lord of flies

What exactly do you mean by "war needs as much justification as gravity"? It seems to imply that we can/should go to war literally "whenever," but that's a very extreme opinion I don't think virtually anybody holds. And what the hell does political correctness have to do with anything posted in this topic? Sometimes war is justified, sure. The Great Patriotic War, for example, was justified on the part of the Soviet Union (not on the part of the Nazis though, obviously). The point that the original poster of the quote was making is that most wars the US was involved in throughout history were more or less naked wars of imperialism (i.e. War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, World War 1, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Yugoslav Wars, Iraq War, and to a lesser extent the ongoing military occupation of Haiti), and that modern liberals are capable of recognizing this in the retrospective but fail to do so in the modern day.

Venezuela has those too, over here in the real world.

That's not really how election watch organizations work. Go away.

Feel free to find an election watch organization which claims voter fraud is ongoing in Venezuela. Go right ahead, I'll wait. Eighty percent of the public in the United States believes that the country is "run by a few big interests looking out for themselves." "Optimal performance" and bourgeois democracy cannot fit together. Self control. e: besides, the idea that Venezuela doesn't have a free press is bull**** that the US comes up with to prepare for the 2012 coup d'etat.

A) No it doesn't.B) Yes it does.

Yeah, except for the part where Chavez was democratically elected in every election. Stop swallowing US propaganda about him. They United States continually and effectively produces false propaganda about its strategic, political or economic enemies. The fact that it does not have a state press has never stopped it.

No, he does care about the Venezuelan people, that's why he uses the oil money the country gets to help the general public, subsidizes things, guarantees workers' right to strike, etc. The guy's not even in custody any more (still can't leave the country, tho). Way to be uninformed.

Defending progressive revolutionaries is different from imperialism.

White man's burden is, always has been, and always will be, a naked justification for imperialism.

I ask because there was a forum that I used to browse back when I was just a moderate left-winger (like a liberal), and just recently I decided to look up ANSWER on that forum (because I'm joining the PSL, which is a member and one of the main organizers of ANSWER). And while most of the posts were in 2003, there were a few from 2005, and they were mostly virulently anti-ANSWER. Basically on moralistic white-man's-burden grounds. I'd appreciate it if you explained whether or not you were aware of ANSWER.

Cool, good to know that your family from Bum****sville, Cuba, managed to not teach their children what the difference between "anecdote" and "data" is. With military issues, I'm talking about things like ongoing wars, occupations or genocide, where there are large numbers of refuges. "Freedom" really is an incredibly minor motivator for moving around. If you broaden that to "political issues," then there is a larger subsection, but most people don't really care that much, and if they do, they're quite likely to do anti-government things instead of move away. edit: theslug, welcome to my ignore list.

Cool, way to post an article from almost forty years ago regarding a policy that was revoked over thirty years ago. Havana today has a thriving gay scene. Maybe in backwards world. Here in the real world, Cuba's economy has been steadily recovering since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here is a little FYI for you: the vast majority of all immigration is due to economic or military-related issues. The United States is richer than Cuba and the DPRK, yes, perhaps you would like to post more facts that are irrelevant to any moral analysis of the character of a country?

Cuba's free health care system now includes gender-reassignment surgery

You don't have to be a communist to be my friend. But it sure does help.

Source? See here (or here if you can read Spanish). The original report was apparently for an admission of guilt with respect to Zuloaga's involvement in the 2002 coup d'etat, by Manuel Villalba (see here or here if you can read Spanish).

Okay, so, you're just posting **** that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand while you decry EVIL SOCIALIST TOTALITARIANISM A BLOO BLOO.

What? Does this have anything to do with anything other than your strawman view of socialism? The man is being arrested for using his news station to distribute false information in order to create a panic, which is a violation of Article 296 of the Penal Code of Venezuela.

PS: He's being arrested for spreading false information, not "being offensive."

How exactly could he have supported the coup any more than he did, other than having been a conspirator? In his position as the head of Globovision he refused to show or recognize the anti-putsch protests in the country, he stated that he supported an undemocratic group's undemocratic seizure of power, etc. If FOX News got behind some military coup and then Obama wound up back in the Presidency, would you be surprised or outraged if he attempted legal action against them? You're confusing totalitarians with people who believe in helping others and using the government as a positive institution. I understand the confusion, since you can't really empathize with the latter.

Chavez is a democratically elected socialist. The government of Venezuela is now arresting a man who directly supported a military putsch. Which one of us is right?

You misspelled "Wrath of Dagon."

Yeah, but this one sucks. De-merge them plx.

Well, first of all, the PSL news doesn't update as often as the NYT. Secondly, the NYT is rich and wastes/uses money on advertisement. It also has "good faith" value as a consequence of its long-term existence (i.e. "the New York Times" is a recognizable name). No PSL article is the sort of thing you get bored with in the middle as a bland, corporate journalist attempts to disguise his bias with the use of too many words and too little information while trying to convince himself that his job is real, complete and unbiased education with long, tangentially related explanations of things that happened years ago. "Hugely biased bollocks"? Perhaps in backwards world. Who gives a **** if the figure would be higher? Maybe we could try doing the right thing instead of some very slightly marginally better thing? If there was a law which would effectively reduce lynching to half its prior levels, would you go "Oh yes, this is a fantastic law and I am highly supportive of it" or would you push for a law that actually outlaws lynching? PS: The PSL is not giving them a "huge sympathy paintjob just to add numbers to the argument," the PSL genuinely believes in that undocumented workers deserve full treatment as citizens and move around due to economic reasons, the root of which is US imperialism.

'Health reform': A victory for the insurance companies