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M_Gargantua posted:Not really. They'd probably just launch a hundred tomahawks to wipe out the Maduro government and their more loyal heavy forces (tanks/aircraft) and see what the people of Venezuela do next. They'll say "We've deposed a dictator now the will of the free people decide" and we'll have another Libya. Isn't Panama a better example of what happens when the US takes out a dictator in Latin America and fucks off than Libya? If Venezuela was Libya, there would already be a war going on, but for better or for worse the conflict in Venezuela is still mostly political. Venezuela still has democratic traditions it could fall back on if Maduro was removed, whereas Libya had to create new institutions out of nothing in a much rougher neighborhood. I still don't think the US should start bombing the presidential palace, because the days of the US unilaterally invading whoever we want should be over (and I agree with people saying US backing could do a lot to delegtiimize Maduro's successor), but I have more faith in the ability of Venezuelans to fix their country if multilateral efforts to remove Maduro ever do take place than you do.
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Mar 17, 2018 16:57
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Furia posted:I was hoping to ask for some help from the thread. Does anyone remember/have that article that was posted recently about hunger in Venezuela? I remember it being about a child funeral and being in English, but I can’t remember much else. I think the funeral involved the parents making some wings for the child, if that helps. NYTimes, it was a piece by Nicolas Casey IIRC. Maybe about a year ago, and I think the proximal cause of death was poisonous manioc or cassava. Phone posting so I’m too lazy to search myself, but it should be easy to find with those cues.
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Mar 17, 2018 17:44
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/as-venezuela-collapses-children-are-dying-of-hunger-1.3332429 Furthermore 
Preen Dog fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 17, 2018 |
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Mar 17, 2018 19:22
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quote:For almost two years, the government did not publish a single epidemiological bulletin tracking statistics like infant mortality. Then in April, a link suddenly appeared on the health ministry’s official website, leading to the unpublished bulletins. They showed that 11,446 children younger than one had died in 2016 – a 30 per cent increase in one year – as the economic crisis accelerated. 
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Mar 17, 2018 23:54
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In further health-related news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/world/americas/venezuela-tuberculosis.html The rate of tuberculosis in Venezuela has probably tripled (or more) in the past year, at least if the number of diagnosed patients per referrals is any indication. Presumably the utter lack of antibiotics and health care in the country also means that people are likely to take lower doses and less regular doses (if they can get anything at all) leading to another incubator for drug-resistant strains of TB. Looking at the worldwide stats, even with a significant under-estimation, it's horrifying to look at how common TB is in many countries, even in places where it's not an opportunistic disease due to AIDS, http://www.who.int/tb/publications/global_report/gtbr2017_annex4.pdf?ua=1 Like how the poo poo did so many people in Kiribati and Marshall Islands get TB?
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Mar 21, 2018 16:03
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https://twitter.com/CORPOELECinfo/status/976955329605980160 New bills that inflation will eat up!
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Mar 23, 2018 00:18
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Blue Nation posted:https://twitter.com/CORPOELECinfo/status/976955329605980160 I bet those gold bars are all thats left of the treasury.
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Mar 23, 2018 00:48
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Pharohman777 posted:I bet those gold bars are all thats left of the treasury. They're probably gold-colored plastic. Otherwise you are correct, that is the treasury.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:26
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Blue Nation posted:https://twitter.com/CORPOELECinfo/status/976955329605980160 Nice! Suddenly the BsF has appreciated in value by 10000% according to official state economists. Better invest all your money in BsF now so that you'll be rich when the BsF jumps from 250k to the dollar to 250 to the dollar. That's how it works, right? I'm pretty sure that's how money works. E: I see it's also been renamed BsF as the "Bolivar Soberano" which means I don't win the award for betting previously that they'd do this and call it the "Bolivar de la Revolución". Dang, they picked an even dumber loving name. Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Mar 23, 2018 |
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Mar 23, 2018 10:38
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My apologies for neglecting the thread again. Things have been really busy over here. Here's a couple of developments:
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Mar 29, 2018 15:24
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Chuck Boone posted:
Normally I wouldn't reply this long after the fact and since it's kind of off-topic, but I have to say you're really off-base on Trump supporters here (of whom I am not, at all). E.g. read Ann Coulter's latest article: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/28/3-d-chess-looks-like-trump-throwing-away-presidency/ She utterly rips on Trump, and everyone in the comments -- that's here on Breitbart -- is all in with her. And she was a very influential early Trump fan. A lot of the Trump fans have turned on him since he has failed to do his primary campaign promise of The Wall and Lock Her Up. Sorry, don't want to derail this thread further but figured it was worth mentioning that since you're a poli sci PhD student (I think).
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Mar 29, 2018 19:14
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Chuck Boone posted:
So there's actually some mainstream US coverage of this in the papers, here's one from the NYT - read before it's paywalled. Some excerpts: quote:The cemetery did not look or smell like a peaceful resting ground for the dead. It felt more like a mass grave, populated with white crosses, buzzing flies, dirt piles and mourners, some wailing, “Why, why?” Also has some pictures of graves and mourners that will really brighten your day.
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Mar 31, 2018 13:43
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https://twitter.com/thicccc_boi/status/980599219496083456 https://twitter.com/SavedYouAClickV/status/980647033290797056 Pharohman777 fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Apr 2, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 21:41
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That was from when that account became some weird boo-berry themed account for april fools.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:21
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Tfw you and your alt right gamergate 4chan buds tell the hard truths about venezuela, and you also have no gf to make you boo berries with her breast milk
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Apr 3, 2018 04:40
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Apr 3, 2018 04:46
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50k is the current official exchange rate, the real one's up to 300k now. So the person would be getting 6 million bolivar. Of course, any amount of bolivar is really worthless...
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Apr 3, 2018 04:58
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Minister of Penitentiaries Iris Varela finally spoke on the PoliCarabobo jail fire yesterday, and immediately passed the buck to local police for the tragedy. Varela said:quote:There was a tragedy that deeply hurt us involving people who were there in the dungeons of the Carabobo state police, which doesn’t involve the Ministry of Penitentiaries. That’s a police matter. Varela's comment calls attention to the fact that in Venezuela, there are more people being held in detention in jails than serving sentences in prison. Exact figures were hard to come by (surprise!), but as far as I can tell there were approximately 28,000 people held in Venezuela's jails in 2016, vs. 17,374 in prisons in 2015. What this means is that many, or possibly all, of the PoliCarabobo jail victims had not yet gone to trial, and may not have been guilty of the crime(s) with which they were charged. It was also reported yesterday in Carabobo state media that some of the relatives of the fire victims claim that their deceased loved ones had bullet injuries, and that they were forced to sign death certificates saying they died of smoke inhalation in order to retrieve the bodies. One woman told a newspaper that her son had two bullet injures (including one in the face), while another said that her relative "had a hole in his head". Saladman posted:Normally I wouldn't reply this long after the fact and since it's kind of off-topic, but I have to say you're really off-base on Trump supporters here (of whom I am not, at all). E.g. read Ann Coulter's latest article: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/28/3-d-chess-looks-like-trump-throwing-away-presidency/ No worries. I'm in a criminology program. I think that what you're saying does not negate what I said. I completely agree with you that Ann Coulter is not a Trump supporter. I also agree with you that many of the people insulting Trump on Breitbart are likely not Trump supporters, either. They may have been Trump supporters at one point, but they are not Trump supporters today. The people who have turned on Trump are not Trump supporters. The people who support Trump are Trump supporters (think Sean Hannity, Jacob Wohl, Bill Mitchell). The comment that I made was about Trump supporters: that is, people who support Donald Trump today. My argument was that anyone who is a Trump supporter today must be OK with having no fixed positions, because Trump has no fixed positions. This is because he has the intellect and the emotional maturity of a child (plus he's vindictive, petty, narcissistic, arrogant, etc.). I'll give you an example from just the last 24 hours:
Trump approval' rating (which is hovering around 40%, according to Gallup) means that, by definition, a good chunk of the U.S. is fine with swallowing whatever Trump vomits out.
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Apr 3, 2018 12:44
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So I see the Bolivar is back on its fast-track inflation to ruination after an unexpected two month stability, with a loss of half its value in the past month. Is the new Bolivar really going to come out in June and already have its most valuable bill be worth only a few cents? Lopping off 3 zeroes is insane if they're planning on printing bills worth 2 through 500 of their "new new Bolivars". At current exchange rates that's like half a US cent to $1 for the full currency range. And by June I'm sure it will be more like a tenth of a US cent to a quarter. I read "Trading with the Enemy" recently, about a US journalist coincidentally living in Cuba during the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of the special period, and it's amazing how much better Cuba managed economic collapse than Venezuela. And hell, at least Cuba could correctly partially blame outside forces for its problems.
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Apr 17, 2018 11:18
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I'm sorry for being away from the thread for so long. I've been swamped with my own work plus a project that I hope to be able to share here in the next few weeks.Saladman posted:Is the new Bolivar really going to come out in June and already have its most valuable bill be worth only a few cents? Lopping off 3 zeroes is insane if they're planning on printing bills worth 2 through 500 of their "new new Bolivars". At current exchange rates that's like half a US cent to $1 for the full currency range. And by June I'm sure it will be more like a tenth of a US cent to a quarter. I'm 100% sure that the Bolivar Soberano will not launch as scheduled. But yes, if it does, it will be as you've said: the money will be worthless by the time it makes it onto the streets. The IMF believes that the 2018 inflation rate will hit 13,000%.
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Apr 20, 2018 15:51
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Someone is spreading the rumour that people who don't vote will be fined with somewhere between 15million to 150 million BsF. This nonsense is being spread on the radio.
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Apr 23, 2018 01:41
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Blue Nation posted:Someone is spreading the rumour that people who don't vote will be fined with somewhere between 15million to 150 million BsF. This nonsense is being spread on the radio. Considering past stupidity by the government, it might be real. https://twitter.com/HaruspexOfHell/status/989059953783656448 https://twitter.com/HaruspexOfHell/status/989084128954978306
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Apr 26, 2018 03:17
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It gets worse. The PSUV governor of Carabobo state isn’t even able to get water to fill his swimming pool. http://m.france24.com/en/20180426-water-crisis-bites-venezuela-governor-outraged-over-empty-pool And since it now affects him, he is going to send the « Dracula mobile » after those responsible for the water crisis. Problem solved!!
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Apr 27, 2018 11:11
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Rafael Lacava is... a character, to put it very politely. Here's the clip of him complaining about his empty swimming pool and about people insulting him on the street: https://twitter.com/rafaellacava10/status/988530901423415296 quote:Lacava: Hi everyone! i’m here in Quinta Carabobo [the governor’s mansion], thinking about what to do about this thing with the water here in Valencia. Here’s the pool in the governor’s house, without water. There’s no water. There’s no water! HydroCentro–gentlemen of HydroCentro. Today is Monday the 23rd. It’s 5:15 PM. I’m giving you until tomorrow night. If tomorrow night I see that there’s been no improvement in the aquaducts–the water distribution here in Valencia, Dracula’s car will come for you. I’m telling you, I’m letting you know. Lacava was elected governor in last year's elections. "Dracula's Car" is a reference to a joke of the same name by Venezuelan comedian Emilio Lovera. Lacava has taken to calling security operations under his governorship by this name, as in, "I'm going to send Dracula's Car to arrest X people". One of my relatives spent all of March in Valencia, which is the capital of Carabobo state. In the four weeks that she was there, the house in which she was staying had water for about 6 hours one day.
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Apr 27, 2018 13:07
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Chuck Boone posted:One of my relatives spent all of March in Valencia, which is the capital of Carabobo state. In the four weeks that she was there, the house in which she was staying had water for about 6 hours one day. Wow, that is... a lot more dire than I had expected. It's pretty bad when your tropical rainforest country has worse water supply than Agadez. Also as far as I can tell, Valencia is on the shore of a massive a fresh water lake, so how in the hell would Valencia not have a consistent 100% supply of fresh water at all times forever?? It'd be like finding that everyone is dying of thirst in Chicago. At least Cape Town has the excuse that you can't easily drink salt water. Edit: apparently Lake Valencia is "the most polluted water source" in Venezuela. Which really says something. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 13:26
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Like so much of the infrastructure in Venezuela, Carabobo's water system has become the victim to rampant corruption, lack of leadership/knowledge and a chronic lack of investment, both for new equipment and repairs. The water situation in the state started to become desperate in the second half of last year. The state was without water for 21 days in November, and this article from March says that some areas of the state have been without water for 45 days. My relative who was in Valencia (a city of ~2 million people) told me that the one time that the water arrived, it did so at around 1:00 AM. By complete coincidence, someone in the house was awake then and noticed. She woke up everyone else in the house, and my relative told me that they spent the rest of the morning scrambling to fill every container they had with water and doing the laundry. This same relative said that they spent a lot of their time chasing water around the city. This involved looking for places to buy it, or travelling to the homes of relatives and friends in other parts of the city when they had water to fill up containers. Towards the end of her trip, the relative told me that they made a trip up a mountain near the home because they'd heard that there was a natural spring there. They found the spring and were able to draw water from it. The problem that they had, though, was that everyone in the household is elderly, so you can imagine what an ordeal it was for them given the physical nature of the task. And Lacava is upset that his swimming pool is empty and that people are insulting him on the street.
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Apr 27, 2018 14:48
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^^^^^ Jesus. You might also be able to read VenezuelaAnalysis without getting a headache anymore. I've been following it recently (especially since this thread got quieter) and the overwhelming majority of articles are strongly negative towards the government e.g. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13784 talks about the government getting repressive even towards workers organizations and unions https://venezuelanalysis.com/News/13785 talks about Venezuela getting hit hard by the ICC regarding expropriation of ConocoPhillips oil fields and the writer seems skeptical of the Venezuelan claim that they "won" by only having to pay $2 bn, because Conoco asked for $30bn (I guess the VA author realizes that those estimates are always absurd highballs so that when they get something 'in the middle' it's often closer to reality). https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13782 - Venezuela being rocked by malaria https://venezuelanalysis.com/News/13781 protests in Nicaragua are not being painted as "right wing terrorists" but instead the more accurate and unbiased phrase "anti-government demonstrators". I guess the VA authors are confused because Nicaragua claims to be left-wing while at the same time going hard-right on its policies. At best I see neutral articles with no tone at all like: https://venezuelanalysis.com/News/13775 on Maduro's visit to Cuba. That's all of today's front page, but pretty much every time I check it, maybe once a month or so, it has a similar proportion of mostly negative, a few neutral, and zero or one positive articles. The only positive article right now is an interview, but it's not VA with the positive spin but the interviewee (although of course they chose the person to be interviewed so it's not totally neutral). The AN is still always painted as right-wing MUD, but protestors no longer seem to be referred to as CIA plants and right-wing terrorists. I guess it's hard to call protestors terrorists when it's the majority of the population and their ranks are filled with the elderly and families with children. This was the only article I've read there recently that made me want to projectile vomit all over the author: https://venezuelanalysis.com/ANALYSIS/13681 ... and even that article makes a lot of concessions. I mean, he directly says "For all his mediocrity as an individual and political leader, Maduro...". It's just basically written by BorneoJimmy, excusing any fault of the PSUV because 'the opposition would be worse'. I mean, drat, that seems to be the best kind of praise the regime can get from "useful idiots" like the writers at VA, who I imagine are not explicit propagandists but actually believe what they write. Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 15:31
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Chuck Boone posted:One of my relatives spent all of March in Valencia, which is the capital of Carabobo state. In the four weeks that she was there, the house in which she was staying had water for about 6 hours one day. Most places have barely 2 hours of water per day, and it's sad my family's apartment is near the high end of the water supply scale and we have to deal with an schedule of two random days per week with a regular supply of heavily-sedimented water and the rest having two hours per day... Saladman posted:Wow, that is... a lot more dire than I had expected. It's pretty bad when your tropical rainforest country has worse water supply than Agadez. About the Lake: both Valencia and Naguanagua never took the steps to redirect all their sewage away from the Cabriales River that is Lake Valencia's main contributor despite those being the classic promise anyone does while running as a candidate for any office in Carabobo, so the Lake hasn't been a water source for the city since the 19th Century. Carabobo's main water supply has actually been the joint efforts of El Pao & Cachinche water reserves on both sides of the border with the Cojedes state. Unfortunately, because a fraction of the water they receive comes from what the "La Mariposa" Water Treatment Plant manages to clean from the Cabriales and the place in question hasn't been working properly since 2005 thanks to the Government's lack of care for anything mantainance-related, that supply has been steadily poisoned by a mix of poorly-treated sewage and chloride (hence why everyone in Carabobo has to live with bottled drinking water as part of their regular expenses) in sediment form that has damaged all pumping stations to the point they're operating at less than 20% their original capacity... AstraSage fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Apr 28, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 22:31
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 Wow, that is really loving dire. I can't really comprehend the water situation getting that bad since I live in the pacific northwest. And the Mariposa treatment plant is basically poisoning the water supply? Pharohman777 fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Apr 28, 2018 |
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Apr 28, 2018 01:14
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Hearthbreaking article on the situation of venezuelans fleeing to northern Brazil https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/world/americas/venezuela-brazil-migrants.html?smid=pl-share
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Apr 29, 2018 17:59
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Elias_Maluco posted:Hearthbreaking article on the situation of venezuelans fleeing to northern Brazil Hospital workers getting sick due to overwork and running out of basic supplies due to influx of patients, formerly welcoming and helpful towns getting tired of the constant influx of refugees. The fact that the Army was called in to set up refugee camps to get refugees out of public spaces really speaks to how bad of a situation venezuela is in.
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Apr 30, 2018 04:45
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Pharohman777 posted:Oof, the Brazilians are really losing their patience with the flood of refugees putting stress on various systems. There's also the fact that Roraima is specially poor and that Brazil is definitely not in a good moment, with a huge institucional crisis ongoing and the rise of our own xenophobic "alt right"
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Apr 30, 2018 15:08
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A few posts back I was wondering why the influx was going to Columbia instead of Brazil when they closed the border as it was harder to cross to Columbia, seems like someone read my post and printed it in a newspaper. Sorry about that Brazilians
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Apr 30, 2018 16:56
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Elias_Maluco posted:There's also the fact that Roraima is specially poor and that Brazil is definitely not in a good moment, with a huge institucional crisis ongoing and the rise of our own xenophobic "alt right" These headlines from Reuters really pair well to show the problem: Feb 2018: "Brazil will not shut border to Venezuelans, seeks to organize flow " https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-venezuela-refugees/brazil-will-not-shut-border-to-venezuelans-seeks-to-organize-flow-idUSKBN1FW29T Apr 2018: "Brazil state seeks to shut Venezuelan border to stop refugee flow" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-venezuela-border/brazil-state-seeks-to-shut-venezuelan-border-to-stop-refugee-flow-idUSKBN1HK2W9 Apparently more than 50k Venezuelans arrived and remained last year alone into Roraima, which only has 500k people, and it sounds like the influx has roughly tripled in 2018. I'm sure some can move on further, but I would guess that many do not have the means to do so; those who have the means probably took a flight to somewhere else, like the Venezuelans in this thread who already fled. I wonder how long until Brazil and Colombia start requiring a passport to cross the border. (Or even more restrictively, a passport with visa.) Maybe never, since I guess the border would be pretty trivial to illegally cross and the optics of it look bad.
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Apr 30, 2018 18:15
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If any Brazilians die due to hospital problems caused by the overload of venezuelans finally getting medical care, the backlash will be huge. 50 thousand refugees streaming into a province with a population of 500 thousand, and 150 thousand more have already come this year. I can so easily see why xenophobia would take root if government/public services that everyone relies on start breaking and shattering due to refugees. 'Get out!' starts becoming a pretty attractive view to take if it means that things can go back to normal.
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Apr 30, 2018 18:54
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If I can ask a stupid question, why is the military still loyal? Society appears to have broken down to a sickening degree, and yet Maduro is still in power...how? Surely he has 0 popular mandate. How is this going to end? Just seems like a super slow motion tragedy of epic proportion.
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Apr 30, 2018 19:45
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Arkane posted:If I can ask a stupid question, why is the military still loyal? Money, fear and corruption
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Apr 30, 2018 20:00
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In the military I assume you at least get the basics of life most of the time, such as food to feed your family.
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Apr 30, 2018 20:38
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Celexi posted:A few posts back I was wondering why the influx was going to Columbia instead of Brazil when they closed the border as it was harder to cross to Columbia, seems like someone read my post and printed it in a newspaper. Don't be. Even though Brazil isn't nowhere close to being able to shelter and manage refugees, I'd do the same
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Apr 30, 2018 21:01
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