Seraphic Sphere posted:

maduro hired erik prince??

GoluboiOgon posted:

no, but he's intimately involved with guaido now(probably trying to sell him some mercenaries). he made a proposal a few years ago to the trump administration that involved him taking over mining concerns in afganistan in exchange for his mercenaries taking control of the country, in a plan deliberately modeled on the east india company. he isn't an unlikely person to receive privatized mining companies/rights if guaido comes in power.

Seraphic Sphere posted:

I know, but if you're going to listen to one mouthpiece then you should give equal time to the other. It's not like 100% objective journalism on Venezuela is easy to find. And there's nothing wrong with listening to the defense of the accused for that matter. Some would even consider it a duty.

GoluboiOgon posted:

no, but he's intimately involved with guaido now(probably trying to sell him some mercenaries). he made a proposal a few years ago to the trump administration that involved him taking over mining concerns in afganistan in exchange for his mercenaries taking control of the country, in a plan deliberately modeled on the east india company. he isn't an unlikely person to receive privatized mining companies/rights if guaido comes in power.

GoluboiOgon posted:

plus, do you really think the post-guaido privatizing of the mineral concerns and selling them to multi-national corporations will be better for the indigenous peoples? eric prince has already been angling to get his hands on mineral extraction rights across the world, do you think that the owner of the infamous blackwater mercenary group is the best person to protect the human rights of indigionous peoples?

fishmech posted:

It is very important to listen to "correctives" on how brutalizing indigenous people in Venezuela is actually extremely cool and good and socialist. It's the only way to be fair and balanced after all.

Seraphic Sphere posted:

he read you exactly right, you have no comprehension whatsoever of latin american history if you think maduro is the same as pinochet. but you clearly do and will no doubt affirm as much.

Epicurius posted:

Most of the Telesur article was trying to justify the February shootings of Pemon over the question of supplies from Brazil. The only real comments on the project as a whole is the defense the government of course would take...that these are national resources necessary for the development of Venezuela's economy, which is the line you expect. Every government justifies exploitation of natural resources that way and minimizes societal and ecological damage.

Discendo Vox posted:

It's worth noting that the telesur article is actually an opinion piece (recycled from a foreign site I don't know well) by a guy who's also written for Global Research, and who has been appearing in other telesur materials since at least 2018. Global Research is just a notch or two above Rense.

Seraphic, I can understand not digging into the source or the author if you're not familiar with teleSUR, but why link something labeled as an opinion piece?

Seraphic Sphere posted:

it's important if you care about the truth, and not making hysterical statements.

Seraphic Sphere posted:

i regard the statement that venezuala is perpetrating genocide to be hysterical.

edit: and wrong.

Seraphic Sphere posted:

i regard the statement that venezuala is perpetrating genocide to be hysterical.

edit: and wrong.

Epicurius posted:

The Orinoco Mining Arc law already calls for privatization of mineral concerns and selling them to multi-national corporations, so what you're describing is what the current government of Venezuela is doing. It's even set up Special Economic Zones in that area so that the mining companies don't have to follow labor and environmental laws.

fishmech posted:

Well I'm sure they're glad to hear that you don't think knocking down their homes in Venezuela is any sort of problem. I am sure you have the exact same opinions when it happens elsewhere.

drilldo squirt posted:

They are going to post reams of gibberish about class traitors until you give up.

Seraphic Sphere posted:

shut up moron

edit: i mean "class traitor"

Seraphic Sphere posted:

you never answered any of my questions btw

drilldo squirt posted:

Would you say the people in charge are looting the country?

GoluboiOgon posted:

plus, do you really think the post-guaido privatizing of the mineral concerns and selling them to multi-national corporations will be better for the indigenous peoples? eric prince has already been angling to get his hands on mineral extraction rights across the world, do you think that the owner of the infamous blackwater mercenary group is the best person to protect the human rights of indigionous peoples?

quote:

Venezuelan and foreign miners have for many decades exploited parts of the Gran Sabana, sometimes with state-granted licenses but often in illegal sites—and in both cases with devastating social and environmental effects. The Pemon are today determined to protect their land rights from external grabbing, but part of this population also associates this with their own rights of extracting minerals. These Pemon see no other realistic alternatives in the short term, and are not willing to renounce a source of income that allows them to stay in their region—labor migrations of the Pemon have historically led to extreme exploitation, which helps explains why they would prefer to mine on their own land.

Around extractive sites, the mining population have consistently reported facing abuses from military personnel, including being extorted through illegally charged “taxes” for permitting extraction or requesting money when equipment, fuel, or commercial goods are brought into mining areas. These widely recognized extortions underpin previous episodes of kidnapping of military personnel by Pemon groups. In other cases, the communities have responded to interventions of security forces allegedly trying to prevent illegal mining by kidnapping. This was the case in a December 2018 episode in the Canaima area, where the renowned Angel’s Falls are located, when an Indigenous man was killed and the miners kidnapped three members of public security forces in response. The public security forces were eventually released after a meeting in which a local leader told a military officer in front of an assembly of local people that if similar military interventions were to occur, the local population would confront them and would either “kill or be killed.”

Armed self-defense groups have also emerged in some Pemon communities, in some cases publicly declaring their objective of protecting what they consider to be their legitimate extractive rights and in other cases as a way of exercising some control over lands that they see growingly encroached. The case of land invasions in the Pemon communities near Santa Elena, whose population multiplied three-fold only between 2001 and 2011, is a telling example: according to my research, some 20 such invasions have taken place in the last two decades. In seeking to control extraction, these armed groups must confront organized criminal mafias, which already control mining areas north of the Gran Sabana. But they must also confront the military when they try to extort miners and when they try to stop illegal mining ventures, which some Pemon see as legitimate in light of their land rights.

quote:

"These miners have no labor rights at all," says Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. "They're not protected from any of the dangerous elements — for example, the mercury that's used in the mining."

He adds that miners are "also severely at risk of being shot dead: Mining communities have phenomenally high homicide rates, even by the extraordinary high levels that we see in the rest of Venezuela."

Getting reliable information is difficult because the area is highly dangerous for outsiders and locals are often too frightened to talk. Yet media and human rights activists portray a chaotic scenario in which armed gangs, fighters from Colombia's National Liberation Army rebel group and elements of Venezuela's military vie with one another for the control of mines, and use extortion and violence to co-opt independent miners.

"It's the Wild West. I mean, it can't be overstated just how lawless a lot of the territory is in this Orinoco mining belt," says Geoff Ramsey, Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy organization for human rights.

Much of the gold is smuggled out of the country. Anxious to shore up loyalty — after several failed plots to overthrow him — Maduro has allowed commanders from Venezuela's military to get involved.

"In mining areas, we see the armed forces of Venezuela acting as a kind of gatekeeper," says Ramsey. "They charge criminal groups for access to the mines."

drilldo squirt posted:

I'm pretty sure literally anything would be better than Maduro still. Name one thing that a right wing government would do that Marudo hasn't.

BEAR GRYLLZ posted:

The UK literally stole over a billion dollars of Venezuelan assets earlier this year and you dumbfucks are whining about Maduro doing what he can to keep his people from starving in the face of blatant theft from the usual capitalist powers.

Almost every ill besetting the Venezuelan state has its root in the actions of America and its allies. As residents of these countries if you actually gave a gently caress about what the Venezuelan people were going through your first priority would be to stop the shitheads in power from loving with Venezuela any further, instead you're concern trolling about Maduro opening mines and beating the drums of war for another failed US invasion that would result in the deaths of millions.

drilldo squirt posted:

Squalid posted:

Gold mining is already privatized in Venezuela.

quote:

It's closer to a libertarian post-apocalypse than orderly East-bloc style heavy industry.

drilldo squirt posted:

I might be wrong but I think that was a reaction to the massive theft of state assets by those nominally in charge.

Majorian posted:

Outright murder tens of thousands of dissidents and suspected dissidents.

drilldo squirt posted:

Holly poo poo your right. No one has been murdered at all. Also their are no militias shooting protesters.

drilldo squirt posted:

Holly poo poo your right. No one has been murdered at all. Also their are no militias shooting protesters.

BEAR GRYLLZ posted:

You are wrong, and a loving idiot to believe a lie that obvious.

drilldo squirt posted:

I, disagree.

Majorian posted:

Yes, but you see, Maduro hasn't killed tens of thousands of dissidents and suspected dissidents, and killing more people is usually worse than killing fewer...

drilldo squirt posted:

So your not denying the Chavista groups shooting protesters on a wim. You just think it's ok.