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The event in Toronto yesterday was really good. The people from the consulate ended up not showing up, but there were about 300 of us who did. A review of the story so far: the Venezuelan consulate in Toronto posted a poorly-photoshopped image showing protesters holding all kinds of guns as part of an advertisement for an event that was supposed to take place yesterday at 2:00 PM at Queen's Park. They got so much flak over the picture that they took it down and replaced it with another one. Later that same day, they took down the advertisement all together. The next day, the consulate said that its website had been hacked (the message is still up today, four days later). People started showing up at Queen's Park at 2:00 PM, but everyone was there to protest against the regime. The CBC and a local news outlet showed up and interviewed people. We sang the national anthem, marched around the park and then held an assembly to decide on what steps we could take next to help increase awareness of the crisis and help people in Venezuela. It was a really positive experience. And to think that what was a nice afternoon in the park for us gets people tear gassed and shot in Venezuela. Here are some pictures:      Phlegmish posted:I hope the protests continue until the regime is toppled, with minimal casualties of course...except maybe Maduro and his cronies, who are responsible for the deaths and suffering of so many. Today is the 44th day since the protests started, and there's another huge one planned for tomorrow. It's remarkable how much fuel there is for this movement. That movie is  . I could only take about 20 seconds of it.I'll definitely let you know if I hear anything. I bet there's a "Venezolanos en Bruselas" Facebook group that acts as a hub for these types of events. I also bet that it's all in Spanish, but whenever someone comes into the "Venezolanos en Toronto" group speaking English, someone always replies in English. Thanks for the interest in participating! I know that it means a lot to people in Venezuela to know that there are people around the world that want to help. There's been a spike in anti-regime events at consulates and embassies in Europe and elsewhere, and I'm sure that kind of pressure will continue specially as long as the protests are happening in Venezuela.
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May 14, 2017 21:27
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Cool, let me know if you do hear anything. I'll probably be able to get my dad to come with, he has the same opinion of Maduro and we both live close to Brussels. I think along with the current repression, what pushed me over the edge were the reports about the steep rise in infant mortality published by his own minister - whom he later fired, of course. That's when he stopped being 'just' an authoritarian clown and turned into a loving mass murderer. Which site are you mainly using to keep abreast of developments in Venezuela? Spanish is not a problem, I can read it just fine (just don't ask me to speak it).
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May 14, 2017 22:02
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Phlegmish posted:Cool, let me know if you do hear anything. I'll probably be able to get my dad to come with, he has the same opinion of Maduro and we both live close to Brussels. I think along with the current repression, what pushed me over the edge were the reports about the steep rise in infant mortality published by his own minister - whom he later fired, of course. That's when he stopped being 'just' an authoritarian clown and turned into a loving mass murderer. Yeah, that was a tough pill to swallow. Last year, 11,466 infants died in Venezuela. That figure is 30% higher than it was in 2015, meaning that approximately 2,500 more infants died in 2016 than in 2015. That's 2,500 people that died last year for a whole bunch of reasons related directly to Maduro, chief among them the fact that he even refuses to admit that there's a humanitarian crisis. The dude won't even accept donations for medicine and that means that 2,500 kids died last year that could easily still be alive today. It's impossibly to quantify the amount of suffering that these people are causing. So, thank you again for taking an interest in this and wanting to help. These are the sites that I use daily to keep up with what's going on:
There are some other websites (Caraota Digital, Maduradas, TalCual) that I'll go to occasionally, but I don't check them routinely. I think that out of those three, Maduradas is a bit sensationalist and tabloid-y, but sometimes they'll have videos or pictures that are interesting. If you're on Twitter, there are a couple of people and organizations that are worth following (aside from the Twitter pages of the news sources I listed above):
That should keep you off the streets for a while!
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May 14, 2017 22:43
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When a barely functioning state like North Korea relies on humanitarian aid to feed its people, it really makes Venezuelan leadership retarded. I mean geeze, at least appropriate all the donations like other lovely organizations for yourself and slowly hand more food out to the masses. Can't even scam donations right, what the gently caress, how dumb are you Maduro?
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May 15, 2017 11:47
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caberham posted:When a barely functioning state like North Korea relies on humanitarian aid to feed its people, it really makes Venezuelan leadership retarded. I mean geeze, at least appropriate all the donations like other lovely organizations for yourself and slowly hand more food out to the masses. Can't even scam donations right, what the gently caress, how dumb are you Maduro? They tried once to use a Donated Batch from Mexico for the CLAP (and hid the fact it was charity to charge for the rations), but they were so blatantly corrupted in how mismanaged its distribution was their "Venezuela doesn't have any Crisis that needs Internacional Aid" Policy is just them not wanting to be in a spot to face off another government or organization without a Bribe-able way out: for a refresher, the safest option to get the supposed "Monthly" (yet Weekly-sized) Ration Pack was always to pay outrageous prices to millitar-aligned scalpers. On other news, the Guard has been going hard in Valencia's usual protest spots (Distribuidor El Trigal, Tazajal) today.
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May 15, 2017 18:52
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AstraSage posted:They tried once to use a Donated Batch from Mexico for the CLAP (and hid the fact it was charity to charge for the rations), but they were so blatantly corrupted in how mismanaged its distribution was their "Venezuela doesn't have any Crisis that needs Internacional Aid" Policy is just them not wanting to be in a spot to face off another government or organization without a Bribe-able way out: for a refresher, the safest option to get the supposed "Monthly" (yet Weekly-sized) Ration Pack was always to pay outrageous prices to millitar-aligned scalpers. Venezualas attempt to accept charity sounds interesting, can you guys tell me more about this and the aftereffects when it was found that ration packs were being sold?
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May 15, 2017 22:13
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Pharohman777 posted:Venezualas attempt to accept charity sounds interesting, can you guys tell me more about this and the aftereffects when it was found that ration packs were being sold? It was never charity. It was a program designed to ensure that bags of subsidized foods made it only to PSUV loyalists, run by the military. This being Venezuela, most of the supplies intended for the program were diverted and sold by the military on the black market.
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May 16, 2017 00:23
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Pharohman777 posted:Venezualas attempt to accept charity sounds interesting, can you guys tell me more about this and the aftereffects when it was found that ration packs were being sold? Okay, I'm not good at elaborating at these topics, but I need to make sure one thing is kept it clear: CLAP is basically a "Home-delivered Ration Pack by Subscription" System the Government formulated in its classic "Treat the Symptoms, not the Disease" fashion to end the whole "long waiting lines in grocery stores" thing caused by the food shortage and it was meant to be sold in the first place, with the actual problem being just another stripe to a tiger well known for profiting out of import shenanigans. AstraSage fucked around with this message at 03:59 on May 16, 2017 |
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May 16, 2017 01:11
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There was another plantón today in cities all across the country. Like AstraSage said, Valencia saw tons of fighting. Two protesters were killed in Tachira state, bringing the death toll since April 1 to 49. The fatalities were Luis Alviarez (17) and Diego Hernandez (33). They were killed in Palmira and Capacho Nuevo, respectively. Both of them were shot in the chest and appear to have died where they fell. Here is a picture from the Altamira interchange on the Francisco Fajardo highway. It was raining on and off in the afternoon. Still, lots of people: https://twitter.com/ReporteYa/status/864185293439733760 This video shows escuderos (shield-bearers) in action. The video is undated, but I think that it was taken today somewhere in Caracas. It's remarkable how organized some of these shield-bearer groups are. There's a clear division of labour within the units, with some protesters carrying the shields, others bringing up/shooting fireworks, and others throwing back tear gas canisters: https://twitter.com/exitpoll2012/status/864258810038427648 You might remember that Miguel Castillo was killed on May 10 by a ball bearing shot into just chest. I first saw reports of National Guard soldiers shooting ball bearings and marbles at protesters in mid-April. The picture below shows a ball bearing that punctured through a shield. Note the Marian images on the shield to help keep the bearer safe. I guess the prayers worked this time: https://twitter.com/PorHumanidad/status/864140979804270592 Some other videos from the rest of the country: A National Guard truck speeding down a road turns a corner and starts shooting (likely rubber pellets) at fleeing protesters in Colon, Tachira state: https://twitter.com/gaby_sb13/status/864222590952452097 This video from Carabobo was probably recorded somewhere in Valencia. It shows Carabobo State Police officers taking fire from unseen shooters. The video is intense: you can hear the hail of bullets whiz by the officers. This is the first time that I've seen a video of police officers exchanging fire with (presumably) protesters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW16EUTtzqY This video is from Valencia, Carabobo. It shows a SEBIN checkpoint stopping a vehicle before someone opens fire on the officers. The stopped vehicle speeds away as the officers take cover before an armoured truck. The armoured truck appears to belong to CONAS, which is a police agency that works in anti-kidnapping and extortion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2vf5799Ke0 There were mass arrests in Valencia throughout the afternoon. I'm hearing that at least 35 people were arrested in the city, and that officers were breaking into apartment complexes and dragging out anyone they found. This video shows police officers leaving a building complex. Residents have triggered the building's alarm to alert others of the raid: https://twitter.com/ReporteYa/status/864191654617591809 This video shows National Guard soldiers shooting at a vehicle from an overpass in Valencia as the vehicle drives underneath. The occupants of the vehicle think that the soldiers saw them recording, which is why they shot them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzPchBlcBzU This video is Santa Cruz de Mora in Merida state. It shows National Guard soldiers fleeing the area after getting outflanked by demonstrators: https://twitter.com/ortegalud/status/864219934557122560
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May 16, 2017 03:18
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This poo poo is starting to escalate. Looks like the protesters are starting to get real tired of being shot and beaten and are starting to do something about it.
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May 16, 2017 03:51
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One would suspect the colectivos are probably going to be where any pushback starts, as in spite of being heavily armed they are despised and seem poorly organized for the most part and that's a real recipe for getting torn apart by a mob as soon as they are more angry than afraid of you. I mean we already saw that thing where a couple of them were stripped naked and tied to something, you can't expect crowds to stay that merciful.
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May 16, 2017 04:00
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This seems like a new phase of popular resistance to the Venezuelan government. Do you think the police are going to start getting targeted wherever they appear, or just during protests? In popular revolutions typically the penultimate phase before state institutions defect and coup the regime or a civil war breaks out is removing police and other civil authorities from the street. once the police disappear from the streets there's no turning back.
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May 17, 2017 04:54
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Chuck Boone posted:
Holy poo poo, when it was "ball bearings" I thought it was those little micro pellets like the size you'd see in a BB gun. I figured it was a freak accident that killed those people, but god drat that is the same size as a musket ball. Is the muzzle velocity way lower or something? Because that looks as dangerous as shooting someone with a 18th century musket, which worked just fine for killing people in large numbers. Saladman fucked around with this message at 07:59 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 07:56
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There were two other protest-related casualties yesterday. A 31 year old man named Diego Arellano was shot while protesting in San Antonio de Los Altos south of Caracas, and a 17 year old boy named Yeison Mora Castillo died in hospital after having been shot while protesting on Monday in Pedraza, Barinas state. The 24-hour period starting at noon on Monday saw four protesters killed. San Antonio is still seeing very heavy skirmishes today. I have family living there and they've sent me pictures of multiple armoured trucks (likely 5 or 6) and about 100 National Guard soldiers stationed at a central roundabout in the city. This picture from early this morning shows National Guard soldiers firing tear gas into an apartment building: https://twitter.com/laregionweb/status/864795074030391296 The highway that runs through the city and connects the south of Miranda state to Caracas is still blocked. Businesses are closed all over the city: https://twitter.com/laregionweb/status/864805083166507009 https://twitter.com/GalileoAleman/status/864809013590052864 Residents in San Diego (which is a bit further south from San Antonio) lit fire to a truck to block a highway this morning: https://twitter.com/dmurolo/status/864812155996172288 Squalid posted:Do you think the police are going to start getting targeted wherever they appear, or just during protests? Venezuela is a tangled web of municipal, state, and what we might call "national" police forces. To give you an example, Caracas is one city but it has six difference police forces: one for each municipality (Libertador, Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo, and Sucre), and also one police force for the city of Caracas itself. Image if New York City had a Manhattan Police Department, a Brooklyn Police Department, a Queens Police Department, etc., and then the NYPD on top. That's what the policing arrangement in Caracas is like. Caracas is a bit of a unique example in Venezuela, but the overlapping layers of police forces get messy elsewhere specially when you take into account what we might call a particular department's political affiliation. The governor of Carabobo state is a man named Francisco Ameliach. He's a high-profile PSUV member and is definitely one of the baddies. So, in Carabobo state, you'll see the Carabobo state police (Policarabobo) take an active role in protest repression primarily because Ameliach will give those orders. Control over state police forces is important to the PSUV for this reason, which I suspect is partially why the regime hasn't let people vote for governors in the elections that were supposed to have happened last year. The PSUV currently holds 20/23 states, and I'm certain that they would lose the vast majority of those in an election. I may be mistaken about this, but I believe that it is illegal for municipal police forces to respond to protests. That role falls squarely on the state police and the National Guard, and I think even then the National Guard carries most of that weight because they tend to be better equipped. On top of the state police forces you have another web of national police forces--or perhaps said better, police forces that have national jurisdiction. This includes the National Bolivarian Police, the SEBIN (the political police), and the CICPC (the forensic police). I've also started to see officers from CONAS (an anti-kidnapping police force) respond to protests, which is something that I've never seen before. All of that is to say that how people react to the police depends on the police's reputation and their political loyalties. People despise the SEBIN and generally won't mess with them because the SEBIN is a Gestapo-wannabe. If you live in Chacao, you might quite like the municipal police there because (at least 10 years ago) they had a very good reputation for being solid cops, and Chacao is run by the opposition. You asked if we're going to see people lash out against police, and I said that we're seeing hints of that. Protesters burned down a police station in Tachira yesterday. Back on May 12, two National Bolivarian Police officers were taken hostage by the residents of a neighbourhood who demanded the release of some people that had been arrested while protesting that day. The video I posted earlier from Carabobo showed a full-out gunfight between Carabobo police and a shooter(s). Those two states in particular might be unique cases because of how despised their PSUV governors are, but the fact remains that violence against state police officers is happening. Saladman posted:Holy poo poo, when it was "ball bearings" I thought it was those little micro pellets like the size you'd see in a BB gun. I figured it was a freak accident that killed those people, but god drat that is the same size as a musket ball. Is the muzzle velocity way lower or something? Because that looks as dangerous as shooting someone with a 18th century musket, which worked just fine for killing people in large numbers. I'm very sure that the people who are shooting ball bearings are the National Guard. I say this because National Guard soldiers are equipped with shotguns, but they are only supposed to carry rubber pellet ammunition. It seems to me that a determined National Guard soldier might be able to replace the rubber pellets in a shotgun shell with ball bearings if he wanted to. The colectivos wouldn't be shooting ball bearings because they have actual bullets.
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May 17, 2017 17:14
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quote:According to Luis Betancourt, a coordinator for Foro Penal (an NGO set up to give legal aid to victims of political repression) 15 of the detainees told a military judge that they were force-fed pasta topped with grass and excrement. They said tear gas powder was rubbed on their noses to make them open their mouths. https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/05/16/detainees-processed-military-justice-forced-eat-pasta-feces/ It will probably be difficult to verify these reports, but the mere fact that these people are being tried by a military tribunal is already absurd. beer_war fucked around with this message at 17:56 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 17:52
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Feinne posted:One would suspect the colectivos are probably going to be where any pushback starts, as in spite of being heavily armed they are despised and seem poorly organized for the most part and that's a real recipe for getting torn apart by a mob as soon as they are more angry than afraid of you. Most of them appear to be common thugs and criminals, and in any case they're going to bat for a quasi-dictatorship that has ruined the country. I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.
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May 17, 2017 18:45
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The Foro Penal is an excellent NGO and I place a great deal of trust on their figures. The story of the feces-covered pasta is disturbing but not out of line with the other allegations of torture that we're hearing about, not just during this round of protests but also the ones from 2014. Another bit to add to the complicated mess that is policing, colectivos armados and social control in Venezuela: a man named Jonathan Ramon Camacho Delgado has just been arrested for the April 19 murder of Carlos Moreno, a 17 year old boy who was shot during a demonstration in San Bernardino, Caracas. The agency that conducted the arrest said that Camacho is a member of a colectivo called 5 de Marzo that operates out of the Libertador municipality. Witnesses said that Moreno had been killed by a colectivo that attacked the opposition crowd that day. Aside from being a colectivo member, Camacho is also an officer with the Sucre Municipal Police. EDIT: I forgot to add on what you said, beer_war: yes, the use of military tribunals to try civilians is contrary to both Venezuelan and international law. The Foro Penal said that up to May 11, 208 civilians had been processed by military tribunals since April 1. Some of them are already serving prison sentences. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 18:59 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 18:56
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Chuck - If you post any pictures from your fam make sure to scrub the EXIF data first, just in case.
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May 17, 2017 19:44
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How are Maduro's plans for the 'special assembly' coming along? How is he planning to rewrite the constitution while parliament is opposition-controlled? This poo poo needs to be stopped before Maduro becomes another Putin/Erdogan.
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May 17, 2017 20:11
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Two more people died today in protest-related violence: one was a 15 year old boy named Jose Francisco Guerrero and the other was a 30 year old man named Manuel Castellanos. Guerrero was shot by National Guard soldiers while walking back from buying corn flour for dinner in Sabaneta, Tachira. He was hospitalized overnight and died around noon. The video below is from one of his sisters: https://twitter.com/JuanPalenciaS/status/864878625153318912 quote:Maria: I am Maria Elizabeth Contreras Zambrano, the sister of Jose Francisco Guerrero, who was 15 years old. Yesterday, he became another victim of the National Guard and the colectivos [pro-regime militias]. Castellanos was also shot coming back from a store, this time in a place in Tachira state called Tucape. El Nacional reports that Castellanos was shot by an FN FAL rifle. If this is true, it suggests that Castellanos was killed by an army soldier (as opposed to a National Guard soldier--they're different). This would likely be the first instance of a protester being killed by an army soldier this year. Castellano's death was preceded shortly by an announcement by Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who said that he was ramping up the pressure on protesters in the state by deploying 2,000 National Guard soldiers and 600 "special operations soldiers" to the state effective immediately. National Assembly deputy Juan Requesens tweeted the images below early in the afternoon. The images show a heavily-armed colectivo armado milling about casually inside the local headquarters of the PSUV in Barrio Obrero, Tachira: https://twitter.com/JuanRequesens/status/864920161329008640 There was also lots of fighting in San Antonio throughout the day. This is a video showing the scene there at approximately 4:00 PM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKBF9wXwRes) and this video shows a tear gas canister flying into an apartment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nB0rCVDQc0). Phlegmish posted:How are Maduro's plans for the 'special assembly' coming along? How is he planning to rewrite the constitution while parliament is opposition-controlled? He's plugged his ears and is going full speed ahead with it. I believe it was last Monday that he invited all opposition parties to attend a meeting in Miraflores to go over the details of how to get this abomination going, and not a single opposition party attended. He doesn't care and will likely die on this hill. Maduro said yesterday that he was sad about all of the discontent directed at him and other PSUV officials, both in Venezuela and abroad. He also said this: quote:We are the new Jews of the world (…) only for the crime of being chavista.  Scaramouche posted:Chuck - If you post any pictures from your fam make sure to scrub the EXIF data first, just in case. Thanks for this. I didn't know what this mean and had to look it up. I don't think I've posted anything that they have sent me. I'll keep this in mind going forward. EDIT: I forgot to mention that Al Jazeera is doing some kind of web show tomorrow with journalists living in Venezuela about their experiences in the country. They're taking questions from the public, which you can submit through Twitter here: https://twitter.com/AJStream/status/864937353495838721 The show starts at around 3:30 EST tomorrow, so if you'd like to ask a journalist living in Venezuela a question, you have until then to get it in. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 03:07 on May 18, 2017 |
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May 18, 2017 00:04
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Thank you Chuck for the continuing updates. I thought this was a good article so I'll paste the whole thing here. Police and Protesters in Venezuela Share Common Grievances posted:CARACAS, Venezuela — In scenes across Venezuela, the security forces emerge as villains in dark uniforms. A young demonstrator approaches the military with outstretched arms, witnesses said, only to be shot dead moments later. If there's any hope of a not terribly violent end to all of this, it would be the PSUV losing the support of the security forces. I know there are all different groups of those but anything would be a start.
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May 18, 2017 13:50
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Interesting read for sure. I've been wondering about that myself. It seems like you have a lot of different categories of security personnel in Venezuela, and loyalty to the regime is very variable within and between them. All it would take is for a police line guarding the approach to Miraflores to give way and it could be over. Unfortunately, it probably won't be that simple.
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May 18, 2017 16:38
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I can see why the police are in a rough spot. They want to participate in the protest, but they need to obey the regime to get money to eat. And getting thrown in those horrific Venezuelan prisons is a threat good enough to keep them in line.
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May 18, 2017 22:01
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So apparently someone talked to the US's orange dipshit of a president and now we're putting sanctions on your supreme court justices. I'm not sure what caused it, but are they the kind of officials to be wealthy enough to have extensive business with US banks and things?
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May 18, 2017 22:47
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Most likely the work of whoever remains in the State Department. Not a bad thing but I'm not sure it's more than symbolic.
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May 18, 2017 23:10
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A 24 year old medical student named Paul Moreno was killed during a protest in Maracaibo, Zulia state today. Paul was Green Cross volunteer, and attended protests as a medic. This was Paul: https://twitter.com/DolarToday/status/865351744473182208 Earlier this month (or was it late April?), the National Guard tear gassed a kindergarten in Maracaibo. The kindergarten was evacuated by Green Cross volunteers. The event made headlines around the country, and there's a famous video of volunteers carrying infants away from the gas. Paul had a still of this video on his Instagram account, which people are taking to mean that Paul was the man seen in this video carrying the child wearing red: https://twitter.com/rubenramirez95/status/865386855122042880 The caption on the tweet above is nice: "He who dies doing the right thing does not die". Death tolls are all over the place. My own count is that Paul is the 53rd person killed since the protests began in April. Most media have the death toll at 43-44, and some have it at 50. The discrepancy appears to come from the fact that there was a mass death event in El Valle, Caracas on April 20. Different outlets have different figures from the night, and they range from 10 to 20 dead. My count is on the higher end of estimates because I'm including the higher estimates from El Valle. Anyway, there were lots of protests again today all over the country. Hard to keep track of everything. Here are some images from Caracas: https://twitter.com/PriscillaCrdz/status/865269913476374530 This video shows protesters and National Guard soldiers in a skirmish. The protesters are on the Francisco Fajardo highway, and the National Guard soldiers are inside the La Carlota military air base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98B0s-QnTEc This video is really interesting. It's a time lapse of the repression in Caracas today. The video was taken over the course of about an hour: https://twitter.com/ReporteYa/status/865294094175784962 Meanwhile, San Antonio de los Altos continues to see lots of fighting. This video was taken there this evening: https://twitter.com/chepina1709/status/865381773886337024 Another bit of news from today is that Henrique Capriles was trying to board a plane to New York City today when he was temporarily detained. His passport was annulled and he was unable to leave the country. Capriles was supposed to meet with Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, who is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The eight sanctioned individuals are all, save one, magistrates on the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which is the top legal body in the country. The only exception is Gladys Gutierrez, who was the head of the Supreme Court until earlier this year when she stepped down, presumably for medical reasons. The Constitutional Chamber is where the two rulings that effectively killed democracy in Venezuela came from: the ruling stripping parliamentary immunity from all National Assembly deputies, and the ruling taking over all powers from the legislature so long as it remains in contempt (read: forever). The Supreme Court reversed the decisions later that week after Maduro ordered them to do so on television given the overwhelming discontent with the rulings. Those two rulings are actually what started this wave of protests. There are lots of reasons to suspect that these magistrates are in on all kinds of shady dealings. There's no doubt in my mind that they've abused their positions to enrich themselves. The current head of the Constitutional Chamber, Maikel Moreno, served time in jail on two different occassions for murder, and now he's somehow the top legal figure in the country. On Phlegmish and Pharohman777's police talk: I think that the day that we see a highly-publicized defection by either a police officer(s) and/or National Guard(s) will be huge. The longer the protests go on, the more this is likely to happen. Saturday will be the 50th day of protests. Unfortunately I will not have reliable internet service until Monday, so I may be unable to post over the next four days or so. I will try my hardest to update the thread at least once a day.
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May 19, 2017 03:31
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article151329772.html Someone made a secret recording of a Venezuelan general talking about using snipers to control (read: kill) demonstrators.
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May 19, 2017 03:52
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That gets very specific and disturbing. And I wonder if the US gov't provided that info because they knew leaking it would be faster than anything official from this administration.
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May 19, 2017 03:56
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Night10194 posted:So apparently someone talked to the US's orange dipshit of a president and now we're putting sanctions on your supreme court justices. Yes, this is referred to as the boliburguesía: government officials that have enriched themselves under chavismo in various mostly illegal ways, while ordinary Venezuelans are starving. I am totally in favor of putting targeted sanctions on individuals associated with the regime (though not the country as a whole). I hope the EU follows suit with this, if they haven't already. Freeze their assets, make it completely impossible for them to enjoy their luxurious lifestyles abroad for as long as Venezuela remains a dictatorship. Unrelated, I've been checking out YT protest videos and it seems that the protesters are steadily getting more organized. I really like the little phalanxes.
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May 19, 2017 07:26
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Phlegmish posted:
As a student of history, it's always interesting to see people reproduce age-old techniques of warfare, like seeing millennia of evolution go by.
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May 19, 2017 17:19
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I spoke with some friends from Valencia today (one of Venezuela's biggest cities, relatively close to Caracas) and they told me they've had to take turns guarding their building against colectivos and the police at night. Apparently, the latest trend is that the police are coming after protests and blockades disperse in residential areas, knocking down the doors to buildings close by, and going floor by floor rounding up people to intimidate them. They take some people to 'process' them to intimidate others and blackmail their families and steal what they can from every apartment after rounding people up. Naturally, those friends decided to pack up their poo poo and leave the country next month, just to be on the safe side.
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May 20, 2017 01:00
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How do you defend your building against that? I guess colectivos maybe you can intimidate if you're also a bunch of guys with guns, but how do they deter police?
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May 20, 2017 18:36
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Saladman posted:How do you defend your building against that? I guess colectivos maybe you can intimidate if you're also a bunch of guys with guns, but how do they deter police? I guess it's not as much defending as just keeping an eye out and alerting people if someone tries to break in. They're not going to be able to stop a group trying to force their way in, but at least it makes them feel a bit safer.
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May 21, 2017 01:03
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Saladman posted:How do you defend your building against that? I guess colectivos maybe you can intimidate if you're also a bunch of guys with guns, but how do they deter police? If you have a bunch of guns you are better armed than the police.
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May 21, 2017 03:29
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As an American, how can I help our Venegoon friends in this thread? I'd love to send a box of staples or other food/supplies, but I have no idea how to get it to you.
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May 21, 2017 20:04
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Send them pressed metal mac-11s. gently caress humanitarian aide. They need firearms and explosives hopefully trump sends some hispanic SOF guys to teach you all how to grow grass greener. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 21, 2017 20:09
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HonorableTB posted:As an American, how can I help our Venegoon friends in this thread? I'd love to send a box of staples or other food/supplies, but I have no idea how to get it to you. There are more than a few courier services that send boxes of food and medicine to Venezuela with decent chance to actually get there. Look for a Facebook group called Venezolanos en Miami or something like it and ask for one. As for needs, any non perishable food and basic medicine would be wonderful. Basic hygiene products, like deodorant, are also welcomed.
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May 22, 2017 07:07
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So what's the visibility to the long-term fix of currency/inflation stabilization and investment? Obviously both of those are going to require some political stability. Still expecting elections next year?
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May 22, 2017 21:58
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Arkane posted:So what's the visibility to the long-term fix of currency/inflation stabilization and investment? Obviously both of those are going to require some political stability. Wrong thread perhaps?
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May 22, 2017 22:44
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Depressing if it was intended to be in this thread, because lol there's never going to be another election in Venezuela until Maduro and his cronies are rotting on pikes.
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May 22, 2017 23:02
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