Majorian posted:

"Invasion" is a pretty important word in the post you quoted.

Majorian posted:

Do you have evidence that those ~7000 extra infant deaths are due directly to Maduro's bad leadership, as opposed to poo poo like, I dunno, sanctions? Extra infant deaths tend to happen under those, you know.

Noshtane posted:

You mean the sweeping 2019 sanctions where so powerful that they went back in time and killed thousands of of infants in 2017?
Or that the sanctions against a few select individuals in 2017 where so horrifying to investors that they went back to 2010 and pulled so much foreign capital that the positive trend in infant mortality turned bad and skyrocketed each subsequent year?

fnox posted:

I'm against a military intervention. I've stated this far too many times.

quote:

You don't seem to be interested in any action that would actually result in Maduro being removed from power.

Majorian posted:

The 2017 sanctions have already been shown to be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and that's coming from Jeffrey "Shock Therapy is actually good" Sachs.

Majorian posted:

I think you need to do a little basic research into each of those dictatorial regimes. Not all of the deaths caused by them took place in extermination camps. (in fact, most didn't!)


Do you have evidence that those ~7000 extra infant deaths are due directly to Maduro's bad leadership, as opposed to poo poo like, I dunno, sanctions? Extra infant deaths tend to happen under those, you know.


"Invasion" is a pretty important word in the post you quoted.

Majorian posted:

The 2017 sanctions have already been shown to be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and that's coming from Jeffrey "Shock Therapy is actually good" Sachs.

fnox posted:

That is according to Mark Weisbrot. You go one link deeper and you see it comes from the guy that said this.

quote:

“The sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food, and other essential imports,” says the report, co-authored by Jeffrey Sachs, an award-winning economist based at Columbia University, and Mark Weisbrot. “This is illegal under US and international law, and treaties that the US has signed. Congress should move to stop it.”

Squalid posted:

You really can’t blame deaths in 2017 on sanctions

quote:

This paper looks at some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government since August of 2017. It finds that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population. The sanctions reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.

Squalid posted:

I don’t know why you would bring up Trujillo if you don’t want to talk about genocide. His rule is actually remembered fondly by a surprising number of Dominicans for its steady and good economic growth. He doesn’t really deserve credit for it but at least he didn’t muck it up completely.

Noshtane posted:

Care to summarize to how sanctions against individuals cause widespread starvation and shortages of basically everything? Or link the report? Because someone wrote it in a report doesn't automatically make it the one and only truth, or I won't accept it as such until I've actually read it.

quote:

The August 2017 sanctions prohibited the Venezuelan government from borrowing in US financial markets. This prevented the government from restructuring its foreign debt, because any debt restructuring requires the issuance of new bonds in exchange for the existing debt. Thus, these sanctions prevented the economy from recovering from a deep recession which had already taken a large toll on the population, which along with the economy was more vulnerable to these sanctions and the ones that followed as a result of the economic crisis. Real GDP had already declined by about 24.7 percent from 2013 through 2016, and consumer price inflation for January to August 2017 was probably somewhere between 758 percent and 1,350 percent at an annual rate.

It is important to emphasize that nearly all of the foreign exchange that is needed to import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation, is received by the Venezuelan economy through the government’s revenue from the export of oil. Thus, any sanctions that reduce export earnings, and therefore government revenue, thereby reduce the imports of these essential and, in many cases, life-saving goods.

Majorian posted:

You should actually read the article:



The report says otherwise. From the executive summary:



This is literally on page 1 of the report, which is linked in the article that I posted.:

The report posted:

According to the National Survey on Living Conditions (ENCOVI by its acronym in Spanish), an
annual survey of living conditions administered by three Venezuelan universities, there was a 31
percent increase in general mortality from 2017 to 2018.
35 This would imply an increase of more than
40,000 deaths.36 This would be a large loss of civilian life even in an armed conflict, and it is virtually
certain that the US economic sanctions made a substantial contribution to these deaths. The
percentage of deaths due to the sanctions is difficult to estimate because the counterfactual is
unknowable, but it is worth noting that the counterfactual in the absence of sanctions could even be
that mortality would have been reduced (see below), in the event that an economic recovery would
have taken place.

fnox posted:

The article further states that the drop in oil revenues, $8.4bn in foreign exchange. This is seemingly the mechanism of action of the sanctions. Loss in revenues means less money available for the foreign exchange schemes of Maduro, which is apparently what leads to them not working.

quote:

I'd like to ask you know, which of these things do you think are the result of Maduro's incompetence, of disastrous economic policies, and which of these are direct actions created by the sanctions?

Squalid posted:

Those quotes don’t say deaths started in 2017 though? The effect of the ban on bond purchases would have started to manifest several months later, and then that would translate into shortages with a bit more delay. It’s perfectly possible some proportion of the increase in deaths that year be attributed to sanctions, but when the year was already 2/3 over when they were announced you can’t possibly believe it makes up the entire increase compared to 2010.

quote:

Also don’t be stupid I’m not defending Trujillo. If I wanted to do that why would I bring up his killings of Haitians? Use your head for once.

Noshtane posted:

Yeah, the report makes the same mistake as tankies has done in this very thread on multiple occasion. 40.000 deaths, on which the US sanctions has impacted granted, magically becomes "US sanctions kill 40.000"

quote:

Meanwhile, the infant mortality began skyrocketing LONG before these sanctions came into being and 2017 just followed the trend seen in previous years.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2017&locations=VE&start=1990

Majorian posted:

The report posted:

The percentage of deaths due to the sanctions is difficult to estimate because the counterfactual is
unknowable

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Majorian you're gish galloping hard.

Majorian posted:

The report quite literally says, "We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018." Not "impacted," not "increased," but "inflicted." That's 40,000 deaths because of U.S. sanctions in those two years alone.

Noshtane posted:

Care to summarize to how sanctions against individuals cause widespread starvation and shortages of basically everything? Or link the report? Because someone wrote it in a report doesn't automatically make it the one and only truth, or I won't accept it as such until I've actually read it.

fnox posted:

For someone who believes Maduro is a bad ruler you sure are going extreme lengths to not attribute things to him. There’s been shortages of food and medicine since 2013, you attribute those to what? The oil crash happened a year later and the sanctions 4 years later. Is every increase in general mortality attributable to only one source?

Noshtane posted:

Read the quote in my post. They read a ENCOVI report, took the numbers and blamed everything on the US.
They even stated that what they did is guesswork;


But that didn't prevent people from later claiming that US sanctions killed 40.000.

Squalid posted:

Can you quote the entire paragraph? Because it is clear in Noshtane’s quote that the author is referring to the increase of 40000 deaths in 2018 relative to 2017. This report is not claiming an increase in mortality for 2017

quote:

Since these are annual statistics, they would not take into account the impact of the sanctions during the last four months of 2017. As noted above, the impact of the August 2017 sanctions on the collapse of oil production and therefore access to imports was quite immediate, so we would expect some of the increased mortality to show up in 2017.

Majorian posted:

Well, first of all, looking at the first couple pages of a report that charts the negative effects of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela is not exactly "extreme lengths." Secondly, I'm not the one who is claiming that an increase in general mortality is attributable to one source; that's been you. You are the one suggesting that Maduro is the source of most, if not all, of Venezuela's woes, and proclaiming that literally anything would be a better alternative.

fnox posted:

Yes, because he’s been in power all this time, mostly unopposed, and it’s his beyond disastrous management of the economy that led to any sort of crisis.

quote:

I ask again, what causes an increase in the amount of people being killed for resisting arrest?

Majorian posted:

This is just flat-out wrong. The crisis didn't start with Maduro; he made it worse on several levels,

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Uhh, you just contradicted yourself here.

punk rebel ecks posted:

I'll just stop beating around the bush.

Majorian, how much do you think Maduro and the PSUV are responsible for the Venezuela's current situation, and where would you rank them in terms of tiers of lovely authoritarian regimes?

It's clear you don't think Maduro is as bad as Pinochet, but who would you compare him to?

Rust Martialis posted:

I like Majorian presenting the report as absolute proof the sanctions alone caused the excess deaths in 2017 when the authors themselves say they can't prove it.

"Mr Weisbrot, a cofounder of the CEPR, told The Independent the authors could not prove those excess deaths were the result of sanctions"

Just like Maduro's regime causing babies to die is *clearly* less bad than Pinochet's regime murdering dissidents, because, hey, I dunno. Maybe they're both bad, and stop whitewashing Maduro's regime. If they weren't stealing billions, fewer babies would be dead. That's direct responsibility, son.

fnox posted:

He is responsible because the spike got worse with him.

quote:

But you’re telling me that the crisis didn’t start with him, when I can tell you that at no point, not even during the oil strike of 2003 where oil revenues sank rapidly and massively, were there food and medicine shortages. I know this because I loving experienced what it was like to go from 2013 to 2014. They began with Maduro. It began with his policies, with his Ley de Precios Justos, he started the crisis before the crash, before sanctions, before anything.

quote:

Again, you’re saying that Maduro is bad, but you don’t seem to agree that any of the major components of the crisis are his fault.

fnox posted:

He is responsible because the spike got worse with him. I will admit the political crisis comes from Chavez, and that some of the worst economic policies are actually Chavez’ ideas.

But you’re telling me that the crisis didn’t start with him, when I can tell you that at no point, not even during the oil strike of 2003 where oil revenues sank rapidly and massively, were there food and medicine shortages. I know this because I loving experienced what it was like to go from 2013 to 2014. They began with Maduro. It began with his policies, with his Ley de Precios Justos, he started the crisis before the crash, before sanctions, before anything.

There isn’t a problem getting food into the country, well besides dealing with insanely corrupt customs officers, the problem is with selling it. There’s no embargo. But if you want to sell Harina PAN in Venezuela outside of government stores, you gotta do it underground, like if you were selling cocaine, not flour. Otherwise, it will be decommissioned, or you will be forced to sell it at a huge loss.

Again, you’re saying that Maduro is bad, but you don’t seem to agree that any of the major components of the crisis are his fault. What the gently caress do you think he’s been doing all this time?

punk rebel ecks posted:

So you believe that the current crisis and problems are due to Maduro and not Chavez? Like if Chavez was still around Venezuela would not be in its current state?

Rust Martialis posted:

Maduro took a bad situation *and actively worsened it*.

Majorian posted:

Yes, I've said that a few times now. What I don't get is fnox's apparent inability to acknowledge that there were other significant factors at play, including oil.

Rust Martialis posted:

Well the article you cited claimed every death was due to sanctions alone, so oil and Maduro's policies were evidently immaterial if it's all the fault of sanctions.

quote:

I think comparing Pinochet to Maduro is pointless, they're both horrible independently.

Majorian posted:

Where does the article/study claim that? I didn't see it say anything of the sort.


Thank you.

Rust Martialis posted:

Sorry, every excess death.

Majorian posted:

Where does the article/study claim that? I didn't see it say anything of the sort.