The mouse that roars
Shortly after returning from a $3 billion dollar arms shopping spree in Russia, Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chávez told his armed forces to get ready to fight a guerrilla war against the United States. And what's his evidence that Washington is preparing to invade Venezuela? Why, the fact that students in Venezuela had the temerity to protest the shutdown of RCTV, of course. Who else but dirty dealing Yanqui imperialist capitalist swine could turn the revolutionary people against their caudillo?
Sure, Hugo Chávez may be out of his mind, but he's certainly putting his petrodollars where his paranoia is. In the past year, Chávez has gone on an arms acquisition binge the likes of which South America has never seen - not even when Argentina, Chile and Brazil were ruled by military dictators. The Russians are particularly eager to sell Chávez 9 hopelessly obsolete diesel powered submarines to stem the Yanqui tide of Ohio class nuclear submarines. While Chávez's attempts to build a modern navy from submarines that were outdated before Leonid Brezhnev even took office, such a purchase would, unbelievably, give Venezuela the largest submarine fleet in all of South America.
The real irony here, of course, is that the United States has no intention of invading Venezuela, and has no real need to. The United States is perfectly comfortable buying Venezuelan oil, which provides Chávez with the cash he needs to spend Venezuela into the poorhouse. The more oil the United States buys, the more hard currency Chávez throws down the drain, and the less valuable the Bolivar Fuerte becomes. The United States would, doubtlessly, not shed any tears if Hugo Chávez were to disappear, but unless Chávez is looking to build nuclear weapons, Washington considers him to be nothing more than a vulgar pipsqueak whose belligerent rhetoric can't keep up with his laughable ambitions and pitiful arsenal. The status quo is, ironically, exactly to Washington's tastes, especially since Chávez's self-inflicted out of control inflation can be just as hazardous to a dictator as any military invasion.
1 comment:
Americans are the best entertained and the least informed people in the world. Neil Postman
People might not like his rhetoric, fox news and Pat Robertson might say he is a dictator and should be assassinated but that does not make him a dictator.
In fact he was elected fairly by land slide majority twice. He follows rule of Law and represents the will of his people. That is more that you can say for your current leader.
The embarrassing thing is the United States was implicated on the coup attempt of 2002 to replace him with a puppet government, until most of the country turned out on the street supporting him and reversed the coupe. So if that is not true representation of the people, I don't know what is.
By the way BBC were caught in the coup while making a documentary. which was shown around the world but not in the Unites States.
You can watch it at
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144&q=the+revolution+will+not+be+televised&total=119&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
The closing of the privately owned TV station that you speak of was instrumental in the coup.
He was amazingly tolerant of them, but when it came to renewing the license he legally decline to renew it.
I don't agree with the spending spree in armaments, but you can not blame him of being paranoid when he had a first under hand experience from the so called beacon of democracy.
Please don't push the goal post of Democracy and people representation when ever it suites you, it is a universal standard.
Julio Caesar
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