Glenn: Author of the new book Moscow Rules, Daniel Silva is with me and I've said before, there's a handful of authors out there that I think are doing what Hollywood used to do in the 1940's and that was inform through entertainment many and there are a lot of things that people, you know, you will listen to, but you'll tie them all together, but you can't get your dopey friends together, if you are spooked at all by Putin, Russia, you can read it and really enjoy it and hand it to one of your friends and say, it's not anything and when they read it they go, yeah, most of that stuff really happening right now.
So, Daniel, you and I were talking on the set a couple of days ago about what's really going on in Moscow and then I saw a story in the paper about how Moscow is now being courted by Chavez and he's begging them, please arm me for the evil America.
Silva: You know, no one likes people to say "I told you so," but two nights ago you and I had a conversation about the fact that Russia is selling arms, flogging its arms to a veritable rogue gallery of the nations around the world and what happened the next morning? We picked up the newspaper and there is Hugo the great or excuse me, is it Ugo
Glenn: Ugo.
Silva: sitting next to little Dimitri, Diminutive Dimitri as I call them and they have agreed on a package of arms worth $1 billion.
Glenn: And by the way, that billion dollars comes from Citgo gas.
Silva: Oil.
Glenn: Yep.
Silva: Yeah, this is unfortunately not the first arms package that has been negotiated between the Russians and the Venezuelans. According to my research, they have already purchased $3 billion worth of Russian weapons in the last three years. 23 military helicopters, 24 SU jets, and I believe there are some submarines that are going to be in the new package. They've been negotiating for this for a long time. So, you know, it's reverting to that old Cold War sort of behavior, where you're going out and you're finding friends among the crappiest of the leaders out there and it's all it gives the Russians another advantage. We buy very few, the world buys, I should say, very few finished products that are stamped made in Russia, other than vodka, you know, arms of one of Russia's only true ex experts other than oil and natural gas and so they need a market.
Glenn: Let me tell you something, Daniel. This morning I got up and Adam who works with me brought over some a canister of bullets because we'll go out target, you know, shooting and everything else.
Silva: Uh huh.
Glenn: And he brought out a box of bullets and sat them down and they're made in Russia and I said, What the hell are you doing with Russian bullets? And he said, Oh, you know, Russia is big into bullets and everything else and with the war going on you're buying your ammunition from Russia. I'm, like, what are you talking about?
Silva: A very interesting as speck of the deal that's on the table and that is that they want to build an AK 47 factory in Venezuela to license the production of AK's.
Glenn: That would be perfect.
Silva: Which is exactly what Latin America need, more than AK 47's flowing around so that Ugo can sell, ship off AK's to whoever he likes and they don't need to go to Moscow for them.
Glenn: There is also two other stories in the paper, while Obama was meeting with the Lebanese prime minister, at the same time Russia was arming Iran and just last week Russia tried to buy every bit of carbon fuel from Libya. That's all of their natural gas and all of their oil.
Today there's a story I don't know if you've seen this one about the Arctic. Have you seen this one?
Silva: I have not seen the Arctic story, but they lay claim to vast portions of the Arctic. I have talked about, you know, the expansionist
Glenn: Russia.
Silva: Russia and I remember a few months ago they went down and planted some kind of Russian flag on the sea floor. They believe that the Arctic or a large portion of it is theirs.
Glenn: And now we know why and I'll explain after the top of the hour, because there are vast, vast reserves of oil now. While we're playing footsy on this global warming thing, they are locking up the world's reserves. It is bad, bad news. I'll give you proof positive at the top of the hour.
Daniel Silva, author of Moscow Rules, thanks, man.
Silva: Take care.