Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’ re-inauguration has been postponed indefinitely because he’s recovering from a second round of cancer surgery. The guy has plenty of enemies who would love, to put it nicely, to see his recovery fail. But why do so many people want this guy dead? Investigative journalist Greg Palast provides one interesting answer to that question in his documentary, “The Assassination Of Hugo Chavez,” now available as a free download.
The documentary is pretty short clocking in at 24 minutes and contains interviews with Chavez, businessman and interim president Pedro Carmona, then-Secretary General of OPEC Ali Rodriguez, and a number of Chavez’ supporters and anti-Chavistas as well. There’s also footage of Chavez wielding Simon Bolivar’s sword like Aragon in Lord of the Rings (a slight exaggeration!) plus a few seconds of his impressive singing voice. Chavez, quit politics and go on the lounge lizard circuit!
Palast, who has a knack for uncovering scandals, connects a few dots beginning with the 2002 CIA-backed coup that ousted Chavez from power for about two days (he survived by planting elite commandos in secret underground tunnels following a tip from Rodriguez) to the black gold buried underneath Venezuelan soil: an amount of extra-heavy oil five times larger than the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.
Download the documentary (which does not contain any appearances by Oliver Stone or Sean Penn) for free at Greg Palast’s website.
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