Languish.org

Quote3800 More Toilet Paper Packs Found Hoarded

Oct 22nd 2013, by La Iguana / Axis of Logic

Over 3800 rolls of toilet paper, 440 litres of powdered milk and 1560 litres of long-life liquid milk were taken by order of the Public Prosecutor for being allegedly hidden in a warehouse of the Don Biagio Mini Market and Super Express, located in Maracaibo, Zulia state.

It was determined that the products were absent from the shelves in spite of being stored in the warehouse, restricting consumer access to these goods.

The establishment where the goods were found was not identified by name or RIF (commercial registration), however, the property serves as a warehouse of goods and food from the aforementioned store.

The legal representative of the business was put under preventative arrest under conditions of the public prosecutor.

In addition, the goods seized shall be put up for sale at fair prices in the markets Fundación Mercados de Zulia (Fundamercado), the organization in Zula that facilitates the selling of products directly to the people.

These actions were carried out by the audit staff of the National Costs and Prices Superintendency (Sundecop) and the Institute for the Defense of People's Access to Goods and Services (Indepabis) as part of the actions undertaken by the national government for the fight against shortages and hoarding.

During the last few weeks, the  Superior Organ for the Popular Defense of the Economy  has referred more than 25 people to the Attorney General's office for engaging in wrongful acts that infringe on the sovereignty and food security of Venezuela.

The prosecutor for Indepabis stated, "We will provide continuity to due process, and representation guarantees the right of defense to the representatives of the establishment."

This inspection was attended by the National Guard and prosecutors of the Seniat (customs and tax service), in addition to the participation of Decandido, the Bolivarian Trade Union of Supermarket Workers, who acted as worker prosecutors.

"We are involved with the supervisory bodies, we support their actions, we carried out training and intelligence work to detect establishments such as these, where goods are hoarded," said Gustavo Cadenas, a representative of the union.

The complaints by customers is the most important information that agencies such as Sundecop, Seniat and Indepabis have, said Cadenas.

It's thanks to such complaints and the information provided by the people through denouncement lines 0800-Sabotaje, 0800 –Sundeco and Twitter account @Sundecop that the Superior Organ for the Economy is able to conduct the inspections and to act.

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 22, 2013, 09:20:45 PM
Depends what you want. But all are an order of magnitude easier than North Korea.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 09:19:14 PM
Just another day in the Workers' Paradise.

Speaking of which, which workers' paradise do you think would be the easiest to live in?  As a local, not as a visitor.

Venezuela
Cuba
North Korea
Ecuador
Bolivia
Nicaragua
Jaronistan?

Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 22, 2013, 09:36:55 PM
Probably Cuba.  So many more accessible beaches and DeSotos.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 09:27:44 PM
It depends on what *you* want.  I'm asking what your preference is.

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 22, 2013, 09:46:18 PM
Probably Cuba then. Less crime than Venezuela, still higher GDP per capita than the other three. Rum and cigars. More beaches, less mountains. Also less freedom than the other four.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 09:55:44 PM

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 22, 2013, 09:46:18 PM
Probably Cuba then. Less crime than Venezuela, still higher GDP per capita than the other three. Rum and cigars. More beaches, less mountains. Also less freedom than the other four.

Cuba has a higher GDP per capita than Ecuador, Bolivia, or Nicaraga?  :huh:

I find that hard to believe.

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 22, 2013, 10:02:05 PM
Cuba's reckoned to be lower-midtable of Caribbean countries but way above the other three.

Quote from: Ed Anger on October 22, 2013, 09:43:01 PM
I'd live under Katmai, but my ceiling would collapse from the strain.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 10:07:43 PM

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 22, 2013, 10:02:05 PM
Cuba's reckoned to be lower-midtable of Caribbean countries but way above the other three.

That's a fuck load of remittances then, given the official wage is 20 bucks a month.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 10:36:23 PM
IIRC, the official ration consists of 1 chicken, 6 eggs, and some bread each month.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 10:36:23 PM
IIRC, the official ration consists of 1 chicken, 6 eggs, and some bread each month.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 22, 2013, 10:36:23 PM
IIRC, the official ration consists of 1 chicken, 6 eggs, and some bread each month.

QuoteVenezuela government creates happiness agency


CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - At first, many Venezuelans thought it was a joke: President Nicolas Maduro is creating a Deputy Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness.

The president says that the pediatrician in charge of the agency will coordinate all anti-poverty missions created by the late President Hugo Chavez.

Wags had a field day Friday, waxing sarcastic on Twitter about how happy they felt a day after the announcement.

Oil-rich Venezuela is chronically short of basic goods and medical supplies. Annual inflation is running officially at near 50 percent and the U.S. dollar now fetches more than seven times the official rate on the black market.

Quote from: Savonarola on October 30, 2013, 03:16:30 PM
Why have social happiness when you can have SUPREME social happiness?

QuoteVenezuela government creates happiness agency


CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - At first, many Venezuelans thought it was a joke: President Nicolas Maduro is creating a Deputy Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness.

The president says that the pediatrician in charge of the agency will coordinate all anti-poverty missions created by the late President Hugo Chavez.

Wags had a field day Friday, waxing sarcastic on Twitter about how happy they felt a day after the announcement.

Oil-rich Venezuela is chronically short of basic goods and medical supplies. Annual inflation is running officially at near 50 percent and the U.S. dollar now fetches more than seven times the official rate on the black market.

WAR IS PEACE
OIL IS LOVE
TOILET PAPER SHORTAGES ARE SUPREME SOCIAL HAPPINESS

QuoteVenezuelan government sends TROOPS into electronics chain to force them to sell goods at a "fair price"

The Venezuelan government sent armed troops into an electronics chain to force the company to start selling products at cheaper prices.

The bizarre tactic was employed by President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government to send a message to combat inflated prices which are hobbling the country's economy.

Authorities arrested various managers of the five-store, 500-employee Daka chain, and sent soldiers into the shops instead.

That brought crowds of bargain-hunters to Daka outlets and sparked looting at one store in the central city of Valencia.

"Inflation's killing us. I'm not sure if this was the right way, but something had to be done," said Carlos Rangel, 37, among about 500 people queuing outside a Daka store in Caracas.

"I think it's right to make people sell things at fair prices." Maduro, who accuses rich businessmen and right-wing political foes backed by Washington of waging an economic "war" against him, said the occupation of Daka was simply the "tip of the iceberg" in a nationwide drive against speculators.

In a speech to the nation on Saturday evening, he condemned the looting reported in Valencia but said it was an isolated incident and the real criminals were unscrupulous businessmen exploiting Venezuelans with unjustified price hikes.

"The ones who have looted Venezuela are you, bourgeois parasites," Maduro said, accusing Daka of raising some prices of products beyond 1,000 percent of cost.

He showed particular astonishment at a washing-machine on sale for 54,000 bolivars ($8,571 at the official exchange rate of 6.3 to the dollar).

"We're going to comb the whole nation in the next few days. This robbery of the people has to stop," Maduro said.

"You've not seen anything."

Illustrating that point, Maduro said government communications experts were blocking a clutch of websites that publish the illegal black-market price of the dollar.

"They're going off the air!" he exclaimed, to applause from supporters.

Minutes after his announcement, however, some of the sites could still be seen by a Reuters reporter in Venezuela.

Maduro's move against Daka, after weeks of warnings of a pre-Christmas push against private businesses to keep prices down, recalled the sweeping and often theatrical takeovers during the 14-year government of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The late president frequently took the nation by surprise announcing expropriations on live TV. He used soldiers to secure oil fields, power stations, supermarkets and other targets while nationalizing large swathes of Venezuela's economy.

But Maduro, who took over in April after Chavez's death from cancer, has stopped short of any more of the outright nationalizations that characterised his mentor's rule.

QuotePower outage plunges most of Venezuela into darkness
Reuters By Diego Ore and Andrew Cawthorne
December 2, 2013 11:06 PM

By Diego Ore and Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's second massive power outage of the year plunged much of the nation into darkness on Monday night, prompting renewed talk of sabotage from President Nicolas Maduro's government and cries of incompetence from its foes.

Power went off in Caracas and other cities around the country soon after 8 p.m. local time (0030 GMT), to the intense annoyance of residents and commuters.

"I feel so frustrated, angry and impotent," said sales adviser Aneudys Acosta, 29, trudging through the rain along a street in the capital after having to leave the disrupted underground transport system.

"I live far away and here I am stuck under the rain. Something's going wrong that they're not sorting out. The government needs a Plan B. This is just not normal."

Monday's outage appeared similar to a massive September 5 blackout that was one of the worst in the South American OPEC member's history.

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver who narrowly won a presidential election this year after the death of his mentor and former leader Hugo Chavez, accused the opposition then of deliberately sabotaging the power grid to discredit him.

View galleryPeople try to make payment at a supermarket that is …
People try to make payment at a supermarket that is running on backup generators after a blackout in ...
His powerful ally and National Assembly president, Diosdado Cabello, repeated the same accusation after Monday's blackout that affected more than half of Venezuela.

"I have no doubt that today's electricity sabotage is part of the right-wing's plan," Cabello said on Twitter.

PROTESTS

In some wealthier parts of Caracas, where opposition to the socialist government is strongest, people began banging pots and pans out of their windows in a traditional form of protest.

Some shouted, "Maduro, resign!"

Venezuela has been suffering periodic electricity cuts around the country since 2009, although the capital has been spared the worst outages.

View galleryPeople walk on a street during a blackout in Carac …
People walk on a street during a blackout in Caracas December 2, 2013. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Critics say the power problems symbolize the failure of the government and its 15 years of socialist policies in resource-rich Venezuela. The country has the world's largest crude oil reserves and big rivers that feed hydroelectric facilities generating two-thirds of its power.

The blackouts, some due to planned power rationing and at other times to utility failures, have not affected the oil refineries, which are powered by separate generator plants.

State oil company PDVSA said its installations were all working normally on Monday night, with fuel supplies guaranteed.

Electricity Minister Jesse Chacon said the same major transmission line that went down in September - and carries about 60 percent of national supply - had again been affected.

Power began returning to most parts of Caracas within an hour or two, though remoter parts of the nation of 29 million people were still in the dark late into the evening.

"We ask Venezuelans for patience," Chacon said.

Maduro was giving a live address on state TV when he was abruptly cut off. He later Tweeted that he was continuing to work in the presidential palace despite the "strange" blackout, and appeared live on state TV surrounded by school children.

"Be strong against this electrical war that yesterday's fascists have declared against our people," Maduro said in another address to the nation at about 11 p.m. local time.

Security services were on alert, while the oil industry had been "put on emergency", the president said.

Since winning office in April, Maduro has accused political opponents of conniving with wealthy businessmen and their allies in the United States to undermine his government.

As well as accusing them of sabotaging the power grid, he has alleged plots to assassinate him and to destroy the economy through price-gouging and the hoarding of products.

Venezuelans are suffering from a 54 percent annual inflation rate, as well as scarcities of basic products from flour to toilet paper. Nationwide local municipal elections on Sunday are seen as a major test of Maduro's standing.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said government officials' bellicose statements were "pathetic" at a time of national disquiet. "For once in your lives, be responsible," he Tweeted.

Capriles and others say the reasons for the power failures are obvious and simple: lack of investment, incompetence and corruption within the state-run power company Corpoelec since Chavez's 2007 nationalization of the sector.

Venezuela has a maximum generation capacity of about 28,000 megawatts and normal demand of about 18,000.

The government constantly chides Venezuelans, however, for wasteful habits in a nation where the average household consumes an average of 5,878 kilowatt hours per year, about double the average in Latin America.

QuoteVenezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Says He Sleeps In Hugo Chavez's Mausoleum

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is known for his devotion to late leader Hugo Chavez and now he acknowledges that he sometimes sleeps in the mausoleum where his mentor's remains are kept.

Maduro was Chavez's vice president and named by him as his successor before he died. During the campaign for the April 14 election he narrowly won, Maduro caused a furor when he said Chavez came to him in the form of a little bird that flew around his head.

Venezuela's president reopened the issue of his use of Chavez's image on Thursday when, during an act at the former military museum where Chavez's remains are kept, he said: "I sometimes come at night. At times, many times, I sleep here."

He said he sometimes comes with a retinue. "We enter at night and we stay to sleep. At night we reflect on things here."

QuoteVenezuela's Nicolás Maduro cements power with victory in local elections
President's party thwarts opposition hopes of denting Maduro's power in what it called a referendum on his performance

President Nicolás Maduro's party won the most votes in Venezuela's local elections on Sunday, disappointing the opposition and helping his quest to preserve the late Hugo Chavez's socialist legacy.

With votes in from three-quarters of the nation's 337 mayoral races, the ruling party and allies had combined 49.2% support, compared with 42.7% for the the opposition coalition and its partners, the election board said.

"The Venezuelan people have said to the world that the Bolivarian revolution continues stronger than ever," Maduro said, referring to Chavez's self-styled movement named after the independence hero Simon Bolivar.

In a triumphant speech in Bolivar Square in downtown Caracas, Maduro mocked the opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, and urged him to resign.

"They underestimate us. They call me a donkey, there is social racism," he said. "They said that today was a plebiscite, that Maduro would have to leave the presidency after today."

The government took nearly 200 municipalities, with three-quarters counted, reflecting the traditional strength of "Chavismo" in rural and poorer areas.

As expected, the opposition performed well in urban centres, keeping the principal mayorship of the capital, Caracas, and that of Venezuela's second city, Maracaibo. The opposition also won the capital of Barinas, Chavez's home state.

But its failure to win the overall vote share was a blow to Capriles. Capriles had repeatedly called for the vote to be seen as a referendum on Maduro's performance.

"I did everything humanly possible," Capriles said after the results were out. "Remember that Venezuela does not have a single owner. A divided country needs dialogue."

Since taking power in April, Maduro, a 51-year-old former bus driver, has faced a plethora of economic problems including slowing growth, the highest inflation in the Americas and shortages of basic goods including milk and toilet paper.

Yet an aggressive campaign launched last month to force businesses to slash prices proved popular with consumers, especially the poor, and helped Maduro's candidates on Sunday.

Sunday's election was the biggest political test for Maduro since he narrowly won the presidential election after Chavez's death from cancer ended his 14-year rule of the OPEC nation.

Winning the overall vote share may help Maduro shake off perceptions of weakness, enabling him to exert more authority over the different factions in the ruling Socialist Party and perhaps take unpopular measures such as a currency devaluation.
Opposition activists alleged some irregularities on Sunday, including intimidation of some observers and the use of state oil company PDVSA's vehicles to ferry pro-government voters.

Capriles accused the government of intimidating local media to silence his voice and running the most unfair campaign in Venezuelan history.

"I had to go round the country practically with a megaphone in my hand ... This campaign saw a brutal waste of Venezuelans' resources (by the government)," he said in a midnight speech.

But unlike after April's vote, Capriles did not appeal against the validity of the results.

Capriles may find his authority challenged within his coalition after Sunday's results.

"They did not achieve their objective of a protest vote against Maduro," local pollster Luis Vicente Leon said.

QuoteVenezuela's president blames soap operas for crime 

BY FABIOLA SANCHEZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Nicolas Maduro has a new villain as he campaigns to bring down Venezuela's spiraling crime: TV soap operas. He accuses the telenovelas of spreading "anti-values" to young people by glamorizing violence, guns and drugs.

The criticism follows attacks last year by Maduro on violent video games and the Hollywood movie "Spider-Man."

On Monday night, his vice president, Jorge Arreaza, met with broadcast and pay TV operators to review the prime time lineup, warning that they could be in violation of a 2004 law mandating "socially responsible" programming. The two sides will meet in a week with the aim of drafting an agreement on meeting those obligations.

It's unclear whether the government will take steps to restrict programming or impose harsher rules on telenovelas, which are hugely popular across Latin America.

Analysts say arm-twisting is unlikely to reduce Venezuela's high homicide rate, which the United Nations ranks as the fifth worst globally, and they warn that Maduro's campaign could be used as an excuse to further gag media criticism of the government.

"It's a smoke screen to distract attention away from the real causes" of violence and crime, said Roberto Briceno Leon of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, which estimates the country's murder rate has quadrupled in 15 years of socialist rule.

Pressure on the government to crack down on crime heated up this month after former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear and her ex-husband were shot to death by robbers, with their 5-year-old daughter looking on.

The double slaying shocked even Venezuelans hardened by rampant bloodshed and put the government on the defensive on an issue that surveys say is the biggest concern among voters.

In his state of the union speech last week, Maduro took aim at a popular soap opera, "De todas maneras Rosa," produced by Venevision.

He accused the nation's biggest broadcaster of profiting from violence by celebrating the crimes of one of the melodrama's lead characters, Andreina Vallejo, a psychopathic former beauty queen who fatally poisons her own mother to hide the paternity of her son.

"Mama, everybody in the world knows that the relationship between parents and their children is completely accidental," a smiling Vallejo says as her mother gasps for breath in her daughter's arms.

Alberto Barrera Tyszka, the creator of several soap operas, said television only reflects the alarming levels of violence present in society and is already tightly regulated for content deemed unsuitable for minors. He said Maduro should turn his attention to the root causes of crime instead.

"It's ridiculous to blame the violence on what's seen for one or two hours a night on television" said Barrera Tyszka, who also wrote a biography of Maduro's predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Briceno Leon, whose group tracks Venezuela's violence, blamed the country's bloodshed on the proliferation of illegal firearms, between 9 million and 15 million by the government's count, as well as the lack of punishment for those who commit crimes. He said the government has neglected security, viewing it until recently as a concern mainly for its political enemies among Venezuela's upper classes.

His group estimates more the 24,000 people were slain last year in Venezuela, pushing the homicide rate to 79 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The government disputes those findings, but has blocked access to official crime statistics in recent years. Officials say the rate last year was 39 per 100,000 people, a level that's still the highest in South America and eight times the U.S. rate.

Reflecting high levels of impunity, Venezuela's criminal justice system was ranked the lowest in the world in a recently published study on the rule of law in 97 countries by the Washington-based World Justice Project.

Maduro may see putting the blame on television as an effective political strategy by focusing attention on the breakdown in societal and family values, a broader problem that can entangle all politicians, regardless of party affiliation, Briceno Leon said.

Barrera Tyszka, the soap opera creator, said the president's campaign also reinforces government control of the airwaves, providing it with another tool to bully channels whose news coverage it frequently attacks as part of a right-wing conspiracy to destabilize the nation. Media self-censorship is already high after several years of the government imposing multimillion-dollar fines and even taking channels off the air for allegedly slanted coverage.

"There are almost no guns in Venezuelan telenovelas," he said. "There are a number of things that aren't shown for fear of being fined."

QuoteVenezuelan opposition leader Lopez due in court after surrendering

By Mariano Castillo. Catherine E. Shoichet and Jethro Mullen, CNN
updated 2:08 PM EST, Wed February 19, 2014


(CNN) -- Facing the largest anti-government protests in his 11 months in power, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appears ready to move forward with the prosecution of a leading opposition figure on charges of terrorism and murder.

Four anti-government protesters and one government supporter have died in clashes around the country.

The man the government blames for the deaths is opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who turned himself in to authorities on Tuesday.

Human rights groups warn about the danger of turning the protests into a persecution of political opponents.

The charges against Lopez, who has organized protests demanding better security, an end to shortages and protected freedom of speech, "smack of a politically motivated attempt to silence dissent in the country," Amnesty International said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch weighed in too, warning that Venezuela must avoid "scapegoating" political opponents.
But the way forward seemed set, with Lopez expected to appear in court Wednesday.

Charges against him include murder, terrorism and arson in connection with the protests, according to his party, Popular Will.
Lopez denies the accusations, the party said in a statement, which talso asked witnesses of the protests to send their own accounts of what happened to be used in his defense.

"The last thing he said to me was for me to not forget what he is going through," his wife, Lilian Tintori de Lopez, said in an interview with CNN en Español. "Not forget that he is arrested for things that he has asked for: the liberation of political prisoners, liberation of students, no more oppression, no more violence."

She called on his supporters to join her at the justice building for his appearance Wednesday morning.

Death toll up

The latest victim of the violence died on Wednesday, a day after being shot during an anti-government protest in the state of Carabobo.

The death of Genesis Carmona drew attention because the student was also a beauty queen. She was winner of the 2013 Miss Tourism crown in Carabobo, and represented her state at Miss Tourism Venezuela.

Her Twitter account shows she actively retweeted messages from opposition leaders and supported Lopez. She even retweeted guidance for a workaround in case the government tried to block access to social media as the protests grew.
The last thing Carmona shared on Twitter was a retweet: "Stay with the one who tells the best stories. One day they will tell yours."

No signs of letup

The tensions in Venezuela show no signs of letting up.

Maduro and his supporters have also rallied, blaming the opposition for causing the very problems it protests.
The confrontation took a turn Tuesday, when Lopez marched with a crowd of thousands of protesters before surrendering to National Guard troops.

"The options I had were leave the country, and I will never leave Venezuela!" Lopez told the massive crowd. "The other option was to remain in hiding, but that option could have left doubt among some, including some who are here, and we don't have anything to hide."

Hours later, at a rally with throngs of supporters, Maduro said the head of Venezuela's National Assembly had helped negotiate Lopez's surrender and was taking him to a prison outside Caracas.

Maduro: Opposition leaders 'fascists'

Maduro described opposition leaders as right-wing fascists who plant seeds of fear and violence. He claimed his opponents have U.S. backing and have repeatedly tried to assassinate him and overthrow his democratically elected government.
And he compared the opposition to an illness plaguing the South American country.

"The only way to fight fascism in a society is like when you have a very bad infection ... you need to take penicillin, or rather the strongest antibiotic, and undergo treatment," he said. "Fascism is an infection in Venezuela and in the world. And the only treatment that exists is justice."

Lopez: 'The people woke up'

Footage from Tuesday's demonstration shows Lopez being led by National Guard troops to a military vehicle, waving to the crowd as he is placed inside and even continuing to speak on a megaphone until the door is closed.

A message on Lopez's Twitter account Tuesday night said he was on the way to a military prison, where party officials said he would be held at least until a court appearance scheduled for Wednesday. The post included a link to an apparently prerecorded video message, showing the opposition leader seated on a couch next to his wife, calling on Venezuelans to keep pushing for change.

"If you are watching this video, it is because the government has carried out one more abuse, full of lies, of falsehoods, of twisting facts and trying to manipulate the reality that we Venezuelans are living," he said. "I want to tell all Venezuelans that I do not regret what we have done up to this moment, in convoking the protests. ... The people came out. The people woke up."

'Yankee, go home'

Major social and economic problems in Venezuela have fueled the protests. But as the demonstrations gained steam, officials have pointed fingers at other factors, accusing the United States of plotting to destabilize the government.

On Monday, Venezuela gave three U.S. diplomats 48 hours to leave the country, accusing them of conspiring to bring down the government. At Tuesday's rally, Maduro shouted, "Yankee, go home" from the stage, drawing cheers from the crowd.
The opposition has been defeated over and over again at the polls, but it continues to call for marches and protests, Julio Rafael Chavez, a ruling party lawmaker, told CNN en Español on Tuesday.

"The peace-loving Venezuelans feel very, very worried by the irrational, fascist-leaning attitude and actions of a sector of the Venezuelan opposition," he said.

This isn't the first time that bitter protests and counterprotests by supporters and opponents of the government have threatened political stability in Venezuela over the past decade.

Many of Maduro's claims -- of U.S. intervention, of assassination plots -- were also lobbed by the late President Hugo Chavez. Chavez was briefly ousted in a coup in 2002, but otherwise outlasted the protests and repeatedly won reelection. He ruled for 14 years, until his death last year after a long battle with cancer.

The U.S. State Department has repeatedly denied Venezuela's accusations. Asked whether the United States backs Lopez, Sen. John McCain told CNN on Tuesday that his country "backs the people's right to express their will, to object to corruption, the repression of the media and the arrest of political dissidents."

'The protests will continue'

The current protests are the biggest that the Maduro government has faced in its 11 months in power.

The latest death came Monday, when a 17-year-old was hit by a truck and killed at a protest in the northeastern city of Carupano, a government official said.

Lopez's party has accused the government of being responsible for violence during the protests.

At Tuesday's rally, Maduro stressed that the socialist revolution he now leads is peaceful and democratic.

"What I want is peace, dialogue, understanding, coexistence," Maduro said. "It is what I want and what I am doing."

But another opposition leader said that the government's actions paint a different picture.

"The latest actions we've seen from the government indicate that far from fomenting a climate of peace, (it) is trying to fortify the climate of confrontation and violence that the world has seen in images," former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles told CNN en Español.

Capriles has backed away from calling for massive protests, saying they are ineffective and play into the government's narrative, but he said Lopez has his support.

"The protest will continue as long as the government gives no sign of resolving the problems of the Venezuelans," Capriles said.

CNN equipment taken

A CNN crew covering the anti-government demonstrations had its equipment taken away at gunpoint Tuesday -- but the journalists were unharmed.

The incident took place in a neighborhood in Caracas where the CNN crew was preparing to film and the National Guard was present.

About 20 men on motorbikes rode toward a crowd of anti-government protesters when they noticed the journalists and approached them, brandishing several guns.

They demanded that the crew hand over its equipment, including a camera and broadcasting gear.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 19, 2014, 04:05:23 PM
I'm sorry if I my comments strike the rest of you as contrarian and divisive, but I'm worried Maduro might have lost track of the true meaning of Bolivarian Socialism.

Quote from: derspiess on December 04, 2013, 12:15:10 PM
"Yesterday's Fascists" sounds like a good name for a band.

Quote from: derspiess on February 19, 2014, 05:52:25 PM
True fact: I've met the coach/trainer/whatever for the Venezuelan dude skiing in the Olympics.

Quote from: garbon on February 19, 2014, 11:24:40 PM

Quote from: derspiess on February 19, 2014, 05:52:25 PM
True fact: I've met the coach/trainer/whatever for the Venezuelan dude skiing in the Olympics.

What did he tell you about Maduro's state of mind and thoughts on foreign policy?

Quote from: Razgovory on February 19, 2014, 07:25:07 PM

Quote from: derspiess on December 04, 2013, 12:15:10 PM
"Yesterday's Fascists" sounds like a good name for a band.

It was the Motto of the CIA in the 1950's.

Quote from: derspiess on February 19, 2014, 11:50:06 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on February 19, 2014, 07:25:07 PM

Quote from: derspiess on December 04, 2013, 12:15:10 PM
"Yesterday's Fascists" sounds like a good name for a band.

It was the Motto of the CIA in the 1950's.

<_<

Quote from: derspiess on February 19, 2014, 11:48:25 PM

Quote from: garbon on February 19, 2014, 11:24:40 PM

Quote from: derspiess on February 19, 2014, 05:52:25 PM
True fact: I've met the coach/trainer/whatever for the Venezuelan dude skiing in the Olympics.

What did he tell you about Maduro's state of mind and thoughts on foreign policy?

Lots. But it was in Spanish so you probably wouldn't understand.

Quote from: garbon on February 20, 2014, 12:10:34 AM
Why not? I'm rusty but that was my main foreign language.

Quote from: celedhring on February 20, 2014, 09:22:39 AM
I'm pretty sure I could understand it. Please, go on.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 20, 2014, 04:44:50 PM
I doubt it.  Bad guys have too much firepower.

QuoteTonight, Venezuela is seeing a spasm of violence that's unlike anything the country has experienced since 1989. Information is fragmented, since an almost complete media black-out is in place, but you don't need the media to hear your neighbor's screams.

Caracas, Valencia, Merida and San Cristobal in particular have become virtual war zones: National Guard units and National Police have been shooting tear gas canisters and buckshot sometimes directly at protesters, sometimes into residential buildings and, raiding any place they think student protesters may be hiding. Alongside them, the government backed colectivos (basically paramilitary gangs on motorbikes, a tropical basij) shoot at people with live ammo.

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(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcaracaschronicles.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2Fvalencia.jpeg%3Fw%3D700&hash=aa70c7d194668e1ed7024a06c74122c5c9a4eaca)

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 20, 2014, 05:05:45 PM
I wonder how much the price of Miami real estate jumped in the last 30 minutes.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 20, 2014, 05:16:59 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 20, 2014, 05:05:45 PM
I wonder how much the price of Miami real estate jumped in the last 30 minutes.

Wouldn't most people who could afford that have fled the country years ago.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 19, 2014, 04:05:23 PM
I'm sorry if I my comments strike the rest of you as contrarian and divisive, but I'm worried Maduro might have lost track of the true meaning of Bolivarian Socialism.

Quote from: Siege on February 20, 2014, 04:33:22 PM
Hey, this is a English-Only forum.

Read the forum rules.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 22, 2014, 01:38:36 AM
Just heard on NPR/BBC that Maduro has invited Obama to "negotiate as equals"

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 24, 2014, 10:34:43 AM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 22, 2014, 01:38:36 AM
Just heard on NPR/BBC that Maduro has invited Obama to "negotiate as equals"

barack's going to need 3-4 really degenerative rounds of reincarnation before that becomes possible.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 24, 2014, 10:37:05 AM
Marx was a little off on Latin America.
When history repeats itself there, it is first as farce, then as really bad farce.  After that point it goes downhill.

Quote from: derspiess on February 24, 2014, 10:28:49 AM
Nice opinion piece from HuffPo of all places:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carlosgonzalez/venezuela-international-left_b_4844724.html

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2014, 11:40:33 AM
There were plenty of Chavez supporters.

All strangely silent now.  :hmm:

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 11:48:22 AM
You must not have as many actual Leftist friends as I do.  They're still out there supporting him.

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 12:10:44 PM
Do you know what the Holodomor was?"

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2014, 12:13:46 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 12:10:44 PM
Do you know what the Holodomor was?"

No. :mellow:

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2014, 12:13:46 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 12:10:44 PM
Do you know what the Holodomor was?"

No. :mellow:

Quote from: alfred russel on February 24, 2014, 02:06:59 PM
There are currents of support for "bolivarian socialism" or similar throughout Latin America. Maybe it isn't awful to have one country try it out to remind the others how awful it is in practice.

QuoteThat is probably not the best use for Venezuela though.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 24, 2014, 11:40:33 AM
There were plenty of Chavez supporters.

All strangely silent now.  :hmm:

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 24, 2014, 02:34:53 PM
A fair few saying it'd be fine if Chavez were alive.

Of course that kind of misses the point that the one thing Latin America doesn't need more of is regimes dependent on one leader.

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 01:16:12 PM
I don't know why my hatred of Communism surprises people.  I like Russia.  Communism ruined Russia.   :unsure:

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 04:46:46 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 01:16:12 PM
I don't know why my hatred of Communism surprises people.  I like Russia.  Communism ruined Russia.   :unsure:

The switch from North Germanic to Slav rule ruined Russia.

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 04:50:39 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 04:46:46 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 01:16:12 PM
I don't know why my hatred of Communism surprises people.  I like Russia.  Communism ruined Russia.   :unsure:

The switch from North Germanic to Slav rule ruined Russia.

WTF did Tsar Michael do?

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 04:50:39 PM
WTF did Tsar Michael do?

Quote from: derspiess on February 24, 2014, 12:12:08 PM
Apparently Madonna spoke out in favor of the opposition.  TAKE THAT SEAN PENN

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 24, 2014, 05:38:26 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

Do you measure that distance in inches or centimeters?

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

Quote from: katmai on February 24, 2014, 05:40:49 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

you can't quit me.

Quote from: derspiess on February 24, 2014, 05:07:02 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 24, 2014, 04:50:39 PM
WTF did Tsar Michael do?

He knows what he did  :glare:

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 24, 2014, 05:44:32 PM

Quote from: katmai on February 24, 2014, 05:40:49 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

you can't quit me.

You have a large gravity well.

Quote from: Siege on February 24, 2014, 07:02:29 PM

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 24, 2014, 05:44:32 PM

Quote from: katmai on February 24, 2014, 05:40:49 PM

Quote from: The Brain on February 24, 2014, 05:17:27 PM
I keep my distance from katmai.

you can't quit me.

You have a large gravity well.

Do you mean he is FAT?

Quote from: katmai on February 24, 2014, 09:13:49 PM
Crack all the jokes you want now, but see who's laughing when I sit on you.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 24, 2014, 10:39:38 PM
I liked this thread better when it was about Katmai's weight.  :(

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 24, 2014, 11:17:13 PM
Me and Spicy are mind linked..WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE!

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 10:51:59 AM
Kicking out the CNN crew was a smart move by Maduro.

QuoteGays under siege in Uganda

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 10:51:59 AM
Kicking out the CNN crew was a smart move by Maduro.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 10:58:29 AM
Surely there are one or two people in Venezuela with motion cameras in their phones?  I have seen zero footage of the fascist coup attempt. 

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 11:05:02 AM
It's on youtube-- search "Venezuela 2014".  Also a couple clips have been posted here.  In one of them you hear the dude's mom yelling at him to get away from the window.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 11:07:29 AM

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 11:05:02 AM
It's on youtube-- search "Venezuela 2014".  Also a couple clips have been posted here.  In one of them you hear the dude's mom yelling at him to get away from the window.

OK.  But that still doesn't change the fact that if it's not shown on CNN it's not really happening.

QuoteFor over a week now, the world's press and media have carried images of a Venezuela in flames. Burning buses, angry demonstrations, public buildings under siege. But the pictures are rarely explained or placed in any kind of context, and people are left to assume that this is just one more urban riot, one more youth rebellion against the crisis, like those in Greece and Spain.

The reality is both very different and far more complex. Venezuela, after all, is a society that declared war on neoliberalism fifteen years ago.

Caracas, where this series of events began, is a divided city. Its eastern part is middle class and prosperous; to the west, the population is poorer. The political divide reflects exactly the social division. Leopoldo Lopez, who has been a leader of this new phase of violent opposition to the government of Nicolas Maduro, was mayor of one of the eastern districts. Together with another prominent right wing anti-chavista, Maria Corina Machado, he had issued a call for an open public meeting the previous Sunday to demand the fall of the government. Youth Day, on February 12, provided an opportunity to bring out students to march, demonstrate, and occupy the streets.

The majority of the burning barricades, however, were built in middle class areas. And the students building them came from either the private universities or the state university which had largely excluded poorer students in recent times. There was almost nothing happening in the poorer areas to the west.

In more recent days, the class character of the demonstrations has become clearer. The government's new bus system, offering clean and safe travel at low prices, has been attacked, 50 of them on Friday alone. The Bolivarian University, offering higher education to people excluded from the university system, was besieged Friday — though the demonstrators failed to get in to wreck it. And in several places Cuban medical personnel, who run the Barrio Adentro health system, have been viciously attacked. In one very curious development, a wonderful sculpture in the city of Barquisimeto by the communist architect Fruto Vivas, is now being defended by Chavistas after an attempt to destroy it.

Maduro and his cabinet have responded by denouncing the increasingly violent confrontations as organized by fascists and financed and supported by the United States. And there are certainly extreme elements involved, actively engaged in trying to destabilize the situation. They include paramilitaries linked to the drug trade, whose presence has grown in this overly-weaponized country.

But why has the Right chosen this particular moment to take to the streets? In part, it is a response to what is seen as the weakness of the Maduro government, and specifically of Maduro himself. It is no secret that behind the façade of unity, there is a struggle for power between extremely wealthy and influential groups within government — a struggle that began to intensify in the months before Chavez's death. The military presence in government has grown dramatically, and they are largely controlled by the group around Diosdado Cabello. The head of the oil corporation and Vice President for the Economy, Rafael Rodriguez, has enormous economic power in his hands.

At the same time, there is a battle for power within the Right. All of the prominent leaders, including Leopoldo Lopez, Cristina Machado, and Capriles, come from the wealthiest sections of the bourgeoisie. But they are competing. Lopez and Machado are pursuing what some call (referring to Chile 1972-3) "a soft coup": economic destabilization plus a continuous mobilization on the streets to deepen the government's weakness.

Capriles, however, has been hesitant to support the demonstrations and instead argues for a "government of national unity," which Maduro seems increasingly wedded to. Just a few weeks ago, Maduro had talks with one of Venezuela's wealthiest capitalists, Mendoza, and other sections of the bourgeoisie have expressed support for him. And that strategy has the backing of important figures in and around government.

Against this background, the position of the Chavista government has been to call for "peace" — a slogan echoed by the huge numbers of ordinary Venezuelans who have rallied behind Maduro. Their chant "they will never come back" is very significant. They recognise in the leaders of the current unrest the same people who implemented the devastating economic programmes of the 1990s, before Chavez, and who attempted to destroy his government twice before. At the same time, that"'peace" has yet to be defined. Does it mean addressing the real problems that people face, and driving a wedge between an anxious lower middle class and its self-proclaimed bourgeois leaders? Or will it be achieved by consensus with other sections of that same class, perhaps represented by Capriles, who have no commitment at all to socialism, 21st century or otherwise?

The Venezuelan Right is no stranger to violence. On 11 April 2002, it launched a coup against Chavez and assumed power. Calls in the media for leading Chavistas to be killed gave the measure of what they were prepared to do. The coup had the support of sections of the army, the Church, the employers federation, the corrupt national trade union organization, and the U.S. Embassy. But it failed because the mass of Venezuela's poor and working class took to the streets and brought Chavez back.

Nine months later, the attempt to destroy the oil industry, and with it the economy as a whole, was foiled again by the mass mobilization of the majority of Venezuelans — the very people whose votes had carried Chavez to power.

Is the present situation a repeat of April? Between 2002 and 2014, the Right failed to dislodge Chavez; on the contrary, Chavez's electoral support rose consistently until his death early last year. After that, his nominated successor, Maduro, won the presidential elections in April 2013. But this time the right-wing candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, came within 250,000 votes (under one percent) of winning.

It was a clear expression of the growing frustration and anger among Chavez supporters. 2012 had seen inflation rates hovering around fifty percent (officially) and the level has risen inexorably throughout the last year. Today the basic basket of goods costs 30% more than the minimum wage — and that is if the goods are to be found on the increasingly empty shelves of shops and supermarkets. The shortages are explained partly by speculation on the part of capitalists — just as happened in Chile in 1972 — and partly by the rising cost of imports, which make up a growing proportion of what is consumed in Venezuela. And that means not luxuries, but food, basic technology, and even gasoline.

All of this is an expression of an economic crisis vigorously denied by the Maduro government but obvious to everyone else. Inflation is caused by the declining value of the bolivar, Venezuela's currency, itself the result of economic paralysis. The truth is that production of anything other than oil has ground to a virtual halt. The car industry employs 80,000 workers, yet since the beginning of 2014 it has produced 200 vehicles — what would normally be produced in half a day.

How is it possible that a country with the world's largest proven reserves of oil (and possibly of gas, too) should now be deeply in debt to China and unable to finance the industrial development that Chavez promised in his first economic plan?

The answer is political rather than economic: corruption on an almost unimaginable scale, combined with inefficiency and a total absence of any kind of economic strategy. In recent weeks, there have been very public denunciations of speculators, hoarders, and the smugglers taking oil and almost everything else across the Colombian border. And there have been horrified reports of the "discovery" of thousands of containers of rotting food. But all of this has been common knowledge for years. Equally well known is the involvement of sectors of the state and government in all these activities.

Chavez promised popular power and the investment of the country's oil wealth in new social programs. Quite rightly, his new health and education programs were a source of great pride and a guarantee of continued support for him among the majority of Venezuelans. Today, those funds are drying up as Venezuela's oil income is diverted to paying for increasingly expensive imports.

What has emerged in Venezuela is a new bureaucratic class who are themselves the speculators and owners of this new and failing economy. Today, as the violence increases, they are to be seen delivering fierce speeches against corruption and wearing the obligatory red shirt and cap of Chavismo.

But the literally billions of dollars that have "disappeared" in recent years, and the extraordinary wealth accumulated by leading Chavistas, are the clearest signs that their interests have prevailed. At the same time, the institutions of popular power have largely withered on the vine. The promises of community control, of control from below, of a socialism that benefited the whole population, have proved to be hollow.

The Right has hoped to trade on that disillusionment. That it has not yet managed to mobilize significant numbers of working class people is testimony to their intense loyalty to the Chavista project, if not to his self-appointed successors — though they are unimpressed by those successors' overnight conversion to transparency and honesty in government.

The solution is not in unprincipled alliances with the opponents of Chavismo, nor in inviting in multinationals like Samsung to enjoy cheap Venezuelan labour in assembling their equipment. What can save the Bolivarian project, and the hope it inspired in so many, is for the speculators and bureaucrats to be removed, and for popular power to be built, from the ground up, on the basis of a genuine socialism — participatory, democratic, and exemplary in refusing to reproduce the values and methods of a capitalism which has been unmasked by the revolutionary youth of Greece, Spain and the Middle East.

Roland Denis, a leading grassroots Venezuelan activist over many years, summed it up this way: "Either we turn this moment into a creative opportunity to reactivate our collective revolutionary will, or we can begin to say our farewells to the beautiful, traumatic history we have lived out over the last twenty-five years."

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 11:07:29 AM

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 11:05:02 AM
It's on youtube-- search "Venezuela 2014".  Also a couple clips have been posted here.  In one of them you hear the dude's mom yelling at him to get away from the window.

OK.  But that still doesn't change the fact that if it's not shown on CNN it's not really happening.

Quote from: Queequeg on February 25, 2014, 12:38:04 PM
Meh.  What was interesting to me was that they were coping to the complete failure of Chavismo.

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 01:04:09 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 25, 2014, 12:38:04 PM
Meh.  What was interesting to me was that they were coping to the complete failure of Chavismo.

But it's the same tired "that wasn't true socialism/communism-- let's give it another shot.  It just has to work this time" line.

Hell, even our own Venezuelan Marxist* disavowed Chavez early on. 


*PS did not seem like quite as much a Marxist as he claimed to be.

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 01:04:09 PM

Quote from: Queequeg on February 25, 2014, 12:38:04 PM
Meh.  What was interesting to me was that they were coping to the complete failure of Chavismo.

But it's the same tired "that wasn't true socialism/communism-- let's give it another shot.  It just has to work this time" line.

Hell, even our own Venezuelan Marxist* disavowed Chavez early on. 


*PS did not seem like quite as much a Marxist as he claimed to be.

QuoteChavez promised popular power and the investment of the country's oil wealth in new social programs. Quite rightly, his new health and education programs were a source of great pride and a guarantee of continued support for him among the majority of Venezuelans. Today, those funds are drying up as Venezuela's oil income is diverted to paying for increasingly expensive imports.

What has emerged in Venezuela is a new bureaucratic class who are themselves the speculators and owners of this new and failing economy. Today, as the violence increases, they are to be seen delivering fierce speeches against corruption and wearing the obligatory red shirt and cap of Chavismo.

But the literally billions of dollars that have "disappeared" in recent years, and the extraordinary wealth accumulated by leading Chavistas, are the clearest signs that their interests have prevailed. At the same time, the institutions of popular power have largely withered on the vine. The promises of community control, of control from below, of a socialism that benefited the whole population, have proved to be hollow.

The Right has hoped to trade on that disillusionment. That it has not yet managed to mobilize significant numbers of working class people is testimony to their intense loyalty to the Chavista project, if not to his self-appointed successors — though they are unimpressed by those successors' overnight conversion to transparency and honesty in government.

The solution is not in unprincipled alliances with the opponents of Chavismo, nor in inviting in multinationals like Samsung to enjoy cheap Venezuelan labour in assembling their equipment. What can save the Bolivarian project, and the hope it inspired in so many, is for the speculators and bureaucrats to be removed, and for popular power to be built, from the ground up, on the basis of a genuine socialism — participatory, democratic, and exemplary in refusing to reproduce the values and methods of a capitalism which has been unmasked by the revolutionary youth of Greece, Spain and the Middle East.

Quote from: Barrister on February 25, 2014, 01:20:29 PM
He seems to not ask himself the question of why, in every single instance where socialism has been attempted, does it inevitably lead to "a new bureaucratic class who are themselves the speculators and owners of this new and failing economy".

Quote from: KRonn on February 25, 2014, 01:52:37 PM
I figure this may likely go the way of Ukraine, the President forced to flee, government making huge changes and concessions.

QuoteBut Maduro may have enough support among the Chavez-istas to be able to remain in power,but with so much anger and dissent it gets hard to run the government, so he would need to make some serious changes. I have to think also about these kinds of dissent happening in other countries which have caused governments to resign, topple or change that it emboldens protesters who have strong feelings for change elsewhere.

QuoteUkraine being the best most current example.

Quote from: Valmy on February 24, 2014, 11:22:17 AM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 24, 2014, 10:37:05 AM
Marx was a little off on Latin America.
When history repeats itself there, it is first as farce, then as really bad farce.  After that point it goes downhill.

Yep.  It is pretty absurd how predictable it all is.  I mean was there anybody who knew anything about Latin American history not predicting this is exactly how this would turn out?

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2014, 02:47:22 PM
Brazil has been relatively okay for the last decade. If that continues, then maybe it's influence help stabilize the rest of the continent.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 25, 2014, 02:50:24 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2014, 02:47:22 PM
Brazil has been relatively okay for the last decade. If that continues, then maybe it's influence help stabilize the rest of the continent.

The US has been pretty stable for the last century and a half, hasn't helped Mexico much.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 03:01:27 PM
Venezuela is not Ukraine.  All indications are it is a minority of the population opposed to Maduro.  And the wealthier minority, hence automatically less sympathetic.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2014, 03:03:47 PM
Stuff I've read. 

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 03:07:11 PM
I'd bet that around half, if not more than half, are opposed to Maduro.  He only won the election last year 50.6% to 49.1%, and that was likely with some measure of fraud or other hi-jinks.  Plus, things have gotten much worse since the election so if the 50.6% was legit, it's not hard to imagine him having lost some of that.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2014, 02:47:22 PMBrazil has been relatively okay for the last decade. If that continues, then maybe it's influence help stabilize the rest of the continent.

QuotePoint taken.  However, there is a difference between voting for the opposition and supporting violent street protest.

Quote"U.S. society needs to know the truth about Venezuela," Maduro said in the latest of his daily speeches to the nation at a meeting with state governors late on Monday.

"They (Americans) think we're killing each other. They think we can't go out to the corner. They're asking for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. What madness! Should that happen, you and I will be out with a gun defending our territory."

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 05:50:40 PM

Quote"They (Americans) think we're killing each other. They think we can't go out to the corner. They're asking for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. What madness! Should that happen, you and I will be out with a gun defending our territory."

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 05:50:40 PM
The US expelled 3 Venezuelan diplomats. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-venezuela-protests-idUSBREA1O12B20140225

Nice little nugget from Maduro:

Quote"U.S. society needs to know the truth about Venezuela," Maduro said in the latest of his daily speeches to the nation at a meeting with state governors late on Monday.

"They (Americans) think we're killing each other. They think we can't go out to the corner. They're asking for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. What madness! Should that happen, you and I will be out with a gun defending our territory."

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 25, 2014, 06:01:18 PM
His bright yellow track suit makes for piss poor camouflage.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on February 25, 2014, 02:50:24 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2014, 02:47:22 PM
Brazil has been relatively okay for the last decade. If that continues, then maybe it's influence help stabilize the rest of the continent.

The US has been pretty stable for the last century and a half, hasn't helped Mexico much.

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 25, 2014, 03:34:05 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2014, 02:47:22 PMBrazil has been relatively okay for the last decade. If that continues, then maybe it's influence help stabilize the rest of the continent.

Brazil's nothing like Venezuela :mellow:

Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2014, 06:19:28 PM
The rest of the continent is actually pretty stable Tim.

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2014, 08:51:22 PM
Not all opponents are rich guys, Yi. Some lower class folks are also fed up with the situation.

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 25, 2014, 06:23:08 PM

Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2014, 06:19:28 PM
The rest of the continent is actually pretty stable Tim.

Until Katmai walks on it

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 26, 2014, 10:48:12 AM
what's materialist analysis?

Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 10, 2014, 02:07:39 PM
If some shithead shoots the MILF I am ready to import, I am going insane.

Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 10, 2014, 02:07:39 PM
If some shithead shoots the MILF I am ready to import

Quote"The slaves destroyed tirelessly... From their masters they had known rape, torture, degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death... they did as they had been taught... And yet they were surprisingly moderate... far more humane than their masters had been or would ever be to them... The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression."

- CLR James, The Black Jacobins

Venezuela's Jacobins are in the news again. Whether in the commemorations of the first year since the death of Hugo Chávez — a veritable Toussaint — or in Nicolás Maduro's recent interview with Christiane Amanpour, discussions of Venezuela continue to center on the towering heights of political power. To some extent this is defensive: in recent weeks, those seeking to restore the feudal privileges of the deposed Venezuelan ancien régime have attempted to harness largely middle-class student protests to depose the Maduro government, and the international community has heeded their call.

Well-heeled domestic elites (whose English shows no trace of an accent) have taken to Twitter and the international media to mobilize solidarities. They have been well-received by the US press and a slew of naïve celebrities, who eagerly regurgitate exaggerations, misrepresentations, and outright lies about so-called "human rights' abuses" at the hands of the Maduro government. These attempts to seamlessly stitch "violence" to the "revolution," however, have fallen increasingly flat as the days pass and the anti-Chavistas grow increasingly desperate and divided.

After a few deaths at the hands of government forces — some resulting in arrests of the police and soldiers involved — the brunt of the violence is now falling upon bystanders and the Chavistas themselves, as with the two shot dead by opposition gunmen in a wealthy Caracas neighborhood on March 6, and a Chilean woman killed on March 9 in Mérida after helping neighbors clear barricades.

The Cruelties of Property

While the reactionary protestors' slide towards brutality may doom their cause in the short run,questions of violence and the revolution remain unresolved. But it does reflect something that appeared a truism for CLR James: that "[t]he cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression." The disproportionality of reactionary violence has been a feature of the Bolivarian revolutionary process from the very beginning.

The Bolivarian process was born of rebellion and massacre, with each side contributing decisively. On 27 February 1989, the Venezuelan people rebelled against neoliberal structural adjustment in a week-long riot known as the Caracazo. Those forever excluded — economically, socially, politically, racially, and geographically — took over spaces previously forbidden, traumatizing an entire generation of Venezuela's bourgeoisie.

If a reminder of James' point were necessary, it was provided during the short-lived coup against Chávez in April 2002, which saw more killed in a matter of hours than in previous years. This tendency is again confirmed today, as the reactionary opposition takes to the streets, fueled by a racial and class hatred of the Chavista "hordes" who have so often been smeared as violent. The hypocrisy of violently attacking those one deems violent should not surprise us, as it is a constant feature that confirms Frantz Fanon's dictum that for those relegated to non-being, to even appear is a violent act. Attacking privilege will always be portrayed as violent by those in power.

Today the question of violence, as well as the task — impossible as it is unavoidable — of measuring or somehow gauging it, is once again on the agenda. But despite exaggeration in the foreign media resulting from what Iñigo Errejón has called the "mediatic overrepresentation" of the protests, James' observation holds: that even in the Haitian Revolution, so reputedly "barbaric," the true barbarians were the powerful, the "old slave-owners ... who burnt a little powder in the arse of a Negro, who buried him alive for insects to eat." And so too James' prescription: "for these there is no need to waste one tear or one drop of ink."

Sifrinos

"Like a good bourgeois he had an immense respect for royal and noble blood."

- CLR James, The Black Jacobins

Class in Venezuela has never been solely about money, but has instead revolved around that peculiar mélange of race and class that is lineage, an inherited nobility that is itself a source of capital. Class is not something one acquires or buys into easily — more often, it is something that one is born with. While this was once associated with those elite whites known as Mantuanos, or in Caracas quite simply "masters of the valley," mantuanaje has been replaced by what, in a recent ethnography, Ociel López calls sifrinaje, the "cultural ethos" of Venezuela's posh snobs, or sifrinos.

Through sifrinaje, all the symbolic rage of displaceD elites is mobilized and transmitted into the jealous middle classes through the "denigration of popular subjects and the criminalization of any popular action" with epithets for the poor like "monkeys," "hordes," and "scum." In recent weeks, the scornful terms of choice have been "colectivos" — a loose reference to the organized grassroots sectors of the revolutionary process — repeatedly and groundlessly blamed for any and all violence (often later discovered to have been committed by others).

Such pejoratives themselves serve to legitimize reactionary violence, as when a retired general tweeted out the suggestion that opposition protestors hang wire at the barricades at a specific height, with the goal of "neutralizing the [Chavista] motorcycle hordes."

Gochos

These protests began, however, not with mantuanos or sifrinos but with a very different political identity whose center of gravity lay further westward, at the foot of the Andes in remote Táchira state: gochos. Gochos are reputedly hard-headed and combative, and here the guarimba barricades have been the most proudly violent. One protestor, rough-hewn weapon in hand, told the New York Times, "we're not peaceful here."

When the protests went nationwide, gocho pride swelled, but as a recent tweet demonstrates, this is about more than simply regional identity: "Los gochos son los putos amos de Venezuela," "the gochos are the fucking [rightful] masters of Venezuela."

While urban elites often mocked the gochos as backward hillbillies, the region produced an astonishing seven presidents (dictators included) — in the twentieth century. Gocho identity as hard-working mountaineers emerged in direct contrast to the perceived laziness of coastal slaves, and their pride was never fully separable from caste superiority: "they contrasted their austere way of life with that of the darker-hued lowland Venezuelans, whom they depicted as being descendants of fun-loving and frolicking slave ancestors."

Politically conservative, disdainful of the racially inferior, and with a celebration of industriousness that slides quickly into scorn for the poor: picture something like a Venezuelan Tea Party constituency.

Most recently, elites nationwide had no trouble agreeing on a president who was himself nicknamed El Gocho: Carlos Andrés Pérez, who imposed the 1989 neoliberal reform package that sparked the Caracazo rebellion and everything that has come since. The poor rebels of the barrios, meanwhile, found little difficulty in the inverse: during the rebellion, "fuera el Gocho, out with the Gocho," was a common refrain.

I recently spoke with a Venezuelan expat who described the play of identities in terms of Carl Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan: the gochos burning barricades in the streets of western Venezuela see themselves as "the true Venezuelans defending their neighborhoods from the heavily racialized colectivos," but in the process they come to approximate the very same violence that they attribute to this imagined enemy.

A similar superiority complex drives protests nationwide: as one resident of the working-class zone of El Valle in southern Caracas described it to me, those manning the burning guarimba reside in the tall apartment blocks lining the main avenue and "think they are better than the barrio."

Sansculottes

"The Jacobins ... were authoritarian in outlook ... they wished to act with the people and for them... The sansculottes on the contrary were extreme democrats: they wanted the direct government of the people by the people; if they demanded a dictatorship against the aristocrats they wished to exercise it themselves."

- CLR James, The Black Jacobins

If we are against unnecessary brutality, there is nevertheless a radically democratic form of brutality that we cannot disavow entirely. This is the same brutality that "dragged the Bourbons off the throne" and that, confronted with the relentless conspiracy to reinstitute slavery, ultimately led to the massacre of the whites of Saint-Domingue, to which James responded bluntly: "so much the worse for the whites."

This was not brutality for brutality's sake, however, and much less the more violent and more repugnant brutality in the name of ossified hierarchy. It is instead a strange paradox: egalitarian brutality, the radically democratic dictatorship of the wretched of the earth.

Those smeared today as colectivos and "the horde," slandered as "Tupamaros" and in prior decades as "ñangaras," are in fact the most direct and organic expression of the wretched of the Venezuelan earth. They are the most politicized and revolutionary segment of the discarded human mass that the opposition has never cared about for a second. If they are authoritarian, it is only to the degree that they insist that the last be first.

As the current minister of communes stated in a recent interview, "the collectives are synonymous with organization, not violence," and this organization is a radically local and directly democratic phenomenon that seeks to transform the state itself. As many revolutionary militants have made perfectly clear to me, they are with Chavismo only as long as Chavismo is with the revolution.

Even within some sectors of Chavismo, there exists a dangerous class disdain for the poorest that runs the risk of seeing residents of the barrios as beneficiaries rather than protagonists of the Bolivarian process. The Bolivarian Revolution itself has ironically created some of these beneficiaries among the "middle-lower classes that are growing in recent years thanks to oil income and the 'fattening' of the state ... The bureaucracy [has emerged] as a class, with its own interests and new fears."  If the Jacobins of the Bolivarian process turn toward this sector at the expense of the revolutionary base, they run the mortal risk of "losing influence in the barrio as the privileged space for the production of Chavismo" as a political identity.

Comuneros

"Toussaint, like Robespierre, destroyed his own left-wing, and with it sealed his own doom."

- CLR James, The Black Jacobins

The Bolivarian Revolution was never about Hugo Chávez the individual. It preceded and exceeded him, just as the sansculottes of France and Haiti pressed their own Jacobins forward, continuing in their absence. Just as the sansculottes a century later built the Paris Commune, so too do Venezuelan revolutionaries today set about a similar task under the banner of "¡Comuna o Nada!," "the Commune or Nothing!"

The same people tarred as colectivos and the "horde" are those who today dedicate themselves to the slow and difficult construction of radically democratic and participatory socialist alternatives.

Theirs is a radically democratic form of brutality, one that spares no effort or means in destroying structures of privilege. Against opposition mythmaking, the Chavista government has not unleashed this sort of popular brutality, but has instead served to contain it. But what would happen were the people no longer held back? Despite thousands of anxious pages penned through the centuries by political thinkers fearful of the "tyranny of the majority," the history of our world has seen far more of the opposite: the tyranny of small minorities, racial, colonial, and economic elites.

The Bolivarian process today confronts economic barriers — themselves inherently political and amplified by Chávez's death and the relentless opposition assault on Maduro. What is needed today, and what is more urgent than ever, is not dialogue or reconciliation, not harmony and understanding, but a radical commitment to press decisively forward.

Venezuelans are demanding fair prices, but these are still set by capitalists. Venezuelans are demanding safe streets, but the police have been a poor vehicle for confronting mafias. Venezuelans are demanding a deepening of participatory institutions, but powerful sectors want to keep their hands on the oil rent. A Gordian Knot is binding, the threads relentlessly intertwining and demanding to be cut.

It is not the Venezuelan Jacobins that will save us, but the sansculottes.

Quote from: Beenherebefore on March 13, 2014, 05:43:18 PM
Nope, not going to bite.

Quote from: derspiess on March 17, 2014, 12:33:28 PM
So Maduro is requesting talks with the US with the goal of ending the unrest.  Because obviously Obama behind the Yanqui Fascist Imperialist plot to destabilize Venezuela and negate the wonderful gains made by Bolivarian Socialism.

Same tactic he takes with his opposition: make all kinds of false accusations, call them every derogatory name in the book.  Then in the next breath, request a "peace summit" with them.

QuoteVenezuela arrests generals 'plotting coup'
President Maduro says three generals with opposition ties attempted to get Air Force to rise up against his government.

Three Venezuelan air force generals accused of plotting a coup against the leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro have been arrested amid a widening crackdown on the opposition.

The unidentified generals were in contact with opposition politicians and "were trying to get the Air Force to rise up against the legitimately elected government," Maduro said on Tuesday, in a meeting of South American foreign ministers.

"This group that was captured has direct links with sectors of the opposition and they were saying that this week was the decisive week," Maduro said.

The disclosure comes after more than six weeks of street protests that have left at least 34 dead.

The generals have been summoned before a court martial, Maduro said, adding that the plot was uncovered because other officers came forward to say they were being recruited.

Anti-government protests

Asked for details about the generals, a senior source told the AFP news agency that the information was "being handled only through Maduro's office".

It is the first time in 15 years of socialist government that generals had been arrested for alleged coup plotting, said military expert Fernando Falcon, a retired lieutenant colonel.

Massive protests in April 2002 resulted in Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, being briefly ousted - before he was restored to power for another decade.

Venezuela's government has been the target of near-daily protests fuelled by public anger over soaring crime, hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods such as toilet paper.

Demonstrators are also angry at Venezuela's close financial and political ties to Cuba, the only Communist one-party state in the Americas.

Maduro had earlier said he fended off a coup bid aided by the United States and other "fascists".

The president, however, still enjoys support among Venezuela's larger, poor population.

QuoteVenezuela's disastrous course

(CNN)For a fleeting few years the South American nation of Venezuela and its histrionic late President Hugo Chavez made waves on the global stage. While he upended the country's economy and exploited class conflict at home, he blamed the world's woes on the U.S., insulted the American president at the United Nations, and exhorted other leftists in the region to challenge the prevailing economic model and follow his path to "21st century socialism."

Since Chavez died, the world mostly stopped paying attention. That, however, may soon change.

The stage is now set for what could become a major confrontation. Under pressure from a jailed opposition leader on hunger strike, the government finally set an election date. On December 6, Venezuelans will go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. The stakes are enormous, and the possibility of serious turmoil is very real.

President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, already warned that if the opposition wins, "very grave things will occur," saying a "process of confrontation" will be unleashed, vowing he will be first to take to streets to "defend the revolution."

When opposition candidates started trying to register for the election last week, they discovered that election authorities, loyal to the government, were already barring them from running for office. And the judiciary system will offer no relief.

As international human rights groups just reiterated, the justice system is nothing but a tool against government critics and rivals, with judges and prosecutors obediently serving the President's political objectives.

Still, the opposition is looking forward to winning this election as popular frustration with increasingly dire economic and security conditions turn a growing number of people against the regime. A significant number of Venezuelans, perhaps 25%, remains loyal to the legacy of the charismatic Chavez. But there is a very good chance that the opposition will try to launch a recall campaign against the hapless Maduro.

The ingredients for a crisis are in place: Anger, frustration, visceral enmity between two camps and a sense of unfair play. The only way to prevent a greater disaster is making sure that fair elections take place, opening a peaceful path, a political avenue for working across the country's deep divide.

But the prospects do not look good. The Venezuelan people have endured a catastrophic economic collapse that is sure to grow worse in the months ahead. If someone had set out to destroy the country they could hardly have done it more effectively than Chavez and his chosen heir, who has followed the same disastrous policies, driving the country into the abyss.

Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, but the country is essentially bankrupt. Last November it started importing, of all things, oil. There are shortages of practically every conceivable consumer product, from toilet paper to beer, from milk to antibiotics.

A shopping expedition is an exercise in frustration and endurance. Venezuelans have to stand in line for hours in the stifling tropical heat in pursuit of products that are more often than not completely out of stock.

As his predecessor did, Maduro blames the shortages on the opposition, on his political enemies, and on the rich. But the real reason why the economy is simply not functioning is that the government has introduced wrong-headed policies that defy all logic.

What started as an effort to alleviate poverty -- the most worthy of goals in a poor country -- turned into a failed experiment in populist-infused socialism. The government expropriated businesses, tried to control prices and markets, and generally disrupted the mechanisms of supply and demand to the point where producing anything became unprofitable.

The first and biggest target of government intervention was the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which was used by the Chavez government as a funding source for social programs.

What was once an efficient, profitable, well-run business became a political tool run by party loyalists. Instead of investing in maintenance and production, the government wrung out all it could from its oil firm, using cheap oil to buy the loyalty of Latin American regimes, and using the profits to finance a multitude of unrelated projects.

If done with more foresight it might have worked, but in the end it all came crashing down. This all started during the years when oil prices spiked above $100 a barrel, bringing oceans of money, none of which was used to expand production and maintain equipment. The government broke the piggy bank.

Oil production has collapsed. And, making matters worse, much worse, the world price of oil, the lifeblood of the regime and the country, has fallen by about half. The country's cash flow problems were already serious before oil prices swooned. They will only get worse now.

In a desperate effort to hold on to scarce dollars, the government has imposed a dizzying system of currency controls, with four different exchange rates. In 2003, the official rate stood at 1.6 Bolivars per dollar. A year ago the rate stood at 79 per dollar. Today you can get about 700 bolivars for a dollar on the black market.

The government also helped itself to the nation's hard currency reserves, using what is meant to be saved as the economic ballast to fund social programs. Now those reserves stand at record lows and the economy is about to crash into a wall.

The inflation rate is so high that authorities have stopped reporting the latest statistics. The last official report last year put it at 68%, but economists say it's now well into triple digits. The economy is in a deep recession. Again, no official figures are available.

What makes the situation truly perilous is the political polarization that Chavez and Maduro stoked with such gusto. The country is divided into two camps that despise each other. The depth of animosity makes divisions in Washington seem tame. For every problem, for every shortage, for every crime, for every failed policy, Maduro blames the opposition; he accuses businesses of hoarding and speculating to destroy his government.

Venezuela will make headlines in the coming months. If a total collapse ensues, the repercussions will be felt throughout the region and the hemisphere. The only way to prevent it is for the international community to demand fair elections. Maduro has already rejected international observers, saying, "Venezuela is not and will not be monitored by anyone." But there is still a way to prevent disaster if Maduro can be convinced to let democracy take its course.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2014, 05:04:59 PM
Rhetoric expands in relation to the injustice of one's cause.

Quote from: Savonarola on August 10, 2015, 04:42:33 PM
Yesterday's fascists always win.   :(

Quote from: Duque de Bragança on August 11, 2015, 10:10:05 AM
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid.  :frog:

Quote from: Valmy on August 11, 2015, 10:08:19 AM
Yi from 17 months ago is burned by a fierce Raz retort!

Quote from: Valmy on August 11, 2015, 10:08:19 AM
Yi from 17 months ago is burned by a fierce Raz retort!

Quote"The people that used to give us work—the private companies, the rich—have all gone," said Ms. Palma in La Sibucara, adding that she also occasionally traffics goods to get by. "It's not the greatest business but we don't have work and we have to find a way to eat."

Quote

Venezuela's President Starts to Look Desperate
Sept 14, 2015 2:49 PM EDT
By Mac Margolis

Deporting immigrants at rifle point, reigniting long-settled claims to a neighbor's oil reserves, sending soldiers instead of groceries to depleted supermarkets -- just when you'd think Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro could go no further to turn his country into an outlaw state, the leader of the Bolivarian Republic has trumped himself -- criminalizing dissent.

On Sept. 10, a circuit court condemned Leopoldo Lopez, the Maduro regime's most charismatic critic, to nearly 14 years imprisonment for inciting violence during last year's street demonstrations.

Technically speaking, Judge Susana Barreiros's ruling was the act of the independent Venezuelan judiciary. Yet during the lengthy trial, Lopez, a 44-year-old Harvard-trained economist and former Venezuelan mayor, was barred from presenting physical evidence and allowed to call only two defense witnesses -- direct violations of Venezuelan due process -- and the media was locked out of the courtroom.

The prosecution, on the other hand, summoned more than 100 witnesses, and though none placed Lopez at the scene when violence flared, Barreiros gave him the maximum sentence.

The trial was described as "a travesty," by Human Rights Watch, a "political lynching," by former diplomat Diego Arria and a "farce" by Lopez's attorneys, while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry worried aloud over the apparent "use of the Venezuelan judicial system to suppress and punish government critics."

Take your pick; the Lopez conviction was anything but a surprise. In the revolution Hugo Chavez built, nearly 70 percent of judges hold temporary posts, meaning essentially they serve at the pleasure of the country's political bosses.

Fealty starts at the top. The 32 justices of the Supreme Court are elected by the Venezuelan National Assembly, where thanks to a decade and a half of gerrymandering the governing United Socialist Party rules. A study published last year showed that in more than 45,000 sentences handed down by the Supreme Court from 2004 to 2014, the government never lost a case.

Judges defy the Palacio Miraflores at their own risk. Consider Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who presided over the case of Eligio Cedeno, a prominent banker who was accused of corruption by Chavista prosecutors and jailed in 2009.

The United Nations human rights commission called his imprisonment arbitrary. Afiuni agreed and ordered Cedeno released, whereupon she was promptly jailed, allegedly tortured and sent to trial, which is still ongoing.

So perhaps it's no mystery that Barreiros -- a junior judge handpicked to replace Afiuni in the 28th circuit -- chose to ignore the international cry to free Lopez, lock down the courthouse and dispatch the regime's most caustic critic to a military prison until 2029. Her 40-page verdict was ready in less than two hours.

What other way to go when Venezuela's second most powerful leader, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello, had already given his verdict? "I don't agree with just 11 years," Cabello declared on nationwide television, on the eve of the Lopez verdict. The final sentence? Thirteen years, nine months, seven days and 12 hours.

Clearly, the harsh sentence was calculated to intimidate the government's fiercest rivals -- those Maduro hasn't already arrested or banished from politics, that is -- ahead of the crucial Dec. 6 parliamentary elections. But with Maduro's approval ratings scraping bottom, he risks looking less fearsome than desperate.

Just two years ago, Lopez was a compelling but hardly unifying figure, viewed with envy and distrust among the fractious opposition. "Arrogant, vindictive and power hungry," a U.S. diplomat reported in 2009, in a secret cable released last year by WikiLeaks.

Last year Ramon Jose Medina, then deputy leader of the main opposition bloc, the Democratic Union Roundtable, accused Lopez of provoking his own arrest to gain notoriety, though he later apologized.

Lopez's cachet soared when he led the largest anti-government demonstrations Venezuela had seen in a decade. By jailing him Maduro converted the official "monster" into a martyr. Now public outrage over the sham trial stands to convert him into a national lightning rod.

Never has Chavismo looked so vulnerable. Whether Venezuela's sniping opposition leaders can holster their differences and ride the prevailing anger to victory at the ballot box is a separate question. Keep your eyes on the Venezuelan street, where the next round of protests is scheduled for Sept. 19.


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-14/by-jailing-leopoldo-lopez-venezuela-s-maduro-looks-desperate?cmpid=yhoo (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-14/by-jailing-leopoldo-lopez-venezuela-s-maduro-looks-desperate?cmpid=yhoo)

Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 07, 2015, 08:21:17 AM
I've been reading the Venezuela thread on Something Awful; the Chavista party certainly tried to cheat, going as far as setting up a fake opposition party with a nearly identical name and a party leader with the same name as the real opposition, among other tricks. However, when it comes to voting, the machines have an electronic tally and print off physical receipts; I think there was also something about parties being able to monitor the results? So presumably there was no way to rig the vote without it appearing blatantly obvious, especially with such a landslide and polls reflecting an impending landslide.

Quote from: Valmy on December 07, 2015, 10:30:10 AM
I think morale is low among the Chavistas right now and they don't have it in them.

But we all know how this is going to go. Liberalization will lead to rapid economic growth that will mostly be concentrated with the elites. Unrest and anger will grow and eventually the whole process will be repeated.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 07, 2015, 10:27:56 AM

Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 07, 2015, 08:21:17 AM
I've been reading the Venezuela thread on Something Awful; the Chavista party certainly tried to cheat, going as far as setting up a fake opposition party with a nearly identical name and a party leader with the same name as the real opposition, among other tricks. However, when it comes to voting, the machines have an electronic tally and print off physical receipts; I think there was also something about parties being able to monitor the results? So presumably there was no way to rig the vote without it appearing blatantly obvious, especially with such a landslide and polls reflecting an impending landslide.

But that doesn't explain why the previous government implemented voting machines that couldn't be tampered with.

Quote from: Jacob on December 07, 2015, 01:56:45 PM
Yeah, it's good to see the Chavistas get their asses kicked. Maduro still remains president, though, right?

It looks like it's going to remain messy for a while.

Quote from: Jacob on December 07, 2015, 01:56:45 PM
Yeah, it's good to see the Chavistas get their asses kicked. Maduro still remains president, though, right?

It looks like it's going to remain messy for a while.

Quote from: Jacob on December 07, 2015, 01:56:45 PM
Yeah, it's good to see the Chavistas get their asses kicked. Maduro still remains president, though, right?

It looks like it's going to remain messy for a while.

QuoteVenezuela Has Just Begun to Fight

Hugo Chavez's legacy just suffered a huge defeat. But the political opposition's toughest days are still ahead.

Dictators are typically bad losers. Whenever the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez felt in danger on the eve of an election, he would conjure the possibility of violence, death, or chaos if the vote didn't go his way. The modern dictator doesn't threaten a bloodbath, of course; rather, he suggests obliquely that "forces could be unleashed," that the "will of the people" cannot be denied, or that the "streets will erupt." Slobodan Milosevic always warned that Serbia would fall "into the hands of NATO aggressors." And Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro followed suit in the final days of Venezuela's parliamentary election, accusing the United States of plotting his demise and saying that the opposition "better pray" that his ruling party win or he might simply seize control of the parliament if the opposition won.

On Sunday night, against the backdrop of fireworks and honking horns, Maduro's nightmare came to pass. With 22 races still too close to call, the opposition captured 99 seats in the 167-member National Assembly, more than double the number won by the ruling party. Some election watchers believe the opposition's tally could rise to 112 or 113 seats. If the opposition wins a supermajority, it would have the power to pass major pieces of legislation, sack ministers and Supreme Court justices, and rewrite Chavez's 1999 constitution that centralized so much power in the president's hands. With voter turnout topping 74 percent, the opposition can credibly claim a mandate to undo the country's failed socialist project, which has left Venezuela an economic basket case. That will likely not just mean calling for a presidential referendum to remove Maduro from office next year, but also the release of unjustly imprisoned political prisoners such as opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

Not that Maduro and his political cronies didn't reach deep into their bag of dirty tricks. The regime had extra representatives assigned to areas where it was expected to perform well. Some opposition candidates were banned from running, a well-worn Chavista tactic. The government intentionally crafted a confusing ballot, creating a separate party whose name was sufficiently similar to the opposition's formal name to draw votes away. The government even introduced a candidate with the same name as one of the opposition candidates, in an incredible attempt to confuse people into voting for the imposter.

The trouble is that electoral tricks couldn't distract from the country's collapse. Venezuela is the rare petrostate that suffers from chronic shortages of basic staples and medicine. Its public services have lapsed into utter dysfunction. The only things rising in Venezuela are the rates of crime, murder, and inflation—typically the world's highest these days. The legacy of Chavez's authoritarianism is all that had kept Maduro in the presidential palace. But the failure of Chavismo's policies—the country's slide into the community of failed states—has become too great for even its sympathizers to deny.

But authoritarianism doesn't just concede victory; it must be won—and Venezuela's opposition came prepared on Sunday. The get-out-the-vote effort for young voters was impressive, on par with a similar campaign run in Serbia in 2000. Planeloads of Venezuelans who had been forced to flee the country in recent years returned home to cast a vote. The opposition was ready to defend their votes as well. They had more than 5,000 volunteers, trained in nonviolent tactics, divided into more than 1,000 small cells and stationed at the most important polling stations across the country, according to a senior member of the team spearheading this effort. They had also developed a quick count system and centralized their collection of election data from volunteers so that they could spot irregularities or violations in "almost real time." 

This fight, however, is nowhere near over. Maduro and the ruling party will attempt to marginalize this victory in the weeks and months ahead through a variety of means. And it has the capability: Despite this landslide victory, the ruling party still has control of the machinery of state and the media. Maduro will most likely accept this loss now—thereby burnishing his democratic credentials and silencing international critics—only to try to undermine its practical significance later. Expect the courts to issue rulings circumscribing the powers of the legislature. Expect new edicts and orders concentrating even more power into the executive. Look for government budgets and competencies to shift. Watch out for allegations of corruption and criminal offenses against key members of the opposition.

Even if the opposition succeeds in combating these efforts and prevents "Chavista business as usual," experience tells us that the real challenge lies ahead. Lessons from Ukraine or the Arab Spring have proven that it is one thing to win at the ballot box and another to manage and secure a meaningful transition. Opposition movements don't only require plans for Day 1—reversals of some of the regime's most repressive political practices—but a vision on how to stop the country's free-fall. Even without the ruling party attempting to play a spoiler, the challenges will be immense. The opposition must maintain its unity among a diverse coalition of personalities and forces, and avoid falling into the "Ukrainian trap" of infighting among democratic leaders. It must offer solutions to fix the country's broken economy and effectively fight gang violence, while enlisting the support of almost a million mostly young and educated Venezuelans who have left the country in the last decade.

Today the opposition can celebrate. They are engaged in a long struggle, and victories need to be cherished; they are what give a movement the stamina to keep going. And they will need that stamina. Political figures like Nicolas Maduro rarely retreat peacefully, especially when cornered by the threat of prosecution for their crimes. Tomorrow the fight will begin anew.

Srdja Popovic is the executive director of CANVAS and the author of Blueprint for Revolution.

Quote from: celedhring on December 08, 2015, 08:29:23 PM
Well, the last 5 MPs have been adjudicated to the opposition, so now they have the majority to dismantle the whole shebang. We'll see what happens come January.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 15, 2016, 10:10:10 PM
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 16, 2016, 02:39:56 AM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 15, 2016, 10:10:10 PM
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Wouldn't it be appropriate to wait for them to do at least one dumbass thing before you start badmouthing them?

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 16, 2016, 03:41:05 AM
Maduro hasn't done enough dumbass things for you already?  :huh:

Quote from: citizen k on June 06, 2016, 04:36:28 PM

Venezuelan woman shot dead during latest looting
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-looting-idUSKCN0YS1XJ (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-looting-idUSKCN0YS1XJ)

Quote"These are plans orchestrated by the right wing," he said. "We hope to capture the person responsible."

Quote from: derspiess on June 07, 2016, 10:40:56 AM
May be impossible to know, but I'd like to get a feel for how much support Maduro still has from the erstwhile Chavista base of lower class folks.  They're hungry, and I can't imagine they'd continue to fall for the VRWC line by this point. 

Quote from: Valmy on June 07, 2016, 08:54:59 AM
Government claims food riots are a planned right wing conspiracy.

QuoteMcDonald's forced to halt Big Mac sales in Venezuela
by Florencia Trucco and Bijan Hosseini   @CNNMoney

The latest sign of deepening crisis in Venezuela? McDonald's has been forced to suspend sales of Big Macs in the country because it can't source one of the burger's key components.

Arcos Dorados, the world's largest McDonald's franchisee, said Thursday that it wasn't able to supply the middle bun that separates the two burger patties.

While the company is working to resolve the problem, it will continue to offer menu options such as the Quarter Pounder and a cheeseburger called the McNífica.

Venezuela is deep into a humanitarian crisis, and the country is suffering from food shortages.

Venezuelans flooded into Colombia on Sunday after the border was temporarily reopened, allowing them to buy basic foods and toiletries -- rare commodities in their home country.

The country can't pay to import some goods because its government is desperately strapped for cash after years of mismanagement of its funds, heavy spending on poorly run government programs, and lack of investment on its oil fields.The International Monetary Fund forecasts Venezuela's economy will shrink 10% this year, worse than its previous estimate of 8%. It also estimates that inflation in Venezuela will catapult to 700% this year.

Veneuzuela's foreign reserves are now a mere $11.9 billion, according to its central bank. Two years ago it had $20 billion. The country has had to ship gold to Switzerland this year to help pay down its debts.

The country could be quickly approaching an economic judgment day. It owes about $5 billion in a string of bond payments between October and November. Many experts believe the chance of default is very high.

QuoteYou know what they call a Big Mac in Venezuela?
Brett: Um, no.
Jules: Tell 'em, Vincent.
Vincent: Big Mac sin  Bollo Media.
Jules: "Royale with cheese." Know why they call it that?
Brett: Uh, because they don't have any middle buns?
Jules: (smiles at Brett) Check out the big brain on Brett! You're a smart motherfucker. That's right, they don't have any middle buns.

Quote

The Beginning of the End for Maduro?

How protesters banging kitchenware marked a turning point for a country in chaos   

Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters

| Sep 7, 2016


It's nighttime, and the footage is grainy. At first, it's not clear what you're looking at. A gaggle of roughly 40 people walks quickly down a street, a strange clanking noise marking time. A voice emerges from the din: "¿Que es esto?" or "What's going on here?" Then a large man dressed in olive green materializes, jogging through the center of the frame, surrounded by four or five men, presumably bodyguards. He looks panicked and powerless—entirely out of control. Gradually, it dawns on you that the large man in green is none other than Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, and the entourage his rattled security detail. People in the background shout "¡Mamagüebo!" — "Cocksucker!" It looks for all the world like Maduro is being chased down the street by an angry mob, clanging away, oddly, on pots.

Within hours, the clip of Maduro's pursuit had gone mega-viral across Venezuela via social media. Soon, news trickled out that the presidential Honor Guard was going door-to-door searching homes and seizing cell phones in Villa Rosa, the hardscrabble shantytown on Margarita Island, 200 miles east of Caracas, where the pot-banging scramble all went down. But the regime's goons move much slower than the internet: by the time they were done arresting and questioning 20 residents later that night, pretty much everyone in Venezuela had seen the videos.

It's not yet clear why Maduro decided to go on his ill-fated walkabout in Villa Rosa that night. Minutes earlier, he had been showcasing a series of slum homes, recently refurbished through one of his social programs. The day before, three-quarters of a million people had marched peacefully in Caracas, demanding a referendum to recall Maduro from office, a right guaranteed to them by the Venezuelan constitution. Amid the worst economic crisis in the nation's history, and unprecedented levels of hunger and destitution, people have had enough.

The #VillaRosa incident, as it soon became known on Twitter, electrified Venezuela like nothing had in a good long time. Jeered to his face by desperate, furious, regular people, Maduro looked ridiculous. And little is more destabilizing to an autocrat than being made to look ridiculous. Even the extraordinary scenes of three main Caracas thoroughfares, packed to the gills with demonstrators the day before, couldn't capture the emotional impact of #VillaRosa. There's something radical about the image of ordinary people right up in the president's face, banging their empty pots, something no march could match for raw affect.

That pot-banging—known as a cacerolazo, a venerated form of protest dating back to demonstrations over shortages in Allende-era Chile, which typically involves striking empty kitchenware—merits specific consideration. It is a decentralized, do-it-yourself form of dissent: At scheduled times, people position themselves at their windows, banging on their pots with ladles, producing a neighborhood-wide cacophony. Its genius is in how it lowers the cost of protest, breaking down the isolation that autocratic regimes like Maduro's, and Hugo Chavez's before him, rely on to break down their opponents. Amid a cacerolazo, you can actually hear the sound of those who feel the way you do. Things you would be too scared to voice openly, the cacerola can say on your behalf. In fact, the ruckus turns the tables on government supporters: Normally, they can enforce silence, but during a cacerolazo, they're the isolated ones. And for the security forces, a cacerolazo presents an insurmountable problem: How do you repress a protest that's both everywhere and nowhere in particular at once?

Cacerolazos figured prominently in the first wave of anti-regime protests from 2002 to 2004, when Chavez was still around and things in Venezuela were nowhere near as bad as they are today. Then, the protest movement failed, beaten by Chavez's raw charisma and deep pockets amid the oil-price boom of the early aughts. To some, the tradition still carries the foul odor of that movement's defeat: Chavez, of course, did not fall, and went on to rule in increasingly authoritarian fashion right up to his death in 2013.

The pots are empty anyway—why not bang on them?

Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, inherited his instinct for repression and gut-level admiration for Cuban methods of controlling dissent, but none of his charisma, and none of his luck with the oil market. Low oil prices have cast a spotlight on the million dysfunctions to which a socialist economy is prone. Today, the system has reached a crisis point: an all-out economic rout that's left even middle-class professionals facing outright hunger. The pots are empty anyway—why not bang on them?

In Venezuela, increasing authoritarianism under Maduro has left people justifiably fearful of speaking out too openly against his government. Known opponents of the regime are routinely fired from state jobs. Worse, they're denied access to the rationing system virtually everyone now depends on for food. To survive, you must stay quiet; enforced silence, in turn, leaves opponents isolated. Where there's a terrible price to pay for revealing your true beliefs, political action is nearly impossible.

Yet the sense of urgency for regime change is palpable in Venezuela. To those in the country I've spoken to in recent days, it was clear that some sort of #VillaRosa had been brewing all year. Public opinion, long split roughly down the middle, has turned virulently anti-regime: a July Venebarometro poll had likely voters breaking 88-to-11 in favor of recalling Maduro from office. Under such circumstances, denying a timely recall vote seems liable to set the country on a path to unmanageable political conflict.   

The first signs of that conflict were on display in Villa Rosa. The sight of ordinary people in an ordinary neighborhood literally chasing the president down the street brought to mind the famous scenes in Romania in 1989, when a handpicked crowd of government supporters in Bucharest began jeering at then-president Nicolae Ceaușescu during a set-piece speech. Romanians remember the way his aura of menace and omnipotence crumbled on live television as he waved at the audience, lamely, in a futile effort to settle them down. Within days, his once all-powerful dictatorship had crumbled, and Ceaușescu was summarily executed by a revolutionary tribunal. All that, two decades before Twitter.

On first glance, it would seem that #VillaRosa was Maduro's Ceaușescu moment—that one image that burns itself onto the national psyche and lays bare the collapse of a leader's authority. But the regime itself won't fall quite as quickly as Romania's. While only 15 percent of respondents in a recent poll backed the government strongly, chavismo's adherents are organized, ideologically rigid, and heavily armed. Maduro's authority may be flagging, but he has plenty of power. The regime controls virtually every part of the state, from the Elections Authority, to the police, the the ruling party's National Guard militia, the army, navy, and the air force.


The one bit of the state chavistas don't control is the National Assembly, the sole institution shaped by the people and now controlled by the opposition, which won a crushing two-thirds supermajority in elections last December. Even that's no sweat for an autocratic regime like Maduro's, though, since it controls the Supreme Tribunal. On Tuesday, the tribunal—Venezuela's Supreme Court—ruled that the legislature's bills are all "null and void," in response to the opposition-controlled body's decision to swear in three lawmakers it had accused of electoral fraud. With a single ruling, the highest court in the land overturned literally everything the elected National Assembly does.

Legally, the opposition needs 3.9 million signatures in October's signature-gathering drive (agreed to by the government's docile Elections Council) to officially trigger a recall vote. The opposition's gamble is that a defiant show of force at that point—say if 5, 6, or 7 million turn up to sign—will generate irresistible pressure toward a referendum before the end of the year. If the government refuses to hold one even then, extreme civil disobedience could render the country impossible to govern. At that point, the pressure on Maduro to resign could become overwhelming.

What the opposition needs most of all now is street pressure.

The timing matters. Under the Venezuelan constitution's complex rules, snap elections are called only if the president is recalled before year four of his six year-term. The key deadline is January 10, 2017: If the vote to recall Maduro occurs before then, a new election will be triggered. But if the vote happens after this date, his vice president will serve out the remainder of his term, leaving the chavista regime in power. The government's strategy, then, has been to delay the recall as much as possible, dragging its feet at every stage of the process in an effort to run out the clock. 

What the opposition needs most of all now is street pressure: the determination to sustain a protest agenda in defiance of a regime that has virtually unlimited power, but virtually no authority.

Power, shorn of authority, is inherently unstable. In Venezuela, it's hard to shake the sense that we're witnessing the final days chavismo. What began as a hopeful experiment is ending in the kind of economic and institutional devastation rarely seen beyond the battlefield. How long it might all take to play out, and how much more damage the regime might still do on its way out, is uncertain. But in the wake of #VillaRosa, it's a question of when, not if.

Quote from: Archy on July 26, 2016, 05:14:27 AM

QuoteYou know what they call a Big Mac in Venezuela?
Brett: Um, no.
Jules: Tell 'em, Vincent.
Vincent: Big Mac sin  Bollo Media.
Jules: "Royale with cheese." Know why they call it that?
Brett: Uh, because they don't have any middle buns?
Jules: (smiles at Brett) Check out the big brain on Brett! You're a smart motherfucker. That's right, they don't have any middle buns.

QuoteVenezuela's latest corporate target is Spain's Telefonica

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused a foreign-owned telecommunications firm of helping to orchestrate mass protests against his government.

Maduro called for an investigation of Movistar, a subsidiary of Spain's Telefonica, during a televised speech on Thursday, saying the company had supported a "coup."
"I have asked for an investigation because [Movistar] joined the coup march against the country, and that is not its job," Maduro said.

Maduro claimed that Movistar has sent millions of messages to its users to promote the anti-government protests that have rocked Venezuela in recent weeks. Protesters accuse Maduro of eroding democracy and mismanaging the country's increasingly cash-strapped economy.

Movistar and Telefonica did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Movistar has 11 million customers in the country -- about one-third of the population.

Maduro's announcement comes just a day after General Motors (GM) said authorities unexpectedly seized its auto manufacturing plant in Venezuela, showing a "total disregard" of its legal rights.

Huge swaths of Venezuela's economy have been nationalized in recent decades, including private oil, telecommunications, energy and cement businesses.

The country is now in crisis mode: Its economy shrank by 18% in 2016 -- the third consecutive year of recession. Unemployment is set to surpass 25%, and its people have suffered from widespread shortages of food and medicine.

Hyperinflation has wiped out the value of its currency, the bolivar. The price of consumer goods has skyrocketed.

The recent large-scale protests erupted after Maduro's administration barred opposition leader Henrique Capriles from holding political office for the next 15 years. At least nine people have been killed in the protests. Maduro has been accused by the opposition of behaving like a dictator.

In late March, the loyalist-backed Supreme Court tried to strip the opposition-led National Assembly of its powers, but quickly reversed course after a severe public outcry. The Supreme Court also blocked all reforms from opposition lawmakers.

A slew of global firms have pulled out of the country or been forced to halt operations as a result of government interference or moves to put key sectors of the economy under state control.

Telefonica has been operating in Venezuela since 2005. It made €432 million ($462 million) in the country last year.

Quote from: derspiess on April 27, 2017, 12:15:10 PM
Maduro's solution to his country's problem: MOAR ARMED MILITIAS

Wonder what he thinks his best case scenario is? 

Quote from: derspiess on April 27, 2017, 12:15:10 PM
Maduro's solution to his country's problem: MOAR ARMED MILITIAS

Wonder what he thinks his best case scenario is?

Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2017, 12:21:57 PM

Valmy - where does he go with those hundreds of millions that won't lock him up and send him back to Venezuela if extradition is requested?

Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2017, 12:21:57 PM

Valmy - where does he go with those hundreds of millions that won't lock him up and send him back to Venezuela if extradition is requested?

Quote from: Valmy on April 27, 2017, 12:24:13 PM

Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2017, 12:21:57 PM

Valmy - where does he go with those hundreds of millions that won't lock him up and send him back to Venezuela if extradition is requested?

These guys always find someplace.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 27, 2017, 01:00:21 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

He did? I thought that was their pretext for the hostages.  :hmm:

Quote from: frunk on April 27, 2017, 12:49:06 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

I think he ended up in France (edit: nope, Egypt).

Quote from: Savonarola on May 02, 2017, 09:19:30 AM
While reading an article yesterday I came across the word autogolpe which is a coup organized by the government itself to allow it to take extra powers.  On the one hand that there is such a word in the Spanish language tells a great deal about Latin America.  On the other hand, as an English speaker, I think we should steal this word just in case we ever have use for it.   :bowler:

("False flag" or "Wag the dog" would be related concepts in English, but nowhere near as specific as autogolpe.)

Quote from: Duque de Bragança on May 02, 2017, 11:06:24 AM

Quote from: frunk on April 27, 2017, 12:49:06 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

I think he ended up in France (edit: nope, Egypt).

The Iranian who ended up in France for a while was Khomeiny.  :frusty:

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 02, 2017, 01:08:07 PM

Quote from: Duque de Bragança on May 02, 2017, 11:06:24 AM

Quote from: frunk on April 27, 2017, 12:49:06 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

I think he ended up in France (edit: nope, Egypt).

The Iranian who ended up in France for a while was Khomeiny.  :frusty:

a stupid move that was. Almost as stupid as all the left-wingers supporting him while he was pretty clear about what would happen if he gained power.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 02, 2017, 01:08:07 PM
a stupid move that was. Almost as stupid as all the left-wingers supporting him while he was pretty clear about what would happen if he gained power.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 27, 2017, 12:47:25 PM
Can't remember where he ended up but Carter famously denied entry to the Shah.

Quote from: DGuller on July 25, 2017, 10:16:15 PM
Tracksuits without white stripes just look off somehow.

QuoteBy Teresa Rivas

The situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate, with the U.S. ordering family members of U.S. embassy works to come home and warning travelers against going to the troubled South American nation.

Late yesterday, the State Department said that embassy family members should leave Venezuela, citing Sunday's vote to elect an assembly that would rewrite the constitution. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Venezuela's opposition is boycotting the move and Washington warns the election could undermine the nation's democracy. The U.S. plans to limit the movements of employees who stay.

The news came in a travel warning that advised against Americans going to the country due to "social unrest, violent crime and pervasive food and medicine shortages."

The news comes after the U.S. leveled sanctions against 13 high-ranking Venezuelans for alleged corruption, human-rights violations and undermining the country's democracy.

Just last week, opposition judges were put in place in an attempt to undermine Sunday's vote, but the government called it treason.

Quote from: Valmy on July 28, 2017, 03:36:07 PM
Oh we are banned from Venezuela? Huh. What did we do in 2012 to bring that on?

I hope your customer is right.

Quote from: derspiess on July 28, 2017, 04:09:26 PM
My wife handles inside sales for Latin America in her company.  She says oddly enough, sales to Venezuela have been pretty steady.  She demands full payment before anything is shipped, but they always pay on time.

Quote from: derspiess on July 28, 2017, 04:09:26 PM
My wife handles inside sales for Latin America in her company.  She says oddly enough, sales to Venezuela have been pretty steady.  She demands full payment before anything is shipped, but they always pay on time.

Quote from: Valmy on September 30, 2017, 01:03:31 PM
That will show the evil vaxxers whose boss.

Quote

Venezuelans protest over pork shortage, Maduro blames Portugal

CARACAS (Reuters) - Hundreds of Venezuelans took to the streets in poor parts of Caracas overnight to protest a shortage of pork for traditional Christmas meals in the latest symptom of social discontent during a brutal economic crisis.

President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government had promised to provide subsidized meat to Venezuelans at the end of a fourth year of recession in the OPEC nation - but in many parts it did not materialize and frustration has boiled over.

Local media and Twitter users posted images of hundreds of people standing on streets and burning trash in Caracas late on Wednesday complaining about the failed pork deliveries.

Some pockets of protests continued on Thursday morning, in what some social media users dubbed the "pork revolution".

Maduro, who has been alleging a foreign-led "economic war" against his government, went on state TV to blame Portugal for failing to deliver pork imports in time for Christmas.

"What happened to the pork? They sabotaged us. I can name a country: Portugal," Maduro said.

"We bought the pork, signed the agreements - but they pursued the bank accounts of the boats," he added, without giving further details.

Another senior official said Washington, which has imposed sanctions on the Maduro government, had leant on Lisbon.

"The Portuguese government certainly has no power to sabotage pork (deliveries). We live in a market economy. Companies are in charge of exports," Portugal's Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva told Portuguese radio station TSF.

He added that he would seek information from the Portuguese embassy in Venezuela to clarify the situation.

There was no immediate response from the United States.

Maduro frequently blames the opposition, United States and other foreign powers for the country's economic and social crisis in which millions are suffering shortages of basic products, hyperinflation and a crumbling infrastructure.

The pork protests add to the scattered demonstrations and roadblocks around Venezuela during the Christmas holiday period over the shortages, power-cuts, high prices and fuel rationing. Twenty-eight people were arrested for looting in southern Bolivar state.

Critics blame the government's mishandling of the economy, plus rampant corruption and inefficiency, during nearly two decades of leftist rule in the nation of 30 million people.

"With or without sabotage, no one will take away the happiness of Christmas from the people," Maduro said late on Wednesday.

Critics were scathing. "They'll probably blame Christopher Columbus for hyper-inflation," scoffed one exiled opposition leader Antonio Ledezma.

Quote from: Zoupa on January 10, 2018, 12:43:57 AM

Quote from: Berkut on January 09, 2018, 02:52:08 PM

Quote from: Benedict Arnold on January 09, 2018, 02:50:37 PM

Quote from: Jacob on January 09, 2018, 02:10:31 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 09, 2018, 01:44:20 PM
Which is hopefully something doesn't happen as that likely leads to a situation where militarily powerful nations in the world start carving it up. Decentralized Europe doesn't stand a hope.

Yeah, while there were issues with the Pax Americana based on the post-WWII consensus and a commitment to Western democratic ideals as defined and promoted by the US, all told I was pretty comfortable with it.

The US led the free world based on compelling ideals, mutual benefit, and their position of strength.

If you lived in Central America, South America, Africa, or Asia, you might have a very different opinion of the merits of the Pax Americana and American "commitment" to Western Democratic ideals. 

Indeed. What a nightmare American peace has been for those areas of the world mentioned. If only they had been able to enjoy the peace, prosperity, and justice that was denied them by American interference.

Never change, Berky.

USA! USA! USA!

Quote from: Berkut on January 10, 2018, 02:47:18 PM
I wonder where the crazy left ever got the idea that they could just blame every fucked up situation on the US?

QuoteColombia and Brazil clamp down on borders as Venezuela crisis spurs exodus
Venezuela's neighbors plan to dispatch more security personnel while Brazil prepares to relocate thousands of refugees to country's interior

Colombia and Brazil are tightening their borders in response to Venezuela's economic crisis and food shortages that have provoked an exodus of desperate migrants.

Brazil announced on Thursday that it would send more troops to patrol frontier regions and start relocating thousands of Venezuelan refugees, who have overwhelmed social services in frontier areas, to towns and cities in Brazil's interior.

"This is a humanitarian drama. The Venezuelans are being expelled from their country by hunger and the lack of jobs and medicine," Brazil's defence minister, Raul Jungmann, told reporters during a visit to Boa Vista, which lies on Brazil's northern border with Venezuela. "We are here to bring help and to strengthen the border."

During a visit to Cúcuta, which lies on Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela, the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, announced measures to make it more difficult for Venezuelans to cross the frontier illegally or remain in the country as undocumented migrants. He also dispatched 3,000 more security personnel to border regions.

Over the last half of 2017, the number of Venezuelans moving to Colombia jumped by 62% to about 550,000, according to immigration officials. But due to illegal immigration, some officials estimate that more than 1 million have moved to Colombia since Venezuela's economic crisis took hold in 2015.

"Colombia has never before experienced a situation like this," Santos said during a visit to Cúcuta, a border city of 670,000 that is the main receiving center for Venezuelan migrants.

Santos laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's increasingly authoritarian president, whose socialist policies have provoked food shortages, hyperinflation, and a collapse of the currency. Many Venezuelans now earn the equivalent of just a few British pounds a month and have trouble finding staples such as milk and pasta.

"I want to repeat to President Maduro: this is the result of your policies. It is not the fault of Colombians and it's the result of your refusal to receive humanitarian aid, which has been offered, not just from Colombia but from the international community," Santos said.

As they straggle into Cúcuta, tired and hungry Venezuelans often sell their possessions, including wedding rings and even their hair, in order to buy food. Some hole up in temporary shelters or on park benches and rely on soup kitchens set up by churches.

One of the newcomers, Jesús García, said he quit his job as an industrial mechanic with Venezuela's state oil company in December. Hyperinflation in Venezuela, which the International Monetary Fund forecasts will hit 13,000% this year, meant that he could no longer afford food for his wife and two kids.

García arrived in Cúcuta last month and is looking for work in Colombia's oil patch. Meanwhile, he busks in a Cúcuta park, playing a harp and singing folk songs alongside a a fellow Venezuelan, who strums guitar. Bystanders toss the equivalent of about £8 ($11) per day into an open guitar case – which is more than García earned as an oil worker back in Venezuela.

Quote from: KRonn on February 10, 2018, 02:04:28 PM
What a mess Venezuela has become. And I think they had been a quite prosperous nation about a decade or more ago.

QuoteTrump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.

Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.

The White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in "dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy" in order to "bring positive change to a country that has suffered so much under Maduro."

But one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government's own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.

He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration's willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically.

Most Latin American leaders agree that Venezuela's president, Mr. Maduro, is an increasingly authoritarian ruler who has effectively ruined his country's economy, leading to extreme shortages of food and medicine. The collapse has set off an exodus of desperate Venezuelans who are spilling over borders, overwhelming their neighbors.

Even so, Mr. Maduro has long justified his grip on Venezuela by claiming that Washington imperialists are actively trying to depose him, and the secret talks could provide him with ammunition to chip away at the region's nearly united stance against him.

"This is going to land like a bomb" in the region, said Mari Carmen Aponte, who served as the top diplomat overseeing Latin American affairs in the final months of the Obama administration.
Beyond the coup plot, Mr. Maduro's government has already fended off several small-scale attacks, including salvos from a helicopter last year and exploding drones as he gave a speech in August. The attacks have added to the sense that the president is vulnerable.

Venezuelan military officials sought direct access to the American government during Barack Obama's presidency, only to be rebuffed, officials said.

Then in August of last year, President Trump declared that the United States had a "military option" for Venezuela — a declaration that drew condemnation from American allies in the region but encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington once again.

"It was the commander in chief saying this now," the former Venezuelan commander on the sanctions list said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals by the Venezuelan government. "I'm not going to doubt it when this was the messenger."

In a series of covert meetings abroad, which began last fall and continued this year, the military officers told the American government that they represented a few hundred members of the armed forces who had soured on Mr. Maduro's authoritarianism.

The officers asked the United States to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government to run the country until elections could be held.

American officials did not provide material support, and the plans unraveled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters.

Relations between the United States and Venezuela have been strained for years. The two have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010. After Mr. Trump took office, his administration increased sanctions against top Venezuelan officials, including Mr. Maduro himself, his vice president and other top officials in the government.

The account of the clandestine meetings and the policy debates preceding them is drawn from interviews with 11 current and former American officials, as well as the former Venezuelan commander. He said at least three distinct groups within the Venezuelan military had been plotting against the Maduro government.

One established contact with the American government by approaching the United States Embassy in a European capital. When this was reported back to Washington, officials at the White House were intrigued but apprehensive. They worried that the meeting request could be a ploy to surreptitiously record an American official appearing to conspire against the Venezuelan government, officials said.

But as the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela worsened last year, American officials felt that having a clearer picture of the plans and the men who aspired to oust Mr. Maduro was worth the risk.

"After a lot of discussion, we agreed we should listen to what they had to say," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak about the secret talks.

The administration initially considered dispatching Juan Cruz, a veteran Central Intelligence Agency official who recently stepped down as the White House's top Latin America policymaker. But White House lawyers said it would be more prudent to send a career diplomat instead.

The American envoy was instructed to attend the meetings "purely on listening mode," and was not authorized to negotiate anything of substance on the spot, according to the senior administration official.

After the first meeting, which took place in the fall of 2017, the diplomat reported that the Venezuelans didn't appear to have a detailed plan and had showed up at the encounter hoping the Americans would offer guidance or ideas, officials said.

The former Venezuelan commander said that the rebellious officers never asked for an American military intervention. "I never agreed, nor did they propose, to do a joint operation," he said.

He claimed that he and his comrades considered striking last summer, when the government suspended the powers of the legislature and installed a new national assembly loyal to Mr. Maduro. But he said they aborted the plan, fearing it would lead to bloodshed.

They later planned to take power in March, the former officer said, but that plan leaked. Finally, the dissidents looked to the May 20 election, during which Mr. Maduro was re-elected, as a new target date. But again, word got out and the plotters held their fire.

It is unclear how many of these details the coup planners shared with the Americans. But there is no indication that Mr. Maduro knew the mutinous officers were talking to the Americans at all.

For any of the plots to have worked, the former commander said, he and his comrades believed they needed to detain Mr. Maduro and other top government figures simultaneously. To do that, he added, the rebel officers needed a way to communicate securely. They made their request during their second meeting with the American diplomat, which took place last year.

The American diplomat relayed the request to Washington, where senior officials turned it down, American officials said.

"We were frustrated," said the former Venezuelan commander. "There was a lack of follow-through. They left me waiting."

The American diplomat then met the coup plotters a third time early this year, but the discussions did not result in a promise of material aid or even a clear signal that Washington endorsed the rebels' plans, according to the Venezuelan commander and several American officials.

Still, the Venezuelan plotters could view the meetings as tacit approval of their plans, argued Peter Kornbluh, a historian at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

"The United States always has an interest in gathering intelligence on potential changes of leadership in governments," Mr. Kornbluh said. "But the mere presence of a U.S. official at such a meeting would likely be perceived as encouragement."

In its statement, the White House called the situation in Venezuela "a threat to regional security and democracy" and said that the Trump administration would continue to strengthen a coalition of "like-minded, and right-minded, partners from Europe to Asia to the Americas to pressure the Maduro regime to restore democracy in Venezuela."

American officials have openly discussed the possibility that Venezuela's military could take action.

On Feb. 1, Rex W. Tillerson, who was secretary of state at the time, delivered a speech in which he said the United States had not "advocated for regime change or removal of President Maduro." Yet, responding to a question afterward, Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.

"When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can't serve the citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition," he said.

Days later, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has sought to shape the Trump administration's approach toward Latin America, wrote a series of Twitter posts that encouraged dissident members of the Venezuelan armed forces to topple their commander in chief.

"Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid," Mr. Rubio wrote. He then added: "The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator."

In a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr. Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a "madman," Mr. Cruz said all Venezuelans should "urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions. Honor your oath."

As the crisis in Venezuela worsened in recent years, American officials debated the pros and cons of opening lines of dialogue with rebellious factions of the military.

"There were differences of opinion," said Ms. Aponte, the former top Latin America diplomat under Mr. Obama. "There were people who had a lot of faith in the idea that they could bring about stability, help distribute food, work on practical stuff."

But others — including Ms. Aponte — saw considerable risk in building bridges with leaders of a military that, in Washington's assessment, has become a pillar of the cocaine trade and human rights abuses.

Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who preceded Ms. Aponte as the top State Department official for Latin America policy, said that while Washington has long regarded the Venezuelan military as "widely corrupt, deeply involved in narcotics trafficking and very unsavory," she saw merit in establishing a back channel with some of them.

"Given the broader breakdown in institutions in Venezuela, there was a feeling that — while they were not necessarily the answer — any kind of democratic resolution would have had to have the military on board," said Ms. Jacobson, who retired from the State Department this year. "The idea of hearing from actors in those places, no matter how unsavory they may be, is integral to diplomacy."

But whatever the rationale, holding discussions with coup plotters could set off alarms in a region with a list of infamous interventions: the Central Intelligence Agency's failed Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba in 1961; the American-supported coup in Chile in 1973, which led to the long military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet; and the Reagan administration's covert support of right-wing rebels known as the contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

In Venezuela, a coup in 2002 briefly deposed Mr. Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez. The United States knew a plot was being hatched but warned against it, according to a classified document that was later made public. The coup took place anyway and the George W. Bush administration opened a channel to the new leader. Officials then backed away from the new government after popular anger rose against the coup and countries in the region loudly denounced it. Mr. Chávez was reinstated as president.

In the latest coup plot, the number of military figures connected to the plan dwindled from a high of about 300 to 400 last year to about half that after a crackdown this year by Mr. Maduro's government.

The former Venezuelan military officer worries that the 150 or so comrades who have been detained are probably being tortured. He lamented that the United States did not supply the mutineers with radios, which he believes could have changed the country's history.

"I'm disappointed," he said. "But I'm the least affected. I'm not a prisoner."

Quote from: Valmy on September 08, 2018, 02:09:12 PM
The only way we could make the situation worse would be to help overthrow the government.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on September 08, 2018, 02:15:46 PM

Quote from: Valmy on September 08, 2018, 02:09:12 PM
The only way we could make the situation worse would be to help overthrow the government.

That would make it better. The way we make it worse is to try and fail.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2019, 06:24:42 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YleDadp5Rz4

A handful of National Guardsmen declare opposition to Maduro, call on people for support.

QuoteVenezuela: Trump recognises opposition leader as president

    Juan Guaidó, 35, proclaimed himself interim leader in Caracas
    Move is dramatic escalation of crisis in South American country

Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaidó has declared himself interim president of the beleaguered South American country, in a dramatic escalation of efforts to force President Nicolás Maduro from power.

The move was immediately welcomed by the US and Canadian governments. Donald Trump said he would use the "full weight" of US economic and diplomatic power to push for the restoration of Venezuela's democracy.

In front of thousands of protesters in the capital, Caracas, Guaidó, the head of the opposition-run national assembly, raised his right hand and said he was "formally assuming the responsibility of the national executive".

The 35-year-old lawmaker, said his surprise move was the only way to rescue Venezuela from "dictatorship" and restore constitutional order.

"We know that this will have consequences," Guaidó, 35, told the cheering crowd standing before a lectern emblazoned with Venezuela's national coat of arms.

"To be able to achieve this task and to re-establish the constitution we need the agreement of all Venezuelans," he shouted.

Guaidó had previously declared himself willing to assume the presidency on an interim basis with the support of the armed forces to call elections.

In a statement, Trump described the national assembly as the "only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people" and called on other countries in the western hemisphere governments to recognize Guaidó as interim president.

"We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people," he said.

Canada's foreign minister Chrystia Freeland said that Maduro's government was "now fully entrenched as a dictatorship", and called on him to hand power to the National Assembly until new elections were held.

"The suffering of Venezuelans will only worsen should he continue to illegitimately cling to power," she said in a statement.

The sudden developments came as tens of thousands joined marches across the country's capital in what opponents of Nicolás Maduro hope will prove a turning point for the country's slide into authoritarianism and economic ruin.

Venezuela's president, who started his second term on 11 January after disputed elections, is facing a reinvigorated opposition as well as increasing international hostility from the rightwing governments of the US, Brazil and Colombia.

Wednesday's march follow two nights of violent protests in working-class neighbourhoods of Caracas – once bastions of support for the government – and the apparent foiling of an armed uprising by members of the national guard.

Early on Wednesday, protesters in eastern Caracas braved an early morning downpour, shouting in unison: "Who are we? Venezuela! What do we want? Freedom!"

An opposition member holds a Venezuelan national flag during a protest march against Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Wednesday.

In the centre of the capital, riot police flanked by water tanks and lightly armored vehicles had already been deployed to the central Plaza Venezuela square.

Other protests were planned across the country and outside embassies around the world.

Guaidó repeated calls for members of the security forces to withdraw their support for Maduro. "The world's eyes are on our homeland today," he said in an early-morning tweet.

Relatively unknown until this month, Guaidó appears to have reinvigorated Venezuela's opposition which has long been racked by infighting. Ahead of Maduro's inauguration, Guaidó described the leader as a "usurper" and declared himself ready to assume the presidency until open elections could be held.

Wednesday also marks the anniversary of the 1958 uprising that overthrew the military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez – a symbolism that was not lost on María de Jesús, a social worker from Caracas who was born on the day of the 1958 rebellion.

"I was born in democracy," she said on her way to the march in Caracas. "I want my freedom; this is a dictatorship."

Across town, several hundred supporters held a rival march in support of Maduro. Though it was dwarfed in size by the opposition protest, those in attendance were in a buoyant mood.

"We are here to support our president and defend our resources," said Ana Media, who works for the state oil company PDVA, as salsa music blasted from loudspeakers. "We know that other countries are against Maduro because they want to take over our resources."

Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with hyperinflation rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent.

Analysts have long held that Maduro's survival depends on the backing of the military, who he has rewarded with senior positions in government and the state oil company PDVSA.

But it is unclear how solid that support is. Guaidó and the opposition-held national assembly have sought to peel away the military, offering an amnesty to members of the armed forces who help bring about a return to democracy. This week, authorities arrested 27 national guardsmen who tried to launch an uprising against Maduro.

In Ciudad Guayana, a north-eastern city, a statue of Hugo Chávez – Maduro's late predecessor and the figurehead of Venezuelan socialism – was burned, cut in half and the bust hung from a bridge on Tuesday night.

Maduro has accused the opposition of fomenting violence. "I demand the full rigor of the law against the fascists," he said on Tuesday night. His allies have also threatened the use of armed pro-government militias – known as colectivos – to quell disturbances.

The United States, long fiercely opposed to Maduro, has thrown its support behind the opposition. "President Trump and the US stand resolutely with the Venezuelan people as they seek to regain their liberty from dictator Nicolás Maduro," Vice-President Mike Pence wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

A previous spate of protests in 2017 left at least 120 dead and hundreds more injured, after Maduro dispatched the national guard. Human rights watchdogs and international observers are readying for a similar crackdown on Wednesday.

Foro Penal, a local watchdog, reported on Wednesday morning that 30 protestors had been arrested overnight. Local journalists alleged that authorities in Caracas had attempted to confiscate their equipment.

Quote from: celedhring on January 23, 2019, 02:05:56 PM
More seriously, this is so not going to end well.

Quote from: celedhring on January 23, 2019, 02:05:56 PM
More seriously, this is so not going to end well.

Quote from: celedhring on January 23, 2019, 02:04:15 PM
The blue player just bought a topple card.

Quote from: Iormlund on January 23, 2019, 06:31:28 PM
Those with access to hard currency and good sense are fairly well off, others are pretty much indentured servants.

Quote from: FunkMonk on January 24, 2019, 08:53:16 PM
Can someone enlighten me on this?

Quote from: FunkMonk on January 24, 2019, 08:53:16 PM
I'm not too knowledgeable of the current situation, but I thought the sanctions currently in place, which started under Obama, target only regime officials and their assets, and that the current protests are organic and mainly coming from the poorest people in the country.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 24, 2019, 09:00:56 PMSure.  The Democratic Socialists of the People's Republic of America are wingnuts.

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 24, 2019, 10:01:18 PM
I still largely prefer my wingnuts over yours.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 24, 2019, 10:04:21 PM

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 24, 2019, 10:01:18 PM
I still largely prefer my wingnuts over yours.

I'm a centrist.  We don't have wingnuts.  :showoff:

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 24, 2019, 10:01:18 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 24, 2019, 09:00:56 PMSure.  The Democratic Socialists of the People's Republic of America are wingnuts.

I still largely prefer my wingnuts over yours.

Quote from: Valmy on January 24, 2019, 10:38:16 PM
Why prefer wingnuts of any variety?

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 24, 2019, 11:03:49 PM

Quote from: Valmy on January 24, 2019, 10:38:16 PM
Why prefer wingnuts of any variety?

For all sorts of reasons.

Because some wingnuts are more harmless than others.
Because some wingnuts are in the service of worthy causes, and others are in the service of hateful causes. 
Because some wingnuts are utopians, rather than dystopians.
Because some wingnuts are inspiring.
Because centrists often delude themselves into thinking that a milquetoast stance on everything is equivalent to reasonableness. Some causes require wingnuts. I don't want to be a centrist on causes like slavery, or antisemitism, or human dignity. 
Because centrism is no less susceptible to extremity and wingnuttery as any of the causes they hope to distinguish themselves from; simply, they offer their beliefs as "common sense". 

Many of the things I cherish about our world have been the result of the action of wingnuts. I can rarely escape the feeling that a reasonable me would have condemned them at the time.

Quote from: Valmy on January 24, 2019, 11:08:32 PM
And I don't regard Yi as being milquetoast at all, he has very passionate convictions. So clearly we are using words that mean different things to each other.

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:19:30 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

As much as I despise that communist asshatery going on there, recognising some random dude declaring himself President seems like a bit of a desperate move. Covertly arming rebels should have been the way to go.

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:31:01 AM

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:19:30 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

As much as I despise that communist asshatery going on there, recognising some random dude declaring himself President seems like a bit of a desperate move. Covertly arming rebels should have been the way to go.

He's not some random dude.

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:19:30 AM
As much as I despise that communist asshatery going on there, recognising some random dude declaring himself President seems like a bit of a desperate move. Covertly arming rebels should have been the way to go.

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM
What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

Quote from: celedhring on January 25, 2019, 10:26:16 AM
1980s nostalgia runs strong in Tamas  :lol:

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 10:32:32 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

Eh, I'm fine with it.

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:32:43 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:31:01 AM

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:19:30 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

As much as I despise that communist asshatery going on there, recognising some random dude declaring himself President seems like a bit of a desperate move. Covertly arming rebels should have been the way to go.

He's not some random dude.

What's the legitimacy of his claim?

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:54:59 AM

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:32:43 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:31:01 AM

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 10:19:30 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

As much as I despise that communist asshatery going on there, recognising some random dude declaring himself President seems like a bit of a desperate move. Covertly arming rebels should have been the way to go.

He's not some random dude.

What's the legitimacy of his claim?

He's the president of the National Assembly.  Per the 1999 constitution, the president of the National Assembly becomes the interim president if there is no legitimate president.  Maduro is arguably not legitimate, per his shenanigans with the 2018 election.

FWIW, the OAS and most of the Western Hemisphere recognize Guaidó.  The EU isn't specifically recognizing him but is recognizing the legitimacy of the National Assembly.

I am still thinking through my own opinion on this whole thing.  I think I'm in favor of recognizing Guaidó given how many others have done so, but where do we go from here?

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:54:59 AM
I think I'm in favor of recognizing Guaidó given how many others have done so, but where do we go from here?

Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2019, 11:04:45 AM
Ah, I did not know that. Thanks.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 25, 2019, 11:21:28 AM
I think we start flipping military commanders.

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 12:01:23 PM
Easier said than done.

Quote from: Valmy on January 25, 2019, 11:18:00 AM
That is my question on the matter. I mean we have recognized him and as the dominant power in the area doesn't that compel us to support him directly in someway? Otherwise if we just sit by and watching him fall after recognizing him that would make us look like fools.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 25, 2019, 12:04:02 PM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 12:01:23 PM
Easier said than done.

Well duh.  But it's a better approach than invading or making heartfelt speeches.

Quote from: Valmy on January 25, 2019, 11:18:00 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:54:59 AM
I think I'm in favor of recognizing Guaidó given how many others have done so, but where do we go from here?

That is my question on the matter. I mean we have recognized him and as the dominant power in the area doesn't that compel us to support him directly in someway? Otherwise if we just sit by and watching him fall after recognizing him that would make us look like fools.

Quote from: Barrister on January 25, 2019, 12:22:11 PM

Quote from: Valmy on January 25, 2019, 11:18:00 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:54:59 AM
I think I'm in favor of recognizing Guaidó given how many others have done so, but where do we go from here?

That is my question on the matter. I mean we have recognized him and as the dominant power in the area doesn't that compel us to support him directly in someway? Otherwise if we just sit by and watching him fall after recognizing him that would make us look like fools.

Not necessarily.  The US never recognized the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, for example.  That didn't mean that they did much about it.

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 12:14:46 PM
Is there any point at which you would support intervention?

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:41:38 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 10:32:32 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 09:45:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 25, 2019, 01:00:27 AM
I would prefer if the US simply stays out of this.  The people of Venezuela created this mess, it's up to them to fix it.  Hopefully that will come soon.  On the other hand, if Maduro is overthrown the US shouldbecome involved.  Food Aid, loans, technical assistance, etc.  There is nothing wrong with a helping hand to people who genuinely want it and need it.

In short the US should be a good neighbor.

What are your thoughts on actions we've taken so far?  Should we have continued to recognize Maduro as prez?

Eh, I'm fine with it.

Fine with actions we've taken thus far, or fine with continuing to recognize Maduro?

Quote from: Barrister on January 25, 2019, 12:22:11 PM

Quote from: Valmy on January 25, 2019, 11:18:00 AM

Quote from: derspiess on January 25, 2019, 10:54:59 AM
I think I'm in favor of recognizing Guaidó given how many others have done so, but where do we go from here?

That is my question on the matter. I mean we have recognized him and as the dominant power in the area doesn't that compel us to support him directly in someway? Otherwise if we just sit by and watching him fall after recognizing him that would make us look like fools.

Not necessarily.  The US never recognized the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, for example.  That didn't mean that they did much about it.

QuoteMOSCOW (Reuters) - Private military contractors who do secret missions for Russia flew into Venezuela in the past few days to beef up security for President Nicolas Maduro in the face of U.S.-backed opposition protests, according to two people close to them.

QuotePortuguese bank halted $1.2 billion transfer of Venezuela funds: lawmaker

CARACAS (Reuters) - Portugal-based Novo Banco halted a transfer of $1.2 billion by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to banks in Uruguay, a Venezuelan legislator said on Tuesday, a day after the opposition denounced what they called the theft of public funds.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who most European and Western Hemisphere nations have recognized as the country's legitimate leader, said on Monday that authorities were trying to move up to $1.2 billion to banks in Uruguay.

Countries around the world are pressuring Maduro to resign amid a hyperinflationary economic crisis that has led millions to emigrate. His adversaries warn that officials are seeking to drain state coffers ahead of a potential change of government.

"They attempted to move Venezuelan government financial assets in Novo Banco in Portugal worth some $1.2 billion toward Uruguayan banks," said legislator Carlos Paparoni during a congressional session on Tuesday.

"I'm pleased to inform the Venezuelan people that this transaction has until now been halted, protecting the resources of all Venezuelans."

Venezuela's Information Ministry, which handles all media inquiries, did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

Lisbon-based Novo Banco, which is 75 percent-owned by U.S. private equity firm Lone Star Funds, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Major European nations joined the United States on Monday in recognizing Guaido, while members of an Americas regional bloc kept up the pressure on socialist Maduro.

QuoteOrganized labour in Canada is voicing its opposition to the federal government's decision to embrace Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido over the regime of Nicolas Maduro — which has been accused of human rights abuses and of winning the last election through vote-rigging.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) — Canada's largest union — the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Labour Congress have expressed varying degrees of concern over Canada's move to recognize Guaido as interim president.
...

CUPE goes on in that statement to accuse the Trudeau government of choosing to side with a self-declared interim leader over President Nicolas Maduro, "who was duly elected by the people of Venezuela." It also accused Ottawa of siding with U.S. President Donald Trump and American foreign policy.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 07, 2019, 03:57:14 PM
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cupe-unions-venezuela-maduro-cupw-clc-1.5005798

QuoteOrganized labour in Canada is voicing its opposition to the federal government's decision to embrace Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido over the regime of Nicolas Maduro — which has been accused of human rights abuses and of winning the last election through vote-rigging.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) — Canada's largest union — the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Labour Congress have expressed varying degrees of concern over Canada's move to recognize Guaido as interim president.
...

CUPE goes on in that statement to accuse the Trudeau government of choosing to side with a self-declared interim leader over President Nicolas Maduro, "who was duly elected by the people of Venezuela." It also accused Ottawa of siding with U.S. President Donald Trump and American foreign policy.

:huh:

Quote from: derspiess on February 07, 2019, 03:46:27 PM
Would save some lives, for sure. 

My wife's Venezuelan friends keep telling me they'd give up half their oil or build ("and paint" :huh: ) Trump's wall if we get rid of Maduro.

Quote from: Habbaku on February 07, 2019, 09:11:50 PM
There are plenty of morons in the USA that are equally stupid RE: Maduro and Guaido. Without knowing anything about the situation, they claim this is a "both sides are bad" situation or, worse, claim that Maduro is totally OK and it's really just the evil Yanqui that are making him do bad things.

Quote from: Berkut on February 08, 2019, 10:25:08 AM
Fuck that. No US intervention in South America has EVER been seen by the world as positive in any way, not matter what. The long term result is that we end up owning whatever fucked up outcome there is, if there is a fucked up outcome, and if there is a positive outcome, it had nothing to do with our imperialist meddling.

Let the EU or something fix them.

Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:37:07 AM
I would be for doing something on a small scale. Like helping to evacuate Maduro to wherever disgraced South American politicians live in exile these days.

Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:39:02 AM
The impression I got was that Guaido was just some guy who declared himself the leader of the opposition, knowing he actually is Constitutionally supposed to be President right now changes things. Maybe I am not alone in getting that message somehow?

Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:39:02 AM

Quote from: Habbaku on February 07, 2019, 09:11:50 PM
There are plenty of morons in the USA that are equally stupid RE: Maduro and Guaido. Without knowing anything about the situation, they claim this is a "both sides are bad" situation or, worse, claim that Maduro is totally OK and it's really just the evil Yanqui that are making him do bad things.

The impression I got was that Guaido was just some guy who declared himself the leader of the opposition, knowing he actually is Constitutionally supposed to be President right now changes things. Maybe I am not alone in getting that message somehow?

Quote from: derspiess on February 08, 2019, 11:42:28 AM

Quote from: Valmy on February 08, 2019, 10:39:02 AM
The impression I got was that Guaido was just some guy who declared himself the leader of the opposition, knowing he actually is Constitutionally supposed to be President right now changes things. Maybe I am not alone in getting that message somehow?

Since this caught a lot of people off-guard, one can be forgiven for not fully understanding things 2-3 weeks ago.  But now the information has been out there & available.

Quote from: derspiess on February 25, 2019, 12:40:32 PM
Not sure how much this made "the news" this weekend but Saturday was a big day in Venezuela.  It was announced ahead of time that Trucks carrying humanitarian aid from the US, Canada, Brazil, and Colombia would enter Venezuela through several border crossings along Venezuela's border with Colombia and Brazil.  Maduro closed both borders and deployed his National Guard and militia to keep the aid convoys out.

Apparently one convoy successfully got through at one point, but the rest were stopped, and in at least a couple instances the aid trucks were set on fire by the pro-Maduro side.  There were some pretty emotional confrontations throughout the day.  The aid packages burning was a pretty ugly visual.  And I saw some footage of Venezuelan military police chasing down an aid truck and executing the driver.

Quote from: FunkMonk on February 25, 2019, 12:49:59 PM
But those aid trucks were really smuggling in weapons from the CIA, you see

Quote from: FunkMonk on February 25, 2019, 12:49:59 PM
But those aid trucks were really smuggling in weapons from the CIA, you see

Quote from: derspiess on February 11, 2019, 01:34:29 PM
Jill Stein is doubling down on Maduro.  She's calling Guaido's party "rightwing" (they're center-left and a member of the Socialist International) and spouting all sorts of other crap on Twitter.

#jillgonnajill

Quote from: Threviel on February 26, 2019, 01:24:54 AM
If they are executing the drivers, who are the drivers? I would think that external aid would be driving in with not-venezuelan drivers.

Quote from: derspiess on February 26, 2019, 08:27:49 AM

Quote from: Threviel on February 26, 2019, 01:24:54 AM
If they are executing the drivers, who are the drivers? I would think that external aid would be driving in with not-venezuelan drivers.

Good question-- I'll see if I can find out.  My guess is they're Venezuelan.  A lot of the aid workers involved with the effort were in fact Venezuelan citizens.  I'm sure they found some that could drive trucks.

Quote from: Threviel on February 26, 2019, 02:54:47 PM
It's just that if Venezuela is so fucked up that the truck drivers risk being shot it would probably be safer to go with colombian och brazilian drivers. Or even US drivers, I have a hard time believing that US citizens would be shot.

Quote from: Threviel on February 26, 2019, 04:04:59 PM
Damn, is it Somalia bad over there or what?

Quote from: Threviel on February 26, 2019, 04:04:59 PM
Damn, is it Somalia bad over there or what?

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:24:22 PM
Apparently with the power out there is also no running water in Caracas for the past few days.

Quote from: Valmy on March 12, 2019, 12:38:27 PM

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:24:22 PM
Apparently with the power out there is also no running water in Caracas for the past few days.

Sometimes I wonder not how Maduro manages to keep power, but why he wants to. Surely he can see this situation cannot and will not end well for him.

Quote from: derspiess on March 12, 2019, 01:01:48 PM
He can always go to Cuba.  Also doubt Turkey would extradite him.

Quote from: derspiess on March 12, 2019, 01:01:48 PM
He can always go to Cuba.  Also doubt Turkey would extradite him.

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:40:40 PM

Quote from: Valmy on March 12, 2019, 12:38:27 PM

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:24:22 PM
Apparently with the power out there is also no running water in Caracas for the past few days.

Sometimes I wonder not how Maduro manages to keep power, but why he wants to. Surely he can see this situation cannot and will not end well for him.

But that's exactly it.  The days when dictators could flee into comfortable exile on the French Riviera are over.  If he leaves power he's probably hauled before either a Venezuelan court, or the ICC, for crimes against humanity.  He has to stay in power for his own survival.

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:24:22 PM
Apparently with the power out there is also no running water in Caracas for the past few days.

Quote from: Malthus on March 13, 2019, 01:21:10 PM

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:40:40 PM

Quote from: Valmy on March 12, 2019, 12:38:27 PM

Quote from: Barrister on March 12, 2019, 12:24:22 PM
Apparently with the power out there is also no running water in Caracas for the past few days.

Sometimes I wonder not how Maduro manages to keep power, but why he wants to. Surely he can see this situation cannot and will not end well for him.

But that's exactly it.  The days when dictators could flee into comfortable exile on the French Riviera are over.  If he leaves power he's probably hauled before either a Venezuelan court, or the ICC, for crimes against humanity.  He has to stay in power for his own survival.

This makes me think it would be a good idea to guarantee evil dictators complete immunity for their crimes, if they step down - because otherwise they won't step down.

Quote from: derspiess on March 13, 2019, 10:09:35 PM
But that would also eliminate a lot of the risk associated with becoming a dictator in the first place. And then we might have more men willing to become dictators. Don't want to end up like Mussolini or Khadafi did? Don't become a dictator.

Quote from: derspiess on March 14, 2019, 08:50:10 AM
I would like to think the Mussolini fate would at least encourage some restraint.

Quote from: derspiess on March 14, 2019, 08:50:10 AM
I would like to think the Mussolini fate would at least encourage some restraint.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 19, 2019, 02:17:27 AM
Check the app store.  I don't have a smart phone.

Quote from: Barrister on March 19, 2019, 10:03:07 AM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 19, 2019, 02:17:27 AM
Check the app store.  I don't have a smart phone.

:blink:

I'm more baffled by this than all the euros who don't own cars.

Quote from: derspiess on March 19, 2019, 03:38:03 PM
Read an article that crime is down slightly in Venezuela because criminals/gangs (plus the regime?) are having difficulty affording ammunition due to the economic collapse.

Quote from: viper37 on March 19, 2019, 09:48:38 PM

Quote from: derspiess on March 19, 2019, 03:38:03 PM
Read an article that crime is down slightly in Venezuela because criminals/gangs (plus the regime?) are having difficulty affording ammunition due to the economic collapse.

is that the future of the US under President Trump's third term? ;)

Quote
Venezuela crisis: Russian military planes land near Caracas
25 March 2019 

Two Russian military planes landed in Venezuela's main airport on Saturday, reportedly carrying dozens of troops and large amounts of equipment.

The planes were sent to "fulfil technical military contracts", Russia's Sputnik news agency reported.

Javier Mayorca, a Venezuelan journalist, wrote on Twitter that he saw about 100 troops and 35 tonnes of equipment offloaded from the planes.

It comes three months after the two nations held joint military exercises.

Russia has long been an ally of Venezuela, lending the South American nation billions of dollars and backing its oil industry and military.

Quote
Prof. Steve Hanke 
@steve_hanke
    
More Russian soldiers unload in #Venezuela to help prop up Pres. #Maduro. The Ilyushin IL-62M is used to carry military personnel and frequently flies troops from #Russia to Syria -- indeed it stopped in #Syria on its way from Russia to #Caracas. pic.twitter.com/YfU2SnZacJ

8:22 PM - 24 Mar 2019

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 25, 2019, 06:04:42 PM
This was already mentioned upstream mongers.  Private contractors there to prop up the bad guys.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 25, 2019, 06:04:42 PM
This was already mentioned upstream mongers.  Private contractors there to prop up the bad guys.

Quote from: derspiess on March 29, 2019, 02:29:59 PM
This may have been mentioned already, but I read that the original blackout was triggered by a fire at a substation.  Grass was allowed to grow too high and caught on fire.  Somehow that triggered a chain of events that essentially destroyed the turbine at the main hydroelectric dam. 

Also read that turbine was manufactured by GE.  No way to get it replaced with sanctions and no dollars.  The US should offer to replace it for free if Maduro steps down.

Quote from: Tamas on April 30, 2019, 08:32:06 AM
Coup is apparently ongoing, but early reports are not encouraging.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2019/apr/30/venezuela-opposition-leader-juan-guaido-claims-coup-underway-live-news

Quote from: derspiess on April 30, 2019, 10:30:53 AM
Also, this is not a coup unless one considers Maduro to be the legitimate president of Venezuela.  Lots of lazy journalism going on out  there.

Quote from: derspiess on April 30, 2019, 11:03:17 AM
Just saw footage of Venezuelan National Guard armored cars running over protesters.  It is starting to get ugly.

Quote
Venezuela's rulers accused by UN of death squads and policy of fear
4 July 2019 

The UN has accused Venezuela of a strategy of instilling fear in its population to retain power, removing opponents with a "shocking" number of alleged extrajudicial killings.

Victims are arrested and shot, with crime scenes manipulated to suggest they resisted police, a report says.

The UN urges Venezuela to end the "grave violations of economic, social, civil, political and cultural rights".

Nicolás Maduro's administration has not yet officially responded to the report.

Venezuela has in the past dismissed human rights allegations as "lies".

Mr Maduro is locked in a political battle with opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Mr Guaidó, head of the country's National Assembly, declared himself interim president in January and has the backing of more than 50 countries, including the US and most of Latin America. Mr Maduro retains the loyalty of most of the military and important allies such as China and Russia.

Some four million people have fled Venezuela since 2015, according to the UN, amid a severe economic crisis that has resulted in high unemployment and chronic shortages of food and medicine.

What is the UN report and what does it allege?

The report is scheduled to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Friday.

It is based on "558 interviews with victims and witnesses of human rights violations and the deteriorating economic situation" from January 2018 to May 2019.

Its most damning findings relate to the number of deaths the Venezuelan government has ascribed to resisting arrest.

That figure for last year was 5,287, with another 1,569 up to 19 May this year.

Referring to these figures as "unusually" and "shockingly" high, the report says: "Information analysed by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial executions."

The UN says witnesses reported how the Special Action Forces (FAES) "manipulated the crime scene and evidence. They would plant arms and drugs and fire their weapons against the walls or in the air to suggest a confrontation and to show the victim had 'resisted authority'".

It adds that the UN "is concerned the authorities may be using FAES and other security forces as an instrument to instil fear in the population and to maintain social control".

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the report paints a dark picture of Venezuela, in which unmarked black vans arrive in poor neighbourhoods, masked officers get out, round up young men and shoot them.
...

Quote from: celedhring on May 02, 2019, 02:11:41 PM
Search & Capture order issued for Leopoldo López, who's holed up at the Spanish Embassy.

Quote from: DGuller on May 05, 2021, 06:05:31 PM
What's the context here?  Is that a ceremony or an execution?