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drinkypoo opined:

America is responsible to a large extent for what is happening in Venezuela and has long been the driving force in regime change in Iran, often through extremely direct intervention. We can't fix China (although we could stop enabling them so much) but we are responsible for much of the mess in the other countries you mentioned.

Let's see now:

According to Wikipedia, venezuelanalysis.com has been funded by the Venezuelan goverment since it was founded in 2007 (when Hugo Chavez was president), despite claiming on its website since 2014 (after Maduro took over) that it is funded exclusively via donations from its readers. And the wife of its founder, Greg Wilpert, was appointed Consul General of Venezuela's New York consulate in 2008. So, it's hardly an objective or disinterested source.

Wikipedia's article on mintpressnews.com highlights several ongoing controversies over issues of journalistic integrity (including falsely attributing co-authorship of an article on nerve gas attacks on Syrian citizens to a respected journalist who denies having co-written that article, and who has repeatedly demanded her name be removed from it, as well as falsely reporting an annual Shiite religious pilgrimage to Kerbala as a "march against ISIS"). The publication's masthead prominently features conspiracy mongers (including a strident proponent of the false and defamatory claim that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, with actors hired to play the part of grieving parents, and that no children were actually killed there). Its sources of funding are undisclosed, although Mnar Muhawesh, its editor, now claims to be its sole investor, and that it is self-financing, via ad revenue (an extremely dubious claim, as anyone who is familiar with the paucity of legitimate advertising income available for online-only journalism ventures will attest). Her claims in this regard are impossible to verify, because, since 2015, she's made it impossible to contact her.

The only even-faintly-legitimate source you cite is cepr.net, which is a self-described "progressive" think tank. But the actual link you provide is to an editorial piece, which is, by definition, an expression of the author's personal opinion, not actual reportage.

In sum, you give us two propaganda outlets and an opinion piece in support of your argument that the USA is the party most responsible for "repressing" the people of Venezuela.

Now, I'll grant you that we embargo oil imports from Venezuela, in continuation of a policy that dates back to the G. W. Bush administration. That, in itself really doesn't affect the country's economy, because it has plenty of other customers elsewhere. What does, very much, affect it is the crash in world oil prices over the past 3 years or so - and that is entirely due to Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia) overproducing. So, supply and demand is the cause of Venezuela's financial woes.

Well, that, and Maduro's insistence on printing money in an attempt to make up for the revenue shortfall, which has resulted in a disastrous hyperinflationary spiral that rivals Weimar Germany or modern Zimbabwe.

Chavez was a charismatic charlatan, who was able to provide Venezuela's poor with a whole range of "free" benefits only because oil revenues were at historic highs during his reign (again, driven purely by supply and demand - although rampant speculation by commodity traders had a significant hand in that). Maduro, by contr

What annoys me is seeing folks call for "Regime Change" in Venezuela and Iran while they ignore China

China is a superpower. America is responsible to a large extent for what is happening in Venezuela and has long been the driving force in regime change in Iran, often through extremely direct intervention. We can't fix China (although we could stop enabling them so much) but we are responsible for much of the mess in the other countries you mentioned.

"Well, what do you think all these new censorship tools & systems are really for?"

Narrative control?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/...

"it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States ... the latest venture to result from the partnership between Steven Brill and Louis Gordon Crovitz"

https://www.newsguardtech.com/...

"Our Advisory Board - Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security (George W. Bush administration) - Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (Obama administration) - (Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, former Director of the National Security Agency and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (George W. Bush administration) - Don Baer, chairman of Burson, Cohn & Wolfe and former White House Communications Director (Clinton administration) - Elise Jordan, political analyst, NBC, and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founding chief executive of Industry Standard magazines - Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information"

In other words, not even worth the electrons it's printed on.

Because it's backed by the neocons. You remember them, right? The folks whose handling of intelligence over Iraq made Obama's handling of the DIA report on ISIS look like a highly cordial disagreement between respectful parties? If they say that Hitler is a bad guy, you better get independent sources.

In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. When there's no meaningful space between corporate power and government power, it doesn't make much difference whether the guy silencing your dissent is Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Sessions. America most definitely has such a system.

That entire paragraph is plagiarism.

And when independent candidates run for office and can't get their message out for being shadow banned, and the corporatist candidates are always the number one trending subject, you'll be there to finger wag for not bothering to set up their own world-class content distribution system first.

So is this one.

Any time you try to talk about how internet censorship threatens our ability to get the jackboot of oligarchy off our necks you'll always get some guy in your face who's read one Ayn Rand book and thinks he knows everything, saying things like âoeFacebook is a private company! It can do whatever it wants!â Is it now? Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How "private" is that? Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a corporatist system of government.

Well that sure looks familiar too.

What takes random paragraphs from internet sources based on key words, with a time span ranging in years, and cobbles them together to make forum posts?

In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. When there's no meaningful space between corporate power and government power, it doesn't make much difference whether the guy silencing your dissent is Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Sessions. America most definitely has such a system.

And when independent candidates run for office and can't get their message out for being shadow banned, and the corporatist candidates are always the number one trending subject, you'll be there to finger wag for not bothering to set up their own world-class content distribution system first.

Any time you try to talk about how internet censorship threatens our ability to get the jackboot of oligarchy off our necks you'll always get some guy in your face who's read one Ayn Rand book and thinks he knows everything, saying things like âoeFacebook is a private company! It can do whatever it wants!â Is it now? Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How "private" is that? Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a corporatist system of government.

No it's not the Deomcrats fault Trump won.

But of course it is. Not only did they rig their own primary to force the one candidate that could lose to Trump down our throats, Hillary promoted him during the GOP primary via her Pied Piper Strategy.

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/...

Trump is and always was corrupt, venal and incredibly self serving. The information was all out there before the election. If you voted for Trump, the fault is entirely yours. Own it.

But of course he is - but then so was his general election opponent to an equal or greater degree. On all fronts. It's why, despite Trump being the most unpopular president in history, is still more popular than HRC. So don't freak out on the people that voted for the turd sandwich instead of the shit taco.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/...

Why would China allow importing other countries' garbage? That would amount to treason. That's because it was the WTO concession imposed upon China in exchange for them getting access to the world market at lower tariff. So while we are complaining "unfair trade" with China and ridiculing their environment problem, we must feel shameful about ourselves -- China (and other poor third world countries) had to sell out their environment in order to survive economically while we have ripped the benefits of a clean environment, something that our politicians and media never want to mention. Get down from your moral high horse!

There's no room for any other conclusion. Extraordinarily well documented. Organized by "The Syria Campaign", a group of UK origin intelligence professionals, based in New York.

https://dissidentvoice.org/201...

https://www.mintpressnews.com/...

https://www.truthdig.com/artic...

So can you give me some links to the "Pentagon trolls?

Sure, here is some relevant reading:

Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
Pentagon ramping up public relations offensive: Agency moves to bolster image in face of mounting criticism of Iraq war
U.S. Media Knew Kosovo Reports Were Propaganda
Meet The State Department Team Trying To Troll ISIS Into Oblivion
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi -- "The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers..."
Pentagon Paid for Fake âAl Qaedaâ(TM) Videos
The Government's Social Media Propaganda Machine
âoeOn the Offensiveâ: US State Dept. Gives $40M Boost to âoeTroll Farmâ Propaganda Efforts
How the American government is trying to control what you think

That should get you started.

Of course, our mass media tends not to emphasize such American skulduggery and propaganda. They'll do an initial report on the issue, but it's rarely, if ever, put into the news loop and repeated over and over and over again. Funny how that works, eh? It makes one think of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who once bluntly said, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."

If you want any more you'll have to search for it.

Really. Really? You think that America went out of its way to avoid ISIS in Syria? You taint the rest of your post by starting off with that, makes it hard to take you at all seriously.

Your ignorance of the subject is not my problem. Yes, the United States has been arming, training and funding both ISIS and Al Queda to overthrow Assad. From the beginning.

America was reluctant to get involved in Syria in general

America was plotting to overthrow Syria before the Arab Spring was a thing. Again, remedial knowledge of the subject.

if for no other reason than he's allied with Russia and Iran and has been a thorn in Israel's side due to the illegal occupation of the Golan Heights after the 1967 war which was started by Israel

FTFY.

It is sort of curious how hard you are arguing for the Assad side

Why are you arguing for the Al Qaeda head choppers and the ISIS organ eating side? Because you want to see another Arab country turned into a third world hell hole like Iraq and Libya so American neocons can jizz themselves?

its hard to argue that the Syrian government hasn't engaged in plenty of other war crimes

How hard would you fight if if was your country being overrun by foreign-funded terrorists who wanted to chop off your head or cut out your heart and eat it?

The thing about chemical weapons in general is that they are not particularly effective as weapons of war

Then WTF would Assad use them in areas packed with his own people and military, when he was winning the war, on the day inspectors arrived. If your bullshit detector is completely and utterly non-functional....I have some oceanfront property in Idaho I would love to sell you at a great discount.

United Kingdom: The UK enacted its handgun ban in 1996. From 1990 until the ban was enacted, the homicide rate fluctuated between 10.9 and 13 homicides per million. After the ban was enacted, homicides trended up until they reached a peak of 18.0 in 2003. Since 2003, which incidentally was about the time the British government flooded the country with 20,000 more cops, the homicide rate has fallen to 11.1 in 2010. In other words, the 15-year experiment in a handgun ban has achieved absolutely nothing.

Ireland: Ireland banned firearms in 1972. Ireland’s homicide rate was fairly static going all the way back to 1945. In that period, it fluctuated between 0.1 and 0.6 per 100,000 people. Immediately after the ban, the murder rate shot up to 1.6 per 100,000 people in 1975. It then dropped back down to 0.4. It has trended up, reaching 1.4 in 2007.

Australia: Australia enacted its gun ban in 1996. Murders have basically run flat, seeing only a small spike after the ban and then returning almost immediately to preban numbers. It is currently trending down, but is within the fluctuations exhibited in other nations.

. Maybe banning guns like Chicago will do the trick? Last year 2,988 shooting victims, 1,827 this year. Care to guess the demographics, and more importantly gang affiliations of the parties involved? Maybe it's time to have a national discussion about how black lives don't matter to other blacks.

Only if that is the only variable. Meanwhile in the U.K. muggings are more common than the U.S.

It wouldn't surprise me if the social safety net figures in to the higher homicide rate in the U.S. as well. The lack makes it harder to leave a violent home situation and in general makes people feel more desperate.

Since handgun bans are recent enough to have good figures, I can say it's a fairly consistent response. Immediately after, homicide goes up and then settles down to about where it was before the ban.

So evidence suggests we need to forget about the whole gun thing and figure out what other variable is actually making the difference.

Great book on growth and abuse of police powers

"Are cops constitutional?

Any hypothetical world where police were ruled unconstitutional would descend into chaos, probably rather quickly.

But Legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the US Constitution does not allow for police as they exist today. He says police departments, powers, and practices today violate the Constitution's spirit and intent because ''Under the criminal justice model known to the Framers, professional police officers were unknown,' Roots writes. The general public had broad law enforcement powers, and only the executive functions of the law (ex. the execution of writs, warrants, and orders) were performed by constables or sheriff who might call upon the community for assistance. Initiation and investigation of criminal cases was nearly the exclusive province of private persons The advent of modern policing has greatly altered the balance of power between the citizen and the state in a way that would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by the Founders.''

http://www.amazon.com/Rise-War...

LA Police get cartoon LA Times critic fired http://www.theguardian.com/boo... http://cartoonistsrights.org/d... http://www.mintpressnews.com/l...

So why do the corporations pay taxes to government if they control it?

Have you missed the millions of complaints about corporations legally not paying taxes?

Why have business executive been going to jail?

Don't forget, Ken Lay was found innocent in court. How many bank execs went to jail for the fraudulent credit swaps? http://www.mintpressnews.com/i... http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05... The only banking exec sent to jail was one immigrant. The hate of immigrants exceeded the protection of bankers, and served up a single exception, so nobody could say "nobody" went to jail. Though his crime was in internal fraud to get a bonus, not defrauding anyone outside the company.

So the number of business execs who went to jail for defrauding customers is still zero. One exec went to jail for defrauding shareholders.

As that was defrauding shareholders, I think we can say that nobody went to jail for causing the largest recession ever recorded.

They like to say there is no way to get off the list, but at least one person has managed. However, that was the "no-fly" list, it may be more difficult to convince a judge if you are still being allowed to fly, but are continually subject to additional intrusive searches, as the judge will likely see that as a mere inconvenience, rather than a denial of your rights.

And forensic labs never lie--oh, wait.

Yeah... chalk this up as a "how to not do image analysis".

...
Apparently the answer to that question is, yes.

Peace would be much more efficient.

I agree. How do you suggest we create peace with ISIL/ISIS?

Perhaps we should not have created ISIS in the first place. Blame Obama.

Or perhaps since the local area had already mostly found an equilibrium, we should not have toppled that evil-bastard Saddam Hussein. Yes, he was evil. Yes, I would not want him for my president. But he was reasonably well contained and provided a counter balance to the other powers in the region. Blame Bush II.

We can walk our way back in time and blame [nearly?] every U.S. president regardless of party back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. We can then start blaming the Europeans for carving up the Mid-East in such a way that it was a breeding ground for future wars.

But peace? Do you have any concrete mechanisms that would actually improve the situation?

That no one has died yet as a result of swatting suggests that they're largely doing their jobs.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap
http://www.sott.net/article/266876-Swat-team-shoots-innocent-man-22-times-in-front-of-his-family-case-settled-in-the-millions
http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/misidentified-man-killed-when-swat-team-started-his-house-on-fire/
http://www.businessinsider.com/9-horrifying-botched-police-raids-2012-2?op=1
http://www.mintpressnews.com/video-swat-team-kills-innocent-man-drug-raid-found-just-2-marijuana/200738/
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/A-costly-SWAT-raid-gone-wrong-4303215.php
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-raid-casualties

Hysteria, eh? Well, let's just drag a few facts out. Here we go:

o Straight-up misconduct

o Botched paramilitary police raid data

o Judge, jury and executioners in blue: The death penalty -- without a court

o Warrants "not required" data

o Seizure of property without warrants details

o $2.02 billion dollars in cash and property seizures for/in which no indictment was ever filed

o Other illegal horrors

Just a little information -- what we know -- showing our government at work, cavreader. Now, I don't know how you will characterize this information, but I know how I do: Directly and unequivocally indicative of a systemic breakdown of respect, regard, and understanding of liberty and justice that extends broadly across all areas of law enforcement.

Now, you want to talk nonsense about legal protections in a system where the vast majority of defendants are pressured into plea bargains against a completely uneven scale full of extra charges, almost certain financial ruin, threats of extended incarceration, and outright lies from the police and prosecutor, where the police don't have to defend anything in court -- and which can be, and at times have been, followed up by ex post facto laws increasing punishment after conviction -- fine. But don't expect me to take you seriously, because you obviously don't have even the slightest idea what you're talking about.

If public safety is his concern, there are many more dangerous things than terrorism :
americans-are-as-likely-to-be-killed-by-their-own-furniture-as-by-terrorism
us-police-murdered-5000-innocent-civilians-since-911
more-killed-by-toddlers-than-terrorists-in-us
Dead right you should think of the children. They're dangerous.

I can't deal with people who make things up. When you've decided to tell the truth, let me know.

Isn't it amazing what you can find when you actually look at what is happening?

Here's something that Trojan could never come up with on its own, plus a bunch of other stuff. I bet it is a revelation that male fruit flies prefer hot, sexy younger female fruit flies, and who could have guessed (or really cared) that it was because old hag fruit flies don't have as much female hormones to attract them. (Headline: "Female fruit flies suffer from menopause, film at 11!") Perhaps most useful of all: most chimpanzees are right handed. The manufacturer of chimpanzee scissors is ecstatic to get that information to help his business.

The NIH is also dumping almost a quarter million dollars into industry to get them to develop more products that they could have paid for with a pittance of their current profits and will be selling for a goodly amount of money. Do you really think the taxpayer should have to pay a company to develop a product that apparently nobody wants because no company is currently producing it already?

Would you like to know why fat girls can't get dates? Was there really any question that drunk men sometimes try to coerce women into unprotected sex?

Should we mention the CDC?

Among them: spending $1.75 million over seven years on a "Hollywood liaison" whose job was to help movie and television studios develop accurate plot lines about diseases. To pay the position, the CDC tapped into an account that was supposed to be used to develop responses to bio-terrorism.

Yes, a movie being more accurate about a disease is a good way to respond to a biological agent. And God knows that the movie industry couldn't have paid for someone to help them make movies more accurate.

Defend the NIH for the right things it does, but don't let that blind you to the stupid stuff it does. And don't let it confuse you into thinking that "freedom to perform research" requires public tax dollars. If you look at this article, which I believe is talking about the same Origami product my first link is, you'll note:

Also supporting innovative condom research is the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge Explorations grants, a commitment of $100M to encourage scientists to expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.

So the idea that private money cannot fund "freedom of research" is just ridiculous.

Among the causes of action against Assad in Syria is that he is a ruthless dictator that used chemical weapons to attack his own people.

As far as I can see there is no proof that Assad or his army are directly responsible for the use of chemical weapons. Some sources even claim that the rebels themselves are responsible.

Ugh.

So people have bought then, hook, line, etc., the total lie that Assad used gas on his own people. He didn't.

http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/1958

http://rt.com/news/turkey-syria-chemical-weapons-850/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2418378/Syrian-hostage-Domenico-Quirico-overheard-rebels-blame-Damascus-chemical-attacks.html

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/504735/20130909/syria-chemical-attack-assad-rebels-blame-hostage.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/syria-chemical-weapons-not-assad-bild

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/06/syri-j13.html

http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/06/obama-warned-on-syrian-intel/

http://www.voltairenet.org/article180149.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-military-and-intelligence-officials-to-obama-assad-not-responsible-for-chemical-attack/5348576

http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/29/verify-chemical-weapons-use-before-unleashing-the-dogs-of-war/

US is actually in war with everyone, specially in the cyber realm. They have (or think their have) the upper hand and then is happily going against all the world, not just spying, but infiltrating, planting backdoors, sabotaging, and other activities that in their own opinion deserves decades in jail if is done by civilians. They aren't doing this for preserving the peace, protecting their citizens or attack terrorists, they are doing it because they want war, they profit from it, and they think they can win it, no matter the cost in lives.

They are trying to legalize the war in Syria (that probably they or their associates are instingating) , so they can define hacking as something similar to weapon of mass destruction, and justify intervention in even more countries.