Cause, as the garbage cans are poured into the truck, but before being compacted, they can pick out the food that wasn't near the top of trash cans on the street. Or would you rather they dump the cans out on the street in search of food? Don't imagine eating from trash is you.— Clay Claiborne (@clayclai) February 27, 2019
You probably never had to eat from trash in your life. Right? Food near the top of trash cans gets pretty well picked over. When they are dumped into the trash truck, food near the bottom becomes available. U think nobody starving in Venezuela?— Clay Claiborne (@clayclai) February 27, 2019
Starving people eat food where ever they can find it. Were they finding food? Yes? Why wasn't it eaten already by safer/cleaner homeless ppl 1st? Maybe the can needed to be dumped to get at the food they got. So dump on ground or wait for dump truck?After I entered that text and hit the [tweet] button, Twitter responded with the ominous message that: You are not allowed to perform that action, please refresh your page. When I refresh the page, I discovered that Boots Riley had blocked me:
According to Jorge Ramos, these images of men eating garbage in Venezuela caused Nicolás Maduro to hold him and his team for two hours.Boots Riley is promoting the conspiracy theory that the video that journalist Jorge Ramos showed to Nicolás Maduro of Venezuelans rummaging for food in the garbage being dumped into the back of a dump truck, the video that got Ramos arrested by Maduro, was a staged video. His proof: Real starving people wouldn't do that.
When I politely challenged him on that in two tweets, he blocked me, so let me post my response here.
The sum of his argument is that obviously it was staged because people would just forage for food from the trash cans and garbage bags ahead of the truck, rather than out the back of the truck were it would be even dirtier and more dangerous. As far as he is concerned: Case Closed.
Of course, if it was staged, those staging it could have just as easily staged it the way Riley suggests, assuming they agreed with his analysis of the improbability of starving people foraging for food wherever they could find it. In any case, in spite of being blocked by Boots Riley on Twitter, I still have some questions for him, which I will publicly post here:
Riley suggests no hungry Venezuelan would pick food out of the back of a garbage truck. Here is a picture of Venezuelans foraging for food even farther down the garbage chain, after it has been left at the dump by those garbage trucks.
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People scavenge for food and recyclables at a garbage dump overlooking the main port and industrial plants of Morn, Venezuela, Sept. 30, 2017. Many of the people picking through the trash at the dump said that they used to work in the port but were now desperate to feed their families after being laid off once ship traffic slowed to a trickle. (MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT)
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Was this picture staged?
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Families salvage food scraps from garbage bags in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 10, 2017. A recent report by the United Nations and the Pan American Health Organization found that 1.3 million people who used to be able to feed themselves in Venezuela have had difficulty doing so since the economic crisis began three years ago. (MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT)
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Was this picture staged?
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Esteban Granadillo, 18 days, who weighs 4 pounds 10 ounces, lies at Dr. Agustn Zubillaga University Hospital of Pediatrics in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Aug. 28, 2017. Doctors across the country said that their emergency rooms were being overwhelmed by children with severe malnutrition — a condition they had rarely encountered before the economic crisis began. (MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT
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Was this picture staged?
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Family and friends attend the burial of 3-month-old Kleiver Enrique Hernndez at the cemetery in Ca, Venezuela, Aug. 17, 2017. (MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT)
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Was this picture staged?
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Nerio Parra and Abigail Torres on July 8, 2017, visit the graves of two of their five children who died from severe malnutrition, in Caracas, Venezuela. (MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT)
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Was this picture staged?
These pictures are from As Venezuela collapses, its children are dying of hunger, Seattle Times, 18 December 2017. Venezuelans have been eating garbage for a while now, in case Riley hasn't noticed. There is no need to stage their misery. Does he think those graves are empty? Also note that this was the state of the famine in the Fall of 2017, before Trump's sanctions had a chance to have an effect, or even before three-quarters of them had even been imposed.
While we must strongly oppose US attempts to use the crisis to increase its influence by putting a US friendly government in Caracas, and especially oppose any military intervention, we should not let our just opposition to US imperialism morph into support for the increasingly authoritarian and brutal Maduro regime. Most importantly, we must put the welfare of the Venezuelan people above any other consideration in this crisis.
Never forget pic.twitter.com/kB4aczi784— Ken (@KenGarciaTorres) February 26, 2019
Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
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