Hugo Chavez has been a thorn in the
side of the plutocrats for a long time. But
to understand why we must look first at the history of Venezuela and the oil
subsidies . In 1949 the government of Venezuela was considering nationalizing
their oil. Well the plutocrats will have nothing of the sort and Royal Dutch
Shell and Jersey Standard Oil strike a deal, they will give the government of
Venezuela 50% for the profits that they make. Well within a year the detail of
this come out and Saudi Arabia starts looking to do the same. The companies
dealing with Saudi Arabia at the time went by the name ARAMCO (Arab American Company). So Saudi Arabia is looking to strike a deal
or nationalize their oil company, and they’re kind of leaning towards the
soviets because of our support for Israel, and arabs don’t like Israel. So a
deal is struck, Aramco will make all the money they can, and give half to the
saudi’s, They can then turn around and deduct half the money they make from
their taxes, not from their income for calculation of their taxes, but simply
cut off the tax bill. So who makes up for
the sortfall… BINGO! The American taxpayer.
So
fast forward to around the mid 1970’s.
Where the whole scheme has been known for a while, and surprise
surprise, the corporate elite have figured out that they can get money from the government just
like Aramco. Well this opens the door, the only thing left is to figure out how
to do it. Enter: the powell memo. What this was, was basically a call to
corporate America to become more aggressive in it’s takeover of the government,
because it was, at it’s core, extraordinarily profitable. Well Nixon sees this,
and powell is subsequently put on the supreme court, and the finalization of
corporate person hood comes to be through a series of decision by powell and
company. So we basically come to where we are today, corporate rule due to
buying the government being a very lucrative and effective strategy.
Well Chavez had a different
approach, he comes in and basically says “fuck your money, the oil industry now
belongs to the state” and with that Venezuela starts to improve not only their
own lot, but that of several surrounding countries, including Cuba. So while America
is giving money away to rich oil baron, Venezuela is profiting off of it’s own
resources and those resources are being used for the betterment of the country,
essentially giving the middle finger to big business. Say what you want about the man, that is a
great achievement.
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