oligarcho, tremblo!
http://www.alopresidente.gob.ve/
gwan hugo, ya mad yoke ya.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2005/0830/3001431639FR30CHAVEZ.htmlChavez offers fuel at 40% discount to poor US citizens
Hugh O'Shaughnessy in Caracas
VENEZUELA: The Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez is to offer fuel at a discount of up to 40 per cent to millions of US citizens of modest means.
In a series of moves outlined on Sunday evening which are bound to cause intense irritation in Washington, he also announced he would sue the millionaire preacher and politician Rev Marion "Pat" Robertson in the US courts for "incitement to terrorism" over the latter's call last week for his assassination.
Speaking in Caracas at a gathering of the Organisation of American States, the Washington-based body which traditionally reflects US interests in the Western Hemisphere and which currently excludes Cuba, he called for a continent-wide referendum on the island's exclusion.
In the presence of Jose Miguel Insulza, its Chilean secretary general, he went on to hint that the Latin American and Caribbean members of the OAS should take themselves off to a new body which better reflected their interests.
Not content with that, the Venezuelan leader, who returned last week from a visit to Cuba, announced his country would co-operate with President Fidel Castro on a scheme to offer eye treatment, principally cataract operations, at no cost for needy citizens of any country in the Western Hemisphere
The plan, "Operation Miracle", already operating between Venezuela and Cuba, includes return flights for the patient and one accompanying person. The target is to save the sight of 600,000 people a year for 10 years.
Speaking on Sunday on his weekly television programme Alo, Presidente, the Venezuelan leader lambasted "commercialised medicine" and said he and Gen Castro had reserved space in the scheme for 150,000 needy US citizens a year.
He urged those anywhere in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, who felt they could qualify for the free service, to register at Venezuelan embassies and consulates for a health check to determine their needs and arrange necessary treatment.
Mr Chavez made the offer in the presence of the Rev Jesse Jackson, the black US pastor and politician, who is visiting Caracas on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech in Washington in 1963.
The speech cost King his life.
Venezuela's largesse is rooted in the enormous windfall profits that the country, the world's fifth largest oil producer, is reaping from the current high price of crude. Venezuela's cash reserves, fed from oil receipts, said Mr Chavez, now contained a record $31 billion.
Part of the existing cash mountain is being used to promote development among Venezuela's neighbours. Furthermore, Venezuelan oil reserves are about to be recalculated and, say Venezuelan experts, this should show the country's new total will exceed those of Saudi Arabia, currently seen as the world's largest.
Mr Jackson warmly welcomed the move to provide fuel for the poor in his country, as he condemned the call by Mr Robertson, the ultra-conservative television preacher and erstwhile contender for the US presidency, for Mr Chavez's neutralisation.
Mr Chavez, whose popularity is undimmed with the electorate here, has irked the US government with his nationalist attitudes, his public support for Cuba and his penchant for rousing public statements in favour of "21st century socialism".
Supplies of cheap Venezuelan fuel could, Mr Chavez said, be distributed with the assistance of Citgo, a company with refineries and more than 10,000 petrol stations in the US which is owned by PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company.
Potential beneficiaries of the cut-price fuel could be identified by the charities with which Mr Jackson is connected.
In his speech to the OAS delegates - which was nothing if not ambitious - the president went on to announce a continent-wide programme to abolish illiteracy on the lines of that carried out in Cuba and the Venezuelan one which, he said, had taught all Venezuelans to read and write in less than two years.
Mr Chavez will have done his standing with the poor of the region no harm as he pushed for the OAS to adopt a "Social Charter for the Americas", laying down new rights for 222 million of the continent's citizens - nearly half Latin America's total population - who live in chronic poverty. These include the right to health, employment and leisure. "Democratic politics are not enough. We have to guarantee our peoples the right to eat," he declared.
http://www.alopresidente.gob.ve/
gwan hugo, ya mad yoke ya.
