All Posts Tagged With: "cuba"
Russia Threatens To Include Cuba And Venezuela In Its Missile Targeting Sytem
Russia has boosted military cooperation with Venezuela and Cuba in recent months
Moscow (AFP) Sept 17, 2008 on the day before Russia nuclear bombers are set to depart Venezuela and Russia warships are still in nearby waters Russia says it could include Cuba and Venezuela into a satellite navigation system originally designed for missile targeting by the Soviet military.
“We discussed the theme of joint use of the Glonass satellite navigation system,” Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying, referring to talks with the authorities in Venezuela.
Perminov said similar negotiations had been held with Cuban authorities and that Moscow and Havana had talked “in a preliminary way about the possibility of building a space centre in Cuba with our assistance,” RIA Novosti reported.
Glonass was developed for missile targeting by the Soviet army in the 1980s to compete with the GPS system used by the United States. The project is expected to be completed, with 24 satellites in orbit, by 2009.
Glonass is currently administered by the Russian defense ministry.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week boosted financing for the long-delayed project by 1.85 billion euros (2.61 billion dollars). Glonass also aims to compete with the European Union’s Galileo system.
Russia has boosted military cooperation with Venezuela in recent months, reviving memories of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War in the Caribbean region.
In a move seen as a direct response to US plans to set up missile defense installations in the Czech Republic and Poland, Russia this month announced it was dispatching warships and long-range bombers to Venezuela for exercises, and did so.
Russia’s Putin Flip Flops on Cuba
Russia Says Time To Rebuild Links With Former Cold War Ally Cuba
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported. A week ago the Kremlin was busy quashing a Russian news service report it was about to station bombers on Cuban soil. Now Putin says he might just use Cuban to refuel nuclear capable bombers this would reverse Russia’s post Soviet policy not to establish military bases on foreign soil.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin just returned from a recent three-day visit to Cuba, where he discussed a raft of trade and investment issues and met with Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and now the island’s leader.
Some say Russia is positioning to confront the U. S. if Obama is elected U. S. President, believing they can force him to abandon U. S. anti-missile missiles and defense radar systems in Poland and Eastern Europe - and even Israel.
At the height of the Cold War in 1962, a two-week crisis over Soviet missiles on the island nearly led to full-blown war until JFK agreed to remove IMBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) from Turkey for the USSRs removal of its IMBM from Cuba.
The average Cuban’s standard of living remains at a lower level than before the downturn of the 1990s, which was caused by the loss of Soviet aid and its own domestic inefficiencies. Per capita income remains at $4,500 a year (compared with $13,500 in Costa Rica; $9,200 in Dominican Republic; $7,200 in Equador; $5,200 in El Salvador, and $1,900 in Haiti which is the regions poorest).ranking 88 of 179 nations. Venezuela has been providing oil on preferential terms since 2007, and it currently supplies about 100,000 barrels per day of petroleum products. Cuba has been paying for that oil, in part, with the services of Cuban personnel in Venezuela, including some 20,000 medical professionals.
Cuba still suffers from periodic power blackouts concentrated away from tourist center. Private citizens are prohibited from buying computers or accessing the Internet without special authorization; foreigners may access the Internet in large hotels but are subject to firewalls.
According to the United Nations Cuba is principally a source country for women and children trafficked within the country for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation and possibly for forced labor; the country is a destination for European, Mideast, and Asian sex tourism, including child sex tourism, which is a problem in many areas of the country. Cuba is also a transit point for the smuggling of migrants from China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Lebanon, and other nations to the United States and Canada.
Even though there is a 1999 death penalty for drug trafficking its territorial waters and air space serve as transshipment zone for US- and European-bound drug- much of it government approved.
Report Russia To Base Nuke Bombers in Cuba Denied
Izvestia Report Could Be Ploy
A report in the newspaper Izvestia is being denied by Russian news agencies saying the Defense Ministry is denying a report that Russia was considering basing nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba. Izvestia cited an anonymous top air force official as saying the bombers could be based in Cuba as a response to U.S. plans to place elements of a missile-defense system in Eastern European countries.
Since Izvestia does nothing without Kremlin OK some think it is a ploy to test the resolve of the U. S., and specifically Obama’s mettle since there is little doubt how McCain would react, and perhaps even force a backup on the European U. S. missile shield placement that Russia strongly opposes. A Russian Cuban presence in Cuba would plug China’s ambitions while sticking a finger in the U.S. eye and take advantage of a weak President.
On October 15, 1962, United States reconnaissance photographs taken by an American U-2 spy plane revealed missile bases being built in Cuba. President Kennedy reacted strongly and the world tettered on the brink for two weeks until the Soviets backed down.
Thanks to god-like environmentalists: Exxon will not make money drilling offshore. Cuba and China will.
We have a defacto suicidal oil avoidance policy which makes Bush’s shortsighted oil focus look like a misdemeanor in a world of capital crimes.
Bush once declared he was never part of “big oil,” rather he once was part of “little oil”. Bad, bad man. So punish the entire US population.
Well, I say to you, Cuba and China working together to drill for oil in our neighborhood is about Big Oil, but not what ignorant shortsighted politically motivated environmentalists usually think of. Such Stinging hypocrisy. I am an environmentalist, but do not think we have to commit suicide.
They have their heads in the wrong place and deserve any peculiar awards they get. Any ideas?
Suicide. Oil. Policy. Not by Bush. Get it? Iraq WAS about oil, not our appropriating it, but specifically about keeping oil lanes and supplies open to all of the world including poor countries who are dependent on oil and cannot assure it’s availability in a world where volatile countries own and control a lot of oil. It is important to keep the shipping lanes open and half of our military expenditures may be directed to that end for the BENEFIT OF THE ENTIRE FREE AND OTHER WORLDS WHO USE OIL.
Do you know any country that does not use oil?
Do these Energy Brilliants know that while Brazil may be independent of oil thanks to massive forest destroying cultivation of sugar cane and it’s wide use throughout the country they still search for oil? No matter, damn those Exxon profiteers! Boycott their gas stations until they reduce their gas prices. Again, no matter, just fly me in a private jet to the next conference without delay, my limousine and award is waiting.
You follow in a non private plane to take my picture. And don’t be late. And do not us oil products made in the US, be sure to get them off the next boat from half way around the world. Hope any leaks are not on our shores.
Who cares that Venezuela, the country controlled by a mad man who “cares about the people”, owns Citgo. Why bother boycotting them? Well, because they are not Exxon, the Great Satan, who produces, what? Only a small percentage of world wide oil production? How can that be?
No matter. They only give 40% of their political donations to liberals, Democrats or progressive interests so they are bad.
Despite not being dependent on oil, Brazil and it’s sovereign Oil Firm has recently announced that they looked for and found new massive oil reserves in offshore fields. A second one just recently. But only because they looked for it, found it and will drilled it without the permission of god-like US environmentalists. Big Oil again. Taxem, taxem I say.
It is good news for these politically motivated liberal environmentalists because they will get to rejoice that Exxon is not going to make those profits, let along those made off our very own shores. After all if they did, we would have to penalize them and tax the “windfall” for making maybe an 8 to 10% return on equity on a large investment base. That is not a windfall even if measured in billions. Goldman Sachs just announced a poor financial result for the last quarter, just a little over 2 Billion. Where are the cries for a windfall profit on a company that probably makes 60% of their political donations to liberals, Democrats and progressives.
Many industries make a far greater return, but no matter, penalize them. Union pensions own a lot of stock in such companies but that is just hypocrisy, not worthy or mention.
Such shortsighted folks, including those sympathizers in government, do not know what a windfall is. Their extraordinary pensions, health care and other perks and fine china are windfalls and should be taxed at 90%.
Actors or actresses getting 1 to 20 million for a single movie taking 4 months to film, is a windfall requiring poor people to pay $8 to $12 per person for a movie.
An athlete getting similar egregious salaries so that poor people have to pay through the nose to see a single game, is a windfall. Oh and do not forget the 4 dollar popcorn. Unhealthy oil included at no extra charge.
Bill O’Reilly and Larry King’s salary and benefits are egregious and true windfalls.
Al Gore makes windfall profits by scaring us but has no solutions his own worshipful constituency would pay for. Hugh fees for speeches by former Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are windfalls.
Which US legislator is going to introduce the Windfall Profits Tax on Brazil? Or Reagan’s estate or Clinton’s ventures?
Or Cuba or China or Russia?
Hey, how about this, let’s tax Iran for their windfall profits!
Why didn’t we think about this sooner? Notice something here? Those are countries, not stockholder profiteers owned by our pension funds and universities. All conduct foreign policy and build and buy weapons and train and pay for armies. No conflicts of interest there, is there?
Kind of like several much bigger Exxons, some with nuclear weapons, others wimply with nuclear ambitions like Iraq under Saddam. Where will they get the money for those kinds of programs? Not from Profits but from the entire asset base of the company/country. Wake up.
Cuba, China, Vietnam…what’s the difference?
Is McCain’s position on Cuba just another example of pandering to the conservative base, a political move for cementing his vote in Florida, or does he really think that continuing decades worth of failed policy is going to change them?
When his “new found base” supported Chinese WTO membership, MFN status, and normalized trading relations with Vietnam it was oh so good for the country and put America into its proper position at forefront of the Global economy. However when the vote comes to older Cubans in Florida, McCain hides behind the American Flag spouting idiocy like…”we will never sit down with a regime that tortured my fellow solders in Vietnam”. Let me see, wasn’t it Vietnam who was doing most of this torturing? Wasn’t China who supported the communists in Vietnam with weapons, money, and advisors & troops? Wasn’t it China that held American prisoners during the Korean War and have yet to offer up any information about the vast number of missing troops.
H.A. Award For Michael Moore and ‘Sicko”
Michael Moores’s ‘SICKO’ may not get the OSCAR but he’ll receive IGNOMINIOUS HYPOCRISY.COM AWARD.
“Sicko” director Michael Moore jokes that Fidel Castro would be a “ratings grabber” at Sunday night’s Academy Awards show and could deliver his acceptance speech, he told AP. Moore seems convinced he and “Sicko” will be honored with the top award again.
Whether Moore is presented with an Oscar statuette or not he will receive at least one unanticipated decoration, an ignominious HYPOCRISY.COM AWARD. The award’s symbol — a horse’s posterior – is why the HYPOCRISY.COM AWARD is also known as the H. A. Award.
The HYPOCRISY.COM AWARD recognizes Moore for high quality hypocrisy in the production of “SICKO” as further illuminated in the upcoming feature length film “SHOOTING MICHAEL MOORE’ set to debut this spring.
A spokesman for the HYPOCRISY.COM H. A. AWARD said “SHOOTING MICHAEL MOORE” exposes Moore and his film “Sicko” for its many misrepresentations. “Moore – more than most – deserves this ignominy just as much as Americans deserve the truth about medical alternatives around the world”
Cuba Aborts Future Welfare Babies
Maybe it never occurred to Michael Moore in his embarrassing movie Sicko, to inquire into possible reasons why Cuba reports such a low infant mortality rate.
Wonder if Moore knows why his movie is banned in Cuba? Or not scheduled for release yet in England?