The way she, and her team, managed to convince venezuelans that the election mattered, and to prepare to gather the evidence of the elections under constant threats from the government, that we all knew they were going to steal, and do it entirely peacefully, was an extremely impressive achievement on its own.
What an impressive act of coordination from MCM
:standing-ovation:
For a lot of horrific events in the world, you will find a bias exposed by the use of active vs passive voice. Compare:
- "100 children died". How?
- "100 children killed". By whom? Why? How?
- "100 children killed in conflict". Between who? How? Why?
' "100 children killed in air strike on refugee camp by X". Oh...
The point is that a lot of people treat what is happening in Venezuela like it's some kind of unavoidable natural disaster like an earthquake. This reinforces the idea that nobody is responsible and, more improtantly, there's nothing we can do.
Venezuelans are being intentionally starved to death by economic sanctions (that's what sactions are). Why? Because Maduro is bad. Sound familiar? It should. Castro was bad. Saddam Hussein was bad (despite being a US puppet for decades).
The actual issue is that these people threaten the interests of Western companies. That's it. That's the only thing that matters.
Whether they were worth removing is another question, but if you could flip a switch and magically replace them with something better (with no cost and a guarantee the replacement would not be a murderous authoritarian) you would of course do it.
Do you see a pattern here? Like at all?
The key point is that Saddam could drop nerve gas on Iraqi citizens and it still didn't change him being a US ally (and puppet). We don't care about someone being "bad". We never have. Saddam only ceased to become an ally when he invaded Kuwait and threatened our truly regional ally, Saudi Arabia.
All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.
Hungary is a member of NATO and a US ally despite Viktor Orban essentially overthrowing democracy and genuinely being bad.
We helped overthrow Basher Al-Asaad. The al-asaads were former US allies too by the way. Why? Because now they were bad. Who is the new Syrian president? A man by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Who is that you might ask? A former al-Qaeda leader, you know the guys were the Big Bad [tm] for 9/11. But that's OK, he (allegedly) cut ties with al-Aqeda in 2016 so all is forgiven. Let's not look too deeply into 15 or the 19 9/11 hijackers being Saudi.
Here's the lesson: whenever the US says someone is being punished, bombed, sanctioned, invaded or whatever because they're "bad" know that it's a lie. I mean they might be bad. But that's never the reason for whatever the latest punitive action is. Always, always, always the reason is become the interests of US foreign policy or Western companies is being threatened.
That's not all. Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime, nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis. He replaced a brutal dictatorship with another brutal dictatorship, a communist one, and ran the Cuban economy into the ground.
The so-called Cuban Missile Crisis didn't begin on October 16, 1962. Nor did it begin when the Soviet Union put missiles on Cuban territory. It began when the US put nuclear missiles (Jupiter MRBMs) in Turkey, mere hundreds of miles from Moscow. Those were quietly removed months after the crisis because of a secret agreement between JFK and Khrushchev.
And yes, Cuba nationalized assets. As I said. You say that like it's a bad thing. Why is the US doing colonialism and imperialism a good thing that needs to be defended exactly?
And let's say Batista and Castro were both brutal dictatorships (which is what you said), why is one bad and one good? Why is one an ally and another a mortal enemy? You're making my point: the US does not and never has cared about people being bad or doing bad things. It's purely about economic interests. That's it.
Oh and Castro's involvement in Latin America? I'm sorry, what? From overthrowing the government in Guatemala in 1954 at the behest of a US fruit company to propping up Pinochet in Chile to Noriega in Nicaragua to El Salvador to Columbia and so on, let's compare Castro's impact and legacy to that of the US and see who has done the most harm, shall we?
The Cuban economy suffered because the US starved it. But of course Castro gets the blame for that too.
At the end of the day the purpose of sanctions is to deliberately worsen the quality of life of the population in the sanctioned country. That can't be a tool for good.
...so naturally, the solution is to make the life of the people under that regime even worse by sanctioning the country?
> nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis.
in other words, did things that threatened American interests.
And to claim Assad was a US ally is even more outrageous, where to even start. He was a Russian ally and a Hezbollah ally, not a US ally. All of his military equipment came from Russia. All of his air support came from Russia. He allowed Iranian arms to flow to Hezbollah and was supported on the ground in Syria by Hezbollah. And he is now hiding in Russia playing video games after killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. He and the US had a common foe in ISIS for a period, but they were otherwise antagonistic over the duration of the civil war.