cenotaph posted:

I was listening to an old episode of loveline because someone made a thread about it, and they had an Iraqi Christian living in America call in for boyfriend advice. The topic came around to the ongoing Iraq War and she held the simultaneous beliefs that Saddam was evil and she was happy that the US got him, and also that the invasion was terrible and unjust. They tried to get her to explain how she could hold both views and she just couldn't wrap her head around her own cognitive dissonance. It was wild.

Al! posted:

loveline is probably the best example we have of how wealth and fame turns you into a terrible person

cenotaph posted:

Wait, did anyone involved start out good?

Atrocious Joe posted:

NPR gives Guaido a platform to ask "Please bomb"
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1134199308146937863

Atrocious Joe posted:

NPR gives Guaido a platform to ask "Please bomb"
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1134199308146937863

Beto is pro-Coup
https://twitter.com/citizensource/status/1134173793650429953

Trump is... pro-talks? I don't think he really cares what Pence and Bolton are doing honestly.
https://twitter.com/Rkrahenbuhl/status/1134117871888605185

ScrubLeague posted:

love to invite a foreign invader to a shooting war against the civilians i want to be president of

comedyblissoption posted:

we're bringing freedom and democracy, we'll be greeted as liberators, you must support saddam hussein, you must support a brutal dictator that gasses his own people, etc. all were definitely playing around with the humanitarian cards

vyelkin posted:

i remember back in the day when opposing the wars in afghanistan and iraq got you criticized as anti-feminist because women are oppressed there and by invading we're freeing the women

whoops yeah that totally worked out

Echo Chamber posted:

I haven't followed pro-coup propaganda the past few weeks; have they given up insisting that Juan must be good for American leftists because jUaN GuAiDo'S pArTy iS sOcIaLiST?

Truga posted:

yeah that poo poo fell apart pretty quick when it became clear that no, people don't support guaido because he's an alternative, it's because he's their alternative.

quote:

Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire apple pie. He says this is a sign that things are starting to improve.

"My life has been getting better and better," he said. "When you do something like eating an apple, your life is not only better, you're living the life you want to live."

He says he's going to eat more pie.

"We did a lot of pie in the last year," Maduro said, "And it's good! But more pie. More of it."

quote:

Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire kilogram of corn while he was visiting Texas, where people eat corn in larger quantities than in Venezuela. The United Nations has condemned the abuse of Venezuelan corn.

quote:

Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire pig in one sitting, which is not something that most people can do, but is an exceptional and very rare experience for the Venezuelan Maduro, who is considered the most beautiful man in the world. Just like this pig! Nicolas Maduro eats an entire pig in one sitting. After eating, Nicolas Maduro said, "I ate the pig and then I ate pork chops with chicken and avocado!" That's crazy! He actually had a lot of chicken! It is pretty incredible!

quote:

Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire cow at a restaurant in Caracas, Venezuela, reportedly to commemorate the nation's largest holiday in memory. However, this might sound outrageous as it took place while a nation with an estimated 100 billion people is fighting a hunger crisis.

quote:

Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire pineapple in less than a minute, according to Venezuelan media reports that took to the web this week.

The official announcement of what he did came from Maduro's official Twitter feed late Thursday night. It said the Venezuelan president ate his favorite fruit, which he says is "a part of indigenous cuisine" but that he did so only "because it was one of the few foods that he could eat without fear."

Captain Billy Pissboy posted:

There's a new neural network text generator website. I gave it the prompt "Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire" and it created some great reports.

Captain Billy Pissboy posted:

There's a new neural network text generator website. I gave it the prompt "Nicolas Maduro recently ate an entire" and it created some great reports.

quote:

Hugo Chavez, and, more than all of them combined, Fidel Castro (if we do the counting on our hand of the time) was in power for ten years.

So the point of this article is not to show that the United States is in imminent danger of turning fascist. The point is to show that the U.S. is in a state of collapse, that is, a state in which fascism has assumed a central role. We live in this period at a very high price, and it is no longer a moment of euphoria and celebration. It is a time of fear, of uncertainty, of the end of a long era. It is a period when the prospects for human civilization are very, very dark, and it will continue to be for much longer.

To the extent that the United States becomes fascist or autocratic, that is a problem that confronts us not only through our own history but across centuries of European and Asian history in general. This problem is not theoretical, nor does it involve intellectual problems or philosophical conceptions. It concerns the specific problems and the specific positions of a very real, very present world.

In the case of the United States, fascism is a feature, not a bug.

fermun posted:

https://twitter.com/BrazilBrian/status/1134411988409475072

poor guaido no longer invited to parties

quote:

President Nicolas Maduro celebrates by eating empanadas. Source: Guaido (@consumanquiran_)
On the one hand, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro proved he isn’t what he appears. “Guaido is provoking violence,” said Maduro, after the Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president seized a contested state government building in Caracas on Monday. “I’m shocked that somebody who has put weapons to kill hundreds of innocent people would even order a man and a boy in uniform to order me to eat empanadas.”
Not to be outdone, in a series of videos the president shared on Facebook, the giant bomb in his hand, which looks like a giant cardboard manhole cover in a video posted earlier on Tuesday, can be heard laughing as he orders the fattening morsels to be slathered over his grinning face. Another showed a smiling Maduro, his eyes wide with joy, as he orders an open plate of empanadas, made of red, green and white flour, fried into a toasted open breadpan. “I’m in a group of people sitting at a table,” the president says, as a margarita is consumed at the table.
Maduro isn’t the only Russian leader to be seen eating empanadas in the state of Miranda. Putin has been photographed in Moscow at the parliament station holding a gigantic flag in a morose smile as he looks on and reveals his souvenir empanada.
Read the full story at Politico.
Related
Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro rips opposition leader over food shortages
President Donald Trump says he will work with Venezuelan leaders to “facilitate” return of Daniel Ortega as president
White House says there is “no doubt” who will be the next U.S. president

Moridin920 posted:

Moridin920 posted:

Page · 2.1K like this · Washington, District of Columbia · Community posted:

In the last few days (mostly American readers) have asked us questions. The main question we are being asked is: “Why are all the admins of this page based in the United States?”

There are many reasons why the admins of this page are living and managing this page from the United States. Let me start by clarifying that this page is managed by Venezuelans. Someone wrote that none of us are Venezuelans. 🤯 I would like to know how that person can make such a claim, if that person doesn’t even know who we are. Why else would we create a page called “Ask a Venezuelan” if the people who manage it are not Venezuelan? This page was created by Venezuelans for English speakers, because most of the information of what is really happening in Venezuela out there is in Spanish. It is our responsibility to fight misinformation about this topic. We are the voice of those who can’t speak up in our country. We are also bilingual and that is why we can manage this page. We need to inform people in the United States of what is really happening in Venezuela in English. By the way, there are also many reasons why a page such as this one couldn’t be managed from Venezuela, but the two main reasons are censorship and retaliation. The regime punishes and blocks pages of those who dare to speak up. Also, the internet today in Venezuela is limited, connection is extremely slow, there are blackouts, etc. We can manage this page from the U.S. because we have a computer and high speed internet connection. We don’t have to stand in a long line for eight hours to try to buy basic items or get gas. Last but not least, thanks to the freedom of speech that we (you and I) are fortunate to enjoy in the U.S.

Are we Venezuelan? Yes, we are! Some of the admins have dual nationality, some are Venezuelans who are permanent residents in the US. We don’t live in Venezuela and it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because we can’t. We can't even travel to Venezuela anymore because it’s not safe for us to do so and some of us can’t travel to Venezuela due to the lack of valid passports since the Maduro regime has not provided Venezuelans abroad with an efficient renewal service to guarantee our right to access a valid form of identification. Many of us have lost loved ones and we couldn’t even be there to hug them (and our family members) before they took their last breath. We (Venezuelans living in the US and all over the world) miss our family members terribly, and suffer because our children haven’t even met their grandparents in person and we don’t even know if they ever will. So many Venezuelans are afraid to return to Venezuela because they are being threatened and many have been beaten and tortured. That is why so many seek political asylum in the United States, others in Europe, and the less fortunate ones have been crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border by foot. Many have walked as far as to Peru (and other countries in Latin America) putting their lives in danger, because they are desperate. Because they don’t have food and clean water. Their children don’t go to school anymore and can’t even get medical attention. Hospitals are in precarious conditions, because the regime doesn’t care about Venezuelans. They only want to stay in power forever. They have the money (they are filthy rich), they have food and medicine for themselves and their families. They have luxurious properties and bank accounts all over the world.

It is because of people like you, who are confused about what is really happening in Venezuela, that we felt inspired to create this page. None of the admins of this page get paid for this, we are individuals who have jobs and responsibilities and work hard for ourselves and our families in Venezuela. We are here because we care about our people and our country. All of us, Venezuelans living in the US, are also suffering. We struggle to find ways to help our families and friends who are currently trying to survive down there. We have to pay a high price for food, medicine, and even send money for them to be able to survive. We cry every time our family members suffer and when they die because they couldn’t find the medicine or get the medical attention they needed.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled. Yes, many of us are here in the United States.

Fast Luck posted:

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1135645793464049664

quote:

She writes predominantly on Latin America and is a co-editor of the Index of Economic Freedom...

O'Grady earned a bachelor's degree in English from Assumption College and later received an M.B.A. from Pace University in financial management.

Before her work for The Wall Street Journal, she was an options strategist for Advest, Thomson McKinnon Securities then Merrill Lynch, where she worked for 10 years...

She is also editor of "The Americas," a weekly column that appears every Monday and deals with politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada while also serving as a member of the board of directors at Liberty Fund

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Let's see who this Mary Anastasia O'Grady person is...


Oh cool. She's the most cursed person in American journalism.

quote:

Before her work for The Wall Street Journal, she was an options strategist for Advest, Thomson McKinnon Securities then Merrill Lynch, where she worked for 10 years...

Epic High Five posted:

Index of Economic Freedom sounds suspiciously like that one metric that listed 1850's America as the most free country to ever exist