Merged: Venezuela on the edge of ending....

[dudalb]

Originally Posted by trustbutverify

It's the intersection of the two groups I find "interesting".

I think it is a sort of blind hatred of "The Establishment".
I think that Trump selling himself as some sort of Anti Establishment hero is, as far as his domestic economic policies goes, one of the greatest con jobs in history,but the suckers bought it up.

[Childlike Empress]

Yes, you've read that correctly. Mega-moustached psychpath Bolton plans to hold the Venezuelan military and security forces responsible for protecting the Venezuelan people from his evil machinations. One thing you can't complain about with this latest bunch of imperialist freaks: They don't even try to hide it and leave little cogs in the disinformation machine with a really crappy job as we have witnessed here to our collective amusement.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

Yet if you are kicked out but pretend to "decide" to "withdraw" you are lying, like the bully who finally got expelled from the playground will do to his mom.

The timing speaks against your interpretation. But it's funny how these are the only "victories" you can claim. Venezuela is falling apart at the seams because of corruption and incompetence, and Bolton's tweets are your prime concern. Pathetic.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by dann

You mean media like the the New York Times?! No, I can't believe that they would ever publish false rumors unless they'd been innocently and maybe a little naïvely fooled by a doctored Columbian video ...

Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers (NYT, Sep. 1, 2018)

And there was the Judith Miller scandal and faked news dropped by Cheney so he could go on the Sunday talk show rounds and claim the story he was claiming was reported by the NYT.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

The real enemy of socialism isn't capitalist pigs, hoarders, wreckers, or even the United States. The real enemy that socialism can never defeat but will always and inevitably fall to, is entropy.

I like the way right wingers that believe this ignore the disasters right wing dictators have thrust upon their citizens.

You can't claim Chavez and Maduro are champions of socialism. They are corrupt as have been many other leaders regardless of the economic systems.

Conflating socialism with corruption is unsupported by the evidence.

To illustrate just how ingrained corruption is in some Latino cultures, I've been in Mexico City where you can't get a taxi in the taxi stand because the police require a bribe for the taxis to use the stand. I've had a man cut in front of everyone in the travel agency by chatting up some stranger in front of him then going to the counter with the stranger when his number was called. It's a travel agency, people are dressed in nice middle class or better clothes. You take a number when you walk in the door. That may sound trivial to some but to me it was shocking that cheating the queue was the norm everywhere, not just in crowded bus stations.

In the US, corruption is rampant in our current federal government. My neighbors lost a good chunk of their retirement savings because they had Enron stock.

But I digress, this is about Chavez and Maduro, not about socialism and capitalism.

[Childlike Empress]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

But it's funny how these are the only "victories" you can claim.

A remarkably dull sentence maybe showing a little bit of remaining shame about "the struggle" for world domination being led by such obvious criminals. But maybe not.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

Yes, you've read that correctly. Mega-moustached psychpath Bolton plans to hold the Venezuelan military and security forces responsible for protecting the Venezuelan people from his evil machinations. One thing you can't complain about with this latest bunch of imperialist freaks: They don't even try to hide it and leave little cogs in the disinformation machine with a really crappy job as we have witnessed here to our collective amusement.

If anyone wishes to search my posts on candidate Trump, the first alarms I issued were his statements on torture and his statements about seizing the oil from nations we topple.

Because Trump had no track record in politics it was impossible to separate his "Tsun Zu" (Art of the Deal) bluffing from what he actually believed with one exception: Israel. Abject fealty there.

But now we know. Here is the same exact formula used all over the world: impose embargos, sanctions, freeze their money, demonize the leader for how he has run out of the medicine you embargoed in the first place. Fund and arm opposition, agents provacateur, nonstop propaganda.

Guaido would not have announced himself president without the US having first guaranteed its force of arms in the end. The US confirmed so by being the first to recognize this incredible act of treason, wow. Like Nancy Pelosi announcing she is President and Russia loudly recognizing her legitimacy with money, pledges of protection, and a call on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to mutiny. Russian trucks running the border in the name of feeding and housing the staggering homeless populations of San Francisco, LA, etc.

It really shows what kind of impunity the War Party has. There is a fiction of left-right, red-blue, democrat-republican, but it is one party running things and that's the War Party.

Trump is first and foremost a Make Israel Great Again president. But his second interest appears to be his view of himself as taking a Genghis Khan approach to other countries. The Khan though, he was very honest about his intentions to conquer and he had been a warrior since birth. In the saddle with a bow himself as opposed to dodging the draft.

In the original American tradition we did not consider men who hadn't fought in battle themselves for the presidency. I fear this is a fatal Dunning-Kruger moment for Trump because of it. He is way too enamored with these malicous neocon idiots like Bolton and Elliott Abrams for Christ's sake in the case of Venezuela.

Are we taken for morons? Abrams would only be in there to run weapons one way and drugs the other. Death squads.

We keep ratcheting up the drum-beat reminiscent of the same script since Bush the Chimp in Iraq. We have no business running other countries. It is the one thing that will unite them against us. The only people who profit from such things are in the industries serving the war machine.

The track record of so-called "regime change" isn't just bad, it is a thing which has taken the wealthiest, most educated and advanced peoples in a region and utterly destroyed them.

It sounds so simple, this alternate reality propaganda world of magical thinking: all you have to do is remove the bad man and by magic the people of the country are "liberated". You don't have to think one moment beyond cackling over the sodomizing and summary execution of the country's leader.

If our schools taught anything of value it would the the Trillions in debt we have racked up in counterproductive wars. Entered into with lies, fought not with valor but rank indifference to the disease, malnutrition, and the millions of refugees we create in the name of saving fictional babies in incubators, etc.

Well, that's what we teach in our school, lol.

[dudalb]

Funny, but a couple of years ago ABP was on the Trump Bandwagon bigtime....

Guess it's tricky to be eternally anti establishment when who is in the establishement changes on you all the time. You end up advocating some kind of anarchism.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Funny, but a couple of years ago ABP was on the Trump Bandwagon bigtime....

Not an argument.

And also not true in any case. I didn't vote for him. Nor did I urge others to.
So whatever standard of "Trump Bandwagon" you are using, it is absurd logically.

Quote:

Guess it's tricky to be eternally anti establishment when who is in the establishement changes on you all the time. You end up advocating some kind of anarchism.

Also not an argument. Big straw man with labels. "anti-establishment" and "anarchist".

Being against overthrowing the elected (twice) Venezuelan government = anarchism?

This demonstrates you have no argument. It's pretty obvious anyway, what our country is doing now in Venezuela, which is apparently whatever it takes to overthrow their elected (twice) leader.

Having no argument against that, you attack the person with silly labels and straw men.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Originally Posted by dudalb

It's interesting that the "BLame everybody but Maduro and the Venezuelan Government" crowd sound a lot like the "BLame everybody but Donald Trump" crowd in the US.

Just looking at your recent posts demonstrates a relentless label-production factory, not anything resembling reason.

There is no "Blame everybody but Maduro" crowd. There is also no "Blame everybody but Trump" crowd.

So it cannot be "interesting" how two nonexistent things are so much alike.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Originally Posted by dudalb

I think it is a sort of blind hatred of "The Establishment".

I'm back to sucking diesel through the primer on a dump truck to get this dozer delivered and rampaging so this is it for me, got to make that money.

Blind hatred? Have you nothing but malicious labels?

This is why the forum is increasingly useless. It is presumably a skeptical forum and this kind of ad hom would be rare, my God the Doublespeak nature of it is notable.

Talk about projection! It is the reverse: what you have blind hatred for, you label blind hatred.

We have Presidents, like Eisenhower for example that warned in a very important televised public speech about the Military Industrial Complex.

It is very important to make people who agree with Eisenhower out to be dangerous, insane "Conspiracy Theorists".

Gotta go.

[Delphic Oracle]

Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot

If anyone wishes to search my posts on candidate Trump, the first alarms I issued were his statements on torture and his statements about seizing the oil from nations we topple.

Because Trump had no track record in politics it was impossible to separate his "Tsun Zu" (Art of the Deal) bluffing from what he actually believed with one exception: Israel. Abject fealty there.

But now we know. Here is the same exact formula used all over the world: impose embargos, sanctions, freeze their money, demonize the leader for how he has run out of the medicine you embargoed in the first place. Fund and arm opposition, agents provacateur, nonstop propaganda.

Guaido would not have announced himself president without the US having first guaranteed its force of arms in the end. The US confirmed so by being the first to recognize this incredible act of treason, wow. Like Nancy Pelosi announcing she is President and Russia loudly recognizing her legitimacy with money, pledges of protection, and a call on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to mutiny. Russian trucks running the border in the name of feeding and housing the staggering homeless populations of San Francisco, LA, etc.

It really shows what kind of impunity the War Party has. There is a fiction of left-right, red-blue, democrat-republican, but it is one party running things and that's the War Party.

Trump is first and foremost a Make Israel Great Again president. But his second interest appears to be his view of himself as taking a Genghis Khan approach to other countries. The Khan though, he was very honest about his intentions to conquer and he had been a warrior since birth. In the saddle with a bow himself as opposed to dodging the draft.

In the original American tradition we did not consider men who hadn't fought in battle themselves for the presidency. I fear this is a fatal Dunning-Kruger moment for Trump because of it. He is way too enamored with these malicous neocon idiots like Bolton and Elliott Abrams for Christ's sake in the case of Venezuela.

Are we taken for morons? Abrams would only be in there to run weapons one way and drugs the other. Death squads.

We keep ratcheting up the drum-beat reminiscent of the same script since Bush the Chimp in Iraq. We have no business running other countries. It is the one thing that will unite them against us. The only people who profit from such things are in the industries serving the war machine.

The track record of so-called "regime change" isn't just bad, it is a thing which has taken the wealthiest, most educated and advanced peoples in a region and utterly destroyed them.

It sounds so simple, this alternate reality propaganda world of magical thinking: all you have to do is remove the bad man and by magic the people of the country are "liberated". You don't have to think one moment beyond cackling over the sodomizing and summary execution of the country's leader.

If our schools taught anything of value it would the the Trillions in debt we have racked up in counterproductive wars. Entered into with lies, fought not with valor but rank indifference to the disease, malnutrition, and the millions of refugees we create in the name of saving fictional babies in incubators, etc.

Well, that's what we teach in our school, lol.

Run for something or get on a committee for someone who is running for something.

No, really.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I like the way right wingers that believe this ignore the disasters right wing dictators have thrust upon their citizens.

Since this thread is about the effects of a left wing dictatorship, I'm not sure why you think right wing dictators are on topic. Might you be attempting a tu quoque distraction?

Quote:

You can't claim Chavez and Maduro are champions of socialism.

Because they proclaim themselves to be, and because they fit the pattern.

Quote:

They are corrupt as have been many other leaders regardless of the economic systems.

True enough, socialist dictators aren't the only corrupt and incompetent leaders. But they are always corrupt and incompetent.

Quote:

Conflating socialism with corruption is unsupported by the evidence.

Bwahahahahahaha!

No, socialism always leads to corruption. It is not the only path to that destination, but that is the only destination for that path.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

And there was the Judith Miller scandal and faked news dropped by Cheney so he could go on the Sunday talk show rounds and claim the story he was claiming was reported by the NYT.

If you really want to bad mouth the NYT's track record (and far be it for me to stop you), there's a far better example.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

If you really want to bad mouth the NYT's track record (and far be it for me to stop you), there's a far better example.

Yeah because something from almost a century ago is so relevant here.

The reason the damage right wing dictators are responsible for isn't a tu quoque, the point is falsely claiming causation when all you have is correlation.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Yeah because something from almost a century ago is so relevant here.

The reason the damage right wing dictators are responsible for isn't a tu quoque, the point is falsely claiming causation when all you have is correlation.

Perfect correlation, but no causal relationship. Just bad luck, I guess.

[dudalb]

Originally Posted by Delphic Oracle

Run for something or get on a committee for someone who is running for something.

No, really.

But you can't be an edgy anti establishment radical that way.

[dudalb]

Now All American Diplomats have pulled out of the country.
Reports that Maduro is using strong arm gangs against his opponents.
Civil War, here we come.

[Childlike Empress]

^ Reminds me of what the great Evo Morales once said: "There'll never be a color revolution in the US because it doesn't have a US embassy".

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

^ Reminds me of what the great Evo Morales once said: "There'll never be a color revolution in the US because it doesn't have a US embassy".

Yes, the United States likes "colour revolutions" where people attempt to create positive change through peaceful means. We do encourage that and we make no apologies for it. We like freedom and equal rights, even if sometimes we’re not so good at granting that to our own citizens.

If you don’t approve of colour revolutions, how do you think change should come about in places like Egypt or Iran? Do you think these societies should remain static? If not, how should change come about?

Or is your aversion to colour revolutions stem from so many of them being eastern-European nations freeing themselves from communist regimes and Russian influence?

[Childlike Empress]

So in recent days the US has allowed some random comrades of Random Guydo to overtake three Venezuelan diplomatic buildings, two in NY and one in Washington. Which is a blatant violation of the Vienna convention and an act of war. Now US-american activists sleep over in the actual embassy in Washington to prevent that the same happens there.

That's what your pathetic virtual coup attempt has come to: childish make-believe trampling on international conventions just out of spite.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

So in recent days the US has allowed some random comrades of Random Guydo to overtake three Venezuelan diplomatic buildings, two in NY and one in Washington.

I thought the Maduro opposition was supposed to be all hand-picked US puppets. Now you're telling me they're randos? Which is it?

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

I thought the Maduro opposition was supposed to be all hand-picked US puppets. Now you're telling me they're randos? Which is it?

The conspiracy goes very deep. Every single Venezuelan person who is not Maduro has been groomed by the US to be our puppet if they should take over the government.

[Mycroft]

Venezuelan troops fleeing to Columbia:

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/70546...ian-government

[Mycroft]

Maduro detains Roberto Marrero, Juan Guaidó's chief of staff.


https://www.vox.com/2019/3/21/182756...o-intelligence

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

So in recent days the US has allowed some random comrades of Random Guydo to overtake three Venezuelan diplomatic buildings, two in NY and one in Washington. Which is a blatant violation of the Vienna convention and an act of war. Now US-american activists sleep over in the actual embassy in Washington to prevent that the same happens there.

That's what your pathetic virtual coup attempt has come to: childish make-believe trampling on international conventions just out of spite.

It's only an act of war if Maduro wants to make it an act of war.

My guess is he will not.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

It's only an act of war if Maduro wants to make it an act of war.

My guess is he will not.

At a certain point, going to war with America will actually improve Venezuela's situation.

[8enotto]

Childlike Empress, what is your stake in this?

I can see where both maduro and the trupanzee cross the delicate lines of diplomacy with herds of elephant's and both fabricate the facts they need to support impossible claims.

Neither is an innocent party in this BS game hurting so many people.

The fake president of Venezuela is just a distraction at best in all his as he had never held the office.
You cannot just declare something that big and make it stick.

I am not in the US, rather watching this from the sides. I find it scary most world leaders involved put the people suffering on the bottom of this mess in as a footnote.

[theprestige]

To be fair, I don't think the line of diplomacy between nation states is really so fragile. March elephants back and forth across it all day long, and it'll be just fine.

[8enotto]

True, if open warfare is not an option not so delicate..

I stand corrected.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

That's what your pathetic virtual coup attempt has come to: childish make-believe trampling on international conventions just out of spite.

Well, it certainly is about narrative control.

The problem is Venezuela actually is a country with people who elected a leader, twice, and no amount of shrieking by the neocons and everyone else aligned with war profiteering can change that.

Ever since his missile attack on empty runways in Syria I wondered how much recklessness Trump actually possessed. Appointing Bolton answered that question, let alone Abrams.

Look at the clowns they've been working with in Syria - the "White Helmets", ISIS and every other head-chopper pledging to overthrow the elected Syrian government.

Yemen. So we target alleged terrorists there and 20 million are at famine level sustenance. That's our committment to hungry people. Two faced lying cynics.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot

Ever since his missile attack on empty runways in Syria I wondered how much recklessness Trump actually possessed.

That... doesn't make sense. Isn't attacking an empty runway less reckless than attacking a full runway?

[Stylesjl]

Since we seem to be bombarded by nothing but one-sided propaganda at the moment, I thought I might link to this:

https://www.project-syndicate.org/co...en-ami-2019-03

These leaders subscribe to a Cold War worldview, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. By not recognizing the nuances of the current crisis, they end up effectively advancing the interests of multiple dictatorships, including those in Iran, Nicaragua, Syria, and Turkey, as well as the real colonial powers in Venezuela right now: China, Cuba, and Russia.

I suppose if we really want to know why the modern left is not taken very seriously anymore then the obvious moral bankruptcy in the case of Venezuela stands as an important contribution to this process.

[8enotto]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

That... doesn't make sense. Isn't attacking an empty runway less reckless than attacking a full runway?

Attacks on empty runways mean nothing will be taking off it landing on them for at least 24 hours.
It may have been to prevent retaliation for something not in the news instead of just more bumbling and posing.

Which means military intelligence may know who uses that airport and for what. Don't think the pres can just order random attacks on arbitrary targets without someone else having a say in how valid it is.

[Mycroft]

Russian troops in Venezuela:

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-air-f...171301378.html

[Eddie Dane]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

Russian troops in Venezuela:

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-air-f...171301378.html

I have to hand it to Russia. For an imperial has-been with a population the size of Germany and an economy the size of Italy, they sure know how to keep playing superpower.

[Childlike Empress]

Originally Posted by Eddie Dane

I have to hand it to Russia. For an imperial has-been with a population the size of Germany and an economy the size of Italy, they sure know how to keep playing superpower.

Russia is close to twice the population of Germany (and over 400 times the size of your nosy little hangout).

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

Russia is close to twice the population of Germany (and over 400 times the size of your nosy little hangout).

Both Russia and Germany are in severe demographic decline. They are failed societies, and it doesn't matter much which wins the race to self-extinction.

[Childlike Empress]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Both Russia and Germany are in severe demographic decline. They are failed societies, and it doesn't matter much which wins the race to self-extinction.

The birth rates in Russia have actually risen to the point of sustainability in recent years. And we have no Putin but a lot of Syrians to make up for it.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

The birth rates in Russia have actually risen to the point of sustainability in recent years.

In 2017 the fertility rate had risen to an estimated 1.62. That's still well below sustainability, and it's an echo of the last population boom. Overall birth rate is already dropping again:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...01.01.2019.png

Quote:

And we have no Putin but a lot of Syrians to make up for it.

Yeah, that's going to work out swimmingly for you. I can't see any potential for problems.