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Reminder that major members of the PSUV are directly involved in the drug smuggling industry. In fact, that's why some of them have sanctions put on them by the US. Going by the stupid broke brain logic used by tankies ITT, they are more likely to be CIA plants than the protesters, simply because of their involvement in the drug trade.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:53
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Yeah, my uninformed conspiracy laden take is that if the CIA were involved at all it would be with mostly the people who are being sanctioned now
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Aug 1, 2017 17:58
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Feinne posted:I want to be clear that I absolutely do not think this is at all an inevitable outcome from socialism, only the inevitable outcome when a bunch of idiots and thieves run a country into the ground. This would be more convincing if you could point to an example of actual socialism (not the capitalist Nordic social democracy model) working. You'd have Cuba or nk in the 60s - 80s but that was just because the Soviets dumped tons of cash and tech into them, once they lost their trust fund daddy they became much shittier than their capitalist peers and the difference has monumentally widened (even as the us backed off how much support they gave to western Europe and beyond). And there's no defending Chavez either, all the good poo poo that came out of that time was a from the bubble in oil prices. It wasn't sustainable and this is the inevitable result. It would be like saying saudi Arabia has a well run economy - no it's just hard to gently caress things up when you are sitting on a pile of gold.
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Aug 1, 2017 18:00
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if I were a old school CIA cold warrior id be insanely thrilled with the Maduro government, they've done more to damage to the cause of the left in Latin America then the past half a decade of school of the americas graduates
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Aug 1, 2017 18:01
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The National Assembly is holding a special session right now in which it's going on record about the fraud that was the Constituent Assembly. The legislature is trying to maintain institutional legitimacy by continuing to do things by the book, so while this may seem like a formality it is arguably serving some purpose. The biggest bit of news so far seems to be that two PSUV legislators, Eustoquio Contreras and German Ferrer, have broken away from the government bloc, which in parliament is called el bloque de la patria (The Fatherland Bloc -- it's made up of the PSUV and a handful of smaller parties, I think). The two deputies have made a new bloc, the bloque parlamentario socialista (the Socialist Parliamentarian bloc). This is big news because it shows that the PSUV is fracturing over Maduro's hard drive towards authoritarianism. Bob le Moche posted:Apologies about the personal tone, I value your reporting as well as some of the discussion in this thread which is part of why I keep posting in it. I accept your apology. Thank you. I won't respond to the rest of your post because I feel like we're talking past each other at this point. I still maintain that you are defending the very kind of oppression you claim to be against when you defend the Maduro regime. If suggesting that dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night and throwing them in a military prison for speaking out against a tyrannical dictatorship is not good makes me a liberal, then I am a liberal.
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Aug 1, 2017 18:05
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Jambo Jambos posted:He was complicit, how else can his daughter end up with so much money? It was his daughter who was led astray, if only Chavez had known he might have been able to stop it. 
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Aug 1, 2017 18:09
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Jambo Jambos posted:He was complicit, how else can his daughter end up with so much money? He was, but even if he wasn't complicit he set the precedents that allowed for the current state. This sort of cluster gently caress doesn't just happen in a few years, and the economic situation that would cause it was definitely set up under the Chavez regime. It was just lacking the catalyst that was low oil prices.
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Aug 1, 2017 18:25
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Do you think the US will ever welcome Venezuelans as refugees?
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Aug 1, 2017 19:01
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GreyjoyBastard posted:It was his daughter who was led astray, if only Chavez had known he might have been able to stop it. What happened to Chavez' daughter anyway? Last I can tell from a quick google, she was given some sinecure role at the UN. Did anyone ever ask her 'Hey, how come you have 4 billion dollars?'
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Aug 1, 2017 19:04
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BeigeJacket posted:What happened to Chavez' daughter anyway? Last I can tell from a quick google, she was given some sinecure role at the UN. Considering Rafael Ramirez is Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, I think the UN doesn't do jack poo poo to ensure that members of any delegation aren't guilty of embezzlement. Shnooks posted:Do you think the US will ever welcome Venezuelans as refugees? Not with Trump, no. Maybe other countries will.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:06
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Bob le Moche posted:whatever government this one gets replaced with won't be a brutal and reactionary regime that will impose IMF-style austerity on the Venezuelan people by any means necessary (and I sincerely hope I am wrong about this). Venezuelan people already have austerity imposed on them by any means necessary. There is just a nonsensical shifting of goalposts here where, no matter how bad things get under Maduro, things could always be worse under a hypothetical right-wing government ran by literal demons. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 19:17
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Man, what an incredibly depressing last few days. Godspeed, Venegoons. 
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Aug 1, 2017 19:25
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:And there's no defending Chavez either, all the good poo poo that came out of that time was a from the bubble in oil prices. It wasn't sustainable and this is the inevitable result. It would be like saying saudi Arabia has a well run economy - no it's just hard to gently caress things up when you are sitting on a pile of gold. The money from the bubble could have been used differently. Countries like Ecuador aren't in anywhere near this clusterfuck after having fairly successful leftist governments.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:26
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Indeed. Chavez failed to invest the money properly and diversify the enconomy of Venezuela. If there's one thing that's led to the situation today, it can be mostly put on that.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:35
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I honestly pity the MUD. I may live in the US and have no perspectives outside of news articles and this thread, but once the supreme court was loaded up with PSUV cronies by the outgoing legislature back in 2015, the oppositions authority was crippled. They kept trying to pass legislation that kept getting blocked by the supreme court. The MUD seems to have a lot of high minded idealists who want to do things clean and follow the laws, believing in the legitimacy of their election and that the government will follow its own rules. But since the PSUV has thourghly ensnared the presidency, military, and judiciary, the oppositions power over the government via legislation is gone.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:38
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Bob le Moche posted:There are multiple reasons, some people might naively believe that it is actually possible for a socialist government today to not suffer such a fate. Another, major reason, is that for many people, people who have lived their entire lives in a context of precarity and violence; under the abusive dictatorship of their bosses at their lovely workplace, being terrorized by cops in the streets in complete impunity, or living under the perpetual contempt and disdain of an arrogant and hypocritical liberal bourgeoisie who deny them basic human dignity for things like not having been able to go to a good school or for working as a bus driver; Poor Maduro, people made of fun his dumb rear end so he had to become dictator of a failing military-backed narco state
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Aug 1, 2017 19:47
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Pharohman777 posted:I honestly pity the MUD. I may live in the US and have no perspectives outside of news articles and this thread, but once the supreme court was loaded up with PSUV cronies by the outgoing legislature back in 2015, the oppositions authority was crippled. They kept trying to pass legislation that kept getting blocked by the supreme court. They're a combination of parties too broad for its own good. It's filled with way too many differing opinions, some of which (like UNT's) are directly toxic to the cause as they are willing to make concessions to the government or do things independently from the bloc. We need them to take a hardline stance and they're still unwilling to commit to that.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:48
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As Chavismo demonstrates, all the slogans and state power doesn't mean poo poo if you have incompetent, corrupt managers at the top.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:49
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you kidnap them in the middle of the night and you win
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Aug 1, 2017 19:49
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Kokoro Wish posted:Indeed. Chavez failed to invest the money properly and diversify the enconomy of Venezuela. If there's one thing that's led to the situation today, it can be mostly put on that. Yes in the sense that he made investments into he and his cronies' bank accounts rather than the country.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:09
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Bob le Moche posted:The only reason I became a "tankie" (which I guess is what anti-imperialists are called in this thread?) is because, as a North American... This is actually not a bad post. It's useful to recognize patterns and understand the similarities between different situations. But not everything fits well into pre-established patterns, and when that is the case, the particulars of a situation matter more than the pattern. This is part of why people complain about non-Venezuelans posting here to 'defend' the Maduro regime, because what you usually see is that they are making assumptions about how Venezuelan society is organized, what the quality of life is and has been, that aren't really realistic. I think a lot of people think that in South American countries, there's some big majority (the "people") that used to live in total squalor and whose lives are just neverending oppression. If you start from that point of view, then sure, what is happening now doesn't look too bad. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 20:11
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fnox posted:They're a combination of parties too broad for its own good. It's filled with way too many differing opinions, some of which (like UNT's) are directly toxic to the cause as they are willing to make concessions to the government or do things independently from the bloc. We need them to take a hardline stance and they're still unwilling to commit to that. I concede to you on that point. I just wonder what a hardline stance even looks like after the recall referendum was unlawfully ended. Get the US to sanction all oil imports and exports to and from venezuela?
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Aug 1, 2017 20:25
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Wait a second, María Gabriela Chávez has $4 billion dollars? Doesn't that make her the richest person in Venezuela, and worth more than industry tycoons like Mendoza?
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Aug 1, 2017 20:33
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Pedro De Heredia posted:This is actually not a bad post. It's useful to recognize patterns and understand the similarities between different situations. But not everything fits well into pre-established patterns, and when that is the case, the particulars of a situation matter more than the pattern. I haven't defended the Maduro regime in this thread and the reason I don't denounce it as corrupt and opportunist is because I don't believe I get to make any such judgments as a non-Venezuelan. It's really not up to me as a North American to tell the Venezuelan people what to do with their country, and I can't claim to have any better understanding about the situation than them. The posts of mine which earned me so much ire in this thread are the ones where I talk about US imperialism, the history of CIA intervention, the stake of international capitalist interests in the outcome of the Venezuelan crisis, and their ability to influence the discourse around it in the media and to affect the situation in the country.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:35
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Sergg posted:Wait a second, María Gabriela Chávez has $4 billion dollars? Doesn't that make her the richest person in Venezuela, and worth more than industry tycoons like Mendoza? It's a rumor that's taken a life of its own. Clearly, she's not lacking for money, but I doubt anyone knows how much Chavez himself really stole from the country at this point.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:35
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Bob le Moche posted:I haven't once defended the Maduro regime in any of my posts and the reason I don't denounce it as corrupt and opportunist is because I don't believe I get to make any such judgments as a non-Venezuelan. It's really not up to me as a North American to tell the Venezuelan people what to do with their country, and I can't claim to have any better understanding about the situation than them. The posts of mine which earned me so much ire in this thread are the ones where I talk about US imperialism, the history of CIA intervention, the stake of international capitalist interests in the outcome of the Venezuelan crisis, and their ability to influence the discourse around it in the media and to affect the situation in the country. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________/ 
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Aug 1, 2017 20:39
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Sergg posted:Wait a second, María Gabriela Chávez has $4 billion dollars? Doesn't that make her the richest person in Venezuela, and worth more than industry tycoons like Mendoza? Aye, in terms of personal net worth. However, Mendoza's industry connections and control of Empresas Polar, which adds another ~$7 billion, puts him ahead. Then again, she honestly could be worth 3x as much, since nobody knows how much money Chávez stole from the state treasury during his tenure as El Presidente.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:41
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I admit don't know jack poo poo about Venezuela, so I can't for sure say it is bad. Yet I can say that 60-80% of the nation are bourgeois anti-revolutionaries and that seizing a corrupt politician's Miami condo is exactly the same as general sanctions. I'm just asking questions here!
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Aug 1, 2017 20:43
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Labradoodle posted:It's a rumor that's taken a life of its own. Clearly, she's not lacking for money, but I doubt anyone knows how much Chavez himself really stole from the country at this point. I'm reading about Tareck El Aissami now (he's the Vice President & head of their secret police, SEBIN, for those that don't know) and when the US government seized his assets, they netted his private Gulfstream Jet and 3 different extremely expensive apartments at the Four Seasons complex in Miami. They also sanctioned 13 different shell companies linked to him which had assets totalling $3 billion, 5 of which are in Venezuela. How did El Aissami buy a private jet and 3 luxury condos in Miami on just his salary? Interesting. Sergg fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 20:43
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Sergg posted:Tareck El Aissami Lmao this dude's family were hugely prominent Ba'athists in the 90s, both in the Middle East and in Venezuela. Looks like the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:47
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One of 3 principle Rectors of Venezuela's Election Commission is saying the election was a fraud. No poo poo. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sq30i4 JailTrump fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 21:49
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Bob le Moche posted:I haven't defended the Maduro regime in this thread and the reason I don't denounce it as corrupt and opportunist is because I don't believe I get to make any such judgments as a non-Venezuelan. You have defended them, as I pointed out earlier. You described their actions as those of a "democratically elected government do[ing] things that are popular with the people, that they have been elected for and have a popular mandate to do." You said that "the parliament was suspended because of electoral fraud." You said that "the only support that Maduro still has at this point is from groups and social organizations that are loyal to the Bolivarian revolution and see him as its defender, and as the last line of defense against the dictatorship of the right-wing." This is defending the regime. Saying that "you don't denounce them as corrupt and opportunist because I don't believe I get to make any such judgments as a non-Venezuelan" is a defense, because what you're doing instead of 'making a judgment as a non-Venezuelan' is choosing to accept the official position of the government. You are not agnostic about the Venezuelan government, you are repeatedly describing them and their actions the way they describe themselves. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 22:00
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Pedro De Heredia posted:You described their actions as those of a "democratically elected government do[ing] things that are popular with the people, that they have been elected for and have a popular mandate to do." If I'm wrong about my assessment of who Maduro's supporters in Venezuelan society are, or about the legal justification that was used by the supreme court to suspend parliament (or the fact that this justification is never mentioned in the media), then I regret saying what I did about these things. As far as I can tell though neither of them constitute support for Maduro. Pedro De Heredia posted:Saying that "you don't denounce them as corrupt and opportunist because I don't believe I get to make any such judgments as a non-Venezuelan" is a defense, because what you're doing instead of 'making a judgment as a non-Venezuelan' is choosing to accept the official position of the government. You are not agnostic about the Venezuelan government, you are repeatedly describing them and their actions the way they describe themselves.
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Aug 1, 2017 22:21
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Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. If I were Maduro I would ask the Russians or Chinese for help in building more oil wells. Then I'd make the country better by just pumping all that oil money into the economy, and skim a bit off the top for me and my friends. Now I have tons of money and my people love me and ask me to kiss their babies.
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Aug 1, 2017 22:36
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qkkl posted:Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. If I were Maduro I would ask the Russians or Chinese for help in building more oil wells. Then I'd make the country better by just pumping all that oil money into the economy, and skim a bit off the top for me and my friends. Now I have tons of money and my people love me and ask me to kiss their babies. poo poo oil that's expensive and hard to refine at a time of low oil prices and diversification from oil as fuel source
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Aug 1, 2017 22:41
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qkkl posted:Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. If I were Maduro I would ask the Russians or Chinese for help in building more oil wells. Then I'd make the country better by just pumping all that oil money into the economy, and skim a bit off the top for me and my friends. Now I have tons of money and my people love me and ask me to kiss their babies. It's also less valuable than you'd think, as it's harder to refine than a lot of other countries' oil, plus the in-country transportation system for it and the port facilities to actually export it have been left to ruin, especially during Maduro's term. The hard to refine part is why Venezuela's local oil refining capacity is very minimal, and most of their used refined oil products are refined at Citgo plants in the Gulf Coast of the US.
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Aug 1, 2017 22:43
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qkkl posted:Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. If I were Maduro I would ask the Russians or Chinese for help in building more oil wells. Then I'd make the country better by just pumping all that oil money into the economy, and skim a bit off the top for me and my friends. Now I have tons of money and my people love me and ask me to kiss their babies. The problem is Chavistas don't really subscribe to the "take a little off the top" mentality. They're firm believers in the "Grab the whole goddamn thing and leave a couple of scraps for everyone else, then shoot them or put them in prison if they complain" approach. I mean, Tarek El Aissami had assets worth billions just in the US. That's just being greedy. To be fair, they did spread a lot of money around when oil was at its peak, so I want to be clear that I'm referring to their current approach. Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 22:43
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Bob le Moche posted:This is such a bad faith thing to complain about when I was responding to someone WHO WAS LITERALLY COMPLAINING THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAD DONE STUFF IN ORDER TO BOOST THEIR POPULARITY AFTER BEING ELECTED. I didn't expect it to be that contentious to point out that in theory that is kind of the entire point of democracy? This government hardly has a mandate and it has completely failed at boosting its popularity, so maybe this is actually not an accurate description of anything. quote:If I'm wrong about my assessment of who Maduro's supporters in Venezuelan society are, or about the legal justification that was used by the supreme court to suspend parliament (or the fact that this justification is never mentioned in the media), then I regret saying what I did about these things. As far as I can tell though neither of them constitute support for Maduro. I don't want you to cheer for Trump's sanctions. I want you to learn some things about your own beliefs. I actually broadly agree with the idea you've posted about how you are mostly concerned with U.S. intervention and about the patterns that you see in these kind of situations. But there is a difference between your statement of what it is you're doing (posting about that) and what you're actually doing (posting about that, but also defending the Maduro government implicitly by accepting its narrative). Which is why people keep arguing with you.
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Aug 1, 2017 22:47
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Pedro De Heredia posted:But there is a difference between your statement of what it is you're doing (posting about that) and what you're actually doing (posting about that, but also defending the Maduro government implicitly by accepting its narrative). Which is why people keep arguing with you. Actually, it's more that this is such an emotionally-loaded topic, that people are immediately taking any assessments of the situation that aren't fully in support of government change (by any means necessary), or that try to fact check the opposition or find (internal) reasoning behind the government's actions rather than condemning them at every turn, as being pro-Maduro. But that's not how this works. Hitler needn't literally eat babies to be considered evil, nor was Truman chosen by God to lead the nation in winning WW2.
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Aug 1, 2017 23:05
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Conspiratiorist posted:Actually, it's more that this is such an emotionally-loaded topic, that people are immediately taking any assessments of the situation that aren't fully in support of government change (by any means necessary), or that try to fact check the opposition or find (internal) reasoning behind the government's actions rather than condemning them at every turn, as being pro-Maduro. Personally, I just find the narrative of "The US is clearly pulling the strings and funding violent opposition groups to install a puppet government" offending. Not because it's impossible since we all know that it's happened before, but because it paints the picture that the wave of protests is a fight between two equally violent and welll-funded groups. Yes, there are fringe violent groups in the protests, but you have to look at things in the context that people have been spending months on the street, getting picked off one by one by the National Guard, chased, beaten, jailed, tortured, and more. The same National Guard has now taken to breaking into buildings and terrorizing people if there are protests in a particular area and onlookers still expect protesters to be 100% peaceful. What's more, people come into this thread and they try to reduce everything to an ideological discussion such as "Yes, you're oppressed, but I once read a Jacobin article saying the opposition is a right-wing group so you could be worse off". If people don't' support the opposition, I don't really care – most Venezuelans here agree they have committed a ton of blunders, but advocating for a violent overthrow of the government isn't one of them. On top of that, most of them are actually freaking leftists, so it gets a bit annoying when people keep parroting the same propaganda. Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 23:27
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