Questions to wrap up your weekend

[sabotabby]

Everyone's sick of talking about the stupid cartoons (although I have a new-found confidence in gaybortion, which is way better than any of them and also has never caused a riot. So hah!), so let's talk about more interesting subjects.

Baby Godwin is a sad panda.

Rumsfeld compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler.
Then Chavez said that Bush was worse than Hitler.

[Poll #667317]

(Hat tip to roter_terror and springheel_jack.)

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Also, OCAP and Uprising are doing joint movie nights and are looking for recommendations for movies to show. They must be fun (that means no didactic documentaries, kthnx) and political in some way. Until the spring, exceedingly long movies like The Battle of Algiers cannot be shown because Uprising has no heat.

La Haine, They Live!, Life and Debt and The Harder They Come have all been recommended, and I'm being told to quash any suggestions of Bread and Roses. (Heh.)

Personally, I recommend this political movie.

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Marinetti thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and fealty. He is now passed out in the living room.

Comments

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I think that the popular support Chavez has would spell out *massive guerilla warfare*. I mean it's nothing like Saddam Hussein, who was mostly reviled, even by the people who had sectarian sympathies or connections with him. Chavez actually has massive popular support. Considering the quagmire that the U.S. is currently in Iraq, and the intense strain it is creating on the entire armed forces in the U.S., a military operation in Venezuela is unlikely.

As for proxy forces, well, Columbia isn't even in control of itself, and setting off that kind of regional algebra might end up worse for the U.S. in the end. I mean you start a war only because you're completely desperate or you think you have a massive advantage over the other party. I don't think that the U.S. is in either position, and unlike Iraq, I don't think it's even deluded to be in either position.

As far as invading countries goes, I'd put a lot more money on Iran, which could be even stupider than invading Venezuela in a way, but more relevant to U.S. geopolitical interests. I mean Iran is selling its oil and gas in 25-year contracts to China and India, but I don't think Venezuela is. Iran is probably meddling in Iraq as well as trying to get nukes, and is a constant threat to Israel.

Venezuelan oil is still flowing freely to the U.S., and while it's gaining some influence in Latin America, it's still relatively benign outside its own borders, other than shoring up Cuba, which is a symbolic rather than actual threat.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Venezuela is not the country the US is most likely to invade. But from the point of view of Venezuela, the US (possibly via Colombia) likely is their most significant potential external threat. And the load of Kalashnikovs they're buying and the million-person army Chavez talks about would be aimed at enabling just that sort of mass guerrilla resistance you talk about.

Still, I suspect that all this militarist talk may well be more directed towards promoting internal pro-government feeling, and that's what concerns me just a little bit.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally.