President Hugo Chavez has plans to build a factory for manufacturing Russian AK-103 assault rifles, otherwise known as Kalashnikov rifles, sparking fears he may try to arm rebels in other South American nations.
Chavez denies such ambitions, saying his government bought 100,000 Russian-made AK-103 assault rifles and al icense from Moscow to make Kalashnikovs and ammunition, to defend the nation against “the most powerful empire in history” — the United States.
Political opponents and critics suspect the president and former paratrooper hasother intentions, such as providing foreign allies like Bolivia and communist-led Cuba with arms while forging a hemisphericanti-Washington military alliance.
“Our president has always had a warlike mentality, but now it appears this mentality is turning into a mission that could easily extend to other parts of Latin America,” said William Ojeda, a journalist and former Chavez ally who plans to challenge the president in Decemberpresidential elections.
Chavez has said “Venezuelan blood would run” if the United States were to invade Cuba or Bolivia, but has never said Venezuela would provide them with weapons.
Bolivian President, Evo Morales, has said just the same.
And the last paragraph quoted is a least rare at the most… Providing them with weapons is a much more “unknown” movement: you only have to transport the weapons, not the men. But even in that case, normally, those men go with weapons, with Venezuelan weapons. And by the way, Bolivia has received Venezuelan soldiers as I wrote in the post mentioned. I have not heard of any US invasion of Bolivia.
UPDATE: Occidentality comments about the deaths of several journalists, after the threats to the free Press made by Chávez:
More gruesome is the news that a journalist has been murdered in Caracas. At VCrisis, we learn the fates of several other journalists:
Juan Manuel Carmona, owner of El Impulso newspaper was killed in a ‘car accident;’ Filippo Sindoni, owner of El Aragueño, another provincial newspaper and a TV station, was kidnapped and killed; Salvador Termini, owner of La Prensa de Monagas, yet another regional newspaper also died in a ‘car accident;’ and nowJose Joaquin Tovar has been killed. All deaths have occurred recently…
This is really a bad path. The first symptom of a bad democracy is the existence of a controlled press. If the press does not “control” itself, the Government will “control” the “uncontrolled”… any way they can. If the “uncontrolled” carry on their path of “insubordination” (that is, of controlling the power) they are going to be reeducated or eliminated. 4 journalists who are opposed to Chávez have died in “obscure” circumstances, very similar to Mafia murders -you know, “just make it look like an accident”-. Yet, there will be people who will be pointing him as a freedom lover or a freedom supporter.
technorati tags:Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Chávez, Evo+Morales, Castro, USA, Opposed+to+Chávez
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