Venezuela’s Chavez to visit Russia, fighter talks weighed
MOSCOW (AFP) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to visit Russia later this summer after Venezuela signalled interest in buying Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets to replace its US-made F-16s.
news.yahoo.com
U.S. Gov’t Blows it Again: Venezuela to Replace U.S. F-16 Fighters With Russian Su-35s
he U.S. government and it’s wealthy private weapons dealers rarely see an arms deal they do not like – regardless of the paramilitary death squads (e.g. Colombia) and the War Lords (e.g. Africa) in whose hands those weapons end up – and without regard for the innocent people who are maimed and killed by them. The movie, Lord of War, starred by Nicholas Cage, does an excellent job of depicting this U.S./Israeli trafficking in arms throughout the world – a film that can now be rented and one we highly recommend to Axis readers. But passing strange, the U.S. has denied its insatiable appetite for selling weapons in the case of Venezuela, a sovereign, democratic nation in its own hemisphere.
Chavez accused of ties to terrorists
Venezuela has allowed its intelligence service to become a clone of Cuba’s while it shelters groups with ties to Middle East terrorists and allows weapons from its official stockpiles to reach Colombian guerrillas, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.
Those were the principal reasons why the Bush administration blacklisted Venezuela on Monday, saying it has failed to fully cooperate on counterterrorism, Thomas A. Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
“It’s our hope now that we’ve gotten their attention,” he said of the Venezuelans, who are banned from purchasing U.S. weapons because of the listing. “We hope that we are going to be in a position where we can talk with them and look for how we can improve [our] cooperation.”
NY Times: Seeking United Latin America, Venezuela’s Chavez Is a Divider
BOGOTa, Colombia, May 19 As Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, insinuates himself deeper in the politics of his region, something of a backlash is building among his neighbors.
Mr. Chavez, stridently anti-American, leftist and never short on words, has cast himself as spokesman for a united Latin America free of Washington’s influence. He has backed Bolivia’s recent gas nationalization, set up his own Socialist trade bloc and jumped into the middle of disputes between his neighbors, even when no one has asked.
Some nations are beginning to take umbrage. The mere association with Mr. Chavez has helped reverse the leads of presidential candidates in Mexico and Peru. Officials from Mexico to Nicaragua, Peru and Brazil have expressed rising impatience at what they see as Mr. Chavez’s meddling and grandstanding, often at their expense.
Diplomatic sparring has broken into the open. Last month, after very public sniping between Mr. Chavez and Peru’s president, Alejandro Toledo, the country withdrew its ambassador from Caracas, citing “flagrant interference” in its affairs.
“He goes around shooting from the hip and shooting his mouth off, and that has caused tensions,” Jorge G. Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister, said by phone from New York, where he is teaching at New York University. “The difference now is that he’s picking fights with his friends, not just his adversaries.”
Some of Mr. Chavez’s gestures, like his tendency to tweak the Bush administration, or the aid projects he has bankrolled with Venezuela’s oil money, still leave him popular, particularly among the poor.
But increasingly, the very image of the Venezuelan leader has come to stand for a style of caustic nationalism that many in the region fear, as the divisions provoked by the man who professes to want to unify his region have widened.
“He is beginning to overreach, wanting to be involved in everything,” said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “It’s a matter of egomania at work here.”
Mr. Chavez, for instance, has taken the uncompromising stand that governments must choose either his vision of continental unity or free trade with Washington, which Mr. Chavez blames for impoverishing the region. “You either have one or the other,” he said. “Either we’re a united community or we’re not.”
Spoken like a true Divider. I’ll go for ‘The Divider’ over ‘The Decider’ any day.