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Vlex posted:No, I could access dolartoday just fine in both Caracas and Pto. Ayacucho last time I was there. YouTube was blocked in the IVIC for some reason though last time, 12 months ago it was still accessible. Dolartoday.com is blocked currently Regarding the prisons, what can you expect from a country where the interior minister is being prosecuted in the U.S for drug trafficking.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:45
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Venezuelan prisons being hellish pits of human misery predates Chavez. What is relatively new is the almost inconceivable level of corruption (surprise!) at the Ministry of Penitentiaries, specially under the leadership of Iris Varela. She's been the minister since 2011. Varela is currently under investigation at the National Assembly for having embezzled at least $6.4 million from the ministry. Plus, in 2012, she awarded seven contracts through the ministry to companies she personally selected with virtually no oversight. One of the companies she awarded a contract to was headed at the time by the father of one of her children. She was also given $348 million in 2012 to build 24 prisons by 2015, and so far only two have been built. Aside from the financial stuff, Varela is definitely one of the more outspoken ministers. She's one of the more bold-faced liars, too, since I can't count the amount of times that I've seen her on the media saying things like, "there are no drugs or weapons in" in 90% of Venezuelan jails, or that Venezuela has "one of the best prison systems in the world", or like in my last post, that there are no pranes in prison. She seems to be particularly immune from reality. There are also all kinds of rumours that she's personally involved/benefiting from the pran system, but I don't know a whole lot about that.
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Aug 6, 2016 00:45
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The Venezuelan prison system is in the Top 300 in the world, thank you very much.
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Aug 6, 2016 06:02
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We've talked about Polar Enterprises in the thread before, but just as a summary: it's the largest food producing company in Venezuela, and the largest Venezuelan private company still operating. It makes virtually every single Venezuelan food staple you can name. Polar's CEO, Lorenzo Mendoza, is usually the target of vicious attacks by Maduro and other PSUV officials, since he's living proof that private industry is not the parasitic cyst on the life force of the country that chavismo would have you believe. It's not at all unusual for Maduro to threaten to expropriate Polar or to insult him publicly by calling him "a thief", "traitor", "hypocrite", "two-faced", "saboteur", and that he's waging war against the country. As a result, Polar is often the target of increased scrutiny from state organizations. I don't have the link handy, but I remember reading that the revenue agency and all of the other superintendencies in the country will conduct surprise inspections at Polar sites dozens of times per month hoping to catch it for the smallest infractions. Last Thursday, Polar said that during one of these inspections (which included National Guard soldiers), government officials took 14,000 kilograms worth of product from one of its warehouses in Apure state. Polar says there was no reason to take the product, and that much of it had already been sold and was on its way to clients around the country. Yesterday, the same thing happened, and the government took 1,656 kilograms of pasta and margarine. The fact that the National Guard is involved in these types of activities makes me 100% certain that the product was simply stolen under the pretense of some infraction or another so that these officials and their networks could sell it for a profit.
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Aug 6, 2016 15:40
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It is legitimately kind of heartwarming that even though he doesn't have to and must be losing money on doing so Mendoza continues to operate in Venezuela.
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Aug 6, 2016 16:24
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fnox posted:It's literally part of our culture to make fun of our own misery, https://www.elchiguirebipolar.net kind of exemplifies that. But a great deal of what makes Venezuela what it is, is the Venezuelan people's inability to take anything seriously. This has good and bad consequences depending on how you look at it. This site is hilarious and uncomfortably close to Chilean private humor during and after the Pinochet years. Also, today I can't access it. 
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Aug 6, 2016 19:57
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Feinne posted:It is legitimately kind of heartwarming that even though he doesn't have to and must be losing money on doing so Mendoza continues to operate in Venezuela. I admit that I'm a cynic, so my suspicion would be that he's betting on the government collapsing or being replaced, and he doesn't want to risk losing a market of ~30 million people by pulling out now and leaving a vacuum that would be filled by someone else. People gotta eat, even when everything else goes to hell, so even in chaos there would be opportunity for a regional competitor to step in and dominate food distribution and sales. Additionally, while I'm not really aware of Polar's entire range of products, I suspect that what they sell is more attuned to the Venezuelan market (and perhaps those of other countries in the region), so letting go of Venezuela while not having anything to replace it in terms of sales, production, facilities, and so on is probably worse than trying to ride out what is hopefully a temporary (relatively speaking) storm. EDIT: But I admit there could also be a bit of national brand romanticism, based on what people have said about the company in this thread, that "Polar is Venezuela" and its continued existence is a flip of the bird to Maduro's government and a rebuttal of his rhetoric. Kthulhu5000 fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 21:24
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Any Caracas goons have a taxi friend? I need someone to drive me around this Tuesday
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Aug 6, 2016 23:55
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El Hefe posted:Any Caracas goons have a taxi friend? I need someone to drive me around this Tuesday I have a guy, but he only works nights, if you need his number let me know. During the day I stick with EasyTaxi, I've yet to run into an issue with them after almost a year using the service and they just began accepting MercadoPago if you don't wanna carry cash around.
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Aug 7, 2016 00:03
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I need someone for the whole day actually, you can't bring cellphones and stuff into the U.S embassy so I need someone to hold that while I'm there, apparently they don't have lockers or anything...
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Aug 7, 2016 00:19
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The Alfredo Keller y Asociados polling firm released the results of its latest survey on public perceptions of the situation in the country today. The results paint a pretty clear picture consistent with what we've been seeing since 2014: a majority of Venezuelans have a negative view of the country's current situation, and blame Maduro/the PSUV/chavismo for the crisis. The results of the survey are here (in Spanish). I've pulled out most of the findings:
For the stats geeks, the survey sampled 1,200 individuals between July 8 and 29. It is accurate within +/-2.89% and has a confidence level of 95.5%. Feinne posted:It is legitimately kind of heartwarming that even though he doesn't have to and must be losing money on doing so Mendoza continues to operate in Venezuela. Like Kthulhu5000 pointed out, though, Mendoza is a businessman first. Polar's got too much of a history in Venezuela for him to just pack up and leave. I think this is one of the reasons why we get rumours every once in a while that the PSUV is getting ready to expropriate Polar. I think that most people believe that this is the only way the PSUV could get Mendoza out of Polar/Venezuela.
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Aug 7, 2016 03:41
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I think it's telling that when asked about affiliation you have a massive 35% of people who don't believe in the government that, even in this situation, would rather not associate themselves with the opposition and rather say they are independent. Even though the other question for removing Maduro adds up the percentages of people who identify as opposition and independent fairly well. Is this indicative of such a bad view of the formal opposition? How can the MUD be so unappealing that it is only attracting just over half of people disaffected with the current regime.
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Aug 7, 2016 08:54
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:I think it's telling that when asked about affiliation you have a massive 35% of people who don't believe in the government that, even in this situation, would rather not associate themselves with the opposition and rather say they are independent. Even though the other question for removing Maduro adds up the percentages of people who identify as opposition and independent fairly well. Is this indicative of such a bad view of the formal opposition? How can the MUD be so unappealing that it is only attracting just over half of people disaffected with the current regime. Because they're perceived as useless and traitorous. They did absolutely nothing when given a supermajority in the National Assembly that would have easily enabled them to remove every single corrupt minister, the TSJ and the CNE, and they have constantly shown themselves to be completely isolated from the plight of the actual Venezuelans with their absolutely loving idiotic protests, including that poo poo with the donkey in Sabana Grande a couple of months ago. They want the easy way in, they don't care to fight.
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Aug 7, 2016 10:17
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The ni-nis ("neither-nor", from the phrase "Ni opocision ni chavista" [Neither opposition nor chavista]) have been around for a while, certainly before the MUD came about. I'm not sure how their slice of the pie has fluctuated over the years, but this article from 2004 says that "one in three" Venezuelans are ni-ni, while this one from 2012 says that it's "one third".Interestingly, the second article describes the typical ni-ni voter as young, female, lower-income, and "progressive but more worried about the struggles of daily life". Like fnox said, I think if the question is, "Why don't more people support the opposition in 2016?", a lot of ni-nis would identify with his answer. But if this phenomenon predates the MUD and today's conditions, there's got to be another answer. My hunch is that by the late 1990s, there was so much discontent, so much angst over politics in the country that a good chunk of people didn't identify with any political party because "they're all the same bunch of crooks anyway". Come election day, you might actually go vote out of some sense that this crook wouldn't steal as much from you as the other candidate, but many others would stay home. When Chavez came around, some of those people might have gone on to identify with chavismo because it was so radically different from anything that had existed in the country going back to the start of the democratic era in 1958. Still, I suspect that a good chunk of the ni-nis today are people who are continuing that late-1990s legacy of rejecting all parties, and have simply added chavismo to the list.
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Aug 7, 2016 14:33
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fnox posted:Because they're perceived as useless and traitorous. They did absolutely nothing when given a supermajority in the National Assembly that would have easily enabled them to remove every single corrupt minister, the TSJ and the CNE, and they have constantly shown themselves to be completely isolated from the plight of the actual Venezuelans with their absolutely loving idiotic protests, including that poo poo with the donkey in Sabana Grande a couple of months ago. The dumbest one yet has got to be the protest they called for the upcoming first day of September if the electoral council hasn't announced the date for the next step of the referendum. Almost an entire loving month from now when every day is essential. Seriously, either they're stupid or they just think that all Venezuelans are.
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Aug 7, 2016 14:34
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Labradoodle posted:The dumbest one yet has got to be the protest they called for the upcoming first day of September if the electoral council hasn't announced the date for the next step of the referendum. Almost an entire loving month from now when every day is essential. I think that they're so disappointed over the low turnouts for the demonstrations Capriles called for last week with a one or two day run-up that they figure that if they give people a month's warning, some more might show up
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Aug 7, 2016 14:38
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Chuck Boone posted:I think that they're so disappointed over the low turnouts for the demonstrations Capriles called for last week with a one or two day run-up that they figure that if they give people a month's warning, some more might show up I agree, I think I remember Chuo making some comments about that protest and saying the number of people was worrisome – however, this seems like an overcorrection. A month is an eternity in Venezuela these days and the response to the news seemed rather angry with a lot of people blaming the MUD for wasting time. If they do manage to pull it off and gather lots of people from the countryside in Caracas things are going to get ugly. I expect the government will attempt to close all the access to the city and people who have traveled a long way might not take well to that.
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Aug 7, 2016 15:17
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Are they actually planning anything, anything at all, that is remotely meaningful, or is dumb pointless protest it?
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Aug 7, 2016 15:44
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GlyphGryph posted:Are they actually planning anything, anything at all, that is remotely meaningful, or is dumb pointless protest it? It's pointless because they have agreed behind closed doors that the referendum will not take place this year, thus making any attempts at continuing it pointless. There will not be a change of government, at least not in a civic manner.
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Aug 7, 2016 15:46
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Are they makingany noise about the government being illegitimate or pointimg out all the illegal things they are doing? Thats the thing that confuses me the most - from the made up signature effort to this joke of a protest plan they seem to be sending the message that the stuff the government is doing actually is acceptable and its just insane. I have trouble believing they want to fix thinga, at this point it almost seems like they are working for the government as a false alternative sort of situation
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Aug 7, 2016 18:22
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GlyphGryph posted:Are they makingany noise about the government being illegitimate or pointimg out all the illegal things they are doing? Thats the thing that confuses me the most - from the made up signature effort to this joke of a protest plan they seem to be sending the message that the stuff the government is doing actually is acceptable and its just insane. I have trouble believing they want to fix thinga, at this point it almost seems like they are working for the government as a false alternative sort of situation On one extreme of this answer is the group of people who believe that Maduro was born in Colombia and is therefore ineligible to hold office. I've never seen any convincing evidence of this, and as far as I can tell this whole theory started with the fact that Maduro himself has been really vague about where he was born and has even given contradictory answers. Other PSUV officials (Tibisay Lucena and Elias Jaua are two that I can remember off the top of my head) have also said that Maduro was born in different places. I think this fact led some people to start digging around, and then the theory just sort of took off. For what it's worth, I don't think this is a majority view within the opposition, and Henry Ramos Allup said recently that he didn't think Maduro had been born in Venezuela. Then you've got people like Leopoldo Lopez and Lilian Tintori (his wife) and their camp who won't mince words and will call Maduro a dictator. Just yesterday, Lepoldo Lopez said through his Twitter account (which I'm guessing Lilian manages) that "a government that does not respect the right to vote is a dictatorship", referring to Maduro and the recall referendum. These are the kinds of people who would argue for invoking article 350 of the constitution (which establishes the duty to rebel against tyranny). Surprisingly, this camp isn't as large as I'd expect. It's telling that Leopoldo Lopez is the probably the highest-profile proponent of this line of thought in the opposition and he's in jail. Finally, there is the rest of the opposition, and these are the people who, as you say, seem to focus more on the illegal things the government is doing more than the illegitimacy of the government itself. I think that this camp is probably the largest one, and this is probably one of the reasons why we're seeing lots of frustration from opposition supporters, since there's a perception that this main camp is not really doing all that it needs to do given the severity of the situation (i.e., Venezuela is a dictatorship).
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Aug 7, 2016 18:43
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Chuck Boone posted:On one extreme of this answer is the group of people who believe that Maduro was born in Colombia and is therefore ineligible to hold office. I've never seen any convincing evidence of this, and as far as I can tell this whole theory started with the fact that Maduro himself has been really vague about where he was born and has even given contradictory answers. Other PSUV officials (Tibisay Lucena and Elias Jaua are two that I can remember off the top of my head) have also said that Maduro was born in different places. I think this fact led some people to start digging around, and then the theory just sort of took off. For what it's worth, I don't think this is a majority view within the opposition, and Henry Ramos Allup said recently that he didn't think Maduro had been born in Venezuela. Do the opposition legislators in the National Assembly get paid by being in the assembly? A legislator's stipend or whatever? If so, could that maybe explain the seeming lack of vociferousness in attacking the illegitimacy of the government; they exist as a pretense of functioning democracy, but actually being an opposition party would just trigger an official shutdown of the assembly by the government, followed by Maduro invoking more emergency powers to formalize being a dictator. So they sit in the government and make shallow gestures and get paid, but actually doing anything to reform or pressure Maduro's government is off the table.
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Aug 7, 2016 21:17
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If Maduro was born in Venezuela, why doesn't he just say that? Does Venezuela have birth certificates?
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Aug 7, 2016 22:55
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Spacewolf posted:If Maduro was born in Venezuela, why doesn't he just say that? The most likely thing is that he actually wasn't born in Venezuela. I can perfectly believe that. The problem is that he won't step down over something that petty, he can produce the document pretty easily, he's the loving president of an extremely corrupt country what makes anybody think otherwise? The truth is that the government doesn't care about the law, and if they don't play by the rules and fail to uphold them it's pointless to submit yourself to them either. They won't go down lawfully, so yeah, a coup is the only way.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:22
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Chuck Boone posted:Speaking of "I can't tell if this is real life or not" stories, inmates at the Penitenciaria General de Venezuela [Venezuelan General Penitentiary] (PGV) have been in control of the prison since Monday after staging a mutiny. The inmates are requesting that the authorities transfer 3,000 more inmates into the prison. Someone help this man launch a coup. That pran could run your nation better than Maduro. After all, your entire nation has already been transformed into a prison.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:37
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This article from April 22 of this year shows that Venezuelan National Assembly deputies are actually the worst paid in Latin America. At that time, they made Bs. 38,592.72 per month. At the black market exchange rate, that's about US$ 38 a month. They make Bs. 1,000-2000 more in stipends and such, so to be safe let's just say they make less than $50 a month considering all sources of official income. This is likely terrible news because a well-paid and content official is one who is less likely to be corrupted by bribes, and less likely to look for illegal, backroom ways to supplement their income than a poorly paid one. In the US, people talk about the Koch brothers and George Soros tipping elections and buying politicians with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. In Venezuela, a National Assembly deputy could double his/her income for the year with a $600 bribe. Spacewolf posted:If Maduro was born in Venezuela, why doesn't he just say that? Like fnox said, he could have been born in Colombia, but it's really a non-issue at this point. I get the feeling that the people who push for Maduro to release is birth certificate or whatever think that if everyone finds out he was born in Colombia he'll suddenly step down. The dude throws people in jail for challenging him and is apparently OK with millions of innocent people suffering and dying so long as he remains in power. The Colombia thing isn't magically going to get him to resign.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:43
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El Hefe posted:I need someone for the whole day actually, you can't bring cellphones and stuff into the U.S embassy so I need someone to hold that while I'm there, apparently they don't have lockers or anything... Hey, let me know if you still need someone. I went out with some buddies today and one of them mentioned his dad is working as a cabbie nowadays, he's a close friend so it's trustworthy.
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Aug 8, 2016 04:05
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Honestly, it's sounding like Maduro actually is controlling the opposition. No wonder he's still in power. If he has successfully jailed those like Lopez who pose a real risk to his power, and legitimized the official opposition as those are unwilling to rock the boat too much, then... he's not going anywhere. There's no release valve. I don't see anything but an armed revolt dislodging him at that point, and any armed result seems more likely to fail than succeed. Venezuela is just hosed aren't they? There's no actual way out of this for them...
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Aug 8, 2016 16:13
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GlyphGryph posted:Honestly, it's sounding like Maduro actually is controlling the opposition. No wonder he's still in power. If he has successfully jailed those like Lopez who pose a real risk to his power, and legitimized the official opposition as those are unwilling to rock the boat too much, then... he's not going anywhere. There's no release valve. I don't see anything but an armed revolt dislodging him at that point, and any armed result seems more likely to fail than succeed. If history is any judge as soon as you bind a political party to the military they are in control. I think it was stated earlier in this thread that all of the top generals were appointed by the PSUV. Technically once you do that the country is already a dictatorship; this country has been a dictatorship for a long time. It is just now that everyone realizes it. Any opposition leader at this point is thinking about their own survival; all they can really do it hope to get a slice of the pie for themselves. Revolt are successful when it has internal support within the current leadership(like a coup); the current leadership doesn't expect it(like the Arab Spring) or you have a weak willed leader. Otherwise without outside support(money/arms/food) the revolt will be marginalized or crushed outright. My guess is Maduro has been preparing for this for years since Hugo Chavez was in power. First arming the Chavistas then indoctrinating the military from the top down.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:14
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I read an interesting little piece recently that saw Ernesto Reverol's appointment as Minister of the Interior just a day after the indictment against him was unsealed as a pretty ominous sign. The gist of the argument is that Maduro is deliberately surrounding himself with "high exit cost" people: in other words, people who he can be sure will be loyal when things get ugly, because it'd be essentially impossible for them to defect/switch sides. Reverol's not going anywhere as long as the Department of Justice is after him, and he'll fight to the bitter end if it comes to it. Reverol and Molina aren't the only high-ranking military officials connected to the drug trade. I'm sure we'll see more indictments unsealed sooner rather than later. GlyphGryph posted:Honestly, it's sounding like Maduro actually is controlling the opposition. No wonder he's still in power. If he has successfully jailed those like Lopez who pose a real risk to his power, and legitimized the official opposition as those are unwilling to rock the boat too much, then... he's not going anywhere. There's no release valve. I don't see anything but an armed revolt dislodging him at that point, and any armed result seems more likely to fail than succeed.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:37
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Labradoodle posted:Hey, let me know if you still need someone. I went out with some buddies today and one of them mentioned his dad is working as a cabbie nowadays, he's a close friend so it's trustworthy. Ah thank you but my brother lives there too and he found me someone, he was actually going to drive me around but he had to come back to maracaibo in short notice because of his work...
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Aug 8, 2016 19:07
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Chuck Boone posted:This article from April 22 of this year shows that Venezuelan National Assembly deputies are actually the worst paid in Latin America. At that time, they made Bs. 38,592.72 per month. At the black market exchange rate, that's about US$ 38 a month. They make Bs. 1,000-2000 more in stipends and such, so to be safe let's just say they make less than $50 a month considering all sources of official income. I'm guessing, of course, that a PSUV Assembly member would find getting the best rate easier than a MUD one. This is darkly amusing. If what I'm reading is correct, the President of Venezuela makes a base salary of Bs. 2,167,365.6 a year (12 times the minimum wage). This means Maduro is either making $2,160 a year if he uses the black market rate (ha!), $3,360 if he uses the official DICOM rate, or $216,000 if he can get the DIPRO rate, intended for importing food and medicine. Doing these calculations I also just realized how insanely profitable being a currency merchant with the right connections would be. William Bear fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 19:34
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El Hefe posted:Ah thank you but my brother lives there too and he found me someone, he was actually going to drive me around but he had to come back to maracaibo in short notice because of his work... No problem, good luck on your trip! William Bear posted:I'm guessing, of course, that a PSUV Assembly member would find getting the best rate easier than a MUD one. If you can get those cheap dollars then yeah, it's basically a license to print money.
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Aug 9, 2016 00:42
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Labradoodle posted:If you can get those cheap dollars then yeah, it's basically a license to print money. When we still had access to CADIVI people used to travel pretty much for free, going to Aruba or Miami paid for itself, you only had to bring back $500 or so and you were done, free trip. This country is hilariously sad
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Aug 9, 2016 00:48
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Chuck Boone posted:I sometimes feel like the opposition is being incompetent intentionally in order to precipitate unrest. It seems like every second day an opposition figure is on the media saying "If the government doesn't change right now this thing is going to explode". I think some of the opposition leaders might actually be banking on a social explosion. This is just it really, and the reason why no one actually likes the opposition. They want to be the figureheads and the leaders for the new Venezuela, but they refuse to actually do anything about it now and put themselves in danger. At this point, claiming to be leaders and politicians for the opposition, but sitting in their asses trying to play to PSUV's own corrupted rules is just being a coward and a hypocrite.
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Aug 9, 2016 08:33
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Got my U.S visa  didn't even have to do the interview Thanks America Now to kill time in Caracas until 9pm...
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Aug 9, 2016 15:44
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El Hefe posted:Got my U.S visa Good luck, man!
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Aug 9, 2016 16:48
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Yeah good luck. I hope things work out for you
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Aug 9, 2016 16:50
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Sad that Venezuela is losing so many talented people - hopefully in the future you can return to help build it back up again.
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Aug 9, 2016 17:39
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Mozi posted:Sad that Venezuela is losing so many talented people - hopefully in the future you can return to help build it back up again. I cannot think of one failed state where that has ever happened.
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Aug 9, 2016 18:46
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