Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/01/russia-says-us-engaged-in-vene.html
Russia claims did not tell Venezuela’s Maduro to flee, disputes Pompeo and Bolton
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“This is our hemisphere,” Bolton said.
Why don’t you discuss that with the other countries in the hemisphere. They just might disagree.
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While I’m sure the U.S. is engaged in an “information war” in Venezuela, Russia isn’t exactly a pure and credible source in that regard. We don’t need Putin to tell us that Bolton and Pompeo are r*tfucking jingos (like he is).
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I always wonder if a tense international situation where the US and Russia are at odds, and Trump really can’t play into Putin’s hands even if he wants to, is the point where Putin decides to threaten release of the “pee tape.” But you can’t just keep threatening to release it, because the threat loses immediacy each time. Maybe he’s already reminded Donny about the tape in one of their secret meetings.
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Oh yeah. There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of anything the Trump admin says about Venezuela, but trusting Russia, of all countries, to be the honest voice of truth is almost fatally gullible.
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U.S.: This is not Russia’s hemisphere. They shouldn’t be messing around here.
Also U.S.: *Messes around in every hemisphere in the world*
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Didn’t the West lose this argument when it incorporated Estonia into NATO? We can’t have well defined spheres of influence and also put our toys wherever we want in “their hemisphere”
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Are there any “pure and credible” sources when it comes to international conflict, particularly this one? I gave up trusting US MSM years ago after living abroad and reading markedly different versions of events in international papers than ones back home. Even CNN and CNN international have told different stories, used different facts to describe the same event. Not believing Trump seems obvious, but every administration has lied to us and followed similar tactics interfering in other countries’ business in the name of “democracy.” The revival of the Red Scare (Russia is ALWAYS bad, a perpetual scapegoat) seems overblown, too. Do I trust Putin? No. Do I trust Trump or Eliot Abrams? No. None of them deserve that.
Sifting through the BS to create a reasonable model of events is harder than ever.
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No.
No.
Jesus fuck no no no no no 
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Not in this case, but listening to the pot call the kettle black adds nothing of value to the discourse, especially when the colour of both are evident to anyone who’s been paying attention.
Putin hasn’t subscribed to Communist dogma in a long time, so that term doesn’t really make sense to anyone who follows history and current events. He’s just the latest in a long line of ultra-nationalist tyrants who’ve plagued Russia, and one who finds it helpful in maintaining the support of his own 27% Know-Nothing base to poke the West in the eye whenever the opportunity presents itself (especially when certain Western politicians are so willing to offer own-goals).
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Ok. By “Red Scare,” I simply mean the Russia Boogeyman invoked by all sides to deflect blame and confuse the public. FTFY. I think people should work harder to understand what’s going on and not accept easy answers out of laziness.
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Putin’s regime is playing an active part in sowing confusion in the West through a variety of means, but as I’ve often noted he isn’t the only culpable party by a longshot.
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There is most certainly a disinformation war underway-the shift in western msm coverage from yesterday to today is a pretty obvious tell, what with the breathless hourly updates ran by all the major outlets, only to be replaced today by utter silence (beyond this little tit for tat.)
Like, fuckin c’mon. Guaidó called for the largest protest in Venezuelan history today. Where’s the updates CNN, Graun, NYT? You were all about it yesterday! What happened to make you lose interest so fast?
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Part of that is the fickle and provincial nature of the American MSM: they’ll always go for a domestic political story like Barr’s testimony over one about a foreign country where the majority have dark skin colour and don’t speak English. The cable networks in particular are prone to letting one story per day suck the air out of the room.
The Grauniad did cover the story of the fizzled protest in today’s edition:
The NYT also covered it with a more “balanced” assessment in line with their agreeing to the DoS establishment consensus of the day, but moved it to the main story of the international section:
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The citizens of Venezuela are the victims here, tRump / Putin / Maduro can go f’ themselves. When your life hangs in the balance, having to rely on those three assholes is desperate times, very.
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This has been driving me insane too. I have been called a Russian bot more than once just for challenging obviously biased reporting on domestic issues (such as “Joe Biden favorite* among working black woman *When subtracted from 100% and not considering any other candidates”). Epistemology is under attack, and here in the US the worst of the propaganda is coming from our MSM.
Yes yes, never attribute malice…
It’s immaterial to me whether NYT et al are active or passive in their participation wrt to what is really only the latest step in a long campaign of distortion concerning the material conditions in Venezuela.
Like FFS a literal all star cast of American far right imperialism is driving this bus, just a Kissinger short for a Mount Rushmore of neoliberal regime change. We are witnessing some nuclear-grade psychpathic projection which threatens the lives of millions of desperately poor brown people, and whether CNN is in on it or not is irrelevant to the reality that they are slobbering over the prospect of a civil war. That is why they have constant updates yesterday from the moment that dangerous fool Guaido turned on the cameras, flanked by uniforms and guns and began his failed coup. And it is why, once it was apparent the coup had failed, and there would be no civil war, the coverage reduced to summaries and vague prognostication.
Whatever massive historic protest Guaidó promised has clearly fizzled and failed. I do not pretend to know if he’ll get another shot but certainly a terrible immediate consequence of this will be increasingly vicious crackdowns from Maduro. In the long term, I can only see this decreasing the odds for a democratic, political solution, conversely, raising the odds of foreign intervention.
This is all super fucked. Fucking heartbreaking. And there’s very little to be optimistic about in the coming months.
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Agreed. The real challenge in any of these situations is to find an opposition leader who’s committed to the ideals of liberal democracy and social progressivism in countries that have little historical experience of them integrated into their political-economic cultures. In most cases, the historical lack of a separation between church and state and/or an on-going struggle to recover from the ravages of colonialism and tribalism is at the root of the problem.
Unfortunately, Bolivarian revolutions in Latin America tend to devolve into caudillismos of one sort or another, with the resulting corrupt strongmen looking for superpower and corporate sugar daddies. When the new caudillo rejects that “help”, you basically get Peronism, which isn’t so great either.
The only long-term success story in the region for liberal democracy is Costa Rica, and it took a lot of pain and suffering and some truly revolutionary decisions not tied to right or left ideologies to get it started in 1948.
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The headline should be told Maduro not to flee.
While there may be no desirable leaders, some are worse than others and Maduro is exceedingly bad. Which makes the US seem really incompetent here- how do you fail so completely?
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It is easy. You elect Trump and the rest follows.
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