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Comment by forinti | Hacker News Reader

As a Latin-American, I laugh at the notion that the US have any sort of moral authority. In fact, many communist movements in LA actually came to be in response to oppression administered from Washington; if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US and the only people who would help were in Moscow, then your best bet would be to become a communist, just as the Croats cozied up to the Nazis in order to get rid of the Serbs.

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> if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US

Be careful. The US had a lot to do with Latin-American right-wing dictators, but a lot of what is said these days is propaganda from left-wing larval dictators trying to create a patriotic response to an external "threat". Chávez in particular, seems to be considering delaying the upcoming elections by declaring war.

Of course, this might be the case with Latin America, I have no knowledge of the situation down there. But for us, Easter-Europeans, USA was really the better alternative to USSR

You don't always have the best alternatives available to you, even if you were clairvoyant enough to distinguish them.

Would you say the russians were fools to embrace communism when they lived in a feudal system? The communist resistance in Europe started even before the US entered the war. Maybe if the US hadn't taken so long, things might have turned out different for the eastern bloc. Then again they might have taken a bashing for not being prepared and you would be under nazi rule still today.

I was reading a book about Roads that talks about roads from brazil to the pacific. The author mentions a story about seeing a teen in South America, Venezuela iirc, wearing a t-shirt with bin laden's picture on it and the author asked the kid why he is wearing the shirt.

The teen says, "Because he is a defender of the world's poor."

Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? Is Bin Laden really revered down there like this? I'm not trying to take sides, just curious about it because I can't even imagine someone wearing a bin laden t-shirt here.

Is bin Laden the new Che in South America?

> Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? > Is bin Laden the new Che in South America?

No way. And, BTW, only angry teens wear Che t-shirts these days.

In Buenos Aires, most people don't wear T-shirts, but Che is a pretty popular image. He's right up there with Homer Simpson and Bob Marley.

Not at all. That was someone being silly.

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