There are many spots to get yankee cuisine tho! Burgers, fries, some (shudders) Quebecers even showed a hotel cuisine staff how to make poutine. Lots of that at the glorious water park, with beer in big ass glasses.
I hope our comrade defector however opens himself to the delights of Korean and North East Chinese cuisine, maybe have himself also some Russian off brand doshirak.
I'm pretty sure the Talibans (not to defend them, mind you), were already cracking down on poppy farming before 9/11 and the subsequent decade long war.
So how were they benefitting? Or do you mean to say the US and allied forces allowed mass poppy crop farming that was then utilized by the Taliban to fund itself? You know there is an alternative hypothesis: the US and other occupation allied forces tolerated poppy farming to pacify and win over tribal chiefs and keep corrupt Afghan officials squarely on their side. Maybe both were happening, who is to say.
Well I mean barring your personal dislike of the source, it does report an objective fact: opium cash crop farming exploded under the US / Joint alliance occupation and decade+long anti insurgency war, and died out once they left.
And this objective fact DOES raise important questions: what in the hell was the US doing all this time? They had infinitely more resources than the Talibans do now to subsidize non opium crops for farmers, to encourage diversification and development, etc. Did they turn a blind eye to the mass scale poppy farming? If so, why? It generated huge sums, was it a strategic use of and encouragement of corruption of local Afghan administrators and tribal elite to "make the occupation easier"? Did some money return to western elements? What was the impact on world trafficking?
Like you can dislike mintpress news but IMO it's important to, now that the US/West occupation of Afghanistan is over, not swipe it all under the rug and investigate.
It's the PCV.
We can balance critical support for the PSUV against imperialist pressures while condemnig obvious and blatant ill founded anti-communist attacks by it in a context of more than questionable economic moves done in the past few years, putting as stake in the process several key elements of the bolivarian revolution.
Ben Norton is completely, absolutely, painfully wrong in these two tweets and is reaching serious anti-communist slanderous levels. There has been discussions on the issue for the past couple days, see my posts, and that of thelastaxolotl here: https://hexbear.net/comment/3719428
And there: https://hexbear.net/comment/3718791
The first tweet falsly accuses the PCV for "moving to the right" without instantiating it whatsoever. If anything PCV has moved TO THE LEFT as the PSUV moved to the right, especially starting 2018 when the ARP was created as a loyal left opposition against the objective neoliberal reforms done by the PSUV and the attacks it did on its once most steadfast left allies. Things soured even faster after that, especially once PSUV started openly collaborating with the right opposition and doing huge concessions to imperialism while attacking victories of the Bolivarian revolution. All that being said, defense of the PCV must go hand in hand with a steadfast opposition to ANY imperialist pressures on Venezuela. The allegations repeated by Norton without base about PCV being defacto pro imperialist are disgusting. Edit: One of his claim in the first tweet is also straight up manipulative. He says the "leadership was changed" and leaves it at that. What happened is the following: the PSUV went and made a group of non party members and long ex-party members to make a politically motivated judicial attack through the national electoral council to be given the leadership of the party. That means seizing the party logo, legal status, legal face, etc. A hijacking, directly helped by HIGH ranking members of the PSUV like Diosdado. The PCV like any communist party is governed via dem-cent, with the CC and the leadership elected by the membership at a central convention that happens every so years (3,4,5 are the usual years through communist parties the world over, as a rule of thumb). The convention also democratically decides the party lines and positions. The current leadership is abiding by what the mass membership wants, it so happens what the mass membership wants is to stick to Chavez, Bolivarianism, anti-imperialism, and the socialist reinforcement of the Bolivarian revolution. And the PSUV is not a fan TM, especially as it rolled down labour rights recently leading to working class protests.
The second tweet is IMO even MORE shameful: there Norton attacks the KKE, the PCM, and by extention the overwhelming majority of the IMCWP, and blatantly misrepresents their positions, the nuance in said positions, and their actions. To depict the KKE for example as pro Ukraine is single handedly enough insult to get beat up senseless in Athenes. The KKE in terms of opposition to NATO and the war did more than Norton could even dream of. When he is capable of mobilizing thousands to block (physically, via blockading trains) NATO arms shipments to Ukraine, mobilizing union workers to disrupt supply, maybe he can start flapping his glorified blogger's mouth. He went full anti-communist in defense of....a social democratic government rapidly betraying the bolivarian process and attacking communists.
Ben here is flirting with Larouchites and various patsoc/right opportunist parties currently trying to hyjack the world communist movement through the ill named "World Anti-Imperialist Platform". At the very least he shares their same pseeudo anti-imperialism that swings to support to bourgeois forces and opposes communist ones. It's sus as all hell too. It's also absolutely not Leninist.
And I say all that as someone who appreciates his work generally speaking. But those two tweets? Shameful, disgusting, gulag worthy big ass pack of lies. For much balanced news on this situation I would encourage checking out what has been said through the IMCWP, venezuelaanalysis, and Arropea (if u speak spanish).
Edit: if I can add, you can see for yourself the countless tweets responding to him pointing out how wrong his take is on this one, if not down right libelous. With sources and documents. It's odd to repost his tweets as authoritative several days after him getting absolutely dogpiled by various communists from various parties, and as the PCV is receiving messages of support from the entire world communist movement as we speak. I don't want to insinuate anything but as always, more investigation is better than a cursory one.
That is not true tho.
The PCV was one of the earliest and staunchest ally of Chavez. Things soured under Maduro when the PCV along several parties to the left of the PSUV made the ARP (a left alliance of revolutionary parties), which prompted faced repeated legal attacks by the Venezuelan state. Several parties in the ARP (like the Tupamaros/MRT) faced similar attacks by the PSUV but it never dared go after the PCV. Now that the situation is a bit eased on the domestic front, the right wing being largely defeated, and now that some sanctions are being lifted, and as the PSUV is making reforms that revert the Bolivarian revolutionary advances, it feels threatened on its left and is now trying to coopt/take over / illegalize the PCV.
It's far more serious than previous disagreements IMO, the fact that the PCV is being called trot (lol) or right wing plants by key PSUV members is telling, its gotten real ugly this time.
Thank you comrade 🫡 🫡
I initially made an account on lemmy.world to see the broader lemmy federation and lemmygrad but then they went and defederated from Hexbear and it would be a shame to miss out on your prime content, I remember the heydays of /r/chapotraphouse, missed it!
Like I'm super disappointed. Atleast with Blumenthal you could slowly see him going into right populist and conspiracy nonsense. Norton just dropped this hot turd out of nowhere lmao
The second tweet of his in that thread literally left me mouth agape. He went swinging with lies and mischaracterizations on literally the world communist movement / the IMCWP.
The replies in the tweet are sufficient to tell you this is a super weird and nonsensical lie by Ben. It's kind of staggering he'd pull such anti-communist nonsense. His second tweet is even wilder because he basically attacks the enormous majority of the IMCWP and their positions on all the issues he names. He straight up made it all up.
As to the PCV, it NEVER did a "swing to the right" it NEVER allied with the Venezuelan right wing either. Norton very conveniently also does a HUGE euphemism on "its leadership being changed": what is actually happening is the PSUV through the judicial authorities of the country are rendering the party illegal, calling the leadership undemocratic and unaccountable, and basically stealing the party legal entity by putting in charge PSUV militants mislabelled as "aggrieved PCV members". The IMCWP has signed multiple declarations of solidarity with the PCV over the past months also.
Also hello hexbear this is my first post lmao
You are so lucky.
A comrade and I seriously considered getting a job at the local alcohol gov monopoly company to staff their depot and liberate some Russian Standard bottles that have been pulled off the shelf since the beginning of the war. It sadly didn't materialize :(