Stuart Munckton
The sale of heavily discounted heating oil by the Venezuelan government to poor citizens inside the US continues to spread despite opposition from the US government. Venezuela uses Citgo, the refining and distribution subsidiary of its state-owned oil company based in the US, to establish the means, with the aid of supportive politicians or community organisations, to distribute the heating oil.
According to Citgo's website (<http://www.citgo.com>), 27.7 billion gallons of heating oil at prices discounted up to 40%, and 258,000 gallons of free heating oil, are being distributed as part of the program in New York, Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Vermont.
The program is part of a push to internationalise the benefits of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution — the process led by socialist President Hugo Chavez that aims to use the nation's sizeable oil wealth to eradicate poverty and build a just Venezuela.
In response, the US Congress has launched what was described in an opinion piece by Juan Gonzalez in the February 24 New York Daily News as a "bizarre investigation" into Citgo over alleged anti-trust violations. The investigation was launched by "powerful Texan Republican" Joe Barton, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton, one of the highest recipients in Congress of campaign donations from the energy industry, sent a letter to Citgo on February 15 giving it 10 days to produce all records, minutes, logs, emails "and even desk calendars" relating to the program.
While the deputy staff director for the energy and commerce committee, Larry Neal, claimed the cheap heating oil program was an attempt by the "bellicose" Chavez to "meddle in American energy policy", Gonzalez claims the real reason for the opposition is that the program "has created a huge public embarrassment for Barton's friends in the major oil companies, all of which recently announced record-shattering profits for 2005". These profits are the result of the record prices and alleged price gouging, which have hit poor people dependent on heating oil during winter especially hard.
Chavez insisted that Citgo's program would continue, claiming that formerly "Citgo and the Venezuelan money was aimed at presidential election campaigns and US congressmen — now it is aimed at aiding and supporting poor people", according to a March 5 statement issued by Venezuela's ministry of communication and information. Despite the hostility, the program is expanding. According to Gonzalez, the program is soon to be extended to upper Manhattan, while Reuters reported on February 27 that the program had expanded into Connecticut.
According to a March 14 ministry of communication and information statement, Venezuela won the National White Dove Award for the program. The award, issued by the Rochester Committee on Latin America to recognise work in assisting the lives of US people, was presented at a ceremony in New York. More than 200 people turned up to hear about the gains from the program and the Bolivarian revolution.
In response to this growing support for Venezuela's pro-people economic policies, the campaign by the US government to harass the Chavez government is being extended to its supporters inside the US. The Venezuelan embassy in the US released a statement on March 10 that expressed the alarm of the Venezuelan government at what appeared to be the targeting of a US academic for his views in support of the Bolivarian revolution.
The statement reported that "Two agents from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force visited Miguel Tinker-Salas, a widely respected professor at Pomona College" in California on March 7. Several of Tinker-Salas' students were also questioned. Tinker-Salas, who said he believed the visit was an attempt "to intimidate and silence" him, was asked about his relations with the Venezuelan government and questioned on links between terrorism and Venezuela.
Caracas condemned the actions of the FBI as an attack on freedom of expression and a "desperate attempt to link Venezuela with terrorism", requesting an explanation from US authorities.
In an article on increasing US aggression against Venezuela posted on Voltairenet.org on March 10, French academic Salim Lamrani pointed out how the pro-people policies practiced by the Venezuelan government, both at home and abroad, compared extremely favourably to the anti-people policies promoted by the Bush administration. Lamrani noted that while Venezuela contributes US$3.6 billion annually as part of its assistance for Latin America, the US plans to significantly decrease its $1.2 billion annual assistance.
Lamrani claimed that two "contrary models of society face each other, the one in Caracas and the other in Washington". In an opinion piece in the March 9 Los Angeles Times, the co-director for the Centre of Economic and Policy Research in Washington Mark Wiesbrot wrote: "In the contest for the hearts and minds of the hemisphere, Venezuela is clearly winning."
From Green Left Weekly, March 22, 2006.
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