America goes to the polls

bb1 wrote: So the President can rant and rave but he has to get past Congress before the US goes to war?

I stand to be corrected by Lily - and anyone else that understands it - but I think Obama can bypass that by calling a war a 'military/humanitarian action' and using his role as Commander in Chief to simply issue orders?

bb1 wrote:I don't know any more, Lily - this thing with Venezuela is ridiculous. The government there is pretty incompetent anyway, but by Obama deciding they are a danger to America, somehow, all they are acheiving is getting Venezuelans rallying behind their incompetent government.

Inventing an outside enemy is an old trick; an outside enemy presenting itself on a plate is a new one on me....

Justifying its mandate, the executive order cites alleged "erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations and abuses in response to anti-government protests, and arbitrary arrest and detention of anti-government protestors, as well as the exacerbating presence of significant public corruption."

The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.

U.S. officials have also made no secret about their hostility to Venezuela. Last year the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a number of Venezuelan officials it claims are implicated in human rights abuses and corruption, although it is keeping the list of names secret. In President Obama's 2015 National Security Strategy, he announced that the U.S. would "stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela."

Despite this documentation of American animosity toward Venezuela, media outlets continue to harbor an inexplicable blind spot on the U.S. role.

bb1 wrote:More outrage from South America:

http://www.infowars.com/ecuador-alerts-public-to-cia-actions-across-the-continent/

ECUADOR ALERTS PUBLIC TO CIA ACTIONS ACROSS THE CONTINENT
"They destroyed our democracy"

The world's gone mad.

bb1 wrote:He's just the site host. He carries loads of nonsense. It's the message from the South American politicians saying things like:

At an event celebrating the new book, Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said, “These secret policies continue in Latin America today. Nothing that Philip Agee denounced as CIA actions in the past have been discarded by the espionage seen in the present.”

That counts, surely?