I think it’s pretty clear to all that the US has wanted a regime change in V. Now I suppose we can argue about the legitimacy of such a desire in the first place but this doesn’t matter so much in the first place: the real question is if they were acting on it or not.

I’m no authority on the matter, but it does seem to me that, at the very least, the sanctions were a way to elicit such a change, and that the US has also provided some support to the local opposition.

All in all, the question of how likely is it for the CIA to get involved is a question of if we regard the above as legitimate or not : US libs might find it ludicrous that the CIA would act for regime change because they think the above to be legitimate, while CIA involvement is not, and that the US would never do illegitimate stuff. It’s fair enough I suppose, but it does require some amount of belief.

On the other hand, if you think that any manner of US involvement is illegitimate to begin with, well CIA involvement becomes a much more likely threat. It’s no longer a complete change in paradigm, but just an escalation in what the US is already allowing themselves to do.

In a similar fashion, the historical precedence of CIA regime change being pertinent or not relies on how much you believe the US to have effectively changed. In any case, it’s hardly overly paranoid and delusional to judge that the US might take drastic measures in regards to foreign involvement when they are undeniably involving themselves in the first place.

So the only difference in judging how dangerous the threat lied in how far we believed they were willing to go. And if there’s a threat, it’s hardly lying to say that there’s a threat.

All this doesn’t mean that the CIA hasn’t been used as a boogeyman : Maduro could still have used it as an excuse to do stuff that had nothing to do with US or CIA involvement for example. And if it’s convenient, it’s because, from a certain pov, the threat is quite real. That doesn’t mean that Maduro hasn’t made false claims about the matter either. And that doesn’t mean that his gov. might not have taken actions unjustified in regards of the actual threat they thought existed.

And nothing here requires evidence beyond what was in plain sight. A threat is not an ongoing operation, nor the existence of real plans for an operation, a threat is just the possibility of something “bad” happening : can under certain circumstances the US start making up plans for a CIA regime change in V, can they be willing to give it the green light, and can it succeed? The likelihood of any of these happening determine how much of a threat there was, and the fact that it happened makes a strong case to claim that the likelihood was never zero to begin with.

MAGA men and women are unattractive whatever their looks.

I’m sorry for being so late but I’m just getting back from my appointment I had a really long time and I’m sorry for the delay in responding I was so tired I had a little too tired to talk about my mom I just wanted you know that you guys were here I was so glad that I got to talk about you and how you guys were talking and I love that I hope you’re doing good I hope you’re feeling well I love and I love and I hope you’re all well I love and I love and I love and I love and I love and I love and I love and I can’t stop texting and I’m so proud that you’re so proud to say it just want you to say hi and I’m sorry that I hope you’re feeling a little too many times and I’m so proud to hear about the kids and I’m sorry for not feeling well and I’m sorry for your dad I hope tyytytttttttt

Oh my, I think I broke it

Username checks out

This really should read: further details will be made available when our AI api is back up and can self-report on how it fucked up

Your link is broken!

You should assume that experienced burglars will have no trouble taking a rack apart piece by piece and that inexperienced ones will be happy to try, if only to send it flying down the stairs into destruction.

I mean, of course, they might decide it’s just not worth the trouble, but don’t count on it.

we’ve been bombing civilians for 25 years now

Time flies, I’m sorry to tell you but you’ve been bombing civilians for quite a few more decades than that.

It’s random letters. The font-rendering is not correct and all the letters are disjoined (whereas Arabic is cursive with different shapes for letter at the start, middle or end of the word).

Arabic also doesn’t write most vowels. So imagine an AI making sense of something that would have just enough vowels to understand if it weren’t for the lack of spaces between the words, with the twist that the letters are actually completely random.

Edit: actually it seems to be actual text rendered backwards

Well if we stopped building useless shit…

How much washing machines can you build for an average yacht’s worth of ressources time and energy?

Probably not enough but it’s not like there wasn’t other useless shit being made nor like a lot of households would not do just fine sharing a washing machine.

UK is in Europe. They have left the EU but are still in Europe.

Read the article, it mentions several EU countries where acts of sabotage have been increasing.

Criminalization does not mean “applying the laws”, or at least that is only one aspect of it. It can also mean creating new laws or even have nothing to do with the actual legal framework. In France for example, the government has taken the nasty habit of publically branding nature activists as terrorists. That is a form of criminalization even if it remains largely symbolical.

It can also mean that prosecution takes a harder stance or uses a different, harsher legal framework. In France again, vandalism and destruction of private or public property is of course illegal. However the definition of terrorism is rather loose and can also includes acts of sabotage.

So when nature activists break the law to perform acts of sabotage, the prosecution can choose to decide that it was vandalism and treat it as such, or as terrorism and treat it as such. The latter not only allows harsher punishment, but also gives police and prosecution much larger means and leeway, leveraging legislation that was passed not to fight political activism or sabotage, but as a reaction to a whole other kind of terrorism, you know, the kind that haphazardly murders dozens if not hundreds of citizens.

Criminalization can also mean allowing or encouraging the police to respond much more violently to peaceful protests, or the authorities trying to suppress various organisations taking isolated acts of sabotage as an excuse.

Edit: talking about France because that’s what I know best but there is a similar trend in several other Western European countries.

Prime motivation was getting the clients to buy their whole collection a second time.