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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:So far there are thousands fewer disappeared under Maduro, making this point less than ideal to debate. There's a couple million people displaced into neighbouring countries, there's refugee camps in the border with Colombia and with Brazil, there's an absolute and total collapse of all infrastructure including power, water, internet, healthcare, food distribution. Oil production is dropping steadily to pre 1970's levels. Any other industry other than oil was either sold off to foreign powers such as China, Russia or India, or has been otherwise destroyed due to mismanagement. An estimated 300 billion dollars were directly stolen from state coffers. Thousands of political opponents have been arrested or exiled, and a still unknown number of people were massacred in the course of the OLPs, or by colectivos armados, I'm sure after Maduro goes down the true extent of his atrocities will become known, and you'll have the numbers you want. Believe me, this is no exaggeration. Chile was able to recover after Pinochet, Venezuela won't be able to. The damage is unprecedented and irreparable. It's not exactly a new term, although I would extend it to some people on the opposition parties who have similarly benefited from the crisis. BeigeJacket posted:Sorry to interrupt the inevitable tankie wankfest, but has there been any more info about the ‘attack’ on Maduro? It's the official story the government is running with. Again, there's no footage of the actual explosion or the drone, only the loud boom you heard in the recording. The relative lack of footage from non-official sources is caused by the government immediately detaining the press present at the parade and taking their equipment. Bob le Moche posted:A seemingly Oscar Perez-inspired nationalist group calling themselves "Soldados de Franelas" claimed responsibility. That's literally showing a picture of the apartment fire  Bathtub Cheese posted:As it turns out, the guy responsible for spreading the big lie that the Maduro government consists of "corrupt billionaires" is a member of an American soft power org favoring "free trade" and a foreign capitalist himself: https://www.as-coa.org/speakers/juan-carlos-zapata Who the gently caress is that guy? No idiot, it doesn't come from some random Guatemalan. They show up everywhere you can think of, Panama Papers, the Odebretch corruption case, Swiss Leaks even shows you there's 12 billion dollars in Swiss vaults from Venezuelan nationals. fnox fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 16:32
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I literally learned about Soldados de Franelas and found their twitter within minutes of learning about the bombing yesterday. It's amazing to watch how quickly this thread converged on the consensus of "government claim" "probably false flag" "no drones involved", without bothering to check anything else. Maybe I should start posting corrections to some of the BS that gets posted in this thread. Here's one: remember when OP posted about Polio returning to Venezuela? That was verified as complete fake news by the World Health Organization shortly after, but of course no correction was ever posted here, and the disinfo was widely spread and accepted as truth by anti-PSUV liberals and reactionaries in the english-speaking world: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/health/who-polio-has-not-returned-to-venezuela-intl-bn/index.html
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Aug 5, 2018 16:35
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fnox posted:There's a couple million people displaced into neighbouring countries, there's refugee camps in the border with Colombia and with Brazil, there's an absolute and total collapse of all infrastructure including power, water, internet, healthcare, food distribution. Oil production is dropping steadily to pre 1970's levels. Any other industry other than oil was either sold off to foreign powers such as China, Russia or India, or has been otherwise destroyed due to mismanagement. An estimated 300 billion dollars were directly stolen from state coffers. Thousands of political opponents have been arrested or exiled, and a still unknown number of people were massacred in the course of the OLPs, or by colectivos armados, I'm sure after Maduro goes down the true extent of his atrocities will become known, and you'll have the numbers you want. A nice mix of conjecture and outlandish expat claims that'd make a paid DPRK defector blush. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 5, 2018 16:37
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That group has no evidence that they're the ones responsible (assuming there's something to be responsible for). Those sorts of groups will jump to claim responsibility for basically any sort of political violence that they think furthers their "cause" or whatever. Also, are they the only group claiming responsibility?
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Aug 5, 2018 16:41
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Bob le Moche posted:I literally learned about Soldados de Franelas and found their twitter within minutes of learning about the bombing yesterday. It's amazing to watch how quickly this thread converged on the consensus of "government claim" "probably false flag" "no drones involved", without bothering to check anything else. You are misrepresenting the article but I am glad you posted it. Tldr: - Kiddo with suspected polio got super-tested - Was not polio  - Fortunately, because that area has worryingly low polio vaccination rates edit also go gently caress yourself for contributing to the abuse of the term fake news
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Aug 5, 2018 16:43
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GreyjoyBastard posted:You are misrepresenting the article but I am glad you posted it. sooo.... there was no case of polio in venezuela edit: but please tell me what is the "correct" way to use the term "fake news" without "abusing" it
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Aug 5, 2018 16:45
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The Monarch posted:That group has no evidence that they're the ones responsible (assuming there's something to be responsible for). Those sorts of groups will jump to claim responsibility for basically any sort of political violence that they think furthers their "cause" or whatever. There is no verifiable evidence that it was a false flag, just anecdotes from people with an ax to grind and access to the regime change friendly Western press.
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Aug 5, 2018 16:46
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I guess the tankies have decided that they need to have at least one of each type. One China defender got probated, so they've substituted another. Who'll replace the Russia defender, I wonder? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 5, 2018 16:48
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Bob le Moche posted:sooo.... there was no case of polio in venezuela "Fake news", in its original formulation before being corrupted, meant "literally invented out of whole cloth 'news'". So in this case, fake news would have been "there was not in fact a kid with suspected polio". Telephone-gaming suspected polio into definite polio isn't quite that. I am very mad about the corruption of the term because it was a useful, punchy description of a pretty concerning phenomenon, although to your credit you were using a mild corruption of it rather than the Trump corruption of it.
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Aug 5, 2018 16:50
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Bob le Moche posted:I literally learned about Soldados de Franelas and found their twitter within minutes of learning about the bombing yesterday. It's amazing to watch how quickly this thread converged on the consensus of "government claim" "probably false flag" "no drones involved", without bothering to check anything else. Oh neat so you're accepting CNN as a source now? Half a million Venezuelan refugees received temporary residence in Venezuela, 50000 crossed the border last month. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2018/08/02/venezolanos-colombia-permiso-permanencia-temporal-regularizacion-decreto-santos/ By the way literally nobody in the country has ever heard of this Soldados de Franelas thing, from all we know it used to just be a pro Oscar Perez Twitter and Instagram account, with 0 evidence on them being an actual group, much less a group capable of building a drone bomb.
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Aug 5, 2018 16:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I guess the tankies have decided that they need to have at least one of each type. One China defender got probated, so they've substituted another. Who'll replace the Russia defender, I wonder? Yes this is the plan that was decided upon according to the principles of democratic socialism at the last meeting of the tankie international, funded by George Soros and Vladimir Putin, in order to take down western civilization and destroy civility with bots and trolls.
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Aug 5, 2018 16:52
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Bob le Moche posted:Yes this is the plan that was decided upon according to the principles of democratic socialism at the last meeting of the tankie international, funded by George Soros and Vladimir Putin, in order to take down western civilization with bots and trolls. george soros is not a tankie, please do not appropriate the leader of my cabal into your cabal
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Aug 5, 2018 16:53
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Bathtub Cheese posted:There is no verifiable evidence that it was a false flag, just anecdotes from people with an ax to grind and access to the regime change friendly Western press. There is also no verifiable evidence that there was an attack, and I never said or implied "false flag" once. The alternative to the drone story is that a gas tank nearby exploded. This CBC article has a photo of large scorch marks on the side of a building. There's also this: quote:Firefighters at the scene of the blast disputed the government's version of events. Three local authorities said there had been a gas tank explosion inside an apartment near Maduro's speech where smoke could be seen streaming out of a window. They provided no further details on how they had reached that conclusion. It's entirely possible that that's all fake western propaganda too, I suppose, but with the evidence that's been presented Occam's razor I think heavily favours the "coincidental explosion being exploited by corrupt despots" version of the story. The Monarch fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 16:57
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Bob le Moche posted:Yes this is the plan that was decided upon according to the principles of democratic socialism at the last meeting of the tankie international, funded by George Soros and Vladimir Putin, in order to take down western civilization and destroy civility with bots and trolls. You're mixing conspiracies, Soros is the star of the totally non-antisemitic conspiracy theories your anti-imperialist hero Putin promulgates.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:00
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Bob, it's not that we're too far right to not comprehend the immense evils of the American Empire and how it threatens all that exists. It's that your dedication to such an unworthy and otherwise irredeemable cause can only be the result of one of two things: either you're getting paid, or you're just too loving naive to understand how Maduro isn't actually socialist or leftist in any way and that the crisis is the result of his utter inability to stop bleeding the country dry.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:03
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Bob, you’re the expert on these Soldados fellows, how do they link in with the Colombian President who Maduro blamed? Would the Colombians outsource this job? Do you think there was much of a vetting process? I wonder what their contract was? Do you think they negotiated themselves a nice performance bonus if they blatted Maduro? What about the firefighters? Are they innocent dupes, fooked by a distraction apartment excellent explosion, or something more sinister? There’s so many many interesting questions to be answered.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:08
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Did you literally just post a link to a graph that ends in 2013, 5 years before today? Either you're intentionally acting like an idiot, in which case you're an rear end in a top hat and please go back to FYAD, or you're incredibly dumb.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:08
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Saladman posted:Did you literally just post a link to a graph that ends in 2013, 5 years before today? Either you're intentionally acting like an idiot, in which case you're an rear end in a top hat and please go back to FYAD, or you're incredibly dumb. Also it looks like RafRod had things on a pretty good trajectory from that 
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Aug 5, 2018 17:14
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fnox posted:Bob, it's not that we're too far right to not comprehend the immense evils of the American Empire and how it threatens all that exists. It's that your dedication to such an unworthy and otherwise irredeemable cause can only be the result of one of two things: either you're getting paid, or you're just too loving naive to understand how Maduro isn't actually socialist or leftist in any way and that the crisis is the result of his utter inability to stop bleeding the country dry. Thanks for your input on real socialism and anti-imperialism, "Pinochet would make things better in Venezuela" fnox Edit: GreyjoyBastard posted:"Fake news", in its original formulation before being corrupted, meant "literally invented out of whole cloth 'news'". So in this case, fake news would have been "there was not in fact a kid with suspected polio". OK I think I can actually agree with this, I was worried you were going to use the Trump definition, or the "comes from Russia" definition. As long as we can agree that any useful good-faith definition of "fake news" must include, say, major media outlets reporting on WMDs in Iraq leading up to the Iraq war, I'm cool. Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 17:17
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Since he won't answer for another 6 hours, here's what that graph looks like if you extend it to today. That's right, almost 90% live below the poverty line, 61% of those in extreme poverty. So, it's literally triple of what it used to be under Carlos Andres Perez. Also to note, poverty literally doubled in the first year of Maduro's presidency, that's how much of a disaster he's been. fnox fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 17:19
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Formerly Peven Stan also does not seem to realize the details of the four (4) sanctions orders are available on the State Department website and, in fact, pretty much have to be to allow compliance / not lead to ten thousand lawsuits blooming when people get their transactions blocked or suffer criminal penalties because of secret sanctions. I was looking at these sanctions and the restrictions on Americans (or American entitities) purchasing Venezuelan bonds seems like it might be broader and more severe than I first thought. Doesn't this essentially lock Venezuela out of almost all global finance? It also doesn't appear targeted just at state officials but seems to hit the whole Venezuelan economy. How much have these sanctions contributed to the worsening fiscal situation of Venezuela?
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Aug 5, 2018 18:39
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Bob le Moche posted:Liberals are so loving confused about politics at this point that they can't make the difference between left and right anymore, to the point they actually believe that Trump is a socialist. It's like they actually buy into that whole Putin=communist=Trump non-stop propaganda in US media, or that recent WaPo article equating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Trump. They lap that poo poo up straight from the billionaire-owned outlets. In all sincerity, what the hell are you talking about other than your fear of people who are leftist? You pretend to be against "liberals" but what you're defending is right wing rule by embezzlement.
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Aug 5, 2018 18:59
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Supporting violent strongmen to own the libs.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:00
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Squalid posted:I was looking at these sanctions and the restrictions on Americans (or American entitities) purchasing Venezuelan bonds seems like it might be broader and more severe than I first thought. Doesn't this essentially lock Venezuela out of almost all global finance? It also doesn't appear targeted just at state officials but seems to hit the whole Venezuelan economy. Non-government individuals (other than the dudes in Obama's order) aren't hit directly. You are correct that the Venezuelan government and PDVSA appear to be unable to borrow money from the US and US entities at anything except super-short-term, uh, terms. The fourth sanction's a little chewy but I think it doesn't prevent new debt from being issued directly (subject to restrictions under 13808, ie maturity has to be very short), it just interferes with the ability to use new Venezuelan debt as collateral / buy and sell that new debt.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:01
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https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1026130610270756864 I know nothing about the president of Bolivia. Does he have a Trump-like connection to the truth or did this probably actually happen?
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Aug 5, 2018 19:05
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Squalid posted:I was looking at these sanctions and the restrictions on Americans (or American entitities) purchasing Venezuelan bonds seems like it might be broader and more severe than I first thought. Doesn't this essentially lock Venezuela out of almost all global finance? It also doesn't appear targeted just at state officials but seems to hit the whole Venezuelan economy. Do note that Venezuela defaulted twice before Executive Order 13835 was put into place, so it didn't exactly affect their ability to meet bond payments more than it forbid them from doing so with American entities (Such as Goldman Sachs who did so last year). That measure is doing exactly what it says, it's preventing whatever state assets remain from being sold off to meet debt obligations, which would immensely hurt recovery plans after Maduro.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:07
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Gobbeldygook posted:https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1026130610270756864 evo is, surprisingly, a dude!
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Aug 5, 2018 19:08
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The sanctions also do not cover existing debt, to my knowledge.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:11
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fnox posted:Do note that Venezuela defaulted twice before Executive Order 13835 was put into place, so it didn't exactly affect their ability to meet bond payments more than it forbid them from doing so with American entities (Such as Goldman Sachs who did so last year). That measure is doing exactly what it says, it's preventing whatever state assets remain from being sold off to meet debt obligations, which would immensely hurt recovery plans after Maduro.  Unless I'm reading it entirely wrong, they're still allowed to meet bond payments and even take out new (very short-term) debt, you just can't, say, have Goldman Sachs buy a British financial package that includes Venezuelan debt, or, uh, ask the Venezuelan government to pledge public assets as collateral.That last bit is kind of a big deal, but it's also something that our thread tankies should be 100% in favor of because it puts a significant barrier in the way of capitalist vampire squids acquiring Venezuelan national assets for pennies on the dollar after Venezuela defaults yet again. edit dagnabbit where's that emoji Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 19:13
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ronya posted:The sanctions also do not cover existing debt, to my knowledge. Transfer and whatnot of existing debt is forbidden. I think. Getting paid for it by Venezuela is not. it's always nice to be able to use my vaunted talent of "stare at bureaucratspeak until it makes sense and/or my eyes melt out of my skull"
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Aug 5, 2018 19:17
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Gobbeldygook posted:https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1026130610270756864 What's true is that Pence toured Latin America recently to discuss Venezuela in particular. I doubt he "demanded" military intervention, more than he just gauged how regional governments would respond to it. They weren't too keen on the idea, and I think they eventually talked down Trump from moving forward with it as he hasn't talked about it any more. This actually brings me to one of the reasons why you can't apply American political notions to Latin America: regarding the Venezuelan refugee crisis, the side that is in favour of bringing in refugees is the center-right parties, as none of the socialist or communist parties want to admit that there is a crisis in Venezuela, this is a complete 180 from how the topic is treated in America and Europe.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:19
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You appear to be right, I think there were a set of sanctions in 2017 and then another set earlier this year.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:19
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ronya posted:You appear to be right, I think there were a set of sanctions in 2017 and then another set earlier this year. Repostin': https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/venezuela/ Four sanctions. Short version: 2015: Screw You, Kleptocrats August 2017: the big one, limits financing of new not-short-term Venezuelan debt, transactions of new not-short-term debt, and dividend payouts to the government of Venezuela March 2018: Screw You, New Venezuelan Digital Currency May 2018: restricts more debt-related transactions other than the stuff Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 19:21
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No, see, there's a secret sanction that makes Venezuela produce less raw crude to sell to the US.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:40
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fnox posted:No, see, there's a secret sanction that makes Venezuela produce less raw crude to sell to the US. The economy WARs mandate has been discovered! Theres a sanction against the commubist occupation having brain cells
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Aug 5, 2018 19:45
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fnox posted:No, see, there's a secret sanction that makes Venezuela produce less raw crude to sell to the US. It's not actually impossible there's another significant thing I'm unaware of, but A) I'm dubious of the Trump Administration's ability to handle that through normal lower-level rulemaking processes, especially with what he's done to the State Department, and B) more importantly, Donald really likes signing executive orders and feeling like a big boy, so I suspect these four sanctions are the main ones.
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Aug 5, 2018 19:46
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LeoMarr posted:The economy WARs mandate has been discovered! Excuse me but we use SAR here in dnd for our advanced analytics, sanctions over replacement
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Aug 5, 2018 19:53
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GreyjoyBastard posted:It's not actually impossible there's another significant thing I'm unaware of, but A) I'm dubious of the Trump Administration's ability to handle that through normal lower-level rulemaking processes, especially with what he's done to the State Department, and B) more importantly, Donald really likes signing executive orders and feeling like a big boy, so I suspect these four sanctions are the main ones. The thing is that the US still buys every barrel of oil that Venezuela manages to ship. It's not a matter of falling demand, the US needs crude oil and Venezuela has always been one of the better sources of it. But I mean, production has, according to OPEC numbers, halved since 2016. This is the far easier explanation to the economic decline, Maduro's government hasn't been able to keep skilled workers in Venezuela as they would obviously be making more money/living better anywhere else in the world, they also haven't invested back into the refineries or the entire oil infrastructure which has lead to tankers being damaged, refineries and extraction facilities operating under capacity, and so forth. The reason why they haven't invested into oil production is because that's the money they stole, a huge chunk of oil revenue simply evaporates on the currency control scheme that exists solely as a facilitator of embezzlement. Contracts aren't fulfilled and the money is simply pocketed. This is something you can even observe if you take a tour around Caracas, there's a hilarious amount of public works that were never finished, you can legitimately just see them, the Las Mercedes/Chuao extension of the metro line, the Guatire rail, there was even a scheme to clean up the Guaire by 2012, perhaps the most ironic of all for a Caracas denizen as the Guaire has only become more of an open sewer as time has passed. The few things that have actually been finished suffer from extremely shoddy craftsmanship, like the extension of the Valle Coche highway that has support pillars going into the loving Guaire.
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Aug 5, 2018 20:18
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fnox posted:What's true is that Pence toured Latin America recently to discuss Venezuela in particular. I doubt he "demanded" military intervention, more than he just gauged how regional governments would respond to it. They weren't too keen on the idea, and I think they eventually talked down Trump from moving forward with it as he hasn't talked about it any more. Well it was reported Trump raised the subject with several Latin American leaders after a UN meeting last September. However it hasn't before been reported, to my knowledge, that Pence was actively soliciting support for a planned military action. Morales might be exaggerating what Pence said, but this is another signal that Trump is interested in a more heavy handed approach towards regime change in Venezuela.
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Aug 5, 2018 22:33
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If Trump really wanted regime change he could just unilaterally impose tariffs on Venezuelan oil to instantly destroy what's left of the economy. Once that happens it would either force Maduro to nationalize the local food producers in order to prevent starvation, or let his people starve, which would give Trump the excuse he needs to justify a military intervention.
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