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Chávez's socialism won't help Latin America; free trade will***............What bolsters Chávez's stature both at home and abroad is oil, the export of which brings in some $30 billion a year to Venezuela. And there has been a bonanza of late due to oil's skyrocketing market price. At home Chávez has used the proceeds to improve public facilities, particularly medical ones, for the poor, thereby making them politically indebted to him. Abroad, he has succeeded Russia as Cuba's rich uncle, supplying oil to Castro at highly subsidized prices after the Russians cast Cuba adrift. In return, Castro has sent thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela whose ranks were infiltrated, according to some Castro opponents, by Cuban military and security officers.

Venezuela supplies the US with about 13 percent of its imported oil, and Chávez delights in publicly tweaking the US by suggesting that he could sell that elsewhere, for example to China. Another recent taunt is that if the US withholds parts for Venezuela's F-16 fighter planes, Chávez will give the aircraft to Cuba or China.

Chávez's muddle-headed concept of socialism for Latin America is often confusing. He says it is "to transcend the capitalist model," and that it is not communism, at least not "at the moment," but is the alternative to communism, building a "social, humanist, egalitarian economy." Often his philosophy sounds less like a vision for the future than a rant against what he decries as American "imperialism." He has also paid a state visit to Iran, praising the leadership of its mullahs.

Two potential negatives loom for Chávez. One is his dependence on oil, and his current reckless spending of oil revenues based on the resource's current high prices. If the bubble should burst, he would be hard put to continue expanding social services at home and financing revolution throughout Latin America.

The other problem is the inevitable departure from the scene of his comrade-in-arms, Fidel Castro. Castro is 78 years old, and one or two recent lapses suggest that he is in failing health. The likelihood of Cuba's continuing along the path of communism after Castro seems slim. Communism in Cuba is already discredited with the masses and is held nominally in place by Castro's reign of oppression. Cuba's people are the prisoners of a regime that offers them neither political freedom nor a free market economy. ....***

1,237 posted on 11/09/2005 1:55:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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Chávez blasts Fox


CARACAS - (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called his Mexican counterpart a ''puppy of the empire'' for supporting a Washington-backed free-trade zone at the Summit of the Americas.

Mexico reacted by calling in the Venezuelan ambassador, Vladimir Villegas Poljak, to explain Chávez's remarks.

''How sad that the president of a great country like Mexico allowed himself to be the puppy of the empire,'' Chávez said Wednesday evening in his first public speech since returning from the 34-nation summit in Argentina.

The barb comes after Mexican President Vicente Fox, apparently irked by Chávez's strident calls against the trade pact, said in comments to news media after the summit, ``there we have some presidents, fortunately a minority, who blame other countries for all their problems.''

Fox, a staunch supporter of the trade zone, also criticized Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, for failing to support the pact.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13127649.htm


1,238 posted on 11/10/2005 1:38:12 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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