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BigFactory posted:What’s the cost? He steps down, they hold new elections, the sanctions get lifted, maduro screws to Turkey or Cuba. lmao
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Aug 22, 2019 22:52
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i can definitely see the US leaving venezuela alone if maduro stepped down and PSUV won the following election
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Aug 22, 2019 23:13
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if you are thinking about the opposition privatizing industry, much of what's left of Venezuela's state assets are likely to end up seized by creditors or liquidated to pay off debts in the near future regardless of who is President. New Venezuela sanctions protect Citgo, encourage debt talks: opposition quote:Three allies of opposition leader Juan Guaido also said the [latest sanctions] allowed for restructuring negotiations with bondholders, which had been prohibited under previous sanctions. That could be key to protecting Citgo, since half of state oil company PDVSA’s shares in the refiner were put up as collateral for its 2020 bond. Guaido is desperately pleading for time to negotiate with bondholders and other debtors because just before these sanctions froze some dealings with the Venezuelan states, Crystallex was about to be awarded large shares of Citgo by US courts. Court ruling against Venezuela in Crystallex case puts Citgo at risk quote:(Reuters) - A U.S. federal appeals court on Monday rejected an appeal by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company to set aside an order allowing a Canadian gold mining company to seize shares in its U.S. refining unit, Citgo Petroleum Corp. Meanwhile although China and Russia haven't demanded assets in payment for their debts, something like a 1/3 to 1/2 of Venezuelan oil production is going to pay off debts to these countries. They own the output if not the refineries.
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Aug 22, 2019 23:13
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Sanctions make things worse not better
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Aug 22, 2019 23:14
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mortons stork posted:Allow me to point out a few subtle, but crucial differences between a crook rigging an election and a foreign power intentionally destroying a country's productive capacity and starving its citizens of basic necessities so it can pursue its geopolitical agenda. The crook who rigged the election also destroyed his country's productive capacity and starved his citizens. If we're trying to say Maduro did all that by accident I do not believe that is a good defense?
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Aug 22, 2019 23:17
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nepetaMisekiryoiki posted:The crook who rigged the election also destroyed his country's productive capacity and starved his citizens. If we're trying to say Maduro did all that by accident I do not believe that is a good defense? It’s possible he had good intentions and things just got away from him. It happens. Before you know it you’re organizing death squads and jailing your political opponents.
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Aug 22, 2019 23:45
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Jose posted:i can definitely see the US leaving venezuela alone if maduro stepped down and PSUV won the following election I kinda can. Trump is lovely and stupid but he’s transactional in a way that the neocons around him aren’t quite. If he gets his way in Venezuela I can see him losing all interest and ignoring another “shithole country”. Might not play out that way but it’s the best chance Venezuela has imo.
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Aug 23, 2019 00:08
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Giggle Goose posted:I do find it interesting that none of the Maduro apologists in this thread ever bring up the multitude of other nations who are also involved in the efforts to get rid of Maduro. maybe because the "apologists" (lmao you're such a loving scumbag) know those countries are just following the big dog's lead
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Aug 23, 2019 02:56
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Doctor Jeep posted:maybe because the "apologists" (lmao you're such a loving scumbag) know those countries are just following the big dog's lead The EU also?
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Aug 23, 2019 03:01
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I do find it interesting that none of the Saddam Apologists ever bring up the multitude of other nations who are also involved in the efforts to get rid of Saddam. Spain and Poland are involved so how can the regime change in Iraq possibly be related to American business interests. smdh can't believe they forgot Poland VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 05:20
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BigFactory posted:The EU also? yes
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Aug 23, 2019 05:50
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Squalid posted:Meanwhile although China and Russia haven't demanded assets in payment for their debts, something like a 1/3 to 1/2 of Venezuelan oil production is going to pay off debts to these countries. They own the output if not the refineries. This poo poo is so darkly humorous to me. I'm just imagining a Sanders presidency, sanctions gone, complete easing of pressure, and then the Chinese and Russians just take what's left.
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Aug 23, 2019 07:43
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It’s not 50% of CITGO anymore, it’s all of it. If the sanctions are lifted, ironically enough, who gets to keep CITGO is Rosneft. There are several joint Chinese extraction operations in the country, they’re not explicitly allowed to own it, but there’s gotta be some loophole they’re using to allow co-ownership of what should fall under PDVSAs jurisdiction. Presumably, if production keeps falling, China will demand repayment through full ownership of these existing facilities. So yeah, around half of production isn’t even sold, it’s destined to debt for oil repayments from the Fondo Chino. Another huge chunk (wasn’t as big when it first started) is Petrocaribe, which provides small Caribbean countries with extremely generous payment terms for Venezuelan oil. Ironically enough this means that countries like Haiti owe Venezuela billions in debt. Why does this agreement persist when Venezuela needs cash now goes beyond me. Oh yeah we also give Cuba about 80000 barrels every day. It’s unclear how they pay for it. Other than China, the second largest destination of Venezuelan crude is actually India.
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Aug 23, 2019 08:26
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Jose posted:i can definitely see the US leaving venezuela alone if maduro stepped down and PSUV won the following election Uh, probably yes? It's not like the US gives a flying gently caress about Bolivia or Nicaragua. What blows my mind is how you're too incredibly low effort of a poster to ever read anything that is posted here, too low effort to even use capital letters or punctuation, but you're high enough effort to spend at least a year poo poo posting on this thread. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 13:06
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Saladman posted:Uh, probably yes? It's not like the US gives a flying gently caress about Bolivia or Nicaragua. ok so why the meddling in places like Brazil and Honduras and *checks notes* every single LatAm country within the last few decades? Including (especially!!) Nicaragua?
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Aug 23, 2019 14:11
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brugroffil posted:ok so why the meddling in places like Brazil and Honduras and *checks notes* every single LatAm country within the last few decades? Including (especially!!) Nicaragua? That was then, this is now. Trump doesn’t give a gently caress and there aren’t enough people working at the state department anymore to muck poo poo up on their own.
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Aug 23, 2019 14:15
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Oh so we'll just gently caress things up even worse and then abandon it to fresh air slave markets a la Libya, cool cool
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Aug 23, 2019 15:25
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brugroffil posted:Oh so we'll just gently caress things up even worse and then abandon it to fresh air slave markets a la Libya, cool cool Maybe, but that definitely would have been the result if the US never got involved in the first place. Maduro cant and couldn’t right the ship, so at some point he’d just gently caress off to Turkey with all the gold he stole and leave the smoking ruin to some upjumped generals to run.
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Aug 23, 2019 15:30
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BigFactory posted:I kinda can. Trump is lovely and stupid but he’s transactional in a way that the neocons around him aren’t quite. If he gets his way in Venezuela I can see him losing all interest and ignoring another “shithole country”. Might not play out that way but it’s the best chance Venezuela has imo. This is a staggeringly poor analysis of American foreign policy. There is a massive unelected federal bureacracy embedded in the national security state that continues to pursue its goals regardless of what is currently holding Trump's attention. fnox posted:Oh yeah we also give Cuba about 80000 barrels every day. It’s unclear how they pay for it. Other than China, the second largest destination of Venezuelan crude is actually India. Doesn't Cuba supply a significant number of doctors? fnox posted:Estranged father of a friend of mine. To this day we still don't know how they picked up on the phone call, maybe the person on the other end had their phone bugged. He got off easy though. Do you have other friends from the families of military officers? I am curious about their perspectives.
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Aug 23, 2019 16:38
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Helsing posted:This is a staggeringly poor analysis of American foreign policy. There is a massive unelected federal bureacracy embedded in the national security state that continues to pursue its goals regardless of what is currently holding Trump's attention. Right, but the unelected federal bureaucracy relies on appointments and hirings by the executive branch, and the Trump administration has done a shockingly poor job of filling vacancies (as well as insulting and alienating long time civil servants who left and created more vacancies). Particularly at the state department. Some of it was (supposedly) intentional when Tillerson was sec state but if anything it’s gotten worse since then. They’re woefully understaffed. So your report from 2014 is great, but it didn’t predict hurricane Trump.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:18
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Helsing posted:Doesn't Cuba supply a significant number of doctors? Lmao, they bailed a couple of years back. Easy ticket out of Cuba that came without much supervision, most of them became emigres. Misión Barrio Adentro doesn’t really function anymore. Not that it ever addressed the problem which wasn’t a lack of doctors, but rather a lack of modern facilities through most of the country. Regardless, it’s still a bad deal, way uneven with the money that those barrels of oil are worth. Helsing posted:Do you have other friends from the families of military officers? I am curious about their perspectives. I used to, my uncle died a couple years back. He was a retired major of the Air Force who married one of my aunts. AFAIK the Air Force harbors a lot less love for Maduro than the Army. It’s through that Army coronel that I’ve observed a lot of the things officers get as bribes. Ford SUVs, Samsung TVs and phones, tons of home appliances. This family isn’t actually sanctioned, AFAIK, but their US tourist visa got revoked. Apparently the charges were dropped but he’s still in jail due to how slow the legal process is. I forget what the original charge was but it was ridiculous, it was like 7 synonyms for treason.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:32
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brugroffil posted:ok so why the meddling in places like Brazil and Honduras and *checks notes* every single LatAm country within the last few decades? Including (especially!!) Nicaragua? What specific meddling in Brazil and Honduras are you referring to? I mean there's lot's of historical meddling to refer to but I assume "last few decades" means you are referring to something that occurred after 1992, though if you just mean something earlier that's fine. when you mention Honduras I assume you are referring to the 2009 coup against Zelaya, although the primary left (I use this term loosely) criticism of US policy in that instance is that it didn't meddle ENOUGH, i.e. by standing by and doing nothing during and after the coup and diplomatically pushing for normal relations. also Saladman, I think you are wrong when you say the US doesn't care about Nicaragua. Notably John Bolton included the country in the "Troika of Tyranny" which he described last year. Although the USA has been surprisingly quiet about the protests in Nicaragua that followed the benefits reform last year, but that's easily explainable due to American leaders presumably supporting that reform and not really wanting to see it stopped, even if they still dislike Noriega and would like to see him out of office.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:51
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Yes propping up a right wing coup in Honduras is what I was referring to. The lawfare meddling against Lula in order to get a fascist elected would be the involvement in Brazil. The US is deeply interested in basically every Latin American country and remains active in the Trump years and will continue to do so afterwards
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Aug 23, 2019 18:22
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If only this sort of foreign policy were codified with some basic understandable formula, maybe based on the name of the president who first formulated it. But alas, it is not, and thusly we are forced to fumble around in the dark, forever unable to predict us foreign policy in this region.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:30
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BigFactory posted:Maybe, but that definitely would have been the result if the US never got involved in the first place. Maduro cant and couldn’t right the ship, so at some point he’d just gently caress off to Turkey with all the gold he stole and leave the smoking ruin to some upjumped generals to run. It’s wild how much of a monster you are. That said, there’s this unstated assumption that there IS a good outcome here. That any ending ends positively for Venezuela. I don’t think that’s a good assumption.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:39
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Lightning Knight posted:It’s wild how much of a monster you are. Care to explain why?
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Aug 23, 2019 18:44
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BigFactory posted:Care to explain why? It would be wasted effort on you, and should be self-explanatory to others. Even so, I am glad you exist, because you don’t pretend to be what you aren’t.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:47
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Lightning Knight posted:It would be wasted effort on you, and should be self-explanatory to others. It’s ok, I’ll read it if you write it.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:50
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brugroffil posted:Yes propping up a right wing coup in Honduras is what I was referring to. though i really don't understand this argument very well, since the American response to the Honduras coup seems to be exactly how you, and most of the other posters who bring up Honduras itt, want the US to respond to Venezuelan domestic political issues. Basically in Honduras all evidence I can remember is the US did nothing besides ignore everything that happened. There is evidence of some moderate fraud in subsequent Honduran elections that the US did nothing about, which is on a comparable level to the fraud identified in Maduro's first election. The relevant criticism I see is that the US is inconsistent, not that the US did anything in Honduras it shouldn't have. I'm not well informed on the Brazilian issues though. What is the lawfare meddling against Lula, and what was the US role?
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Aug 23, 2019 18:57
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BigFactory posted:It’s ok, I’ll read it if you write it. lol it doesn't matter if you read it or not, it would be like trying to explain right and wrong to a lizard
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Aug 23, 2019 18:58
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Doctor Jeep posted:lol it doesn't matter if you read it or not, it would be like trying to explain right and wrong to a lizard Cool attitude! That’s a great way to bring people around to your way of thinking. Amen brother!
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Aug 23, 2019 19:08
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BigFactory posted:Cool attitude! That’s a great way to bring people around to your way of thinking. Amen brother! anyone with half a brain sees that you're not gonna get brought around by anything
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Aug 23, 2019 19:12
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BigFactory posted:Right, but the unelected federal bureaucracy relies on appointments and hirings by the executive branch, and the Trump administration has done a shockingly poor job of filling vacancies (as well as insulting and alienating long time civil servants who left and created more vacancies). Particularly at the state department. Some of it was (supposedly) intentional when Tillerson was sec state but if anything it’s gotten worse since then. They’re woefully understaffed. So your report from 2014 is great, but it didn’t predict hurricane Trump. I think if you take a few days to actually read that monograph you might realize how completely baseless your intuition here is. fnox posted:Lmao, they bailed a couple of years back. Easy ticket out of Cuba that came without much supervision, most of them became emigres. Misión Barrio Adentro doesn’t really function anymore. Not that it ever addressed the problem which wasn’t a lack of doctors, but rather a lack of modern facilities through most of the country. According to Reuters there was supposed to be something like 2,000 doctors being redirected from Brazil to Venezuela earlier this year. Did that not happen or end up getting cancelled? quote:I used to, my uncle died a couple years back. He was a retired major of the Air Force who married one of my aunts. AFAIK the Air Force harbors a lot less love for Maduro than the Army. Oh that's interesting. I assumed he was probably a school pal, I'm sure growing up with him would have given a more in depth perspective though. Did you spend much time with other air force / military families growing up? Did you generally have overlapping social lives outside your family connections? Squalid posted:What specific meddling in Brazil and Honduras are you referring to? I mean there's lot's of historical meddling to refer to but I assume "last few decades" means you are referring to something that occurred after 1992, though if you just mean something earlier that's fine. What leads you to conclude that this is the "primary" left criticism of US policy in Honduras?
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Aug 23, 2019 19:15
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Helsing posted:I think if you take a few days to actually read that monograph you might realize how completely baseless your intuition here is. You’re denying the major staffing vacancies? Is it fake news? Doctor Jeep posted:anyone with half a brain sees that you're not gonna get brought around by anything
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Aug 23, 2019 19:25
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BigFactory posted:You’re denying the major staffing vacancies? Is it fake news? The vacancies you're referring to don't come even close to substantiating your idea that American foreign policy is exclusively concerned with whatever Trump himself is paying attention to.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:38
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BigFactory posted:Good debate and/or discussion! I found it enjoyable and in the end, that's all that matters
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Aug 23, 2019 19:49
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Helsing posted:The vacancies you're referring to don't come even close to substantiating your idea that American foreign policy is exclusively concerned with whatever Trump himself is paying attention to. I never said exclusively, but our corps of career diplomats and support staff is stretched thinner than its ever been in recent history. Somethings gotta give.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:51
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Trump is a trustworthy ally because he's bad at his job and lets fossil industry ghouls run US foreign policy while he tweets at fox news
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Aug 23, 2019 19:53
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Helsing posted:
because when I google "Hillary Honduras" that seems to be implicit in the articles that appear on the first page of the search hits. For example: The U.S. Role In The Honduras Coup And Subsequent Violence quote:Emails released last year by the State Department also show how Clinton rejected calls by the international community to condemn the coup and used her lobbyist friend Lanny Davis — who was working for the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, which supported the coup — to open communications with Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler installed by the military. Break the Silence: Hillary Clinton’s Role in Honduras’ 2009 Military Coup quote:Yet this past April when New York Daily News columnist Juan González asked Clinton whether she had any “concerns about her role in the aftermath of the coup,” she misrepresented what had happened in Honduras. The Democratic presidential candidate replied that the U.S. had not declared the removal of Zelaya a coup. Relying on a fine point of law which few would grasp, President Barack Obama declared it “not legal” and a “coup.” Obama did not, however, call it an “illegal” coup nor a “military” coup, which would have made cutting off military aid legally necessitated. Nonetheless, by November of 2009, Obama had walked back on even that and was pushing for an election in Honduras rather than the return of Zelaya to his democratically elected position. Dana Frank, a professor of history and expert on U.S. relations with Honduras, replied to Clinton’s remarks to González by calling it “chilling that a leading presidential candidate would say this was not a coup… She’s baldly lying when she says [the United States] never called it a coup.” In both the articles the main criticism is that the US did not actively denounce the coup, nor did it follow it up by cutting aid or taking other moves to compel Honduran politicians to behave. The problem described is less active involvement but that the US moved to normalize relations as quickly as possible, rather than using sanctions, cuts to aid, or other forms of pressure to influence Honduran politics. Unfortunately these criticism are rarely made explicit. It's difficult for me to infer exactly what brugroffil is describing or how he thinks the US should have responded to certain issues because he has not clearly described them. This is why I am asking him to be clear and specific, so that I do not have to extrapolate. If you (perhaps justifiably) believe the Huffington Post is not where I should be getting my leftist talking points, perhaps you could point me to better criticism of the US role in Honduras?
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Aug 23, 2019 19:53
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VitalSigns posted:Trump is a trustworthy ally because he's bad at his job and lets fossil industry ghouls run US foreign policy while he tweets at fox news No, I’m saying he’s bad at his job in fairly unprecedented ways (by modern standards at least) and it means that foreign policy in South America and elsewhere might be carried out poorly (by previous metrics of what “good” foreign policy is, not making an ethical statement).
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Aug 23, 2019 20:04
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