Couldn’t have said it better. They’re the opposition party all right, our opposition. They don’t oppose right wing ideology, they defend it and adopt it. Look at Gavin Newsom and his attack on the trans community! With “allies” like these, who needs enemies?

Absolutely unhinged.

Beep boop! Carry on then!

Lol why I’d did you flag your account as a bot?

You know, in America guns outnumber people I think 2 to 1. You would believe that everyone has one (not saying you believe that, it just stands to reason). However, the anti-gun/gun control and pro-gun dialect has created conditions where the most conservative and reactionary people don’t just own most of the guns, but are primed to use them. The progressive element of the population isn’t just anti-gun, they have mentally barred themselves from even getting trained on using one.

It’s hard not to imagine that this was always the desired outcome. A fully armed reactionary force, and completely disarmed progressive force. Democratic party members never make progress on gun control, because it would disarm the reserve army ready to defend the whole system. Sure, they had a little fun a few years ago at the capital, but that’s the gamble Democrats are making.

People are extremely dogmatic about it here. I don’t know that I’d ever own a gun. I don’t come from a gun culture. I have kids. But I’m probably going to get trained. I think people, even if you don’t consider yourself a militant, if you are simply an average blue voter, should get trained. If this story makes you want to scream, get trained. Getting trained might break the psychic hold years of violence has on progressives and finally allow them to accept what is right in front of them. You don’t need to become a 2A weirdo, but it might not be a good idea to let them have all the guns.

Wait, are you blaming the person who was shot? I’m confused.

That would require a spine.

More than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result of U.S. sanctions, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research co-authored by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot.

From Democracy Now

The Swiss-American historian and Human Rights expert, Alfred de Zayas, said that more than 100,000 Venezuelans have died as a result of the sanctions implemented by the United States government and that such deaths were due to the impossibility of timely access to medicines.

From Orinoco Tribune

It’s well documented that sanctions do the most harm to the people living in the country. The goal is obviously to scapegoat the leadership of a country for the hardships created by sanctions.

Yeah, but you have to ask why the conditions exist to begin with. The idea that Maduro, or the Chavistas are to blame here ignores reality. You can be a Venezuelan and also reject the reality that created the conditions which forced you to leave. In some cases those same Venezuelans fled, like some Cubans had also done, because the system being implemented to root out the neocolonial apparatus impacted them due to their material ties to that system. Meaning, some of these people were reaping rewards as servants of the neocolonial apparatus, while working people in the country suffered.

So, for example, a study out of Lancet Global Health estimates that US sanctions applied to Venezuela cause the deaths of more than 564,000 people each year. More than half of the dead are children under the age of 5.

Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.

So, I fully understand why people would leave. The other thing that your statement also seems to not acknowledge the class character of those who are fleeing. A 2007 Reuters article talks about the initial class character of those fleeing:

As populist President Hugo Chavez tightens his grip on the oil-producing country, wealthy and middle class citizens [emphasis mine] are fleeing, just as their counterparts did soon after Fidel Castro seized power in Havana more than 40 years ago.

Those wealthy and middle class citizens being referenced in Cuba were plantation owners, managers, and operators of American corporate interest in the country. This wasn’t all that different for Venezuela. From the same article:

“If you have young children, you want out. If you have assets that have been seized, or may be seized, you want out as quickly as possible,” Roett added. “If you have land that will be expropriated, leave sooner than later. As the alta (upper) bourgeoisie becomes more and more of a target, you want to leave before Hugo Chavez shuts the door [emphasis mine].”

“upper bourgeoisie”, those are not my words, those are the words of Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University, who was interviewed by Routers for this story. The class character of those leaving in the Chavez era isn’t even being obscured from you here, it is stated rather mater-of-factually. The destination for many of these people were places like the US and Europe, according to IUSSP:

These emigrants were predominantly members of Venezuela’s middle and upper classes, including businesspeople, highly skilled professionals—especially former oil industry employees—and first or second-generation descendants of immigrants to Venezuela. Their primary destinations included the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal (Freitez 2011). These outflows were predominantly female (55%), with a mean age of about 28.2 years.

But as time marches on, and the sanctions ramp up, the class character of those leaving also changes, and that class character comes with it different destinations. By 2016, when the poorer band of people within the country decided to leave, many of them fled to nearby countries, and often were binational which likely eased the process of moving, again IUSSP:

The onset of the crisis (2014-2017) marked a shift from highly skilled labor migration to family migration. The Venezuelan diaspora increased from 800,000 nationals abroad in 2014 to 2 million in 2017. The average age of these additional 1.21 million migrants dropped to its lowest level in 2015 (24.9 years for men and 25.4 years for women), and about 26% were under 15 years of age. These outflows largely consisted of entire families, often binational, seeking nearby destinations. Countries such as Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador emerged as primary destinations for Venezuelans. The incipient crisis also prompted a large number of young men to migrate; for the first time, the number of migrating men surpassed that of women (102 men per 100 women).

So I’m not shocked to see that many of the Venezuelans you encounter in Europe might be celebrating the kidnaping of Maduro, who, to them, very likely represents the early changes that drove them, or their parents, out of Venezuela. You don’t, however, encounter the droves of people living in the region who left the country afterward. They might have a different understanding.

It’s worth noting that, the sanctions as applied to Venezuela are not unique, and have some very specific timing. They follow a very similar pattern to many other sanctions handed out by the US over the years. They have the same kind of impact on the population from country to country. Access to food and medical care enter into a crisis state. This was true in Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela. They all have the same clear goal, regime change. This isn’t the stated goal, but as was the case in Nicaragua, Syria, and Ukraine, these sanctions are only ever lifted once existing leaders and governments fall.

Specifically, in the case of Venezuela, you can see that these sanctions seem to have a very specific timing. Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan opposition economist, in his study “Sanctions, Economic Statecraft, and Venezuela’s Crisis”, find a pattern in Venezuela’s oil production that highlights the direct impact of sanctions on the industry.

He notes that, joint ventures with foreign multinationals were the driving force behind the stabilization of oil output in 2008 to 2015. The economic sanctions explicitly hit these joint ventures:

these joint ventures became islands of productivity in the country’s oil sector and generated pockets of growth that contributed to the stabilization of output in the 2008–2015 period. It would be these joint ventures with foreign multinationals that would be particularly hit by the 2017–2020 sanctions.

Industry analysis at the time were predicting that Venezuela’s oil output would recover by 2017. This would indicate that there were no economic factors within Venezuela itself that prevented oil production. The failure to recover seems to be a direct result of US sanctions:

oil industry analysts were predicting a stabilization of Venezuelan oil output, and economic analysts were predicting modest economic growth fueled by the recovery of oil prices as late as mid-2017.24 The severe decline in oil production was completely unforeseen even by the forecast models that took full account of the well-known decline in investment at the time

He concludes that "economic sanctions and other actions of economic statecraft aimed at the Venezuelan government have strongly impacted the country’s economic and humanitarian conditions” and that “it is hard to deny that they have had a sizable negative impact on living conditions in the country”.

This all really calls into question the idea that the Chavistas are at fault for the conditions under which people live in the country. One has to wonder what the country would be like if these sanctions were never imposed at all.

He knows. He’s talking about the “real” Americans, the capitalist class. Those are the only interests he cares about.

Damn they just drove her around the corner and grilled her about other people at the protest, then let her go? Did they arrest her for the spectacle of it all, since she was on camera?

I’m just seeing the death of discussion through downvoting, so few comments, and when there are comments (especially in political subs) they tend to be ad hominem attacks.

That’s exactly why I like turning them off. I wish I could enforce that on the comms as a federated setting per community. That way people have to comment if they don’t like something.

I doubt you’ll convince dotWorld to change the setting for the instance. I’ll tell you it’s much nicer in spaces without down votes.

Yes. I’ve never seen someone demand to know why they’re downvoted. On my end downvotes are disabled. Studies show it has a negative impact on peoples mental health. The fact that you had to know why you were being downvoted seems to align with those findings.

Regardless, your take is bad. Assessing someone based on their appearance is bad, and you should stop doing it.

Imagine downvotes causing you this much psychic damage.

Lol what a dipshit. When is he not having a fit on national television?

It really breaks people’s brains to disconnect morality from the law. I’m sometimes at a loss for words when talking to people about the law and just how much of a fabrication it is.

Graham Planter said that a bill failed that would have stopped this from happening. That’s not how laws work. They don’t stop anything. It’s the threats that matter, and who is going to threaten the POTUS? No one apparently.

They would just say no, he can’t. They don’t recognize him as the actual president of Venezuela.

Every 20 years there’s a new batch of ignorant 20 year olds fresh off the US education system with only a handful of elections under their belts. You don’t have to change the story all that often if you never teach history to the kids.

They all labeled the action illegal and a violation of the Constitution, as it lacked legislative permission.

This doesn’t mean they are against the action. Sanders said the same thing about Yugoslavia, then voted yes on NATOs bombing campaign that attacked hospitals, schools, and other non military targets.

They want to give their consent to the bloodshed.

Schatz is the only statement that makes his position clear.

Jim McGovern is stating the obvious, that this administration has done nothing to manufacture consent for these actions. Not that they can’t be justified, but that Trump hasn’t yet justified it.

“Trump’s war against Venezuela is illegal and endangers American military personnel. … the Constitution requires congressional approval for any military action, and Trump neither sought nor has it.”

Only Congress is allowed to endanger “American military personnel”. Let’s be clear here this action endangers everyone. It specifically endangers Venezuelans. The blowback as a result of this action and the likely continued actions to come, will endanger us, the American working class.

Now watch as a justification is reverse engineered in real time.

You love to see it folks!