On February 04 2019 18:58 Loco wrote:
Maduro is not "backing off" lool.... "backing off" from the US interventionalist/imperialist agenda that is supported by nations that benefit from not opposing it... what an inversion of logic. You can't back off when you've been driven into a corner. The only thing you have left is your dignity, you either give it up, let your sovereign country become a neoliberal slave state, or you stand up to the bully.
How far up your ass your head has to be when you want murderous dictators to "stand up to bullying"
Remember these arguments, I hope a few decades in the future you will look back in disgust to the times where you supported Chavez, Maduro and Castro.
I've opposed the US intervention with other leftist like Gaddafi because I'm against military interventions but thats not what you are dong, you are actually defending these monsters in power just because they pseudo-align with your bullshit beliefs, disgusting.
Yes, why don't you quote the following part that says that I don't support Maduro? Once again, if there is just a slight amount of nuance and someone doesn't say "All socialists in Latin America deserve(d) to die", that is not satisfactory to you, that means I'm the devil because neoliberal economy = freedom and all else = dictactorship. Viewing things from the binary lense of a child must be exhausting after a while. You didn't present a single argument or fact here. If you're going to make such drastic accusations, I'd expect at least some propaganda to support your argument.
I'll repeat: I want the people to choose, but the US simply won't have it. There are a lot of Venezuelans who want Maduro out, but they want Guaido even less. That is the problem right now, if there is a way to avoid a civil war, they should be given the right to choose. But this is a coup and it's been a long time coming, democracy is the last thing that will be allowed to exist. Trump explicitly said that they are currently "too far along the process" [of the coup] to accept dialogue.
I've opposed the US intervention with other leftist like Gaddafi because I'm against military interventions but thats not what you are dong
That's exactly what they are doing and you are not against interventions because you support sanctions that are interventions designed to create maximum chaos and turn people against their government to pave the way for military intervention. The facts of what they are doing here are overwhelming once you get outside of the mainstream media bubble and investigate the matter. They are not even trying to hide it; you have to be willfully ignorant to miss it.
Dictatorships are exactly what the US likes. If Maduro was one of the worst dictators alive he would be left alone, like Duvalier and Salman bin Abdulaziz and the 20+ authoritarian regimes they currently support. If you paid attention and read people who have paid extra attention to these matters for their whole lives while you were fucking around and racing cars and gambling, people like Noam Chomsky -- people who actually contribute something to our understand of the world -- you would also understand this.
they pseudo-align with your bullshit beliefs
My "bullshit" is called a moral compass. It functions on a couple simple rules: one is the right to self-determination. The other is to side with the "little guy". Support the most marginalized, those with the least amount of freedom, oppose the most powerful and greedy, and you are almost guaranteed to never be in the wrong. If the "small guy" becomes a big guy, time to find another "small guy". Your non-disgusting beliefs on the other hand: The US is currently involved in helping Venezuela because there is a dictator in power and a humanitarian crisis, all the while the US is directly responsible for working with dictators bombing civilians en masse and starving millions to death in Yemen. How do you sleep at night with such cognitive dissonance? Why don't you just admit what we both know is true? That you don't care about what the people want, that you think they are too stupid to decide their own destiny; that you are for a homogenized neoliberal Latin America at all cost because you are convinced that this is as good as life can get. It would make things so much more simple if you could just be honest about that.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Let's have a look at who is Special Envoy to Venezuela shall we? Any opinions on that Baal?
ON DECEMBER 11, 1981 in El Salvador, a Salvadoran military unit created and trained by the U.S. Army began slaughtering everyone they could find in a remote village called El Mozote. Before murdering the women and girls, the soldiers raped them repeatedly, including some as young as 10 years old, and joked that their favorites were the 12-year-olds. One witness described a soldier tossing a 3-year-old child into the air and impaling him with his bayonet. The final death toll was over 800 people.
The next day, December 12, was the first day on the job for Elliott Abrams as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the Reagan administration. Abrams snapped into action, helping to lead a cover-up of the massacre. News reports of what had happened, Abrams told the Senate, were “not credible,” and the whole thing was being “significantly misused” as propaganda by anti-government guerillas.
This past Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named Abrams as America’s special envoy for Venezuela. According to Pompeo, Abrams “will have responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy” in the oil-rich nation.
Why don't you tell us what happened back there, Baal? Is 11 of December 1981 in El Salvador a leftist conspiracy? Is Abrams the man for the job in Venezuela? What about his defense of Ríos Montt as he oversaw a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people in Guatemala? Was that a necessarily evil for the good of the Guatemalan economy?
By the way, Guaido is lying about his claim to the presidency being constitutional.
"Executive Vice President is the first in line to the succession of the President of Venezuela, when President is unable to fulfill the duties of office in the exceptional cases established in the Article 233 and 234 of the National Constitution."
If this was truly about Maduro being unfit to be in power, he would be replaced by Delcy Rodríguez. Instead, what they are claiming is that the entire government is unfit, but that Guaido, a US-educated neoliberal who is unknown to most of the Venezuelan public is fit for it. Guaido has also called for even more US sanctions on Venezuela, of course, which don't hurt the government but the poorest Venezuelans. It doesn't matter how many people starve and kill each other, as long as he gets enough of them to turn against Maduro in desperation.
Another fact that doesn't get any airtime on mainstream media: Guaido was arrested by Bolivarian Intelligence Service officers in January. He was released quickly. The officers carried the decision unilaterally, and they were quickly condemned of abuse of power by the government and charged for it. Yet the narrative is still that Guaido is facing enormous danger and "only goes out where he feels that he will not be arrested". This is such a circus... and you guys lap it up.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On February 06 2019 17:41 Loco wrote:
that means I'm the devil because neoliberal economy = freedom and all else = dictactorship.
dictatorship = dictatorship.
Many latinamerican leftists arent dictators like Lula, Mujica, Macri, the Kirchners.
However Chavez was a dictator, Maduro is a dictator, the Castros are dictators, and it seems that Evo Morales recently became a dictator too.
I'll repeat: I want the people to choose, but the US simply won't have it.
Venezuelans cant choose because Chavez destroyed the institutions that ensured democracy in Venezuela, the dictator must be taken down and then the country has to rebuild its institutions.
That's exactly what they are doing and you are not against interventions because you support sanctions
for the 3rd time, trade isn't intervention dont you hate that the US sells weapons and basically help finance the Saudi regime? well I think so too, I think any country has not only the right but moral oblilgation to stop trade that helps awful dictators and leaders to remain in power.
Dictatorships are exactly what the US likes. If Maduro was one of the worst dictators alive he would be left alone, like Duvalier and Salman bin Abdulaziz and the 20+ authoritarian regimes they currently support.
Perhaps you haven't noticed because you are new to politics but I have been one if not the biggest critic of the US foreign policy on this forum.
If you paid attention and read people who have paid extra attention to these matters for their whole lives while you were fucking around and racing cars and gambling, people like Noam Chomsky
lol you keep mentioning me racing car as some attempt to belittle me intellectually.
My "bullshit" is called a moral compass. It functions on a couple simple rules: one is the right to self-determination. The other is to side with the "little guy". Support the most marginalized, those with the least amount of freedom, oppose the most powerful and greedy, and you are almost guaranteed to never be in the wrong. If the "small guy" becomes a big guy, time to find another "small guy".
Your definiton of self determination is that everybody subsidizes your shit, and even if you could point who "the little guy" is (you can't quantify most forms of marginalizations) the implementations of these are so atrocious the solution is worse than the problem, but I don't we should go in this any more we have already talked about it long enough.
Your non-disgusting beliefs on the other hand: The US is currently involved in helping Venezuela because there is a dictator in power and a humanitarian crisis, all the while the US is directly responsible for working with dictators bombing civilians en masse and starving millions to death in Yemen. How do you sleep at night with such cognitive dissonance? Why don't you just admit what we both know is true?
I've specifically said that the US is looking for their own interest obviously, China and Russia are doing the same when they back Maduro.
The cognitive dissonance is in you who support dictators if they are leftists.
That you don't care about what the people want, that you think they are too stupid to decide their own destiny;
WTF when have I said something that remotely resembles "too stupid to decide their destiny"? thats so random.
that you are for a homogenized neoliberal Latin America at all cost
I dont want a neoliberal anything, how many times I have to say that I dont want big government.
I'd like a libertarian or perhaps ancap latinamerica, and not at all costs, in fact unlike you I wouldn't like violent methods, I think revolutions often fail to archieve any real change because they are driven by passion when change should be driven by jadedness and reason.
because you are convinced that this is as good as life can get. It would make things so much more simple if you could just be honest about that.
I dont think many people in this world believe this is as good as life can get, Its not that hard to see that the median life is quite shitty and there are endless ways to improve our existence.
I'm also aware that these changes occur at a pace that do not match our life spans and this can be deeply frustrating to the point it can turn a man either bitter or a fool, or both.
On January 12 2019 06:23 Baalim wrote:
While not remotely as non-interventionist as I hoped him to be he has been better than Obama was and way better than Hillary would have been in terms of foreign policy (disregarding the idiotic tweets lol).
He withdrew all troops from Syria and that led to Mattis to resign and Hillary went after him publicly saying that this is isolationism.
Re-quoting this to show how insanely disconnected this narrative is. The US/NATO is backing a genocidal dictator trying to eradicate the anarchists of Rojava who helped them fight ISIS. That is the "non-interventionism" that Baal is referring to here.
Rojava’s defenders, in contrast, are seasoned veterans. In a fair fight, they would have no more problem fending off a Turkish incursion than they had driving back Turkish-backed Jihadis in the past.
A “fair fight” in this case would mean having access to anti-tank and anti-air weapons. But this is precisely what the Trump administration promised Turkey it would not let the Kurds have. Even those forces directly working with the US and British troops to defeat Islamic State were never to receive the defensive weapons needed to fend off the Turkish air and armored assault that would inevitably follow – which, if Afrin is anything to go by, may be backed by napalm and cluster bombs.
The moment those forces are withdrawn, however, their former allies will be sitting ducks, unable to defend themselves against the advanced weaponry that Britain and the US themselves help provide to Turkey and maintain.
It is because Turkey is Nato that the western press feels obliged to play along with the charade that it is an enemy of Isis, despite endless evidence of active Turkish collaboration with Isis, and the fact, known to everyone in the region, that Turkish “offensives” against Isis in Syria have largely consisted of bribing Isis commanders to switch sides.
As a result, we are left with the bizarre spectacle of “former” al-Qaida and Isis Jihadis working with Erdogan to fight the YPG as part of a 100,000-strong mercenary force. In addition, men like Seyf Ebu Bekir, who was an Isis commander when it was carrying out its notorious Paris nightclub massacres, are now commanders in the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army. For his part, Ebu Bekir has warned France not to interfere with Turkish plans to unleash Nato forces to destroy Isis’s old Kurdish arch-enemies.
If all this is difficult to comprehend, it’s partly because so many of us – including many who fancy themselves “anti-imperialists” – seem to have forgotten how empires actually work. The British empire didn’t send British troops into combat very often either. Nato powers are arming and maintaining the security forces of their official ally, Turkey, to fly its Nato planes and drive its Nato tanks and shoot at refugees, in the same way Turkey is reportedly employing al-Qaida and Isis legions to do its dirty work of human wave attacks and ethnic cleansing. We have defanged the terrorists by, effectively, putting them on retainer, in much the same way Rome once employed Alaric the Goth, or the US, Osama bin Laden. And we know how well that worked out.
The situation is growing more dire by the day – and it is quite possible that Nato will soon conduct one of the worst genocidal massacres of the 21st century.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
"By the time of his last major speech on October 20, 2012—soon after winning his final reelection—Hugo Chávez knew he was dying, but he looked as energetic as ever. His government ministers, on the other hand, looked sweaty and uncomfortable, with nowhere to hide as he chewed them out before the eyes of the nation, interrogating them on live television and demanding rectification for their mistakes. For more than three hours Chávez spoke, interspersed with commentary from ministers and on-the-ground reports from various sites on different aspects of the socialist project. He railed against government corruption, ineffectiveness, and inefficiency: “Will I continue to cry out in the desert?” he pleaded with increasing exasperation.
This speech would come to be known as the “Golpe de Timón,” which literally means “Strike at the Helm” but suggests a radical change in course. The change in question was the transition to socialism itself, long promised but only partially delivered. It’s too easy, Chávez insisted, to simply call things “socialist” without changing their fundamental structure. Since he had come to power, social welfare had improved dramatically, but the 1999 Constitution promised more: more participation, more democracy, more equality, and a new Venezuela. By 2006, this ambitious project had a name—“twenty-first-century socialism”—and it entailed far more than simply improving social welfare or reducing poverty: the goal was to transform political power itself to create something “truly new.” For Chávez, socialism was not opposed to democracy but instead synonymous with it: “Socialism is democracy and democracy is socialism.”
The building blocks for this new socialist democracy were the communal councils, established in a 2006 law. These councils—directly democratic and participatory institutions for local governance—quickly numbered in the thousands as neighbors began to come together weekly to debate and discuss how to govern themselves. Whether in a dingy room adorned with little more than a poster or mural of Chávez, or outside around a collective stew pot, the debates ranged from banal to engaging, from the local to the national and everything in between. Whether it is building new roads and basketball courts, or strategizing how to deal with increasing drug violence, these councils have become crucial spaces for political participation in Venezuela today. But as late as 2012, it was not entirely clear what this new form of socialism would look like or how to build it. Would the role of the councils be limited to local development? Would they serve as a check on the power of the central government? Or were they instead destined to be a part of something far more ambitious?
For Chávez, the answer was increasingly clear: capitalism was a “monster” that would swallow up any and all small, local alternatives, and a radical leap toward socialism was needed if the Bolivarian process was not to come to an abrupt halt. This meant that the communal councils, not to mention other cooperative or socialist enterprises, were doomed on their own. For the councils to provide a true counterweight to the corruption and bureaucracy of the oil state, they would need to be unified and consolidated into something much bigger. This something was the communes themselves, legally established in a 2010 law designed to bring the communal councils and other participatory units together in increasingly larger self-governed areas. Two years later, however, not a single commune had been established, leading the president to emphasize one question above all: “Where is the commune?”
The question was for his government ministers, and they had no answer. “We keep distributing homes, but the communes are nowhere to be seen.” This was not only a question of the absence of legally registered communes, but something far deeper: What was still lacking, according to Chávez, was “the spirit of the commune which is much more important, communal culture.” The error of government ministers was not that they had failed to create communes from above, but that they had forgotten that those communes needed to be born from below: “The commune—popular power—does not come from Miraflores Palace, nor is it from such and such ministry that we will be able to solve our problems.”
If Chávez had addressed his question—“Where is the commune?”—to those grassroots organizers who have always been the backbone of Chavismo, the answer might have been very different. Some would have no doubt pointed to the very ground on which they stood, as though to say: The commune is here, Comandante.
While the councils and communes were enshrined by law in 2006 and 2010, it is a mistake to think that the Venezuelan state created the communes or the communal councils that they comprise. Just as Chávez did not create the Bolivarian Revolution, the revolutionary movements that “created Chávez” did not simply stop there and stand back to admire their creation. Instead, they continued their formative work in and on the world by building radically democratic and participatory self-government from the bottom up.
In the 1980s, long before the communal councils existed on paper and before Chávez had become a household name, barrio residents—struggling for local autonomy against corrupt two-party rule—began forming a network of barrio assemblies to debate both local affairs and how to bring about revolutionary change on the national level. Before the communes existed on paper, many of these same organizers had begun to expand and consolidate communal control over broader swathes of territory. In fact, one of the most important organizations building communal power in the present—the National Network of Comuneros and Comuneras—was founded by former state employees who broke away in favor of a more independent organization. As Marx and others have, “revolutions are not made with laws” but by the people seizing and exercising power directly.
These communes have existed since the very moment when those who gathered in their neighborhood councils said this is not enough. It is not enough to govern this little corner of Venezuela or that little fragment of the barrio. It is not enough to make decisions about streets and water pipes while there is a broader battle to be fought. It is not enough to have direct democracy in a four-block radius while everything the neighborhood consumes is trucked in from a distance, much of it imported from abroad. It is not enough to be a tiny island of socialism in a vast capitalist sea. Local neighborhood councils would have to connect with one another; they would have to send delegates to discuss and debate questions on a larger scale: how to govern entire parishes, how to collaborate on security and infrastructure, and how to cooperate in the production and distribution of what communities actually need.
If the state did not create the communes, what the state has done is legally recognize the existence of first the councils and later the communes, formalizing their structure—for better and for worse—and even encouraging their expansion. Some 45,000 communal councils exist today, many of which have been incorporated into the now more than 1,500 communes. Within the state apparatus, these communes found no greater ally than Chávez himself, who, fully aware of his own pressing mortality, understood his “Golpe de Timón” as a sort of political will and testament. He knew that once he was gone, Chavistas of different loyalties and stripes would inevitably begin to fight over who best represented his legacy, and—if history is any guide—some would even use his name to betray that legacy. By dedicating his last major speech to the expansion of what he called the “communal state,” Chávez was making perfectly clear that his legacy was the commune, giving radical organizers the leverage they needed to insist that to be a Chavista is to be a comunero, and that those who undermine popular power are no less than traitors.
Today, no two communes look exactly alike. Sometimes a commune is sixty women gathered in a room to debate local road construction, berating political leaders in the harshest of terms. Other times it’s a textile collective gathering with local residents to decide what the community needs and how best to produce it. Sometimes it’s a handful of young men on motorcycles hammering out a gang truce, or others broadcasting on a collective radio or TV station. Often it’s hundreds of rural families growing plantains, cacao, coffee, or corn while attempting to rebuild their ancestral dignity on the land through a new, collective form. There are some constants, however. The coffee is always too sweet, and the process is always difficult, endlessly messy and unpredictable in its inescapable creativity.
What is a commune? Concretely speaking, Venezuela’s communes bring together communal councils—local units of direct democratic self-government—with productive units known as social property enterprises (EPS). Forming a commune is relatively straightforward: participants in a number of adjacent communal councils come together, discuss, and call a referendum among the entire local population. Once the commune is approved and constituted, each communal council and production unit sends an elected delegate to the communal parliament—the commune’s highest decision-making body. Like the councils themselves, the parliament is based on principles of direct democracy. Anyone who is elected—just like all elected officials under the 1999 Constitution—is subject to community oversight and can be recalled from power. Communes even manage local security through participatory “collective defense,” and an alternative system of communal justice seeks to resolve conflicts through “arbitration, conciliation, and mediation.”"
TL;DR part of the legacy of Chavez is 45,000 diverse councils and 1500+ communes involved in direct democracy and worker self-management and that makes him a murderous dictator. LOL. Another instance of you living in the Twilight Zone. "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength" - George Orwell
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 07/02/2019 18:45
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NMcNasty United States. Feb 07 2019 21:07. Posts 2039
US troop withdrawal from Syria might be the worst decision of Trump's presidency even including intentional child separation at the border. While it may seem peaceful that you're recalling an occupying force in a foreign land, in reality you're just removing a deterrent that will surely lead to invasion by Turkish, Assad-regime, and Isis forces. This decision, if fully carried out, will likely result in thousands of deaths. The fighters and organizers in Northern Syria desperately want US military support as they are legitimately trying to establish a free territory while being sandwiched on three sides by brutal, murderous, regimes. Here's an SDF statement:
At a time when an intense battle continues in the last positions ISIS holds and sleeper cells in the region looking to reactivate are being destroyed, the White House announcement that they are withdrawing from Northern and Eastern Syria will have a negative effect on the operation to end terrorism as well as lend military and political strength to those who support terrorism and terrorist acts in the region.
We are announcing to the public that the war to end terror hasn’t ended yet. ISIS is near its end now, but we would like to add that this is an important and delicate period. Everybody should intensify their efforts. There should be more support from the Coalition and fighters must be aided in all aspects so they can continue the fight against ISIS gangs, there should be no withdrawal.
The decision to withdraw from the region will bring about a risky period and pose an obstacle to destroying the terrorist organization. With that, the safety, peace and security of the peoples of the region will be endangered. Because withdrawing from the region at such a time will risk the peace and stability in the region and create gaps between military and political meanings and thus throw the people at the mercy of aggressive forces.
Russian and Turkish state propaganda of course just dismiss this all as just ramblings from terrorists, while the White House pretends its no big deal, we'll just hurt them economically.
The problem is psychopaths don't respond to such threats. Sorry for the poker reference, but this is the equivalent of a nit saying "I'm gonna call you next time" as the lag-donkeys are running over the table. Also, even though troop withdrawal is both morally and tactically wrong, we shouldn't even pretend that the intentions were ever even good. Calling it "isolationism" isn't accurate, its basically just "Putinism". There was little to no discussion of a Syrian troop pullout before it was announced, its not something that is a part of any actual political ideology, and caught everyone in Trump's own administration by surprise. As the Mueller investigation is making more arrests and getting convictions, Its becoming less likely that Trump's actions are based on some sort of fetish for authoritarianism and actually are the result of Russian collusion and/or blackmail.
There was little to no discussion of a Syrian troop pullout before it was announced, its not something that is a part of any actual political ideology, and caught everyone in Trump's own administration by surprise.
That flies in the face of everything we know about the US empire's profound and never-ending hatred for socialism or anything that resembles socialism. They are already claiming that AOC, a milquetoast demsoc, is comparable to Mao, Stalin and Hitler. There is no chance in hell that they are ignorant about Rojava being a working socialist experiment that is deeply inspiring to people. They would love for the Kurds to be exterminated by the Turks, not because they fetishize violence, but because it is a threat to them in the long-term that any such experiment would succeed and grow. It is important for them to be able to repeat the all-too-popular, "wherever socialism has been tried, it has failed miserably" or some variant of this, and be able to convince most of the population that it can never been seen as a legitimate option. Why do you think NATO has branded the PKK a terrorist group? The truth is that the they have more in common with ISIS than with the Kurdish people.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
trade isn't intervention dont you hate that the US sells weapons and basically help finance the Saudi regime? well I think so too, I think any country has not only the right but moral oblilgation to stop trade that helps awful dictators and leaders to remain in power.
Can all you guys contribute your opinions on to this topic? This just boggles my mind.
A big part of understanding the crisis in Venezuela is understanding the role that sanctions play in warfare. Baal talks about trade as if the US were withdrawing a certain privilege of being able to trade with them, like this isn't an offensive act of war that is a lot more complex than that and with serious consequences. It's like if virtually all of the water in the world had been privatized and you could only get enough of it to sustain your population through trade, and suddenly the world's biggest empire slapped sanctions on your ability to receive enough water and paid people to build blockades, because they disagree with your democratically elected leader's politics. Baal is saying this isn't intervention, because it's effectively trade, but we know exactly what this does; we know it isn't optional for human beings to have access to water. Just like we know what it does when you deprive people of education, or when you deprive them of sexual protection and contraception or life-saving medicine, which is what those sanctions do. Is it fair to block these things and claim at the same time that they are not interventions designed to destabilize a nation?
Baal is also saying that, no matter the popular support for an elected leader (Maduro held a 20% higher popular vote than Trump did), we have a moral obligation to literally starve a nation or let them die from preventable diseases if they made the mistake of electing someone with an incompetent enough government. How does that logically follow? I read recently that there are people who have legitimate brain damage and who can simply not predict or understand cause and effect... saying ''[blocking] trade isn't intervention" in this context to me sounds like something that would be said by someone who has this kind of brain damage or someone who is simply confused. Part of those sanctions are not even "trade" as they are freezing the assets of the Venezuelan government abroad, like the 1.2 billion dollars in gold in the Bank of England.
It's not just sanctions the US has funded the opposition's war efforts, to the tune of 50+ millions as I said. Do you deny this Baal, or are you evading it or ignorant of it? The people who have been incarcerated whom we heard most about from the US/EU had direct ties to the US embassy and they led extremely violent protests that caused many deaths -- more deaths than the state is responsible for. How is funding violent people (just like in your Saudi regime example) not an example of interventionist warfare?
One more thing to note: even if we take the pre-Chavez Constitution of 1999, Juan Guaido does not have a legitimate claim to the presidency. Read the link below to understand why. As for the legitimacy of Maduro's presidency:
"Maduro was re-elected cleanly, as verified by reports from four different independent international monitoring missions, is non-consequential, given that Washington preemptively refused to recognize the results of the election more than 90 days ahead of time in support of the main opposition parties’ boycott.
But the US did not stop there. The Trump administration went as far as to threaten to sanction opposition candidate Henri Falcon for daring to defy the boycott, while the major anti-government parties sabotaged his candidacy by actively urging abstention and falsely suggesting that the former governor was in league with Maduro. Somehow this egregious interference in another sovereign country’s electoral process was completely ignored by a Western media lobotomized by Russia-gate hysteria.
All this is quite ironic in light of the fact that the right-wing opposition took to the streets in deadly protests in 2017 demanding early presidential elections with full backing from Washington." https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14304
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Obviously in practice it is a "passive intervention" when you put sanctions while being the global leader... your decision affects almost all potential trading partners on the planet, I'd say only China and Russia would dare to trade with Venezuela (Russia does for a fact)
You're kind of going in circles logically though as you're talking in a way of how "things should be" thus supporting the current regime, but then throw an argument of what happens in practice, that's why Baal answered that way and that's why I stopped the conversation.
In theory, chances are that you're closer to the truth. In practice, the USA will get their way whether Maduro likes it or not, Venezuela will be chaotic afterwards either way - you have a starving nation whose people are being pushed in all kinds of different direction, the question is how fast will it start healing.
In theory withdrawal from trade is also not an interventionalist unless you are the USA obviously.
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NMcNasty United States. Feb 08 2019 02:59. Posts 2039
There was little to no discussion of a Syrian troop pullout before it was announced, its not something that is a part of any actual political ideology, and caught everyone in Trump's own administration by surprise.
It makes sense from a broad post WW2 cold war type perspective that the US would be sabotaging Northern Syria to thwart their socialist agenda, but in 2019 no one really cares. Its too small a region surrounded by too many foes to have any real international influence. US forces have been working well with Northern Syrian forces the past several years fighting ISIS. All the biggest hawks dealing with US foreign policy, like Bolton and Pompeo are pro-Kurd. There's basically no anti-Kurd animosity at all in any shade of US politics, which is actually amazing because we're polarized on virtually everything these days.
The 'Nato forces are building up on the Turkish boarder' article is just really misleading. The argument seems to be that because Turkey is in NATO, Turkish forces are therefore NATO forces, but there's not actually a separate army massing on the border. US and Turkey have been cold war allies and Turkey has been supplied with a ton of arms from the US but its not like there's some global conspiracy involving France and Great Britain, etc. to wipe out tiny Rojava.
They would love for the Kurds to be exterminated by the Turks, not because they fetishize violence, but because it is a threat to them in the long-term that any such experiment would succeed and grow. Why do you think NATO has branded the PKK a terrorist group? The truth is that the they have more in common with ISIS than with the Kurdish people.
I'm not really familiar with PKK, its tough to tell to what extent its involved in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria since it seems like a lot of these parties are reorganized/renamed. It's not listed as one of the DFNS political parties on wiki and was designated a terrorist organization back in 1997.
On February 07 2019 17:03 Loco wrote:
Hugo Chavez was a democrat, not a dictator, and showed a progressive alternative to neo-liberalism
45 presidents ruled for 5 years or less before Chavez, then he changes the constitution removing any limit to presidential terms and rules for 12 years until his death but he was not a dictator?.
Guess you dont consider Putin a dictator either.
edit: removing the ad hominem that doesn't serve any purpose besides my pleasure
I don't want to sit here and argue about the definition of dictator.
I will say that from my view it's rhetoric. It's a negotiation. You start with Chavez is a dictator and then what is a reasonable person supposed to do? I am not going to sit here and argue that Chavez was a savior. I really don't know enough about the situation and it's a waste of time. I have read too much tonight but that "long" text with the link that Loco posted which you probably didn't read that included Chavez's enthusiasm about communes really reminds me of Abdullah Ôcalan's idea of Democratic Confederalism. These are ideas that will go open source in the future or we will all die. I know, I know. We will all die anyway but I am talking extinction which I think David Benatar argues that extinction isn't bad so there is that but obviously instantaneous nuclear annihilation is waaaaayyyyyy better than slow and painful climate disaster.
Labeling Chavez as a dictator isn't as heinous as labeling the atrocities in El Salvadore as leftist propaganda but it's from the same playbook. Have you heard of the Armenian Genocide? Not many people have. It is not even acknowledged in Turkey. It's as if it is such fabricated propaganda that it could only be found in some bat baby tabloid but even if it showed up there in Turkey some people would end up dead in a river. I don't want to get started on the State of Turkey right now............
How about Franklin D. Roosevelt? Was he a dictator? I could hack into JSTOR and write a dissertation about why he was the best president in E.E.U.U. history but holy shit what a colossal waste of time that would be.
On February 08 2019 07:50 RiKD wrote:
In before "post-modern neo-marxist" plans to annihilate humankind with nuclear bomb because David Benatar might have said extinction isn't bad.
dont become Loco and strawman me, not only I wouldn't say that but actually I think exctinction isn't bad (beyond all the grief that it would cause while it happened).
On February 08 2019 07:32 RiKD wrote:
I don't want to sit here and argue about the definition of dictator.
I will say that from my view it's rhetoric. It's a negotiation. You start with Chavez is a dictator and then what is a reasonable person supposed to do? I am not going to sit here and argue that Chavez was a savior. I really don't know enough about the situation and it's a waste of time. I have read too much tonight but that "long" text with the link that Loco posted which you probably didn't read that included Chavez's enthusiasm about communes really reminds me of Abdullah Ôcalan's idea of Democratic Confederalism. These are ideas that will go open source in the future or we will all die. I know, I know. We will all die anyway but I am talking extinction which I think David Benatar argues that extinction isn't bad so there is that but obviously instantaneous nuclear annihilation is waaaaayyyyyy better than slow and painful climate disaster.
Labeling Chavez as a dictator isn't as heinous as labeling the atrocities in El Salvadore as leftist propaganda but it's from the same playbook. Have you heard of the Armenian Genocide? Not many people have. It is not even acknowledged in Turkey. It's as if it is such fabricated propaganda that it could only be found in some bat baby tabloid but even if it showed up there in Turkey some people would end up dead in a river. I don't want to get started on the State of Turkey right now............
How about Franklin D. Roosevelt? Was he a dictator? I could hack into JSTOR and write a dissertation about why he was the best president in E.E.U.U. history but holy shit what a colossal waste of time that would be.
Well, yes as usual it comes to definition and semantics with Loco, and I know that is precisely what he is going to do, slither his way out and try to argue how he technically isn't a dictator but Putin is (or even taking that bullet and say Putin isn't either just to carry on his bullshit argument)
Anyone strongarming the institutions in their countries, changing the constitution, etc in order to extend the time they remain in power is a vile man.
Yes I know about the armenian genocide, I think Cenk from The Young Turks is a denier (hence the network name), but I'm not very knowledable about it, and I haven't read that much about Roosvelt either but I try to judge people withint historical context.
On February 08 2019 01:58 Spitfiree wrote:
Obviously in practice it is a "passive intervention" when you put sanctions while being the global leader... your decision affects almost all potential trading partners on the planet, I'd say only China and Russia would dare to trade with Venezuela (Russia does for a fact)
You're kind of going in circles logically though as you're talking in a way of how "things should be" thus supporting the current regime, but then throw an argument of what happens in practice, that's why Baal answered that way and that's why I stopped the conversation.
In theory, chances are that you're closer to the truth. In practice, the USA will get their way whether Maduro likes it or not, Venezuela will be chaotic afterwards either way - you have a starving nation whose people are being pushed in all kinds of different direction, the question is how fast will it start healing.
In theory withdrawal from trade is also not an interventionalist unless you are the USA obviously.
Being non-interventionist doesn't mean I support the current regime any more than I have to. It only means that I recognize the legitimacy of Maduro over Guaido. That's not saying much, since Guaido has absolutely nothing to stand on. The only ethical (non-paternalist) option is to let the people vote Maduro out and replace him with someone that they actually want more than him, which is not Guaido, according to the polls. A successful coup is not the answer to improving things, when has it ever done so? Can you name me examples of it doing so instead of being so vague? This is not a "starving nation", go look at what the US is currently doing in Yemen if you want to see a starving nation. Compare that to the Chavistas and the opposition's marches/protests... as much as it is a poor nation, they do look reasonably well fed (I'm being serious, actually do go check it out, there are a lot of overweight people).
You have a habit of making vague, wishy-washy statements and not backing them up with anything. It's like you're completely ignoring the 2002 coup and you would have used the same rhetoric back then when they successfully kidnapped Chavez. "It's all lost, the US always has their way." except obviously it wasn't. I appreciate you chiming in on the interventionalist stuff though.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
How convenient of a tactic it is to misuse a word and then pre-emptively say that the only way I can argue with you is through semantics. In another context you will say that people who call certain people on the far-right Nazis or sexists just cheapen the word and render it useless, but here we cannot use the definition of dictator as someone with absolute power or we're "dabbling in semantics". Hmm. Even more convenient is fully ignoring the radical democracy that came to exist under Chavez, that was pushed by Chavez himself, in the form of communal councils and communes, which stands at the absolute opposite of a dictatorship, since Chavez had zero power of decision over theirs. Instead you are making a new, more convenient argument for yourself to defend. Nicely done.
The end of term limits is an interesting subject though. If you are under the powerful delusion that a place like the US is a working democracy, rather than a corrupt two-party system which is effectively a one-party system, just like Venezuela pre-Chavez was, then I can see how that would infuriate you. In a real democracy however, term limits don't make any sense. Forcing a good leader out arbitrarily who has massive popular support doesn't make sense, just like you wouldn't recall someone in a commune just because they've been at one particular job for a while if they are the best person suited for the job and most people agreed.
Knowing that this is a doomed discussion, we'll just have to agree to disagree, and you can view my stance as Chavez having been a "benevolant dictator", obviously a contradiction in terms for me, but which works with your idiosyncratic definition.
I dont want a neoliberal anything, how many times I have to say that I dont want big government.
I'd like a libertarian or perhaps ancap latinamerica
Neoliberalism is precisely shrinking the government as much as you possibly can get away with. It's also implementing "structural adjusment packages" that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, which is what led to the revolution that put Chavez in power. Neoliberalism is the realistic version of the Ayn Rand fantasy world you'd like to be possible. It is the "beautiful working complexity of Milton Friedman bla bla" that you awed at just a few weeks ago. That is precisely why you do not care about "the will of the people" or self-determination and favor interventionism, whether you say you are or not.
But let's just say that I am completely wrong about that and indeed the Randian or an-cap world was possible, you still want and support neoliberalism in the same way that I'd support democratic socialism as the Overton window shifts and you or I move towards what we would ideally want to exist in the future. But of course, anyone who is facing reality understands that what we individually want isn't important. What humans will do will remain what they and all life has always done: adapt due to pressures of necessity. What is evident is that pressures of necessity will keep fomenting radicalization, and that it is only radicalization on the left that can solve the existential threats that we face today as a species.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Selling arms to Saudi Arabia has to be on a similar level to holding gold, Citgo profits, and basic necessities hostage. It has to be classified similarly. They are both interventionist policies with U.S.A. Empire interests in mind. The U.S.A. Empire is torturing and coercing poor people to get what they want. They are terrorizing all classes of society except the wealthy elite and actually probably them too because Joe Bourbon wants a bigger piece of the Venezuela pie than Juan Carlos Escotet.
Classic Empire Strategy: Get rid of the current regime, get rid of or defame intellectuals but it is way easier to just kill them and burn their ideas (if you can get away with it), rape, torture, kill the poors, terrorize the bourgeois subtly or overtly as needed, coerce the wealthy to be under your thumb.
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United States. Feb 07 2019 21:07. Posts 2039
