Also John Oliver Stewart has a new piece slandering Venezuela just in time for the elections. I didn't watch it but I do wonder how much investment there is in these late night comedy shows by imperialism. Apparently democratic socialism is saved from Venezuela though, also just in time for Bernie Sanders to defend John McCain as a "war hero."
E: watching TV snype
It's pretty soothing to me, too.
babyhueypnewton posted:Also John Oliver Stewart has a new piece slandering Venezuela just in time for the elections. I didn't watch it but I do wonder how much investment there is in these late night comedy shows by imperialism. Apparently democratic socialism is saved from Venezuela though, also just in time for Bernie Sanders to defend John McCain as a "war hero."
friendly forums tv masochist checking in to confirm how bad this piece really was
the story they're pushing is pretty standard but as you heard its been massaged for a young audience that leans bernie - socialism is stuff like universal healthcare, which is good, and venezuela isnt socialist, it is bad. they use figures from atlantic council and imf reports and even a clip of a yale professor saying to the camera with a smirk "thats not how money works" to describe how the economy is fucked and how its because of maduro doubling down on the worst of chavez' policies. they go on to play a bunch of out of context clips of maduro ostensibly saying or doing insensitive stuff in front of his starving nation and cutting back to john in the studio going HOLY SHIT! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER DOES THIS!!
my favourite part though is where they address claims that the US might have something to do with the recent protest movement. first they frame this as crazy talk by showing a clip of maduro himself making the claim in interview. then they admit that ok, yeah, the US has done a bunch of bad stuff in the region, but this isn't one of them. then instead of explaining why it isn't, they deflect with one of their patented family guy style jokes about how its like accusing oj simpson of murdering princess di. and the audience hoots and applauds.
it has jacket praise from maduro -- surely a very high form of praise, considering his love of jackets
edit: i seem to recall Mark Weisbrot of CEPR is pretty good on this stuff, too; wikipedia editors have ballooned the detail that he "has been described as supporting Hugo Chávez and the Venezuelan government" into a quarter of CEPR's wiki page, so that's promising
Edited by Constantignoble ()
shapes posted:is there a one stop-primer that i can point to about currency manipulation, food hoarding, and overall State Dept tomfoolery going on in Venezuela? used to be you could just google search "venezuela currency manipulation" and get some decent stuff, but now it's all Forbes articles about "Maduro claims Western Interference over food shortages. Here's why the math doesn't add up"
this is not very helpful exactly but next time you or someone else is like "huh this google search is not working the way i thought it would, this is all mainstream american media narrative reinforcing shit" try something else like duckduckgo, it isn't magic but it helps.
Constantignoble posted:have you peeked at The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in Venezuela? it's a recent book by a Venezuelan economist. i haven't given it more than a skim but it definitely has stuff on exchange rate manip
wow, i didn't realize this was a direct link to the PDF. i clicked it on my phone, and when i got off the subway there were feds waiting at the stop to seize it. you owe me a new SSN, goonsire.
me when the Quantico PDF squad finally catches up
Anyway, been watching The Expanse and enjoying it. Unusual in terms of scifi in that actually it actually portrays class instead of merely masking it with metaphor. Earth and Mars are imperial powers both of whom keep their citizens complacent by exploiting people who live in the asteroids and Jupiter's moons in dangerous conditions, and the two powers constantly threaten to annihilate each other. The asteroids have a national liberation group called the OPA that everyone accuses of being terrorists. Since this is still Yank television of course there is a conspiracy pushing things to the brink being uncovered, because it couldn't be enough to have a story about the oppressed. The asteroid Nationalist played by Jared Harris comes across as the sanest man in the show, though of course it's implied he is merely an opportunist. Though merely presenting his point of view as somewhat legitimate places it above most Amerikan telivision in terms of politics. Of course, our primary heroes are a bourgeois politican, a straight white male liberal paragon, and a corrupt cop. All the interesting perspectives are on the margins. And there's where it gets into similar territory as what BHPN was pointing out with Westworld: Yes Earth and Mars are Imperialist monsters whose citizens live a parasitic lifestyle off the lives of the oppressed in the asteroids, but this conspiracy is the REAL problem, and violence and taking sides is bad mmkay?
Still, badass space ships. Recommend.
Petrol posted:i gave up on westworld after 1 episode. straight up trash
Didn’t u watch a whole series about cops and intelligence services trying to stop 9/11
This dude is running for governor in my state
Kiyomonster posted:if anyone still watching westworld, they did a 'shogun world' episode and boy, the orientalism
it was depicting a theme park made by a (rushed) asshole for (rich) assholes, it would be weird if it wasn't orientalist
88888 posted:watched "the foreigner", a joyless knock-off of taken where jackie chan spends almost the whole movie stalking and harassing sinn fein's gerry adams, played by pierce brosnan. there are maybe four minutes of enjoyable fight scenes across its two hour run time. it has the nakedly fascist politics you would expect from a film like cobra with none of its life or colour. all-in-all a great way to celebrate the royal wedding
its funny how jackie chan is a tory