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Willie Tomg posted:loving sue us for expressing interest when all of us receive push notifications this morning that the silent majority of Venezuela wanted the USA to invade it a month ago. welcome to the stupid motherfucking american consent-manufacturing process, if it all goes according to plan you can expect this bullshit to keep going for another 30-40 years. I mean fnox is a Venezualan expat with family still in the country, so it's understandable that he's a bit sensitive about people bursting into the thread with constant Hot Takes.
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Jan 24, 2019 06:42
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I just have friends there and the ‘heh, let me tell you how it really is, sheeple” dipshits are annoying enough as it is. If I was actually from Venezula or had family there I’d be loving furious at their arrogant asses. This actually really badly highlights the need for the US left to have a viable foreign policy apparatus, so that they can articulate an actual coherent vision for world affairs that doesn’t lead to US leftists becoming useful idiots for a regime that has people eating zoo animals for sustenance.
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Jan 24, 2019 06:47
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Willie Tomg posted:loving sue us for expressing interest when all of us receive push notifications this morning that the silent majority of Venezuela wanted the USA to invade it a month ago. welcome to the stupid motherfucking american consent-manufacturing process, if it all goes according to plan you can expect this bullshit to keep going for another 30-40 years. What do you want, a reward for being uninformed? Where were any of you fuckers when Venezuelan refugees were getting persecuted and deported by the right wing government of Ecuador like 3 days ago? And mind you, the only reason why I'm specifying its a right wing government is so that you don't get tricked into supporting those actions because the president's name is Lenin. You don't care about Venezuelan people, stop pretending.
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Jan 24, 2019 06:52
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Part of the argument about the US (and aligned nations/interests) contributing to Venezuela's situation is not related to sanctions, but rather to the Saudis deliberating causing oil prices to drop, which hurts nations like Iran or Venezuela that the US has an antagonistic relationship with. This also has a direct connection to food shortages, for obvious reasons (relying heavily on food imports funded by oil revenues). Obviously this can be at least partially chalked up to allowing such a vulnerability to exist in the first place (through reliance on oil revenue), but there's still a meaningful difference between a country making the mistake of leaving itself vulnerable to such price manipulation and some sort of completely self-caused problem. And when people bring up the flaw of relying heavily on oil revenue, it kind of begs the question of what the alternative should have been. Seeking revenue through attracting outside investment is very much a poison pill that doesn't exactly lead to good outcomes most of the time for a country like Venezuela. themrguy posted:I just have friends there and the ‘heh, let me tell you how it really is, sheeple” dipshits are annoying enough as it is. If I was actually from Venezula or had family there I’d be loving furious at their arrogant asses. If US leftists are even on the radar of things that come to mind when you think of "causes of bad foreign policy," you have a pretty distorted perception of reality. One useful thought exercise might be to try and articulate what the actual outcome is that you're concerned about occurring as a result of the "US leftists" in question. What good thing do you want to happen that they might stop from happening? Or what bad thing do you think might happen because of them? Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 06:55
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themrguy posted:I just have friends there and the ‘heh, let me tell you how it really is, sheeple” dipshits are annoying enough as it is. If I was actually from Venezula or had family there I’d be loving furious at their arrogant asses. I'll say it again, they don't care about Venezuela, they don't know anything about Venezuela, and they aren't even really talking about Venezuela. Its why they keep shifting the conversation randomly to the subject of Iraq, to hypothetical invasions. For them this conversation isn't really about what Venezuelans want or need, what their future holds, or what's going to happen to them. They're here to talk about abstract principles of foreign policy, or to speculate on the interests of their own political class. They can't talk about the sanctions because they know literally nothing about them, nor anything about Maduro's supposedly socialist economic program. They don't care. Anyone who does, must REALLY be talking about their love of military invasions and bombing foreign countries, because the US war in Afghanistan is really what we need to be talking about right now right guys?
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Jan 24, 2019 06:56
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El Pitazo is a really good source to follow about news from Venezuela. It's in Spanish, but they do amazing work. Anyway, they've put together a short compilation of some of the footage that's come out of Petare tonight. The scale of the fighting there between security forces and residents is probably the worst that I've seen since 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wghyj19g6RI EDIT: holy smokes @ the end of that video and the National Guard/FAES people shooting up into the buildings
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Jan 24, 2019 06:59
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The destruction of the PDVSA really can't be emphasized enough. As I said before, it was basically the gold standard of how you'd want a state-run company to run. With the proper management and investment, it could have helped to provide for Venezuela for generations to come. Instead, it's been strangled to the point that it may never recover, all because of the shortsightedness of Chavez and the PSUV. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it-poor-oil-energy-chavez/ This article is a great read for people who want to know how the PDVSA is in such a sorry state and why chavez is to blame. quote:
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Jan 24, 2019 07:03
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Ytlaya posted:Part of the argument about the US (and aligned nations/interests) contributing to Venezuela's situation is not related to sanctions, but rather to the Saudis deliberating causing oil prices to drop, which hurts nations like Iran or Venezuela that the US has an antagonistic relationship with. This also has a direct connection to food shortages, for obvious reasons (relying heavily on food imports funded by oil revenues). This falls apart when you consider that the price of oil is the same that it was under Chavez right now, the crisis has only worsened despite the prices recovering. Ask yourself this, why is production down to a 70 year low? Shouldn't we be trying to export more oil to make up for the deficit caused by lower prices? What the gently caress has Maduro been doing to the oil industry for it to be running at less than 50% the capacity it was when prices collapsed? And not even that, we had billions in the bank, what happened to our reserves? What happened to all the food we produced locally? Why are there shortages of milk and meat if we were completely independent from importation before Maduro? Why are farms completely abandoned in a time of crisis, under a loving socialist government? For the record too, we had foreign investment, there's this completely erroneous perception of what the country was before 2006 being spread around. All of the poo poo that is missing right now, we produced it locally, I would never have had to buy imported milk, or eggs, or chicken, or meat, or even toilet paper, it all existed locally. The farms got taken over by Chavez, the toilet paper plant was taken over by Maduro, and subsequently ran into the ground. This happened to literally every productive apparatus in the economy, you wanna talk about history repeating itself? Look into where the expropriated companies are now. These Chavistas, they have consistently taken over things just to loot them and run them into the ground, they don't know how to manage anything. fnox fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 07:04
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Ytlaya posted:Part of the argument about the US (and aligned nations/interests) contributing to Venezuela's situation is not related to sanctions, but rather to the Saudis deliberating causing oil prices to drop, which hurts nations like Iran or Venezuela that the US has an antagonistic relationship with. This also has a direct connection to food shortages, for obvious reasons (relying heavily on food imports funded by oil revenues). The article I posted on the last page goes into it, but the big problem is that while the fluctuations of oil prices have hurt Venezuela, mismanagement has been a far, far bigger problem for the PDVSA. To make a long story short, oil is an industry that requires constant reinvestment—drilling for new wells, finding new ways to fully tap out old ones, and refining your oil all require hefty capital investments—particularly in Venezuala, whose oil is mostly of a type that requires refinement before sale. Now, for most of its life the PDVSA was a very well-run and efficient company (Compared, for instance, to various Soviet oil concerns which were incredibly wasteful and lagged far behind Western companies in technology and expertise). When Chavez took over, however, he demanded that the PDVSA hand over more money for use in social programs, and began firing senior executives and managers who disagreed with him. This had significant knock-down effects, as while Chavez was able to implement some social programs in the short term, it came at the expense of the long-term health of the company, to such a degree that when oil prices reached record highs in the 2000s, Venezuela's production actually declined due to reduced capital investment. And as time has gone on, the company has continued to decline to such a degree that now it's a complete shell of its former self, barely able to produce anything at all. It's really an utter tragedy, and entirely self-inflicted.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:07
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Ytlaya posted:Part of the argument about the US (and aligned nations/interests) contributing to Venezuela's situation is not related to sanctions, but rather to the Saudis deliberating causing oil prices to drop, which hurts nations like Iran or Venezuela that the US has an antagonistic relationship with. This also has a direct connection to food shortages, for obvious reasons (relying heavily on food imports funded by oil revenues). There's a lot of things Venezuela could have done but didn't. Normally oil rich countries build up a little bit of savings for a rainy day for example Norway's Pension Fund. States can also invest in productive assets inside their country, although this puts them at risk of crowding out other parts of the economy through currency appreciation. Bolivia for example was a much poorer country than Venezuela and also reliant on the export of mineral commodities. They also went through a price slump. Instead of collapsing the economy though, Bolivia maintained steady growth because when times were good they built up currency reserves, and then spent them when prices were low. Today petroleum prices have recovered a lot from their low, but the value of Venezuela's exports continue to decrease. Why? Well they loving destroyed the oil company, production has plummeted. See instead of saving or reinvesting Venezuela's oil income, Chavez spent it as fast as possible. When he ran out of money, he just started wracking up debt as fast as possible. Through his idiotic currency control schemes he then strangled the rest of the economy as well. If this was a mistake it was one Maduro should have seen he was making years ago and reversed. Instead he doubled down, rigged elections, violated the constitution and cut off any possibility for peaceful transitions of power.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:07
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For those who support the national assembly, what do you see as the best possible outcome? If there is somehow a peaceful transfer of power, do you think Guaido will be able to hold fair elections on 30 day notice after taking power? Would he (or his successor) be able to concretely improve the food situation, or is the economy irreversibly damaged?
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Jan 24, 2019 07:07
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Squalid posted:I'll say it again, they don't care about Venezuela, they don't know anything about Venezuela, and they aren't even really talking about Venezuela. Its why they keep shifting the conversation randomly to the subject of Iraq, to hypothetical invasions. For them this conversation isn't really about what Venezuelans want or need, what their future holds, or what's going to happen to them. They're here to talk about abstract principles of foreign policy, or to speculate on the interests of their own political class. They can't talk about the sanctions because they know literally nothing about them, nor anything about Maduro's supposedly socialist economic program. They don't care. Anyone who does, must REALLY be talking about their love of military invasions and bombing foreign countries, because the US war in Afghanistan is really what we need to be talking about right now right guys? I actually really don’t think that the average American DSA type would be Maduro fans if they had access to all of the facts (extremely online tankies, yeah ok sure). There just isn’t a leftist equivalent of Heritage Foundation that can actually develop and distribute political education on foreign policy. The closest thing you get is centrist/center left places like brookings, and they’re thinner on the ground and more conflicted than the Heritage type places anyway. What leftist think-tank type places do exist tend to focus exclusively on domestic policy. Anyway, enough America-posting in the VZ thread. Let’s say Maduro flees/retires/etc., but his party manages to hang on. Is there a clear line of succession or obvious guy next in line for the throne? Or is everyone so closely tied to him that if he goes it’s pretty much anyone’s bet who ends up in charge because he’ll take all of the senior fleet down with him.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:09
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Even if the current government can be dislodged, repairing the Venezuelan economy is going to be a long painful process. It's not just repairing and replacing the stuff that's broken, but also reversing the brain drain-- skilled workers have fled the country in droves. Venezuela is going to need massive amounts of aid just to pull itself back from the brink and even more to get itself back on it's feet.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:11
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Squalid posted:My ire is directed at the people who took a country with immense wealth and who have systematically immiserated its people. Why is Venezuela reduced to begging for scraps at the feet of vulture capital? Where did all the money go? The truth is Venezuela's leadership squandered everything and when there was no money left they mortgaged the oil company. Some of the money was spent on social programs, but a lot was stolen and a lot was just wasted on idiotic schemes. Given the choice of cutting back on corruption or their stupid and wasteful policies and selling off Venezuela's future Maduro chose the later. His gift to the future is a mountain of debt and the destruction of every asset that could have been used to pay it off. The money disappeared when OPEC--effectively chaired by the kingdom of saudi arabia--increased supply in order to decrease price which turbofucked Venezuela and Iran, but allowed KSA to sell its surpluses for a net gain in capital which king salman and mbs used to do wallpaper reforms on their regimes. This has led to the problem today where the KSA has marginal reserves, but when have ever the hazy fortunes of a middle eastern dictatorship ever been to the detriment of an imperial power? Hah! The Maduro regime is awful and is also in good company. To say one is better than the other is to say the cold is better than the flu. That GS has monetized their desperation (50% yields on bonds lmfao ahahahahahahahahahahah jesus christ) just proves this fnox posted:What do you want, a reward for being uninformed? Where were any of you fuckers when Venezuelan refugees were getting persecuted and deported by the right wing government of Ecuador like 3 days ago? Hiring those refugees whom were strong and savvy enough to get over the border below market wages in manual labor because your existence is illegal and deniable, and also a pretext for racists in our country electing other racists (under the fear of "Mexicans") with the votes of racists upset that our valuable Misery Jobs were being taken up by non-anglos--who's counterparts would rather sell meth and heroin than do those jobs because that's categorically the smart thing to do, and because liberal discourse is so poisoned that castigating those racists for paying latinos less for the same work is the real racism as opposed to treating manual laborers the same regardless of their ethnicity. I was reading the newspaper about international issues, which I have done for several decades now, but I'm a loving weirdo for doing so and frankly my coworkers aren't wrong in saying such, but anyway the fact that every news outlet is now saying the same thing in the same voice at the same time is a point of great interest to me. Also some of us were jacking off, presumably. By the way that job market is gonna get really fuckin' good for employers if Trump decides to Do The Dew and export some freedom even if Brazil is the messenger. Almost enough to offset the lack of Honduran refugees who've gotten the message. Luckily he's been brought to the point of asking for merely several billion dollars for some steel spikes in the ground. Great job, Democrats.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:11
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to be fair a cold is much better than the flu for a lot of reasons
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Jan 24, 2019 07:14
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AGGGGH BEES posted:Even if the current government can be dislodged, repairing the Venezuelan economy is going to be a long painful process. It's not just repairing and replacing the stuff that's broken, but also reversing the brain drain-- skilled workers have fled the country in droves. Aid which Maduro currently refuses to accept because that would mean admitting that there's a humanitarian crisis.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:15
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Willie Tomg posted:The money disappeared when OPEC--effectively chaired by the kingdom of saudi arabia--increased supply in order to decrease price which turbofucked Venezuela and Iran, but allowed KSA to sell its surpluses for a net gain in capital which king salman and mbs used to do wallpaper reforms on their regimes. This has led to the problem today where the KSA has marginal reserves, but when have ever the hazy fortunes of a middle eastern dictatorship ever been to the detriment of an imperial power? Hah! You're kinda proving his point that you don't actually care about Venezualans right now, because he was actually talking about this, which has absolutely nothing to do with the US. Also Venezuala is a member of OPEC fyi
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Jan 24, 2019 07:17
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themrguy posted:I actually really don’t think that the average American DSA type would be Maduro fans if they had access to all of the facts (extremely online tankies, yeah ok sure). There just isn’t a leftist equivalent of Heritage Foundation that can actually develop and distribute political education on foreign policy. The closest thing you get is centrist/center left places like brookings, and they’re thinner on the ground and more conflicted than the Heritage type places anyway. What leftist think-tank type places do exist tend to focus exclusively on domestic policy. The average american socialist doesn't give a gently caress about foreign policy period because there's enough misery in all of our backyards to be going on with, which is why socialism is no longer a four letter world in the parts of the usa that really matter, and why it has such strong inroads into the parts of conservative america who were never entirely clear on why we had troop in Somalia at all, really.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:19
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GoluboiOgon posted:For those who support the national assembly, what do you see as the best possible outcome? If there is somehow a peaceful transfer of power, do you think Guaido will be able to hold fair elections on 30 day notice after taking power? Would he (or his successor) be able to concretely improve the food situation, or is the economy irreversibly damaged? With the help of foreign aid, the Venezuelan situation can be dramatically improved in the short term, again, no military intervention necessary. That should keep the country stable enough for it to carry out new elections. I don't know how we're going to handle votes abroad, but it's absolutely a necessity seeing how there's a Venezuelan diaspora of 4 million. Willie Tomg posted:Hiring those refugees whom were strong and savvy enough to get over the border below market wages in manual labor because your existence is illegal and deniable, and also a pretext for racists in our country electing other racists (under the fear of "Mexicans") with the votes of racists upset that our valuable Misery Jobs were being taken up by non-anglos--who's counterparts would rather sell meth and heroin than do those jobs because that's categorically the smart thing to do, and because liberal discourse is so poisoned that castigating those racists for paying latinos less for the same work is the real racism as opposed to treating manual laborers the same regardless of their ethnicity. I was reading the newspaper about international issues, which I have done for several decades now, but I'm a loving weirdo for doing so and frankly my coworkers aren't wrong in saying such, but anyway the fact that every news outlet is now saying the same thing in the same voice at the same time is a point of great interest to me. Also some of us were jacking off, presumably. There's 1.5 million Venezuelans in your country already, lol. There's not gonna be any more coming in because your government is refusing all visas for Venezuelans, the ones that are already in there have for the most part applied for asylum, I personally know 5 of my friends were granted asylum in the US. I'm not sure why the gently caress you're even bringing this up because the Venezuelans in Ecuador for the most part, walked there. I guess Ecuador is also ran by latinos? I don't know how your absurd American way of classifying people by a combination of their ethnicity and origin works. fnox fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 07:19
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themrguy posted:Anyway, enough America-posting in the VZ thread. Let’s say Maduro flees/retires/etc., but his party manages to hang on. Is there a clear line of succession or obvious guy next in line for the throne? Or is everyone so closely tied to him that if he goes it’s pretty much anyone’s bet who ends up in charge because he’ll take all of the senior fleet down with him. The next guy in line would probably be Diosdado Cabello. He'd be every bit as awful as Maduro is.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:19
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GoluboiOgon posted:For those who support the national assembly, what do you see as the best possible outcome? If there is somehow a peaceful transfer of power, do you think Guaido will be able to hold fair elections on 30 day notice after taking power? Would he (or his successor) be able to concretely improve the food situation, or is the economy irreversibly damaged? Probably something like the Tunisian Revolution or maybe Ceaușescu's 1989 overthrow. The thing is once you make democratic change impossible, changing governments is necessarily a contest of force. I couldn't confidently predict that this is actually a tipping point though. Mass protests have happened many times before in Venezuela, I can't tell where the break point really is.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:21
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You want to do something for Venezuelans right now? Do you want to show that you actually care? Donate to Caritas, yes, it's ran by the Catholic church but put that aside for just a second, it's the only reputable charity that is reliably getting help to Venezuelans right now. Call me whatever the gently caress you want, but please, if you're going to act like you care, put your money where your mouth is, there's a lot that these people can do with just 5 dollars.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:35
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Also Venezuala is a member of OPEC fyi Being a member of OPEC hasn't mattered worth poo poo since shale oil (which north america has in abundance) became profitable in the early 2010's which is oddly when KSA started slashing its prices which were favorable to a gulf extraction breakeven point but nobody else. Odd. Weird. Bizarre. fnox posted:With the help of foreign aid, the Venezuelan situation can be dramatically improved in the short term, again, no military intervention necessary. That should keep the country stable enough for it to carry out new elections. I don't know how we're going to handle votes abroad, but it's absolutely a necessity seeing how there's a Venezuelan diaspora of 4 million. 100% agreed, and it'll never happen, because the USA is a devil nation and our aim has never been the improvement of any people for their own sake. quote:There's 1.5 million Venezuelans in your country already, lol. There's not gonna be any more coming in because your government is refusing all visas for Venezuelans, the ones that are already in there have for the most part applied for asylum, I personally know 5 of my friends were granted asylum in the US. I'm not sure why the gently caress you're even bringing this up because the Venezuelans in Ecuador for the most part, walked there. I guess Ecuador is also ran by latinos? I don't know how your absurd American way of classifying people by a combination of their ethnicity and origin works. Yeah it's almost like we're trying to trap you in a house and then setting that house on fire in order to create a sense of urgency, and then flogging you when you try to leave, because we're not very good people when you get to know us. poo poo's hosed up!! Also everyone south of Texas (and most of the people in Texas) are Latino. That's it. Period. Racist as we are, light or dark as you are, we are refreshingly simple and consistent in this one aspect. Which y'all will learn when you attempt for the mercy Mexicans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans were denied in equal measure.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:45
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Willie Tomg I have no idea what you're even arguing by this point. are you okay fnox posted:You want to do something for Venezuelans right now? Do you want to show that you actually care? Donate to Caritas, yes, it's ran by the Catholic church but put that aside for just a second, it's the only reputable charity that is reliably getting help to Venezuelans right now. Call me whatever the gently caress you want, but please, if you're going to act like you care, put your money where your mouth is, there's a lot that these people can do with just 5 dollars. Dropped 
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Jan 24, 2019 07:47
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Can someone explain this? https://twitter.com/BootsRiley/status/1088308339413524480
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Jan 24, 2019 07:48
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punk rebel ecks posted:Can someone explain this? The article itself says it, the opposition basically argued that even bothering to send observers would legitimize a clearly fraudulent election.
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Jan 24, 2019 07:55
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Willie Tomg I have no idea what you're even arguing by this point. I'm a person over 20 years old and who has worked a manual trade ever yet is also against US intervention generally so yeah I'm fine, and I don't blame you for being confused at what I represent because it's never been shown in the media in your lifetime even if you're 60. You live in a free society. e; Acebuckeye13 posted:The article itself says it, the opposition basically argued that even bothering to send observers would legitimize a clearly fraudulent election. Well that's a burden of proof you can no doubt link as sufficient to prove other circumstances. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 07:58
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Dropped Thank you, seriously. That money goes straight into feeding the people at most risk in Venezuela, kids, the elderly, the sick. punk rebel ecks posted:Can someone explain this? The opposition wasn't allowed to participate, the only "opposition" that was permitted was Henri Falcon, a government stooge that broke away from the coalition bloc. So the actual opposition told international observers to skip this one since being present there would legitimize an obviously fraudulent election.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:00
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fnox posted:You want to do something for Venezuelans right now? Do you want to show that you actually care? Donate to Caritas, yes, it's ran by the Catholic church but put that aside for just a second, it's the only reputable charity that is reliably getting help to Venezuelans right now. Call me whatever the gently caress you want, but please, if you're going to act like you care, put your money where your mouth is, there's a lot that these people can do with just 5 dollars. Done.  punk rebel ecks posted:Can someone explain this? I'd love to read the reports from these "observers".
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Jan 24, 2019 08:03
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This is called 'being misleading,' something you keep doing in this thread when talking about Venezuelans who 'live in the West.' The first people who left Venezuela were people with money, yes. Plenty of them moved to America. If you talked to a Venezuelan living in America sometime around 2008, yes, they probably were a hardcore anti-chavista who came from some money. The numbers are massively different since Venezuela turned to poo poo. Everyone just started trying to leave. There's like half a million Venezuelan refugees in Colombia alone. Those people are definitely not chavistas anymore. The implication of 'living in the West' is just silly. There's plenty of Lybian refugees in Europe too, does anyone scoff and say "pfft. show me a real poor person. this rear end in a top hat could afford a boat ride?" Of course not. People can more easily move to the West if they have some assistance (family or expat groups abroad) and can live in a country that might actually help them, as asylum seekers. Shocking, I know. The ones who can't, just walk to another country.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:05
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punk rebel ecks posted:Can someone explain this? In order to understand what he's saying, one would need to understand how Boots Riley actually feels about UN election certification v. these other 'hundreds of observers.' But here's my response to that: For years (decades?), people defending Venezuela would say "the Venezuelan elections are fair and democratic, as has been confirmed by The Carter Center." Carter made some comment about how Venezuela had one of the best election processes in the world, and boy, did people love to use that one. Endlessly. Of the 2017 election, The Carter Center said: “On top of the fact the election was illegal, the (electoral council) broke every rule in the book of electoral integrity,” said Jennie K. Lincoln, the Carter Center’s director for Latin America and Caribbean. “This election destroyed any vestiges of democracy that might have yet existed in Venezuela.” Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 08:09
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fnox posted:You want to do something for Venezuelans right now? Do you want to show that you actually care? Donate to Caritas, yes, it's ran by the Catholic church but put that aside for just a second, it's the only reputable charity that is reliably getting help to Venezuelans right now. Call me whatever the gently caress you want, but please, if you're going to act like you care, put your money where your mouth is, there's a lot that these people can do with just 5 dollars. Thank you for this, I am trusting you that this org is legit. Hope everything works out well for you and your people. 
AFancyQuestionMark fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 08:09
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beer_war posted:Done. Holy gently caress, thank you so much. Pedro De Heredia posted:The implication of 'living in the West' is just silly. There's plenty of Lybian refugees in Europe too, does anyone scoff and say "pfft. show me a real poor person. this rear end in a top hat could afford a boat ride?" Of course not. People can more easily move to the West if they have some assistance (family or expat groups abroad) and can live in a country that might actually help them, as asylum seekers. Shocking, I know. The ones who can't, just walk to another country. I got help from goons (shoutouts to Chuck, and many other goons in this thread), and I saved for a year to get a plane ticket and a student dorm. That's how I managed to leave. I loving wish I owned a golf course, I didn't even own a bed when I landed. fnox fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 08:10
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Pedro De Heredia posted:This is called 'being misleading,' something you keep doing in this thread when talking about Venezuelans who 'live in the West.' Are you implying class is a function of social relations superceding even bourgeoise notions of race? Because I'm not sure I could take that, if it was even true, which I don't grant for even a second.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:12
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As a latin american, it is a bit disheartening when I listen/read US leftists opinions on Venezuela.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:14
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Guacamayo posted:As a latin american, it is a bit disheartening when I listen/read US leftists opinions on Venezuela. FWIW, virtually everyone to the right of DSA and tankie types dislike Venezuela. Including diehard Bernie supporters.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:23
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also FWIW everyone in a vaguely socialist org like DSA a) maybe, possibly, might know a few other countries exist b) may or may not have opinions more nuanced than "we shouldn't be there, if we're there... are we there? we shouldn't be there. if we are." but everyone saying Such And So Is The Predominant FP Position On The Left is talking out of their rear end, because that position doesn't exist, which they'd know if their engagement left twitter. which it never, ever, ever, ever does.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:28
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punk rebel ecks posted:FWIW, virtually everyone to the right of DSA and tankie types dislike Venezuela. Including diehard Bernie supporters. i'd disagree with this only because i hang with DSA types who really loving hate maduro because he's a constant asterisk on socialism where even KJU isn't in these days of the piss pig president. but yea sanders supporters are pretty hardcore. best to not gently caress with them, they'll literally kill you irl.
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Jan 24, 2019 08:31
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I don't know poo poo about gently caress but surely no one ITT is suggesting US President Donald J. Trump is going to make things better, are they?
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Jan 24, 2019 08:33
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| # ? May 27, 2024 00:13 |
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US leftist Venezuela opinions would be more tolerable if they just accepted they lost. That's really what it comes down to, Venezuela is a loss for leftist politics. I totally get the opposition to any kind of U.S. intervention, the fear of right-wing governments in South America being empowered, the distrust of the opposition. But it's like... this stopped being an issue of strategy (or fantasizing about a future) ages ago. Maduro is never going to get the country on 'the right (left) track' or hand it over to someone who will. There is no path to this anymore and there never will be. The outcome is going to be a horrendous counterreaction. That's what happens when a government is a massive fuckup. Just admit that at this point, for the left, the only thing to do is figure out how to save face. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 08:37
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