Chavez to provide cheap oil to poor Americans

[WMS]

Source

The US on Wednesday threatened to block a record-breaking arms deal under which Spain would sell ships and aircraft to Venezuela, claiming that the $2 billion arms deal with Mr Chavez could destabilise the region.

The deal, due to be signed in Caracas on Monday, would be a huge boost to Spain's ailing shipyard industry and to the rest of its defence industry.

"Those air or naval platforms include US technology," the US ambassador to Madrid, Eduardo Aguirre, said on Wednesday. "We have not yet decided whether to grant our permission for obtaining that technology."

The answer was "no", but that leftist prick in Spain is going to sell it anyway, even though anything with over 50% of the components of U.S. origin can be blocked by the U.S. - and that includes 10 CASA-295 cargo planes in the deal. I hadn't previously considered Zapatero to be a U.S. enemy, but with selling U.S. technology to a regime hostile to the U.S., I guess he is now.

Oh, and nice to see Chavez spending his oil wealth on his people.

"Chavez has compounded his country's loses by selling very cheap oil to Cuba."

Yep no doubt profit isn't his goal as the transaction involved Cuba sending a ton of Doctors to Venezuela's poorest areas where no health care system existed.

Chavez is subsidizing Cuba to the tune of $2 billion per year, in cheap oil and in cash.  If all the Venezuelans are getting out of this is 13,000 doctors (one figure I saw), then that's over $150,000 per year per doctor.  Considering the standard of living in Venezuela, I'm sure they could train and hire Venezuelan doctors for a fraction of the price.

No, Blue Rectangle, the oil subsidies to Cuba also brought over a lot of Cuban paramilitary 'volunteers' to help him establish 'democracy'. That's what he's buying.

That's a poor excuse for Chavez.  Was Stalin a good guy because Tsar Nicholas II was a jerk?  Was Hitler a good guy because the Weimar Republic was terrible?  Is Castro good because Batista was a crook?

I've never said that Chavez was a good guy.  He attempted an anti-democratic coup before being elected President.  I have NO RESPECT AT ALL FOR THAT.  However he isn't the evil dictator that the right tries to portray him as.  I'm merely saying that Chavez has done A TON of good for the Venezuelan people including selling them gas at like 14 cents a gallon...

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Again I'm not claiming he is a particularly good leader I'm just saying he isn't the demon that he is being portrayed as and that if the American right portrays him internationally as such all it does is further his objectives.

Another thing to think about is that now 70% of Venezuala recieves free healthcare and their economy grew by over 17% last year...   And while I'm sure you're against his land reforms I think redistributing land to allow for the creation of a middle class is a good thing. =)

Chavez wants to establish a Castro-style regime. He's already setting up his secret police death squads "Boliviarian Circles". He's spent most of his time subverting democratic institutions and rendering his opposition powerless - have we forgotten that the 2002 attempted anti-Chavez coup was sparked by Chavez's supporters opening fire on a peaceful opposition demonstration?

Oh, you might find House Concurrent Resolution 24 and House Resolution 90 to be of interest.

[WMS]

The same could be said for the regime in Washington, which wastes enormous amounts of money on similar military nonsense, leaving a large percentage of Americans in dire poverty.

Actually, it's all the spending on old people that consumes the budget. And *we* have enough money to do both, as well as far more reasons for military spending - the only reason Chavez needs so much money for his military is because he's planning to cause trouble. There are better places to look for government waste...corporate subsidies, for starters.

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Not in anything I've read about it so far. His opponents represent the democratic governments that ran Venezuela for several decades prior to Chavez's ascension to power, not extremist and/or authoritarian regimes. And any death squads elsewhere (which I opposed then and now) don't justify death squads now.

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No, that was pretty consistent across the sources I've looked at. If you come across an opposing view as to that particular event before the coup, post a link and I'll look at it.

Actually, I prefer to back Christian Democratic or Social Democratic governments in preference to both leftist and rightist forces. And prior support was based on opposing the Soviets, much as we backed the USSR against Nazi Germany. You don't always get to pick your allies. We dropped our support quickly after the USSR fell - see Mobutu in Zaire/D.R. Congo for a big example of that. And one ill does not excuse another ill. And as I have said before on this Forum, I supported the Christian Democrats in Chile in the 1970's, not Pinochet or Allende.

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No, I'm fine with that spending.  Regardless of how much is spent upon the old, the - what is it? - 500 billion dollar 'defense' and war budget is almost entirely wasted.

It's over 2/3 of the total budget IIRC. Defense is a lot less, and some of us like having a strong military. And miltary spending is quite good for economic growth - what do you think got the US out of the Depression?

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In your opinion. Maintaining national security requires many things, among them a globally-capable military force. Every other time we've slashed military spending we've come to regret it since some damn hostile force comes at us (the Germans in the 1930s, the Soviets in both the 1940s and 1970s, the Islamists in the 1990s) and we end up having to catch up our spending anyway. And I'm enough of a nationalist to support remaining on top of the global power scale.

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No, he's already meddled in Colombia and Bolivia and is targeting Ecuador, Peru, and maybe Honduras and other countries. And of course he'll need those troops for the inevitable bloody crackdown on his opponents (2006 most likely, 2007 at the latest). And the U.S. has been too busy to target him - we tried to ignore him for years, but Chavez insists on picking a fight.

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The initial vote, perhaps. Since then he has gradually subverted one institution after another - the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia and the Consejo Nacional Electoral (the Supreme Tribunal of Justice/Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council/FEC, respectively) are no longer impartial, and there's plenty of intimidation of opponents. Both left-leaning Amnesty International and center-leaning Freedom House have been critical of Chavez's regime, and even those Commies over at Human Rights Watch have been critical at times. Chavez's initial election may have been democratic, but the ones after that...well, wait and see. I'm expecting his gradual shift to his idol Fidel Castro's totalitarian regime to continue.

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Well, in the first place, the Germans didn't actually 'come at' the US, it was the Japanese who did that.  In the second place, when did the Soviets ever commit an aggression against the US?  Certainly I don't remember them doing a damn thing in the 1970's.  You surely aren't referring to their support of indigeonous  leftist revolutionary movements the third world?  Because the US did far, far more to support various fascist dictatorships during the whole postwar period than the Soviets ever did for their part.

Actually, there was a naval war already underway between Germany and America for several months before Pearl Harbor. And Germany rather quickly declared war on the U.S. after that (ironically, it was the only time Germany declared war instead of attacking without warning). And it was pretty clear who our main opponent was at the time. The Soviets made a serious push at exerting control over all of Europe in the 1940's and early 1950's, most definitely with the aim of wiping out U.S. allies and gaining control of Eurasia, something that would have left them with enough power to seriously try and dominate the planet. And the 1970's saw them trying to extend their influence everywhere they could while taking advantage of U.S. military weakness post-Vietnam to build up their military. Their goal was most assuredly to supplant U.S. influence everywhere possible. The U.S. usually supported right-wing opponents as a reaction to this push by the Soviets, not the other way around - we wouldn't have cared one way or the other about the Third World otherwise.

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Chavez is explicitly trying to remove any and all U.S. influence from Latin America by any means he can, up to and including overthrowing other democratic governments - supporting the loathsome (and very unpopular among the Colombian citizenry) FARC in Colombia, trying to get democratic governments in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru replaced via non-democratic means such as uprisings and install extreme left anti-democratic allies of his (Evo Morales, anybody?). So, clearly, "he's trying to cause trouble".

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Oh, it'll happen - the Venezuelan opposition is so divided and incompetent Chavez won't have much of a problem. Chavez so explicitly wants to turn Venezuela into Cuba 2.0 that his attempt is inevitable. And the rest of Latin America is democratic to varying extents, so this would be a reversal for the region. For purposes of comparison, Da Silva may be another anti-American lefty, but he isn't trying to overthrow Brazilian democracy.

[WMS]

Ecuador... rings a bell... wasn't there a coup there a few years ago?

Yup - some bizarre alliance between the indigenous folks, the military, and some of the politicians back in 2000. Kind of a odd situation where the public demonstrations succeeded in removing the old President but failed to bring in the Chavez-wannabe in the military who had played a major role in the protests. Wikipedia's got an decent article on that, under History of Ecuador. Democracy has been fairly shaky since then, but still holding.

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Sounds about right, although Da Silva will probably win re-election if what I've read is accurate - certain corrupt politicians were thrown to the wolves by Da Silva over the corruption scandal, I think. Still, Brazilian politics (interesting system: combines a U.S.-style President with an European-style Legislature) seems pretty healthy. There are plenty of other problems, especially in the far reaches of Brazil, though.

[WMS]

Someone's a Risk player!   But seriously, this is a reasonable point, but just try looking at it from their perspective.  I'm sure to them the map looked like their cold, relatively unproductive lands were surrounded by richer territories dominated by a considerably more powerful opponent.  They may have viewed control of Eurasia as essential for their survival.  I think both sides encompass their agressions in terms of defense.  Lastly, in places like Korea, China, and Vietnam, they really were responding to significant indigeonous revolutions in those countries, rather than leading the way.  In fact they just as frequently as not left their socialist brethren hanging when the larger superpower confronted them.

That , plus it does make sense. Eh, their perspective sucks. It is a perennial Russian problem - huge borders to defend in some rough neighborhoods - but they're too damn dangerous if left to their own devices. I'd rather support the current U.S. effort to cripple Russia via dissolution once and for all. But I'm an American nationalist, as I said before, so I would support that. Korea: err...not quite. Subversion by Stalin in both Koreas of the original anti-Japanese movements mixed with Chinese and American influences. The Soviets definitely didn't leave them hanging. That war was Stalin stretching his reach to an area he thought the Americans wouldn't protect. China: you can make a case that both sides were backing different factions of the same indigenous revolution. That's still going on, actually. And China and the USSR split for their own reasons, but until then the USSR had strongly backed them as well. Vietnam: Complex - multiple factions with multiple ideas of indigenous revolution. Vietnam is not historically unified, so this had some elements of imperialism by the North Vietnamese (Cochin China historically) against the South Vietnamese (Annam, the Khmer Delta, the Montagnards and Hmong, etc.). And the Soviets backed the North Vietnamese all the way, even against China. They definitely were trying to spread their system worldwide - it wasn't exactly a secret.

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Before 1945, the U.S. had limited influence, mostly in Central America, the Caribbean, and of course our bitch Mexico. ( at KillerPollo). The U.S. and U.S.S.R. started off about even, and the competition proceeded apace. Actually, most Americans were ready to go back into isolation after WWII (read accounts of the immediate postwar period) but after Stalin intervened in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Greece, Turkey, China and Korea we realized we had a problem on our hands and so the Cold War was under way. Now, there are competing measures of American and Soviet power throughout the Cold War, so it's hard to say who had the upper hand at what time. It varied a lot, I think. The 1970's saw a nadir for the U.S. (just ask dazzleman ) and the U.S.S.R. made a bid for dominance. It didn't - quite - work out.

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They're still dangerous. The barbarians have wrecked civilization before in history, so you always have to be wary...

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I don't think we really make much off of the Third World. There's the odd resource-extraction agreement (which also benefits them) but that's about it. Imperialism really isn't profitable, especially since you can make a lot more through free trade. Fend off foreign powers, yes; satellite states for explotiation, not really. Allies are way less expensive than satellites. I'll just go as for the Soviets' motives, as it's hard to find a more cynical and cutthroat lot that the Soviet Politburo. I'll leave John Dibble or someone like that to argue with you over world economics.

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The eternal dream of the knee-jerk anti-American Latin American leftist. Well, when all the local elites put all the blame for everything wrong on those naughty, naughty, Americans, it's easy to see how populations that have never met an American hate them. Chavez is an opponent of the U.S.; ergo, I wish to see him defeated. I did mention I was an American nationalist, right?

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Well, Da Silva is also not much of a leftist - he's governing from just about the center, and hasn't really done anything to redistribute.  But I would say that Chavez's ambitions seem much greater than Cuba 2.0.  Obviously Venezuala is an enormously richer country, and in addition has much greater international significance due to oil.  Whether Cuba did or did not exist tomorrow wouldnt' really make much difference to the rest of the world.

My final point would be - isn't it impressive that this little fellow is shaking his fist at the empire?  Whether you agree with him or not you have to admire his machismo.  Quixotic, but rather bold.
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Redistribute what? Geez, even the Commies realized that you needed Capitalism to generate something to distribute later on, and Latin America's still stuck in a Feudal economy in a lot of places. Da Silva is not a nut, that's true. And I will agree that Chavez' ambitions are very big...he wants to be Caudillo of Latin America, it appears. Darn oil wealth benefiting America's enemies...one more reason to support research into energy alternatives. Of course at the rate Chavez is going he's going to lower Venezuela's overall GDP. But if Cuba went away, where would irritating Canadian and European leftists go on vacation to protest the United States?

Swap 'annoying' for 'impressive'. I won't accuse him of meekness or lack of ambition, though...which is why I consider him so dangerous and want to stop him.