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punk rebel ecks posted:Have things really gotten that bad there that you are afraid you will be taken away by the Maduro secret police? Or is the context of the post is that you just have stage fright? Or just a general wariness of journalism, amateur or otherwise, thanks to years of reports of people twisting quotes and evidence to say whatever they want to hear and not what the interviewed person actually said. I've never listened to a podcast, or a radio interview for that matter, so I don't know if they have a similar propensity to butcher the original words of those interviewed, but I'm sure wary as hell of journalists in my professional life (not political) and try hard to avoid any interviews unless I can read their previous publications. Thanks Fishmech re: forbes. I was wondering how the magazine existed when most of the articles I see online on their website are along the lines of "Xbox vs ps4: which has the most pixel???". Weird they would let people ruin their brand by publishing any garbage on their website for a few bucks.
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Jun 11, 2017 06:38
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There were at least 70 injured in protests in Caracas yesterday. Most of the fighting took place at the usual spot: the Francisco Fajardo highway stretch through Las Mercedes/Bello Monte. There were also flare-ups in La Candelaria and a couple of other places overnight. Here's a video of protesters taking the highway in the early afternoon: https://twitter.com/CaraotaDigital/status/873636978713088003 A protester is carried away injured from the front lines. The individual may have fainted: https://twitter.com/AlbertoRT51/status/873637725370560513 Protesters pulling back along the highway: https://twitter.com/Dereckb/status/873645541896355840 A National Guard armoured truck on fire in La Candelaria: https://twitter.com/venezolanodecen/status/873719053688373248 A field clinic treating the wounded. I saw a brief interview with a medical volunteer later in the day saying that he had been robbed by a National Bolivarian Police officer of all of his first aid medical gear and his wallet: https://twitter.com/CaraotaDigital/status/873653974074785792 Saladman posted:Is there any reliable way to get news about Venezuela without personally knowing people there? I looked quite a bit a while back re: the Guri dam, and I couldn't find any original reporting aside from Nicolas Casey, the occasional Economist article, the rare AP article, and a bunch of garbage in Spanish, although I don't know what the best potential sources are, is there like a Jeune Afrique / The Economist equivalent for Latin America? i.e. a weekly magazine that does good, relatively impartial, reporting for the entire region? The WOLA Venezuela Blog is run by a professor at Tulane University named David Smilde who is arguably the Venezuela expert in North America. The blog is updated probably two or three times a week, usually with succinct and well-written takes on developments in the country. I hesitate to share this because it's neither original reporting nor is it on the same level quality-wise as some of the professional stuff out there, but I run a website where I post daily updates on what's happening in the country. I usually write at least 500 words on the day's news which I've collected from Venezuelan sources and translated into English. I think that if you've asked yourself "what is one thing that happened in Venezuela today?", then you might find the website useful. I also occasionally (maybe once every 2-3 months) write a piece explaining a particular development or event in-depth. The jump to Bs. 7,000 came as a shock to me as well since I haven't been paying close attention to the market in the past little while. As far as I was concerned the rate was still at Bs. 3,000. The National Assembly's inflation estimate for January-April is 92.8%, which is an average of about 23% per month. That's an improvement over last year.
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Jun 11, 2017 12:08
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punk rebel ecks posted:Have things really gotten that bad there that you are afraid you will be taken away by the Maduro secret police? Or is the context of the post is that you just have stage fright? Oh man, yeah that sounded like I was paranoid! Sorry about that, it's just that I don't like speaking in public. People criticize the government online every minute of every day, I doubt they'd care about another negative podcast enough to send in their goons 
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Jun 11, 2017 16:04
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Labradoodle posted:Oh man, yeah that sounded like I was paranoid! Sorry about that, it's just that I don't like speaking in public. People criticize the government online every minute of every day, I doubt they'd care about another negative podcast enough to send in their goons Ok that's fine. As I said I really would like to have you become you seem so knowledgeable and informed. Plus you are "on the ground" of it all. But either way, thanks for your consideration. 
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Jun 11, 2017 16:50
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Yesterday saw a relatively small crowd of opposition supporters reach the western part of Caracas for the first time in about 73 days. The goal of yesterday's march in Caracas was to reach the offices of the Supreme Court, and as far as I'm aware the protesters made it to the block in which the offices are located. Once there, the oppositions supporters were met by a pro-regime crowd which proceeded to attack them. A journalist from Telemundo got knocked to the ground by the pro-regime folks and there were lots of punches and insults thrown. Here are a couple of videos of the scuffles: https://twitter.com/Harley_Monse/status/874277548993150976 https://twitter.com/NDtitulares/status/874283871164133376 https://twitter.com/AlbertoRT51/status/874303590608896000 A bit later in the afternoon, protesters burned the entrance to the Supreme Court offices in the Chacao neighbourhood of Caracas, which is in the west part of the city: https://twitter.com/HectorAntolinez/status/874373411962839040 https://twitter.com/HectorAntolinez/status/874372132939194368 https://twitter.com/Javierito321/status/874403152577089536 It's not clear from the video what the extent of the damage to the building was. That particular building has been "set on fire" before, but the flames have remained outside the lobby of the offices. It doesn't look to me like the fire was contained to the entrance of the building. While all of that was going on, the Supreme Court denied a request by attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz to annul the ongoing Constituent Assembly process. Ortega Diaz reacted to the annulment by filing another motion before the Supreme Court, this one seeking the removal of 33 magistrates from the to court. There's a 100% chance that the Supreme Court will essentially ignore the motion, but nevertheless, the fight between the Public Ministry and the Supreme Court is heating up. In another bit of news, a picture of a receipt from an Arturo's (the Venezuelan KFC) made a splash on Twitter yesterday. The receipt shows that a family combo with coleslaw and a large Pepsi and large 7 Up costs Bs. 73,2000. The minimum monthly salary is Bs. 65,021. Here's the receipt: https://twitter.com/AlbertoRT51/status/874006847975546882 Interestingly, I came across an article by complete coincidence this morning also talking about the prices at Arturo's almost exactly one year ago. The tone of the article is almost identical to the one from yesterday, but the prices are different. Back on June 27 2016, the price of a family meal at Arturo's was Bs. 10,160.71, and the minimum monthly salary was Bs. 15.051. EDIT: I forgot to say that a man died during the unrest yesterday. His name was Socrates Salgado, and he was 50 years old. A National Assembly deputy from Salgado's home state of Vargas said that he died from respiratory failure due to exposure to tear gas. Salgado is the 68th person to be killed during the unrest this year. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 14:41
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8w7CKp1FM0
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Jun 13, 2017 15:29
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Chuck Boone posted:Interestingly, I came across an article by complete coincidence this morning also talking about the prices at Arturo's almost exactly one year ago. The tone of the article is almost identical to the one from yesterday, but the prices are different. Back on June 27 2016, the price of a family meal at Arturo's was Bs. 10,160.71, and the minimum monthly salary was Bs. 15.051. So does that mean the purchasing power has gone down accordingly (e.g. 15,000 / 10,000 one year ago -> 65,000 / 73,000 today; i.e. a ~50% drop in purchasing power) or do such comparisons not even make sense to do? Why does anyone still go to work at a public office, if their entire month's salary will barely cover two fast food meals for a single person? Especially for public workers who don't have an opportunity to demand bribes? How do back-room public employees even survive if those CLAP bags only come once a month and only provide a weeks' worth of food? I don't get how people in major cities aren't starving to death like in Hawija. Does (or can) the church — or any other charity — provide anything?
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Jun 13, 2017 16:02
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Saladman posted:So does that mean the purchasing power has gone down accordingly (e.g. 15,000 / 10,000 one year ago -> 65,000 / 73,000 today; i.e. a ~50% drop in purchasing power) or do such comparisons not even make sense to do? Keep in mind, while the minimum wage is around BsF65,000 employees also get food stamps (not exactly the same, but it's the closest description) for approximately BsF140,000. Put together a couple of those salaries and you basically have enough to feed a family of two (although not lavishly) for a month even if you buy most food at unregulated prices. As an example, my mother and I spend around BsF500,000-600,000 (less than $100 at today's black market rates) on food alone each month and we don't buy any regulated products. If you have the time to do queues you can save some of that money, although you never know exactly what you're going to find at the end of the line until you're already there. Of course, that doesn't even begin to take into consideration buying personal hygiene items, clothes, paying for transport, etc. Most people I know are doing some kind of side job to make ends meet, from driving cabs to selling homemade meals. Of course, not every family has dual incomes, though. Single income families with multiple children are the ones getting hit the hardest right now, I'd say, and I have no idea how they're making ends meet.
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Jun 13, 2017 16:43
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My interview with Chuck is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk5SxqqSRC4
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Jun 14, 2017 05:23
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I'm poking my head a bit into the conversations about Venezuela happening in far-left spaces and a common line of attack against the opposition seems to be that they are racist/and or have their ranks filled with white supremacists. Is there any truth to this at all, as in, has racism been an issue for the Venezuelan right/opposition? I'd imagine any racism would be played up to pretty high degrees by the regime to discredit the opposition. In any case most protesters these days don't seem to be guided by much of an ideology anyways. In particular they seem to single out Julio Borges for whatever that's worth.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:57
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Jygallax posted:I'm poking my head a bit into the conversations about Venezuela happening in far-left spaces and a common line of attack against the opposition seems to be that they are racist/and or have their ranks filled with white supremacists. Is there any truth to this at all LOL
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Jun 14, 2017 10:02
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Sergg posted:LOL It's the only line of attack they have left, scream racism.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:36
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Lol I figured as much. All their evidence really seemed like grasping at straws.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:40
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Jygallax posted:I'm poking my head a bit into the conversations about Venezuela happening in far-left spaces and a common line of attack against the opposition seems to be that they are racist/and or have their ranks filled with white supremacists. Is there any truth to this at all, as in, has racism been an issue for the Venezuelan right/opposition? I'd imagine any racism would be played up to pretty high degrees by the regime to discredit the opposition. This criticism doesn't hold much water anymore for a few reasons. The first is that "the opposition" means "anyone who isn't the PSUV". Maduro's approval rating hit bottom months and months ago, and it's still there: it's about 20%. That means that 80% of Venezuelans do not approve of Maduro as president. There have been dozens of public opinion polls conducted over the last three years or so that show overwhelming rejection of both Maduro and the PSUV. We saw a concrete example of this most recently at the end of 2015, where about 56% of voters cast their ballots for the opposition in the parliamentary elections. The opposition got over 2 million more votes that the PSUV in that election. The opposition won seats in lots of areas that are predominately poor/non-white, including places like Petare in Caracas. In other words, to say that the opposition (read: the vast majority of the country) is racist/full of white supremacists is extremely misinformed at best. Jygallax posted:In any case most protesters these days don't seem to be guided by much of an ideology anyways. In particular they seem to single out Julio Borges for whatever that's worth.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:43
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quote:I'm not quite sure what you mean here--how do you define ideology? What makes you say that "most protesters" are not guided by an ideology? What do you think is guiding them? The main opposition bloc (the Mesa de la Unidad Democratica) has coherent political goals, and the opposition-controlled National Assembly passed about a dozen laws during last year's parliamentary session. Julio Borges is the current president of the National Assembly, so he's a leading figure of the opposition at the moment. I'm not sure who you mean is singling him out and for what purpose, though. What I meant was that most of the protesters in the current protest movement seem more motivated by a simple desire for an end to shortages and a desire for elections than any specific political/economic/social program, but maybe that's only how it appears from the perspective of a foreigner who doesn't know the political intricacies of the opposition. What I meant by my comment about Borges is that I saw at least one person singling him out as like one of the arch-racists.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:59
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Jygallax posted:What I meant was that most of the protesters in the current protest movement seem more motivated by a simple desire for an end to shortages and a desire for elections than any specific political/economic/social program, but maybe that's only how it appears from the perspective of a foreigner who doesn't know the political intricacies of the opposition. Ah--thanks for the clarification. Well, to the first comment I'd say that demanding food and the chance to vote for the people you want to run the country are in fact specific economic/political motivators. Another way to think of it is that at its most basic level, the opposition movement is motivated by a desire to have a political system that truly represents the will of the electorate and an economy that functions and is able to provide a reasonable standard of living for Venezuelans. I think that those are most certainly politically and economically motivated demands. Now, if the argument is that we can't easily attach a label to those demands and say, "these are social democratic demands", or "these are right-wing conservative demands", then I think that's another discussion. It's also worth keeping in mind that the status quo will often try to discredit political opponents by making this very argument--that they are senseless, that they're just out to cause chaos, that they don't really have any political goals. We see this strategy over and over and over. Think of some of the rhetoric that was used by the media and the authorities to describe the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the Ferguson riots in particular, for example. To the second comment I'd say that Borges is the target of all kinds of attacks at the moment because, like I mentioned, he's the head of the National Assembly right now and is a really high-profile opposition figure. I'm not aware of any reason why someone might charge him with being a white supremacist.
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Jun 14, 2017 15:13
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I have a feeling that the opposition really needs an organized effort to counter regime disinfo right about now, because its sort of the wild west in some areas on the infosphere. The situation is starting to remind me of Syria, where people on different sides of the conflict live in totally different worlds, and for any event that happens there's opposing explanations by either side.
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Jun 14, 2017 15:38
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Jygallax posted:I have a feeling that the opposition really needs an organized effort to counter regime disinfo right about now, because its sort of the wild west in some areas on the infosphere. The situation is starting to remind me of Syria, where people on different sides of the conflict live in totally different worlds, and for any event that happens there's opposing explanations by either side. There's a lot of info out there by more-or-less neutral sources. Anyone who still wants to follow bullshit won't have their mind changed by the opposition somehow giving them more evidence. The thing in Syria is that the truth is covered up and prpbably no one knows except a handful of people on the ground. Most of the poo poo happening in Venezuela is going on fully in the public eye and you can watch any number of Youtube videos about it.
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Jun 14, 2017 19:39
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Saladman posted:There's a lot of info out there by more-or-less neutral sources. Anyone who still wants to follow bullshit won't have their mind changed by the opposition somehow giving them more evidence. There are also way more actors in Syria, with complicated webs of alliances and competing agendas. In Venezuela it's really only the government, the opposition, and the supporters of both.
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Jun 15, 2017 02:18
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I don't exactly know what the MUD is waiting for right now, bur these actions that the Attorney General is taking is the perfect setup for a winning move. The window of opportunity is going to fly past them if they continue sitting on their asses.
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Jun 15, 2017 06:28
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fnox posted:I don't exactly know what the MUD is waiting for right now, bur these actions that the Attorney General is taking is the perfect setup for a winning move. The window of opportunity is going to fly past them if they continue sitting on their asses. I think the next step is for the National Assembly to replace the Supreme Court magistrates, which seems to be what they're working on now. There's a committee working right now on a timetable (check the latest tweets here https://twitter.com/EfectoCocuyo), but I don't think it's going to be a speedy process from what it sounds like. Right now I think we're at an impasse. The only card the MUD has left to play is replacing the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council while keeping the pressure on the streets, but the problem is that won't work unless they can convince the military to stop supporting the government. Otherwise, they'll just go "Yeah, we're going to stick with our guys" and ignore them. As for the protests, the MUD also needs to take a moment to devise a new strategy or something to energize them again because attendance has been waning. People are scared about going out to protest in the same places day in and day out because we all know how it's going to end. The National Guard will show up, there'll be a clash, dozens of people will get detained and tortured, someone will get murdered, and the cycle will repeat itself after a couple of days without any improvement.
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Jun 15, 2017 15:21
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Unfortunately there were seven protest-related deaths this week, bringing the total number of fatalities to 74 since the protests began on April 1. The fatalities this week were:
In some other news, a local NGO called the Observatorio Electoral Venezolano (OEV) [Venezuelan Electoral Watch] released a statement recently pointing out that the National Electoral Council (CNE) has skipped anywhere between 70-100 steps that must take place as mandated by law before any electoral process in the country in its rush to hold the Constituent Assembly in July. The steps include things like recruiting and training electoral volunteers to staff voting centres on the day of the election, as well as vetting and accrediting election observers and journalists to cover the event. The OEV also pointed out that previous electoral process in Venezuela (namely the 2005, 2010 and 2015 parliamentary elections) took anywhere between 165-187 days to organize and hold. By contrast, the Constituent Assembly election will span just 91 days from the day that it was announced to the day that Venezuelans vote for the representatives. For the OEV, it's obvious that what the CNE is doing is rushing to this thing because that's what Maduro wants. The CNE is not an impartial body that works to organize and hold free and fair elections to the benefit of Venezuelans: it is an institution that is squarely in the PSUV's pocket and works only to ensure that the party stays in power by any means necessary. This is what the OEV concluded from its observations: quote:The electoral schedule and be read as yet another piece of evidence that demonstrates the assault against law that the elections body has been carrying out in order to respond to--with unusual speed--the request from the Executive. Or, as a move by an institution that serves a government that is clearly a minority and is seeking to maintain in power a political group that has already been punished at the polls. The National Constituent Assembly now threatens to destroy the trust that people have placed in the automate voting system.
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Jun 18, 2017 15:26
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Any details about voting rolls etc yet? How are they going to stuff or manipulate the ballot? I mean, there is zero chance this will be in any way a fair vote and most likely will need to be entirely constructed given their current popularity.
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Jun 19, 2017 01:00
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBb0MqnLB4w&t=11s
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Jun 19, 2017 08:55
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Munin posted:Any details about voting rolls etc yet? How are they going to stuff or manipulate the ballot? The thing about the Constituent Assembly is that it is a wholly unnecessary process, and therein lies the fraud. It's a an event that has absolutely no business happening, and yet it is. Part of the controversy this time around is that the last time that we had a Constituent Assembly was in 1999, and Chavez put the matter up to a referendum vote. This time we're not getting a referendum vote because Maduro just snapped his fingers and declared that the thing is happening. In other words, the fact that this thing is happening at all is in itself a huge victory for the regime. We don't really have any details about what the vote is going to look like, which is what the NGO that I talked about in my last post was pointing out. This is without a doubt the most important election in Venezuela since 1999 because we're getting a whole new constitution, a whole new country, and yet no one really knows how this is all going to work. We do know that the commission in charge of putting the assembly together is made up of 11 people, every single one of whom is a hard-line PSUV minister or deputy. We also know that the assembly will be made up of 540-545 people (Maduro says 545, the CNE says 540). Some of those people will be elected by their respective municipalities, while the rest (I think about 150) will be elected by "sectores" (literally, "sectors"). There are about ten different sectors, including youth, pensioners, farmers, and workers. Elections by sectors in this way are completely unprecedented in Venezuelan history. The sectors are wholly arbitrary. There's no justification why some groups of people are "sectors" and others aren't. The regime simply made up the sectors. Doctors aren't a sector; the opposition isn't a sector; formerly incarcerated individuals isn't a sector; victims of crime isn't a sector. And yet, these are all groups of people with significant populations that probably have lots of opinions about what the new constitution should look like. What I'm trying to say is that the regime has hand-picked groups of people that it wants to be part of this, which is also contrary to the principles of democracy. In short, the nitty gritty of what the vote will actually look like poses very serious questions about the fair nature of this thing, but that's arguably the least important part of this mess. The fact that Maduro is forcing the country to write a new constitution that it does not want is the big problem. TeleSur is the international propaganda wing of the regime. It's majority-owned by the Venezuelan government. Posting videos from TeleSur personalities talking about how everyone in the world is wrong about Venezuela would be like citing Sean Hannity and Breitbart links talking about how great Trump is. The source poisons the message. Notice in the second video that the starting premise isn't "Lots of people are saying that Maduro is a dictator--is he?". The starting premise is "Maduro is not a dictator, but lots of people say he is. Why are they so misinformed?" Do you see how the first premise sets up an interesting discussion, but the second gives you the answer and then pretends to have a discussion?
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Jun 19, 2017 13:35
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Munin posted:Any details about voting rolls etc yet? How are they going to stuff or manipulate the ballot? I may be wrong on the details here so I'd appreciate it if someone else could correct me. From what I know, the "Constituent Assembly" (that's the literal translation, but I'm not sure if it makes sense, so I'll just refer to it as the Constituyente) will be made up of 500 people. The problem is, 250 of those people will be elected by sectors of society handpicked by Maduro. Think farmers, students, laborers, and so on. The Electoral Council picks which sector you can vote for without your consent (or doesn't assign you one at all), which means they can stuff each of these sectors with their own voters (using their own records about members of the PSUV or beneficiaries of government programs) to ensure they get votes for the people they want. That move should ensure them that at least half of the 500 members of the Constituyente will be handpicked by them because the Electoral Council is also the one that oversees candidacies. If they don't like someone, they can just say "Nope, you can't put your name forward because X reasons". Even if hardly anyone from the PSUV goes to the ballots (which is likely considering the majority of the country rejects the process), they'd still be casting votes for government handpicked candidates. Hypothetically speaking, even if the opposition were to participate in the elections, they'd lose because the Electoral Council decides who can be a part of the new assembly. Once the Constituyente is seated, they have the power to modify any part of the constitution and sweep the board starting from zero. It's a handy way to do away with the gubernatorial elections altogether and maybe even the post of governors, which is highly likely since the government has appointed seven of those by hand during the past couple of years alone. The problem is if you're the opposition, you can't participate in this type of election even if you have an overwhelming majority of the country on your side, as they do. Doing so would only validate the process, which is illogical since everyone agrees it's a blatant power grab by the Maduro government. If something doesn't happen before election day (July 30th), I have no idea what comes next.
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Jun 19, 2017 13:40
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Labradoodle posted:I may be wrong on the details here so I'd appreciate it if someone else could correct me. From what I know, the "Constituent Assembly" (that's the literal translation, but I'm not sure if it makes sense, so I'll just refer to it as the Constituyente) will be made up of 500 people. The problem is, 250 of those people will be elected by sectors of society handpicked by Maduro. Think farmers, students, laborers, and so on. The Electoral Council picks which sector you can vote for without your consent (or doesn't assign you one at all), which means they can stuff each of these sectors with their own voters (using their own records about members of the PSUV or beneficiaries of government programs) to ensure they get votes for the people they want. So Maduro wants to bring back 19th/early 20th century European Corporatism to shore up his regime, huh? That's pretty fuckin dire. Guess we only need to wait a few years until he outright starts calling himself a fascist.
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Jun 19, 2017 16:27
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Labradoodle posted:If something doesn't happen before election day (July 30th), I have no idea what comes next. It looks pretty grim. So the constituent assembly is almost certainly going to happen, in which case: what changes are they going to implement to keep the PSUV in power indefinitely? I thought the "ban all 'improperly registered' parties" trick was going to be the cap on Venezuela's one-party state, but I'm not even sure what they'll push for for the constituent assembly. Maybe turn the president into a position elected by government (i.e. more like a prime minister, but in this case elected by itself and not by parliament)? Remove parliament's powers and allocate them to the president? It's amazing Venezuela still hasn't hit rock bottom yet. From this perspective it kind of looks like things will continue as-is until the currency reserves drop to zero (half a year to a year from now?) after which point I'm guessing some sort of coup will occur. Please get your exit visas ready...
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Jun 19, 2017 20:25
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Labradoodle posted:The problem is if you're the opposition, you can't participate in this type of election even if you have an overwhelming majority of the country on your side, as they do. Doing so would only validate the process, which is illogical since everyone agrees it's a blatant power grab by the Maduro government. If something doesn't happen before election day (July 30th), I have no idea what comes next. The CNE sure moves quickly when it wants to, huh? Remember how long it took them to organize a simple recall referendum? And now they're setting up this bureaucratic nightmare in, what, 3 months?
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Jun 20, 2017 06:51
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A 17 year old student was killed yesterday during a protest in Caracas. His name was Fabian Urbina. He's the 75th person killed during the protests since they began on April 1. Urbina was killed by a National Guard soldier who shot into a crowd of demonstrators with his pistol. This is quite remarkable because even though the National Guard has killed dozens of people since April, none of the deaths have been attributed directly to firearms (as far as I'm aware). This appears to be the first case for which there is evidence of soldiers shooting at protesters with firearms. Here is a video of protesters charging soldiers across an overpass in the Altamira neighbourhood of the city. You can hear gunfire go off as the protesters begin to retreat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KuVOSY2Zek Here's a video with some stills showing soldiers clearly aiming/shooting pistols at the protesters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFmU-VtuNE This video appears to show the same event as the two video above from the point of view of the protesters: https://twitter.com/RCamachoVzla/status/876911667170430976 In another bit of news, the Supreme Court just approved impeachment proceedings against the attorney general. This is because the attorney general has been outspoken against all of the abuses that the Maduro regime has been carrying out over the past few months. So, it looks like we'll have a new attorney general soon. On a side note, I'm attending an academic conference in Mexico City all of this week and I noticed that George Ciccariello-Maher is scheduled to present. I don't think that I'll be attending his presentation (he's presenting a paper on the right to self-defense), but there's a non-zero chance that he may attend my presentation on Friday because I'll be talking about the Leopoldo Lopez trial and the state of the judicial branch in Venezuela. Saladman posted:It looks pretty grim. So the constituent assembly is almost certainly going to happen, in which case: what changes are they going to implement to keep the PSUV in power indefinitely? I thought the "ban all 'improperly registered' parties" trick was going to be the cap on Venezuela's one-party state, but I'm not even sure what they'll push for for the constituent assembly. Maybe turn the president into a position elected by government (i.e. more like a prime minister, but in this case elected by itself and not by parliament)? Remove parliament's powers and allocate them to the president? This is just the thing: if you get to write the constitution, you can write anything you want. Your imagination is the only limitation. Do you want lifelong presidential term limits? Regional elections every 20 years? Or party-appointed regional governments? Public adherence to party line in order to hold any administrative or judicial position? Military tribunals for "terrorists" accused of destabilizing the country? If you get to write the rules, you can write anything you want. beer_war posted:The CNE sure moves quickly when it wants to, huh? Remember how long it took them to organize a simple recall referendum? And now they're setting up this bureaucratic nightmare in, what, 3 months? Yeah, no kidding. It took the CNE about seven months to get dragged, kicking and screaming, to the halfway point of the recall referendum last year before they decided to just stop playing along and cancel the whole thing. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 01:39
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The MUD gave a press conference today saying that in accordance with article 350 of the constitution, they're claiming the government has lost its legitimacy and calling for people to ignore its authority. This is big. Article 350 is basically the nuclear option of the constitution that empowers people to disavow any non-democratic regime and to participate in restoring a legitimate government. It's something that's been thrown around in discussions a lot during the past few years as an option, but until now the opposition hadn't considered it seriously (I assume). Here's what the MUD is proposing to do now moving forward:
2. Ignore any Supreme Court rulings and calls by the government until they're dissolved. 3. Organize people for indefinite protest including a general strike. 4. Call for all public sectors to come out in favor of ignoring the Constituent Assembly and support them in naming new heads for the branches of government. 5. Prevent the vote for the Constituent Assembly from taking place. This is a massive milestone because so far the MUD has been very intent on doing everything by the book. Before the current wave of protests began, they tried literally every legal method to counteract the government and they were blocked at every turn. In a way, this is a last ditch effort since the government could use these declarations as an excuse to jail pretty much every member of the coalition. Sure, they don't really need the excuse, but you get my drift. The MUD hasn't announced a date for these measures yet, claiming they want to take the government by surprise. However, the vote for the Constituent Assembly is set for July 30, so this month is going to be decisive. On a different note, I'm not really sure about the idea of a massive strike in Venezuela. A large segment of the country could potentially run out of food if they can't work or shop, so how the hell do you pull that off in this scenario? I'm game for everything else, though. Chuck Boone posted:On a side note, I'm attending an academic conference in Mexico City all of this week and I noticed that George Ciccariello-Maher is scheduled to present. I don't think that I'll be attending his presentation (he's presenting a paper on the right to self-defense), but there's a non-zero chance that he may attend my presentation on Friday because I'll be talking about the Leopoldo Lopez trial and the state of the judicial branch in Venezuela. Ugh, if I were you I'd have a hard time doing my presentation with that smarmy mug sitting in the audience. Knock them dead! Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 02:00
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Chuck, you make a Venegoon proud. Kick rear end at that presentation, I'll be clapping from Spain.
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Jun 21, 2017 11:35
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Thanks, you two! I really appreciate your support. I've gotten good feedback on my presentations in the past, so I'm not too worried. The conference schedule booklet is about two hundred pages long, so unless he specifically looked for me (he wouldn't do that), it's very unlikely that he would just happen by chance to see my paper, or that he'd be free to pop in for the presentation. In any case, I'm arguing from fact, and I think that even if he were to show up he'd have a hard time challenging me on what I'm going to present and how I'm going to present it. The short of my presentation (which is based on an essay I'm hoping to eventually publish in an academic journal) is that the Leopoldo Lopez trial was the culmination of a decades-long process that saw the nature of judicial dependence in Venezuela shift to where it is today: completely dependent on the power of the Executive. Anyway, I may have a few minutes to drop by his presentation tomorrow. If I do end up going, I'll write up a trip report for the thread!
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Jun 22, 2017 04:43
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Chuck Boone posted:Thanks, you two! I really appreciate your support. Yo if you need a native English speaker to proof read your eventual journal paper, I am more than happy to help.
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Jun 22, 2017 09:36
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I see that the DICOM/SIMADI rate finally jumped closer to the real exchange rate (now 2600 BsF/$, from the ~600-700 BsF/$ that its' been at for a year), and if the last two weeks are anything to go by, it looks like it will start following changes in the real exchange rate more closely, although who knows if that will keep up. I always wonder how they calculate those types of things. For those of you in Venezuela, it sounds like you actually use BsF to make purchases, but it seems like financial suicide to have more than a few hundred US$ in a Venezuelan bank account. Is there some way you can regularly convert your real money into BsF every week or two to keep up with your purchases? I don't quite get how this even works unless you regularly leave the country and return with cash obtained from abroad, and I don't think there's any way to do a bank transfer between a Venezuelan bank account holding Monopoly money and a foreign bank holding real currencies? Do the few remaining middle class Venezuelans just have stacks of cash locked up in hidden places in their apartments, or is there some way to transfer money by wire without setting 90%+ of it on fire along the way? Will DICOM, now at "only" 1/3rd the real exchange rate, now make it less atrocious to make such a transfer? (Since with SIMADI, you were recently losing 90% on a bank transfer.)
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Jun 22, 2017 14:14
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Saladman posted:I see that the DICOM/SIMADI rate finally jumped closer to the real exchange rate (now 2600 BsF/$, from the ~600-700 BsF/$ that its' been at for a year), and if the last two weeks are anything to go by, it looks like it will start following changes in the real exchange rate more closely, although who knows if that will keep up. I always wonder how they calculate those types of things. I wouldn't hold my breath about the DICOM/SIMADI rate closing in on the black market. The government has a long history of making a big deal out of its official currency exchange systems for a few weeks and then forgetting all about them. Saladman posted:For those of you in Venezuela, it sounds like you actually use BsF to make purchases, but it seems like financial suicide to have more than a few hundred US$ in a Venezuelan bank account. Is there some way you can regularly convert your real money into BsF every week or two to keep up with your purchases? I don't quite get how this even works unless you regularly leave the country and return with cash obtained from abroad, and I don't think there's any way to do a bank transfer between a Venezuelan bank account holding Monopoly money and a foreign bank holding real currencies? Do the few remaining middle class Venezuelans just have stacks of cash locked up in hidden places in their apartments, or is there some way to transfer money by wire without setting 90%+ of it on fire along the way? Will DICOM, now at "only" 1/3rd the real exchange rate, now make it less atrocious to make such a transfer? (Since with SIMADI, you were recently losing 90% on a bank transfer.) Well, we can't have USD in most Venezuelan bank accounts. Some banks do enable you to create USD accounts, but you can only fund them via DICOM/SIMADI and you can't exchange that money directly or transfer it abroad. It's locked in there except for a debit card you can use abroad. I'm not 100% sure about that, though, I've never opened one myself. So, if you have USD it's probably because you already have an account abroad that you opened yourself at some point, which isn't that common. Most people just use BsF for everything. You get paid in BsF and you try to make ends meet anyway you can. People that have dollars just do wire transfers to other accounts abroad to someone willing to pay them in bolivares (at black market rates), bypassing the official exchange system altogether. In my case, I do that with PayPal and I've never had any problem finding a buyer. There's even a somewhat healthy local Bitcoin market if that's more your thing. In any case, no one makes transactions based on the DICOM/SIMADI rates.
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Jun 22, 2017 14:43
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The tourist guides recommend something like "Look up the black market exchange rate online, ask your hotel front desk to refer you to someone, and be sure to bring a backpack to carry all the bolivars."
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Jun 22, 2017 17:36
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"And don't forget to be inconspicuous."
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Jun 22, 2017 20:17
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Is the situation in Venezuela worse than Cuba right now, as it appears to be judging by the widespread unrest? If so, how the gently caress did that even happen? Or is Cuba still worse but better at repressing the opposition?
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Jun 23, 2017 00:27
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PT6A posted:Is the situation in Venezuela worse than Cuba right now, as it appears to be judging by the widespread unrest? If so, how the gently caress did that even happen? Well people aren't starving to death in Cuba for one. And their entire administration aren't trump level incompetent 2
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Jun 23, 2017 00:30
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