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from the how-dare-you-try-and-help-my-people? dept.
Venezuela soldiers abandon posts at Colombia border
Soldiers from the Venezuelan national guard have left their posts ahead of an opposition-led effort to bring aid into the country, Colombia's migration agency said. In a separate development, Venezuelan troops have fired tear gas at people looking to cross into Colombia to work. Tensions have been rising over a row about the delivery of humanitarian aid.
President Nicolás Maduro said the border with Colombia is partly closed to stop aid being delivered. But self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó has vowed that hundreds of thousands of volunteers will help bring in the aid deliveries, which include food and medicine, on Saturday. The first delivery of aid has already entered Venezuela through Brazil, Mr Guaidó tweeted. The delivery of aid to the stricken country has proven to be a key area of contention between the two men who see themselves as Venezuela's leader.
National Guard fires tear gas amid Venezuela border tension
Venezuela's National Guard fired tear gas on opposition activists at a barricaded border bridge to Colombia on Saturday, and two protesters were killed near the border in Brazil, as the opposition tried to execute a high-risk plan to deliver humanitarian aid over the obstinate refusal of President Nicolas Maduro.
Opposition leader Juan Guaido pulled himself onto a semitruck and shook hands with its driver as he and Colombian President Ivan Duque gave a ceremonial send-off to an aid convoy looking to transport nearly 200 metric tons of mostly U.S.-supplied emergency food and medical supplies from the Colombian border city of Cucuta. "Our call to the armed forces couldn't be clearer: put yourself on the right side of history," he said in an appeal to troops constituting Maduro's last-remaining major plank of support in a country ravaged by hyperinflation and widespread shortages.
Amid the aid push, Maduro struck back, breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia, whose government he accuses of serving as a staging ground for a U.S.-led effort to oust him from power. "My patience has run out," Maduro said, speaking at a rally of red-shirted supporters in Caracas and giving Colombian diplomats 24 hours to leave the country.
The opposition is calling on masses of Venezuelans to form a "humanitarian avalanche" to escort the trucks across several border bridges. But clashes started at dawn in the Venezuelan border town of Urena, when residents began removing yellow metal barricades and barbed wire blocking the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge. Venezuela's National Guard responded forcefully, firing tear gas and buckshot on the protesters who demanded that the aid pass through. Some of the protesters were masked youth who threw rocks and later commandeered a city bus and set it afire. At least two dozen people were injured in the disturbances, according to local health officials in Urena.
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(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:57PM (8 children)
No, it is you who is living in a fantasy land. Very idea of "how much you contribute" to society is pretty subjective. Nobody agrees about it. The root cause of this is that there is no particular of goal entire society works for. Each person makes up own stuff. They will never agree. Even money has no inherent value since amount of stuff you buy with each unit varies wildly due to many reasons such as transport expenses and buyers proficiency at haggling or countless other factors. Money per se is just abstract number that facilitates movement of goods from places of excess to places of lack. By itself it has no meaning but when people pretend it does it might do something useful. Sometimes.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:19PM (2 children)
There's no point in arguing with TMB about any of this. He has a total blind spot about what he thinks is 'Communism" or "Socialism" and it aligns completely with the propaganda the ruling class of the United States has been churning out for more than 100 years.
He has never asked himself why we (in the West) have to go in and kill anyone who decides to call themselves communist as quickly as possible.
We have been doing this since 1919, when Britain, France and the US invaded Russia during its Civil War in support of the brutal Romanovs, not that he cares.
Don't expect any shades of grey, or understanding from TMB, as far as he is concerned Communism has killed more people than the plague, and must be wiped out.
Completely ignoring the fact that for many people Communism is a much better option than the shitty, brutal ruler we impose on them.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:54PM (1 child)
"Decides to call themselves communist"? No. Everyone who don't align. Mosaddegh and Lumumba for sure didn't call themselves communists yet still got killed.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday February 25 2019, @12:30AM
I had forgotten about them. I was thinking more about the western hemisphere guys like Salvador Allende who were murdered for not toeing the line enough.
If I was a young man in Honduras in 1050 (for instance) I would be a Communist because the alternative was to be a slave for the United Fruit company.
Not so different to how people felt in Vietnam in 1956 when Diem cancelled the elections really.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 25 2019, @04:47AM (4 children)
How much you contribute is easily measured. "What would it cost to adequately replace you" is the precise measure of your worth to both an employer and to society. If you're doing a job a dipshit teenager could do after two hours of training, you're not worth any more than a dipshit teenager to anyone except maybe your mother. If you're doing something very few people can do and it betters society enough that they trip over themselves to give you money for whatever you're doing, they've all just voted you extremely valuable. It's not rocket surgery to figure this out.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday February 25 2019, @08:22AM (3 children)
"adequately replace you" is the subjective part here. This measure can wary wildly depending on whether dipshit teenager in question is company's founder's son. Someone who got everything done for them will always "succeed" and never put in any effort. So people who are unrelated to someone important will never put in any effort either. Since it's pointless. Nobody in any long running society will ever pay attention to any actual performance, since all worthy jobs are taken by people with money that they inherited and putting in effort will not be competitive way of earning money since inheriting from parents is so much easier.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 25 2019, @12:39PM (2 children)
You, sir, are just making excuses for you dissatisfaction with your life. Nepotism and cronyism certainly exist but they don't remotely fill every decent job and most employers can tell a good employee from a shitty one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by loonycyborg on Monday February 25 2019, @12:55PM (1 child)
There is most definitely wiggling room in this determination, otherwise nepotism and cronyism couldn't exist. Everyone fruitlessly fight to ensure that their determination of which person is decent and which is not holds more sway but there is no way to satisfy everyone. So don't even try. This is consequence of advances of civilization. Excellency in everything is no longer necessary for survival so everyone suck but pretend that they don't. And they will always suck because they're insulated from their faults by all those advantages conferred by being a part of civilization.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 25 2019, @03:36PM
"Everyone" does not get a say in which person is decent and which is not. Only the employer does and only the employer should. The rest isn't really worth responding to, it's just garden variety nihilism.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.