Complete with dunce cap.
"Crackdown presents challenge to Citizens Energy, Joe Kennedy II" | May 25, 2014
"The wife of imprisoned Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López accepted an important recognition on his behalf at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government last weekend. López was awarded
the school’s alumni achievement award, for those who have
“significantly improved the human condition.” When accepting the honor,
Lilian Tintori told the crowd
in Spanish: “What an irony and how impressive that the best university
in the world is awarding this honor to Leopoldo for the values he
learned here. And today, he is in jail in Venezuela exactly for being a
progressive leader, and for dreaming of a better country.”
And for being on the CIA dole, no doubt.
Related: Venezuelan Voice
That was the last time I heard from them in my Globe.
Tintori was referring to the worsening crisis in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has been cracking down
on anti-government protests and arresting hundreds of people in the
past three months, prompting widespread allegations of human rights
abuses.
From who? The U.S.? Pffft!
This has led to sharp calls for sanctions
from Capitol Hill, as the State Department considers whether to impose
economic constraints as well. But as the US government considers how
best to pressure the Venezuelan government, it’s time for one of its
allies in Boston — former US Representative Joe Kennedy II’s Citizens
Energy Corp. — to do the same.
By now, most Massachusetts residents have seen the homespun ads
that show Kennedy delivering oil in person to a needy family during the
cold winter. Kennedy often concludes the ads for his heating oil
assistance program, Joe-4-Oil, and by thanking “the people of Venezuela”
for making it possible.
Yeah, I have seen them, and I like them.
For almost 10 years, Kennedy’s Citizens Energy has parlayed a
relationship with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company Citgo into over
200 million gallons of low-cost oil for the needy. It’s an impressive
record, but it’s a relationship increasingly fraught with moral
complications.
Just wondering where the billions-per-quarter in profit BP and Exxon are on this. I know they are sticking a gas pump up our a$$es, but we are talking home heating oil here.
In an interview, Kennedy recognized that it’s been “heartbreaking to
watch a country . . . be literally torn apart by the incredible poverty
that always has existed in Venezuela [and] by the lack of economic
opportunity.” Kennedy said he has tried to contact the Maduro
administration repeatedly to offer his assistance during this crisis.
But he also fiercely stood by his hallmark program and turned defiant
when confronted about the optics of Joe-4-Oil.
“I have asked every single oil company, and not one of them has given
me a gallon to help the poor,” he said. “Is the Venezuelan government
worse than the Saudi Arabian government? Is it worse than the Russian
government? Don’t be telling me that I’m in some kind of collusion with
the Venezuelan government when they’re the only ones who have showed
some willingness to help our poor.”
Yeah, and for that last part you are subjected to attack by whoreporate mouthpieces and their minions. This is a for and of the 1% paper, written by bended-knee wannabes.
But it is an embarrassing irony: An impoverished and deteriorating
country supplies charity oil to the United States.
You know what else is an embarrassing irony? The United States sending billions and billions overseas to prop up governments and foment overthrows when we have epidemic poverty, hunger, and homelessness here at home.
Another embarrassing irony? An arrogant pre$$ that can't smell its own massive pile of hypocrisy.
From its inception,
the gift from the Venezuelan people was an act of geopolitical
grandstanding started by the country’s now-deceased leader, Hugo Chavez,
and continued by his successor, Maduro, who won last year’s
presidential election by a small margin.
Oh, was it a small margin?
Yeah, Chavez helping the poor is political grandstanding while AmeriKan efforts at resource extraction in the name of corporate profits (with the U.S. getting its cut of the transaction) is all altrui$tic.
Maybe the Globe and the elites that it is written for believe it; it seems like the rest of the people of planet earth have rejected it and are really getting quite pissy about it.
So when are BP and Exxon going to give a gran$tanding gift, Globe?
Chavez was a fiery populist
whose anti-American rhetoric created a backlash in the United States.
Yeah, those populi$ts! They certainly raise hackles among the elite, along with an alleged anti-American backlash to boot.
But that was mostly a war of words.
Better than a real war, which is what the US has been threatening from what I have heard.
Today’s ongoing domestic unrest
against Maduro has a decidedly different weight. In the three months
since students began the uprising to protest a deepening economic
crisis, a growing crime rate, and basic goods shortages and rationing, more than 40 activists, students, Maduro supporters, and bystanders have been killed; nearly 800 have been injured; and about 3,000 people arrested.
Ah, the sudden student protests, a hallmark of CIA destabilization campaigns!
A recent report by Human Rights Watch documented 45 cases involving more than 150 victims in which the government violated the rights of protesters.
And just who is Human Rights Watch anyway?
Even Kinzer can see it for what it is and has long been suspected here.
I'm so tired of the war paper and their agenda. So very, very tired of their dogma.
Now, Kennedy rationalizes his relationship with Venezuela on the
basis that violence and human rights abuses exist in countries like Iraq
and “in all sorts of countries where just our for-profit oil companies
operate,” and argues that he’s being unfairly singled out: “You only go
against the nonprofit who’s giving the oil away to our poor here. None
of us here at Citizens Energy make a single dime off of the Venezuelan
oil.”
Of course, when the US government rationalizes relationships that's okay and made for national $ecurity rea$ons.
But Chavez’s cheap oil came with a price from the beginning: Kennedy
provided public validation for Chavez, even as Chavez’s economic
programs hollowed out a once-thriving economy.
So doesn't Saudi oil.
Even as the economic
situation in Venezuela worsened — the country’s economy is expected to
contract 0.5 percent this year, compared with growth of 1.4 percent in
2013 and 5.6 percent the year before, according to Bloomberg — Chavez
increased the supply to oil to the US, which now reaches well beyond
Massachusetts to more than 20 states. The country is also contending
with rising inflation: Venezuela’s consumer prices rose 5.7 percent in
April, after jumping from 4.1 percent the month before.
If he was so bad why did the US government allow the program in 20 states?!!
Citizens Energy has provided a winter lifeline to more than 1.8
million people. If it gave up its deal with Venezuela, many of those
families would face far higher heating costs.
Or FREEZE!!! Readers, those two sentences broke my rage and turned it into sadness. This sick swill of corporate propaganda has burned it all up.
But American interests
aren’t the only ones at issue. In López’s Harvard award acceptance
letter, he urged Americans to speak up about what’s happening in his
country: “You have an opportunity to send a far different message: that
the weight of the global community is on the side of human rights and
dignity.”
Related: Dinner at Guantánamo
"We" are on the wrong side, Americans, and that babble at harvard looks like nothing more than self-aggrandizing, self-adulating shit.
As one of Venezuela’s most prominent backers, Kennedy has a real
opportunity to send a message to Maduro’s government and openly
articulate his disapproval. But if it continues not to take his calls,
Kennedy should be prepared to suspend his program for as long as the
Maduro regime continues its abuses.
And let the poor freeze to death! That will reduce the surplus population!
--more--"
Also see: Jaime Lusinchi, 89, former president of Venezuela
Related: Hugo Left 'Em Hungry
He certainly left us wanting more of those like him, God rest his soul.
