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fnox
May 19, 2013



Kurnugia posted:

A cessation of violence would immediately lead to the collapse of every state in south america. You said yourself that slavery wasnt really abolished, but simply replaced by capitalist serfdom with inconsequential differences. How do you think that happened if not through violence? Who do you think were responsible for overthrowing Maduro?

The hot take is that Latin America never had a revolution. Your states simply cancelled their tribute to Spain and continued as before. With violence.

"Overthrowing Maduro"? He's still in power and facing no significant opposition, and Chavez is absolutely the image of the modern day Caudillo. Chavistas came to power after a coup, and their entire platform is based upon vengeance and social violence. The revolution that Chavez proposed was not one where there would be any form of peaceful transfer of power, his people took over and replaced the old money, becoming worse than they've ever been. There is no clearer example of that capitalist serfdom than modern day Venezuela under Maduro, most labour is paid less than a dollar a day, sometimes they're even paid in food.

You're right though, there's never been a revolution. There's never been a change in this perception that somehow it's through militarism and by following bold strongmen that we'll get out of this permanent glut. For a few decades, Venezuela was almost on the track to get out of that loop; then came Lusinchi and CAP and just like that we were back to square one. The left-right alignments don't matter at all, the goal is always the same, so long as it's military men running things.

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Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
I guess he meant Evo

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

Elias_Maluco posted:

I guess he meant Evo

Yeah

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo
You do not overthrow a ruling hierarchy without violence.

ZearothK
Aug 25, 2008

I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021


Yeah, the caudillo part is very relevant for Brazilian history. A lot of the powerful political dynasties are literally Portuguese families who have been here since the colonial days and a lot of Brazilian history is the local military killing republican, emancipatory or leftist movements that could upset the status quo. We only got a republic declared when the big landowners figured they could have more power without an Emperor, who could occasionally be disagreeable.

fnox
May 19, 2013



Kurnugia posted:

You do not overthrow a ruling hierarchy without violence.

The ruling hierarchy is there because of violence. It's very easy to continuously demand sacrifices from others when it isn't your life that's at risk. Violence is the way that the ruling hierarchy manipulates those under them.

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

fnox posted:

The ruling hierarchy is there because of violence. It's very easy to continuously demand sacrifices from others when it isn't your life that's at risk. Violence is the way that the ruling hierarchy manipulates those under them.

What sacrifices did i demand from just now?

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo
i mean i agree, the ruling hierarchy is there because of violence and remains in power through violence. they aren't going to relinquish power without violence either, so... we are in agreement then?

shades of blue
Sep 27, 2012
All of fnox's posts should be understood in the context of him not believing that anything better is remotely possible

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose

Sampatrick posted:

All of fnox's posts should be understood in the context of him not believing that anything better is remotely possible

He literally lived through seeing anything better for Venezuela get squashed by Maduro's cronies through violence to the point he became a literal refugee. Don't be an rear end.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010
Let's:
a) not relitigate fnox's real-life past
b) make arguments centered around actual provable facts and data, rather than personal experiences and anecdotes that are inherently gonna be incomplete due to the massive divides in Venezuelan and ex-Venezuelan society

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Kurnugia posted:

What sacrifices did i demand from just now?

The issue is that this attitude:

Kurnugia posted:

You do not overthrow a ruling hierarchy without violence.

Heavily favors people who would overturn one authority in favor of another military dictatorship. It's also the same basis on which people are handwaving the flaws in Columbia's new government as just necessary growing pains, since there was some large sentiment against reelection that the current regime uses as their basis for legitimacy.

And with regard to Venezuela, it voices a hope that the starving, economically destroyed citizens of the country take up arms to solve their situation, which isn't exactly feasible or very desirable, because the one thing Maduro has kept together is the army. The prospect of a bloody civil war or a bloody american invasion and having to suck up to new warlords to be more benevolent (or at least more competent) than the old one isn't great, so it's better to seize upon the hope for a peaceful solution.

And while massive aid programs could solve a lot, you're not going to get that from the current xenophobic and sometimes genocidal US government, so it's not worth pivoting to that right now either.

fnox
May 19, 2013



Main Paineframe posted:

Let's:
a) not relitigate fnox's real-life past
b) make arguments centered around actual provable facts and data, rather than personal experiences and anecdotes that are inherently gonna be incomplete due to the massive divides in Venezuelan and ex-Venezuelan society

Every possible metric for Venezuela shows that life got significantly worse under Maduro, every single one. This shouldn't be up for debate; matter of fact it isn't, you can ask anybody inside or outside the country and you'll get the same answer: whatever positive was attained under Chavez was not only reversed but actively made worse.

Do you want to enforce a fact based discussion about the country? Because I tried to, but the following facts are somehow in dispute:

1) The Venezuelan crisis preceded economic sanctions. The first shortages started in 2013 at the latest. The first economic sanctions rolled out in 2017 after Trump was inaugurated.

2) The Venezuelan government is corrupt. It is the most corrupt government Venezuela has ever faced, according to Transparency International. In fact, it is bottom 5, just above Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and Somalia. The amount of revenue that has been stolen from the country's coffers is hard to gauge, but admissions by deserting ministers under Chavez claim that the number is in the hundreds of billions.

3) The Venezuelan government violates human rights and has violently repressed opposition against it, according to the UN Human Rights commission, and this violence has only gotten worse over the years. Thousands have been killed by security forces, thousands more have been imprisoned. There's widespread reports of torture, of harassment, of the use of military courts to try civilians.

4) Venezuela experiences the highest crime rate outside of active war zones. The evidence of this is not anecdotal, the unofficial (since the government has refused to release official figures) Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia keeps record of the murder rate, which at its peak was 90 homicides per 100000 inhabitants and is at around 60 nowadays. Don't trust those numbers? The UN places the current murder rate at 56, with only El Salvador being higher than that.

4) Venezuelan emigration has triggered the worst refugee crisis Latin America has ever seen. I've never heard of anybody accusing the Syrian diaspora of being bougie, but that's a common accusation you hear being thrown to "ex-Venezuelan" society. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.6 million people have fled the country (roughly 15% of the population before the crisis). 600000 are registered as refugees. 2 million have entered other Latin American countries under new visas issued due to the crisis.

5) The Venezuelan economic collapse cannot be explained solely by a fall in oil revenue. Unemployment is over 40%. Shortages coincide almost identically the implementation of price controls for those items. Local food production has been disappearing steadily since Maduro and Chavez expropriated farms and industries. The government's insistence in controlling food distribution and importation has resulted in massive amounts of waste, best exemplified by the PudreVAL incident of 2010, where 170000 tons of food went to waste in warehouses due to mismanagement. Currency controls are a major driver in inflation, so is the massive overspending, so is the insane insistence by the government to subsidize gasoline to the point that it is essentially free for everyone in the country.

6) The Venezuelan economy is paradoxically over-reliant on American industry and products. America was the largest purchaser of Venezuelan oil until 2019. In 20 years of Chavismo there was never any attempt to reverse this. This is under the US' own admission. The US dollar is currently used for most transactions in the country.

7) There was no attempt under Maduro or Chavez to move the economy away from oil extraction. In fact, every other industry in the country has actively struggled since at least 2003, some which were once enough to make the country self sufficient just flat out disappeared. Hundreds of infrastucture projects were left incomplete, and the existing infrastructure was left to decay, resulting in completely insufficient power generation, water treatment, roads, access to internet, healthcare, education, and just about everything else. There's been power outages every single dry season since 2012 because the hydroelectric plant that supplies the entire country and was built in the 1970s is on its last legs.

I've said, repeatedly, that you do not need to rely on my anecdotes. There's documentaries, there's great ones by DW, there's leftist sources from within the country decrying harassment against workers and unions, the evidence is overwhelming in saying the same thing, Maduro has been an unmitigated disaster for the country. This idea that the only people who have been affected or who have left the country are bougie is a lie, it has no basis in reality, and I can also show you numbers and studies on this.

Unless we have some baseline truths being enforced, you'll see that any discussion about this topic will keep on being just drive by shitposts.

fnox fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 23, 2020

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

SlothfulCobra posted:

Heavily favors people who would overturn one authority in favor of another military dictatorship. It's also the same basis on which people are handwaving the flaws in Columbia's new government as just necessary growing pains, since there was some large sentiment against reelection that the current regime uses as their basis for legitimacy.

um... how on earth is the necessity for violence to uproot a ruling class a basis of legitimacy for.... a columbian centrist party? what

fnox posted:


1)The first economic sanctions rolled out in 2017 after Trump was inaugurated.

nah

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep

Kurnugia posted:

um... how on earth is the necessity for violence to uproot a ruling class a basis of legitimacy for.... a columbian centrist party? what


nah

Colombian

fnox
May 19, 2013




No counter argument, no cited facts, no anything. It's just that the perception of the world of some D&D posters cannot fit reality, so its gotta rely on lies. Go ahead, look it up, find these economic sanctions that existed before 2017.

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis
U.S. President Barack Obama issued a presidential order on 9 March 2015 declaring Venezuela a "threat to its national security" and ordered the United States Department of the Treasury to freeze property and assets of seven Venezuelan officials.[22][23] The U.S. held the seven individuals sanctioned responsible for "excesses committed in the repression of the demonstrations of February 2014 that left at least 43 dead" including "erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, restrictions on press freedom, violence and human rights abuses in response to anti-government protests, arbitrary arrests and arrests of anti-government protesters, and significant public corruption" according to BBC Mundo.[24] Among those sanctioned were Antonio Benavides Torres, commander in the Venezuelan armed forces and former leader of the Venezuelan National Guard, and SEBIN directors Manuel Bernal Martínez and Gustavo González López.[25]

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

im bad at english

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo
but i do have to literally quote a loving wikipedia article it seems

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose
Sanctions targeting individuals are not the same thing as sanctions targeting an entire country and its disingenuous to claim they're equivalent.

fnox
May 19, 2013



You're saying, because of 7 people being targetted by the US Department of Treasury, the country collapsed into a crisis.

poo poo, you didn't even bother reading the full Wikipedia page, or you would have read about Hugo "El Pollo" Carvajal, who was similarly sanctioned in 2008 along with three others, shortly before the economy reached a peak in 2010. He's by the way since turned, and admitted being involved in state sponsored drug trafficking.

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Sanctions targeting individuals are not the same thing as sanctions targeting an entire country and its disingenuous to claim they're equivalent.

so what?

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose

So, you're factually wrong. That's kind of important.

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

So, you're factually wrong. That's kind of important.

factually wrong about what?

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose
You, Kurnugia, are wrong about blanket economic sanctions on the Venezuelan state predating Trump. This is what fnox was very obviously referring to, and you are resorting to blatant evasion in pretending not to understand this. And by "this", refer to the earlier sentences of this post.

Pomeroy
Apr 20, 2020

fnox posted:

"Overthrowing Maduro"? He's still in power and facing no significant opposition, and Chavez is absolutely the image of the modern day Caudillo. Chavistas came to power after a coup, and their entire platform is based upon vengeance and social violence. The revolution that Chavez proposed was not one where there would be any form of peaceful transfer of power, his people took over and replaced the old money, becoming worse than they've ever been. There is no clearer example of that capitalist serfdom than modern day Venezuela under Maduro, most labour is paid less than a dollar a day, sometimes they're even paid in food.

You're right though, there's never been a revolution. There's never been a change in this perception that somehow it's through militarism and by following bold strongmen that we'll get out of this permanent glut. For a few decades, Venezuela was almost on the track to get out of that loop; then came Lusinchi and CAP and just like that we were back to square one. The left-right alignments don't matter at all, the goal is always the same, so long as it's military men running things.

"vengeance and social violence" - that's fantastic. The PSUV lets actual traitors run around the country free while they call for a military coup, they barely punished an actual coup that kidnapped the president and shot people in the streets, but they're supposed to be bloodthirsty savages. You've got a real cop style definition of violence: it's all while and good while the ruling class beats workers with a stick, but the moment they wrestle it away, let alone brandish it, then you cry "violence!"

Kurnugia
Sep 2, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo
hell if you think that the united states government needs to pass a law to wage economic war on a country, i dunno what to tell ya. you're stupid i guess? the question was when did america start sanctioning venezuela, and it was during obama

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose

Kurnugia posted:

hell if you think that the united states government needs to pass a law to wage economic war on a country, i dunno what to tell ya. you're stupid i guess? the question was when did america start sanctioning venezuela, and it was during obama

This claim is factually false, as has been demonstrated by the very link you cited to support your position.

fnox
May 19, 2013



Kurnugia posted:

hell if you think that the united states government needs to pass a law to wage economic war on a country, i dunno what to tell ya. you're stupid i guess? the question was when did america start sanctioning venezuela, and it was during obama

How? Through what method? What proof is there of this? Are Maduro's economic actions therefore justified?

Pomeroy posted:

"vengeance and social violence" - that's fantastic. The PSUV lets actual traitors run around the country free while they call for a military coup, they barely punished an actual coup that kidnapped the president and shot people in the streets, but they're supposed to be bloodthirsty savages. You've got a real cop style definition of violence: it's all while and good while the ruling class beats workers with a stick, but the moment they wrestle it away, let alone brandish it, then you cry "violence!"

What do you think about the government's repression of unions and protests by workers demanding better conditions? Or the UN's report on the situation in the country, where they allege the government has killed 6,856 people extrajudicially, with they themselves alleging the number is likely higher?

Also, this rhetoric is just worrying. "Actual traitors", according to whom? Your evidence of the PSUV being merciful is that they're not killing their political enemies when they could?

punk rebel ecks
Dec 11, 2010

A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.
It blows my mind that people still defend the Venezuelan government.

coronavirus
Jan 27, 2020

by Cyrano4747

uninterrupted posted:

build more ties with countries that believe in freedom like China/Russia/Iran, build more industry at home.

I am assuming this is a joke right. You can't actually believe this? Like I get the whole USA is bad thing (obviously) but that doesn't make other garbage governments somehow good for opposing them.

Pomeroy
Apr 20, 2020

fnox posted:

How? Through what method? What proof is there of this? Are Maduro's economic actions therefore justified?


What do you think about the government's repression of unions and protests by workers demanding better conditions? Or the UN's report on the situation in the country, where they allege the government has killed 6,856 people extrajudicially, with they themselves alleging the number is likely higher?

Also, this rhetoric is just worrying. "Actual traitors", according to whom? Your evidence of the PSUV being merciful is that they're not killing their political enemies when they could?

I'm sure you won't like the site hosting it, but among other things, this report the State Department put up and then quickly removed when they realized they were saying the quiet parts aloud outlines the individual sanctions folks are dismissing as a component of the economic war: https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/US-Department-of-State-Venezuela-actions.pdf

This report from the Congressional Research service also clarifies the nature of these so-called "individual" sanctions: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

If you want a specific response on union questions, ask a more specific question and cite specific sources.

As far as Bachelet's report goes, I'm with Alfred de Zayas: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/weaponizing-human-rights-un-high-commissioner-bachelets-venezuela-report-follows-us-regime-change-script/

Guaido is a traitor by any consistent definition, and if a US American official were to pull the stunts he has he'd be dead or in prison for the rest of his life. Can you imagine what it would look like in the US if Nancy Pelosi (though people outside her party actually know who she is, so it's not a perfect example) declared the Trump administration illegitimate, called for foreign powers to recognize her as an interim President, while coordinating closely with, let's say, the Chinese government, and asked the army to install her? Do you have any notion, if she wasn't just quietly disappeared to an asylum, how much blood there'd be on the streets? How many treason trials we'd see if anyone else in the party went along with her?

Pomeroy fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Apr 23, 2020

fnox
May 19, 2013



Pomeroy posted:

I'm sure you won't like the site hosting it, but among other things, this report the State Department put up and then quickly removed when they realized they were saying the quiet parts aloud outlines the individual sanctions folks are dismissing as a component of the economic war: https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/US-Department-of-State-Venezuela-actions.pdf

This report from the Congressional Research service also clarifies the nature of these so-called "individual" sanctions: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

Nothing in this supposedly leaked government is new information. It doesn’t explain how the US government caused the Venezuelan economy to collapse in 2016, or why there were shortages in 2013. Don’t you think it’s an easier explanation to just admit the government mismanaged it’s economy?

There’s also nothing in that document from Congress that explains how this economic warfare was supposed to be carried out before 2017. Like, well it does clarify what the sanctions are, I guess it does do that, it doesn’t explain how a country collapses because of individual sanctions. The document itself confirms the only actions before 2017 were against individuals.

Pomeroy posted:

If you want a specific response on union questions, ask a more specific question and cite specific sources.

Sure. Here’s a write up on the way the government deceived unions. Here’s one on the military’s harassment of union workers and its repression against protests by workers


Who’s saying...What exactly? I had to go through this entire article and it is literally nothing but deflection from the most significant claims of the report. It is saying nothing about the claims that the government has killed thousands of people, instead choosing to deflect entirely to violence committed by the opposition.

Pomeroy posted:

Guaido is a traitor by any consistent definition, and if a US American official were to pull the stunts he has he'd be dead or in prison for the rest of his life. Can you imagine what it would look like in the US if Nancy Pelosi (though people outside her party actually know who she is, so it's not a perfect example) declared the Trump administration illegitimate, called for foreign powers to recognize her as an interim President, while coordinating closely with, let's say, the Chinese government, and asked the army to install her? Do you have any notion, if she wasn't just quietly disappeared to an asylum, how much blood there'd be on the streets? How many treason trials we'd see if anyone else in the party went along with her?

What? Are you like ironically asking this? Are you American?

fnox fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Apr 24, 2020

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

Pomeroy posted:

I'm sure you won't like the site hosting it, but among other things, this report the State Department put up and then quickly removed when they realized they were saying the quiet parts aloud outlines the individual sanctions folks are dismissing as a component of the economic war: https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/US-Department-of-State-Venezuela-actions.pdf

This report from the Congressional Research service also clarifies the nature of these so-called "individual" sanctions: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

If you want a specific response on union questions, ask a more specific question and cite specific sources.

As far as Bachelet's report goes, I'm with Alfred de Zayas: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/weaponizing-human-rights-un-high-commissioner-bachelets-venezuela-report-follows-us-regime-change-script/

Guaido is a traitor by any consistent definition, and if a US American official were to pull the stunts he has he'd be dead or in prison for the rest of his life. Can you imagine what it would look like in the US if Nancy Pelosi (though people outside her party actually know who she is, so it's not a perfect example) declared the Trump administration illegitimate, called for foreign powers to recognize her as an interim President, while coordinating closely with, let's say, the Chinese government, and asked the army to install her? Do you have any notion, if she wasn't just quietly disappeared to an asylum, how much blood there'd be on the streets? How many treason trials we'd see if anyone else in the party went along with her?

those documents don't really support the argument that American financial sanctions on individuals had a significant impact on the Venezuelan economy prior to 2015. In fact they mostly just highlight the insignificance of those actions compared to those which followed. They quite explicit on the point, one emphasizes 2017 as the beginning of policy implementation and the stated goal is pressuring the Maduro government. Also I'm not sure why you think the US government would take down these documents "for saying the quiet part loud," since you can find documents saying the exact same things up on the state department website right now.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

The thing the anti-Maduro folks keep omitting is any sort of remotely convincing argument that their preferred politicians wouldn't just take the status quo and shift more wealth to the upper class.

They're relying on some sort of bizarre logic that completely ignores historical context and assumes that it is quite literally impossible for anything to be worse. They would quickly learn that the latter isn't true if their wishes were actually answered (or maybe they wouldn't, since the whole proposed game-plan under someone like Guaido is to sell off public resources to enrich the upper class, and 99% of the what is shown on US media would be the perspective of those people, though there's a decent chance information about the actual death squads that would arise under those circumstances would be impossible to suppress).

Pomeroy
Apr 20, 2020

fnox posted:

Nothing in this supposedly leaked government is new information. It doesn’t explain how the US government caused the Venezuelan economy to collapse in 2016, or why there were shortages in 2013. Don’t you think it’s an easier explanation to just admit the government mismanaged it’s economy?

There’s also nothing in that document from Congress that explains how this economic warfare was supposed to be carried out before 2017. Like, well it does clarify what the sanctions are, I guess it does do that, it doesn’t explain how a country collapses because of individual sanctions. The document itself confirms the only actions before 2017 were against individuals.

Suffice to say, I have to deal with OFAC processes at my job, and characterizing sanctions against individual leaders of any kind of organization, state, party, bank, business, as meaningfully separate, in practice from sanctioning those institutions, is something an honest person can only do out of ignorance.


as far as the first article goes, it's no surprise to me that the Friedrich "arm the sturmtruppen to kill commies" Ebert Foundation opposes any working class struggle for political power, and wants workers to confine themselves to the narrowest kind of trade union struggle within a democratic capitalist system. Neither is it shocking that certain unions in a country historically subject to semi-colonialism might prefer to avoid the dangers of anti-imperialist struggle. Sankara had some words about that kind of "syndicalist." For the second, while there have been conflicts and disagreements between certain sections of the PSUV, the broader Chavista movement, and the PCV, the latter are firmly part of that movement, and your use of this internal dispute is pure, cynical opportunism.

fnox posted:

Who’s saying...What exactly? I had to go through this entire article and it is literally nothing but deflection from the most significant claims of the report. It is saying nothing about the claims that the government has killed thousands of people, instead choosing to deflect entirely to violence committed by the opposition.

I'm not trying to quibble about numbers, the point is it's a country in crisis, in near civil-war conditions. Of course there's violence, both from the state and the opposition. The objection to the report is that it, and folks like you making use of it, try to characterize this as the government taking basically fascist repressive measures against legitimate political opposition, which you can only do by glossing over the actual character and actions of that opposition.

fnox posted:

What? Are you like ironically asking this? Are you American?

Ah, feigned incredulity, there's a fresh rhetorical angle. Try addressing the point.

Really, let's cut to the chase. The PSUV, contrary to your insistence that they are bloodthirsty killers, are determined to avoid either civil war or US invasion. This produces contradictions, much of the Venezuelan capitalist class sees no reason to tolerate a government that they don't control, and so do all that they can, in collaboration with the US to bring it down. The government is unwilling to act decisively against them because it would in all likelihood mean war, but they are unwilling to just surrender political power back to the capitalists, who they know perfectly well will launch the most vicious reprisals, so just as Allende did, they seek a peaceful, gradual route to socialism. High oil prices allowed them to overcome the contradictions that brought Chile to its crisis, but now those contradiction come roaring back. You know perfectly well, if the capitalists regain control what it will mean. It will mean a bloodletting, it will mean the millions of homes the government has built for the working class will be handed over to landlords for pennies.

Pomeroy fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Apr 24, 2020

uninterrupted
Jun 20, 2011

coronavirus posted:

I am assuming this is a joke right. You can't actually believe this? Like I get the whole USA is bad thing (obviously) but that doesn't make other garbage governments somehow good for opposing them.

Yes, obviously a lot of countries do bad things, but china/iran/russia are objectively better actors on the world stage for average people than the US is.

You just have to look at this thread, where the pro-Trump/anti-Maduro/anti-Morales posters champion politicians who want to cut food assistance and public housing during food crisis.

uninterrupted
Jun 20, 2011
Quick reminder that the previous incarnation of Guaido, Pedro Carmona,
- literally threw out the constitution and made himself an absolute dictator through the Carmona Decree
- threw out 49 wildly popular executive decrees by Chavez, including land reform and state control of petrolium resources
- attempted to have Chavez captured and executed

this is the future fnox wants.

Pomeroy
Apr 20, 2020

uninterrupted posted:

Yes, obviously a lot of countries do bad things, but china/iran/russia are objectively better actors on the world stage for average people than the US is.

You just have to look at this thread, where the pro-Trump/anti-Maduro/anti-Morales posters champion politicians who want to cut food assistance and public housing during food crisis.

and in each of those three cases, the governments in question are immeasurably superior, from the standpoint of the regular working people, than what preceded them (Chiang, Pahlavi, Yeltsin), and the empire has never forgiven the loss of those lackeys

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coronavirus
Jan 27, 2020

by Cyrano4747

uninterrupted posted:

Yes, obviously a lot of countries do bad things, but china/iran/russia are objectively better actors on the world stage for average people than the US is.

How much do you know about the history of Russia or China say 50 years ago or more? My guess is not much.

And your statement wasn't even about whose a better 'world actor' but what country is more free. China doesn't even have free internet. In Russia its still ok for the prime minister to hate gays. Iran's treatment of women is stuck in the 1800s. USA is a loving paradise compared to this hellscapes.

Now, if you want to say USA is clearly less free than an actual good country like Norway or whatever, sure.

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