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Here's a trick I've learnt to get an authentic view of events like these, a nice way to parse through the keyboard warrior and ivory tower voices and noise is t
by unionjack22 9mo ago
Here's a trick I've learnt to get an authentic view of events like these, a nice way to parse through the keyboard warrior and ivory tower voices and noise is to hear what Venezuelans, the millions of Venezuelan migrants, and the citizens of neighboring countries who've had to reckon with the legacy of Chavez think about this. You can extend this to anything really with good results.
No valuable insight will be gleaned from chat boards and reddit in the immediate aftermath of these sorts of events.
- yuppiepuppie 9mo agoYeah, I agree. But it’s also very hard to gather those voices in one place. Any thoughts on where to find these voices beside a personal network?
- 6P58r3MXJSLi 9mo agoTrue, but it is like saying that to know China you have to ask the nationalists in Taiwan. Or that to understand Italian resistance you have to ask the millions of people in Italy that supported fascism. It doesn't work.
- toenail 9mo agoWe have an ongoing war in Europe because one President tried to remove the President of another country. You can perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify military actions, and depending on who you ask you will always get the answers you want.
- unionjack22 9mo agoI'm not arguing the point you're making. I'm saying that these discussions on these sorts of things on chat boards populated by privileged western nerds and conspicuous progressives have little merit and are merely a reflection of biases/ego of the privileged western nerd when put up against the lived experiences of people in Venezuela and neighboring states.
- toenail 9mo ago[flagged]
- tsimionescu 9mo agoYou're not really saying anything, in fact, just bashing everyone else's opinion. And note that we can look at history and see that, sometimes, people's honest opinions about their own country and what is best for it happen to be wrong. Libyans were extremely happy when Gaddafi was killed - and now they're living in much worse conditions than when he was alive. Many Afghans welcomed the US toppling of the brutal taliban regime, and now after twenty years of brutal war, the taliban are back in power as if nothing happened. It would be absolutely wonderful if the same fate doesn't happen to Venezuela. I sincerely wish and hope that they will have a provisional government which quickly organizes free and fair elections and that a much better leader is elected who can start reversing the damage Maduro did. I don't think this is particularly likely to happen, sadly, looking at the history and track-record of violent regime change by foreign powers. This observation remains true regardless of what the people of Venezuela think and hope, sadly.
- calf 9mo agoThis is abusing the concept of lived experience (which by the way is an ivory tower privileged term)
- luckylion 9mo agoYou mean one unelected dictator tried to annex a neighboring country and wanted to remove the elected president of that country. Please don't spread Russian propaganda by taking over their talking points.
- toenail 9mo agoLol, saying the invading countries is bad is Russian propaganda, ok buddy.
- ponector 9mo agoThat is not a reason why there is a war. The Ukrainian war is an existential one, a continuation of multiple acts of genocide performed by russians for centuries. That is a big difference between war in Ukraine and war in Iraq or Venezuela. Russia has unlimited objectives: destroy Ukrainian identity and sovereignty. Annex the country. While USA has limited objectives, like to overthrow the government.
- lovegrenoble 9mo ago[flagged]
- ponector 9mo ago>> Russia stood by while everything Russian, including the Russian language which is the native language of millions of Ukrainians, was facing many restrictions You think Ukrainians shouldn't decide which language to use? Also russian is native for millions of Ukrainians due to ethnic cleansing done by russians for centuries.
- pacija 9mo agoWell behaved governments will provide national minorities with everything they need to feel at home. Bilingual street signs, schools in minority's native language, churches, radio and TV broadcasts in minority's native language etc. Any government who denies this to their national minorities should be promptly replaced as this kind of disrespect to other peoples' culture, religion and national identity inevitably leads to bad outcomes.
- LunaSea 9mo agoRussia never cared about diplomacy and always wanted to regain the ex-USSR territories back. This has been confirmed by various Russian declarations and maps. The diplomatic issues are merely an official stance that is presented to convince the gullible. It's on you if you believe it. You can look at Moldova, Georgia, Romania and Chechnya for other examples of Putin and Russia's imperialistic ambissions.
- 9mo ago
- dataviz1000 9mo agoI've been traveling South America including Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Brazil. There are no good guys anywhere. A lot of the low wage labor come from Venezuela, and in the case of southern Brazil, Cuba. In Lima, Peru it is impossible to take an Uber without having to hear about how much a shit Maduro is. The crisis has strongly affected all countries in South America and if the Venezuelans are able return home and democratically elect a new regime it will be better for everybody.
- gpderetta 9mo agoIf Venezuelans will end up with fair elections, it will be a good result from a bad action. But knowing the usual modus operandi in SA, a dictator is more likely to be installed than not.
- nicce 9mo agoBecause the oil seems to be the main discussion topic, it is fair to assume that there are no fair elections or own decision power anytime soon.
- throw-12-16 9mo agoLaughs in Pinochet
- aglavine 9mo agoPinochet was a bloody dictator who left the power willingly and callibg elections. Something Maduro wasn't willing to do in +20 years.
- thinkindie 9mo agoChavez died in March 2013, Maduro took over after that after being vice president. It's not 20+ years.
- throw-12-16 9mo agoRemind me again how Pinochet came to power?
- kristopolous 9mo agoSo if Americans don't like Trump then, say, Italy can unilaterally bomb San Francisco? Or should this only be a one way street? Is dropping bombs to disapprove of elections how we're being adults in 2026?
- _vertigo 9mo agoI’m American and I don’t like Trump. If Italy did bomb San Francisco and you asked me what I thought of that, I’d say I disapproved. If China invaded overnight and absconded with Trump, I’d say I disapproved even though I don’t like him.
- bmacho 9mo agoYou say you'd disapprove a violent action. But when it actually happens? I've seen explicit support for Luigi from many otherwise apolitical and non-violent people.
- kristopolous 9mo agoThat's quite different. Luigi killed the banker. You're thinking of Thomas Crooks. I don't think I've seen too many Crooks fanboys. And even then, there's a difference between that and say if it was a sniper squadron working for say, let's pick the Azerbaijan military or any other organized state force.
- 9mo ago
- Dumblydorr 9mo agoSo that equally applies to your comment here and renders it null?
- lucb1e 9mo agoIf we can't talk about the method then I don't know how to get to good results
- Dumblydorr 9mo agoTo me it seems like an obvious oversight that they didn’t acknowledge the irony of mentioning on this board not to read this board’s posts. They could’ve actually done what they stated, talked about the people, instead of just a meta-criticism of HN, which is probably the #1 type of comment on threads on HN already. And yes I’ll acknowledge this is a meta criticism of a meta criticism.
- boramalper 9mo agoLots and lots of locals were equally excited, if not more, at the beginning of Arab Spring…
- christophilus 9mo agoYeah. Exactly. There have been many regime changes in the last few centuries. It’s hard to think of more than a handful that were actually objectively better. It’s even harder to think of any where the US was involved in the overthrow and installation of the replacement, and it went well. The Marshall plan was good. Any others?
- kjkjadksj 9mo agoYugoslavia in the sense that the cultures were at an unlivable state with eachother without significant autonomy. Bad from an economic perspective as the resulting nations are weaker than what a unified yugoslavia would have been today when one looks at gdp projections.
- torginus 9mo agoAre you from the region? Yugoslavia has been a far richer and developed country than any of its successor states for a long time, and I hardly think most locals would see the cost of human lives and untold destruction the war brought to settle some incomprehensible ethnic conflict as a good trade.
- scns 9mo ago> incomprehensible ethnic conflict It's about grudges held since hundreds of years. Blood feuds are still a thing in the region.
- littlestymaar 9mo agoIn 1917's Russia too.
- 9mo ago
- SecretDreams 9mo agoThe fish celebrate when the bear is hunted. It does not mean order has been restored to the wild.
- seydor 9mo agoFor one, immigrants are not representative of their country, they are so biased that they left. But i think the opinion of venezuelans has leaked and it s pretty obvious his regime is not popular at home
- marcosdumay 9mo ago> For one, immigrants are not representative of their country, they are so biased that they left. That's close to 20% of their population. And the most relevant factor deciding if people fled or not was whether they could reach another country before Maduro closed the borders.
- mvdtnz 9mo agoVenezuelans didn't leave because they were "biased", good grief. They left because they were suffering under poverty, hyperinflation and violence.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoThere’s still a selection bias involved, just as there is with Cubans in Florida. Those that leave are mainly the ones with means and/or the ones who feel strongest about it.
- array_key_first 9mo agoThat's not what they said. They said people who left are inherently biased, because they had to leave, which makes perfect sense.
- integralid 9mo agoThe set of people that left their country is not random, and certainly statistically biased.
- password54321 9mo agoYeah this is just flawed. Even people close to what is happening can be ignorant/brainwashed or (and even more likely) have ulterior motives. Venezuela doesn't exactly come across as a sophisticated nation.
- thenaturalist 9mo ago> Venezuela doesn't exactly come across as a sophisticated nation. Yeah this is just flawed.
- hearsathought 9mo ago[flagged]
- justajew 9mo ago[flagged]
- dang 9mo agoThere's no such thing as a comment "disappearing without leaving traces" on HN, except in rare cases when an author asks us explicitly to delete their post and we do. Other than that, the most that happens is that a comment gets killed (a.k.a. marked as [dead]), and anyone who wants to can see those comments in their, er, glory by turning on 'showdead' in their profile. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. We don't moderate this place to promote (or demote) any particular political agenda, let alone try to "shape" public opinion, something which sounds even more boring than soulless. As long as you're implying secret sinister processes taking place here, I think you should include some specific links so readers can make up their own minds.
- 303uru 9mo agoAbout the stupidest thing I’ve ever read here. Why does a US perspective not matter when the fucking US conducted the strike? If Russia decides trump stole the election in 2024 you’d just sit back and let them take over?
- anon291 9mo agoMany Americans were asking for just this.
- afavour 9mo agoI don’t think any valuable insight is to be found in the opinions of migrants either in terms of what any of this means long term. A lot of Iraqis were happy when Saddam was deposed. They certainly didn’t like what happened next.
- saubeidl 9mo agoThat's how you get the most reactionary voices. The ones that liked Maduro presumably stayed in Venezuela and didn't start complaining online.
- cryptoegorophy 9mo agoYou simply can’t. Just enjoy the show. Sorry, last 5 years have been a complete destruction of common sense and logic, just focus on something else to remain sane.
- MisterMower 9mo agoInformation that is known to be wrong is still useful. The immediate talking points on both sides reveal quite a bit if you can read between the lines. Everyone is lying but the lies themselves are revealing.
- themafia 9mo ago> and the citizens of neighboring countries who've had to reckon with the legacy of Chavez think about this. Sure, just ask them about the legacy of Chevron in South America next. If they're old enough ask them about the United Fruit Company. > You can extend this to anything really with good results. Your trick is not enough to overcome your ignorance of history. > No valuable insight will be gleaned from chat boards and reddit in the immediate aftermath of these sorts of events. Ridiculous. How exactly do you expect me to probe the feelings of an entire nation of people? Have CNN do it for me?