From the New York Times: the US government has barred Spain from selling military planes built with American technology to Venezuela, citing the “antidemocratic” nature of President Hugo Chávez’s goverment and saying that the sale would “destabilize the region.” What utter bullshit. Apparently, Spain’s government disagrees with the US and regrets their decision, but will try to push forward with the deal (which will generate a whole helluva lot of money for Spain) with non-American technology.
From the statement of rejection from the US government:
Despite being democratically elected, the government of President Hugo Chávez has systematically undermined democratic institutions, pressured and harassed independent media and the political opposition, and grown progressively more autocratic and antidemocratic.
Hmm… does anyone else think that statement would make a whole lot more sense if we replaced “Hugo Chávez” with “George W. Bush?” Oh, except we’d have to also replace “democratically elected” with “undemocratically selected, both times.” I mean, come on – does the government really not recognize the incredible hypocrisy of a statement like that?
This on the tails of another breaking story about Venezuela and the US: Rhode Island will join four other states in receiving discounted heating oil for low-income families in a deal financed by Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. It’s interesting how the US goverment won’t bar Venezuela’s “antidemocratic” government from trying to take care of the poor US citizens who continue to be systemically neglected by their very own government at home.
