Thanks for those. Emersberger's was particularly good, but Roddis' as well.
wrt the latter, the quote from Chomsky is particularly apropos in interpreting liberal critiques of Maduro:
So when American dissidents criticize the atrocities of some enemy state like Cuba or Vietnam, it’s no secret what the effects of that criticism are going to be: it’s not going to have any effect whatsoever on the Cuban regime, for example, but certainly will help the torturers in Washington and Miami to keep inflicting their campaign of suffering on the Cuban population [i.e. through the US-led embargo]. Well, that is something I do not think a moral person would want to contribute to.
(Although in the case of Syria, where there was undeniably a campaign of suffering being imposed on the Syrian population by Washington and its allies, Chomsky did not observe this principle...)