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This might be slightly offtopic, but does anyone here have first hand info on how things are going in Colombia? I have a trip there in 10 days and am wondering if I should reconsider my itinerary
+ Show Spoiler +I had planned out more or less 4 days in Bogota, 5 in Carthagena and 5 in Santa Marta doing the Ciudad Perdida hike. I assume that unless things really heat up, Carthagena and Santa Marta will be fine reguardless, so what I'm trying to work out is if I should avoid Bogota altogether
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For those of you that have not read the full but are interested CBC has a nice brief summary of the report. I'm not sure that anyone at this point can claim that Morales didn't cheat. Perhaps with the Trump tactic of now swapping to "cheating doesn't matter," or I need to cheat to defeat my enemies or something along those lines.
Important notes, the reported was supported by countries that support Morales like Mexico.
In all there were 36 experts from 18 countries in the hemisphere, including "electoral attorneys, statisticians, IT experts, document specialists, handwriting experts, experts in chain of custody and experts in electoral organization," according to the OAS. They began their work on Nov. 1.
The audit was supported both by governments that backed Morales, such as Mexico, and by others that have recognized a caretaker administration led by Jeanine Añez, such as the United States.
The fraud began before the election, or at least the plan to implement it.
Even before voting began, there was a climate of suspicion in Bolivia due partly to a series of dismissals, replacements and appointments of people affiliated with the ruling party to the electoral tribunal and the Civil Registry Service. Individuals in those government agencies were implicated in the fraud by OAS auditors.
It debunks the idea that it was rural voting coming in at the end.
The audit dismisses the claim by Morales's supporters that this happened because the last votes counted came from heavily Indigenous rural areas where Morales is popular. Auditors found that votes from similar areas, tallied before the sudden stoppage, were less favourable to MAS.
It was wide spread deliberate manipulation, the people were right to protest the results and the MAS party is right to move on from their corrupt new leaders to new younger hopefully trustworthy ones.
"The detailed findings reveal the partiality of the electoral authority," says the document. "The scrutineers of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, who were supposed to ensure the legality and integrity of the process, allowed the flow of information to be diverted to external servers, destroying all confidence in the electoral process."
It also confirmed that an outside user who controlled a Linux AMI appliance with "root privileges" — conferring the ability to alter results — accessed the official vote-counting server during the counting.
Auditors also found that in a sample of 4,692 returns from polling stations around the country, 226 showed multiple signatures by the same person for different voting booths, a violation of electoral law. On those returns, 91 per cent of votes went to MAS, approximately double the rate recorded elsewhere. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bolivia-election-oas-audit-canada-1.5390060
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Pretty crazy news coming out of Mexico, the top of their FBI was just arrested for accepting bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. As some suspected his "war on drugs" was actually just a war on Sinaloa enemies. It is amazing how high the corruption goes. This might be the start of a lot of high ranking officials from the past government going down depending on if Genaro Garcia Luna flips on anyone. I wonder if El Chapo threw him under the bus and if others will also fall. Hopefully everyone corrupt does, and I hope people of the current government are scared off from doing the same.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/arrest-of-top-crime-fighter-stuns-mexico-where-corruption-is-all-too-routine/ar-AAK2Zu5?li=AAggNb9
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If Mexico had a serious anti-corruption movement half the Government would be gone, past and present. The Cartels have seemingly affected everything from the Government to the police, and event the military.
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That is what happens if criminal organisations have the same amount of money that industries have. They start lobbying too. Only if criminals do it, it is called bribery and corruption, but if a car company does it, it is legal lobbying.
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On December 13 2019 02:38 Simberto wrote: That is what happens if criminal organisations have the same amount of money that industries have. They start lobbying too. Only if criminals do it, it is called bribery and corruption, but if a car company does it, it is legal lobbying.
Pretty much. Then add in that the criminality of the drug lords and legality of the industries largely being a result of said lobbying/corruption and you've got a neat little package.
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It is really past due to make all these drugs legal, making them illegal has done little if anything to curb use or any of the problems and just created a hugely lucrative, violent, black market. Legalizing them wouldn't solve all the problems but it would make the money taxable and legitimate and perhaps that could be funneled back into social programs that could do some good.
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Pretty interesting article about what is still going on in Venezuela. Maduro attempted to block Guaido from being voted to lead the national assembly by physically blocking him from entering. They did vote in one of their own but then the assembly held a emergency vote in a different location putting guaido back in charge. Pretty cool picture of them blocking him and him trying to climb a fence to get in.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793884001/supporters-of-venezuelas-maduro-try-to-seize-control-of-legislature
With Maduro having back channel meetings with Abrams's and other Trump insiders it looks like there will be no one to remove him. It is a strange time as now since a huge portion of the economy is black market and funded in American dollars but the banks won't accept them people are hiding them like all over their house. It is sad what maduro has done to this country.
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More on Maduro being a thug, he kept a photographer in jail for 18 months on trumped up charges with no trial than finally just released him. His crime, taking photo's of things in the healthcare system Maduro didn't want people to see. His health is much worse after being kept in maximum security prison, way worse then here, imagine what it must be like when the middle class struggles for food. Hopefully at some point leftists across the world will stop supporting this guy and pretending he is a socialist.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51018787
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Is anyone surprised that great "socialists" Chavez and Maduro have been striking deals with the "capital class" to enrich themselves for a long time now. Working with some of the worst of the worst?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-15/ex-jpmorgan-banker-invited-erik-prince-on-secret-venezuela-trip
It does not surprise me in the least, they are corrupt to the core and only about protecting their power, and increasing it along with their own personal wealth. ISM doesn't matter when you give absolute power to a small group they do what is best for themselves.
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Brazillian minister of culture quotes Gobbels in video announcing an art prize, and later claims it was just a "rethorical coincidence". You can't make this shit up.
A few hours later and after backlash from both allies and enemies he's fired by Bolsonaro.
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On January 18 2020 00:19 Sbrubbles wrote: Brazillian minister of culture quotes Gobbels in video announcing an art prize, and later claims it was just a "rethorical coincidence". You can't make this shit up.
A few hours later and after backlash from both allies and enemies he's fired by Bolsonaro. Crazy coincidence 😂
The US is trying to direct TV to not block channels that Maduro has censored like BBC and CNN. Maduro originally blocked them when they showed the video of military trucks running over unarmed protestors. While this would be about the only way the poor could get outside info (even the internet is highly censored) it will likely backfire and maduro will say the US is bullying again. Direct TV has a 44% market share so it is big and likely Maduro would not confiscate all the equiptment. Legally this would be different than most sanctions because media has always hard certain exemptions do to the US rules on freedom of info, but they may point out Maduro has choked the freedom of info. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6425262/att-venezuelas-maduro/
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After Morales of Boliva made public comments about organizing millitia's in Bolivia like they have in Venezuala he has retracted those statements and said he meant only slingshots. They were wildly unpopular statements since very few Bolivians want the horrible conditions of the dictatorship in Venezuela and even less want armed "collectivo's" requiring people to pay protection and so on. These are basically legal gangs in Venezuela.
Poor political move and before the retraction MAS was distancing themselves from the comments.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/evo-morales-retracts-call-armed-militias-bolivia-200116192545546.html
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Not gonna read 50 pages of this topic but I wanna ask Out of curiosity Jimmic why are u so interested in sa políticas?
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On January 18 2020 12:44 XenOsky wrote: Not gonna read 50 pages of this topic but I wanna ask Out of curiosity Jimmic why are u so interested in sa políticas? I work with a lot of displaced Venezuelan’s both at my job and where I volunteer, the interest has grown from there. My wife’s sister is also common law with a refugee from SA so when he talks about it I like to be able to talk some what intelligently. Another one of my friends moved to Chile for 3 years in agriculture. Some based on my heritage and other parts based on how interesting it is. There are much more dramatic swings in left to right then we have in Canada and I was surprised how often the same problems arise often rooted in corruption. And then because of that I get a lot of stories suggested to me from google many of which I find fascinating.
The main thing that started it was them telling me how bad it was getting before it was common knowledge, or made big news here. But getting told here and other places that what these poor, refugees were telling me was US propaganda. It didn’t make sense so As I dig deeper and saw all the BS the US had actually done in the past so that also seemed pretty plausible, so I have been following it and reading and than discussing it with the displaced people.
It is all very complicated and with so much propaganda, from every direction it makes it complicated and interesting.
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I think Argentina will have food shortages, Venezuela style, in 5-10 years.
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