and mexico wud be servicing these , right?

got any link and more info on these, seems like Venenzuela is going for big ticket this time

how many B-1 and B-2 in DG ??…..

yes the British can send their rov …. but the blah blah channel wud not be enthuisaistic abt reporting this as they did for Krushk and also not to leave behind that it was they who made up to the sub caoz the Russians sub coud not make it ……. FULLY IGNORING that compared to the MIR , the British stuff is a peanut with the Russians haveing the highest passenger capacity, very long endurance and also the deepest one …… but as usual and in tune with the well known Russian Misfortunes, the Mir lost their entire power trying to dock as that damn currents was at the heaviest odds when the Russians went down …. so saaad …….but the western hypocrisy and jealousy can be seen that even after the Titanic was ‘discoverd’ , the Russian submersible is still unknown ….

But the headlin-ing cant be more humorous and so technical in using terms when reporting on Chief removal, the art being last years

MiG Chief Under Fire, Likely to Be Jettisoned 😀
http://www.avia.ru/english/articles/doc171.shtml

wow Ken thats very beautiful models, how much does it cost yaar??…… is there any special price for 3rd world nation’s citizens, … just in case ? ….

can u put some bigger picture of that size comparisons plz, and also if possible a bigger picture of the Tu-160’s smaller picture displayed in pic, I’ve seen the pic in ur site, do u have any bigger pict of these ??

I hope the mods don delete this one, those who dont like to read are welcome to skip[ this one, but for those who want to know abt him and venenzula can take ur time to read it. Hope the co.uk in thge forum wont favour the deletion of my posts as it has been earlier ..

Rooting for Chavez

JAYANTI GHOSH

Hugo Chavez is now one of the most potent symbols of resistance to U.S. imperialism in Latin America, and his social and economic policies are becoming widely recognised as possible alternatives to the mainstream Washington Consensus.

HUGO CHAVEZ, President of Venezuela, has always been a larger than life figure. In recent times his stature has, if anything, been enhanced by all the attacks against him. In Latin America, he is now one of the most potent symbols against U.S. imperialism, and his social and economic policies are becoming widely recognised as possible alternatives to the mainstream Washington Consensus. And so the results of the recent referendum on his rule are especially significant because they indicate the extent of popular support not only for Chavez, but also for his policies.

He first attracted international attention in 1992 when he led a failed military coup against then President Carlos Andres Perez. He was jailed, pardoned two years later, and then elected President for the first time in 1998. His victory reflected the disintegration of the two corrupt parties that had run Venezuela for the previous 40 years under a system known as Puntofijo, in which they took turns to control the government and divided the spoils, especially the profits from oil exports, between them.

The right-wing elites of Venezuela, backed with money and resources from the U.S. government, have been baying for his blood ever since. This is the third major defeat in as many years for the right-wing Opposition, as it attempts to overthrow Chavez. In April 2002, it carried out a coup in collaboration with the Bush administration, briefly imprisoning Chavez and installing a junta of military officers and businessmen. This junta was quickly sought to be legitimised by the Bush administration, which did not reckon with the mass resistance that immediately erupted in the slums and working class neighbourhoods of Caracas and other areas of the country. Within a week, Chavez had to be reinstated, much to the discomfiture of the U.S. government and its local allies.

Subsequently, in 2003, an employer-organised general strike (focussing particularly on the country’s crucial oil industry) that lasted for months also failed to dislodge the government, though it inflicted severe damage on the economy.

It was only after the failure of these extra-legal attempts to bring down the government that the Opposition opted to use a clause in the Constitution (ironically introduced under Chavez’s rule) that allows for recall referendums. In the build-up to this referendum, and during the voting itself, the Opposition pulled out everything it could from its bag of dirty tricks, including the trick of spreading false information about the actual counts.

However, the final result could not have been more decisive, or more disappointing for the Opposition. The recall was comprehensively defeated, with those in favour of retaining Chavez accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the votes polled. This meant that Chavez won by a margin of around 20 per cent of all votes. The President more than retained the share of the vote he received in the 1998 and 2000 elections, and indeed found more than 1 million new supporters.

The turnout was unprecedented, with polls having had to stay open until midnight in order to process the 8.56 million votes cast. The previous record in Venezuelan history was for the 1988 elections, when 7.52 million people voted.

This result obviously provides a major boost to Chavez politically, as a resounding reconfirmation and a popular mandate to continue his current policies. But it is also a slap in the face of the elite Opposition and its U.S. financiers. Indeed, there was already outcry within Venezuela as official documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that a U.S. organisation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the U.S. Congress, provided funds to Sumate, the organiser of the petition drive for the referendum. Sumate’s leader had earlier endorsed the April 2002 coup by signing as a witness at the hastily convened swearing-in ceremony. Such external funding is in direct contravention of Venezuelan law.

NED also provided grants to other Opposition groups to develop [COLOR=Red]alternatives to Chavez, such as the Centre for International Private Enterprise and the Venezuelan Centre for the Dissemination of Economic Information. In all, since it came to power the Bush administration has provided more than $4 million, or around $1 million every year, to efforts within Venezuela to dislodge Chavez in any way that can be found. This has included inciting workers to strike, creating civil unrest and economic dislocation – methods that are now familiar in Latin American history.[/COLOR]

THE domestic Opposition is no less determined, and even less able than the U.S. government to accept defeat, even in the current case. While the U.S. government has grudgingly accepted that the vote was fair, local Opposition leaders are refusing to accept the results of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, despite the fact that they have been corroborated by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Centre, the Organisation of American States, and by all the other independent international observers.

This irresponsible attitude of the Opposition is not confined to rejecting the results of a democratic ballot. Hatred of Chavez has led to extreme reactions, such as the reported statement of former President and current Opposition leader Carlos Andres Perez that “Chavez should die like a dog” and that violence “is the only option we have left” to remove him from power.

Such responses – and indeed the entire process of the recall referendum and its result – reflect the extreme socio-economic polarisation within Venezuela. Although it is a major oil exporter, the country remains underdeveloped and ridden with inequality. As in several other countries in the region, nearly 60 per cent of the population lives in poverty, while the financial elite siphons off the country’s oil wealth.

Chavez has won substantial popular support among Venezuela’s impoverished majority, in part by using some of Venezuela’s oil revenues to fund education, health and housing programmes. As a result, the poor are now not only beneficiaries of these programmes, they are also engaged in running them, which thereby creates much-needed employment. Abandoned buildings are being turned into neighbourhood centres to provide a range of public and community services. Local people are running community kitchens. Thousands are volunteering to teach in the literacy programmes, organising neighbourhood health brigades and registering millions of new voters.

These programmes are not especially radical. In fact they are similar to some of the policies undertaken even by the more “bourgeois” governments of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. However, they stand out because they are such a departure from the more recent neoliberal strategy that downplays attempts at social reform through public expenditure. Therefore, they represent a major change from the general trend in economic strategy across the region, which has involved cutting down public services and raising user charges for them, reducing public employment and generally redistributing incomes from the poor to the rich. They also represent a challenge, though a modest one, to the received wisdom emanating from Washington and being absorbed by governments across the developing world – of reducing the role of productive public spending and increasing the role of profit-oriented private delivery of almost all goods and services.

While these social expenditure programmes may have made life noticeably better for the poor, they have alarmed the oligarchy that had hitherto retained power through ensuring that the vast majority of the population remained poor, disempowered and disenfranchised. So Chavez has become an object of intense hatred within Venezuela’s oligarchy and privileged sections of the middle class.

These groups view his halting of planned privatisations (including the privatisation of the country’s massive state oil industry) as an intolerable restriction on their ability to be the dominant beneficiaries of the country’s oil wealth. They have used their control over the media to blast Chavez for destroying the economy, supporting Cuban President Fidel Castro, antagonising the U.S. government, expropriating private property and for being a `dictator’. They have equated his limited social reforms with communism, and even accuse him of using the social programmes that have improved the lives of the poor as a way to buy votes.

THE U.S. government, of course, disliked him for all these reasons, but the Bush administration has also been wary of Chavez because of his potential in building up regional support to oppose U.S. policies in Latin America. Chavez has been friendly with Fidel Castro, who has sent hundreds of Cuban doctors to work in Venezuela’s community health programmes. He has supported Kirchner of Argentina in his struggle against the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The governing Workers Party (P.T.) in Brazil endorsed him in the referendum, as did the country’s CUT workers’ union.

Recently, the Venezuelan government has also moved towards deeper regional trade integration, with Venezuela joining the Southern Cone trading bloc Mercosur as an associate member. Various oil sector and economic cooperation agreements have been signed with Argentina, Caribbean countries and even Colombia. Chavez’s anti-U.S. stance is finding a growing audience in the hemisphere, given the rising popular hatred of free-market economic policies and U.S. domination in the region.

So Chavez and his government remain significant threats to the U.S. government and to the domestic Venezuelan right-wing oligarchy. While the U.S. government may have accepted the popular mandate of the referendum, it is unlikely to let this government carry on peacefully. Even though the financial markets welcomed the result because it ensured stability in a world already troubled by high oil prices, the political pressures within the U.S. will ensure that Chavez remains under attack. Apparently, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has already begun elaborating plans to counter Venezuela’s influence in Latin America in the wake of the referendum.

Significantly, this attitude of the U.S. is likely to persist whatever be the result of the November U.S. presidential elections. The views of George Bush on the matter are well known. But even the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, has issued repeated statements calling for greater “pressure” to be exerted on the Chavez government, accusing it of using “extra-legal measures”, creating “a haven for narco-terrorists” and sowing “instability in the region”. Kerry has also called for tripling the funding for the NED, which has been such an important source of funding for the right-wing Opposition in Venezuela.

So this referendum was certainly a victory for progressive and democratic forces, but it is unfortunately likely that the war is still not over.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2118/stories/20040910005011000.htm

and there is good news for kerry opponents too, anyway u guys vote, Kerry too will follow the same line as Bush on these matters, so actually there is no difference as to who is in washington w.r.t these matters, But stiull I want Bush to win , VOTE FOR BUSH!!!

Its great news, and good indeed for the RAC-MiG … hope some guys wud nowe be scratching their arse as to how their predictions are getting wrong …

btw here are some facts that u guys can summarise abt Venenzula’s politicals stuffs …… hope no one deletes my post and display his arrogance for what he don’t like …..

—–

A hat-trick in Venezuela

JOHN CHERIAN

With his resounding victory in the Venezuelan presidential referendum on August 15, Hugo Chavez consolidates his position as the people’s President.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez addresses supporters from the balcony of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas on August 16.

THE writing on the wall was clear, but the Opposition in Venezuela, which is backed by the United States, refused to recognise the political realities and paid the price for it. Hugo Chavez, whom it hoped to dislodge from the presidency in a referendum held on August 15, triumphed once again, getting more than 58 per cent of the votes cast. Francisco Carrasquerro, President of the National Electoral Commission, declared Chavez the winner. Polling booths in many parts of the country were kept open until midnight, so that all the voters who had queued up could cast their ballots. More than 8,568,000 votes were cast – the highest so far in Venezuelan history. The voting had to close more than eight hours after the scheduled time. Jesus Torrealba, a prominent Venezuelan Opposition leader, said the result was “impossible to swallow”.

Chavez, however, was magnanimous in victory, and told his supporters that those who voted against him should be “respected”. The result was a great victory for the Venezuelan Constitution, he said and added that he was “pleased to be the first President on earth to submit himself to the people’s judgment halfway through his term”. He expressed the hope that Washington would now start to “respect the government and people of Venezuela”. “The ball must have fallen right in the middle of the White House. It’s a present for Bush,” he said, using Baseball terminology to take a dig at U.S. President George W. Bush.

The Bush administration had provided more than $2 million to the Opposition through the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. front organisation, and in the run-up to the referendum Chavez had alleged that Washington was pouring millions of dollars into the country to unseat him.

At a joint news conference held the day after the vote, the former U.S. President and Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter, and Cesare Gaviria, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), pronounced the referendum free and fair. Carter said the results announced by the Electoral Commission were “compatible” with the figures that the international observers had. Carter emphasised that the international team of monitors had not found “any element of fraud” in the way the referendum was conducted. He added that initial counts by the “Sumate” – the electoral watchdog endorsed by the Opposition parties – had also estimated that 55 per cent voted for Chavez being retained in office.

CHAVEZ has now defeated the machinations of the Opposition for the third time in a row. A failed U.S.-backed coup attempt in April 2002 was followed by a concerted attempt by the elite to paralyse the country economically. It brought work to a virtual standstill at Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company in December 2002, hoping to precipitate a crisis that would eventually lead to the overthrow of the government. This had happened in Chile in the early 1970s, when the Chilean middle class went on strike, and precipitated a chain of events that led to the overthrow of the socialist government of Salvadore Allende.

Chavez tackled the strike successfully and brought the hitherto “autonomous” PDVSA under the full control of the government. As many as 18,000 anti-Chavez employees were sacked during the two-month-long strike and Western analysts concluded that the Venezuelan oil industry would grind to a halt after this purging. Instead, the PDVSA, now popularly called the People’s Oil Company, is perceived to be more efficient, pumping around 2.6 million barrels of oil a day and earning the country more than $7 billion this year from oil revenues. Venezuela’s oil reserves are comparable to that of Saudi Arabia, and most of the revenue goes into the social sector, for the benefit of the poorer sections of society. “Oil is not for a minority, so that the minority can get rich,” was Chavez constant refrain as he hit the campaign trail.

This time around, the Opposition exploited a clause in the Constitution, which allows for a recall of the sitting President. In retrospect, this was a difficult task. To “recall” the President midway through his term, the Opposition had to get more than the 3.8 million votes polled by Chavez in the 2000 presidential election. Besides the “yes” votes in favour of Chavez’ removal had to be more than the “no” votes. The Opposition failed on both counts, and even before the first vote was cast, it started making allegations of fraud.

However, Jimmy Carter said that he had never before witnessed people participating in a vote in such a massive way. People started queuing up at the crack of dawn to cast their ballots. The Venezuelan government had introduced a foolproof computerised voting system, which included fingerprinting of every voter.

In a recent article, El Mundo, a Spanish daily, said that the Central Intelligence Agency had put in place a contingency plan in the event of Chavez winning the referendum, and had for “good or bad” started working on a strategy to “neutralise” Chavez.

Washington fears that the Venezuelan model could be emulated by other Latin American countries, including neighbouring Colombia, which has been in the throes of a civil war for decades. The Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, is under a cloud as there are serious allegations that he was in the pay of the notorious Medellin drug cartel, which was led by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s. Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo Manrique’s popularity ratings are in single digits.

Chavez and his anti-globalisation “Bolivarian” ideology have a lot of admirers across Latin America, and he has been repeatedly emphasising the need for Latin American countries to unite politically and to pursue an alternative form of economic development. All this is anathema to Washington, which still controls the destiny of many Latin American countries.

Chavez’ friendship with Fidel Castro coupled with his open admiration for Cuba’s socialist model of development, has further angered the top echelons of the Bush administration.

AROUND 80 per cent of the Venezuelan people live in the countryside, and their culture and skin colour are different from those of the white elites, concentrated in Caracas, the capital. Samuel Moncada, a prominent Venezuelan social scientist, called the parties ranged against Chavez the “aesthetic opposition”.

The Opposition has repeatedly used racist pejoratives against Chavez, who is of African and native Indian descent, and made clear their preference for a leader of pure European descent. There is no doubt that Chavez lost some of the support he had with some sections of the elite. They abandoned him when it became clear that he was intent on fulfilling the agenda for which he was elected. But the reform measures he undertook for the benefit of the people in the last couple of years more than compensated for that loss.

Hundreds of thousands of new voters were registered. As many as 60,000 peasant families received more than 5.5 million hectares after the government started implementing the much-needed land reforms. Eight per cent of the budget went for national health and education and the government stopped subsidising the private schools to which children of the elite go. Easy bank credit was made available to both the rural and the urban poor and health care was taken to the remote corners of the country. The Cuban government offered help in the social sector, with Cuban doctors playing a big role in taking health care to the poor.

It was no surprise then that most of the votes in the rural areas went to Chavez. Also, names in the voters register had swelled from 12.5 million in April to 14 million. The increase was a result of a massive campaign undertaken by the government to empower the poor neighbourhoods.

An ex-paratrooper, Chavez has said that he will continue in politics till the radical reforms he has envisaged for his country are implemented fully. The results of the referendum are a boost to his stature as one of the foremost statesmen of Latin America.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2118/stories/20040910002204900.htm

and no wonder that there are many haters for Chavez where as many lover for the ‘noble’ dictator, whose nobledom is coz of his alignment with the paradise just miles above, sadly Saddam was not lucky enough to get his certificate for which free blackgold was necessary … 😀

and the two engine option thats available for the Tu-330 …. looks impressive with its specs, and more fuel efficient too…..

is there any particular advantage with the turboprops that the Airbus choose the 4 x Turboprops???