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Chuck or someone else could probably speak to the actual differences between their positions better but "the opposition" is a coalition of parties that seem largely united by wanting to get rid of Maduro but not QUITE enough to really do anything effectual and that needs to be remembered.
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Feb 26, 2018 22:03
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In communities like mine where illiteracy is abundant, people are assisted to vote even if they know how to read, so there's someone affiliated to the PSUV standing next to the voter infront of the machine, which is obviously illegal. They do this with people who receive some sort of benefit from the goverment like houses, aid with medical bills, etc. I once was a (miembro de mesa electoral-someone else properly translate this for me) for the legal National Assembly elections, the only assistance I could offer was giving instructions to people with the cardboard barrier between us. If someone required aid to operate the machine the assistant had to be previously registered at the CNE office. Prior to the 'Homeland ID' the only document valid to vote was the cédula de identidad, if you showed up with your passport you were turned away.
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Feb 26, 2018 22:10
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Saladman posted:"He loved his wife when he got married, so why is she being beaten now? Why is he suddenly beating his wife?" Do you regard the PSUV as uniquely malevolent in Venezuela's history?
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Feb 26, 2018 22:19
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Do you regard the PSUV as uniquely malevolent in Venezuela's history? Hardly. Venezuela is part of a long line of political catastrophes. But it had never been this bad ever before. The amount of death, corruption, the wealth squandered, the division in politics... edit to add: I refer specifically to the dictatorships of the likes of Perez Jimenez or Juan Vicente Gomez. Tyranny is not new to Venezuela, but such a orchestrated destruction of the country from within is unlike anything ever before Furia fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Feb 26, 2018 |
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Feb 26, 2018 22:48
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Do you regard the PSUV as uniquely malevolent in Venezuela's history? "Malevolent"? Well I mean there was the Caracazo which afaik (not that I know much) was caused by neoliberalism mixed falling oil prices — most likely with a big helping of kleptocracy. So I guess Venezuela is no stranger to bad policies mixed with bad luck and incompetent government. I don't know if there are any lessons to be directly learned from that, but from a super basic understanding of Venezuelan history pre-PSUV it seems pretty similar except that this time the military has been co-opted and the regime is more entrenched, so political bargaining for a solution seems less likely. But I don't really know more about this than any jackass who can read ten English-language Wikipedia articles about the economic and social conditions which led to the rise of Chavez.
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Feb 26, 2018 22:50
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Blue Nation posted:In communities like mine where illiteracy is abundant, people are assisted to vote even if they know how to read, so there's someone affiliated to the PSUV standing next to the voter infront of the machine, which is obviously illegal. They do this with people who receive some sort of benefit from the goverment like houses, aid with medical bills, etc. One thing I didn't understand is how does the new identity card corrupt the voting process? Is there any reason that not everyone could easily get them? Or is it sort of an indirect thing like how voter ID laws in the US aren't explicitly racist because anyone could get a recognized ID for a few bucks and a couple hours of time? Or does it somehow track your vote in a specific way?
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Feb 26, 2018 22:54
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lollontee posted:Ok look, I'm trying to get you to talk about the transition to what you would refer as the undemocratic phase of PSUV rule. Ah, OK! Why didn't you just ask from the start?  There is an entire book yet to be written on this question. I'll say for the purposes of answering your question that the PSUV's transition towards authoritarianism began in earnest on December 6 2015, and culminated on July 30 2017.The ultra-short answer is that what precipitated this turn towards authoritarianism was the unprecedented social and economic collapse that Venezuela began to experience in 2013 after Maduro was elected. Remember that Maduro barely won the 2013 election. This is why in 2014 he faced a months-long protest movement. He was so unpopular, and was so spectacularly mismanaging the country, that the country erupted in protests against him less than a year into his first term. I'm not an electoral expert, but I will say that my sense is that the Venezuelan electoral system was set up to deeply favour the ruling party as early as 2007. Chavez was outraged by an electoral loss in the 2006 constitutional amendment plebiscite, and I think that's partially what flipped the switch. 2006 is the year that Tibisay Lucena, the current head of the CNE, took over the organization. In other words, what I'd like to suggest is that the transition towards authoritarianism--at least as it is expressed through electoral processes--is a nebulous one that takes place over many years and individual events. With the first point in mind, I think that the transition to authoritarianism in Venezuela began when the opposition won the National Assembly in 2015, and culminated with the Constituent Assembly vote in 2017. I think that the National Assembly loss taught the PSUV that the usual bag of dirty tricks was not enough to win elections anymore, given how unpopular Maduro and the PSUV had become. The National Assembly election was the first vote to take place in the country since Maduro's 2013 election. The opposition built it up as a referendum on Maduro's rule. The results were overwhelming: the PSUV suffered the worst electoral defeat in its history, winning only 40.9% of the vote to the opposition's 56.2%. More people voted for the opposition in 2015 (7.7 million) that voted for Maduro in 2013. The election taught them that the PSUV not only had to cheat to win future elections, it had to cheat hard. The PSUV countered the loss of the National Assembly by leaning extra hard on the Supreme Court to overturn all of the laws that came out of the legislature all through 2016. If you go on Google an look up "TSJ anula" (TSJ stands for Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, which is the Supreme Court) you'll find over a dozen examples of individual laws that the Court annulled, simply because they were passed by the opposition. The effect of this campaign was that the National Assembly was rendered absolutely useless. Everything that was left without effect. The Supreme Court got tired of having to write new decisions every time the National Assembly passed a law to annul it, so it ruled in March 2017 that the entire National Assembly was in contempt, and that the Court would be taking over all of its functions until further notice (read: forever). This decision was so shocking and so blatantly authoritarian that it sparked the 2017 anti-government protest movement. What we saw in the regime's campaign to nullify the National Assembly throughout 2016 and 2017 was nothing short of a naked attempt to dismantle democracy in Venezuela, to amputate the legislative branch of government simply because it wasn't under the control of the ruling party. I argue that the PSUV's transition to authoritarianism culminated in the July 30 2017 Constituent Assembly election because that election contained two fundamental facets of the Maduro dictatorship as it exists today: it put an end to the National Assembly problem by creating an entirely new legislature that was 100% under the control of the PSUV, and it did so through what is likely to be the most brazenly fraudulent elections the country has seen since the Marcos Perez Jimenez dictatorship. As I mentioned in another post, the vote was held under the most problematic conditions, and even the company that provided the voting machines for the process said that the vote totals that the regime announced did not match what the machines had tallied. The CNE didn't care, Maduro didn't care, and the PSUV didn't care: their argument was literally "the election saw X amount of voters because we say so". In short, transitions to authoritarianism are often not sudden. They can take place over a long period of time, at multiple sites, with varying degrees of intensity. They can happen so slowly that, were you to live through such a transition, you might not notice it until it was way too late, and the dictator was already safely entrenched in power. Feinne posted:Chuck or someone else could probably speak to the actual differences between their positions better but "the opposition" is a coalition of parties that seem largely united by wanting to get rid of Maduro but not QUITE enough to really do anything effectual and that needs to be remembered. This is correct. "The opposition" essentially means "anyone who isn't aligned with the PSUV". The MUD is an opposition bloc, the largest and most important in the country, and it's made up of lots of parties that often don't see eye-to-eye, but are trying to remain united under the one thing on which they do agree. Saladman posted:Not really. For instance, one of the things they do is have one of their local vote-getters take a blank ballot sheet, fill in the candidates he wants you to vote for, then he hands it to you and keeps track of your name so that you get food or a TV or whatever sometime soon. You walk in, take a blank ballot sheet, then drop the pre-filled in ballot sheet, then you walk back out and give your blank sheet to the guy who is deciding your votes, then rinse repeat. Chuck (or maybe it was someone else though I doubt it) had a explanation about this a while ago when someone asked "why is there a video of some PSUV guy at the beginning of the votation video grabbing a blank ballot sheet and then walking out of the room?" This is "conspiracy theory" in the same way that "the CIA topples democratically elected governments without the say of the American people" is a conspiracy theory. The video you're thinking about is this one. It shows Minister of Electrical Energy Luis Motta Dominguez committing voter fraud live on television by pretending to deposit his ballot in the box, but instead palming it and walking away with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI3KDq67YIc Saladman posted:One thing I didn't understand is how does the new identity card corrupt the voting process? Is there any reason that not everyone could easily get them? Or is it sort of an indirect thing like how voter ID laws in the US aren't explicitly racist because anyone could get a recognized ID for a few bucks and a couple hours of time? Or does it somehow track your vote in a specific way? Think of it as being forced to register with your local Republican Party chapter before voting in a U.S. election. What if you're not a Republican? Do you pretend to be a Republican just to get the card so you can vote? But what if you don't want to do that, and would rather disenfranchise yourself and not vote? What if this Republican Party card not only allowed you to vote, but was also connected to the social services that you receive? Would you be more willing then to sign up for the card, even if you're not a Republican? Now imagine that there are Republican Party workers at voting centres demanding that you show your card before you vote... This is precisely why Venezuelan law (before the PSUV decided to ignore it) mandates that all you need to vote is your national I.D. card, which is a completely apolitical piece of identification that is available to everyone that requests it regardless of political affiliation. EDIT: Whoops! Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 26, 2018 |
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Feb 26, 2018 23:01
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Saladman posted:One thing I didn't understand is how does the new identity card corrupt the voting process? Is there any reason that not everyone could easily get them? Or is it sort of an indirect thing like how voter ID laws in the US aren't explicitly racist because anyone could get a recognized ID for a few bucks and a couple hours of time? Or does it somehow track your vote in a specific way? This is a rumour I've been told from different people but the new card has a code and a serial number that are supposedly registered when voting so a person with this ID card actually votes 3 times, but I haven't come across any articles denouncing this, so it may as well be bullshit. Getting the new card isn't as easy as getting a regular ID, the PSUV holds a few days to emit these cards, it's free but people have to wait in line for over 12 hours to get them.
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Feb 26, 2018 23:05
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Democracies gradually sliding into authoritarianism before people know it, reminds me of Chuck saying that we in America should be worried about Trump.
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Feb 26, 2018 23:23
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Huh, thanks! I'm a US citizen and I actually registered as Republican before the primaries last time just so I could vote against Trump, since I was more worried about him than the Bernie/Clinton divide. I've never voted for the GOP ever on anything, but I guess I still count as a Republican in the state where I was born. But, I don't think I would have waited in 12 hours for it especially since I'm registered in a state that has a 99.9% chance of voting GOP. I guess the other problem is huge numbers of Venezuelans knowing their vote actually doesn't count, in a much more serious way than how the electoral college kinda disenfranchises people. Saladman fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Feb 26, 2018 |
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Feb 26, 2018 23:30
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Yes, but I should have specified that I meant "general election", as in, the presidential election. So my analogy should have been: "Imagine being forced to register for a Republican Party I.D. card as a requirement to vote in a general election for president". I should also clarify that Venezuela does not have anything like an electoral college. The person who gets the most votes wins.
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Feb 26, 2018 23:37
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Does Labradoodle still post here or is his area in a permenant black out?Chuck Boone posted:
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Feb 27, 2018 00:13
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punk rebel ecks posted:Does Labradoodle still post here or is his area in a permenant black out? Hey man, thanks for worrying! I left a little over a month ago and am now living in Buenos Aires, so no more blackouts for me (hopefully).
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Feb 27, 2018 18:14
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Labradoodle posted:Hey man, thanks for worrying! I left a little over a month ago and am now living in Buenos Aires, so no more blackouts for me (hopefully). Oh so you didn't go to America. How you liking Argentina?
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Feb 27, 2018 18:33
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Blue Nation posted:I once was a (miembro de mesa electoral-someone else properly translate this for me) for the legal National Assembly elections This is from ages ago, but: "member of the electoral board" (or "member of the board of elections" - the term varies from place to place in the US, at least)
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Feb 28, 2018 02:52
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punk rebel ecks posted:Oh so you didn't go to America. America was never in the cards for me – immigration there is too complicated. Argentina is wonderful and I'm probably staying here for a few years at least.
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Feb 28, 2018 04:30
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I know it's been talked about at length in the thread, but the Venezuelan economy crashing is very much not due to either "socialism" or US sanctions. This is mainly aimed at American readers, who tend to read "socialism" as either "slave labour, starvation and thought police" or "any policy aimed at increasing general welfare whatsoever". Given the latter reading, even Americans who should know better tend to describe the Scandinavian nations as "socialists", when what they mean is actually "a state that shows a minimum of human decency and tries to prevent people starving to death in the streets". ...sorry for the rant. Anyway. The kind of worker's rights discussed earlier (protection against arbitrary firing, compensation for overtime, guaranteed vacation time etc) have been standard throughout most of Europe for many decades. Nowhere have they caused the economy to stagnate or crash. Other welfare policies (universal healthcare, free education, allowances to the poor, sick or jobless etc) are likewise standard throughout many, many nations. Nowhere have they caused the kind of economic chaos that Venezuela is now in. Various government-controlled companies (or even entire industries) are performing decently across the globe - even in the USA. Government control of a company does not in itself determine whether it is well or badly run. Even if US sanctions were targeting sectors of the Venezuelan economy (which they are not, they are aimed entirely against members of the government) this in itself is not enough to cripple the economy in the way that the Venezuelan economy has been. Other nations under far more punishing US sanctions (such as Russia, Cuba, Iran etc) are chugging along without experiencing what Venezuela is going through. Government interference in the market is not enough to explain what is happening to the Venezuelan economy. The planned economies of the Soviet Union or the various People's Republics - while often experiencing moderate to severe shortages - never went through what Venezuela is currently going through. And Venezuela is not a planned economy. So what is causing the economic disaster in Venezuela? Corruption, grift, nepotism and a staggering incompetence of those tasked with running the national economy. If Maduro and his supporters at home and abroad want to call that "socialism", go right ahead.
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Feb 28, 2018 20:32
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While I agree with most of what you wrote, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is absolutely an example of a socialist government, and saying anything otherwise is just moving goalposts. It's just really poorly implemented socialism, in addition to the other and far more important governing flaws, but yeah the explicitly socialist policies are definitely pretty far down the line as far as causes of the collapse. The only thing I can think of that would have directly influenced the collapse were the mandated price controls with no compensation or assistance to business owners ("gently caress you, bakers!!"), and the socialist-policy-driven destruction of the farming industry ("why should we farm in Venezuela when we can just use our oil to import Brazilian beef? And while we're at it with importing, also why don't I just steal 50% of the money that was supposed to go buy the beef?"). Still though, way-under-market-value price controls aren't exactly a socialist-specific deal. I mean, Egypt also has tons of price controls on basic staples, as do an absolute ton of other countries that would not be considered 'socialist', like even Switzerland (milk and a few other things are price controlled). Also it seems like the PSUV would love to set up Venezuela as a planned economy and it seems like they regularly try, but they are so grossly incompetent that they do not realize that saying something on TV is not 100% of the process.
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Feb 28, 2018 21:20
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I consider countries like Venezuela and Cuba as Socialist as ancient Rome and Napoleon were Democratic.
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Feb 28, 2018 21:33
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Saladman posted:While I agree with most of what you wrote, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is absolutely an example of a socialist government, and saying anything otherwise is just moving goalposts. It's just really poorly implemented socialism, in addition to the other and far more important governing flaws, but yeah the explicitly socialist policies are definitely pretty far down the line as far as causes of the collapse. The only thing I can think of that would have directly influenced the collapse were the mandated price controls with no compensation or assistance to business owners ("gently caress you, bakers!!"), and the socialist-policy-driven destruction of the farming industry ("why should we farm in Venezuela when we can just use our oil to import Brazilian beef? And while we're at it with importing, also why don't I just steal 50% of the money that was supposed to go buy the beef?"). Venezuela really got into socialism, but it forgot what it had to do with its industries after the step of 'seize the means of production'. Something about running those industries just as or more efficiently? Nah, they got oil to pay for imports, the price of oil will never go down!
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Feb 28, 2018 23:11
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I like to call Venezuela the "Ayn Rand villain socialism" country.
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Feb 28, 2018 23:29
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Pharohman777 posted:Venezuela really got into socialism, but it forgot what it had to do with its industries after the step of 'seize the means of production'. Something about running those industries just as or more efficiently? Nah, they got oil to pay for imports, the price of oil will never go down! They messed up by not giving the workers and the local community population power, rather than the political party.
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Feb 28, 2018 23:33
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punk rebel ecks posted:They messed up by not giving the workers and the local community population power, rather than the political party. Isn't this what always happens though?
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Feb 28, 2018 23:43
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wdarkk posted:Isn't this what always happens though? Not always. Look at Bolonga, Italy. But yes, similar to Democracy up until the 1800s, Socialism so far results in consolidated power.
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Feb 28, 2018 23:50
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punk rebel ecks posted:They messed up by not giving the workers and the local community population power, rather than the political party. They hosed things up by turning most of the low-income population into proverbial Pets of the State by giving them stuff through their facade of social help without asking any of them to do any actual productive work that could make said population self-reliable (a direct opposition to "Don't just give them a fish: Teach them to fish.") instead of enforcing that extreme co-dependence to a growing Incompetent Government. In short: They turned the Working Class into the Struggling Class. Oh, and add that any big name asking the Government to delegate their functions was bound to be branded as "Enemy of the Nation".
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Mar 1, 2018 00:02
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punk rebel ecks posted:They messed up by not giving the workers and the local community population power, rather than the political party. Well no, they messed up by not keeping the oil extraction, transport, and export infrastructure functioning. The Soviets knew drat well to keep their oil infrastructure in tip-top shape. They could have been precisely as incompetent in all other areas, but if they were still capable of maintaining production and export levels via not neglecting things, the country would be a ton better off today.
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Mar 1, 2018 00:19
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I meant they messed up in terms of actually doing Socialism.
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Mar 1, 2018 00:24
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Saladman posted:While I agree with most of what you wrote, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is absolutely an example of a socialist government, and saying anything otherwise is just moving goalposts. Oh yes! I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't. I've just been seeing people both here and elsewhere either attacking or defending Venezuela over its self-proclaimed socialism, and wanted to point out that many of its "socialist" policies have been successfully implemented elsewhere without wrecking the local economy - that it is in fact the corruption and ineptitude of the regime more than anything that is causing the economic chaos.
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Mar 1, 2018 08:33
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Minimum wage just went up again: actual wage is 392,646 and food tickets is 915,000 for a total of 1,307,646 BsF. https://twitter.com/PresidencialVen/status/969334871830220800 Now all working venezuelans will be millionaires  Can't wait for that rise in food prices!
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Mar 2, 2018 00:10
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Blue Nation posted:Minimum wage just went up again: actual wage is 392,646 and food tickets is 915,000 for a total of 1,307,646 BsF. Look at that jolly bananaman!
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Mar 2, 2018 00:34
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What's the deal with the PCV? I'm guessing they are the standard-Old Guard communist party but I've seen pictures of Maduro waving the PCV flag and wondered if they have any independence or they moslty kowtow to the PSUV these days. Also, why is their logo a rooster? 
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Mar 2, 2018 02:40
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Did anyone itt ever found out what happened to El Hefe? Probably someone already asked that, so apologies in advance.
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Mar 2, 2018 09:51
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If anyone has more information other than he worked at a security company in Maracaibo I could try looking out when I go back to Maracaibo.
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Mar 2, 2018 13:14
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That's all I know, that and that he was into F1. And AFAIK it was his own security company, so probably a pretty small operation. He might not be dead, IIRC he went MIA around last Christmas (like 15 months ago) after getting a probation for something like cussing out one of those fuckwits who sometimes strolls in here talking about how great Chavez is and how anyone who doesn't love Maduro is a right wing death squad member. So it's possible he was just like "gently caress this forum, buncha fuckin leftwing cocksuckers". On the other hand, he ran a private security company in one of the most dangerous places in the world, so he might be dead too.
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Mar 2, 2018 16:13
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Saladman posted:That's all I know, that and that he was into F1. And AFAIK it was his own security company, so probably a pretty small operation. I didn’t know about the probation. The consensus in the f1 thread seems to be that he died or something bad happened to him. But when you describe his last posts here it might be possible that he left. I hope anyone in here has some more info on him.
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Mar 2, 2018 16:44
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mrfart posted:I didn’t know about the probation. Yeah, looks like I remembered right. I just checked his profile: https://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=105070 Last post was Dec 25, 2016 13:54, which is the same day he got a 7 day probation for not being sufficiently against the sterilization of women who have previously had children. OTOH I imagine Christmas is a good time of year to murder people for profit.
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Mar 2, 2018 17:13
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Maybe I should go down to Venezuela and investigate his disappearence?
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Mar 2, 2018 17:20
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punk rebel ecks posted:Maybe I should go down to Venezuela and investigate his disappearence? Go for it. Just PM someone your personal information before you go so that they can report back if you're murdered for your cell phone and $25. (Don't actually go for it.) E: Unless you're actually Venezuelan and are from or near Maracaibo, in which case that actually would be kind of nice.
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Mar 2, 2018 17:55
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punk rebel ecks posted:Maybe I should go down to Venezuela and investigate his disappearence? Come eat arepas at my house.
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Mar 2, 2018 19:21
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Saladman posted:Go for it. Just PM someone your personal information before you go so that they can report back if you're murdered for your cell phone and $25. My plan is to fly to Venezuela blindly and then roam the streets while asking random strangers "Do you know where El Hefe is?" in broken Spanish, until I find him.
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Mar 2, 2018 19:24
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