https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/karlazabludovsky/venezuela-rockefeller-bolivar
South American Politics thread - Page 30
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JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/karlazabludovsky/venezuela-rockefeller-bolivar | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/28/nicolas-maduro-son-venezuela-sanctions-us People skipping school to just try to survive https://www.npr.org/2019/06/29/736573450/venezuelas-teachers-and-students-skip-school-for-survival Estimates are now that migration will hit 8 million!!! which makes it more than Syria, yikes. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/oas-venezuela-migration-largest-world-2020-190628174012682.html | ||
GreenHorizons
United States21791 Posts
We have more than 59 hours of videos from more than 7 meetings by the terrorists” said Rodriguez, who then proceeded to play leaked recordings of phone calls and meetings between opposition figures in which they discussed the logistics of carrying new violent attacks, and their liaisons with foreign groups. One revelation was that former military figures discussed the need to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife Cilia Flores and President of the National Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello Another detail revealed was the high level of cooperation between coup plotters and foreign armed groups, namely from Panama and Israel. One former army general, known as "Simón" is said to be the go-between for the Israelis. In one call the Israelis cooperating with them were referred to as “those of the holy land”. As Rodriguez concluded the press conference he listed those who have been detained for their involvement in the coup and published the identities of those who are still in connection to it. The minister said that one of them, José Gregorio Valladares, was known as a torturer and drug trafficker during the neoliberal period, he also asked the public for information on the whereabouts of Ilich Sanchez Farias, a senior military figure who is wanted for involvement in the April 30th coup, and was recorded calling for the murder of Cuban doctors in Venezuela. Thursday’s press conference was a follow up to one that took place on Wednesday that exposed the deep divisions among the opposition during the most recent coup attempt. One revelation was that a faction of military officers was secretly plotting to declare former general Baduel rather than Juan Guaido as the self-declared ‘President’ were the coup to have been successful. www.telesurenglish.net | ||
GreenHorizons
United States21791 Posts
Some background on the people fleeing the country for their lives: Tapachula, Mexico - Maical Garcia carried almost no belongings when he fled Honduras earlier this month. Once in Mexico, he contacted relatives to ask for a copy of his father's death certificate, a case linked to the death threats that forced him to flee years later. Garcia's father, Jose Luis Garcia Manueles, was a primary school teacher and part-time local radio correspondent in Marcala, a town in western Honduras. The political climate was tense in early 2009, but Garcia Manueles aired contentious local perspectives on politics and allegations of political corruption in town, his son said. "He received telephone threats and messages left on his vehicle, telling him to stop the [radio] programme," Maical Garcia, 28, told Al Jazeera. "He never stopped working. He never thought it would cost him his life," he said. On May 19, 2009, Garcia Manueles was shot in the head. His body was dumped along a road out of town. His family was in mourning the following month when the Honduran military overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya, who had gradually shifted somewhat to the left while in office. Politicians from both main political parties, including Zelaya's, closed ranks behind the military, instating a civilian de facto government pending elections. Friday marks the anniversary of the June 28, 2009 coup d'etat that set in motion a decade of political crises, violence, mass protests, militarisation and repression. Ten years later, the government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez has instituted a crackdown on protesters, and Hondurans continue to flee by the thousands every month. www.aljazeera.com | ||
Starlightsun
United States1405 Posts
On June 30 2019 00:37 JimmiC wrote: Estimates are now that migration will hit 8 million!!! which makes it more than Syria, yikes. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/oas-venezuela-migration-largest-world-2020-190628174012682.html Scary thought. I wish we would help instead of blasting them with sanctions. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
On June 30 2019 01:52 Starlightsun wrote: Scary thought. I wish we would help instead of blasting them with sanctions. That gets super complicated considering that they have two people claiming to be president and the one in control of the army will not allow aid. And the other one has no control and now also has some corruption swirling around his people so it is even murkier. At least the US is fighting this with economy instead of bombs. The Venezuelans I know still want the US and rest of the world to continue down this path as they feel Maduro will never do right by the people but time will tell. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10091 Posts
On June 30 2019 02:48 JimmiC wrote: Pfff. Yeah sure, let sanction people who are contrarian to us just in the hopes their people starve for long enough for them to rebel.That gets super complicated considering that they have two people claiming to be president and the one in control of the army will not allow aid. And the other one has no control and now also has some corruption swirling around his people so it is even murkier. At least the US is fighting this with economy instead of bombs. The Venezuelans I know still want the US and rest of the world to continue down this path as they feel Maduro will never do right by the people but time will tell. Are you reading yourself? Atleast they are not bombing them? What the actual fuck. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
On June 30 2019 03:28 Godwrath wrote: Pfff. Yeah sure, let sanction people who are contrarian to us just in the hopes their people starve for long enough for them to rebel. Are you reading yourself? Atleast they are not bombing them? What the actual fuck. They are not contrarian to "ourselves". They have a leader who has destroyed their democracy stolen from his people and ruined the countries economy before the sanctions. Perhaps do some actual research instead of jumping on the "must be bad because Murcia is involved" plan. Over 2 million had left pre-sanctions. It is hard to even say how much the sanctions are effecting the people since almost no money made it to them anyway. Perhaps you believe in full isolationism and letting everyone sort everything else out themselves and North Korean would be a oasis if not for the evil hand of the west. I don't believe that, I don't believe in "socialism" where the leaders are somehow billionaires. If you could let me know how you think the western world should treat a dictatorship who stole the democracy from the country and won't allow free elections, arrests and tortures any one who disagrees with him, leaves his people to starve while him and the other oligarchs get ultra rich, let me know. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10091 Posts
On June 30 2019 04:34 JimmiC wrote: Well, let's ask a simple question. What have sanctions accomplished in Cuba, North Korea or Iran? Your determination to agree to economic sanctions designed to starve populations is not only immoral, but it isn't even efficient. We already had this discussion about external interventionism.They are not contrarian to "ourselves". They have a leader who has destroyed their democracy stolen from his people and ruined the countries economy before the sanctions. Perhaps do some actual research instead of jumping on the "must be bad because Murcia is involved" plan. Over 2 million had left pre-sanctions. It is hard to even say how much the sanctions are effecting the people since almost no money made it to them anyway. Perhaps you believe in full isolationism and letting everyone sort everything else out themselves and North Korean would be a oasis if not for the evil hand of the west. I don't believe that, I don't believe in "socialism" where the leaders are somehow billionaires. If you could let me know how you think the western world should treat a dictatorship who stole the democracy from the country and won't allow free elections, arrests and tortures any one who disagrees with him, leaves his people to starve while him and the other oligarchs get ultra rich, let me know. About sanctions being put in place because they have a leader who has destroyed their democracy, is quite baffling, let's just ignore decades of planting dictatorships by the US in Latin America (And beyond) and the US willfully ignoring the corruption and human rights violations in countries whom are allies or clients, so we can finally reach the conclusion that the reason the sanctions had been put in place are not because they are contrarian to US interests, but to protect Venezuelan's democracy. I won't even bother answering your consecuent rambling and attempts to strawman me. I know my post was short, but if you want to have my opinion on something, just ask instead of attempting to characterize me through poor guesses. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
On June 30 2019 05:18 Godwrath wrote: Well, let's ask a simple question. What have sanctions accomplished in Cuba, North Korea or Iran? Your determination to agree to economic sanctions designed to starve populations is not only immoral, but it isn't even efficient. We already had this discussion about external interventionism. About sanctions being put in place because they have a leader who has destroyed their democracy, is quite baffling, let's just ignore decades of planting dictatorships by the US in Latin America (And beyond) and the US willfully ignoring the corruption and human rights violations in countries whom are allies or clients, so we can finally reach the conclusion that the reason the sanctions had been put in place are not because they are contrarian to US interests, but to protect Venezuelan's democracy. I won't even bother answering your consecuent rambling and attempts to strawman me. I know my post was short, but if you want to have my opinion on something, just ask instead of attempting to characterize me through poor guesses. It is funny that you are offended by "making guesses" when this is exactly what you did to me. Feel free to pretend to be so offended that you can't explain yourself but you should then at least not do the exact same thing. I'd agree they have not been effective, which is why I asked what you would do. So far it appears that the only options are do nothing, economic sanctions, or war. I prefer the second though if there is something better I'd be interested. I generally disagree with the US foreign policy, and if they had replaced Maduro with their own dictator I wouldn't have been happy. I also think it is despicable when they replace democracies with their own choice for economic benefit. Neither has happened here, and basically every democracy that has "picked a side" has not picked Maduro, and basically every dictatorship has. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10091 Posts
On June 30 2019 06:57 JimmiC wrote: Might be that your comment about "atleast they are not bombing it" were in tongue in cheek, but from most of your posts i took that you are not against the sanctions (or atleast your position has been "what else can we do?", which is something i find facepalm worthy). If that isn't true, i apologize.It is funny that you are offended by "making guesses" when this is exactly what you did to me. Feel free to pretend to be so offended that you can't explain yourself but you should then at least not do the exact same thing. I'd agree they have not been effective, which is why I asked what you would do. So far it appears that the only options are do nothing, economic sanctions, or war. I prefer the second though if there is something better I'd be interested. I generally disagree with the US foreign policy, and if they had replaced Maduro with their own dictator I wouldn't have been happy. I also think it is despicable when they replace democracies with their own choice for economic benefit. Neither has happened here, and basically every democracy that has "picked a side" has not picked Maduro, and basically every dictatorship has. My opinion on how to deal with Venezuela doesn't differ from a openess strategy, most likely because that's how most democracies had been successfully installed. Commerce, tourism and migration would help way more to change the lifestyle expectations from a good chunk of Venezuelans than crushing their hopes through sanctions if they don't revolt and start a civil war, which they might not win and would still be catastrophic to the country. We can blame Maduro for not stepping down, but from there the international community (and more specifically the US) shouldn't bring pain to regular citizens which are the ones that will suffer the most through these sanctions, just to give the aesthethic that they are punishing the regime, which in return gets into a better position to entrench itself even further. | ||
CuddlyCuteKitten
Sweden2351 Posts
On July 01 2019 00:12 Godwrath wrote: Might be that your comment about "atleast they are not bombing it" were in tongue in cheek, but from most of your posts i took that you are not against the sanctions (or atleast your position has been "what else can we do?", which is something i find facepalm worthy). If that isn't true, i apologize. My opinion on how to deal with Venezuela doesn't differ from a openess strategy, most likely because that's how most democracies had been successfully installed. Commerce, tourism and migration would help way more to change the lifestyle expectations from a good chunk of Venezuelans than crushing their hopes through sanctions if they don't revolt and start a civil war, which they might not win and would still be catastrophic to the country. We can blame Maduro for not stepping down, but from there the international community (and more specifically the US) shouldn't bring pain to regular citizens which are the ones that will suffer the most through these sanctions, just to give the aesthethic that they are punishing the regime, which in return gets into a better position to entrench itself even further. Trying to deal with dictatorships through openness is usually a bad idea. The cure is simple. Make sure they don't have enough money to pay the people with the guns (enough of the people with the guns). The police and the military will not kill their own people and risk their lives for free. There is no "entrenching" of power for a dictator, you just have to spend cash every day to keep yourself in power and the moment the cash runs out you are fucked. Now you can either go violently at once or peacefully by buying off the people with increasing freedoms until you are no longer a dictatorship but it's all about not having enough resources to keep your people in check. The main problem for Venezuela (like many other places) is it's oil. If the person in power can steal all the oil (or diamonds or whatever) money they no longer need a functional economy to stay in power. Thus as time goes by the rest of the economy suffers since it's unnecessary. I'm pretty sure the socialists had good intentions at the start but priority 1 is always "stay in power". So if the rest of the world can completely cut of Venezuela that is in fact the best way to deal with it. Unfortunately there is a high risk of the US trying to get their "man" in the job and then removing the sanctions and just trading one regime for another one. If Venezuela didn't have oil perhaps openness could have worked but not now. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
On July 01 2019 00:12 Godwrath wrote: Might be that your comment about "atleast they are not bombing it" were in tongue in cheek, but from most of your posts i took that you are not against the sanctions (or atleast your position has been "what else can we do?", which is something i find facepalm worthy). If that isn't true, i apologize. My opinion on how to deal with Venezuela doesn't differ from a openess strategy, most likely because that's how most democracies had been successfully installed. Commerce, tourism and migration would help way more to change the lifestyle expectations from a good chunk of Venezuelans than crushing their hopes through sanctions if they don't revolt and start a civil war, which they might not win and would still be catastrophic to the country. We can blame Maduro for not stepping down, but from there the international community (and more specifically the US) shouldn't bring pain to regular citizens which are the ones that will suffer the most through these sanctions, just to give the aesthethic that they are punishing the regime, which in return gets into a better position to entrench itself even further. I think we generally would agree. I'm completely on board with the sanctions that are on the leadership and are freezing and and seizing their wealth in the USA. It is hard for me to feel sorry for socialist 100 million and billionaires losing their money. How do they even pretend they got it legitimately? They were talking about sanctioning the CLAP purchases, which are the food buckets given to only Maduro supporters. I would be against that, even though it is super corrupt and the leaders are stealing tons off it (there is lots of articles basically the books show them paying Mexico way more than Mexico receives) but at least food is getting to the people. The oil sanctions I'm not sure on, I've done tons of reading but it is very hard to know the truth given the history and so on. What I am confident in is even before the sanctions they were stealing so much that even basic maintenance was not begin done and the production was failing. There was over 2 million people who had left pre-sanctions. So if they didn't sanction in that way how much would actually be making it to the poor? I suspect less than the aid they refused. Based on the new information on Guaido and his people I'm not confident he is the answer. But I 100% know Maduro is not. Fake socialists are the worst because they steal like crazy, get stupid rich, and somehow people think their country is failing because of some right wing conspiracy. How about you just don't steal and we see how it works out? Basically I'm sure Madruo is a piece of shit and based on all the numbers the country and its poor was fucked regardless of the sanctions (lets not forget Maduro ordered his security forces to open fire on the indigenous trying to get aid, the rest I guess I can see how people can believe it is right wing lies, but these are the poorest of the poor, no excuse justifies it). They need democracy back and that is what Guaido is promising. That is what the democratic world is hoping for. Not to install Guaido but rather to make him interim while they have actual elections. Saying Madruo is the elected leader of the people is not that different from saying that Kim of NK is the most popular leader in the world because he wins at a 100% rate. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
Support for Guaido remains high but it has dipped slightly from 61.2% in February to 56.7% in May, according to a June 10 report from Venezuelan pollster Datanalisis. Just 10.1% of Venezuelans approved of Maduro in May, the lowest level for a president since 1999, according to the survey. Meanwhile, a survey from pollster DatinCorp showed the proportion of Venezuelans who recognized Guaido as the legitimate president had fallen from 49% in February to 36% in June. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-analysis/disappointed-venezuelans-lose-patience-with-guaido-as-maduro-hangs-on-idUSKCN1TW3ME This is pretty sick, but I'm not sure that anything can or will be done. Dictators face no justice while they are in power. It will either reignite the momentum against him or scare people from doing it in the future. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/01/venezuela-navy-captain-torture-widow-rafael-acosta | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-trade-mercosur-brazil/brazil-to-act-on-deforestation-if-concerns-confirmed-minister-says-idUSKCN1TY2XO | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
Bachelet is a Chilean socialist who knows all about imperialism. She suffered torture in the 1970s at the hands of a U.S.-backed military government before going on, decades later, to serve two terms as president of her country. As Chile’s president, she was one of a handful of Latin American leaders who were not openly critical of Maduro. Clearly, Maduro hoped her report would provide a counterweight to the dominant storyline surrounding Venezuela – a storyline that paints him as a villainous dictator. To that end, as the report notes, the regime welcomed her UN investigators and willingly provided them with information. Bachelet herself flew to Caracas last month to meet Maduro and other top figures in the regime. With the governments own numbers (so real ones are likely much higher) basically the Government death squads are nearing 8000 people killed. This would not include all the killings and violence committed by the colictivo's. Using the government’s own figures, the report says that in 2018 security forces killed 5,287 people engaged in “resistance to authority.” Between January and May 2019, they killed 1,569 more “Many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial executions,” the report says. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/07/08/un-points-the-finger-at-maduro-for-venezuelas-crisis.html Here is the full report. https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/07/1041902 Here is a far left report saying that the UN report by a socialist is a right wing conspiracy. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/weaponizing-human-rights-un-high-commissioner-bachelets-venezuela-report-follows-us-regime-change-script/ I'm going to stick with the UN report as being fairly unbiased. | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article232593057.html | ||
GreenHorizons
United States21791 Posts
I think Rep. Jan Schakowsky out of Chicago's northside (not radical left by any means) summed up the absurdity of US foreign policy in Honduras pretty well. The United States has continued to support successive administrations in Honduras, even though elections have been biased by vote buying, fraud, and assassinations. The United States sends the Honduran military and police aid even though these security forces have been ordered to beat and shoot non-violent protesters and there are credible allegations of death squads formed to assassinate journalists and citizens working for social change. One of these citizens was the well-known environmental activist Berta Cáceres. No one is held accountable for these crimes. She continues: The 10 years since the (US supported) coup have resulted in increasing poverty, privatization of social goods keeping services out of the reach of the poor, violence from both drug cartels and state security forces against Honduran citizens, human and civil rights violations, corruption, and a dramatic increase of refugee migration fleeing the country, many to the United States. Almost 70 percent of Hondurans live in poverty, and Honduras now has the most uneven wealth distribution in Latin America. thehill.com No one the US government supports is ever the hero in South/Latin America (unless or until they turn against the US government). | ||
JimmiC
Canada22806 Posts
Corruption is such a way of life right now that changing governments ism only changes what elites take advantage of the poor. | ||
GreenHorizons
United States21791 Posts
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