President Obama decleares Venezuela a national security threat

[SirBeef]

Even the amnesty thing?

Yes, Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 all passed amnesty EOs.

Reagan Executive Order 12324
Reagan Executive Order 12582

G. H. W. Bush Executive Order 12711

GW Bush Executive Order 13269
GW Bush Executive Order 13276

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I'm only against ones that are designed to weaken the country, so the answer is no.

As far as I know none were, nor have been by any president. It may be talking points that spin them to be.

[Venant]

As far as I know none were, nor have been by any president. It may be talking points that spin them to be.

The fact that Obama has killed thousands of civilians with his illegal assassination programs speak for his own human rights record, so how is it that politicians don't literally choke on the amount of hypocrisy they have to spew out.

You do know that our government attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government a few years back? Are you familiar with our history in South America? Do you support us training death squads in this country and then sending them south to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people under the direction of the CIA?

US foreign policy towards South America is a farce, you shouldn't support it regardless of who is in the white house.

[Derah]

It isn't remotely close to being an iron-fisted dictatorship.

Tell you what, why don't you fucking live here for a year, then tell that to my face again? huh?

70% of the media is private.

Which means jack shit when the government tightly controls EVERYTHING they can broadcast, and heavily censors what they can and cannot say. They've also been expropriating private media one by one systematically, starting with the most popular TV Station in the country, RCTV.

Elections observed by international overseers were deemed fair.

A sham of massive proportions. Its state policy that the vote is no longer secret, if you work for ANY branch of the government you are FORCED to vote for the PSUV candidates or you are fired. And I'll remind you that they've seized nearly all the industries in the nation, which means every single man and woman in the army, navy, air force, national guard, police, ministry of justice, ministry of education, oil industry, ministry of health, pretty much all banks, and several more industries HAVE NO SAY on who they're gonna vote. You do what you're told or you're fired. Something an "international observer" wouldn't be able to tell unless they lived here.

My uncle was a chemical engineer of genius-level degrees. A master on his area, who worked for PDVSA (The main Oil company here) for 20 long years as a veteran, and was kicked out of his position overnight because he had the audacity to vote against a PSUV candidate. That's the kind of shit that you're not allowed to know, because, lest you forgot, our media are not allowed to say it. Those that break the silence are labeled as traitors, and placed in fucking gulags that make guantanamo look like a god-damned Hilton Hotel.

A dictatorship simply closes down the media that is critical of it

And what do you think they've done with the media that refuses to bend over and take it from behind huh? They've already closed 1 major TV station, 3 major radio stations, and 4 major news papers. The rest quickly fell in line. Reporters who like to speak of things they shouldn't are quickly murdered by the masked thugs known as "colectivos" who serve as a secret police to punish anyone who says anything against the regime. They're trained death squads that are above the law.

I bet you didn't see any of THAT shit on wherever you get the news. You only learn about them by living in the barrios here and yelling out loud in the middle of the street FUCK CHAVEZ. Try that and see how well that works for you here.

and generally does not bother with elections at all, much less monitoring.

They're bothering with elections because they want to maintain the facade that this is still a democracy. The same way that there's elections in Cuba. Which Fidel somehow won for 60 years in a row despite all the monstrous things he did there.

But this is no democracy, this is a sad mockery of what democracy used to be.

The torture you describe is fairly hideous as all torture is, but by the standards of global human rights violations, fairly minor.

I only posted that bit because if I post the more grisly stuff, I could probably get banned, but just in case you didn't know, public beheadings are actually fairly common over here. It changes your perspective in life when you see a national guard blow open the head of a 9 year old boy like a melon with a point-blank shotgun blast just because that boy was on the way of a peaceful march. Our very own Venezuelan Ambassador on the UN dared to joke that "putting a bullet between the eyes of an esqualido (that's their nickname for the opposition here) goes in quickly because their heads are hollow."

If the far right takes over with CIA you'd have to be incredibly naive to believe the same or worse won't happen

I'm well aware that if the US intervenes physically and actually sends troops here, things are gonna get ugly. Iraq-ugly. Nicaragua-ugly. Bombed homes, just to name one problem off the top of my head.

But you know what? While I'm smart enough to know that, I'm also angry enough at the regime to no longer care.

I say bring them on. We're suffering here anyways, may as well make those fucking communist pigs bleed with us as well.

[Theinquisition]

Aren't they having serious economic issues due to OPEC and price dropping? Especially since their oil cost more to produce than middle easter oil? I mean I guess I could see the people eating the propaganda that it is all the US's working to cause a regime change and there could be a few lunatics who would try terrorist activity. However, I would hardly think they are as serious a threat to America as they make it out to be. Obviously I don't know the info the intelligence community does, so I'm probably wrong. It just seems like they would have more reason to attack their own government seeing as how they are horribly corrupt and their leader disbanded their intelligence community and keeps killing all the prosecutors who try to indict her.

they're having a ton of problems economically right now. Between nationalizing alot of industries and private buisnesses, and enforced price controls that lead to shortages and inflation, oil prices dropping is just icing on the cake.

Hell, we don't even have to do anything to them, maybe a few well placed economic sanctions and they will be having a even worse day.