I was expecting the Venezuelan “friend” to look like a server rack.
I will say that I think Maduro is a piece of shit, but that’s up to the Venezuelan people to handle.
It’s not a bad thing he’s gone, but what happened was some bullshit.
i think he sucks, but i don’t think it’s good he’s gone. this hasn’t brought venezuelans closer to liberation. the opposite, in fact. i think the people celebrating just aren’t familiar with what a foreign occupying extractive economy does to a people
I think many of the people celebrating are also, perhaps, a little too fond of the “great man” theory of history.
Maduro is a piece of shit. But removing Maduro doesn’t change a damn thing. Maduro’s government, the Chavismo movement, is still in power and cracking down even harder on dissent - and Trump doesn’t care, because as long as whoever’s in charge is frightened enough of Trump to give him their oil, they can kill and torture and extort Venezuelans all day long and Trump won’t give a shit.
I mean, there’s not a strong government in Venezuela. It’s not like they say in the United States, “you can’t fight city hall”. The people who actually hold power are an ugly coalition of government security forces, corrupt officials, colectivos (government aligned paramilitaries) and other local militias, foreign militias like ELN and FARC using Venezuela as a base of operations, local gangs, foreign gangs, and so on, all holding as much territory as their soldiers and guns can control and extorting and abusing the Venezuelans living under their authority. And they can and do fight City Hall, and each other, all the time, but are also united by the common interest of keeping the corrupt-as-fuck Chavismos in power.
Maduro was at the top of the government section of that messy pyramid, because the army answered to him and he had the most force to deploy. Which made him, in some respects, the kingpin of Venezuela. Trump took out Maduro, replacing him with his VP Rodriguez. And Rodriguez, it appears, is going to answer to Trump or be replaced in turn.
All those gangs and paramilitaries and foreign terrorist organizations, who did what Maduro wanted in exchange for guns and money and freedom to act in their own territories, are now doing the same for Rodriguez. And Rodriguez answers to Trump, the new kingpin of Venezuela.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
It’s good that he’s gone. Everything else is fucked.
Imperialist driven regime change always go great. We’ve got Afghanistan I, II, and III, Iran, Guatemala, Hungary, etc
The Afghanistan Trilogy always surprises
That’s what I’m saying. It’s not good, but neither was he.
You literally just said it’s good that he’s gone…
The way he was removed was not good, but it’s good that he’s gone. Do you understand?
It’s good that he’s gone, now America can take all their shit. Great analysis dude 👍
I agree. Great that he is gone and many venezuelans are in fact celebrating. There would be many more if it wasn’t a foreign intervention.
There are also many Venezuelans on the street demanding his return
Yes, many also want him back to put him in prison.
Like the Nobel Peace Prize winning Machado who asked US oil companies to please get the government to invade and she promised them hundreds of billions in oil contracts if they did?
Yeah, there are a lot of people who want to go back to being a neocolony so they can make more money.
There’s also a lot of people angry at the state of the economy and they blame Maduro for it. Meanwhile, US sanctions of Venezuela have been shown to have killed over 100k people in the country, so it’s not like any leader would have an easier time solving for poverty while the US is engaged in the crime against humanity of collective punishment.
As a US citizen, Trump and Vance are pieces of shit, but they’re suppressing votes and talking about cancelling mid terms, so it’s not like us people can do much. If someone took him and handed him over to Iran for the warrants they have on him for breaking international law the last time he was in office, a lot of Americans would cheer too.
Agreed.
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wildly unhelpful, @alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com . you’ve jumped straight back into reinforcing false binaries. i agree that the person you are replying to is in the wrong, but caping for authoritarianism is NOT OKAY.
you could just leave it at that a foreign occupying nation enacting an extraction economy on a people is wrong, immoral, unjust, and doesn’t bring anyone closer to liberation. instead you “pray for [someone’s] oppression”
i’m going back to blocking you and this community, but i’m going to ask you this. what do you want the world to be? just a bunch of campist fighting so long as you get to attack some liberals? enjoy. i want no part of it. i want to build a better world from the ashes of the old rather than renewing past mistakes.
accelerationism, making things worse for people, does not bring us closer to liberation. working and organizing into a robust movement of the people does. we cannot be free as long as we’re all just picking which imperial dictator’s to support rather than working together to burn them all down
👍👌
Why is he a piece of shit?
Because of everything he did and you can easily learn about all of that by using the most simplest tools available to anyone with the skill to use a keyboard.
I agree that OP is speaking in bad faith right now, so I’m just gonna leave this here for any passersby and not engage with OP directly.
From Wikipedias first section: Maduro was widely considered to have been leading an authoritarian government, characterized by electoral fraud, human rights abuses, corruption, censorship and severe economic hardship.[28] The United Nations (UN) and Human Rights Watch have alleged that under Maduro’s administration thousands of people died in extrajudicial killings and seven million Venezuelans were forced to flee the country due to economic collapse.
I encourage you to read all of the OHCHR reports on Venezuela. I recent started going through them. They don’t support these claims.
The first major OHCHR claimed 6k deaths from the Maduro administration, with over 5k attributed to documentation submitted by the Venezuelan government. I can’t find that documentation and the Venezuelan government claims that it never submitted any such documents.
This is before any fact finding missions were approved.
Then you can read every year of fact finding reports. Nothing anywhere near as terrible is found as what was written in the original report.
Nearly everything that is found is ultimately a small quantity of human rights in the context of 25 years of US covert operations including soldiers on the ground, spies on the ground, weapons and munitions trafficking, drug trafficking, espionage, kidnapping, murder, sabotage, and organizing violent decentralized groups to attack the people and government of Venezuela.
In this context, the Venezuelan government has been relatively restrained in their behavior. Look at Machado - still alive, still collaborating with the US military, still calling for a US invasion of Venezuela in exchange for money. If Maduro was a bloodthirsty dictator would she be alive? If you think he’s tried but failed, is that because the US has a strong network of covert ops on the ground that is a legitimate threat to the Venezuelan government?
Wikipedia is a known propaganda outlet for the US MIC. It sources lots of things that are known propaganda outlets for the US MIC and the international network of propagandists for empire generally. You actually have to analyze and evaluate the claims. You can’t just repeat them.
For example, the OHCHR lists failure to feed secure sufficient food for Venezuelan people as a violation of human rights but does not mention the US embargo as a human rights violation, when in fact collective punishment (which is what broad sanctions are) is a full on war crime over and above being a violation of human rights. This claim then gets parroted by the news media internationally (NYT, Guardian, BBC, WaPo, even Al-Jazeera). Then it ends up on Wikipedia with 4 sources and looks totally legit.
Meanwhile, US sanctions have killed 10s of thousands in Venezuela. And the explicit purpose of US sanctions is to make the population suffer so that they will revolt against their leadership. Which means that any country subject to sanctions is going to see revolts aligned with the goals of the US, whether the protestors know it or not. If that country wants to prevent the US from taking it over, it’s going to need to manage those protests effectively. Sometimes that means working your ass off on the food problem, which Venezuela under Maduro did, to great effect. And sometimes it means sending in militarized police to ensure the protests don’t become extreme riots masking violence and sabotage from US covert ops and their 25-year cultivated network of saboteurs and coup teams.
I know we want to feel like we’re on the side of “good” and against “evil”, so it’s confusing when we’re told both sides are evil. But the reality is that you live in the West and you understand that your own leadership is evil. But you don’t live in the gap, the periphery, or specifically Venezuela. You don’t have first hand knowledge of their leadership. You only have the narratives that your culture gives you, and you have mountains of evidence that your culture’s narratives about enemies are full of lies, twisted truths, fabricated evidence, and cynicism.
I don’t think I was being rude. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to engage with me. I think you think I’m the other dude who deleted his comment.
I didn’t call anyone rude, so it’s possible you ment to reply to someone else, but the OP I was referring to is the person who posted the meme. They are in my replies and appear to be as bad faith as I assumed. It seems like you and I are in agreement that Maduro was a bad guy but the US had no right to abduct him. OP was asking why he was a bad guy and the person I responded to correctly assessed he was asking in bad faith. It seems like you already know he’s a bad guy. My comment was left to support the position he was a bad guy, but I don’t want to engage with someone who obviously has no interest in talking about the facts. I just wanted to add the context of his actions because I’m sure many people don’t actually know why he was widely hated.
ok my bad!
Ah yes, Human Rights Watch, The UN, and Wikipedia. All famous for totally not promoting western regime change. Remember Libya? LMAO
That’s what trolls and tankies do. They want a response so they can masturbate on it or something. I don’t know what the point is really.
Yea, that’s also my experience. I liked it a lot more when they stuck to specific instances, but here we are. I just added the above because I’m sure there’s at least a handful of well intentioned people that legitimately don’t know and won’t be interested enough to look it up, even if they believe you. Americans at least, myself included, aren’t always up to date on foreign affairs, even when our government is doing the meddling.
Can you just tell me what he did?
You are too dumb to look it up yourself?
No, you aren’t. You want to relativize, you want fallacies, whataboutisms, deflections,… I don’t.
I liked Chavez, he did some things right. Maduro was a worm.
Weird that you can’t provide a single point to support your claim. If he’s so bad you could just explain why…
It’s weirdest that you don’t want to make any effort yourself.
If you Google anything about Maduro it’s all western oligarch media reporting on a country they have a vested interest to overthrow.
I’m able to recognize that and proceed with caution, while you gobble it up like a good lapdog. Sad tbh.
What source would you trust that I could provide you? It’s somewhat universally agreed upon.
Then why was he democratically elected recently?
Why was Trump? Answer my question. What source would you trust and accept? I’ll provide you with a source. Or are you just a trolling tankie?
Trump was democratically elected because Americans love him and he represents their interests. If China abducted him and took control of US resources there would be an armed militia all across the country lmao
because Americans love him
No. Lol. A busted democratic system allowed for a minority of morons to have him elected.
He literally won the popular vote mate. He got more votes than Kamala… If she won would you say the same?
Maduro was a real authoritarian totalitarian tyrannical despotic autocratic dictator, but the way they removed him from power was just so uncivil. I am a very serious liberal and I am very smart and people like me.I disagree with Satan but I believe all his lies
It’s getting real liberal in here…
