 months.

Their website is very quaint, they discuss the amount of tons of rock they processed. I guess this is the reason the Soviet Union fell, they had engineers bragging about the amounts of rock they processed.

http://www.beloil.by/en/about/