¡Aló Presidente! -- Open Letter to the President of Venezuela

Dear President Chavez:

You may have heard that many Americans are "concerned" about your recent purchases of military armaments from Russia. The officials of the the government of the United States are cautioning you not to let any of this weaponry fall into the hands of "insurgents." I trust you are well enough acquainted with the character of the United States' government by now to know that, whatever it suggests, the prudent and honorable course, invariably, is to do the opposite. And as you, as much as anybody in the world, are aware, the very thing that would most profit the world would be, for the many insurgents who are threatened by the armed might of America and its NATO allies, to have real weapons in hand--not just the sticks and stones that they may find by happenstance beside the road--to shoot and kill the mercenary soldiers of their oppressors. Think only how advantageous, in many regards, it would be for your own country, and your allies, if suddenly the many insurgencies and potential insurgencies which oppose the United States, armed by you and your semi-secret partners in this guerrilla arms proliferation, were to burst forth in simultaneous armed insurrection against the United States' armed forces and those of its NATO allies--with the citizenry of whole nations suddenly seizing the arms supplied by you, to turn them on the occupying and invading British and American soldiers in their midst, and to shoot them dead--in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iraq and the Yemen, and in Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru: Death to the Evil Empire and to all its Creatures and Agents!