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Comrayn posted:I saw this on twitter earlier. Colectivos stripped naked and tied to a tree. It's hard to imagine things dying down without the regime's thugs seeking revenge if people have been fighting back against them this hard. It's still stunning to me that the protesters aren't killing people. Seems hard to believe that's going to last for long if this continues to escalate though.
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May 3, 2017 02:28
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Yep, things are borderline civil war by now. loving stay safe, venegoons.
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May 3, 2017 02:53
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One last thing to share before going to bed: a group of protesters hijacked a fully-loaded gasoline truck and was using it to block a highway near Barquisimeto, Lara state: https://twitter.com/HenriFalconLara/status/859567908967546881 The protesters said that they would burn the truck unless the regime released all political prisoners, and... well, they ended up burning the truck: https://twitter.com/HenriFalconLara/status/859605957978066944 Comrayn posted:I saw this on twitter earlier. Colectivos stripped naked and tied to a tree. It's hard to imagine things dying down without the regime's thugs seeking revenge if people have been fighting back against them this hard. Sinteres posted:It's still stunning to me that the protesters aren't killing people. Seems hard to believe that's going to last for long if this continues to escalate though. Also, I did a quick round of research and I'm very sure that: 1) You can in fact hear a machine gun firing in this video (at 0:30) and in this video (at 0:14), and that 2) The machine guns that you can hear in those videos are FN MAGs. The shots in the two videos sound very similar to what you hear if you go on YouTube and look for videos of people shooting the gun. Also, there's a video from January showing Maduro playing with a MAG and saying that it would be a good idea to "give 10,000 or 20,000 of these to the barrios". Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 04:24 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 04:16
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Quick update:
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May 3, 2017 22:01
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Chuck, thank you for continuing to post updates. This thread has become my daily stop for news from Venezuela. I hope you guys can restore your country with as little bloodshed possible, but that's looking to be less and less likely. Stay safe.
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May 4, 2017 02:01
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A 17 year old named Armando Cañizalez was killed in Las Mercedes, Caracas at around 5:00 PM during a protest. It's not entirely clear what happened to him, but the mayor of the Baruta municipality in the city said that he had been shot in the neck with an object that remained lodged in there. Perhaps a bullet, but the National Guard and National Bolivarian Police have been known to use marbles and ball bearings as projectiles. The big news right now is that Leopoldo Castillo, who is a very reputable journalist, tweeted this about an hour ago: "[I've received information that] Leopoldo Lopez has been taken from Ramo Verde [prison] to the military hospital without vital signs. The regime is playing with the hypothesis that he died of intoxication". https://twitter.com/elcitizen/status/859920917765525506 Twitter blew up as soon as the tweet came out. Castillo's account does not appear to have been hacked. No media is reporting the rumour right now because if true, Leopoldo Lopez's death would be one of the biggest stories of the decade. It would likely trigger a social explosion unlike anything we've seen recently. Lopez is the most important opposition political figure and... well, it's just a rumour right now. I and about 25 million other Venezuelans are glued to Twitter and WhatsApp right now waiting for the rumours to be denied. If you want to follow along, Leopoldo Lopez's wife (Lilian Titori) has a Twitter account, and so does Lopez's second-in-command, Freddy Guevara. I personally am not getting too worked up about this because today was a horrific, high-pressure and tense day, and this is precisely when rumours get started and spread. I'll be watching those Twitter accounts all night until someone says something, though. dublish posted:Chuck, thank you for continuing to post updates. This thread has become my daily stop for news from Venezuela. I hope you guys can restore your country with as little bloodshed possible, but that's looking to be less and less likely. Stay safe. My pleasure. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 02:17 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 02:12
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Just want to add my wishes that you all stay safe, as a longtime lurker in here.
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May 4, 2017 02:14
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US Senator Marco Rubio says he's confirmed that Lopez was taken to a hospital in very serious condition, but that seems to be all anyone knows except maybe that journalist so far.
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May 4, 2017 02:42
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Sinteres posted:US Senator Marco Rubio says he's confirmed that Lopez was taken to a hospital in very serious condition, but that seems to be all anyone knows except maybe that journalist so far. https://twitter.com/liliantintori/status/859943916753301505 The window of probability is closing. It tweet was fake; the tweet was real, but it was just a rumour; the rumour was true, but Leopoldo is still alive... Leopoldo has been held incommunicado for about one month now. No one has seen or heard from him since early April. Diosdado Cabello was just on TV for his weekly television show, and he said that rumours of Lopez's death were false. That makes me think that there is some truth to it. EDIT: It's possible that this is some kind of plot from the opposition to force the regime to show proof that Leopoldo is still alive and well. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 02:59 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 02:48
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Those videos posted today look they could have been taken during the Arab spring or during Slobodan Milosevic's ouster in Serbia. I don't see much in the way of a future for the Bolivarian Republic.
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May 4, 2017 03:11
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What a time to be alive. A National Assembly deputy (Carlos Paparoni) is part of the crowd that has gathered outside of the Military Hospital in Caracas and he's live streaming from there: https://www.pscp.tv/CarlosPaparoni/1vAxRbjowBRxl Lilian Tintori and Leopoldo's mom are there. The guards refuse to let them in, or to even confirm that Leopoldo is there.
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May 4, 2017 03:13
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Remember when I said civil war in 6 months? It's been 4 months since i said that. Remember how many people said "nah. They wont do it". Just wait until Venezuela is turned into a fascist country that sides with MLPs france.
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May 4, 2017 03:13
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It's amazing how Twitter is the only way for people to find out what's happening now and the contrast between the rest of the city and the area close to Miraflores. Today I went grocery shopping and to do errands around here and it was the most normal poo poo ever while people were facing off against the national guard kilometers away. If something did happen to Leopoldo, I think that's going to ignite something the government can't contain anymore.
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May 4, 2017 03:18
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I think a civil war is inevitable. And ultimately, what will have to happen is the strong supporters of Maduro and Bolivarianism will have to be exiled or killed. There is no way a society can function with people who are so strongly brainwashed participating in it. Bolivarianism will need to go the way of Nazism in Germany post World War 2 - banned as a party and even mention for any hope of progress. I feel it is unlikely; eitherway, for Venezuela to come back from this, or survive as an independent state. They cary too much debt, oil will be irrelevant within in the next 10-20 years, and even neighbor states, who really don't know what to do when it comes to developing economies for a post-oil world, don't know what to do. And they're lightyears ahead of Venezuela. I can see Venezuela being nothing more than a Chinese puppet for the forseeable future, much as the Shah's Iran. Most of these countries will face food crisis even greater than the one Venezuela sees today due to Global Warming. I can not currently imagine any of the poorest south american countries surviving the next 20 years without defaulting to some sort of dictatorship. The biggest problem in most of them comparably to generate a dictatorship, is how weak and divided the military is and how little power it has in their countries. In Venezuela the Military is the strongest force out of all - and many would probably welcome a military junta at this point.
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May 4, 2017 03:29
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How is the Venezuelan Military in terms of political affiliation, It's a socialist country so I assume their lives are so tied to the regime they wouldn't turn. But what would it take for desertions to begin? Where are the highest volumes of Officers recruited from?
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May 4, 2017 03:32
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LeoMarr posted:How is the Venezuelan Military in terms of political affiliation, It's a socialist country so I assume their lives are so tied to the regime they wouldn't turn. But what would it take for desertions to begin? Where are the highest volumes of Officers recruited from? The Venezuelan military is outwardly chavista as hell. Their affiliation is bought with perks the rest of the population doesn't have access to, like easier access to food, appliances and so on. However, there's also very strong evidence a large percentage of the army is involved in government-sanctioned drug smuggling. I say this because multiple top dogs in the government have been accused of drug trafficking by the USA, including the president's nephews, who were by all means raised as his own sons and were just indicted for those charges. The real question is, how big a percentage of the military is benefiting from these perks? Food and appliances are nice, but they're ultimately insignificant when compared with exchange-rate shenanigans and drug smuggling. That means there may be room for an insurgency if enough of them are happy with the current status quo. However, there's also the matter of surveillance. The government engages in heavy surveillance of opposition figures and most likely the military as well since that's their biggest vulnerability. That means elements that don't conform to their whims are probably sniffed out before they become problems. As for the topic of civil war, the idea is frankly laughable in Venezuela. Simply put, there may be a lot of guns in the streets but they're mostly out of the hands of the people that might oppose the government. Everytime someone mentions 'civil war' I take it as a sign they don't really understand the makeup of Venezuelan society. If violence escalates, we're not going to see a civil war scenario – we're going to see government sanctioned massacres.
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May 4, 2017 03:43
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Diasdado on TV just showed a proof of life video from Lopez where he says today's date. https://twitter.com/KathyPennacchio/status/859961930504691712
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May 4, 2017 03:47
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Labradoodle posted:As for the topic of civil war, the idea is frankly laughable in Venezuela. Simply put, there may be a lot of guns in the streets but they're mostly out of the hands of the people that might oppose the government. Everytime someone mentions 'civil war' I take it as a sign they don't really understand the makeup of Venezuelan society. If violence escalates, we're not going to see a civil war scenario – we're going to see government sanctioned massacres. A Civil War in Venezuela is very easily achieved when the guns being given up by the FARC in Colombia are stolen by the Clan Del Golfo and smuggled across the border. And it would make perfect seeing as the Clan del Golfo are allied with the Zetas while the Venezuelan militaries Cartel of the Suns are allied with the Sinaloa Cartel.
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May 4, 2017 03:51
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Looks like somebody's been working out in prison, drat.
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May 4, 2017 03:56
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It looks like Leopoldo is alive. Diosdado Cabello aired a video of him about 10 minutes ago. This is the video: https://twitter.com/ConElMazoDando/status/859961719220842503 quote:This is a message to my family to prove that I'm alive. It's May 3, 9:00 PM. This message is for Lilian. I don't understand why there is a need to prove that I'm alive right now. I'm sending this family to my family and my children: I am O.K. ISeeCuckedPeople posted:A Civil War in Venezuela is very easily achieved when the guns being given up by the FARC in Colombia are stolen by the Clan Del Golfo and smuggled across the border. There's lots of fuel, like Labradoodle said, for massacres like the one we saw in 1989. But not a civil war like what we're seeing in Ukraine and Syria. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 04:04 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 03:58
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It's frankly amazing that Diosdado doesn't grasp how having to prove that Leopoldo is alive in the first place makes them look. These guys are usually portrayed as criminal masterminds, but this kind of stuff reveals them for what they are. Petty crooks with too much power and no idea what to do with it beyond beating people down. On another topic. Holy poo poo, this picture from today is amazing. 
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May 4, 2017 04:07
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The government lied about Chavez being alive for months after he died. They can pull this off too. That said, Freddy Guevara has said that he believes the video is real, which probably means that he is indeed alive.
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May 4, 2017 04:38
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Wow, what a dramatic intensification of class struggle. Either the petit bourgeoisie middle class will be destroyed once and for all or the Venezuelan lower classes will be in for a lot of suffering.
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May 4, 2017 04:44
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Chuck Boone posted:Venezuela isn't divided along ethnic lines (like Ukraine) or secterian lines (like Syria). We don't see that in Venezuela. We also don't see an opposition that is cohesive/organized enough to do things like raise and command fighting forces. I'm not convinced that your average army soldier is willing to take a bullet for Maduro, or kill his friend for Maduro. There just isn't enough fuel to light that kind of fire. You might be right, but also Colombia has the same lack of ethnic and sectarian divisions as Venezuela, and a similar split between people and a kleptocratic government, and that did them just fine for getting a civil war started after what, 15-20 years of political assassinations and current-Venezuela-style unrest. It doesn't have to get as bad as Syria. Libya is also in a low level civil war, which seems like a roadmap for Venezuela. I don't mean east vs west in Libya, I mean the civil war in Tripoli and its surroundings, to which Haftar is essentially irrelevant.
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May 4, 2017 05:46
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Horns of Hattin posted:Wow, what a dramatic intensification of class struggle. Either the petit bourgeoisie middle class will be destroyed once and for all or the Venezuelan lower classes will be in for a lot of suffering. ¿Por qué no los dos?
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May 4, 2017 06:18
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Saladman posted:You might be right, but also Colombia has the same lack of ethnic and sectarian divisions as Venezuela, and a similar split between people and a kleptocratic government, and that did them just fine for getting a civil war started after what, 15-20 years of political assassinations and current-Venezuela-style unrest. It doesn't have to get as bad as Syria. Libya is also in a low level civil war, which seems like a roadmap for Venezuela. I don't mean east vs west in Libya, I mean the civil war in Tripoli and its surroundings, to which Haftar is essentially irrelevant. This brings up a more logical endgame. The fact is, large swaths of the country are already basically under the control of criminal enterprises. Take the areas surrounding prisons, for example, nothing happens there without the say so of the 'prans'. Those are basically criminal overlords with free reign to act from the government as long as they don't kick up too much of a fuss. Once there's a real government back in Venezuela, they're going to have to deal with gigantic criminal enterprises that don't give a crap about the PSUV or the opposition. They just care about their own thing and there's no good way to counter them without incurring in heavy human rights violations. These are incredibly well-armed gangs that are accustomed to killing everyone in their way, including the police, and they won't give up control of their territories easily. Worst of all, the police and army probably have strong ties with them. Whenever one of my friends talks about returning to Venezuela in the future, that's the point I bring up. There's not going to be anything resembling normal life here without living in constant fear of getting robbed or killed for a long time. Even without chavismo in power.
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May 4, 2017 06:42
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Labradoodle posted:Whenever one of my friends talks about returning to Venezuela in the future, that's the point I bring up. There's not going to be anything resembling normal life here without living in constant fear of getting robbed or killed for a long time. Even without chavismo in power. No doubt. Even the absolute best outcome from all this going on will still leave a fractured, anarchist country in which the strong rule and the weak are prey. It has been that way for years and it's not directly related to Chavismo (although, indirectly due to corruption and missmanagement, they have cemented it). I can't think of a Caracas in which your life isn't worth less than your shoes, or that you are able to just walk somewhere at night, Maduro or not. I admire the people fighting for their country, or at least what they wish their country was. I don't share that optimism. There's at least a full generation of Venezuelans that will come and go before the country could be considered at peace, if everything goes well from now on and the people in power actively look after everyone's interests instead of just their own (and this is Latin America, so fat chance of that)
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May 4, 2017 09:39
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ISeeCuckedPeople posted:I think a civil war is inevitable. And ultimately, what will have to happen is the strong supporters of Maduro and Bolivarianism will have to be exiled or killed. There is no way a society can function with people who are so strongly brainwashed participating in it. Nah.
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May 4, 2017 13:39
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fnox posted:That said, Freddy Guevara has said that he believes the video is real, which probably means that he is indeed alive. Lots of people are incredulous of the video this morning. That says a lot about the public's perception of the regime. Aside from the fact that the production needed to fake the video would be monumental (either have an identical body double on 24/7 standby to record these videos, or have Lopez record a video for every hour/date in advance), the thing that I found "real" about the video aside from the man who looks and sounds like Leopoldo is when he says, "I don't understand why there is a need to prove that I'm alive right now". I can imagine Leopoldo having just gone to bed. He's drifting into sleep when suddenly four guards burst into the cell. The lights come on and they say, "Get up. Stand in front of this camera. Say the time, date, and that you're O.K." Leopoldo starts to think: "Why do they want me to do this? What's going on outside? Am I helping them by doing this? Am I helping the regime by saying the time and the date, and that I'm OK? Maybe this is helping them somehow. Maybe this is going to hurt my family somehow. Ok, well, I'll say it anyway. I have no choice". So, when he records the video, he slips in the fact that he has no idea what's going on, and that for better or for worse he's agreeing to record this video for the guards. Saladman posted:You might be right, but also Colombia has the same lack of ethnic and sectarian divisions as Venezuela, and a similar split between people and a kleptocratic government, and that did them just fine for getting a civil war started after what, 15-20 years of political assassinations and current-Venezuela-style unrest. It doesn't have to get as bad as Syria. Libya is also in a low level civil war, which seems like a roadmap for Venezuela. I don't mean east vs west in Libya, I mean the civil war in Tripoli and its surroundings, to which Haftar is essentially irrelevant. This is a good point. I'm probably straw-manning when I point to Ukraine and Syria and say that this can't happen in Venezuela, given the scale of those conflicts. I'm not an expert on civil wars so I honestly can't name many more conflicts than those without thinking really hard about the subject. Colombia is a good example of another type of civil conflict that, like you said, isn't on the same level as Syria. I'll still say that the Venezuelan situation is different. Although I think it's probably true that if a civil war does break out in Venezuela people will look at it in hindsight and say, "Well, it was precisely because these factors were unique in Venezuela that the civil war started". Even taking the example of Colombia, though, it seems to me like the situation there is the inverse of the situation in Venezuela. I think that the Venezuelan crisis is more comparable to Chile under Pinochet, for example, where you had a dictatorial regime in power with the support of the military until pressure brought democratic rule to the country. That's a gross simplification, but the transition was nevertheless from dictatorship to democracy without a civil war in between. I had another paragraph here clumsily trying to explain my point, but then I saw this tweet from National Assembly deputy Luis Florido that encapsulates what I was struggling to say: https://twitter.com/LuisFlorido/status/860104491730948097 quote:This struggle isn't between a people and a people. It's a people against the repression and tyranny of Nicolas Maduro. We will keep moving forward!
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May 4, 2017 14:02
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The american liberal media is really dropping the ball on Venezuela reporting. The coverage in this thread and even Brietbart (for christsake!) surpasses the NY Times. Really, what a failure of western journalism. If you went by the Times (LA or NY) you'd think Maduro is a fine leader who just got a bad economic set of cards delt to him instead of the horrifying leftist authoritarian baffoon that he is. I'm beginning to think conservatives were right, the traditional media is biased.
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May 4, 2017 19:10
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Pity Party Animal posted:The american liberal media is really dropping the ball on Venezuela reporting. The coverage in this thread and even Brietbart (for christsake!) surpasses the NY Times. Really, what a failure of western journalism. If you went by the Times (LA or NY) you'd think Maduro is a fine leader who just got a bad economic set of cards delt to him instead of the horrifying leftist authoritarian baffoon that he is. I'm beginning to think conservatives were right, the traditional media is biased. It's not getting much coverage but god drat this is a bad take on things. Venezuela rarely pops up but in American news but when it does Madura and the government are not portrayed as the good guys. You need to go more in depth to really express how terrible the situation is and they don't take the time to do that. Anyway here is a picture of a buff lady throwing a rock. https://mobile.twitter.com/hannahdreier/status/860190600901128192
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May 4, 2017 19:18
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I did a search on the NY times website. The top ten relevant results in the last week are all critical of the government or at best neutral-ish 'just the facts' style reporting. The top result is an opinion piece by an opposition supporter that says the Chavez programme has 'left the country in ruins', the remaining news articles tend to casually refer to things like 'repression', 'increasingly authoritarian rule' and the 'deep desperation of [Maduro's] unpopular government'. The closest thing to a pro-PSUV view is a report of the Pope being unhappy with divisions in the opposition derailing Vatican attempts to mediate, and this thread itself is full of criticism of the opposition leadership. The NY times is a centre-left liberal organ with no interest (quite the opposite) in propping up the PSUV. If the only reporting you find acceptable is a fascist propaganda rag you're probably looking in the wrong place by going to mainstream American newspapers. e: I'm reminded of the occasional claims that the D&D Venezuela thread used to be a haven of doctrinaire Chavism where dissent was banned by the moderators, when I used to like it (the one before this one) precisely because it was the only Venezuela discussion I had ever found that had meaningful dialogue rather than a shouting match or a hegemony. Peel fucked around with this message at 20:02 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 19:54
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You barely see Venezuela reported on in the normal American media, but when it is mentioned it's either outright negative on Maduro, or indirectly negative, like reporting when a bunch of higher ups got charged with drug crimes.
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May 4, 2017 20:01
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El Hefe you better not be dead.
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May 4, 2017 20:02
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I don't think I've seen something uncritical of Chavez/Maduro in mainstream US news since at least 2014, and it was rare even before then.
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May 4, 2017 20:12
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Here's someone who has been posting pics on Imgur over the last 3 days or so, says they will be doing 1 post a day. almost 800k views so far for 4 posts tagged #onevenezuelanpicaday http://imgur.com/gallery/bBGCL http://imgur.com/t/onevenezuelanpicaday
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May 4, 2017 20:19
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Uncle Jam posted:El Hefe you better not be dead. 
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May 4, 2017 20:35
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Pity Party Animal posted:The american liberal media is really dropping the ball on Venezuela reporting. The coverage in this thread and even Brietbart (for christsake!) surpasses the NY Times. Really, what a failure of western journalism. If you went by the Times (LA or NY) you'd think Maduro is a fine leader who just got a bad economic set of cards delt to him instead of the horrifying leftist authoritarian baffoon that he is. I'm beginning to think conservatives were right, the traditional media is biased. NY Times posted:Chaos Looms Over Venezuela
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May 4, 2017 20:53
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Pity Party Animal posted:The american liberal media is really dropping the ball on Venezuela reporting. The coverage in this thread and even Brietbart (for christsake!) surpasses the NY Times. Really, what a failure of western journalism. If you went by the Times (LA or NY) you'd think Maduro is a fine leader who just got a bad economic set of cards delt to him instead of the horrifying leftist authoritarian baffoon that he is. I'm beginning to think conservatives were right, the traditional media is biased. I'm a citizen of the United States living in Chile, and I would say this is just more the fault of disinterest than anything else. Most people in the US (even pretty well educated people) mostly think of Mexico, Cuba and Colombia when they think of Latin America, and those stories are mostly only relevant as they relate to us. Which is a shame, because even though there are other countries with more extreme problems, the situation in Venezuela is a lot more relevant to the United States. Its not just Latin America, though. When I was in Taiwan, I read newspapers wondering why the US wasn't doing more about Taiwan and the Mainland, and I was like "probably half the people in the US don't even know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand".
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May 4, 2017 21:08
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:An OP-ED That's labelled as an opinion piece. Excellent reporting NYT. Meanwhile, the associated press blames oil prices with no mention of corruption or economic mismanagement. American joe blows not caring is one thing, but I'd say a newspaper not caring is a journalistic failure. I know most foreign journalists have been expelled, but that doesn't excuse the truthiness in the middle reporting from safe, western newsrooms. https://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/05/02/world/americas/ap-lt-venezuela-political-crisis-news-guide.html
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May 4, 2017 21:46
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