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293 comments on DrumBeat: September 20, 2006

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Agric on September 20, 2006 - 8:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Uncle Hugo is more a verbal bludgeon than great orator, and it begins to look like he will rival Fidel in the interminable length of his speeches as he approaches his dotage (yep, he'll be in power, legitimately, for a long while yet unless the US illegally topples him).

But his sense of humour and irony, his subtlety (LOL), even the accuracy of his content, puts the great white chief to shame. I'd pull out this one paragraph as being a poignant and perceptive observation:

"Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions."

Hugo is entertaining in an over the top kind of way, but at least he spouts some ideas and very occasional interesting observation. GW makes me shiver with his simplistic (much more so than Hugo's) mechanistic attempts - apparently mostly successful - at selected voter button pressing.

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roy on September 20, 2006 - 9:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Poignant and perceptive" Agreed. Maybe fewer of his words would seem over the top to you if you were head of state of a country the administration doesn't like and literally feared a U.S. invasion. There's certainly precedence for that fear. And then there is the question of his intended audience - not we U.S. citizens I would think.
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