Tuesday, September 20th, 2005
Venezuela's President Chavez Offers Cheap Oil to the Poor...of the United States

And then they draft the map of the neighborhood. They go house by house, family
by family and they assess all the problems. If they lack running water or if
some of the houses are unstable and they could fall down. How many children they
have. The schools. The health care system in the
neighborhood and so on. So these are the urban land communities.
We also have the technical commissions of water. These technical commissions
of water interact with the urban land committee. They take care of the water
supply and also the sewage system. There are other technical groups to take care
of energy supply, electricity supply especially. We have also the health
committee. The rural land committees in the rural areas. We also have housing
cooperatives. In large networks of grassroots organizations, as you know, in the
constitution that we have drafted, in the government we foster these grassroots
movements. Here we have been trying the democratic model. It is the
revolutionary democracy. But it is not only a representative democracy. It is a
participatory democracy and beyond that it is a fully and meaningful democracy.
And Abraham Lincoln already said this: the government of the people, for the
people and by the people. That what we say here is to transfer power to the
people, especially the poorest of the poor. If you want to get rid
of poverty, we need to empower the poor. Not to treat them like beggars. And
this week we're going to give money, we’re going to give financial resources to
these neighborhood committees, grassroots organizations, we’re going to give
them technical resources, equipment, we are going to carry out the housing
schemes, infrastructure schemes, water supply, electricity supply schemes. So
this is a beautiful task we are conducting.
Because there, we are reducing to zero, the possibility of corruption because
we give the money to the population themselves. And they put it in the bank,
they help to make withdrawals and then execute the budget. They have to save
some money also. And, of course, the money is to better used. They do the social
oversight of the use of the moneys. Efficiency, because the work will profit
them. It not a private company that is going to do the job and they take the
profit and in the end the community is poorer than before.
And let me tell you this. In all these committees, cooperatives, the women
play a major role. Without women there would be no revolution. Artists are never
wrong when they paint revolution with the beautiful dress and with the sword. On
the horse or by foot. Because revolution is a woman. A woman is the revolution.
But the poverty also is the face of the woman. And the hopes is also woman. And
nature is also woman. There will be no probability of success without the
creative participation and the powerful participation of women.
MARGARET PRESCOTT: Thank you.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, there's no longer any doubt that the majority of
the people in Venezuela support your government. But there are still those in
Venezuela who say that you are using that majority support to stamp out the
dissident views. Recently, I participated in a forum at Columbia University with
Gustavo Cisnero, the head of Venevision, where he insisted that you are not
allowing a free press to continue to function in Venezuela. I asked him, well
what is the press of Venezuela doing organizing political coups? But I'd like
you to talk about the role of the press in your democratic revolution and the
importance of the press in general in communicating ideas to the mass of the
people.
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: Ignacio Ramonet recently wrote a piece called “The
Media Dictatorship” because most of the media, not only in Venezuela but all
over the world as well, they are in the hands of very powerful people. Very
powerful economic people. For instance this person you refer to is a clear
example of that. And he was one of the ones taking part in the coup in that
time. And he use all his media power and all the private channels in Venezuela
and all the media, the press, newspapers and private TV stations even succeeded
in fooling the international public opinion for some time. They depicted me as a
tyrant who massacred his people. The tyrant was defeated, was overthrown, was
toppled. However, a few hours after that, the people who toppled the tyrant
brought the tyrant back. So they were naked before the world, of course. So that
is one of the problems the world is facing today, the media’s tyranny and that
we have been denouncing around the world. However, at the same
time we are very encouraged by the fact that we have excellent shows.
Every day the more the truth is being revealed in the Hurricane. I was
watching CNN during the Katrina disaster, and you can see how the journalists--
I remember a lady who was in the eye of the hurricane, Inez Fered, I think the
name of this lady. I watched a lot of TV at the time during Katrina. Well she
started to interview people and telling the truth. And then another journalist,
and they started to criticize the government for the way they reacted to the
tragedy. So the powers could not silence the truth. Not even through CNN. And
other media, large media. Now in Venezuela we have full freedom of the press. I
doubt very much that there is any other country where freedom of the speech is
so respected in Venezuela. For instance, Luis Zapatero, the president of the
Spanish government, he arrived late, and I waited for him in the palace the next
day. When he saw me, he told me, Chavez, I had many news about you and about
freedom of speech. Now, this morning I saw two hours of TV
shows. And I read the papers. I have no doubt in my mind that here you have
full and total freedom of speech. And this will continue to be so. And all these
rumors and attacks against us are totally untrue. And I think here in the United
States you have a journalist in jail because she did not reveal her sources.
This has never, in other parts of our history, never happened. Journalists who
were in jail and journalists killed or persecuted. Today, there is total freedom
Venezuela. This is part of the dynamic of the revolutionary democracy. And what
the capitalists of the media do not forgive us, forgive the people because we
have demonstrated that the people are fully aware of the reality defeat the
media campaign.
You ask about the middle class. I forgot to mention the middle classes. This
is important. The same struggles -- the same reality that was discovered openly
in the world is touching today the middle class. In Venezuela, middle class’s
current is appearing all over the country. And they are adding up. They are
joining the process. After the coup there is this movement called middle class
in positive this is a movement which is growing every day. When the medical
doctors, the Cuban doctors arrived in Venezuela. The media launched a campaign
against these Cuban doctors. And they succeeded in making the middle class to
oppose the presence of the Cuban doctors in Venezuela. They succeeded in
preventing Venezuelan doctors to join these health care schemes. It was
insanity, total insanity. Today, however, we have thousands of Venezuelan
doctors joining the Cuban doctors in these programs. We have dentists,
ophthalmologists, and the “Into the Neighborhood” project, the health care
program,
today, two hundred million of doctors seeing patients in poor neighborhoods. We
have twenty-five million people. It means that it’s four times the population.
It’s like each Venezuelan has gone to the doctor four times, and these being
free of charge procedures with the medication. The Venezuelan doctors today are
joining this scheme. And together with Castro, we have signed an agreement to
form, to train two hundred thousand doctors in ten years. To train them in South
America, Africa and the U.S., social doctors, doctors who are not charging,
those who are saving lives. People who are giving a lending hand to the poor.
That’s the medical doctors we need. We have also started a project called “The
Miracle Project,” and we put this project today to be at the disposal of the
U.S. If you know someone – tomorrow when you show this broadcast this show and
you have people who have eye problems and they cannot afford an eye surgery,
please, go to the Venezuelan Consulate in the U.S. Go to
the U.S. Embassy in Washington. Go to CITGO. We can guarantee the
transportation of these people to Caracas and Havana free, totally free of
charge. These people could undergo eye surgery. This year we have conducted
close to 100,000 eye surgeries, cataracts. In children, when you do not operate
these cataracts, they can go blind, cornea operations, estavism, myopia and many
others. You wear glasses and you are writing pretty well, right? If you remove
your glasses, you cannot read. It’s going to be difficult. The same thing. I am
51 years old. So I have problems with my eyes. I need glasses. There are people
who cannot read because no one has told them that they should wear glasses. They
don't have glasses to read – millions of human beings. So we have this plan with
Fidel, and we have agreed to do this in the next 10 years, and we have already
started, 2005 to 2015, we are going to operate to conduct eye surgery to a
million people. 600,000 people per year. That's a miracle
surgery. And that includes the U.S. people, especially the poorest of the poor.
Help us to help these people who are suffering from eye diseases.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, I know you have to go, but why are you calling for
the extradition of Luis Posada to Venezuela?
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: Well, you know that this gentleman – there is ample
evidence that this guy is a terrorist, clear evidence that he took part and he
masterminded, among many other terrorist attacks, in the blowing the Cuban plane
that was coming from Barbados to Caracas. It was blown up, and 73 people died as
a result of this terrorist attack. But also in Venezuela this person occupied a
senior position in the political police force, and there are many evidences of
tortures, of people missing as a result of his acts. It was in the 1960's and
the 1970's. So this gentleman, Posada, was already condemned in Venezuela for
the blowing of the plane. He was in jail, but he fled. He escaped with the
connivance of friends in jail. So we have the duty, once we located him – and we
located him here in the U.S. – well it is our duty to request that he is
extradited to Venezuela because he is a murderer. He is an assassin. He's a
terrorist. He's a very dangerous person. He has caused a lot
of harm, and he could even cause more harm, by himself and in a network he is
leading, because he is very active. If he were in jail, he would be the
mastermind of the terrorist network that already took part in the coup attempt
in Venezuela, like snipers for instance, they were sent to kill people. So they
blame me for those deaths. So this person should be extradited in Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in his first sit-down interview
in the United States. Tomorrow we bring you the rest of the conversation, where
we ask him what evidence he has for his charges that the Bush administration has
attempted to assassinate him. We also talked to him about the offer of cheap oil
to the poor of the United States

AMY GOODMAN: Welcome Mr. President to the United States. You have come to a
country who’s government, the U.S. government, you have accused of trying to
assassinate you. What evidence do you have of this and of your other charge that
it was involved with the attempted coup against you?
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: Thank you for the invitation to come to this show,
Juan, Amy and Margaret and my greetings to all the people and the viewers and
the listeners to these programs these well known programs. Let’s talk about
life, rather than death, because we are fighting for life. However there are
always threats, those who are devoted to the struggle for life and use the truth
as a flag and or principles as a lifeline. There is no doubt whatsoever that the
U.S. government, lead by Mr. Bush, planned and participated in a coup d’etat in
Venezuela in April, 2002. There’re many proofs and evidence of this. There is a
U.S. lady who wrote a book called the “Chavez’s Code,” Mrs. Eva Golinger and she
was sitting here not too long ago, and she is very close and there are
declassified documents that she has found thanks to an effort to investigate the
situation. I have many evidences that my assassination was ordered on April
the 11. More precisely on April the 12, and I was ready
to die, however thank God and thanks to the Venezuelan people and thanks to the
soldiers, Venezuelan soldiers, this order was not accomplished and this order
was given by Washington. And there are many evidences and witnesses, however I
would like to talk about life and greet the U.S. people with a lot of affection,
with a lot of love and with a lot of pain due to the tragedy in New Orleans and
the gulf states. We’ve been accompanying these states from the very beginning,
and we’ve been watching TV and receiving reports by our ambassadors and the
CITGO people from the very beginning, cooperating very humbly trying to save
lives and assist the homeless. We have offered assistance, up to five million
dollars, a very modest sum, but I guess it would be useful. We have offered
medicine, water, and electric power plants, the same way Cuba offered doctors.
So far we have not being authorize to reach the area. However, we hope the best
for the poor, the poorest of these countries. AMY
GOODMAN: And televangelist Pat Robertson, his call for your assassination.