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Longtime lurker from Santa Fe now living in Florida here. Stay safe, Venegoons. Please.
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Apr 21, 2017 11:30
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Stay safe but also take your country back too
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Apr 21, 2017 13:34
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The mayor of the Sucre municipality in Caracas, Carlos Ocariz, said that a man named Melvin Guaitan was killed at a protest in Petare last night. His is the 9th protest-related death since April 6. One of the other protest fatalities was Paola Ramirez, who was killed on a street in San Cristobal on Wednesday. Minister of the Interior Nestor Reverol came out very soon after Ramirez's killing and said that authorities had caught the man who killed her, and would you look at that the killer is a member of the Vente Venezuela opposition party. Reverol named Ivan Alexis Pernia Perez, and said that at the time of his arrest Perez had a pistol and 442 bullets. When I heard that announcement from Reverol I wasn't at all surprised because the regime will often blame the opposition for things, and also because I had just watched a video that predicted what Reverol was going to say. The video shows a man kneeling in front of Ramirez's body as she lay dead on the street. A group of people has gathered around her, and this interaction took place: quote:Man 1: … they screwed her, man. That whole building witnessed it. Reverol's official account of Ramirez's death doesn't sit well with her mother, either. Here are two clips showing an interview with the mother in which she says that she doesn't believe that Perez is the man who killed her daughter, that she doesn't believe justice will be served in the case because the regime is responsible for her death, and that Ramirez called her moments before her death to say that a colectivo armado was shooting people in the area. https://twitter.com/hispanopost/status/855189347678605312 quote:Darcy Gomez: … couldn’t do it right now because of the situation [inaudible]. So she started working with those kids, and that’s all. https://twitter.com/MiguelContigo/status/855186213573193728 quote:Darcy Gomez: … that aren’t the ones. [She’s just finished saying, “The authorities shouldn’t be trying to blame people who didn’t do this”]. People who didn’t do it. These are the two version of Ramirez's death: 1) she was killed by an opposition politician who, presumably after months of undercover work, managed to gain the trust of a local colectivo armado to the point that they let him ride along with them that day and he decided to kill Ramirez because ???, or 2) Ramirez was killed by a colectivo armado as three other people have been over the last week because the regime relies on them to repress protests, as it did in 2014.
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Apr 21, 2017 14:12
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So where do things go from here? Will the government capitulate, or is there going to be more blood on the streets?
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Apr 21, 2017 17:28
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Laphroaig posted:So where do things go from here? Will the government capitulate, or is there going to be more blood on the streets? Who knows? I think there are four distinct possibilities now: - The government tries to ride out the wave of protests by increasing repression and doesn't capitulate at all. - They try to strike a deal with the opposition, which is looking unlikely because if the concede all they're asking they'd essentially be leaving power. - Higher-ups start to turn on the rest of the government in an attempt to negotiate deals of their own with the opposition and get to leave quietly. - The military says gently caress it and decides to take over, which is looking unlikely since they probably the ones already calling the shots and as long as Maduro is in power, they get to play the "We're just doing our jobs!" card. That's all conjecture though, it's pretty much impossible to know what's going to happen in the next few days or weeks.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:52
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Laphroaig posted:So where do things go from here? Will the government capitulate, or is there going to be more blood on the streets? I think that the only way that Maduro and co. are getting on a plane out of the country is if it's to a place in the world where they will be guaranteed absolute immunity for what they've done for the rest of their lives. Some of these people (Maduro, Padrino Lopez, Reverol) have arguably committed crimes against humanity. Others (Cabello, El Aissami, plus a lot more) have been on the DEA radar for years given their involvement in drug trafficking operations. These people will be targets not only of Venezuela justice once the dictatorship falls, but also of justice from other countries and international organizations. These people are not going to exchange power for a jail cell. I think this could get a lot worse before it starts to get better. Also, ten people died during the unrest in El Valle last night. That brings the death total from the unrest in Caracas last night to 11.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:54
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Laphroaig posted:So where do things go from here? Will the government capitulate, or is there going to be more blood on the streets? It seems like there is too much violence in the streets now for protests to just peter out, and the government hasn't shown any inclination to back down so far. Any Venegoons still in country, what's the situation today? I kinda wish Borneo Jimmy hadn't gotten banned just to see what his perverse take on all this would be.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:55
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I dont know posted:It seems like there is too much violence in the streets now for protests to just peter out, and the government hasn't shown any inclination to back down so far. Any Venegoons still in country, what's the situation today? I'm not in the country but the situation in Caracas seems relatively calm. I think last night was such a shock that people are taking the day to recover. There is another big demonstration planned for tomorrow and for Sunday and Monday as well, if I'm not mistaken. If you'd like to get the take from the "other side", TeleSur English probably has a couple of articles up talking about how the violent, fascist ultra-right wing did this. EDIT: This a picture from Caracas yesterday. It shows members of what appears to be a colectivo armado milling around with some soldiers from the Guardia del Pueblo (People's Guard), which I think is part of the National Guard. https://twitter.com/RichardBlancoOf/status/855134276857335808 Again, this is not new. Amnesty International had observers on the ground that documented this kind of behaviour (militias and authorities working side-by-side) during the 2014 unrest. I'm sure there are earlier examples of this as well. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Apr 21, 2017 |
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Apr 21, 2017 18:00
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hard to believe this is all happening just a few hundred miles away stay safe venegoonlanos
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Apr 21, 2017 21:26
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Caracas is calm today, aside from the areas that saw unrest last night. My mother went to work today and I ran a couple of errands normally. I work from home, so I'm very hermit-like but business went on as usual today in the center of Caracas. Tomorrow there's going to be another big protest so let's see what happens.
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Apr 21, 2017 23:01
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Labradoodle posted:Caracas is calm today, aside from the areas that saw unrest last night. My mother went to work today and I ran a couple of errands normally. I work from home, so I'm very hermit-like but business went on as usual today in the center of Caracas. Tomorrow there's going to be another big protest so let's see what happens. Update: Actually, I just ran into my first flaming barricade since 2014. It was a street connecting to a major avenue with tons of flaming debris blocking the way but no one was harassing the cars. It was just the neighbors on the street signaling incoming vehicles where to turn and telling them why they were doing it. The street next to it was full of policemen but they weren't harassing anyone. If you're wondering, I basically live in the most peaceful zone in Caracas right now. I'm so close to Miraflores that no one would think about really protesting violently unless they had backup because that'd mean a one-way ticket to the dungeons. The literal dungeons, as I'm also one block away from the headquarters of the Venezuelan "scientific-police" (the CICPC). Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 02:41
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Labradoodle posted:Update: Actually, I just ran into my first flaming barricade since 2014. It was a street connecting to a major avenue with tons of flaming debris blocking the way but no one was harassing the cars. It was just the neighbors on the street signaling incoming vehicles where to turn and telling them why they were doing it. The street next to it was full of policemen but they weren't harassing anyone. Huh. I didn't know the People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May was a real thing, who knew! Just keep pushing the barricades until everything is behind them...
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Apr 22, 2017 02:46
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Just read an article posted around from some leftist friends, it has these arguments in support of the government. 1)The reason that the supreme court took the power from the parliament is that there is a vote-buying fraud that involves 3 candidates that support the opposition and 1 that supports the current government. The parliament does not want to repeat the elections thus keeping in place an "illegal" opposition majority, which kinda makes the whole parliament not worthy of its power. 2)The lack of basic goods is attributed to the few rich companies that control the import and distribution of these. The proof is that before every elections they ease the flow of said goods. 3)19th of April had more Maduro supporters in the streets than the opposition. The international media conveniently hide that. 4)The majority of tv stations, newspapers and media are private and against the government I suspect propaganda but it would be good to have some people actually on the ground that could counter any of this. Thank you and stay safe! fafish fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 18:42
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fafish posted:2)The lack of basic goods is attributed to the few rich companies that control the import and distribution of these. The proof is that before every elections they ease the flow of said goods. This is true, except what's not being told is that it's companies controlled by the PSUV who control that. Not companies controlled by the opposition, as they seem to be trying to imply.
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Apr 22, 2017 19:38
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fafish posted:Just read an article posted around from some leftist friends, it has these arguments in support of the government. Your friends are passing around wrong information and are complicit in helping to maintain a dictatorship in power that will go down in history as arguably the worst calamity to affect Venezuela and likely the entire region. It sounds to me like they're suffering from lack of critical thinking. I obviously don't know your friends and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but they are misinformed. I apologize in advance for the wall of text, but this is the kind of thing that cannot be explained in a sentence or two. Feel free to pass this along to your friends if you want them to not like you very much: 1) The Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) is the government-run body that authorizes, plans, carries out and oversees every single aspect of elections. The parliamentary elections took place on December 6. Two days later, after carefully counting the votes and checking that no fraud had been committed, the CNE made its final announcement on the election: the opposition had won 112 seats (including the three seats that you're mentioning, which are in Amazonas state). Let me stress the point: the CNE, which is the government-run body that is in charge of conducting elections and making sure that vote fraud doesn't happen, personally vouched for the result of every seat in the country. In late December, a lawsuit by PSUV members alleged that there had been fraud not only in Amazonas, but in a bunch of other states. The Supreme Court (which is 100% under the control of the government (its president at the time was a former PSUV political candidate, and I can go into this point more if you want) went with the Amazonas, and declared that while it investigated the fraud allegations the deputies would not be allowed to take their seats in parliament. The opposition cried foul because the CNE had declared after two days of careful checking and re-checking that no fraud had taken place. I mentioned earlier that the opposition had won 112 seats in parliament. That is exactly the number needed to give it what is called a "supermajority" in the legislation. A supermajority would give the opposition the full arsenal of the National Assembly's powers, including the ability to call a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. With the Supreme Court's decision, the opposition fell to 109 seats, taking away the supermajority. The opposition says, "Fine, whatever, this is another abuse against democracy" and follows the Supreme Court's order. And it waited. And waited. And waited. For seven months, the Supreme Court failed to issue even a single statement on the progress of the case. Let me repeat: with the proper functioning of the country's legislative branch and the democratic will of hundreds of thousands of voters in Amazonas state at stake, the Supreme Court failed to make a single move on the case for seven months. It was beyond obvious at this time that with the decision, the Supreme Court was simply trying to make sure that the opposition did not have a supermajority in parliament. By this time, the Supreme Court had also struck down approximately one dozen laws passed by the National Assembly. Every bill that made it through parliament had been killed by the National Assembly (except for one that had to do with pensioners, if I remember correctly). By late July, the opposition decides that the people of Amazonas who the CNE agrees voted for these deputies fair and square have been abused enough, and decide to hold a swearing-in ceremony for the Amazonas deputies (the PSUV deputy decides not to participate for reasons that are obvious). This ceremony took place on July 29. On September 5, the Supreme Court gets tired of striking down the individual laws that the National Assembly is passing, and instead issues a ruling saying that by swearing in the Amazonas deputies the whole legislative branch is in contempt, and therefore any future act carried out by that branch is null and void. In practical terms, all the ruling does is make the Supreme Court's job a bit easier, because by this point they were striking down laws as they came out. With this blanket ban, they wouldn't do that anymore. In December, the deputies from Amazonas state see the writing on the wall and resign. On January 9, the National Assembly formally accepts the resignation, removes the deputies from their seats. Great! Now the assembly is no longer in contempt because it's adhering to the original Supreme Court order, right? Wrong. The Supreme Court does not accept this as a term for no longer being in contempt. What does the Assembly have to do to not be in contempt anymore, then? No one knows, but following the Court's order wasn't it. On March 30, the Supreme Court issues its killing blow. Arguing that the National Assembly is still in contempt (it wasn't), the Supreme Court says that it will take over "directly" of all of the legislature's powers until the National Assembly is no longer it contempt (it wasn't anyway). In other words, the decision kills the legislative branch and gives the judiciary branch all of its powers. Because the Supreme Court is firmly under the control of Maduro's office, many (myself included) see the March 30 decision as the official birthday of the Maduro decision. However, the outrage against the decision was so unprecedented (the unrest of this month was a direct result of the decision) that Maduro gets on TV, tells the Supreme Court to reverse the decision, and the next day the Supreme Court does just that. Finally, I noticed that you wrote that "the parliament does not want to repeat the elections". If that is what the article/your friends said, it wrong on two levels. First, the CNE decides when elections happen, not parliament. Parliament has no control in deciding when elections take place, full stop. Second, the opposition wants elections! That's what the unrest that you've seen over the last three weeks or so is all about. The opposition wants regional elections (which the CNE cancelled last year), and presidential elections. The PSUV would lose any election held today, which is precisely why they won't let elections happen. The opposition wants elections, but the regime won't let them happen. 2) Ask your friend how many "rich companies" (EDIT: I assume this means privately owned, as opposed to government owned -- but as fishmech said, there are lots and lots of rich, state-owned companies) there are in Venezuela, and how they stay rich if they're not selling any products? I hear this argument all the time and I don't understand it. Also, the argument is circular: "Rich companies restrict the flow of goods, and the evidence is that rich companies restrict the flow of goods during elections". It's an illogical statement. The fact is that the chronic shortages of food, medicine and basic necessities is due primarily to three factors: A) destructive anti-business policies, B) price controls, and C) the currency exchange system. Each and every one of these factors is firmly the fault of the regime. On A: just see how the regime took over General Motors' plant in Valencia this week. There was no reason given for the "expropriation". Fafish, I want you to remember in one year from today to Google "What happened to GM plant expropriated in Venezuela?" because I can guarantee you today that the answer will be the same as what happened to the hundreds of other companies that the government has expropriated over the years: ruin. The government has a track record of expropriating businesses big and small and ruining them. This includes food and medicine producers/importers. Another example: the government expropriated a busy bakery in Caracas on March 16. The next day, the bakery was emptied of all contents by the government and closed. If that was your bakery, you're not getting bread from there anymore not because they "rich" owner felt like sticking it to the government, but because of a disastrous government policy of expropriation that has given similar fates to hundreds of other companies. On B: The government sets the prices on many basic goods and necessities, like bread, toothpaste, toilet paper, rice, etc. The prices are artificially low, under-cost of production, and are not maintained to keep price with inflation. This means two things: if you own a business that makes pasta, you're going out of business sooner rather than later because you're forced to sell the product at a certain price that is typically below cost, specially when factoring in inflation. Second, the system breeds corruption, since if I can get my hands on a bag of pasta in the supermarket for Bs. 10, I can turn around and sell it on the black market for Bs. 1,000 (or whatever the mark-up is). "Why not just subsidize the producer or even the consumer directly? Wouldn't that make more sense?". Yes, it would, but these price controls have been in place for years and have fed scarcity for years and the government won't do anything about it. On C: The government's currency exchange system resulted in a loss of $20 billion dollars from 2011 to 2013 in money that should have gone to import food, medicine and raw materials, but instead went into private pockets. The head of the parliamentary commission in charge of investigating the fraud was a PSUV deputy named Ricardo Sanguino (I believe he's head of the Central Bank now). Sanguino said that the government was "very permissive" to the fraud. I could make a shell company that "imports food", get $1 million from the government to "import food", and then sell those dollars in the black market for huge profit and split it with the corrupt government agents who were in on the deal. This currency exchange system has been in place since 2002, and we've known that this was happening since 2002. The result is that food, medicine and other imports simply don't make them into the country because the money to import them is stolen. Did the government try to address the situation somehow after the Sanguino Report in 2014? No, it didn't. The system remains in place exactly in the same way that it did back then. If you know that something is broken, why not fix it? 3) This is also wrong on a number of levels. First, Maduro's crowds were certainly much smaller than the opposition crowds. The regime uses clever camera tricks to give the impression of huge crowds. What they do is have a single stationary camera placed at the correct angle behind the main stage looking down a long road. If you get the angle right, you can clump people in clusters down the road, and the perception is that the whole street is filled. Here are two videos showing what I mean, both recorded on April 19. The people recording the videos show the images shown on TV of Maduro's speech, then look out the window (they live near the event) to show how the street actually looks: https://twitter.com/MaihenH/status/854813987132801030 Here's a second video from a different location showing the same thing: https://twitter.com/MaihenH/status/854829827169415168 No offense to your friends (I'm sure they're nice and well-meaning), but saying that "the media" isn't showing the crowds right is the same nonsense that Trump was on about after his Inauguration. It's petty, insecure, and  . A second point on this: the government employs approximately 3,000,000 workers. It is a known fact that workers are pressured (sometimes forced) to attend government rallies at the risk of being fired. This has been going on for at least 15 years as far as I'm aware. I did a write-up on this very issue in relation to the April 19 rally, which you can read here. You can also finds pictures of dozens, maybe hundreds of buses used to ship people in from all around the country in Caracas whenever the PSUV want to hold a big rally. I don't have to link images of the opposition protest on April 19 because they're on previous pages. None of those were taken using clever camera tricks, and none of the people in there were threatened with being fired if they didn't show up to march. 4) This is another one of those arguments that I hear all the time that I just don't understand. It's patently untrue. State-run media holds all the cards. A full 50% of T.V. stations are government-owned. The government has the power to broadcast a cadena (the word means "chain", as in "chain every television network's broadcast together"). Cadenas happen all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. The government will often call cadenas whenever Maduro or another high-ranking PSUV member speaks, and all networks in the country are forced to carry the cadena immediately and for the duration of the speech/event. The government will often call cadenas when the opposition holds a rally or press conference in order to shut them out of airwaves. The government also controls the system by which broadcasting licenses are granted, and can revoke them/refuse to extend them at any time. This is what happened to RCTV in 2008, when Chavez refused to grant it a new license and the station was forced off the air. RCTV was really against the government, and it paid the price. Today, the other private stations (Televen, Globovision, etc.) will self-censor in order to avoid the fate that RCTV met. Ask your friends to ask a Venezuelan person what these private stations show when there's unrest (soap operas and cartoons). If you run a newsroom in a private TV station you look at what happened to RCTV and one of your journalists asks you to run a news story critical of the government, what are you going to do? As for newspapers and radio stations, I've never taken survey myself but I can tell you that newspapers that are against the government can and have been forced out of business because the government will mess with them administratively, often by dragging its feet on paper import or outright refusing them to grant them dollars with which to import paper. Back in February of this year, El Carabobeño--which was, if I'm not mistaken, the longest-circulating paper in Venezuela and critical of the government--lwas forced out of circulation because the government would not allow it to import paper. If you're the editor of a private newspaper and you look at what happened to El Carabobeño and one of your journalists asks you to run an anti-government piece, what are you going to do? "Private" doesn't mean "independent". Again, I don't know your friends and I'm sure they're nice. But people have a tendency to agree with things they want to agree with, and to not question things they don't want to question. EDIT: Thank you for your interest in this situation and for going out of your way to get information on what's happening in Venezuela. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 20:14
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I read carefully all your words, i am familiar with extreme, persistent and sophisticated propaganda as i live in in a country abundant with people ideologically similar to Maduro and his clique. That was really comprehensive, i already started fighting back, thank you. I sort of understand the deeply corrosive effect of this kind of policies to the currency and the economy. There is one more thing, it is mentioned that according to a "think tank" Hinterlaces survey on April 13, PSUV and friends popularity has risen from 27% to 35% while the opposition in total gathers 27% and also 9 out of ten people oppose the so-called "guarimbas i.e. violent demos and road closing" according to said article. Off course these particular findings are handpicked carefully from the authors, i am aware that Hinterlaces did an extended survey. But how do you explain even these ones? (There are more things in there like the opposition leaders bad (usually criminal) past, ties to USA politics and money but these do not justify anything the government does and also cannot stain the people in the streets in my eyes.) fafish fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 22:23
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fafish posted:I read carefully all your words, i am familiar with extreme, persistent and sophisticated propaganda as i live in in a country abundant with people ideologically similar to Maduro and his clique. Hinterlaces is ran by a man called Oscar Schemel, who since always has had ties to the government, he's responsible in part for the extensive censoring of Globovision, which was once the opposition's TV channel. His polls are consistently wrong, he failed to predict that the Maduro presidential election would have been as close as it ultimately was, he failed to predict that the opposition would win a supermajority in the 2015 parliamentary elections (Instead bizarrely concluding that it would be independent parties who would win). It's hilarious that they try and smear opposition figures according with what they did in the past, when one of the TSJ magistrates actually served a jail sentence for murder, several high government officials are linked to international drug trade by the DEA and Interpol (two of the president's loving nephews were found guilty of drug trafficking), the ones who aren't are near constantly found shopping in Miami, or owning businesses in Florida through family proxies. You don't even have to trace that far back to see how deluded they are, they gave half a million dollars to Trump's inauguration. The government has more ties to the US than the opposition ever had. I'd recommend finding better friends.
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Apr 22, 2017 22:45
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Chuck covered a lot of ground with his post, but he kinda forgot to point the Ultimate Irony that's fact all the Head Figures of the current Supreme Court that's working so hard to render the Parliament void under the excuse of prosecuting contempt and "fraudulently elected" Seats were appointed ahead of the legal date to do so as a parting gift of the sore losers that made up the Previous Parliament after delaying their last Holidays Break back in 2015's December, and love to rub off the knowledge said appointment can't be reversed before its Two Years period without supermajority and that the Court can rely on the President-appointed Ministries defending any "legitimacy" the Parliament has all the rights to question... The fact this current unrest is the result of the Supreme Court desperately trying and failing to ensure there's not a Parliament to rearrange them out this December is kinda funny in a dark sense of hindsight, though.
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Apr 22, 2017 22:52
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Thanks for that the effort post Boone that is some good stuff. You wont find many people in this thread defending the majority of the opposition, fafish. They are largely horrible.
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Apr 22, 2017 22:55
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GlyphGryph posted:Thanks for that the effort post Boone that is some good stuff. I have often criticized Henrique Capriles and Chuo Torrealba, but I wouldn't say I hate them enough to support them over the PSUV. There's a difference, the opposition is largely incompetent, but never reach the absurd degree of criminal negligence and corruption that PSUV has managed. Getting rid of PSUV, the government, it's paramilitary and state police wings in their entirety is the first step to getting this country back in the right direction. Then we can worry about rooting out the bad parts of the opposition, people like Manuel Rosales or Henri Falcon who are ultimately accomplices. fnox fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 23:04
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fafish posted:There is one more thing, it is mentioned that according to a "think tank" Hinterlaces survey on April 13, PSUV and friends popularity has risen from 27% to 35% while the opposition in total gathers 27% and also 9 out of ten people oppose the so-called "guarimbas i.e. violent demos and road closing" according to said article. Aside from what fnox said, sometimes Hinterlaces or similarly-biased polling firms will put out survey results that say something like, "9 out of 10 Venezuelans oppose foreign intervention in Venezuela" as a way to somehow argue for PSUV support. First of all, yes, an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans (opposition supporters included) will oppose foreign intervention/invasion for obvious reasons. But opposing intervention does not mean "I support the PSUV". The argument the regime will make is that the opposition wants (usually military) intervention, but that's simply not true. The word "guarimba" in Venezuelan Spanish carries a negative connotation, since it's used to describe the complete closure of roads by groups of usually hooded young men that draw a lot of attention from the authorities. If someone asks me, "Do you support violent demonstrations that close roads in your neighbourhood?", of course I'll say "No". However, as with my previous example, that does not mean that I support the PSUV. More importantly, the guarimba is a small part of what is a nation-wide movement made up of millions and millions of Venezuelans. The opposition is not a monolith, and there's lots of internal debate about the usefulness of the tactic. In short, these kinds of surveys release results that are manipulative not only methodologically, but also because they distract attention from the heart of the matter and try to dazzle you with numbers that mean one thing, but are presented as another. AstraSage posted:Chuck covered a lot of ground with his post, but he kinda forgot to point the Ultimate Irony that's fact all the Head Figures of the current Supreme Court that's working so hard to render the Parliament void under the excuse of prosecuting contempt and "fraudulently elected" Seats were appointed ahead of the legal date to do so as a parting gift of the sore losers that made up the Previous Parliament after delaying their last Holidays Break back in 2015's December, and love to rub off the knowledge said appointment can't be reversed before its Two Years period without supermajority and that the Court can rely on the President-appointed Ministries defending any "legitimacy" the Parliament has all the rights to question... Yes, thank you for pointing this out. To provide a bit of detail, 13 Supreme Court magistrates were appointed to their positions in December 2015, on what turned out to be the last legislative session of the PSUV-controlled National Assembly. This was a completely illegal move, since the magistrates had to be appointed by the incoming (opposition-controlled) Assembly. The regime couldn't let that happen, so they rushed the appointments. The Supreme Court is 100% under the control of the PSUV. As as I said, the head magistrate of the Supreme Court for many years (including all of 2015/2016) was Gladys Gutierrez, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in Nueva Esparta for Hugo Chavez's party in 1998. The woman was literally a card-carrying member of the PSUV and was also the most powerful judge in the country. The Supreme Court in Maduro's Venezuela exists only to give his decisions a veil of judicial legitimacy. EDIT: I forgot to mention that the current chief magistrate of the Supreme Court is Maikel Moreno, who was imprisoned twice in the late 1980s for two homicides. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 23:22
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fnox posted:I have often criticized Henrique Capriles and Chuo Torrealba, but I wouldn't say I hate them enough to support them over the PSUV. There's a difference, the opposition is largely incompetent, but never reach the absurd degree of criminal negligence and corruption that PSUV has managed. Getting rid of PSUV, the government, it's paramilitary and state police wings in their entirety is the first step to getting this country back in the right direction. Then we can worry about rooting out the bad parts of the opposition, people like Manuel Rosales or Henri Falcon who are ultimately accomplices. Well yeah obviously. Its also good to remember that the opposition is largely horrible because the government destroys any opposition figures that arent the moment it seems like they might be getting some real power.
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Apr 23, 2017 17:20
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Today is the day of the Gran Plantón Nacional [roughly, the "Great National Sit-In"]. This is a form of protest that has not been tried in Venezuela in this scale before. The Gran Plantón calls for Venezuelans to perform a sit-in on a major road artery in each state capital and in Caracas. I suspect that given the high level of discontent with the regime, we'll bee seeing sit-ins in many more cities as well. In Caracas, the sit-in will take places on the Altamira interchange of the Francisco Fajardo highway. The sit-ins are scheduled to last all day today. One thing that was made very clear when the opposition announced this measure is that the sit-in could only involve protesters' bodies. No cars, tree branches, burning piles of tires or garbage, or any other physical object are to be used during the sit-in to block traffic aside from the protesters' own bodies. It's only 10:00 AM but already I'm seeing videos of confrontations between the National Guard and protesters in a few places. Those don't usually start until at least noon. Here are some pictures from the event so far: In Los Nuevos Teques, Miranda state: https://twitter.com/ElNacionalWeb/status/856499737935192064 Two pictures, one from Aragua state (likely Maracay) and one from Carabobo state (likely Valencia: https://twitter.com/VotoPorVzla/status/856506000614051842 In the El Trigal neighbourhood of Valencia, demonstrators play football on a highway: https://twitter.com/ElPitazoTV/status/856508603750125569 San Diego, Carabobo: https://twitter.com/Lisethlp7/status/856503425756000256 Carrizal, Miranda state: https://twitter.com/marilux26/status/856507074217377793 Merida state: https://twitter.com/OswaldoAPR/status/856506616207876097 EDIT: This was in the La California neighbourhood of Caracas earlier this morning: https://twitter.com/jorgemillant/status/856498527442219008 Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Apr 24, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 15:05
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I'm interested how effective it will be. By scattering the protesters it makes the protests less photogenic and harder to report on. It can also leave protesters isolated and open to piecemeal suppression. One the other hand if taken up broadly enough it would render the suppression of all these widespread flashpoints of dissent a logistical nightmare. If I were the organisers I'd have also tried to set up some sort of bush telegraph that would alert people to a major force of police and national guard moving their way so they can clear out whilst they pass through so as to keep the authorities chasing shadows. It is more coordination than the opposition is capable of I think though.
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Apr 24, 2017 20:08
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I'm not really sure the title of this thread does it justice. How about Venezuela: It's the loving apocalypse in here
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Apr 24, 2017 20:24
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Gort posted:I'm not really sure the title of this thread does it justice. How about Venezuela: It's the loving apocalypse in here Venezuela: World's largest Mad Max roleplay
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Apr 24, 2017 21:29
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It's definitely been interesting to watch this protest (and the movement more generally) unfold from a logistical and organizational perspective. The MUD was very concerned that people wouldn't know "how" to do the sit-in, which is why they held that press conference yesterday and released a bunch of bullet points reminding people not to bring beer, to bring water and food instead, etc. Many of the pictures and videos I saw this morning showed people getting used to the idea of a sit-in. The pictures showed big crowds of people standing up with just a handful sitting down; or people sitting down on the pavement, while others sat on towels and brought lawn chairs. I guess this is how social movements develop. You go to a demonstration, learn from it, and put that experience to use in the next one. The opposition tired to get around the optical issues that you're talking about, Munin, by asking that the sit-ins take place in one central location in each city. In Caracas, that location was the Altamira interchange on the Francisco Fajardo highway. For the most part, it looks like the residents of Caracas and other big cities followed the instructions. These are some shots from the sit-in as it got started in the early afternoon in Caracas: https://twitter.com/inadomingos/status/856563230512218112 https://twitter.com/Plan_Evangeliza/status/856564916261711880 As you can see, most people are standing up, which is the opposite of what you do during a sit-in. These people got the idea, though: https://twitter.com/EfectoCocuyo/status/856548783714430976 There has also been unrest in other parts of the country. The video below is from Barquisimeto, Lara state: https://twitter.com/hombreradikal/status/856537602383589376 And in Delta Amacuro state, a group of regime supporters (wearing red) attacked an opposition sit-in. https://twitter.com/LarissaGonzale6/status/856540292757020672 It's only 5:30ish, so the day is far from over. A couple of other items:
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Apr 24, 2017 22:25
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Gort posted:I'm not really sure the title of this thread does it justice. How about Venezuela: It's the loving apocalypse in here Fallout: Venezuela
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Apr 24, 2017 22:29
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Thanks for the update Chuck Boone. And yeah, I misunderstood how the sit-ins were planned to work. Sit ins taking place in one central location per city wasn't what I was imagining from the initial description.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:31
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It looks like at least two people died during unrest today: one in Merida state and one in Barinas state. The details haven't cemented yet, so it's hard to say who died and how. What is clear is that the fatality in Merida was part of a larger shooting event that left at least other people injured. The death toll in Barinas has jumped from one to two to three back to one in the last hour, so we're going to have to wait until the dust settles to figure out what actually happened. The main sit-in in Caracas ended at 6:00 PM local time, when most people went home. A bunch of more militant demonstrators stayed behind and have set up barricades in the area, which typically results in confrontations throughout the night. I can't find the pictures know, but at least two vehicles (an SUV and what appeared to be some kind of tow truck) were set on fire on the Francisco Fajardo highway at different points. The opposition has also just announced that it will try to march on the Libertador municipality in Caracas again on Wednesday. It looks like a repeat of the last few attempts, with 26 rally points converging into one and then attempting to make it west. The pace of the protests and the number of deaths, arrests and injuries is on track to leave the 2014 unrest looking small in comparison. There were approximately 40 protest-related deaths in 2014 between February-May, and there have been at least 22 (possibly as many as 30) in two and a half weeks. This may be selective memory talking, but colectivos appear to be much more active and fearless this year than in 2014. I don't have my notes on the 2014 protests here at home, but I can see at least 7 deaths likely attributable to colectivos in this month. Munin posted:Thanks for the update Chuck Boone.
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Apr 25, 2017 00:53
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Well you guys said the opposition is actually incompetent and the really angry or persuasive ones are already thrown in jail. I'm surprised people still listen to them instead of wanting to do their own thing of protest. When people go home on time then that just sends the message to the government that the government can just wait things out
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Apr 25, 2017 03:21
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Incompetent or not, the opposition is sadly all we have that can lead and organize things at a massive scale, so trying to go along with their plans is usually what most people are willing to do. More violent protests (like the barricades Chuck mentions) are more individual affairs, but the opposition is still trying to fight between the limits of the law instead of open rebellion.
Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 08:37
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Do you Venegoons see these protests going anywhere? It seems like there are a lot of people with dirty hands that are fighting to keep the PSUV in power, but the same thing was true in Tunisia and Egypt too, and in both of those countries the entrenched, corrupt dictator gave up pretty easily. Any idea why Venezuela is so much more resistant to popular protests? The only big difference I can think of is that there are some people in Venezuela who are in favor of the government despite not having personally benefitted from the looting of the country, whereas in Tunisia (and to a lesser extent Egypt) the government had almost zero popular support outside the small ruling clique. Are those 15-20% of the population who are genuinely supportive of the PSUV what's saving them, or is there something else obvious going on? The current popular protests seem to have gently caress-all effect, although it's always hard to say as collapses are usually sudden. I said the same thing about Tunisia on New Year's 2010, and look how wrong I was there. (Note also that Tunisia has a quite small military and it's exceptionally apolitical—for the MENA region anyway.)
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Apr 25, 2017 11:06
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The other thing to remember is that as the years pass, a new generation of leaders is rising up through the ranks. It's been three years since Lopez was arrested. National Assembly vice president and fellow Voluntad Popular member Freddy Guevara is doing a pretty good job as the face of this new opposition, I think. 10 years ago Freddy was protesting as a university student. Up until 2015, he was on the Caracas City Council. He's probably the most prominent rising star, but there are others. Saladman posted:Are those 15-20% of the population who are genuinely supportive of the PSUV what's saving them, or is there something else obvious going on? The current popular protests seem to have gently caress-all effect, although it's always hard to say as collapses are usually sudden. I said the same thing about Tunisia on New Year's 2010, and look how wrong I was there. (Note also that Tunisia has a quite small military and it's exceptionally apolitical—for the MENA region anyway.) The PSUV is in power because it has lots of weapons and lots of people still willing to use them. We see this every time there's a protest: the rubber bullets, the tear gas, and the colectivos armados are really effective at dispersing crowds. I don't think we could see a Tahrir Square or Maidan-style protest in Venezuela because whatever semi-permanent camp the opposition puts up would be drowned in tear gas or torn to shreds by colectivos at night. Last year, a good chunk of Iceland's population showed up at the National Parliament in Reykjavik, and the PM resigned the next day. The PSUV is fighting tooth and nail to make sure that this doesn't happen in Venezuela, which is why they will not anyone near Miraflores. In this way, comparing protest movements is really tricky since the country's specific context is always key. I think that the protests are having a couple of effects. I think that as exercises in active democracy, the protests are good for people to not forget that they have a voice. One of the worst things that could happen is for Venezuela to turn into North Korea, where there aren't public protests for obvious reasons. People need to know that they can protest peacefully. The right to peaceful protest may be the last one the regime needs to take away for it to cement itself in power. There are likely effects that we can't yet see. Maduro's been more erratic in recent weeks than usual. The other day he published a video on YouTube where he said he thought it was February; then, a video of him playing baseball with his friends and planting trees with his wife. A few nights ago he was on TV, and in the same breath called for dialogue and threatened the opposition with prison. During that same speech, he said he was desperate to hold elections, and that he wanted a Constituent Assembly to draft up a new Constitution. The dude is just barely holding on to reality. The government's propaganda is also reaching the limits of what's possible with a population that has access to Twitter and other social media. The PSUV governor of Sucre state was on TV recently (either this morning or last night) saying that the opposition didn't want elections because they know they would lose. Anyone who has Twitter or has access to non-regime news knows that the #1 thing that the opposition has been asking for is elections. The other day, a bunch of PSUV big shots showed up at El Valle (the neighbourhood that got looted in Caracas), and the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE2X8e5mY6s&t=1s]convoy was forced to turn around and leave the area because residents wouldn't stop booing and yelling obscenities at them[/ur;l]. The alternative reality that the PSUV has built for itself is showing lots and lots of cracks. I think that when the regime collapses we'll be able to look back at the protests and say, "Yeah, that's what really helped to push it over the edge". But until that instant, it might not look like much is going on, because now more than ever the regime needs things to look and feel normal.
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Apr 25, 2017 16:54
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I am frankly amazed that no colectivos armados have been lynched by an angry mob yet.
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Apr 25, 2017 22:50
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:I am frankly amazed that no colectivos armados have been lynched by an angry mob yet. It kinda seems to me that the kind of 'expert' resistance to armed oppression you might see from black bloc types stateside or in Europe either doesn't exist in Venezuela, or is already imprisoned/exclusively in the hands of criminals who would have long since gone to ground in the face of civil unrest.
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Apr 25, 2017 23:26
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:I am frankly amazed that no colectivos armados have been lynched by an angry mob yet. A couple of suspected colectivo members had their motorcycles taken from them and burned at protests over the last few days. I can't remember exactly where this happened, but I remember seeing two distinct examples of this happen over the last week. Also, the two things about colectivos that makes them colectivos is that they are heavily armed and they move in large groups. When a colectivo shows up, people run in the opposite direction because they will literally drive around shooting people as we've seen over the last few weeks (and in particular, with the killing of Paola Ramirez on April 19 in San Cristobal). I can't remember an instance of a colectivo member getting lynched or otherwise killed by a mob yet, but I may have missed it. If it's happened, it'd be incredibly rare. Another testament to the fact that all the firepower is mostly on one side of this conflict. Here's a picture of a colectivo in action in Merida yesterday, where they killed two people. The guy wearing green is carrying some kind of home-made projectile launcher, and the guy with the red bandana is carrying a shotgun of some kind: https://twitter.com/Birrilly/status/856633700406222849 Five people died during unrest in the last 24 hours (two in Merida, one in Barinas and one in Lara). It looks like two were definitely killed by colectivos, while the other three also died from gunshot injuries but it's not clear to me that they were shot by a colectivo. The official death toll since the protests turned deadly on April 6 is now 26, while the unofficial toll is at 33 because it includes 7 people who died in El Valle on April 19. To give you some perspective, the most violent month of the 2014 unrest was March with 21 fatalities. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 23:31
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I am now darkly curious how folks join a colectivo. Is it basically residential gang recruitment? Do they have some mechanism to repel non-Chavista folks, or do they just murder them if discovered?
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Apr 25, 2017 23:33
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Yeah, everything I have heard about colectivos makes them into some sort of chavez cultists.
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Apr 26, 2017 00:16
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I am now darkly curious how folks join a colectivo. Is it basically residential gang recruitment? Do they have some mechanism to repel non-Chavista folks, or do they just murder them if discovered? They're brainwashed gangbangers, made violent by their living conditions, and given a purpose by Chavez. From what I know, there's no formal recruitment as there really isn't a non-violent wing to any of those organizations, but they are fervently adherent to Chavez and his legacy. A good chunk of their members likely hold low level positions within either the government, national police, or the national guard. They're very cultlike in that they're very localized and militant, barrios residents know where the colectivos meet and who's with them. They blur the line between "hampa" and "guerrilla". fnox fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 00:34
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