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Spacedad posted:The chart is for a period when oil prices were low - we already know the country was suffering in that period, along with the various other problems caused through internal incompetence, corruption and hyperinflation. Who is doing more to deepen the suffering of venezuela the US or Maduro?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:44 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 03:53 |
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zapplez posted:They are already starving. Theres a very real possibility the sanctions are going to cause less net harm because it could lead to less years that Maduro remains in power as a dictator. Would you also support a year of civil war if it could lead to less years of Maduro remaining in power? What about two years of civil war?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:46 |
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Who is doing more to deepen the suffering of venezuela the US or Maduro? If you aren't going to refute the argument then that's pretty much all that can be said about this. Oh and - we (i presume most of us) live in the US or are in a US-allied country. So if you want to do something to really help that you actually have a voice in, demand the sanctions be removed. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:46 |
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zapplez posted:They are already starving. Theres a very real possibility the sanctions are going to cause less net harm because it could lead to less years that Maduro remains in power as a dictator. "Inflicting pain, suffering, and starvation on innocent people as a political move, is a cool and good thing to do" me, an american. May and the tories are going to cause massive net harm to the UK, they should probably be sanctioned and starved so a coup can be organized against them. Macron needs to go, we should probably starve and coup the french. Heck Trump didn't even win the vote, america should be starved and a coup organized. Playing god is fun!
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:49 |
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Spacedad posted:The problems originally caused by the lowered price of oil have been exacerbated by Trump's sanctions in august 2017 that caused a massive decline in oil production in Venezuela, compared to Columbia's production. suggesting that 100% of the decline in oil production is due to sanctions - sanctions that were extremely far from a total shutout until very recently - is very questionable i'll grudgingly concede that greater than 0% is probably due to sanctions but mismanagement and degradation of the physical and corporate infrastructure of the PDVSA might have, you know, had some impact as well
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:49 |
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Spacedad posted:If you aren't going to refute the argument then that's pretty much all that can be said about this. Nah. Keep the sanctions so Maduro cant easily sell his countries resources off to increase his own fortune Id support sanctioning all exports until the Maduros FASCIST REGIME and every single memory of it is gone.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:51 |
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spacedad that is a chart from an unspecified source with unlabeled X and Y axes on different scales. (compare the vertical space between 1200-2400 and 500-1000, for ex)
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:54 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:suggesting that 100% of the decline in oil production is due to sanctions - sanctions that were extremely far from a total shutout until very recently - is very questionable Ah yes, famous good-infrastructure-haver Colombia. Also I'm not really interested in playing goalpost moving about how the US is making Venezuela's people's suffering worse, so I'm gonna leave the topic here for now.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 05:57 |
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i may as well post the august 2017 sanctions yet again, just in case anyone wants to read them https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/13808.pdf quote:Section 1. (a) All transactions related to, provision of financing for, and and a bunch of blah blah blah implementation poo poo This, incidentally, is one of the sanctions where I'm pretty dubious of the direct-ish impact of most/all of these provisions on the overall Venezuelan economy. All a1, a2, kinda-a3, and b seem to mean is that the PDVSA and Venezuelan government need to keep rolling over their new debt on short maturities, rather than taking out big ol' long debt. Short term loans generally have better interest terms! The main area I can see a problem would be if, say, future developments called into question the ability of the Venezuelan government to remain solvent, thereby making their short rollovers more expensive rather than letting them float along a bit longer on long-term debt, but what are the odds that the situation in Venezuela would get worse between, for example, mid-2017 and late 2018? Pretty low, am I right? Conflating the August 2017 sanctions with the early 2019 sanctions, in particular, is dumb. Conflating the March 2015 sanctions (and other individual-focused sanctions) with the early 2019 sanctions is extremely dumb. I'm not saying anyone in specific in this thread or elsewhere is doing that, just helpfully reminding y'all not to. It's easy for people I'm kinda curious whether anyone's made a good faith effort to figure out the actual impacts of any given pre-2019 sanction. I'd read the hell out of the boring finance analysis on that. Spacedad posted:Ah yes, famous good-infrastructure-haver Colombia. i reject this characterization Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:03 |
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Spacedad posted:If you aren't going to refute the argument then that's pretty much all that can be said about this. Also nice alt account, first post ever in this thread yesterday eh?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:17 |
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zapplez posted:Thanks for joining a long line of idiots entering this thread not understanding poo poo about the history or suffering of Venezuelans everyone who disagrees with you isn't a meatpuppet
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:20 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:i'll grudgingly concede that greater than 0% is probably due to sanctions Oh, I almost forgot to clarify - the '6 billion lost due to sanctions from the US' is a figure that comes from a study using Center for Strategic and International Studies & EIA data. There's no handwaving about what the sanctions have cost Venezuela. The study concluded that it was roughly 6 billion lost from reduced oil production due to sanctions. Also, we weren't born yesterday - we know that the US does this 'make the economy scream'* routine to every time they want to impose a regime change on a Latin American country they want to install a brutal puppet dictator in. *Nixon to Kissinger, 1973 regarding sanctions against Chile meant to unseat the president and install Pinochet. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:23 |
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Spacedad posted:Oh, I almost forgot to clarify - the '6 billion lost due to sanctions from the US' is a figure that comes from a study using Center for Strategic and International Studies & EIA data. see, that's more interesting to know edit: venezuelanalysis article that is presumably what you drew from: https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14073 venezuelablog article it's responding to which I think is better and also which further links to nerdstuff, i'm going to have to reread it more closely and check out the nerdstuff: https://venezuelablog.org/crude-realities-understanding-venezuelas-economic-collapse/ Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:36 |
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Can you link the nerd stuff directly? Also does anyone know why when I search for Venezuelan oil production numbers, I seem to find two completely different records? Are there just several different ways to measure crude output? It's very annoying. Another thing worth remember, by 2016 it was obvious that Venezuela was heading into a default. This was the tone with which the financial news covered the state of Venezuelan finances. I forget when they actually started defaulting but I think it was also in 2017. I don't know how to separate the effect of sanctions from larger decline in Venezuela's ability to make bond payments. As I recall, one of the justifications for sanctions in 2017 was that Venezuela was already in a hopeless financial situation, so the sanctions would prevent Maduro from mortgaging the country just to delay the inevitable default a few months more. edit: also spacedad, can you link the Center for Strategic and International Studies thing? Would like to see it. Squalid fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 06:54 |
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-military/u-s-destroyers-sail-in-disputed-south-china-sea-amid-trade-tensions-idUSKCN1Q00AJ As we can clearly see from this reuters article the US is an evil empire that is denying china its right to freespeach in the gulf of tonkin. From this we know that the CIA PLANTED RIFLES IN PLANES ONLY TO BE FOUND BY THE HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION, MADURO. Maduro himself actually found the rifles on a return journey from Miami. He saw them hidden under a first class desk with the following label: Maduro was awared the distinguished medal of honor XXIVV for his durable heroism in the matter (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 07:15 |
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that is incomprehensible gibberish
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 07:25 |
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Squalid posted:Another thing worth remember, by 2016 it was obvious that Venezuela was heading into a default. This was the tone with which the financial news covered the state of Venezuelan finances. I forget when they actually started defaulting but I think it was also in 2017. I don't know how to separate the effect of sanctions from larger decline in Venezuela's ability to make bond payments. As I recall, one of the justifications for sanctions in 2017 was that Venezuela was already in a hopeless financial situation, so the sanctions would prevent Maduro from mortgaging the country just to delay the inevitable default a few months more. Problem with that theory is that economies like Venezuela are not allowed to default. They can try (like Argentina did, with some success), but it doesn't work in the long-term unless you're big enough to grow self-sufficient or irreplaceable. You talk about Maduro mortgaging the country but that is absolutely the same outcome as if the IMF would be brought in. They'll fire-sale off every asset that can as part of their mandatory 'reform package'. Something that seems to be glossed over by both sides of this thread discussion is that the Venezuelan economy is not returning to the Chavez peak no matter what. The fundamental problem is not Maduro corruption, nor is it US sanctions. They don't help, but they're not the core issue. It's that the Venezuelan economy grew over-dependent on dollar-imports during the good oil years and now fundamentally can't sustain the same living standards without getting access to the dollar-income lost. International lending and hyperinflation are both just tools to patch over the issue, there's no fixing it in the short-term. Since oil prices are in a slump the economy will keep contracting until imports matches exports again. Venezuela used to have a certain productivity rate at a certain level of corruption that could sustain a certain number of people at a certain living standard, today it doesn't.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 07:36 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:suggesting that 100% of the decline in oil production is due to sanctions - sanctions that were extremely far from a total shutout until very recently - is very questionable grudgingly conceding the people bragging about their plan to choke Venezuela to death, with their hand at their throat, might actually have exerted some pressure on the windpipe while their hands were there. how magnanimous of you
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 07:53 |
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Cease to Hope posted:that is incomprehensible gibberish Its a summary of every poster here who dogpiled in without reading enough to make real points instead of soviet era socialist virtue signalling.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 08:10 |
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are people trying to argue that the US sanctions (possibly including US international pressure like the axis of evil speech and other forms of pressure that don't amount to formal sanctions) had no effect on venezuela's economy, or are they arguing that pdvsa wasn't mismanaged by maduro (and possibly chavez)? i'm a bit lost on who is arguing for what thesis with the various oil export analyses
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 08:31 |
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Since CSIS is apparently a trusted source now, here's a view on the factors affecting the oil industry prior to the latest sanctions. While the US debt financing sanctions had an impact, basically you can't sell what you don't make. Oil production is hugely down due to maintenance neglect, refining also. Plus increased cash is gone to pay foreign companies, further reducing net income. Skilled oil workers leaving Venezuela, lack of money for parts and chemicals. https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-low-can-venezuelan-oil-production-go
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 09:26 |
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 13:24 |
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There are at least three idiots represented in this single image post. Impressive.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 14:21 |
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Serious question here as a non American and in fairly left circles. Does brietbadt carry any water among the non extreme right? I kinda only seen it made fun of I've not seen how much engagement they get for their blatant propaganda machine.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 14:32 |
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Cerepol posted:Serious question here as a non American and in fairly left circles. Does brietbadt carry any water among the non extreme right? I kinda only seen it made fun of I've not seen how much engagement they get for their blatant propaganda machine. It's HuffPo for chuds.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 14:35 |
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Question for those opposed to sanctions: Are you also opposed to the sanctions on individual persons? Like, not the ones stopping the government itself dealing with debt, but the ones doing things like freezing external assets of military officials and Maduro himself, etc...
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 14:51 |
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Question for those opposed to sanctions: Are you also opposed to the sanctions on individual persons? Like, not the ones stopping the government itself dealing with debt, but the ones doing things like freezing external assets of military officials and Maduro himself, etc... I'm opposed to any sanctions that have the ability to hurt people in Venezuela. I'm referring specifically to the August 2017 sanctions on certain government bonds, as well as the more recent sanctions on PDVSA. Initially I was not opposed to targeted sanctions against named individuals (like Maduro, Cabello, Bernal, El Aissami, etc.). That was until I heard arguments from a university professor named David Smilde who works on Venezuelan issues to the effect that these sanctions are not helpful because they decrease the chances that Maduro & Co. will leave power peacefully. There's definitely a tug-of-war here between one's sense of justice and the desire for this chapter of Venezuelan history to come to an end. I still think about this quite a bit, but for now I think that I agree with Smilde: we should be making it easier, not harder, for Maduro to leave power, and targeted sanctions don't make it easier. I think that the goal here is a peaceful transition towards democracy, and I think that we should do everything to make that happen, even those things that upset our sense of justice (like the amnesty law).
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 15:55 |
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How do targeted sanctions keep Maduro from exiting peacefully? Is it because he cant afford a hasty escape to the Swiss Alps if he's blocked from accessing his foreign accounts?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:37 |
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Typical Pubbie posted:How do targeted sanctions keep Maduro from exiting peacefully? Is it because he cant afford a hasty escape to the Swiss Alps if he's blocked from accessing his foreign accounts? Yep. That's the logic behind this line of thinking. That if you allow the dictator and their cronies the ability to funnel money out of the country, that once they build a big enough golden parachute that they will be more tempted to leave peacefully.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:42 |
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Chuck Boone posted:There's definitely a tug-of-war here between one's sense of justice and the desire for this chapter of Venezuelan history to come to an end. Reminds me a bit to what happened with the peace treaty vote in Colombia with the FARC. I wonder how such a vote would go down in Venezuela. Would people be in favor of pardoning all of these thieving fuckers if it means they'd leave and let Venezuelans try and make something out of the mess they leave? Or would we demand justice?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:49 |
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MiddleOne posted:Problem with that theory is that economies like Venezuela are not allowed to default. They can try (like Argentina did, with some success), but it doesn't work in the long-term unless you're big enough to grow self-sufficient or irreplaceable. You talk about Maduro mortgaging the country but that is absolutely the same outcome as if the IMF would be brought in. They'll fire-sale off every asset that can as part of their mandatory 'reform package'. Well yeah, Venezuela can't default long term. They are defaulting short term however. The question everybody was asking in 2016 and 2017 was "when?" I think there is now a lot evidence that US sanctions in 2017 brought forward the date when Venezuela went into short term default. I guess on mortgaging I was thinking that total debt to creditors when Venezuela is forced to restructure might effect the type of concessions made, but these aren't firm ideas on my part, just spitballin'. The issue of Venezuelan import dependence has been talked about a lot. It gets glossed over sometimes because its complicated, you can't just post a graph of oil exports and start extrapolating causes. The current argument over sanctions is about assigning blame. Is Maduro at fault for the Venezuelan economic crisis through his incompetent policies? Or is the Venezuelan economy behaving like that of a normal boom-bust oil economy, but one whose down-cycle has been severely exacerbated by US sanctions? As to Venezuelan productivity there are basically two schools of thought that you can find in this thread and c-spam. As far as I can tell everybody agrees that the Chavez policies of expropriation, collectivization, nationalization, and price ceilings were a disaster that hollowed out the economy. The liberal side argues these policies were inherently flawed and would have necessarily wrecked the economy. The socialist side admits the policies were failures, however they contend that this was because they were half-measures that didn't go far enough. Either way, the continuation of the status quo is obviously terrible policy and Maduro and Chavez are to blame. Cease to Hope posted:are people trying to argue that the US sanctions (possibly including US international pressure like the axis of evil speech and other forms of pressure that don't amount to formal sanctions) had no effect on venezuela's economy, or are they arguing that pdvsa wasn't mismanaged by maduro (and possibly chavez)? i'm a bit lost on who is arguing for what thesis with the various oil export analyses They are trying to argue that US sanctions are justified to assist in removing Maduro from power. To argue they are justified, it is asserted that Maduro is to blame for the economic problems, and therefore efforts to remove him are justified. Alternatively, they are arguing that even if the pdvsa was mismanaged a bit, the primary cause of the economic crisis is American sanctions, which has made an otherwise normal recession catastrophic. Because sanctions are to blame for the crisis, American accusations that the economic situation justifies his removal are hypocritical and self-serving. It's not so much about breaking down the what fraction of the lost gdp is to blame on Maduro/the US as it is establishing moral culpability. Who is morally at fault for the state of the Venezuelan economy? In terms of economic analysis the dispute is rather meaningless. Politically its also somewhat besides the point as US sanctions are justified primarily by Maduro's subversion of democracy rather than for his economic policies. Squalid fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:52 |
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Chuck, do you have the article you mentioned? I'd be interested in reading it. I'm just a bit skeptical of that argument. I admit a big chunk of that skepticism is anger at the idea that someone can be allowed to get away with that kind of corruption, and that it would just encourage dictators in the future to do the same since hey, worst case when you can't loot your country anymore you can just retire in luxury.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:59 |
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Squalid posted:They are trying to argue that US sanctions are justified to assist in removing Maduro from power. who, exactly, is they?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 17:08 |
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PuppyD posted:Yep. That's the logic behind this line of thinking. That if you allow the dictator and their cronies the ability to funnel money out of the country, that once they build a big enough golden parachute that they will be more tempted to leave peacefully. there's some validity to it, but then you have the counterexample of Egypt, where the democratically elected opposition didn't kill the lot of the previous dictatorial regime and so they came screaming right back into power in (yyyou guessed it!) an american-backed military coup. it's one of the exceedingly few situations in international politics where you can have an actual serious discussion on which strategy is better between people on either side of the aisle, because the desire to get The Fuckers (tm) out of power peacefully must be weighed against the odds of The Fuckers (tm) just riding back into power after it turns out your regime can't fix all the problems inside of two years. traditionally Mr. Abrams solves this problem by having people hostile to his pet dictators' desires heads sawed off while they're still alive. this tends to strengthen the resolve of said people to not give in peacefully. weird huh
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 17:11 |
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I know some people are saying BBC is fox news level bad journalism now (its not but whatever), but this video is worth a watch. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-47160760/venezuela-crisis-a-health-system-in-a-state-of-collapse
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 17:31 |
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Cease to Hope posted:who, exactly, is they? okay, maybe its not that commonly expressed itt, though I believe it has at least been implied a lot, if not often explicitly stated. Randarkman is the only person I found who said it outright in all of the five minutes I searched. More common has been people saying that even if sanctions have negative effects on the Venezuelan people, the magnitude of their effect is small enough that Maduro is still morally culpable. Either way the argument is about who is at fault, rather than explaining events. Also I was reading one of the articles greyjoybastard posted and it makes a pretty strong case for how sanctions effected oil exports. https://venezuelablog.org/crude-realities-understanding-venezuelas-economic-collapse/ quote:The Executive Order is part of a broader process of what one could term the “toxification” of financial dealings with Venezuela. During 2017, it became increasingly clear that institutions who decided to enter into financial arrangements with Venezuela would have to be willing to pay high reputational and regulatory costs. This was partly the result of a strategic decision by the Venezuelan opposition, in itself a response to the growing authoritarianism of the Maduro government. This article was good, it offers a lot of detailed but readable analysis.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 17:36 |
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zapplez posted:I know some people are saying BBC is fox news level bad journalism now (its not but whatever), but this video is worth a watch. Yeah, the BBC writing style is much worse than what Fox produces. It's quite sad. Lambert fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 18:20 |
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Is this supposed to be controversial? Since when did it become wrong to defend yourself against foreign invasion?
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 18:30 |
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Flayer posted:Is this supposed to be controversial? Since when did it become wrong to defend yourself against foreign invasion? historically America has punished latin american countries that attempt to do so with our finest examples of creativity in home improvement tool usage. say the punchline with me now, gang: But I'm Sure This Time Will Be Different!
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 18:39 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 03:53 |
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Squalid posted:Can you link the nerd stuff directly? Linked article on the PDVSA's problems: https://prodavinci.com/la-implosion-de-la-industria-petrolera-venezolana/ i guess nothing else was directly linked but [the venezuelablog guy, you know, from the better article] does say he was using, well, quote:[3] There are a number of different data series for Venezuelan oil production, and they differ with respect to the timing of the start of the decline. In Chart 2, we use OPEC’s data from independent secondary sources, which presents a stable trend until 2016. This is the series that OPEC uses, for example, to set production quotas. Data reported by the government to OPEC, as well as data from IPD Latin America, time the start of the decline earlier. Nevertheless, both of them show an acceleration of the decline at the start of 2016. They are thus consistent with our thesis that factors leading to a decline of oil output made themselves felt at the start of 2016. Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Feb 11, 2019 |
# ? Feb 11, 2019 18:43 |