Chavez challenges the oil kings

[Minstrel Boy]

Chavez challenges the oil kings

28 August 2005 By Michael Smith and Peter Wilson
The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)


...

Since last October, he has raised heavy-oil royalty fees to as much as 30 per cent from 1 per cent, begun paying for some services in nonconvertible bolivares instead of US dollars, and ordered oil well contracts converted into government-controlled joint ventures.

Chavez wants to use the revenue to pay for homes, clinics and schools for the 58 per cent of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 a month.

...

“For a long time, our oil went to the rich, but as you can see, here that's changed,” says Wuikelman Angel, 35, who manages workshops, a youth centre and a clinic that PDVSA built last year on a three-hectare shuttered gasoline depot in Caracas's Catia slum.

On one morning in late June, about 50 people wait at the €5.7 million complex, flanked by a verdant hill covered with tin-roofed shacks and piles of garbage, for free treatment at a two-storey clinic with a new X-ray machine and a pediatric ward.

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=7421-qqqx=1.asp

[dflprincess]

1. He wants to pay for homes, clinics and schools?

No wonder Bushco hates him.

[villager]

2. No wonder "Christian" Pat Robertson hates him, too!

That helping the poor stuff... horrendous!

[cliss]

5. Yes, and you know what's even worse?

As Pat Robberson drives around in his elegant, Eddie Bauer designer SUV with cream-colored leather seats and a butt-warmer....

every time he tanks up, he is indirectly helping Commie Socialist Hated Hugo Chavez.

That must drive him bananas.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. "Jesus was a socialist" Chavez is quoted in the article

as saying. Another reason for Robertson to want him crucified.

[schultzee]

4. They hate anyone who really wants to help the poor. That is

why they have bought off the crazy fundamentalists preachers with faith based money, so they will preach the "hate the poor because its their fault" doctrine of all the republicans who are bush supporters.

[daleo]

3. That's got to drive the BFEE oilagarchy mad.

As an aside, when I was a kid the local junior hockey team was the Edmonton Oil Kings. Its a term I haven't heard for a long time.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. The Edmonton Oil Kings, lol

Now I know why that headline struck me as vaguely amusing!

[Child_Of_Isis]

8. He is really into pissing shrub off.

Chavez wants to use the revenue to pay for homes, clinics and schools for the 58 per cent of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 a month.

Then he is going to come over here and help our poor with gas.

This guy kills me. :rofl:

[krkaufman]

9. Very precarious position for Mr Chavez.

My hopes are with him and the people for whom he is fighting.

[Stuckinthebush]

10. And why are we supposed to hate him?

I am confused. This sounds admirable to me. Use the riches of a nation to help the poor of the nation.

Sounds about right.