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Post by Naselus on Jul 28, 2006 11:33:18 GMT
I think it's high time we started looking at this, since the issue has more or less passed by unnoticed for a long while now.
Venezuela, the Communist paradise of South America, ally of Cuba, and latest of the US's favorite enemies, has recently purchase 3 billion dollars worth of weaponry from Russia. This flies in the face of the US's insistance that President Hugo Chavez, the legally-elected left-winger, is a dangerous and aggressive lunatic who's just waiting for the opportunity to take 70-odd ten-year-old Russian aircraft and take over the world.
Vlad Putin, our favorite ex-KGB torturer, roundly ignored the Bush administration's attempt to raise a Cuba-style embargo on oil-rich Venezuela, and flogged the little South American country 20 fighter jets, 53 russian 'flying-tank' helicopters, and 100,000 simply lovely AK 103s. The AK 103 fires ten bullets a second, with an effective range of about a kilometre. It's a very nice gun. The 20 jets are the highly effective SU-30 model, designed to combat the West's F-series, and quite capably at that. Finally the Helicopters are likely to be of a variety, but Russian chopper design has always owed more to the T-34 than the Chinook.
This deal is estimated to be around three times the size of that which Chavez originally hoped for. Surely that speaks of greater Russian favor than had been anticipated, and much greater Russian distain for the US.
How's the volitile Bush Administration likely to take this?
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Post by Naselus on Jul 28, 2006 11:41:49 GMT
Also to be remembered in this is the current position of most of South America's governments. Having suffered constant meddling from the USA since the early 50's, South America is mainly left-wing in principal anyway, and are more dedicated to keeping US interference out than anything else. Over the last year, almost all South American Elections have gone in favour of the left wing candidate.
This could spur the USA to take a more military approach to the region, calling on the phantom of communism to justify it's actions.
Also worth noting is that the country with the biggest problems in South America is the right-wing narcodemocracy of Columbia. The US has been tampering with affairs there in order to cut the vast cocaine supply that constantly pours into California, and if anything everything's getting worse.
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Post by modeski on Aug 3, 2006 2:51:21 GMT
Well, it's certainly an interesting situation. I wonder, though, if the US will devote much time and effort into addressing this issue. Pending forays into Iran, the Israeli death process and the Iraqi "not-really-a" civil war mean that resources are being stretched thin as it is.
I'm not really up to speed on USA-Russia relations, but I think even Bush may realise that it might be a bad idea to antagonise the former USSR, because they do still have a considerable military.
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Post by Naselus on Aug 3, 2006 9:37:49 GMT
Well, I don't think the US can possibly allow another hotbed of communist subversion (or 'independant country', as we used to call 'em in my day) in it's back yard to go unpunished, and I get the feeling Putin's deliberately antagonising Bush with this one. Seeing just how far the US can strech.
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Post by modeski on Aug 3, 2006 21:24:43 GMT
I have to say, part of me is a little bit delighted at the idea of Putin goading Bush. Kind of poking him in the shoulder, going "come on then!"
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Post by Naselus on Aug 4, 2006 8:09:31 GMT
In further Commie news, Bush has started riling Cuba, the US's favorite whipping boy.
Fidel Castro, Cuba's beneviolent dictator of 46 years, has handed over power to his brother temporarily while he recovers from extensive stomach surgery. Castro's enjoyed a consistent popularity rating of over 80% ever since he overthrew the mafia-run, US-supported Batista regime in 1959.
Bush and the US state department, which has maintained a constant blockade of Cuba since 1959 and forced the people to live in abject poverty despite producing the finest tabacco produce in the world, have both spoken out to demand democratisation in Mr Castro's absence, and have gone so faras to say they wil "take note of those, in the current Cuban regime, who obstruct [Cubans'] desire for a free Cuba".
Of course, the Cubans have mainly turned around and said "Hang on, isn't democracy what happened to Iraq? No ta, we remember living in a 'free' country, thanks.". But this is quite obviously yet another round of Castro-bashing from the country which has tried to killl him over 100 times. Who the hell does the US think it's kidding when it tries to claim this is about freedom? If they're the ones in favour of freedom, why have they been they RESTRICTING trade for nearly 50 years?
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Post by modeski on Aug 5, 2006 21:20:33 GMT
From what I've heard, most Cubans are overall pretty happy with life there. One of my favourite journalist Emmanuel Goldstein recently took a trip over there and recorded a radio show as well as kept a travel diary, which is available here. What I find most ironic in all this, is that in the last few years the USA has started to behave more and more like a communist regime in the mould of Stalin, with state-run media, government propaganda, erosion of civil rights, silencing of dissenters etc. Castro can't live forever, but it shouldn't be up to America to decide what happens to the country when he dies.
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Post by Naselus on Aug 6, 2006 12:15:50 GMT
Well, life in Cuba is pretty damn good. Free madical care, free education (to an extremely high standard), free public transport IIRC....
That's a lot of freedom that you just don't get in the Corporate Republic of America.
Oh, and you forgot to mention the USA's gulag archipelago, which looks to be as big and as brutal as Stalin's ever was.
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Post by modeski on Aug 7, 2006 1:14:38 GMT
Oh, and you forgot to mention the USA's gulag archipelago, which looks to be as big and as brutal as Stalin's ever was. You know, that's quite an eye-opening statement when you put it like that. I smell article fodder there, a comparison between the Bush 43 regime and the USSR. I don't mean to be glib, but there are a lot of frightening parallels that one can draw between the two superpowers (one erstwhile).
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Post by Naselus on Aug 7, 2006 11:27:51 GMT
Hell, a comparison of the torture methods employed by both is quite enough to see the similarities. I was horrified when I read The Gulag Archipeligo and found out some of the asolute horrors that the Soviets invented... and I was more horrified still when I discovered that just about all of them are being used in Gitmo and Abu Graib.
Such wonders include sleep dep, 'kneeling', sensory deprevation, and the obscure practice of keeping a prisoner constantly on his way to interrogation for upwards of thirty hours, trooping hmi round the building for all that time. All of these have been alledged to be used by US troops at Guantanemo bay.
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Post by modeski on Aug 8, 2006 1:17:52 GMT
I've little doubt that they were used in Guantanamo bay. One thing I don't hear talked about is how this presents a danger to the US military - if the "other side" captures an American soldier, surely they now have carte blanche to torture them. I mean, if the world's largest superpower can flout the geneva convention, what's to stop anyone else?
It's a dangerous precedent.
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