Fri 10 Jun 2005
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm
Thanks to Dennis on the forum for bringing this up. I have nothing to add, the article sums it up nicely.
Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
And tell your friends.Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.”
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela — not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.
Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn’t have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That’s why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.
So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.
Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don’t have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.
So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.
June 10th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
I skimmed the article and thought I would check buyblue.org for it’s opinion. Here are a couple interesting links:
Citgo’s bio: http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=279
Gas station political contribution breakdown: http://www.buyblue.org/categories.php?parent_id=59
I honestly haven’t had a lot of time to check all of the data, so I’ll let you make your own opinions, and perhaps post again later.
June 10th, 2005 at 7:33 pm
Good call, Luke! I surfed up what I could find out about Chavez’s promise to divert oil profits to the poor, and it’s true. They’re benefitting for the first time, and they’re really, really poor. So buying from Citgo may not save the world overnight, but it’s walking the walk and saving kids in the barrios from sewer water.
And if we can switch from Exxon-Mobil to Citgo, our dollars do double duty. MotherJones has a series of articles on global warming called “As the World Burns.”
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html
Especially interesting to me was “Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank”
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html
that rates ExxonMobil as the prime briber of think tanks, media outlets, and religious and civil rights groups to back up Bush & Co’s rejection of global warming, so they can go on polluting. Fascinating; the same bribed, lying pseudo-scientists turn up on report after report from different “scientific” groups.
Thanks. Dennis
June 11th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
I’m new and didn’t know about BuyBlue.org. Thanks for the pointer, Dave V. I poked around over there and didn’t find much new about Citgo, besides a link to the Buy-cott article that appeared at CommonDreams, TheNewWisdom and others.
While I was there, I came across “Global Warming Is a Fact (Unless You’re ExxonMobil)”
http://www.buyblue.org/archives/2005/05/global_warming.html#more
An ExxonMobil boycott looks better than before. The Citgo buy-cott still looks good after being discussed for a while. Doing both, if we can, makes twice as much good sense.
Thanks. Dennis
June 26th, 2005 at 2:57 am
[…] Wisdom » Buy gas from Citgo, support Venezuela Rants The New Wisdom » Buy gas from Citgo, support VenezuelaNot a bad idea, […]
August 24th, 2005 at 10:45 am
I guess this Citgo protest is working, since Pat Roberson called for Hugo Chavez’s assassination. ITS TEH VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY!!!11!
August 24th, 2005 at 4:53 pm
A Christian calling for an assassination. Amazing.
March 6th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Don’t you people listen, even though Chavez is doing goood for the poor of his country which I think is great. This man wants to do everything he can to destroy the USA. He has made a pledge to do just that I think before you support such a man you need to know what you are supporting.
Thanks for the freedom to speak.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Gary, thanks for the input. Some of us have been following Latin American and U.S. State Dept. developments more closely than the average voter. Our state dept wanted to keep the wealthy and powerful in power and wealthy, because we could rely on mutual support against Communism, communism, socialism and other enemies of fascism and plutocracy. Chavez is simply a socialist in a country that desperately needed some socialism.
Our state dept joined the attempted coup against him, and now he has a problem with our foreign policy. So do I.
If you believe right wing propaganda, buy from Exxon-Mobil — They’re a main support of the American plutocracy. I trust left wing propaganda more, so I’ll buy from Citgo and help the poor in Venezuela.
Dennis
March 12th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Okay, I give up. What are those last two posts about? Do they actually mean something, are they part of a silly game, or are they just to give NSA spies something to occupy their time?
March 12th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Good post, Dennis. The two posts above your last one are junk from fake users. Although they’re usually “BUY YOUR VIAGRA HERE!!!!!!1111111111111111111,” sometimes the spam just comes up as gibberish.
May 15th, 2006 at 10:01 am
With all the conflicting propaganda on Hugo Chavez, Gary’s reservations about support for his policies are understandable. Here’s a revealing article on what’s happening under Chavez, by the author of the Bantam Press book “Freedom Next Time,” who is currently filming a documentary in the hillside barrios of Caracas.
Chávez Is A Threat Because He Offers The Alternative Of A Decent Society
By John Pilger, May 13, 2006, on ZNET at:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-05/13pilger.cfm
One brief excerpt:
“… Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor.
Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments preside over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils… with the steepest descent into poverty ever known in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez was elected. “We didn’t matter in a human sense,” she said. “We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn’t afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy…”
September 23rd, 2006 at 2:16 am
I was surfing townhall.com (one of my mozilla tabs) and found an article by Mike Gallagher which basically paints Chavez as the real devil and then proceeds to lick Bush from taint-to-tailbone.
In the article he asserts that money spent at Citgo ends up going to Venezuela. Not surprisingly he encourages people to boycott Citgo for this reason. Not sure to what extent the claim is true I decided to do a little checking.
Typed “citgo venezuela” into ask.com and towards the top was the link to this thread and found the answer I was looking for.
I’m not particularily a fan of Mike Gallagher and I abhor Rush and O’Reilly. But admittedly I’m a rightie (socially a traditionalist catholic; economically a laissez faire classical liberal and politically a libertarian who is strongly anti-libertine).
I’m highly suspiscious of any claims that socialism is doing good anyhwere in the world, least of all in the hands of a brutish dork like Chavez. Better men than he have tried mightily for much longer than he’s been in the game, to make a go of socialism, and it always deterioates into sub-human tyranny. To wit:
Soviet Gulags
German Nazis
Maoist revolution in China
Cuba
North Vietnam
Khmer Rouge
These are just the worst offenders. Just go to wikipedia and look at every country that ever had a fully socialist or communist “government” and there you’ll find the worst human rights abuses.
Yeah, I know, the US is guilty of yadda yadda but it never comes close to the state sponsored oppression of communist/socialist regimes. Never. Comes. Close.
Anyways I wanted to verify the Citgo/Venezuela for the purpose of boycotting Citgo if its true. I got my answer, so now I will.
Thanks for providing the public service.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
I love how people fall for this socialist drivel. He diverts a small portion of the billions of dollars he receives to the poor so fools like you think he is some great guy. If he cared he would promote capitalism and create jobs for the poor instead of giving them handouts. Wellfare has never worked and never will. Liberals know this but don’t want the poor to figure it out. I grew up very poor and through hardwork and determination have become quite succesful. That is the only way things ever get better. Hard work! You liberals should try it some day. (I was a liberal for the first 25 years of my life and I changed once I figured things out.)
January 20th, 2007 at 12:30 am
You freaks should be ashamed of yourselves. Chavez behind President Freak from Iran is our nations top enemy and you are promoting giving him money to buy arms that will in turn be used to attak the U.S. Get off your ignorant liberal agenda and try doing a little research for once in your life, and that does not mean listening to some stupid propaganda from Al Gore or Sean Penn