Latin America File: Chavez celebrates Exxon-Mobil victory, accuses USA of fomenting Tibet unrest; Quito: Colombians relied on US air support in raid

On March 18 a British judge struck down a court order, initiated by Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., that froze US$12 billion in assets belonging to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), Venezuela's state-run oil company. Venezuela's communist dicator Hugo Chavez, in the story below, lauded the legal decision as "a victory against [US] imperialism." Last year Exxon Mobil sought international arbitration with PDVSA after the red regime in Caracas nationalized a heavy oil project in the crude-rich Orinoco River basin.

Venezuela's Chavez celebrates legal victory over Exxon Mobil Corp.
The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez on Monday praised a recent legal victory over Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., calling a British judge's ruling that favored Venezuela's state oil company a defeat for Washington.

Judge Paul Walker's March 18 decision tossed out an order to freeze US$12 billion ($7.8 billion) in assets belonging to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, a move Chavez lauded as "a victory against (U.S.) imperialism."

"I feel like a baseball manager that suddenly has his team in the major leagues, winning against the Yankees," said Chavez, speaking to PDVSA employees in a nationally televised address.

Exxon Mobil decided to seek international arbitration with PDVSA last year, after Chavez nationalized a heavy oil project in the crude-rich Orinoco River basin. The company later won court orders in the U.K. and other countries to freeze PDVSA's international assets to ensure it would be paid for the project and lost future revenue.

Earlier Monday, Chavez vowed to soon levy a new tax on foreign oil companies to recoup a larger share of their rising profits, although he said it has not yet been determined what the tax rate will be.

"They're earning money that they haven't accounted for," he said. "Those large additional earnings aren't a product of any extraordinary effort.... It isn't that they've invested more." Chavez called it a tax on "unexpected earnings" as a result of sudden rises in world oil prices.

He could approve the new tax by decree if he chooses to, under fast-track powers that the solidly pro-Chavez National Assembly granted him last year. Those powers expire in July.

Chavez has increased state control over the oil industry in recent years, while letting foreign companies stay on as minority partners in oil fields they once managed under contract.

In 2005, Chavez raised royalty rates to 30 percent from 16.6 percent on foreign firms operating heavy oil projects in the Orinoco region, and the government last year assumed majority control of those projects.

Foreign companies operating in Venezuela include U.S.-based Chevron Corp., France's Total, Britain's BP PLC and others.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Meanwhile, South America is ablaze with conspiracy theories that pin the world's misfortunes and the region's strife on "US imperialism" and alleged US aggression and intervention. Comrade Hugo, for example, has come to the defense of his fellow communists and strategic partners in Beijing by pinning the blame for the recent unrest in Tibet on the White House. "The (U.S.) imperialists want to divide China," Chavez warned in a speech two days ago. "And they're causing problems there in Tibet. They're trying to sabotage the Olympics in Beijing, and behind that is the hand of imperialism. We ask the world to support China to neutralize this plan, which aims to sabotage the Olympics." Pictured here: Venezuelan Tyrant-in-Training Chavez visits Chinese Tyrant Hu Jintao in Beijing, on August 24, 2006.

Venezuela's Chavez sees US role in Tibet violence, says aim is tainting Olympics
The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuelan resident Hugo Chavez accused the United States of promoting violence in Tibet, saying Washington aims to weaken China and sabotage the Olympics in Beijing.

"The (U.S.) imperialists want to divide China. And they're causing problems there in Tibet," Chavez said in a speech Monday night.

"They're trying to sabotage the Olympics in Beijing, and behind that is the hand of imperialism.

"We ask the world to support China to neutralize this plan, which aims to sabotage the Olympics," he added.

The deadly riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa this month have been the largest and most sustained in almost 20 years, and China has blamed followers of the Dalai Lama for the uprising. Chavez has built close ties with China and said in an earlier speech Monday that U.S. "imperialism is on the offensive" there. "You see the images of the violence in Tibet. Who is that against? Against China," Chavez said.

"It's the (U.S.) empire that wants to weaken China, because China is rising up." Chavez, who survived a failed coup in 2002, has often accused the U.S. of trying to topple his own government, something U.S. officials deny.

Source: International Herald Tribune

In a related story, the Red Axis' drumbeats for war in South America have slacked off since the March 7 resolution of the short-lived crisis sparked by the incursion of Colombian troops onto Ecuadorean soil for the purpose of wiping out a base of the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Following the March 1 incident in which senior FARC commander Raul Reyes was assassinated, Venezuela deployed 10 battalions of troops to its border with Colombia, which probably amounted to about 6,000 soldiers. Ecuador also deployed troops along its border with Colombia. On March 12 the Chinese state media reported that Venezuela had withdrawn 4,000 troops, using Russian-made MI-26 helicopters, from the international boundary, a story that received little follow-up coverage in the MSM.

Venezuela withdraws troops from border with Colombia
13:09, March 12, 2008

Venezuela began to withdraw some 4,000 troops from its border with Colombia on Tuesday after the nation's President Hugo Chavez ordered normalization of Venezuela-Colombia relations.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with Colombia on Sunday after Ecuador and Colombia agreed to bury their differences Friday at the Rio Group summit in the Dominican Republic.

Venezuela said its soldiers, which had been on high alert after a March 2 mission to the Colombian border, were returned to base by Russian-made MI-26 helicopters and that its diplomats had returned to Colombia Monday.

Ecuador also broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia after Colombian troops entered Ecuadorian territory on March 1 to attack a camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Venezuela also condemned the attack and sent troops to its border with Colombia.

Source: XinhuaNet.com

Although the initial deployment of Venezuelan and Ecuadorean troops appeared to be an opportunistic response to Colombia's attempt to break the back of FARC, rather than a prededitated motion toward military aggression, it is very possible that the red regimes in Caracas and Quito disguised other hostile activities toward the pro-US government in Bogota during the mobilization of their respective armed forces. Indeed, the ideological tensions between Colombia in the one camp and Venezuela and Ecuador in the other camp still simmers under the surface of the MSM infotainment.

Pictured here: Chavez and his "mini me" Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

According to the Costa Rican media, a high-level Ecuadorean military official has revealed that most of his colleagues believe that Colombia relied on US air support during the former's March 1 cross-border counter-terrorist operation. The Ecadorean government argues that the US Air Force employed assets from its air base in Manta, Ecuador, which Washington will lease until 2009. "A large proportion of senior officers in Ecuador share the conviction that the United States was an accomplice in the attack," the anonymous Ecuadorean official admitted in a March 24 interview. "Since Plan Colombia was launched in 2000, a strategic alliance between the United States and Colombia has taken shape, first to combat the insurgents and later to involve neighbouring countries in that war. What is happening today is a consequence of that." The same military source insists:

The technology used, first to locate the target, in other words the camp, and later to attack it, was from the United States. An attack with smart bombs requires pilots who have experience in such operations, which means U.S. pilots. That’s why I think they did the job and later told the Colombians ‘now go in and find the bodies’, which is when Colombian helicopters and troops showed up.

Along similar lines, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador declared: "Equipment that the Latin American armed forces do not have was used in the Mar. 1 bombing. They dropped around five smart bombs with impressive precision and a margin of error of just one metre, at night, from planes travelling at high speeds."

These allegations remain unproven, but Inside Costa Rica, linked above, reveals that on March 6 Admiral James Stavridis, commander of the US Southern Command, informed the US Senate Armed Services Committee that he was monitoring the movement of Ecuadorean and Venezuelan troops to the Colombian border.

The narco-communist-terrorist Sao Paulo Forum (FSP), offspring of the revolutionary minds of Communist Party of Cuba Chairman Fidel Castro and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was not silent on the South American crisis, but released a statement during its under-reported March 17 meeting in Mexico. Information about the FSP is scarce. Google searches reveal few English-language articles and almost nothing about current meetings and activities. The FSP, which embodies Latin America's Red Axis, appears to meet several times yearly. According to Cuba's Prensa Latina the region's communists and leftists excoriated the USA and Colombia for the latter's March 1 security operation on Ecuadorean territory.

Sao Paulo Forum Slugs Colombia-US Plot

Mexico, Mar 17 (Prensa Latina) Progressive Latin American parties attending a Sao Paulo Forum meeting here voiced their concerned over Colombia-United States military plans and condemned their collusion.

The Forum issued a statement rejecting the bombing of Ecuadorian territory by the Colombian army, and expressed condolences to Mexico for the killing of Mexican nationals in the March 1 incident.

The meeting agreements were informed by Saul Escobar, secretary of international relations of the Sao Paulo Forum, who also confirmed the participation of representatives of 21 Latin American political parties.

Escobar accused the Colombian government of ignoring international law and backing the aggressive projects of the United States president, George W. Bush.