02/21/14 – Greg Palast – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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Hey, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And our first guest on the show today is my old friend, Greg Palast.
He's the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and let's see, also Armed Madhouse.
And I think the latest is Vultures Picnic.
And his website, of course, is gregpalast.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Greg, how the hell are you?
Pretty good.
You know, trying to survive the regime.
And by the way, just I heard you were trying to convince people to download Dirty Wars.
They better do that.
It is the director and cinematographer is Rick Raleigh, Ricardo, as he's called in Vultures Picnic.
And he is also the director cinematographer of a terrific film called The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, which I'm going to, as of this moment, I just had My Dear Ms. Bad Penny put up on our site for Scott Horton listeners.
You can download that as well for free, Raleigh's other film.
And it happens to be reported by not a great reporter like Jeremy Scahill, but a second rate reporter, Greg Palast.
So if you want to get the real story of Venezuela, you can go to gregpalast.com, download it for free.
Cool.
Yeah.
And in fact, it's because of you that I know of Rick Raleigh because of his great reporting out of Iraq and the sectarian cleansing of the Shiites from the Sunni provinces during the worst of the surge.
Well, that might have been 2006 or something, actually.
Yeah.
And well, Rick has been Ricardo has been let's see, he was taken hostage in Basra.
He's always doing crazy stuff that he works with me.
If you don't know Greg Palast, I also report for BBC television.
These reports on Hugo Chavez and the assassination of Hugo Chavez and my films about Venezuela and South America were done for BBC television news night with Raleigh.
And you'll see, you know, my discussions with President Chavez, with the people, with the guy who took him hostage when and kidnapped him with the opposition and, you know, the whole the whole crew.
And also, if you go to my site, I don't know if it's in the film, but you'll see the current president who went, came and visited me when he was in New York, Nicolas Maduro.
So, you know, it's the usual, it's very interesting stuff happening in Venezuela today.
So go ahead, if you have any questions, I'll answer.
Yeah.
In fact, I'd like to go back and talk about the 2002 stuff in a minute, because, of course, it is important context.
I have some questions about that.
Why don't you go ahead and give us your rundown about what's really going on there right now, as opposed to what they're trying to show me on CNN?
I'm sure you have your reviews.
You know, there's actually, what's happening in Venezuela, what started in Venezuela has gone worldwide, a kind of, of Occupy Wall Street by the one percent.
So there's kind of a counter-revolutionary uprising by the world's one percent.
In Thailand, you have the upper middle class and the wealthy, who have shut down the government.
They don't want elections because they know they'll lose, you know, democracy is very uncomfortable for the, for the plutocrats.
So you have these mass demonstrations in the street.
They've learned the lesson of Occupy Wall Street, that they're much more violent.
They take over government buildings, they burn, you know, they burn buildings, they're armed.
It's happened in Thailand.
It's moved to the Ukraine.
In fact, right now, the Greg Palast, the photographer, team member, Zach Roberts, is on a flight to the Ukraine as we speak.
And the same stories happen in Venezuela.
Now I went down to Venezuela for BBC a number of times.
And what we're seeing now is what we've, what I've seen for years.
You have the wealthy of Venezuela march.
It's very funny.
And that's covered in the U.S. press, these massive, they are big, by the way, you'll see tens, literally tens of thousands of people marching against the Chavista government.
Now Chavez is dead, but now we have his chosen successor who was elected, Nicolas Maduro.
And so you'll see tens of thousands of people in the street against the current government.
And then you'll see 100 or 200,000 people in the street for the government.
That's completely not covered in the U.S. press.
It's all about the, you know, repressing, you know, repressing the demonstrators.
And for example, we had a New York Times reporter, I actually remember, ask Chavez, who was elected overwhelmingly.
And no one, no one has challenged the veracity of those elections, you know, I mean, mostly poor people, and they vote for their, for their candidate.
And asking Chavez when he was going to give up power, now can you imagine if he turned around and asked George Bush or Ronald Reagan or Obama, listen, when are you going to give up power?
It's like, well, it's called democracy when people voted someone else.
So you see, you see this, so why, by the way, why is the U.S.?
Well now wait a minute.
Let me clarify something here, Greg, because when you're talking about the competing demonstrations, I remember last time, well, and this may have happened numerous times, but I'm certainly remembering back around 02 era or whatever, where you did have the massive demonstrations against Chavez.
And then it was your reporting that said, oh, yeah, well, point the camera to the left over here.
Look, everybody.
And then there's 10 times as many people in support.
But is that going on now?
Because there certainly is a blackout if there is a large turnout in support of the government.
It's always been a blackout.
In fact, I actually had in my book, Our Madhouse, but I took out the section because it was like, my readers already know this stuff about bent media, literally the front page of the New York Times front page, San Francisco Chronicle, it said thousands demonstrate against Chavez regime.
This was a front page, giant photos in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, I was in San Francisco at the time.
Yes.
And it's true that the pictures are not phony.
What they didn't show is that a demonstration at least five to 10 times as big was pro-Chavez, completely non-mentioned.
It wasn't even mentioned.
Do we get bent news in America?
That's why you're on the air, Scott, because it's bent and you've got to bend it back.
You've got to straighten it out, okay?
And that's one of the big problems.
Now, this time, I will say, from what I know, that the proportions have changed.
It used to be that if there was a demonstration of 10,000 anti-government people, there would be 100,000 pro-government.
Now you get 40,000 anti-government and 60,000 pro-government.
People are getting, there's no question that the anti-government forces have gained a lot more popular support.
Before, they were a joke.
They were just literally the rich.
And you see the demonstration, it's funny, you see the poor people demonstrating for the current government, the Chavez government then, and you know, in their jeans and old cowboy hats, and they literally, I got a lot of flack for this, but it's really true.
I'm photographing for the demonstration of the rich, women marching through the shopping district with screaming, kill Chavez, kill him, kill him in English, you know, in high heels and push-up bras and like, you know, bright lipstick.
It was like, it was a cartoon, right?
It was like the demonstration of the trophy wives.
And I'm sorry people are offended by that, but you got to see the film, buy a film, and you'll see it.
But now it's widened out.
The opposition to Chavez has widened out because of, it's been many years.
I mean, the Chavez government- We've got real bad price inflation, and that'll get you booted out of office every time when people go to the store and the price of bread and milk just keeps going up, up, up, and these are things that you need now, you know?
So whatever the reasons, and the Chavez, well, our government's being sabotaged, but whatever it is, you now have, before, there was zero question.
You know, the U.S. government used to talk about, oh, how Chavez wrecked the economy, and maybe for the 1%, they didn't live too badly.
But the average person in Venezuela was enormously better off under Chavez, and they felt that and they believed it.
What's happening now is, in a way, the Chavez government, and I call it the Chavez government because Maduro is simply the shadow of, the living shadow of Chavez.
I know Maduro, and he really is just a shadow who's, in my opinion, now I'm giving an opinion, you don't deal with elections, but he was not a great choice, successor.
He's not a leader.
He's a politician and a good union leader, but he's not a president, you know?
And that's one of the problems, that he's not an articulate leader and a strong leader, which Venezuelans like.
So what's happened now is that there is no question that he's been this victim of his own success.
Suddenly you have literally hundreds of thousands of kids who wouldn't even get any schooling are suddenly college graduates after 20 years of Chavez to power.
You have people joining the middle class, and you know, where you stand depends on where you sit.
That is, so what's happened is, in a way, the Chavistas have created their own opposition by making people wealthier, so now you have all these people who are middle class.
You have all these kids with college degrees.
You have all these students who are saying they don't remember the bad old days of a nation, a third world nation on it, but an impoverished where they didn't stand a chance to remember any of that.
All they know is that, like you say, the price of bread has gone up.
They graduate from college.
They thought they were going to be dentists.
They can't afford a new car.
So they don't say, oh gee, if it weren't for Chavez and the Chavista government, I wouldn't be a dentist today.
All they know is that they say, hey, wait a minute.
I just went to college, and I'm being paid as much as my father makes as a baker, and I can't afford the bread.
Well, it's a lot of working class people out there too, right?
Or is that just in the spin?
That's just in the spin.
Well, when you say the working class people, no, it's just in the spin.
It's middle class, but understand.
I mean, price inflation can hurt somebody who lives paycheck to paycheck pretty bad too, right?
Everyone.
Everyone.
Okay, the current price inflation there is harming everyone, so that real incomes are declining.
And eventually, and I've got to tell you, my prediction, here's my prediction, the Chavista government's always been committed to democracy.
I mean, Chavez, when he tried to change the Constitution so he could run for an extra term, lost by half percent.
You don't see, you know, the U.S. talks about dictatorial power.
George Bush lost by more than half a percent in Florida.
He wasn't going to give up power, right?
But Chavez, while he was upset about losing the election, accepted the verdict of the people.
I think you will see, and I saw this when I was in Nicaragua, when people got tired of the socialist slogans, because every voter always says, yeah, yeah, that was 20 years ago.
What about today?
And I think that you're going to see, if the opposition in Venezuela, which is split in half, does put itself together, that the Maduro government cannot get reelected.
I think it will be close, but I don't see them getting reelected at this moment unless they do something to stop the economic fall.
All right, now we're about to have to take a break, so this is a good time to remind people that Maduro was elected in the first place in fair elections that no one really contested.
And in fact, his party won local elections and the opposition lost out in the local elections later.
For what that's worth, this is not, you know, an American-backed dictator like Mubarak being overthrown by the people out in Tahrir Square.
This is something else altogether.
And then when we get back, though, we need to talk about who are these opposition leaders and what does the NED or USAID or any of those nefarious actors have to do with it?
What about Houston, Texas?
What's their position?
Greg Pallast is on the line, author of Our Madhouse and Vulture's Picnic.
GregPallast.com.
We'll be right back after this.
Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is scott at scotthorton.org.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking about the Maduro administration.
First time in a little while, I'd say.
GregPallast.com is the website.
Vulture's Picnic is the book.
And we're talking about Venezuela and the putsch out in the street going on.
I don't know.
Sort of seems like it.
What exactly are the demands of the upper-class protesters here, Greg?
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I love you now, and we're going to write big checks to you, and everything will be fine.
No, just the opposite.
At the moment, the only thing that keeps Venezuela alive and made it wealthy is oil.
This is about oil.
Believe it or not, Scott, oil is the story here.
Venezuela is one of the world's biggest producers of oil.
It has, officially, if you look at the OPEC and U.S. Department of Energy sites, it is Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, which has, by far, the world's largest reserve of oil.
This is about the control of the world's largest reserve of oil.
In particular, Venezuela is the main source of high-sulfur oil, heavy oil, super-heavy oil.
It's filthy oil.
It's really heavy, gunky stuff.
You say, well, why do we want that?
Well, I don't know about you or me, but the refineries in Houston and the Houston area, Corpus Christi, are designed only for Venezuelan oil, super-heavy oil, and that's owned by Coke Industries.
Everyone says, oh, he's bringing up the Coke, but what do you want me to do?
The number one purchaser of Venezuela's oil is Coke Industries in Corpus Christi, Texas.
They are completely dependent on Venezuelan oil, and Venezuela, instead of giving a discount because their oil is crappy and heavy, actually charges a premium because they know the Cokes have no other alternative source of oil.
The only alternative that the Cokes have would be Canadian super-heavy oil, otherwise known as tar sands oil, and that means the XL pipeline.
Unless and until there's an XL pipeline, the Cokes are dependent on Venezuela and the Chavistas.
They would love a government.
The Coke brothers would love a government that would cut the price of oil to Houston.
And if that happens, all the people in the streets that are screaming for cheaper bread and continuing subsidies, like you can buy gasoline there for about $0.08 a gallon, that people want the continued subsidies, are going to find out after they throw out the Chavistas that things are going to be even more expensive because bread doesn't grow on trees.
You have to cost money, and it's paid for by oil.
Unless they're going to give the Cokes a discount, you know, they're going to give them a discount on the oil, they're going to have less money, the government.
Well, but how much less?
I mean, give me some percentages and some tens of billions of dollars and things.
Because, I mean, if you're telling me they're sitting on, and I remember you explaining before, back when the price was too low, that once the price is high enough, Venezuelan oil will be, you know, the largest amount, larger than Saudi Arabia.
How could they possibly not be able to afford all the welfare in the world sitting on that pipeline?
Well, the answer is at the moment, because tar sands, the heavy oil like tar sands in Alaska, is very, very expensive to produce.
So while Venezuela produces today about roughly 2 million barrels a day of oil, and mostly lighter, you know, super heavy oil and then heavy oil, to open up those monster reserves is going to require something in the order of $100 billion of investment.
And so they're not...
I'll just have Janet Yellen print that.
Yeah.
So to get that $100 billion, Venezuela would need help from several sources, including the U.S. companies and the Chinese companies and others to develop that oil.
But they have to maintain, the price of oil has to stay up high.
Obviously, it's a fight over who's going to control that ultimate reserve, and what price they're going to pay for it.
Now, the previous government, the pre-Chavez government, was charging 1% royalty for the super heavy oil, 16% royalty for the lighter oil, compared to Saudi Arabia, which is about 87% royalty, for example.
So when Chavez got in, he said, 1% is a little cheap, guys.
Don't you think the government of Venezuela ought to get a little bit more than 1%?
And he was following the lead of the socialist governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who had doubled the royalties on oil companies there.
And so he tried to double the royalties on oil companies in taking Venezuela's oil out of Venezuela.
And so in 2002, a coup was engineered to overthrow him.
Now, today, the U.S. government is very interested in maintaining and taking control of that oil.
Right now, they are in wars where the Chinese are saying, if the Koch brothers don't want to pay the premium price for your oil, which they're charging, Venezuela's charging about $103 a barrel.
Last time I looked, about $5 above the international price.
If the Kochs don't pay the premium, China will take it.
And that's what's upsetting them.
We need a government there that won't sell it off to China.
Now, would you connect the dots between, and I remember in your old book, Best Democracy Money Can Buy, you connect the dots between the Kochs' bribery and breaking the law in the Republican Revolution in 1994 with the acquittal in the Senate of Bill Clinton in 1998, you guys protect us and we'll protect you kind of thing.
So would you connect the dots here that the Kochs are lobbying the state to get rid of these commies right now?
Is that what's really going on here?
Or just these are the interests in a vague way?
You have to understand, the reason why my film, again, I'm offering it for a free download at gregbalsacom, it's called The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.
By the way, Chavez did not die from assassination.
He wasn't killed.
He kind of did himself in by doing, I knew him well, he did about 30 cups of coffee a day and got stomach cancer.
So he wasn't killed.
Don't assume that the title means that.
It's about the continuing attempts to get him assassinated, not by pouring him more coffee.
But they don't need the Koch brothers to do that, even though the Koch brothers are being overcharged or being charged the hilt by the Venezuelan.
There is something else that Chavez's government did, which is nationalize companies that threaten to move out.
You threaten to close your business in Venezuela, they don't say, oh, we'll give you extra tax breaks.
They say, if you leave, we'll simply nationalize your plant.
And one of the biggest plants nationalized in Venezuela was the gigantic ketchup plant owned by a guy named John Kerry.
I don't know what he's doing today.
I don't know his latest job.
Oh, he's Secretary of State.
So the Secretary of State of the United States.
Big tomato.
Big plant.
John Kerry.
The Heinz ketchup lost a big, giant ketchup manufacturing plant in Venezuela.
They threatened to close it, so Chavez said, you're not going to, if you don't give us tax breaks, you don't allow us to cut wages because they've raised the minimum wage.
So Chavez said, if you don't pay, we'll take you over, and he did.
So Heinz lost one of the biggest ketchup packing operations in Latin America.
All right, lots of motive, Greg, but we're almost out of time.
Tell me, what do you know about CIA, NED, USAID, actual American interference in this crisis today?
Plenty, because what's happening is that the NED is National Endowment for Democracy.
It seems to be spending a lot of its money trying to overthrow a democratically elected government.
I can't say the help is overwhelming.
What they've done is that they kind of train the opposition in kind of low-level street mayhem.
They train them.
I actually, to be very honest, I think that the NED's help to these guys is pretty minimal.
What has been the bigger threat is groups like what used to be called the Wackenhut Corporation, who are actually involved in attempts at assassination.
I think that while the U.S. government is pushing very heavily to support this kind of uprising of the plutocrats, in the end, as you say, people are going to go into the streets if they can't afford the bread.
But there's no doubt that the U.S. and our current Secretary of State, the great Democrat John Kerry, has been viciously and violently against the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
It's about time the U.S. stand up for democratically elected government.
That's one thing.
If the Chavistas lose, then they have to leave office, no matter who backed them or whatever.
But that's the problem here, is that the U.S. doesn't understand there is blowback from pushing, pushing to overthrow democratically elected governments, whether it's in Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua.
We can force regime change through manipulation, but that will come back to haunt us.
They have a guilty conscience, too, because when they talk about it on TV, they just never mention whether there were elections or not.
They just sort of let it sound like these are all Mubaraks in Ukraine.
Yeah, and so then what will happen is that we'll suddenly find that we have an excuse to send in the drones or whatever.
You know, if you didn't like blood for oil, I don't see how it's going to be better to have blood for ketchup.
You know, this is the problem here.
We have a Secretary of State who's basically trying to get even for the nationalization of his property.
Same old story with these guys, just like the Dulles Brothers and United Fruit Company back in Guatemala and all that.
All right, we've got to go.
We're out of time.
Thanks very much, Greg.
Good to talk to you again.
You're very welcome.
Bye, Scott.
Everybody, that's the great Greg Palast.
He's at gregpalast.com.
He's the author of Vultures Picnic.
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Don't worry about things you can't control.
Isn't that what they always say?
But it's about impossible to avoid worrying about what's going on these days.
The government has used the war on guns, the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism to tear our Bill of Rights to shreds.
But you can fight back.
The Tenth Amendment Center has proven it, racking up major victories.
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Their latest project is offnow.org, nullifying the National Security Agency.
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Our best chance is nullification and interposition on the state level.
Go to offnow.org, print out that model legislation, and get to work nullifying the NSA.
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Let's take it.offnow.org