Venezuela political situation/humanitarian Crisis - Page 5

On January 31 2019 13:05 JimmiC wrote:
Earlier I suggested we feed the people and the refugees. Perhaps use the gold in the bank of england if needed. Just make sure to deliver it to the people so corruption doesnt steal and sell it elsewhere as well.

Considering how weak the sanctions were and hope little the people had to eat who knows how much this will even change things.

On January 31 2019 14:48 RvB wrote:
You do realise Maduro has repeatedly refused international aid right? I doubt he's going to accept it now.

On February 01 2019 01:07 JimmiC wrote:



Also there was 1 million people at the anti government protests on the 23rd and apparently bigger numbers are expected for protests on Feb 2nd. Hoepfully this pressure along with the international community can force a change. Civil war or invasion, IMO, will do way more harm than good.

Maduro is also having his intelligence officers arrest foreign reporters attempting to report on the protests.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/venezuela-detains-foreign-journalists-crackdown-protests-190131073859425.html

On February 01 2019 03:29 JimmiC wrote:
I think no one wants another Libya and there are some pretty clear and stark differences between the two situations. So count me the group that will act surprised if it ends up the same.

On February 01 2019 03:52 JimmiC wrote:
Eastern Europe. Hungry, East Germany, Poland so on.

When the Polish government launched martial law in December 1981, however, Solidarity was not alerted. Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention."[188] CIA support for Solidarity included money, equipment and training, which was coordinated by Special Operations.

On February 01 2019 04:15 JimmiC wrote:
Your going down a rabbit hole that is far from the target. But I think that when the wall came down in Germany a lot of those countries and their citizens were a lot better off with their new elected governments and getting away from their dictatorships. As for getting into more detail, not only is not my interest but it is not the purpose of this blog. Feel free to bring that discussion back to yours if you would like.

On February 01 2019 04:33 JimmiC wrote:
Yes it is, about what is happening. What could happen if X Y Z happens while acting like X Y Z are happening but are really assumptions seems like a fools errand to me. So I will stick to what is happening and will remain hopeful because assuming the worst accomplishes nothing. But by all means you have your whole blog to talk about whatever it is that you want so do all your future theorizing and so on there.


Guaido says that his family has been threaten and that the police loyal to Maduro came for his wife in an attempt to intimidate him. Who knows? I think because of how public this is he is fairly safe, but it is also pretty classic strongman tactics.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47066906


https://thehill.com/policy/international/427885-venezuelas-guaido-says-police-showed-up-at-house-looking-for-his-wife

On February 01 2019 05:05 JimmiC wrote:


I'm not doing any of the planning, neither are you so that is not really relevant in this case.

I hope he is not actually killed that would almost certainly lead to lots more violence whether it is civil war or invasion or both.

What Has Happened in Venezuela Is a Coup. Trump’s Denial Is Dangerous

Juan Guaidó has declared himself president. Now the US and rightwing regimes may seek an excuse to intervene in support.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Hugo Chavez invoked Bolívar’s promise and when the poor, black, Amerindian people of Venezuela returned him to power, time and again, especially after the failed US-backed coup of 2002, he too radicalised his stance against the mighty empire Bolivar had only speculated about, America. Again, the promise was realised only in part. Some might say the revolution has been betrayed or stalled during the rule of his successor Nicolás Maduro. No one can deny Venezuela’s problems. The very source of its magic in the 1970s, oil, has proven its downfall. Chavez did not win his country’s independence from oil and its geopolitics.

Crisis loomed when global prices fell, production stagnated, the value of the currency dropped, and under Maduro, dependence on imports and retail monopolies meant shortages that hurt many. That responsibility lies with the government and the industrialist rightwing opposition. But to think that this opposition, revived by Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation spectacle, acts out of genuine concern for the poor, black people and Amerindians who empowered themselves during the years of the Bolivarian revolution would be foolish.

Enter Donald Trump: megalomaniac, erratic, liar. Calling out the interventionism of previous US administrations, which had been constant in their hatred for Chavez and their attempts to regain influence in the region, Trump promised to put an end to all such shenanigans. But on Wednesday, vice-president Mike Pence saluted Guaidó’s self-appointment, observing that although Trump disliked intervening elsewhere, he “has always had a very different view of our hemisphere”. That’s an explicit invocation of the Monroe doctrine under which the US has held it as its responsibility to intervene in the Americas, which it sees as its backyard.

Trump swiftly recognised Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, and was followed by a cohort of Latin American presidents, all-white, upper-class leaders now spearheading the new reactionary wave in the region: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera. They’ll proclaim themselves saviours of democracy and humanitarianism, the liars. Draping themselves in the robes of the liberators of yesteryear, just as Guaidó draped himself in the image of Chavez and Bolívar while holding a constitution with the latter’s image on its cover, they’ll happily support further US sanctions, paramilitary forces training Venezuela’s opposition in the torture tactics that displaced 7 million people in Colombia, or using “lawfare” in pan-American institutions just as happened to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay.

Expect such measures to have limited purchase. Washington knows it. Then, Trump and the others will be ready to go for the more muscular approach. Not by accident, this could also benefit Trump as elections approach or if he is cornered by investigations and impeachment. War distracts and makes money. Only this won’t be a regional plunder: China and Russia, both with key interests in Venezuela and elsewhere in the region, have followed Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and Cuba to call Guaidó’s stunt by its real name: a coup. Russia has indicated it would come to the defence of its ally. In Venezuela, many who may be critical of Maduro but fear most the return of the rightwing opposition to power are unlikely to cheer the newly converted humanitarians.