On 10/8/06, Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If it was the same converstion I recalled, asking how can the
Cubans, who complained about the shoddy quality of Russian
consumer goods, welcome Russian nukes. They responded
that the consumer goods were shoddy because the Russians concentrated
their care on military/nuke stuff.
Maybe the Cubans were thinking of AK-47s.
<blockquote>[T]here are now 10 times as many AK-47s in the world as
M16s, their American rival, the Soviets having given them away free to
any movement they felt an empathy with or saw a use for.
The key to its success is its simple design, intended to ensure that
even the unskilled women and children running the Soviet arms
factories during wartime could mass-produce it for their fathers and
sons on the front. It is so basic that crude versions have been
produced in village workshops in Pakistan. "Compared to other
automatic rifles at the time," says Maxime Piadiyshev, editor of Arms
Export Review, "it was very simple in production, use and maintenance,
with eight moving parts. This simplicity meant a poorly trained
soldier could strip it within 50 seconds and easily clean and maintain
it." ("'I Sleep Soundly': An Interview with Mikhail Kalashnikov," 10
October 2003,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1059879,00.html>)</blockquote>
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
