Today only 20% of Venezuelan oil money goes to the state. 80% disappears. Stop the coup!
In 1974 it was the reverse. 80% went to the state. Why the coup-plotters are in such a hurry.

Please forward widely. I have not seen these facts anywhere in the world's mainstream English media.  These are the reasons for the continued coup attempts this year in Venezuela. The corporate media and the corporate coup plotters want to overthrow the elected government to prevent the January 2003 implementation of economic legislation that will change things for the better. Bold formatting and larger text sizes have been added to some of the text below. 2 articles near the end give more details about progressive changes that have occurred in Venezuela for the poor and others. 

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http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article556.html

The Narco News Bulletin
narconews.com - Reporting on the Drug War and Democracy from Latin America	Home | Mailing List | Search | Print
Why Are the Coup Plotters So Impatient? …And How Venezuela Can Defeat Them Legally By Heinz Dieterich Steffan Rebelion.org December 8, 2002 [Snip. Excerpt from article:] The second reason for the pro-coup haste is the entrance in vigor of various important laws that come into effect on January 1, 2003, that touch vital interests of the economic elite: Among them, the Land Law that affects not just the large plantation owners in the country but also real estate speculators and vacant lots in urban zones. The Hydrocarbon law is even more important because it will permit the dismantling of the meta-State of the petroleum business PdVSA, the corrupt oil group that controls the economic life of the country and that is an integral part of the New World Energy Order of George Bush. Today, only 20 percent of the income of this mega-company goes to the State. Eighty percent goes to "operating costs" that enrich secret accounts of the beneficiaries of this economic cancer. The power of this petroleum "steal-ocracy" has become propped up progressively during recent decades. In 1974, the company delivered 80 percent of its income to the State and kept 20 percent ("operating costs"). In 1990, the ratio tied at 50 to 50 percent and in 1998 it reached the ratio of 80 to 20 percent. It's logical that they are going to fight to the death – of the nation – to defend "their" black gold. [Snip. end of excerpt] -----------------

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Mid-December:
The Oil Sector Sabotage

http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article571.html

[snip. Excerpt begins]

There was, this month, one sector of oil company executives that claimed they were on "strike," but who in fact have spent this month actively working to lock-out rank-and-file employees and, according to their own public statements, to facilitate the sabotage, including eco-terrorism, of oil facilities.

According to public records at the Venezuela Secretary of Mining and Energy (MEM, in its Spanish initials), these were the annual salaries of the 22 major oil "strike" leaders, including their bonuses, paid vacations, and other benefits, at the trough of the state-owned oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela, or PdVSA:

Edgar Paredes makes 837 million bolivars a year ($643,000 U.S. dollars).

The lowest paid of these 22 ringleaders, Luis Ramírez, makes 310 million bolivars a year ($238,000 U.S. dollars).

The highest paid, Karl Mazeika, makes 990 million bolivars a year ($761,000).

The average annual salary of these 22 "strike" leaders is $426,000 U.S. dollars a year; almost 100 times the per capita income of the average Venezuelan citizen of $4,760 dollars per year. In the Venezuelan economy, $426,000 gives somebody more buying power than people who make millions of dollars a year in the United States.

Check out the rest of their salaries in the Venezuelan currency of Bolivars (at 1,300 bolivars to the dollar), here they are, the annual booties of the oppressed "vanguard" of The Strike That Wasn't:

Luis Andrés Rojas: 688 million
Vincenzo Paglione: 979 million
Raúl Alemán: 687 million
Horacio Medina: 320 million
Juan Fernández: 399 million
Edgar Rasquin: 668 million
Rogelio Lozada: 410 million
Luis Matheus: 533 million
Carlos Machado: 542 million
Iván Crespo: 498 million
Luis Aray: 530 million
Andrés Riera: 508 million
Maria Lizardo: 444 million
Armando Izquierdo: 501 million
Luis Pacheco: 542 million
Gabriel García: 322 million
Francisco Bustillos: 643 million
Salvador Arrieta: 596 million
Armando Acosta: 471 million

Each of these oil executives, of course, had their own team of highly-paid middle managers underneath them: controlling the paperwork, the computers, the hiring and firing, and all other aspects of the company.

In recent weeks, they locked out the workers, and installed their own men at key strategic points where sabotage has been committed to facilities under their watch.

The "opposition" complains about graffiti on the wall of a Commercial TV station and calls it "vandalism" or "violence." These guys, meanwhile, have presided over the destruction of pumps, pipelines, tankers and other ships, trucks, and other key points in the flow of oil from the ground to the consumer, including to the United States.

If they had tried anything like this inside the United States, we would see the White House calling them terrorists, locking them up in Guantanamo Bay, and suing them for the millions of dollars of losses that they have caused. Some of the members of the "oil-igarchy" have made public statements that some oil supplies have been contaminated, and some facilities have been booby-trapped to cause environmental disaster if they are re-started.

Between the oil drilling facility and the gas pump there are many stops along the road. Shut down or sabotage one of those points, and you shut down the entire pipeline. That has certainly happened at various points. 

[snip. End of excerpt]

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ZNet | A Community of People Committed to Social Change
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2546 Why Venezuela's Middle Class (for the most part) Opposes Chavez	ZNet Top Venezuela Home     Recent Venezuela  AP's One Sided Venezuela Coverage US Still in Venezuela Coup D'Petrol Gaviria Should Leave Recent Wilpert  Coup D'Petrol Opposition and Government Supporters Rally Their Forces Venezuela after the Coup Attempt Coup in Venezuela: An Eyewitness Account
by Gregory Wilpert October 27, 2002
VENEZUELA [First part of article snipped] The government's health care and education policies have benefited the poor more than the middle class because the middle class tends to rely on private health care and education. In contrast, the poor have benefited from the institution of universal health care for the first time in Venezuela's history, even if that health care is relatively miserable, at least it is more accessible to the poor than it has ever been. The situation is similar with education. The government has introduced thousands of "Bolivarian" schools throughout the country, which provide three free full meals per day to all students; something they would never be guaranteed if they stayed at home. As a result, one million new students have been matriculated in schools, who were never part of the school system before. One of the most significant achievements of the new constitution is that it permanently broke the two-party system of Venezuela and has thus enabled the participation of large sectors of society that were traditionally excluded from government before. Important in this regard are the constitution's inclusion of women, indigenous peoples, and homosexuals, who in the earlier constitution had few real rights. Again, these are changes that, at best, the vast majority of the middle class feels quite indifferent about. Another area that is high on the Chavez government's agenda, but which leaves the middle class out, is land reform. The government has introduced two kinds of land reform programs-rural and urban. The rural land reform has caught quite a bit of attention and its passage in November 2001 was arguably the beginning of the opposition's campaign against the president. The land reform law is essentially designed to put idle land into production and to redistribute idle land to landless peasants if landowners refuse to put their land into production. The basic purpose is to both create greater social justice and to increase the country's agricultural production. This program is also supplemented by a wide variety of agricultural credit and training programs. The urban land reform program, in contrast, is designed to confer ownership titles to land which the urban poor currently occupy illegally through land invasions and to help them improve their communities through self-governance. The urban reform program sets up land committees of up to 200 families in the poor neighborhoods that help measure plots of land, determine communal property, negotiate with government for services such as water and electricity, and create a communal identity. This democratization of property is to be combined with a democratization of local governance through participatory planning processes for local projects, such as has been spearheaded in parts of Brazil under the Labor Party there. Other major government programs that primarily benefit the poor, but not the middle class are the public housing program and the micro-credit programs. Related to this, the government recently announced the creation of a new "Social Economy" ministry. This ministry would support workplace democracy, especially the creation of cooperatives and other social justice projects, such as the micro-credit programs. A policy that directly hurts the interests especially of the upper middle class is the government's effort to collect income taxes for the first time in Venezuelan history. Only those with incomes in the top 20% or so are required to pay income taxes. [Rest of article snipped] Gregory Wilpert is a freelance journalist and sociologist, who lives in Caracas and is currently working on a book on Venezuela during the Chavez presidency, which will be published by Zed Books in 2003. He can be reached at: Wilpert@cantv.net   Print-Friendly Version Email This Article To A Friend ZNet Top | Venezuela Home

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Women and the new Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. 
72% of men and women voted FOR it. Many details on the progressive aspects of the new constitution and how it effects women and others are in this message at Ireland Indymedia: 
http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=22333&start=0

"We women reject the organizers of hate and chaos.

"We women are on the front line for our right to live in peace and to defend the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, which gives us, for the first time in history, the right to full legal equality, to social security, to a pension for housewives. We are on the streets backing our President and our Bolivarian Revolution.

"Long live the Constitution! No to the fraudulent referendum! No to the pro-coup fascist stoppage! Don't stop for the stoppage!"

----Go to the link above for many more details.--------

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Le Monde diplomatique 
described the likely scenario for overthrowing Chavez:

"[T]here will be a coalition of the well-to-do, bringing together the Catholic Church …, the financial oligarchy, the employers' organizations, the bourgeoisie and corrupt trade union leaderships – all repackaged as ‘civil society.' The owners of major media will collude ... to support the campaigns that they will each launch against the president, in the name of defending that ‘civil society.'...

"The press and TV will brandish terms ‘the people, democracy, liberty,' etc. They will mobilize street demonstrations and any attempt by the government to criticize them will be immediately described as ‘a serious assault on freedom of expression,' ... they will revive the insurrectional strike and encourage ideas of a coup and an assault on the presidential palace. ...

"The Venezuelan media currently uses lies and disinformation in the biggest ever destabilization campaign against a democratically elected government. Since the world hardly seems to care, the media hopes that this time it will succeed in committing the perfect crime."

Excerpt above was found toward the end of this article: 
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/07/138635.php 

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*Stop corporatism. "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor). 
http://corporatism.tripod.com  and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction

Kunnen de VRT nieuwsmakers in het vervolg een klein beetje genuanceerder zijn in hun berichtgeving? Volgens hen is Chavez een tiran en vragen de betogers zijn aftreden en vrede... wie bij de VRT is verantwoordelijk voor deze miskleun van formaat? Ik zie dit als een zeer gevaarlijke evolutie en een gedachteloos achternalopen van de misdadige buitenlandse VS-politiek.