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Electoral fraud is rare in the US, however, electoral REGISTRATION fraud isn't. The two are often, and erroneously, conflated.
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Oct 25, 2017 02:58
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The only solution at this point to the situation is for the opposition to pursue the path of a dirty war against the PSUV. The traitorous actions of Henry Allup and the MUDs left wing shows that there can be no peaceful solution to the dictatorship. No member of the opposition can be trusted unless they directly have blood on the line. Those people did not. The reality is Allup should be killed for his actions by any means possible. The only way any kind of solution is going to come is through full on guerrilla warfare. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 25, 2017 06:07
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Jesus Christ, no, don't kill anyone. What is true however is that at last the conflict has consolidated itself into a left/right split now, with AD, UNT and AP basically bending over to PSUV, and PJ, VP, VV and the smaller DSD and ABP parties wanting to coalesce into a new opposition bloc. The government is preparing for protests again, they're restocking on gas grenades, and just had a shipment from China stopped in Iceland.
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Oct 25, 2017 06:47
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fnox posted:The government is preparing for protests again, they're restocking on gas grenades, and just had a shipment from China stopped in Iceland. How nice of Iceland to stop that Chinese shipment. I'm sure whoever was moving those gas grenades must have felt quite lost, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic from Venezuela.
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Oct 25, 2017 08:13
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dublish posted:How nice of Iceland to stop that Chinese shipment. I'm sure whoever was moving those gas grenades must have felt quite lost, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic from Venezuela. If you're implying I'm making this up, here it is from an official source. It's an air shipment.
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Oct 25, 2017 09:34
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dublish posted:How nice of Iceland to stop that Chinese shipment. I'm sure whoever was moving those gas grenades must have felt quite lost, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic from Venezuela. Do you think that any and all commercial traffic goes directly from point A to point B? 
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Oct 25, 2017 12:38
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in markets: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/24/venezuelan-bond-prices-jump-on-report-state-oil-giant-will-avoid-default.html the Nov 2 one might be interesting
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Oct 25, 2017 13:09
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ugh its Troika posted:Do you think that any and all commercial traffic goes directly from point A to point B? This isn't candy either, it's weapons. Very few airports are going to allow a shipment of military gear heading towards Venezuela to land without express permission from the local government. They can't go straight from China to Venezuela because it's too far, and they can't land and refuel in America, so they have to go the other way around.
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Oct 25, 2017 13:17
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The split in the MUD really boiled over yesterday as Henrique Capriles and Henry Ramos Allup both held press conferences to talk about the swearing in of the four governors-elect from Allup's party at the Constituent Assembly. Capriles was really blunt in his press conference, saying that he "will not be a part of" the MUD as long as Allup is. He also called Allup's Accion Democratica (AD) party "a tumour", and suggested that it had to be removed from the bloc so that it could move on with rebuilding itself: quote:The time has come to remove this tumour, for all of us who are united [in the struggle for] a change in government to construct that unity (…) Allup's press conference happened later in the day. He glanced at Capriles' comments and [urk=https://www.lapatilla.com/site/2017/10/24/ramos-allup-estan-autoexcluidos-los-gobernadores-de-ad-juramentados-en-la-anc/]largely refused to engage with him directly[/url]: quote:It’s unfortunate. I’m not going to get into a fight with anyone. I won’t take the bait. But I think that it is very unfortunate that some spokespersons from Primero Justicia [the party to which Capriles belongs] have tried to take shots at Accion Democratica and at me in a dispute for which I am not responsible. Allup argued that he did not order the four governors from his party to be sworn in at the National Assembly, and suggested that the four had effectively gone rogue and come to that decision on their own. Asked to clarify if he had kicked the four individuals from the party, Allup said that it wasn't possible to expel members from AD, but that the four had "removed themselves" from the party by taking part in the act. To add a bit more context, it's important to note that Henry Ramos Allup and his AD party are the old guard in Venezuela. AD has been around since 1941, and Allup has been part of national politics for more than 30 years. That's ancient history in Venezuela. There have always been whispers inside the MUD about what an anachronism it is to still have AD and Allup around, and I think that Allup feels like the MUD is going for the kill over this swearing-in thing. ronya posted:the Nov 2 one might be interesting I'll be very impressed if the PSUV makes it to November 3 without having defaulted. I posted an article a few pages back that said that the threat of default with these two bonds (the one due Friday and the one due November 2) isn't so much that the government won't have the money to pay up, but that an administrative snafu will prevent the payment from being paid in time.
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Oct 25, 2017 14:52
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ugh its Troika posted:Do you think that any and all commercial traffic goes directly from point A to point B? whoosh
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Oct 25, 2017 14:53
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Hey Labradoodle, aren't you trying to leave Venezuela sometime soon? Were you able to secure a ticket and everything else you needed to get out? It's kind of crazy that will leave zero local-on-the-ground Venezuelan posters in this thread. I wonder if there are any statistics on the flight of the educated middle class. I can't imagine why any doctor, nurse, engineer, or anyone with marketable international skills would stay unless they're working in private clinics for PSUV peolle and paid in real currency. Even for supporting their families, any skilled public sector employee would generally be better off leaving and sending remittances.
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Oct 25, 2017 14:54
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Saladman posted:Hey Labradoodle, aren't you trying to leave Venezuela sometime soon? Were you able to secure a ticket and everything else you needed to get out? I was planning on leaving in November, but my family guilt-tripped me into staying after Christmas and well, I don't plan on returning to visit soon so it's a small ask. I'm lucky I already have a couple solid remote jobs so I can just pick up and leave without much fuss. There aren't any official numbers on how many people have emigrated, but I remember seeing an estimate of almost two million people. Which is insane when you think that Venezuela has a population of approximately 31 million.
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Oct 25, 2017 15:56
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I don't know about the middle class specifically, since it's hard to track due to just how hosed the economy is, but according to unofficial sources, half a million people have left the country in the last two years, and 2.1 million have left the country since 1998. Apparently, more than 50000 people emigrated in August alone.
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Oct 25, 2017 15:59
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Caracas Chronicles posted an article on the Venezuelan diaspora not too long ago.
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Oct 25, 2017 16:14
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fnox posted:If you're implying I'm making this up, here it is from an official source. It's an air shipment. I tried to click on that but only got random corrupted ASCII.
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Oct 25, 2017 17:56
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peak debt posted:I tried to click on that but only got random corrupted ASCII. Be glad that only a bunch of weirdos on an island speak that language. I would cry if Swedish looked like that and I'd have to learn it.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:48
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http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/25/absurdly-expensive-college-funds-three-day-lecture-series-touting-totalitarian-socialist-hellhole/quote:A fancypants private college in Southern California is funding and hosting a three-day lecture series this week that promotes Venezuela’s totalitarian socialist regime in glowing terms. “Paramilitarism from the Right versus Building the Communal State from Below.” A flyer for the second lecture explains that “paramilitarism” and “building the communal state” have “everything to do with gender.” I wonder how those two have to do with gender, given that men like Hugo Chavez and Maduro were pretty involved with "building the communal state", and men will probably be held responsible for paramilitarism.
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Oct 26, 2017 02:43
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Conservative tabloid yells about liberal college is an evergreen source of garbage articles. Cool that they eventually wrote about something actually bad instead of feminist literature or whatever. Western leftists continue to turn a blind eye to Venezuela. Come on guys it’s just making the “it’s not real socialism” takes even more painful down the road.
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Oct 26, 2017 03:12
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Honestly, its the crazy claims being made that come directly form the lecture series that fascinate me. I mean, what exactly is the "rightwing government in exile" that no paper has ever reported on?
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Oct 26, 2017 03:23
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It's that thing that some opposition officials got sworn in in exile or something. re: the lectures I always find that to be more dangerous than what people give them credit for. Not the politics of the lectures themselves, but the fact that the government appropriates them for their goals. It used to be that Chavez would call people fags and condemn wandering jews on national tv, now they're all for diversity. It's bullshit, and all they want is to look good by association and try to become irreprochable due to a nebulous set of goals they are only accidentally associated with
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Oct 26, 2017 12:45
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That article made me sad. $69,000 is more than the total that I'll pay for my doctorate even if it takes me eight years to finish. I don't know enough about how the post-secondary education system works in the U.S., but it's depressing to think that people are paying that much money to be spoon-fed propaganda. I don't know how the student body is reacting to the lecture series. I guess like on any other campus there are people eagerly eating that garbage up, and others who are more critical of it?Furia posted:It used to be that Chavez would call people fags and condemn wandering jews on national tv, now they're all for diversity. It's bullshit, and all they want is to look good by association and try to become irreprochable due to a nebulous set of goals they are only accidentally associated with Exactly. The PSUV is the party of buzzwords. If you watch enough speeches by Maduro, you'll notice that he'll literally list half a dozen buzzwords whenever he describes the Bolivarian Revolution. He'll say things like, "The Revolution is humanist, inclusive, liberating, honest, sovereign, independent, anti-imperialist and democratic". All buzzwords, like they're trying to check off boxes on a list of terms that they think will play well with the audience. It's sad to think that the tactic might be more effective outside of the country than it is inside. One of the regime's nicknames for Henrique Capriles (a leading opposition figure and former governor of Miranda state) is "Capriloca", which is combination of his last name and the word "loca", which is the feminine form of the word for "crazy". The regime has long alleged that Capriles is a homosexual because obviously to the regime being homosexual is a bad thing. Here's a clip of a high ranking PSUV member (Pedro Carreño) calling Capriles a "human being" at the National Assembly, just a little while after saying that the PSUV accepted "sexual diversity": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliXqWSqS9U Here's a clip of Maduro calling the entire opposition "big faggots" during a rally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNonamU5j5U Pharohman777 posted:I mean, what exactly is the "rightwing government in exile" that no paper has ever reported on? I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Furia is on the right track. To cut a very long story short: the PSUV-controlled National Assembly appointed 13 Supreme Court judges on the last day of the 2015 parliamentary year through a process that was completely rushed. There was basically no vetting at all for the judges, and it was clear that the appointments were purely political and done with the purpose of stuffing the Supreme Court with PSUV stooges. The reason why the PSUV made the rush appointments was because it had just lost the legislature in the December 6 2015 parliamentary election. That meant that the opposition would get to appoint the magistrates... unless they got to do it first. In July of this year, the opposition-controlled National Assembly finally got around to saying, "the judges that the PSUV appointed aren't valid, so we're going to appoint our own set of judges to the Supreme Court". The regime reacted immediately by cracking down on the judges, forcing most of them to flee the country. Some of them ended up in Chile, and I think that eventually all of them made it to the U.S. Earlier this month, the Organization of American States gave the judges an office so that they could work, because as far as the OAS is concerned the opposition-appointed magistrates are the legitimate Supreme Court judges. This is a very quick and dirty version of what happened with the Supreme Court judges. If anyone would like links to news articles on anything that I said that I didn't link anything to, please let me know. In short: the reality of the case is full of nuance and facts that call into questions assumptions about legality and legitimacy, but if you're the kind of person who can't be bothered with thinking about stuff you can just believe a Venezuelan government official and call that "a right wing government in exile". Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 13:22
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Chuck Boone posted:Here's a clip of a high ranking PSUV member (Pedro Carreño) calling Capriles a "human being" at the National Assembly, just a little while after saying that the PSUV accepted "sexual diversity": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliXqWSqS9U lol jesus loving christ what a god damned farce.
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Oct 26, 2017 18:45
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So, the ANC and the CNE have now called for mayoral elections to be held in December 10th, so that they can complete their  and legally take all power away from the opposition, power which they of course, already held illegally.In case it isn't necessarily obvious, here's the reasons why the opposition shouldn't participate in them:
AD, UNT and AP are the only opposition parties thus far that have said they're going to participate. These are of course, the parties that I've repeatedly mentioned as being collaborationist. It's unlikely that any other opposition party will join them.
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Oct 28, 2017 11:18
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So, is there a way out of this that isn't handing over Venezuela's oil wealth in exchange for being someone's client state? Even if we assume tomorrow everyone wakes up overwhelmed with PSUV joy and Maduro gets a legitimate super-majority of the vote...then what? The propaganda is united in its blame of the CIA as starvation and lack of medicine remains a problem for years? The country seems so depleted of extremely basic necessities that I have a hard time seeing anyone of any political stripe pulling a win out of this. If the MUD takes over, do they go to the IMF or some other external actor as an immediate next step? Does any party offer a realistic vision out of this mess?
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Oct 28, 2017 17:55
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US Foreign Policy posted:So, is there a way out of this that isn't handing over Venezuela's oil wealth in exchange for being someone's client state? The kindest ending to this results in austerity and IMF loans. There is literally nothing left in the bank for Venezuela. It has received several billion dollars in oil money, and by the time these gangsters decide to step down it'll all be gone.
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Oct 28, 2017 19:45
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Realistically the country is going to slowly degenerate into violent anarchy as every service breaks down and Maduro's minions start feeling the pinch too.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:02
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fnox posted:The kindest ending to this results in austerity and IMF loans. There is literally nothing left in the bank for Venezuela. It has received several billion dollars in oil money, and by the time these gangsters decide to step down it'll all be gone. Yeah, and I suspect even if Venezuela gets access to a program from the IMF they are going to have a hard time getting rid of their current onerous debt.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:52
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, and I suspect even if Venezuela gets access to a program from the IMF they are going to have a hard time getting rid of their current onerous debt. Someone may be willing to declare debt relief in exchange for ownership of particularly good for military base land. Although given the amount of debt by then they may get the whole country.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:57
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Just saw news that the National Guard captured a 27 year old in Delta Amacuro, who killed a 17 year old, sliced and diced him and then sold his flesh by the kilo saying that it was capybara meat, 45000 bolivares (around $1 USD) a piece.
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Oct 29, 2017 21:55
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Chuck Boone posted:That article made me sad. $69,000 is more than the total that I'll pay for my doctorate even if it takes me eight years to finish. I don't know enough about how the post-secondary education system works in the U.S., but it's depressing to think that people are paying that much money to be spoon-fed propaganda. I don't know how the student body is reacting to the lecture series. I guess like on any other campus there are people eagerly eating that garbage up, and others who are more critical of it? it feels like a lovely attempt at trying to get/keep foreign liberal and lefty support. most left leaning groups are pretty socially progressive and maybe the PSUV is hoping to rebuild inroads with them by pretending to be "woke". they need more support then tankies i guess.
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Oct 29, 2017 23:39
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Maduro announced yesterday that he the government was introducing a Bs. 100,000 bill starting today. Remember that it was only in January that the government launched a new set of bills, the highest denomination being Bs. 20,000. Inflation is so high that in eleven months the government has been forced to introduce a bill that is worth five times as much as what was the highest bill just a few months ago. The new Bs. 100,000 bill looks identical to the Bs. 100 bill, except that it is yellowish and has the word "mil" [thousand] on it. I saw a Twitter user comment yesterday that the new bill is the old bill with malaria and diphtheria, which I thought was a nicely sardonic jab at the situation. Maduro said that the bill would enter circulation today, but the government has a horrendous track record of getting bills into circulation, so I'd be very surprised if we see these bills on the streets in any meaningful quantity within the next three months. Maduro also announced the fifth increase this year to the minimum monthly salary last night. The last time that he increased the figure was in September, when he raised it by 40%. The increase yesterday is of 30%, with the minimum monthly salary jumping from Bs. 136,544.18 to Bs. 177,507.44. At the current black market exchange rate, a Venezuelan worker earning the minimum salary takes home $4.29. The increase also affect food subsidies that workers get. When you consider these subsidies as income, the total amount of money a worker takes home now is Bs. 456,507.44, or $11.06. In another bit of news, I went to a talk last week that featured Luisa Ortega Diaz, the former attorney general who was forced to flee Venezuela earlier this yer after turning on the government. It was surreal for me to see her. There were tons of Venezuelans in the audience, and when she walked into the room you could feel the silence take over as everyone stopped talking and starting talking pictures of her on their cellphones. Here are a couple of thoughts on the talk:
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Nov 2, 2017 15:21
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How can I get one of these 100,000 notes?
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Nov 3, 2017 04:35
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JohnGalt posted:How can I get one of these 100,000 notes? Man, I've still only gotten my hands on a handful of 20,000 notes and they've supposedly been around for a year or so. At first, people talked about the new bills as if they were an urban legend "Hey, I met someone that got one of those 10,000 bills!" "No way, I've only seen them in pictures!". Give it a few months and then offer someone $5-10 to send you one, by then, the Bs should have hit new lows.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:40
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If we ever get up to a million, I would want one just deriving from the historical significance.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:43
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Kavros posted:If we ever get up to a million, I would want one just deriving from the historical significance. Speaking of, wasn't Chuck talking about some possible default coming up for Venezuela in this first week of November? What happened with that? I'm also guessing you're going to get much higher denominations than 100,000, as Venezuela still seems to have a bit of life left it in it before utter currency collapse. Assuming this rate of currency collapse stays steady, there should be 10,000,000 denominations by end of next year. Still, I don't think Venezuela will ever make it anywhere close to the Hungarian Pengő.
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Nov 3, 2017 12:26
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Saladman posted:Speaking of, wasn't Chuck talking about some possible default coming up for Venezuela in this first week of November? What happened with that? Yes. The two make-or-break payments were due last week and today. Last week's payment (about $845 million if I remember correctly) went through without incident. After the payment was made, the consensus among investors and economists seemed to be that the one due today (worth $1.2 billion) was also likely to be made, because if the government knew that they were going to default on today's payment they wouldn't have made the one last week. I guess we'll have to wait until the end of the day to find out if today's payment went through, but it looks like it will. On a related note, Maduro said in a speech last night that he was "declaring" the restructuring of all of Venezuela's foreign debt starting immediately, but not counting today's bond payment. Maduro put vice president Tareck El Aissami in charge of the effort. You might remember that El Aissami is the target of financial sanctions because he is suspected of being an active drug kingpin. As per usual, Maduro didn't provide any kind of detail about exactly what he meant by what he said. "Declaring" debt restructuring is a bit like me walking into a bank and declaring that they give me a mortgage. Whether or not restructuring happens will depend on a million different variables.
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Nov 3, 2017 14:15
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Whoops. I'm a big dummy. Quote is not edit. Anyway... Here's how investors reacted to Maduro's speech last night: https://twitter.com/M_PaulMcNamara/status/926432979760672770
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Nov 3, 2017 14:54
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https://twitter.com/hannahdreier/status/926453745516531712
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Nov 3, 2017 16:31
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Hey, if I had a bunch of empanadas in my desk drawers at work (????), I don't think I'd be able to help myself from eating them either.
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Nov 3, 2017 17:06
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Chuck Boone posted:
Disclaimer: I do not know how credit/loans works in Venezuela and am just assuming it is similar to America. How do these massive changes in currency value affect like, a 30 year mortgage? If you took out a loan back in the Good Years before the currency imploded, has that debt effectively evaporated or do they index to the exchange rate or something? Does it honestly not matter because who cares about loans measured in years during a famine?
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Nov 3, 2017 18:09
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