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11 cops dead in a month sounds like something out of the world of Robocop.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:21
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Helsing posted:Yeah the whole region was an island of sunshine and happiness until Chavez appeared on the scene. This kind of fatalism and lack of knowledge about the specifics of Venezuela is what makes American leftists so destructive in this discussion. Not every Spanish-speaking country was ruled by a dictator in cahoots with banana companies and beset by roving death squads 100% of the time. Peace, democracy, and civil society have existed in South America before, and existed in many countries (especially Venezuela) for long periods. "Welp those coffee-harvesting rubes are just gonna machete each other to death anyway, might as well support the guy who machetes for the Correct Marxist Reasons" is loving bullshit. Chavez is responsible for making the situation markedly worse and undermining democratic and peaceful institutions in Venezuela and its neighbors, and "someone else did a bad thing before" is not an excuse.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:28
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Helsing posted:11 cops dead in a month sounds like something out of the world of Robocop. I'm terribly sorry, but I got some numbers mixed up. 174 people in general were murdered in Caracas during the first 11 days of July. 77 police officers have been killed in the Greater Caracas Area so far this year, which averages to 11 police officers killed per month.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:45
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M. Discordia posted:This kind of fatalism and lack of knowledge about the specifics of Venezuela is what makes American leftists so destructive in this discussion. Not every Spanish-speaking country was ruled by a dictator in cahoots with banana companies and beset by roving death squads 100% of the time. Peace, democracy, and civil society have existed in South America before, and existed in many countries (especially Venezuela) for long periods. "Welp those coffee-harvesting rubes are just gonna machete each other to death anyway, might as well support the guy who machetes for the Correct Marxist Reasons" is loving bullshit. Chavez is responsible for making the situation markedly worse and undermining democratic and peaceful institutions in Venezuela and its neighbors, and "someone else did a bad thing before" is not an excuse. That was a very compelling retort to a bunch of things I never said. Since you never bothered to ascertain my opinions on this topic (or my nationality) I think it's cute that you're so ready to make grand pronouncements about what I believe and how destructive those beliefs apparently are. I'm flattered that you think I have so much influence over the situation, I only wish I could learn to use my powers for good instead of evil! Chuck Boone posted:I'm terribly sorry, but I got some numbers mixed up. Really that's an even more disturbing couple of statistics. I know that when I asked about where this violence comes from a while back people mentioned that developments in the drug war shifted activity from Columbia to Venezuela but I'm still a bit staggered by how things can be that bad. Normally that kind of violence only happens in countries with active military conflicts.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:52
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Why would you even want to become a police officer in Venezuela or at least Caracas.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:52
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Kurtofan posted:Why would you even want to become a police officer in Venezuela or at least Caracas.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:05
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Helsing posted:I know that when I asked about where this violence comes from a while back people mentioned that developments in the drug war shifted activity from Columbia to Venezuela but I'm still a bit staggered by how things can be that bad. Normally that kind of violence only happens in countries with active military conflicts. I think a big part of it has to do with the fact that the Venezuelan justice system is making a run at being the most ineffective in the world. The impunity rate in the country - that is, what percentage of criminals escape trial - is in the high 90s. For "common crimes" (homicide, robbery, assault, and rape), the rate is 98.45%. In other words, out of the 351,321 "common crimes" reported in 2014, 5,426 made it to trial. That's according to the Public Ministry's own statistics. Large urban areas are no stranger to violent crime. Some of us are lucky to live in functioning societies where the rule of law exists, and Venezuela is an example of the opposite of that.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:15
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Here's a video with some of the family members of the 14 people who died in the raid on the Cota 905 in Caracas yesterday, with my translation below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9WHnRMdPG4quote:Woman in Red: He who kills by the sword can't die peacefully [roughly translating from a Venezuelan saying to that effect]. [There's no guarantee] that if they [the police] go into an area like that again, they won't get... and then their family members come out too, and they have human rights as well. They also had human rights. He [her dead relative] was taken out of his house and they killed him. They took him out of his house and we found him dead here in the Bello Monte morgue. Also, Maria Corina Machado (one of the most well-known opposition figures) said on Twitter an hour ago that she has been banned from holding public office for one year. She received a document from the Comptroller General's office notifying her of the ban. The news is still breaking so I don't know the details. She had been elected to represent Circuit 2 in Miranda state in the December 6 elections. Out of "the big four" opposition figures (Ledezma, Lopez, Machado and Capriles): Lopez and Ledezma are in jail, and Machado is now unable to hold office. Capriles is the last one standing.
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Jul 14, 2015 23:16
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A little more about the Cota 905, where the large police operative took place: the area is what's known officially as a Peace Zone, which is esentially somewhere where the government has struck a deal with gangs not to enter without warrants/urgent reasons as long as they police themselves, so they're zones that are wholly under the control of criminals. Whether they're paramilitary or not is not the point, it's that the government has literally ceded control to armed groups in some areas of the country. This latest crackdown is puzzling because operatives of this magnitude haven't ocurred in recent memory and may be partly fuelled by the fact that a minister's caravan was attacked at gunpoint last week while transiting the area, so it could be simply a case of the government flexing it's muscles to show that although they allow these gangs to operate with impunity, they won't tolerate attacks on high ranking members. Think about that, crime is so out of control that thugs didn't think twice about opening fire on a minister's caravan in the capital (my choice of words is very specific here because high ranking government members esentially travel in motorcades wherever they go, a bunch of bulletproof SUVs surrounded by motorcycles with bodyguards). On the topic of bodyguards, once you add their numbers to those of killed policemen you have an even worse figure than 11 per month killed on average; they're usually murdered to steal their firearms which of course sell for a whole bunch of money on top of giving a boost to the status of the criminals who take them down. Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 00:12
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So Robocop was perhaps too optimistic a comparison. Judge Dredd might be more apt.
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Jul 15, 2015 00:23
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LOL Venezuela sitting on a >600% inflation rate right now. GG Venezuela! They better put up some price controls ASAP! That always fixes things. 
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Jul 15, 2015 00:27
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At the risk of looking like I'm beating a dead horse, I want to talk about the Colombian paramilitaries claim so we can bury the issue for good. When the government accuses Colombian paramilitaries of being in the country, it is important to remember the context in which the claims are made. The PSUV has been arguing for a while that there are international groups (the USA, Colombia, Spain, the CIA, the IMF, the OAS, Guyana, etc.) who are actively engaged in destabilizing activities with the goal of removing Maduro from power. Scarcity, inflation, insecurity: all caused by the opposition and their international backers. Maduro has mentioned numerous times that what he calls the "Miami-Madrid-Bogota axis" is an integral part of this international destabilizing force. The Colombian paramilitaries are not just your run-of-the-mill guerillas on vacation; they are in Venezuela with the express intent of creating chaos to make the PSUV look bad and force Maduro out of office. This is why the government is so quick to yell "Colombian paramilitaries!" whenever they can, as is the case with the raid in Caracas yesterday. As I've said before, there has been no conclusive evidence provided so far that these groups exist or that they are operating in the country as the government suggests. When the Minister of the Interior says that authorities arrested "Colombian paramilitaries", it's important to ask: "How do you know someone is a Colombian paramilitary?" Did they find training manuals among the suspect's possessions? Did they find insignias or uniforms? Documents linking the men to paramilitary groups or organized chains of command? Cell phones with contact information of known paramilitary members? Any kind of out-of-the-ordinary communication equipment? Any kind of literature at all that would suggest that the men in question were part of an organized group created for the purposes of waging clandestine war? Perhaps more importantly, could these allegations hold up in court? Or did authorities just find that, out of a group of 130+ suspects, some of them were Colombian citizens? Given the way previous accusations have played out, I suspect that we'll never find out the answer to these questions. I also suspect that, given the lack of evidence, these allegations are simply false. While I don't doubt that the Venezuelan government arrested Colombian citizens yesterday (there are 1.5 million Colombians living in Venezuela), to take the Minister simply at his word and believe that they were paramilitaries would be ridiculous. I'll remind you that last year, Diosdado Cabello went on television and said that the government had uncovered evidence that the opposition had hired Middle Eastern mercenaries to carry out a campaign of suicide car bombings in the country. Where did those accusations end up? Nowhere. There was no trial, no formal examination or weighing of evidence. Just unfounded accusations.
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Jul 15, 2015 00:57
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Chuck Boone posted:I'll remind you that last year, Diosdado Cabello went on television and said that the government had uncovered evidence that the opposition had hired Middle Eastern mercenaries to carry out a campaign of suicide car bombings in the country. Where did those accusations end up? Nowhere. There was no trial, no formal examination or weighing of evidence. Just unfounded accusations. But it did accomplish its goal of getting left-wing diehards in English-speaking countries to resolve their cognitive dissonance over Venezeuala's collapse, by allowing them to attribute it to "all Bad Things are ultimately caused by the CIA." It doesn't matter if the Bad Thing is still going on, or the link to the CIA is as tenuous as "an alleged arrestee allegedly held citizenship in a country whose government has a better relationship to the U.S. than Venezuela has" -- as long as Bad Thing = CIA, they can go to bed without questioning their worldview. I call it the Chomsky Mechanism. Meanwhile Venezuela is still destroying itself but who cares. M. Discordia fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 01:41
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M. Discordia posted:Look at the quote above -- Maduro says to anyone who's listening that there will be consequences for those who don't vote for PSUV. This is the culmination of 16 years of rigging the system such that many people probably don't think it's worthwhile to vote. Is this true Chuck and Labra?
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Jul 15, 2015 06:17
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Chuck Boone posted:"Miami-Madrid-Bogota axis" What dark conspiracies are machinating in Madrid, of all places? Does the PSUV still have its panties in a bunch over Juan Carlos telling Chavez to wind his neck in?
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Jul 15, 2015 10:03
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punk rebel ecks posted:Is this true Chuck and Labra? Well, Maduro's approval rating is in fact probably still in the 20-25% range, if not lower.This is going off data from surveys conducted earlier this year. Since the situation in the country has not improved since the start of the year (and you could argue it's gotten worse, specially when it comes to scarcity), then it stands to reason that his approval rating wouldn't have changed much. As to the rest of his post, it's an opinion. We do know that the PSUV has punished people for signing petitions against them in the past (see: Tascon list), a tool so benign that you can even sign petitions through Facebook on your lunch break. We also know that the PSUV has access to voter lists indicating who voted and who did not (as per Maduro's comments during the PSUV primaries; "... we know who votes and who doesn't".) Knowing these two facts, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to imagine people voting a certain way out of fear of punishment from not doing so, specially if you work in the public sector. This is the reason why the secret ballot is such an important pillar of democracy. kapparomeo posted:What dark conspiracies are machinating in Madrid, of all places? Does the PSUV still have its panties in a bunch over Juan Carlos telling Chavez to wind his neck in? I don't know this for a fact because I don't know about this particular episode, but the answer is probably "Sure, why not!". More recently, though, the Spanish Congress of Deputies passed a motion calling for the immediate release of Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez, and Maduro freaked out on television. He said that the Spanish Prime Minister was "really racist" and that Spain could "have opinions about their own mothers, but not Venezuela". Also, even more recently, former Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales travelled to Caracas supposedly to help with Lopez's legal defence, to which Maduro reacted equally angrily.
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Jul 15, 2015 12:00
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Chuck Boone posted:I don't know this for a fact because I don't know about this particular episode, but the answer is probably "Sure, why not!". Wikipedia Article At the 2007 Ibero-American summit Chavez was repeatedly interrupting the Spanish Prime Minister (not even to criticise what Zapatero was saying, but to go off on a tangent accusing the previous PM Anzar of being a fascist) and King Juan Carlos interrupted Chavez in turn with "why don't you just shut up". The Eternal Commander of the Revolution didn't take it well. kapparomeo fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 12:10
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Why was he even ranting about Aznar in 2007.
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Jul 15, 2015 12:50
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Can you still buy "porque no te callas" poo poo?
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Jul 15, 2015 17:15
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This thread is consistently fascinating reading, thanks to everyone posting from Venezuela. I'm spending six weeks in the country starting the middle of next month (I posted some pages upthread about our research near Puerto Ayacucho) and the financial situation is incredibly disconcerting to hear about. I can only imagine what it's like to live with on a permanent basis.
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Jul 15, 2015 23:34
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A little bit more on the Maria Corina Machado saga: Machado was elected to the National Assembly in 2011 to represent a district in Miranda. In March of last year, she spoke at a meeting of the Organization of American states on the protests and human rights abuses that were taking place in the country at the time. On March 24 of last year, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said that by accepting the invitation to speak at the OAS, she had forfeited her National Assembly seat, and was therefore no longer a deputy. He said that she would not be allowed to enter the National Assembly if she tried. As is often the case in Venezuela, there was no impeachment, no trial, no examination of evidence: just an utterance. Since then, she has been traveling around America (I got a chance to see her speak at the University of Toronto last year) raising awareness on the situation in Venezuela. She's a fairly popular opposition figure, and probably the most well-known besides Leopoldo Lopez, Antonio Ledezma and Henrique Capriles. Her name appeared on the primary ballot for the opposition earlier this year, and she was elected to represent a district in Miranda in the December 6 parliamentary elections. Yesterday, the Comptroller General of the Republic, sent her notice that she had been disqualified from holding political officer for one year. Machado says that the reason given for her disqualification was that she failed to declare cestatickets as part of her income. Cestatickets are (I believe) a kind of food stamp that is given to people who earn below a certain threshold as a way to supplement their income so that they are able to afford food. Machado said she never received cestatickets while she was a deputy, so she never declared any. A criminal lawyer by the name of Alberto Arteaga told El Nacional today that the officer of the Comptroller General does not have the power to disqualify someone from holding office: only a judge can determine such a punishment at the end of a trial. Once again, no trial, no legal proceeding, no investigation: just an utterance. kapparomeo posted:Wikipedia Article Thank you for linking this. I do remember the "Por que no te callas?" incident causing a huge stir back when it happened, although I wasn't aware of all the details. Vlex posted:This thread is consistently fascinating reading, thanks to everyone posting from Venezuela. Venezuela is a truly unique place. I work at an ESL school, and it's always really interesting to have Venezuelan students in the classroom. Listening to them explain what they see and put up with in their daily lives to, for example, the Japanese students, is really interesting. Students from other country's often don't have anything close to a proper frame of reference to make sense of the stories. "What do you mean you have to line up for hours, and when you go inside the supermarket is empty? Where did all the food go?"
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Jul 16, 2015 01:47
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Chuck Boone posted:
My boss has been working in Venezuela for decades at this point, and he has said that he has rarely seen things this bad. Figuring out a way to acquire enough $Bs to pay our collaborators/partners a decent wage is the real pain in the neck!
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Jul 16, 2015 10:09
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Vlex posted:My boss has been working in Venezuela for decades at this point, and he has said that he has rarely seen things this bad. Figuring out a way to acquire enough $Bs to pay our collaborators/partners a decent wage is the real pain in the neck! First of all, good luck in your trip! You should post about your stay afterwards if you have the time, I haven't been to Puerto Ayacucho since I was a kid. About the wages, wouldn't the steep exchange rate help in that aspect? I cant' imagine there aren't exchangers over there who would be happy to take a few dollars off your hands.
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Jul 16, 2015 14:56
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Chuck Boone posted:
All involved in multiple attempts to violently overthrow the government, I don't think most governments would tolerate those kind of shenanigans.
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Jul 16, 2015 15:14
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Sekrit Gummint overthrow plan (Don't tell Chavez) 1) toss some bombs out of a plane over the capital 2) ??? 3) Profit (for evil western corporations)
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Jul 16, 2015 15:54
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Helsing posted:It seems like there are some pretty big problems with the Venezuelan economy and with crime but what are the realistic end goals of the protesters? Given that they've consistently lost elections that international observers have certified as fair and free doesn't this amount to an attempt to use force and disruption to annul the outcome of repeated elections? Having armed people manning barricades seems like a very extreme step to be taking in a context where the government has been legitimately elected. It's kinda funny to look back and revisit posts like this.
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Jul 16, 2015 16:10
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Borneo Jimmy posted:All involved in multiple attempts to violently overthrow the government, I don't think most governments would tolerate those kind of shenanigans. You do realize, that for all your furious shitposting, no one believes anything you say, and in fact laughs at you?
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Jul 16, 2015 16:14
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-Troika- posted:You do realize, that for all your furious shitposting, no one believes anything you say, and in fact laughs at you? The real joke here is the neoliberal opposition's constant failure to win elections or get anything done. The best they can hope for is an armed invasion as a result of a Marco Rubio presidency.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:05
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-Troika- posted:You do realize, that for all your furious shitposting, no one believes anything you say, and in fact laughs at you? Please don't make ol Jimbo stop posting, I like having an unfiltered propagandist in here so I can experience what it must be like watching Venezuelan TV and listening to Venezuelan radio. It is the j'ne sais quoi of the complete and utter sincerity of a converted true believer.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:27
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shrike82 posted:It's kinda funny to look back and revisit posts like this. Holy poo poo the first few pages of this thread have me laughing so hard I might throw up. I know hindsight is 20/20, but its not so much that these posts ended up being mistaken (its dishonest and unfair to critique people for not being able to see 3 years into the future). But its not that those posts are wrong as they are mind-blowingly narcissistic and place personal ideology over critical inspection of the issues facing the country in 2012. Frijolero posted:I hope Chavez wins. a bad enough dude posted:Reading the flood of whining and bullshit that has come out since the election by wealthy Venezuelan expats has actually made me more supportive of Chavez. The only thing of real concern that has been brought up is the crime rate, which seems to be more a fault of the shifting and intensifying drug war than any of Chavez's policies. a bad enough dude posted:Reading the flood of whining and bullshit that has come out since the election by wealthy Venezuelan expats has actually made me more supportive of Chavez. The only thing of real concern that has been brought up is the crime rate, which seems to be more a fault of the shifting and intensifying drug war than any of Chavez's policies. None of the people are remotely capable of thinking beyond themselves and its really gross. The upside is that a lot of people early on were totally on the ball and there are certainly plenty of arguments that make sense in context - I'm just picking out the bad ones. This may come across as a pot-shot, but its really a fairly instructive look at how cognitive dissonance and how it pops on the left. If you back you'll find that a few people were incredibly informed, skilled, and accurate when it came to predicting how the other economies in South America would develop but were completely wrong about Venezuela. There's no sane reason why someone well informed enough to predict the economies of all other South American Countries three years in advance could be so incredibly wrong about this one. Bifner McDoogle fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jul 16, 2015 |
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Jul 16, 2015 19:00
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Chavez certainly enacted some good policies, but the extent of his ambition was boilerplate social democracy that relied thread-and-fiber on a single commodity's price continually increasing forever. Even the most avowed Marxist in the world would tell you that ain't happening.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:16
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Bifner McDoogle posted:Holy poo poo the first few pages of this thread have me laughing so hard I might throw up. I know hindsight is 20/20, but its not so much that these posts ended up being mistaken (its dishonest and unfair to critique people for not being able to see 3 years into the future). But its not that those posts are wrong as they are mind-blowingly narcissistic and place personal ideology over critical inspection of the issues facing the country in 2012. In my opinion Americans in general tend to be quite clueless at figuring out other countries. I'm not talking about people in this thread, but for most Americans (even the educated ones), their understanding of other governments and societies is very sketchy and they rely on stereotypes. American leftists are especially bad and condescending towards us. Tony_Montana fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jul 16, 2015 |
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Jul 16, 2015 21:33
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Borneo Jimmy posted:All involved in multiple attempts to violently overthrow the government, I don't think most governments would tolerate those kind of shenanigans. Borneo jimmy how do you feel about Hugo Chavez's failed coup in 1992 which sought to assassinate the sitting president and led to the deaths of hundreds? It seems like attempting to violently overthrow the government has a long and storied history in Venezuela, not that any of these opposition leaders attempted anything comparable.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:46
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Tony_Montana posted:In my opinion Americans in general tend to be quite clueless at figuring out other countries.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:53
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JeffersonClay posted:Borneo jimmy how do you feel about Hugo Chavez's failed coup in 1992 which sought to assassinate the sitting president and led to the deaths of hundreds? A very different situation since Chavez's uprising was against a government that had just massacred 3000 Venezuelans.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:59
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New thread title proposal: Venezuala: Porque no te callas, Borneo Jimenez
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Jul 16, 2015 22:33
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Chuck Boone posted:At the risk of looking like I'm beating a dead horse, I want to talk about the Colombian paramilitaries claim so we can bury the issue for good. Ironically this sounds more a little bit like the way some of the more unhinged American Republicans like Steve King talk. Anyway thanks for taking the time to give out a detailed answer. These posts are very helpful for getting a better sense of how things stand in Venezuela at the moment. Vermain posted:Chavez certainly enacted some good policies, but the extent of his ambition was boilerplate social democracy that relied thread-and-fiber on a single commodity's price continually increasing forever. Even the most avowed Marxist in the world would tell you that ain't happening. As bad as the reliance on oil was I wonder if the bigger issue here is the rotten state of Venezueala's political institutions. Massive corruption and street violence aren't really compatible with egalitarian social policies, and reliance on oil (and the lack of a contingency plan for when the price inevitably falls) are symptoms of a political situation where the ruling party is apparently as fixated on holding power and personally enriching themselves as they are on actually steering the country in a new direction.
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Jul 17, 2015 00:13
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The Comptroller General has just disqualified Enzo Scarano (another opposition National Assembly candidate) from holding office for a period of one year. Same thing that they did to Maria Corina Machado two days ago. Scarano was the mayor of San Diego, Carabobo state, until March of last year, when the government removed him from office for failing to refuse an order to clear protesters from the streets of San Diego. He served 10 months in the Ramo Verde military prison where Leopoldo Lopez has been held since February of last year. At the time, Scarano (alongside Daniel Ceballos, the mayor of San Cristobal who was also removed from office at the same time for the same reason) argued that municipal police forces are legally unable to act in protests scenarios, a role which is left to the National Guard and the National Bolivarian Police. I believe that Daniel Ceballos was also elected to represent a district in Tachira in the December 6 elections, so we can all probably look forward to his disqualification sooner or later. (EDIT: My bad - it looks like he was disqualified back on July 6) JeffersonClay posted:Borneo jimmy how do you feel about Hugo Chavez's failed coup in 1992 which sought to assassinate the sitting president and led to the deaths of hundreds? It seems like attempting to violently overthrow the government has a long and storied history in Venezuela, not that any of these opposition leaders attempted anything comparable. The official PSUV position on this is that the events of 1992 were not a failed coup, but rather "an act of dignity and rebellion". Or, if you'd like, "it's not a coup when we do it". Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jul 17, 2015 |
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Jul 17, 2015 00:20
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Helsing posted:As bad as the reliance on oil was I wonder if the bigger issue here is the rotten state of Venezueala's political institutions. Massive corruption and street violence aren't really compatible with egalitarian social policies, and reliance on oil (and the lack of a contingency plan for when the price inevitably falls) are symptoms of a political situation where the ruling party is apparently as fixated on holding power and personally enriching themselves as they are on actually steering the country in a new direction. It's contributory to the current poor state of affairs, but nearsightedness on oil prices damns corrupt dictatorships and egalitarian democracies alike. General economic acumen seems to be the main determiner, here: Alberta's democratically elected government is struggling with a legacy of idiotic policy decisions that's left it more-or-less hooped, while monarchical Saudi Arabia is chugging along just fine.
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Jul 17, 2015 04:35
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Yeah, the Netherlands and Norway made some spectacularly poor decisions to over-rely on oil prices being high forever at various times in the last 40 years and never ended up with food scarcity or protestors being shot in the street. Having the sort of genuine rule of law that makes it impossible for the small circle of the seven most powerful politicians to loot the oil fund to Swiss bank accounts or corrupt the civil service with political purges is what really matters. This is the most immediate problem with "revolutionary" governance.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:38
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