Footage Contradicts U.S. Claim That Maduro Burned Aid Convoy - Polidicks

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-aid-fire-video.html https://nyti.ms/2NSjllg CÚCUTA, Colombia — The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger. Vice President Mike Pence wrote that “the tyrant in Caracas danced”as his henchmen “burned food & medicine.” The State Department released a video saying Mr. Maduro had ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition held up the images of the burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of Mr. Maduro’s cruelty. But there is a problem: The opposition itself, not Mr. Maduro’s men, appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally. Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times and previously released tapes — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident. It suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an antigovernment protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze. The video by the NYT is an excellent breakdown of the events of what happened that day, and how the unsubstantiated story was quickly spread via Twitter by US officials seeking regime change.

I hope the our Government addresses this newfound footage but I don't see that happening any time soon.

The Times reached out to Marco Rubio and etc. to ask them about this and they basically just said "Maduro is responsible because he blocked the trucks," without specifying who actually started the fire.

Not surprising. The opposition is desperate to start something.

Maduro does this shit all the time with people who hide themselves among protesters just to start shit. They do it in every protest for the explicit purpose of justifying the official forces going to extremes and to discredit protests. Then they turn around and start targeting protestors outside the protests for harassment, kidnapping, and murder.

It's entirely convenient for Maduro that neither colectivos nor protesters carry uniforms. To say it's the opposition who burned them is equally ridiculous. That it wasn't the policemen doesn't mean that it wasn't paramilitaries.

What you're describing is a thing but if you watch the footage it's clear, in this case, that the molotov unintentionally broke apart midflight and accidentally landed on the truck.

It's not ridiculous, it's what the evidence is suggesting. Agent provocateurs are certainly possible but there's no evidence to show this was a plant. In the video the molotov breaking apart was clearly an accident and nothing suggests the fire was deliberate. Regardless, the way Marco Rubio, John Bolton et al. jumped to blame Maduro because it suited their political purpose of regime change is reprehensible and should be condemned. There's plenty of real, tangible horrors you can pin on Maduro.

This is the part I really feel needs to be stressed. I've mentioned my tankie a friend a few times now, but I just know that he and people like him will latch onto this one instance of Maduro not being responsible and use it to extrapolate that Maduro is totally innocent and none of the bad things are his fault. And I want to make it perfectly clear that this event is in no way evidence of that. Just because he wasn't responsible for one bad thing, doesn't mean he wasn't responsible for any bad thing.

Was pretty clearly an accident based on the footage. If you watch the footage and PAY ATTENTION during the part where they explain that the dude throwing the molotov's you'll see that the bottle he threw continues in the direction of the roadblock but the rag was not in the bottle tightly enough and fell out and was most likely carried a bit by the wind as they are on top of a bridge. This was, imo, clearly unintentional and not done by government stooges, this time at the very least. Well, the evidence doesn't show that paramilitaries did it either, at least in this case. I mean the evidence in the video is presented so well I dunno how anyone can watch it a not come to the conclusion that it was just an unfortunate accident. The dude thew the bottles in the direction of the roadblock but unfortunately the rag on one of them flew out of the bottle and spiraled in a weird direction.

It appears that it was an unintentional side effect of the blockade, however this hasn't become a 'gotcha' against the US because Maduro DOES HAVE A history of doing shit like this. No one won in this debate, and only the Venezuelan people lost.

Protestors accidentally fucked themselves over when they were trying to murder police officers. Kind of poetic. It'd be funny if not for the fact that real, starving, dying people literally can't receive those critical resources because some idiot burned them up. Even if they hadn't disappeared in flames, the fucking government wouldn't have allowed it in. What an atrocious state of things

I thought multiple trucks torched? Was it just the one?

I mean, sure truck was torched, but the aid convoy was still being blocked and blockaded by Maduro's National Police, which is the reason molotovs were flying

i guess this one thing absolves maduro now time to pack up and go home, this is clearly a US coup and maduro is a brave socialist defending his country from imperialistic forces