How come all these dots seem to join up?
We all go “Ra! Ra! Ra!” because Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, has cocked a snook at the rich and powerful by nationalising his country’s massive oil fields and refineries, sending the over-rich international oil cartels packing (these companies being the real-time successors to Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez’s American Banana Company, made famous in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.)
Along with them, he sends the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund packing too. “We want no more vultures of the West hanging around here,” he says. He intends to use those fabulous oil revenues to bring real development to his country, especially the poor (and indeed has already substantially begun to do so.)
Up there in Washington, the president of the World Bank, Paul “the Wolf” Wolfowitz, probably has little time to think about what the VeneÂzuelan upstart has done, because he is caught in a sleaze and corruption scandal of awful proportions. He has given his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, who happened to be a bank employee when he was appointed, a promotion and a hefty $60Â 000 salary hike. The world is baying for his resignation. He is digging in his heels, with the full support of the United States president, who appointed him.
Meanwhile, just across the Atlantic in rustic England, the head of one of those big oil companies, which will probably be at the blunt end of Chávez’s nationalisation, does take the honourable plunge and resigns because of a sleaze-gate of his own. The unpleasant British newspaper group that owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday has been trying for months to expose the fact that he is gay — or that he has had reason to pretend that he isn’t.
Lord Browne, who steered British Petroleum to pole position among the world’s exploitative oil companies over the past decade or so, now comes across as one of the world’s greatest victims, because this “outing” has made him resign with immediate effect, to protect the honour of BP. He will apparently be deprived of about £15million in lost salary and shares as a result of leaving three months before his sell-by date. (God knows what he has already tucked away every month till now if that is all he is sacrificing.)
One’s thoughts about the destructive power of the oil companies aside, one has to ask: Who cares if he is gay? All his peers in the corporate world think he is a wonderful and amazingly effective corporate guy — the Sun King, as they used to call him.
But it seems that being gay is indeed still an issue in the 21st century. Lord Browne himself was so appalled at the possibility of his sexuality being revealed that he lied in court and issued a number of injunctions to stop the slimy Mail group from publishing. And when it became clear that he could not stop the news coming out, he fell on his own sword.
Chávez is the undisputed champion of the people Frantz Fanon labelled the Wretched of the Earth. Browne, while he was still in the saddle, tried to steal a little of Chávez’s politically correct thunder by making it seem that his company was at the forefront of moves to find alternative, Earth-friendly fuel sources — also for the benefit of “the people”. Like arch oil rival Shell, BP’s advertising campaigns gave the impression that the company was at the forefront of the conservation movement.
Meanwhile, Lord Browne’s company continued to pump billions of tons of carbon gases into the atmosphere, making no small contribution to global warming, the fashionable topic of the day.
Wolfowitz also had his share of trying to look like the nice guy. The World Bank has been touted as the saviour of the poor. What it really does, along with its IMF cousin in Europe, says Chávez, is essentially make the poor poorer.
At the same time, Wolfowitz, as deputy United States defence secretary, was the prime architect of the war in Iraq, with all its disastrous fallout for all life forms in the area. He would probably like to take the same measures against Chávez and his nationalisation programme if only he could — and if he didn’t have the headache that has been dubbed “Rizagate” on his hands.
So, too, has the war in Iraq always been about oil. Ironically, Riza worked for a while in a section headed by the daughter of US Vice-President Dick Cheney — one of the major corporate beneÂficiaries of the spoils of the war in Iraq, including its rich oil reserves.
Although Riza has since been moved on, her massive pay hike still stands, and is still paid by — you guessed it — the World Bank. It is still out there fulfilling its mission to take care of the poor.
There is an irony at the end of this chain of dots. Chávez’s position is secure, and he can continue to use oil revenues to uplift the poor of his country — as long as the international oil price remains high.
Meanwhile, down here on the ground, these high oil prices take their toll on the average South African motorist, who has to deal with a rise in the price of the stuff every two weeks.
Viva Chávez — but not entirely.