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So is there a right-wing populist faction in the opposition that's ready to take over when Torrealba is forced out of the leadership position? Because judging by the weakness of Venezuelan liberalism and the way of the world at the moment, I could definitely see Venezuela embracing fascism.
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Feb 1, 2017 14:34
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Venomous posted:So is there a right-wing populist faction in the opposition that's ready to take over when Torrealba is forced out of the leadership position? Because judging by the weakness of Venezuelan liberalism and the way of the world at the moment, I could definitely see Venezuela embracing fascism. I don't see how that would work seeing how the current government is identical to a fascist, authoritarian dictatorship in everything but name.
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Feb 1, 2017 14:54
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Some weird shenanigans went down in Sucre state on Monday night. The governor of the state, a PSUV politician named Luis Acuña, was asked to resign from his post, likely by some PSUV higher-ups but not necessarily Maduro. That same night, a handful of PSUV politicians flew over to Sucre state and swore in a new governor, another PSUV politician named Edwin Rojas. The ceremony happened with at least some members of the Sucre state assembly present. In other words, the PSUV asked the PSUV governor of Sucre to resign, and replaced him with another PSUV politician in an unprecedented ceremony that involved other PUV politicians swearing the guy in. The whole thing is absolutely illegal, of course. The Sucre state constitution says that if the governor's seat becomes vacant for any reason after the halfway point in the term, the state assembly has to do these things in this order: 1) declare the seat vacant, 2) vote on a temporary replacement until elections take place again. In a functioning Venezuela, regional elections should have taken place last year, but the CNE cancelled them until this year some time. It's already February and we haven't heard a word from the CNE on the elections, meaning that Rojas will be governor of Sucre state until ??/??/????. fnox posted:Capriles asks Chuo Torrealba to step down: http://www.noticierodigital.com/2017/01/capriles-planteo-la-salida-de-chuo-torrealba-de-la-mud/ No kidding! I find it really hard to believe that Capriles doesn't count himself as a member of the MUD leadership. He's calling for the MUD leadership to step down... but he's not the leadership so he can stay. Venomous posted:So is there a right-wing populist faction in the opposition that's ready to take over when Torrealba is forced out of the leadership position? Because judging by the weakness of Venezuelan liberalism and the way of the world at the moment, I could definitely see Venezuela embracing fascism. Going off what fnox said, I think that one of the best things that the PSUV has done is that it has ruined fascism in Venezuela for at least a few generations. I know that I've personally been throwing the word "fascism" around a lot since Trump got elected, but I have to admit that I do so carelessly because I'm not an expert on what fascism is beyond "what we saw in Italy and Germany during WW2". I'll say that when I think of the word "fascism", I think of a political ideology that has these characteristics: 1) it is deeply nationalistic; 2) it is deeply militaristic; 3) it needs conflict to survive; 4) it sets itself in opposition to "the enemy", which is an imagined "Other" who stands directly opposed to it; 3) it is deeply intolerant of difference of opinion and thought, 4) it demands that civilians sacrifice themselves to the nation/the party; 5) it relies heavily on mythology/a romanticised glorious past. I would argue that the PSUV meets and excels at every one of those criteria. I think that the evidence is clearly visible if you've been following events in Venezuela specially since Maduro took power in 2013, so I won't provide examples of each characteristic. However, if you'd like clarity on the points, let me know and I'll make sure to write up a longer post on this when I have a bit more time. Right now, the opposition is staying clear from all of those characteristics because it needs to distance itself from the PSUV as much as possible. If you listen to the appeals coming out of the opposition, you'll notice that they're quite republican and echo some of the same appeals made by U.S. revolutionary and Enlightenment thinkers. There's a lot of talk of the need for liberty, for freedom of thought and conscience, for a government that is run not on whims but on laws, etc. I think this is getting to your point, though: if this mainstream opposition line of thought is failing/fails, who fills the gap? For the reasons outlined above, I think it'd be really difficult for a nationalistic, militaristic, conflict-driven, "everyone is out to get us so we need a strong party", intolerant, sacrifice-demanding, past-glorifying alternative to show up because... well, that alternative would be indistinguishable from the PSUV and wouldn't get very far.
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Feb 1, 2017 16:24
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There's a military parade on right now in Caracas which you can watch live here on VTV. Every time I watch one of these things I go  over how North Korean it all sounds and looks.
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Feb 1, 2017 19:02
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Chuck Boone posted:Some weird shenanigans went down in Sucre state on Monday night. It is probably more accurate to describe Venezuela as a patronage dictatorship/single party state. Fascism and communism despite being described as far right and far left actually share a lot in common in the fact that they require as close to 100% mobilization of the people to support goals of the state. Often the line between communism and fascism gets blurred because the goals of the state often don't align with the needs of the people. Whereas a patronage dictatorship hopes to cut the people out of participating in its goals and power structure in favor of using privilege and wealth as a reward for its supporters. Fascism and communism sees people as assets to be used by the state whereas patronage systems tend to exclude as much of the populace as possible.
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Feb 1, 2017 19:45
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Venezuela is what a third world kleptocracy becomes if you let it put down roots for too long without pouring Agent Orange on them.
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Feb 1, 2017 22:20
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Chuck Boone posted:
I dunno this kind of activity and rhetoric sounds pretty fascist https://www.thenation.com/article/christmas-in-caracas-worse-than-the-grinch/ quote:Bolivarian Venezuela is not revolutionary France. It’s not even, when it comes to everyday violence, Mexico, where bodies are piling up faster than snow in Whoville. And Maduro’s certainly not Saint-Just. After a decade of self-described “socialism” (as Alejandro Velasco reminds us below, it wasn’t until 2005, seven years after his election, after having faced stiff opposition to the mildest reforms, that Hugo Chávez declared himself a socialist), it’s the opposition that is bloodstained, responsible for significantly more political terror and assassinations than the would-be revolutionaries. They do Robespierre proud, having even come up with a novel way to behead: In 2014, when they tried to stage a revolt to unseat Maduro, anti-government forces strung galvanized wire across city streets, which led to at least one decapitation of a motorcyclist. See this summary by Gabriel Hetland, who writes that the true executors of Venezuela’s “brutal history is almost totally absent from mainstream media depictions of the opposition.” Over 40 people, mostly Chavistas or government employees, were killed in 2014 protests; and “approximately two hundred peasant leaders killed by ranchers opposed to the 2001 land reform law pushed by Chávez.” https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451 quote:“I wish I could decapitate in public plazas [Venezuelan politicians] Lina Ron and Diosdado Cabello. I wish I could torture for the rest of his remaining existence Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel … I wish I could fly over Caracas slums throwing the dead bodies of the criminals that have destroyed my country … Only barbaric practices will neutralize them, much the same way [Genghis] Khan did. I wish I was him.” He later declared, “Re: advocating for violence yes I have mentioned in many occasions that in my view that is the only solution left for dealing with Chavez” (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 2, 2017 01:32
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If you didn't get a chance to catch the military parade today honouring Ezequiel Zamora, here are a bunch of pictures: Here's a picture of Maduro cosplaying as, uhh... well, here's a picture: https://twitter.com/InfoVzlaNet/status/826904638045749252 From left to right (the bottom left picture): Supreme Court President Gladys Rodriguez, First Combatant (First Lady) Cilia Flores, Maduro, and Minister of Defence Vladimir Padrino Lopez: https://twitter.com/VillegasPoljak/status/826856929532198912 Pensive Maduro taking in the sights (I've never seen him in this grey uniform): https://twitter.com/1ChavistaMaduro/status/826891704934494208 A bird's eye view of the Paseo de los Proceres, which is where military parades take place: https://twitter.com/gestionperfecta/status/826903624559230978 Soldiers and hardware: https://twitter.com/1ChavistaMaduro/status/826891704934494208 https://twitter.com/prensaFANB/status/826896804868407296 owDAWG posted:It is probably more accurate to describe Venezuela as a patronage dictatorship/single party state. Fascism and communism despite being described as far right and far left actually share a lot in common in the fact that they require as close to 100% mobilization of the people to support goals of the state. Often the line between communism and fascism gets blurred because the goals of the state often don't align with the needs of the people. Whereas a patronage dictatorship hopes to cut the people out of participating in its goals and power structure in favor of using privilege and wealth as a reward for its supporters. Fascism and communism sees people as assets to be used by the state whereas patronage systems tend to exclude as much of the populace as possible. I can understand this. But do you see how the PSUV exhibits many of the characteristics that we in (I presume) North America could characterise as fascist? Highly nationalistic, very much dependent on existential enemies and people who are "lesser than", extremely militaristic, etc.? The point here being that if any "real" fascists show up, I'm not sure how much different they would look from the PSUV. Sun Wu Kampf posted:Venezuela is what a third world kleptocracy becomes if you let it put down roots for too long without pouring Agent Orange on them. Please don't do this  my grandma and a lot of really nice people still live there.Venezuela is definitely what happens to a country where a charismatic leader shows up promising everyone everything and then proceeds to dismantle the rule of law and state institutions because he claims to have a mandate to completely restructure the state, and then fills the government with sycophants and lackeys. EDIT: Ugh, the Twitter links came out all wrong. Sorry. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 2, 2017 |
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Feb 2, 2017 02:02
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Venomous posted:So is there a right-wing populist faction in the opposition that's ready to take over when Torrealba is forced out of the leadership position? Because judging by the weakness of Venezuelan liberalism and the way of the world at the moment, I could definitely see Venezuela embracing fascism. Both Venezuelan liberals and conservatives are weak at the moment. It's caused by lack of food 
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Feb 2, 2017 07:25
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Does anyone know if el hefe is OK? He's a regular poster in the formula 1 thread and we haven't heard from him since December.
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Feb 2, 2017 10:58
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Even with the tankie rhetoric hidden in some of the paragraphs (Linking George Ciccariello, lmao), this article straight up says that things are very bad in Venezuela. Jimmy is running out of articles praising the Bolivarian revolution.
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Feb 2, 2017 12:58
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learnincurve posted:Does anyone know if el hefe is OK? He's a regular poster in the formula 1 thread and we haven't heard from him since December. I'm not in contact with him outside of the thread and neither is Labradoodle. He was probated for a post he made on here a while ago, and I figured that he was just taking a break from the forums. I do wish he'd post to let us know he's doing alright, though!
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Feb 2, 2017 13:40
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Those pictures of the parade are loving surreal. Those are pictures of a pretty nice Potemkin village. Vladimir Padrino Lopez is the guy who Maduro handed shedloads of power to right? M. Discordia posted:The point is that it's going to happen again and again. Venezuela isn't going to be the last country that gets defended by international leftists to the point of totalitarianism. Venezuela's collapse due to socialism is also a thing that is ongoing right now and not a historical curiosity, and the denialism is still coming strong from the same people who want to Make America Venezuela Again, so it's a useful critique of their detachment from reality. Right wing "Defenders of Liberty" have been more than happy to support (or put in power) "Leaders they can do business with" for decades, despite death squads and other wonderful hobbies. These "Defenders of Liberty" were people with power not sad internet or pamphlet warriors. I have plenty of bile for them both but reserve my concern more for the ones who can actually have a proper impact. Chuck Boone posted:Venezuela is definitely what happens to a country where a charismatic leader shows up promising everyone everything and then proceeds to dismantle the rule of law and state institutions because he claims to have a mandate to completely restructure the state, and then fills the government with sycophants and lackeys. Ouch.
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Feb 3, 2017 00:34
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Munin posted:Those pictures of the parade are loving surreal. Those are pictures of a pretty nice Potemkin village. Take a look at this short clip from the parade yesterday and pay attention, even if you don't speak Spanish, to the way the announcers speak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb57cFO0ON8 Listen to the intonation and the enunciation in the announcers' voices. I can guarantee you that whenever they were practising their lines in front of the people from the Ministry of Communication, the feedback they got was, "yeah, that sounds good - but try again, and this time try to sound more patriotic". You hear the same kind of thing when you watch North Korean newscasts. There's just something about the way that the announcers speak that sounds forced and unnatural, and I'm sure it's because what they're saying is supposed to sound heroic and patriotic. Munin posted:Vladimir Padrino Lopez is the guy who Maduro handed shedloads of power to right?
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Feb 3, 2017 01:38
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It's always been absurd just how much money Venezuela puts into its military for a country that hasn't been in any armed conflict with any foreign power since its independence. Colombia, which has been in armed conflict for 50 years, has something like half of the equipment the Venezuelan military has.
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Feb 3, 2017 02:47
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fnox posted:Even with the tankie rhetoric hidden in some of the paragraphs (Linking George Ciccariello, lmao), this article straight up says that things are very bad in Venezuela. Jimmy is running out of articles praising the Bolivarian revolution. Huh, I read that link ( https://www.thenation.com/article/c...han-the-grinch/) after you posted it, and it sounds a lot more reasonable than I expected from something from Borneo Jimmy. I don't think he actually read it, especially once you get into the interview lower down in the article. E: To be honest, reading the interview, I don't see anything the Venezuelan guy says that I can disagree with, not that I'm an expert in Venezuelan history or anything. There's "As bad as things are, the opposition in power would be an even worse option." but he's talking specifically about the people in 23 de Enero, for whom live probably would be even worse under the opposition than under Maduro (at least in the short term). I tend to go center-right on government issues too. Hope El Hefe's OK, but IIRC he runs a private security company so I imagine he knows how to handle himself. Saladman fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Feb 3, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2017 08:00
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Saladman posted:Huh, I read that link ( https://www.thenation.com/article/c...han-the-grinch/) after you posted it, and it sounds a lot more reasonable than I expected from something from Borneo Jimmy. I don't think he actually read it, especially once you get into the interview lower down in the article. The article suffers from the "so-far-up-my-own-rear end" syndrome that a lot of pro-PSUV pieces from intellectuals outside of the country suffer from. That's the general viewpoint from which the article is written. I'll give you two simple examples that prove this. The first: quote: The worst fate Venezuela’s opposition leaders face is that they have to use their US credit cards to order from Amazon to stuff their Christmas stockings.  ". The second: quote:... it’s the opposition that is bloodstained, responsible for significantly more political terror and assassinations than the would-be revolutionaries. What do you call that? Is that not "political terror"? When you put stolen money that was destined to import chemotherapy drugs into your private overseas bank account, are you not assassinating the people you've doomed to death? I haven't read Barrio Rising, but I'll be picking it up after reading that interview.
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Feb 3, 2017 14:37
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fnox posted:It's always been absurd just how much money Venezuela puts into its military for a country that hasn't been in any armed conflict with any foreign power since its independence. Colombia, which has been in armed conflict for 50 years, has something like half of the equipment the Venezuelan military has.
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Feb 3, 2017 19:50
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Honest question: how much of the military equipment Venezuela supposedly has is actually still in military hands? By that I mean, are we sure the various generals and majors haven't been making cash for themselves by selling things off to other countries or groups?
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Feb 3, 2017 20:07
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fishmech posted:Honest question: how much of the military equipment Venezuela supposedly has is actually still in military hands? By that I mean, are we sure the various generals and majors haven't been making cash for themselves by selling things off to other countries or groups? From what has been said in the thread, corruption, embezzlement, and reselling equipment is practically considered part of a government job's regular compensation. I would assume a lot of material has fallen of trucks, but I imagine no one has been systemically investigating. Or at least no one investigates for very long.
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Feb 4, 2017 00:36
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fishmech posted:Honest question: how much of the military equipment Venezuela supposedly has is actually still in military hands? By that I mean, are we sure the various generals and majors haven't been making cash for themselves by selling things off to other countries or groups? The one thing that comes to mind on this is how relatively common grenade attacks against police are in Venezuela. I remember at least half a dozen separate cases of grenade attacks against police stations, checkpoints or officers in the last year or so. The government has claimed that the attackers are fascist shock troops or whatever bent on weakening the security apparatus of the country as part of the perpetual coup against Maduro, but the infinitely more likely explanation is that this is military hardware that has been sold to gang members by unscrupulous military personnel, or stuff that has otherwise fallen out of the proverbial truck somehow. And to add to what I dont know said about the general corruption and chaos that seems to be fairly prevalent in the military: there have been a couple of high profile events recently that speak to this. One is the Tumeremo Massacre from last march in Bolivar state. A gang dispute over mining rights in a region of Bolivar state resulted in approximately 28 people being killed, and there are allegations that the army was involved, which makes sense given their heavy presence in the area and stake in mineral extraction. As far as I'm aware the investigation into the massacre went absolutely nowhere, and the state government's (PSUV) response to the initial reports of the event was to deny it. The second case is known as the Barlovento Massacre, and that took place in October of last year. Soldiers executed 12 people they had picked up in a security operation and buried them in a mass grave. 11 soldiers were eventually arrested for the murders. I'm not sure what the motive was for the massacre, but the event is still an example of how broken the military is in Venezuela.
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Feb 4, 2017 01:01
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Chuck Boone posted:The article suffers from the "so-far-up-my-own-rear end" syndrome that a lot of pro-PSUV pieces from intellectuals outside of the country suffer from. That's the general viewpoint from which the article is written. I'll give you two simple examples that prove this. The second quote is from a different person than I was quoting. I was talking about the Venezuelan guy in the interview. The first quote is from him, but do you think that the opposition politicians are not actually living pretty decent lives? I can't imagine even a single one of them is waiting in food lines. Did you read the interview? He talks about Maduro et al being incredibly corrupt as well.
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Feb 4, 2017 13:05
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Saladman posted:The second quote is from a different person than I was quoting. I was talking about the Venezuelan guy in the interview. The first quote is from him, but do you think that the opposition politicians are not actually living pretty decent lives? I can't imagine even a single one of them is waiting in food lines. Did you read the interview? He talks about Maduro et al being incredibly corrupt as well. Yes - I agree with you 100% that the person who was interviewed (Alejandro Velasco) made interesting, compelling and enlightening arguments. I've ordered his book and I'm excited to read it. My comments were directed at the author of the article, Greg Grandin. The two quotes I took from his introduction display the same kind of logic that you hear from people on Venezuelanalysis, for example, which tends to come from people who sympathize with chavismo and the PSUV and do not live in Venezuela. I cannot take any critique of the opposition for being opulent seriously if it isn't immediately followed by "and by the way, I say that knowing full well that the PSUV leadership is in power only to enrich themselves through corruption and theft, and their greed is the direct cause of incalculable suffering". And I already went through how narrow-sighted and selective the other comment I highlighted is. I also agree with you completely when you say that the opposition leaders are weathering the storm just fine from a financial perspective since they're wealthy and have access to all kinds of things that the average Venezuelan doesn't. That goes for the leadership (the really big names); some of the new National Assembly deputies are really young and come from really humble backgrounds as far as I can tell, and opposition figures in regional politics are also less likely to be living luxuriously. But yes, I have no doubt that the opposition leadership hasn't gone hungry in a long, long time. Probably the biggest thing that sets the lives of the opposition leaders apart from those of the PSUV leaders is the fact that the opposition leadership is being persecuted politically. The thread is full of examples of people getting arrested, imprisoned, harassed by the SEBIN and other authorities, threatened with everything under the sky, etc. Conspiracy theories aside, if you're an opposition leader you've got good reason to fear that today might be the day they put you in jail with Leopoldo Lopez and the ~100 other political prisoners.
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Feb 4, 2017 14:37
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Did you hear that Bitcoins are on the rise in Venezuela? 
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Feb 6, 2017 03:58
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Yeah, that figure of 85,000 users per month using that particular exchange doesn't really hold up. I use the platform regularly and they have nowhere near that volume. The article falls into the same trap as most bitcoin "journalism". The author works from the premise that a small group of people using the currency means the country is on its way to widespread adoption and talks as if a single business accepting payments exclusively in bitcoin means anything. Furthermore, he couldn't be more wrong about the country embracing policies that enable the currency to flourish. I mean, the police have made a big deal of shutting down several mining operations and throwing the people in jail for money laundering charges, some of them within the past few weeks. Overall, the government probably doesn't give two shits about a small-time black market for currency trading, and local authorities will throw anyone in jail if they think they're using too much electricity and they're doing something fishy.
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Feb 6, 2017 15:50
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Yesterday, Maduro hosted his weekly Sundays With Maduro show in the city of Guarenas, which is just east of Caracas. During the show, Maduro had an interesting interaction with a local high school student who took the opportunity of the president's visit to ask for some help for her school. The video of the interaction is here, and my translation is below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5u0shdhohEquote:Maduro: Dulbita Barquino. Dulbi! Let’s give Dulbi a microphone. How old are you, Dulbi?  ) but there are a couple of things that stood out for me. First, it is obvious that the girl's school is quite literally falling apart. The government has utterly failed this school. Despite this, Maduro's response (You can't just ask for things! Go out and protest!) is because chances are the girl has gone out to protest with her friends against your government, you gigantic idiot, and also because it demonstrates one of the "benefits" of the Bolviarian revolution. One of the positive things that people bring up about the Bolivarian revolution is how it worked to empower communities - direct democracy and all that. I am 100% for community engagement in issues that directly affect them and direct democracy, but for Maduro to put the onus on the students to essentially force the government to listen to them and fix the roof that is threatening to collapse at any moment and kill everyone is absurd. It's an abuse of this key "strong point" of the revolution. Maduro was faced with this obviously horrendous criticism of his government's corruption, inefficiency, etc., and he attempted to save face by giving the student a lesson in what it means to be a patriotic revolutionary. As you can see, it didn't really work.Second, there were a couple of times when the girl hesitated in her responses because she didn't want to lay blame on Maduro and his government for what was going on. When Maduro asked "and what have you done?", the girl answered in the passive voice to hide the culprit. Her answer wasn't, 'we've written you/the ministry a bunch of times but you/the ministry hasn't responded", it was "we've written requests but we haven't gotten answers". She also said "they" suspended our cafeteria system, instead of "your government/the ministry of education". I'm not sure where I'm going with this; I'm just saying the girl had tact. Third, you'll notice that when Maduro ordered that stooge (who responded to Maduro's order by saluting him... ugh), the crowd went wild and started clapping. The Worker's President is taking action! The revolution is working! This happens quite a bit during Maduro's TV shows. He'll order someone to do something in response to a request from the crowd, and everyone will cheer because it looks like Maduro is doing something. It makes for great TV, but I hope you realize that it's absolute insanity. Why do you have to personally request that the president of your country take action directly on this issue that affects you (and your school, or apartment bloc, or neighbourhood group) exclusively? If Venezuela had anything like a functioning government, you wouldn't need to beg the president on live television to spare some money for desks so that you don't have to sit on the floor when you're in school. Labradoodle posted:Yeah, that figure of 85,000 users per month using that particular exchange doesn't really hold up. I use the platform regularly and they have nowhere near that volume. The only place where I hear bitcoins discussed seriously is the Venezuela reddit page, but that might be because it's reddit. I'm glad to hear your take on this because I thought (like the dude who wrote the article) that bitcoins were legitimately becoming a thing down there.
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Feb 7, 2017 01:11
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quote:Latin american death squads are a tool to achieve an end. If that end is a democratic nation with peaceful transitions of power, then that tool is a necessary evil. If that end is to concentrate power in a totalitarian's hands, then those death squads are merely evil. Interesting take on latin american death squads there. I can't really think of any examples of the latter and quite a few of the former... The same goes for death squads in general. Be it Collectivos or soldiers "disappearing" people in Chile they should all be despised. Munin fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Feb 7, 2017 |
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Feb 7, 2017 23:20
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/world/venezuela-passports-investigation/index.html?adkey=bn I can believe this easily. they have been helping the various cartels and other smugglers. what if they are legit helping terrorists. its definatly a little fearmongery but at the same time with such dire straiter, maduro would probaly do it. plus be giving a gently caress you to the US.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:58
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The CNE (the government body in charge of elections) announced on Wednesday night that it was opening up a political party re-certification process in order to validate political parties that want to take part in the next elections, whenever those may be. The opposition is already in panic mode because the way that the process has been set up is similar to the way the recall referendum process played out. Jesus Torrealba, the head of the MUD, described the process as "an obstacle race designed so that no one can win it". The process is extremely complex, convoluted, and makes very little logical sense. Here's a breakdown of what the process looks like:
That's just for 59 relatively small parties. Still, the hoops the parties have to jump through are so absurd that there's a real chance that at least some of them will cease to exist simply because the CNE designed this so poorly (read: well). One of the CNE's own rectors, Luis Emilio Rondon, came out against the requirements after they were announced, calling them "almost impossible" to meet. For bigger parties, the process is a bit different: parties that participated in the 2015 parliamentary elections will be re-certified based on the amount of votes that they each won during that electoral process. The MUD is crying foul over this process because by definition it appears set to do one of two things: 1) invalidate the MUD as a political organization, or 2) invalidate the MUD's political parties as political organizations. This is because in the run up to the 2015 parliamentary elections, the MUD agreed to run candidates on a single "MUD ticket". In other words, if you voted for Freddy Guevara in the 2015 parliamentary elections, you technically cast your vote for the MUD ticket in whatever district it is Freddy Guevara represents. Freddy Guevara officially belongs to the Voluntad Popular party, but you didn't vote for Voluntad Popular: you voted for the MUD. The MUD is afraid that the CNE will say "Ah! Voluntad Popular (and every other party in the MUD) got 0 votes in the last election, so they're not a party anymore!", or "Ah! People voted for Voluntad Popular (and every other party in the MUD) in the last election and not for the MUD because the MUD was never a legitimate party, so it can't exist anymore and is now illegal!". Unfortunately, as is the case with so many other things in Venezuela, the boundary between  and reality is so blurred that it's often difficult to discern at all, so I think that the MUD is absolutely justified in its fears. Dapper_Swindler posted:http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/world/venezuela-passports-investigation/index.html?adkey=bn It's definitely plausible. It's important to note that there's doesn't have to be any nefarious master plan behind the selling of the passports and other documents. All you need is a handful of corrupt individuals willing to make a lot of extra easy money and you've got yourself a fraudulent passport business. The fact that there has been no response from the Venezuelan authorities is reason enough to believe that there's at least a couple of important people wetting their beaks on this.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:35
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Believe it or not, there MUD is at fault here, last year at around March, the CNE called for political parties to re-certificate, for whatever reason, every party other than UNT failed to do so, and the procedure was much easier. This has been a pretty recurrent criticism of the MUD as a bloc, since the MUD itself must be registered as a party for it to appear in the ballots, the "bloc" is legally, just one really big opposition party, and it's pretty naive to expect that the government wasn't going to seize the opportunity of doing exactly this. Of course, the government could have simply declared opposition parties to be illegal and turn Venezuela into a one party state, and nobody would bat an eye. I think they're aware that the illusion of bipartidism suits them better.
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Feb 9, 2017 22:30
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Munin posted:Interesting take on latin american death squads there. I can't really think of any examples of the latter and quite a few of the former... The summary execution of 10k+ Tamils for living in the wrong shithole village at the tail end of the Sri Lankan civil war, of course.  I have less sympathy for the actual combatants who were mass-murdered, never mind Prabharakan himself, but that's still, you know, a war crime and there are good reasons it's frowned upon.
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Feb 9, 2017 22:44
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Chuck Boone posted:I can understand this. But do you see how the PSUV exhibits many of the characteristics that we in (I presume) North America could characterise as fascist? Highly nationalistic, very much dependent on existential enemies and people who are "lesser than", extremely militaristic, etc.? The point here being that if any "real" fascists show up, I'm not sure how much different they would look from the PSUV. do you think the 1930s USSR was fascist? if so the word is literally meaningless
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Feb 10, 2017 02:23
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Why don't they just come right out and say "elections are cancelled forever, gently caress you"? It's obvious by now that the MUD is so completely toothless that Maduro could make it stick with little effort.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:25
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:Why don't they just come right out and say "elections are cancelled forever, gently caress you"? It's obvious by now that the MUD is so completely toothless that Maduro could make it stick with little effort. Getting the public to slowly accept authoritarianism over time instead of presenting them with it overnight is how you avoid public rioting.
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Feb 10, 2017 05:13
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icantfindaname posted:do you think the 1930s USSR was fascist? if so the word is literally meaningless The way idiots on both the left and right use it, it really is.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:09
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icantfindaname posted:do you think the 1930s USSR was fascist? if so the word is literally meaningless My point on the PSUV very closely resembling fascism was in response to a question on the possibility of a fascist party mounting a serious challenge to the PSUV. I understand that there are really big and important differences between fascism and communism (for example, the relationship between the state and business and the state's stance towards private property). Telling of my limited knowledge on this, the characteristics of fascism that I described are all fairly superficial and don't get into the nitty-gritty of economics and policy. At the risk of muddling my answer more, I'll try to re-articulate that original point through an analogy. You're a prehistoric human and one day an animal you've never seen before comes into your village. It's a lion. The lion kills indiscriminately and terrifies everyone, then leaves. The next day, you're standing watch near the edge of the village and spot another animal you've never seen before coming towards your village. It's a cheetah. At that moment, you'd have one of two thoughts: 1) Huh. This new animal I've never seen before sure looks a lot like that thing that was here yesterday and killed so many of us. However, I can see that it's not quite the same as the animal that was here yesterday. This one has black spots all over and is a bit smaller. This is clearly a different animal, so there's no need to panic. Let's see if it's friendly! 2) Christ, that thing looks a hell of a lot like the other thing that was here yesterday. It's not quite 100% the same but it's close enough that I need to run for my life and warn everyone back at the village. I think that you'd be more likely to have thought #2, and I think that the same goes for Venezuelans were a fascist party to come into the political sphere. A lion and a cheetah are different beasts, but your experience with one was so horrendous that you're likely to want to stay away from the other because they share more than a handful of similarities. The other thing to keep in mind is that a pendulum swing from left-wing to right-wing is more likely if the pendulum starts at left-wing. We've discussed in the thread before what the "essence" of the PSUV is. Is it a truly socialist government? Is it really working from a left-wing framework to implement these policies on the road to communism? I and others have argued that this is not the essence of the PSUV. I've argued that the PSUV is an authoritarian kleptocracy that is not interested in governing whatsoever; that it only appeals to leftists with empty rhetoric and some token policies, and that its leadership is interested only in gaining wealth and escaping prosecution from a future non-PSUV government or international bodies. In this case, the pendulum wouldn't necessarily swing to the right-wing, but rather towards something that is the opposite of the PSUV that I've described. I think that this would be a democratic republic where the rule of law is a thing that exists. That's why I brought up the fact that the opposition tends to frame its arguments using the language of human rights, rule of law, democracy, respect for separation of powers, etc. This is why I think that when the pendulum swings back, it won't be towards fascism. I really hope so. Sun Wu Kampf posted:Why don't they just come right out and say "elections are cancelled forever, gently caress you"? It's obvious by now that the MUD is so completely toothless that Maduro could make it stick with little effort. Like Sinteres said, the strategy appears to be to ease into full out "we don't need elections anymore" rather than just making the declaration outright. The CNE (the people in charge of elections) announced today that the regional elections that should have happened last year [url=http://www.eluniversal.com/noticias/politica/cne-elecciones-regionales-estan-interrumpidas-por-renovacion-partidos_639111will not happen before June 21[/url]. This means that they're already backtracking on their promise last year when they postponed the elections, which is that they would take place in the first half of 2017. Since it takes the CNE months and months to organize elections, we're getting extremely close to not having elections in 2017, either. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 16:14
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Venezuelans are now so desperate for food that they're killing and eating things like flamingos and anteaters..
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Feb 11, 2017 17:30
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Welp, there goes all the wildlife. It's just going to be like China and Korea. Lots of trees and not enough animals
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Feb 11, 2017 18:00
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Oh, it gets worse: some of the animals being eaten are endangered species.
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Feb 11, 2017 18:10
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| # ? May 27, 2024 03:23 |
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So this year's Guri Dam crisis should start cropping up in the next month or so, right? Is there any news so far on what to expect there? English searches didn't turn up much, nor in my (lousy) Spanish.
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Feb 11, 2017 23:19
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