Yossarian-22 posted:

Observers pretty much universally agreed that Venezuelan elections were free and fair whereas Russian ones do not get the same universal recognition (although let's be honest: Putin would've won them anyway).

logikv9 posted:

Enjoy your lack of amenities

Concerned Citizen posted:

the sad thing about venezuela is that the opposition is actually more evil than he was

Concerned Citizen posted:

the sad thing about venezuela is that the opposition is actually more evil than he was

GlyphGryph posted:

Which opposition? Leopoldo Lopez seems alright and despite being in jail he still seems to be the closest thing the opposition has to a real leader.

It seems like most of the opposition is actually working for Maduro based on how they act though, hahah.

Nonsense posted:

Capriles is who the US media mainly focuses their attention on as Venezuelans future president.

walgreenslatino posted:

On the one hand we have an inept corrupt windbag who wasted billions of petrodollars instead of making the tiniest effort towards diversification and long term security, who handed over power to an inept thug and corrupt bus driver who's such a great socialist that his party fought to the death to remain patron and landlord to thousands of people crying out for housing redistribution; both of whom despite their shittiness repeatedly won democratic elections, made measurable impacts against poverty and illiteracy

On the other we have some feckless CIA pencil necks who botched at least one coup attempt, phalanxed by a media apparatus that is so brutally biased against PSUV they just make stuff up instead of reporting the already-horrible truth.


The truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is in the middle

Concerned Citizen posted:

the sad thing about venezuela is that the opposition is actually more evil than he was

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

tell the Venezuelan goons this

frankenfreak posted:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Baloogan posted:

quote:

"I'm not talking about the poor people; I'm talking about middle-class people starving to death. It's happened to me somewhat. And I live in the capital. So I am having the easiest time of them all."

"At first, the people knocked ... they come and they beg ... 'I haven't eaten in a while. If you could share some mango with us?' ... and you could gladly give them some, because by that point, it wasn't as bad as it would be around a month later."

Busteq took to stocking his freezer with the best mangoes and giving away the bad ones to the needy. But as the crisis worsened, "starved, desperate people started roaming the neighborhood." The first of those people to try to steal Busteq's mangoes was "a guy with his daughter. He jumped my wall. And he climbed it and stood on top ... It was not a wall built for keeping intruders away. He starts taking the fruit directly from the tree."

"At that point, I am basically starving to death. My food consists of mostly mangoes. And at six in the [evening], I get in line for bread. This bread will cost me half a dollar, and that's what my food for the day will be."

"So one day, a truck comes in carrying around five people. These five people get down off the truck, they climb my wall and begin shaking my tree. And they take every single mango left from that tree. And they drop them into the truck and take them away."

Busteq was lucky, in that he had the second mango tree in his backyard, not vulnerable to this kind of drive-by harvest and out of sight of starving strangers roaming around looking for something, anything, to eat. This, however, meant they would descend on the homes of other fruit tree owners in the neighborhood.

"One of the neighbors realized there are like seven people in the yard of his house and comes out screaming. In the meantime, the guard of this [neighborhood] notices ... and decides it's not his loving problem, and he runs. So the women begin screaming, and several neighbors come out, including myself. So one person had like an airsoft gun, and he begins flying around pretending it's a real gun. And he says something like, 'What the gently caress's going on?' Acting all brave, trying to scare the people stealing mangoes."

It worked that time, but the guys with real guns weren't far behind. "Another neighbor two blocks away still has his mangoes. He tells me his two children were downstairs playing with a computer, and two guys on a bike came in. One points his gun and says, 'Open up the door, we want the mangoes!' ... The children try to run, and the guy shouts from the back, "Who do you think is faster, the bullets or you?'"

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

i posit that handing over huge swathes of your country to drug cartels and pocketing tons of money as the nation descends into lawlessness is, in fact, bad

rudatron posted:

Chavez + Maduro just don't know what the they're doing. Their primary method of attempting wealth distribution is price-fixing and subsidies for certain goods. They're not the only people to do this btw, it's a popular thing to do in 3rd world countries, because they don't have a non-corrupt bureaucracy. But it doesn't really work, and in venezuela's case, has only encouraged vast smuggling operations. That worked fined so long as oil was priced high, but oh poo poo it turns out commodities are volatile, and you shouldn't base your entire countries tax base off a single one of them.

The central problem is corruption, and the attempts at dodging solving that problem. But they're not a first-world country, so they don't have a lot of options.

It's tricky. I'm not sure what I would do in their position. There's no simple solution to that kind of problem

But, I'm gonna reason they still kept getting voted in, was that their oppositions solution to that problem would be something along the lines of 'kill the poor'

rudatron posted:

source: my rear end

rudatron posted:

Chavez + Maduro just don't know what the they're doing. Their primary method of attempting wealth distribution is price-fixing and subsidies for certain goods. They're not the only people to do this btw, it's a popular thing to do in 3rd world countries, because they don't have a non-corrupt bureaucracy. But it doesn't really work, and in venezuela's case, has only encouraged vast smuggling operations. That worked fined so long as oil was priced high, but oh poo poo it turns out commodities are volatile, and you shouldn't base your entire countries tax base off a single one of them.

The central problem is corruption, and the attempts at dodging solving that problem. But they're not a first-world country, so they don't have a lot of options.

It's tricky. I'm not sure what I would do in their position. There's no simple solution to that kind of problem

But, I'm gonna reason they still kept getting voted in, was that their oppositions solution to that problem would be something along the lines of 'kill the poor'

Chokes McGee posted:

I mean it's good your making threads and certainly welcome but it's going to be harder to keep D&D out now

GlyphGryph posted:

At first? Maybe. We know they aren't free and fair now, though - when do the observers universally agree it switched from one to the other?

Because it seems to me to have turned on a dime the moment the PSUV thought it might lose (they started straight up nullifying election results that would have given power in the Assembly to the opposition coalition in 2015).

And if your elections are only free and fair so long as you vote for the right person, and any results to the contrary will be ignored or opposed... your elections aren't actually free and fair.

We don't know if Venezuela's elections were ever free and fair, because we don't have an example of Chavez actually losing them and recognizing the results, which is sort of a really big part of an election being free and fair. We know that the moment his party DID lose one they refused to recognize it, and the people who did so were largely many of the same people who Chavez had been putting into power for a while, which sort of retroactively casts those previous elections in a rather bad light, imo.

And now thanks to Chavez's hand picked successors there aren't any elections at all.

Yossarian-22 posted:

I'd say that Maduro ending the recall effort against him and banning opposition parties from regional elections is tantamount to an unfree political system though. PSUV actually did pretty badly in the most recent election and lost tons of ground so things are still nominally somewhat democratic

GlyphGryph posted:

The refused to recognize the results of the election and destroyed the entire legislative branch of government when the branch said "no, actually, we think we will recognize the results".

So not so much?

In terms of votes, they lost the recent election. In terms of results, they simply said "it doesn't count" whenever that mattered and continued to hold all the power. There's no possible way to describe that as Democratic.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I'm gonna use the DnD standard that Venusians [or Venezuelans, whatev] always have the option of shooting themselves in the head or armed revolt and thus by the standards of FREE WILL, it is totally democratic

and therefore, if the poors starve it is because they are irresponsible

Actually now that I think of it poors have the most sacred freedom of all, freedom to starve

They may be freer than America (YOU CAN DO IT TRUMP)

GlyphGryph posted:

No one is doing it in this thread. It is unrelated to what this thread is actually about, unless you tie it together somehow, which you have't.

You're intentionally engaging in diversionary tactics to squash criticism and discussion.

It's pretty uncool.

GlyphGryph posted:

The refused to recognize the results of the election and destroyed the entire legislative branch of government when the branch said "no, actually, we think we will recognize the results".

So not so much?

In terms of votes, they lost the recent election. In terms of results, they simply said "it doesn't count" whenever that mattered and continued to hold all the power. There's no possible way to describe that as Democratic.