They have the support of the military forces. So rioting doesn't work. It just gets you killed on the street with no repercussions for the government.
Also, the word "leader" implies that this is a legitimate democracy, which is not. Venezuela has an authoritarian corrupt government at best, a dictatorship at worst.
A wise leader once said: All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.
I think the quote is actually, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," per Google and Wikipedia. Is this part of Marxist theory, or Maoist? I genuinely don't know. I had always thought that Marx viewed the revolution as at least potentially peaceful, but I confess I have never read him.
Ah, I know who it was. I was more asking whether he was reflecting a viewpoint from earlier Marxist theory, or whether it was a novel viewpoint of his.
I think he based it on reality rather than theory. Every communist government has use force to "maintain the revolution": USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK, China, Romania, etc.
The US political situation is not even remotely comparable, ignoring the plundering of the economy by the government and military, in 2020 or by 2024 at the latest, the US WILL have a different president. Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt.
There is no deep state. There is the rule of law, made by our representatives and questions are decided by courts. Regardless of one person's views, we make choices based on a legal basis.
No course there is no perfection in our human choices. Laws are sometimes applied selectively. That doesn't mean you just give up and say it's all bad.
There shouldn't be secret laws. There are secret interpretations, I hate that. It doesn't mean I just give up and say everything is bad.
I also think parallel construction is very very harmful. Again, knowing it exists and being against it doesn't mean that I am giving up on the general rule of law.
Not really, remember how it turned out that the NSA was breaking the law? Nobody is really a first-world country, especially when the public isn't watching. The US is just first world more often than average. It probably has something to do with the fact that the public watches most of what's going on, at least on the basic level. Anywhere the public is confused (often the case for consumer and environmental issues) or deliberately kept in the dark (you-know-who) corruption runs rampant.
If and when the FISA applications against Carter Page and others in the Trump campaign and transition team are declassified by a vengeful Trump, then we'll know whether the Obama administration weaponized the DOJ and FBI against their political opponents or not. After the declassification, let's discuss about whether there is a failing "deep state" or not.
Are you curious to know how many months into the 18-month Russian collusion investigation that Special Counsel Mueller knew the pee dossier, partly paid for by the HRC campaign, was an incontrovertible fake? Did Mueller know before or after the midterm elections? Whether you're curious or not, we're going to learn the truth soon. And that truth could be very painful, especially for deep state actors.
I don't know why it's relevant when Mueller knew some claims against Trump were fake. He was supposed to thoroughly investigate the issues around it. He wasn't supposed to just go until he found one or more issues not supported by facts. Because there can be some allegations that are true, and some that aren't.
It's relevant if it can be proven there were political motivations in holding those findings until after the midterm elections.
It's very relevant if Mueller was aware right at the start of the investigation that the dossier could not be corroborated. It's already been revealed that the FBI wouldn't have sought the FISA without the dossier. It's also been revealed that the FBI had not corroborated any of the dossier prior to filing the FISA application, nor before any of the monthly renewals.
What's been revealed so far is sketchy, but maybe it will all work out okay for Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein et al. At this point I'm betting Trump is still going to hit back 10x harder. People think Trump is a joke so they write him off, but he's incredibly powerful given the office. I just assume revenge is coming since Trump is who he is.
We can ride a bike and chew bubblegum at the same time: Trump can be an odious human being (up to/including being unfit to serve) _and_ his political opponents can commit serious crimes in their efforts to defeat him (up to/including treason.)
High-level Obama FBI and intel officials are being investigated for their role in the FISA scandal/lies to congress and most have been removed from their positions.
Just don't want you to be shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when deep state perps get frogmarched off to prison.
The government still has the support of an enormous number of people, mostly from the largely non-white working classes, whose economic and political interests were trampled on by the pre-Bolivarian governments and who are naturally suspicious of the right-wing agitators currently attempting to overthrow the government with the backing of foreign powers
The support of the military and by being a not so well known narcostate. If the situation would come to light properly maybe then we will see massive change. I am surprised nothing is done about it honestly.
The reason the leaders of Venezuela still have their heads is that they first won free and fair elections and they then proceeded to do the will of the people.
Though the US is not the sole cause of many problems, they certainly go out of their way to make many of them worse. In Venezuela, they've placed crippling sanctions on the country for years, and promoted political instability by openly backing numerous coups.
Sanctions are a neutral policy, like Google pulling out of China. The US is holding back from interfering in Venezuela (only supporting the constitutionally elected leader) and also refusing to participate in the suffering of the people.
Maduro has always allowed aid into the country. He refused aid from the US as they have a history of using such aid to import weapons and such. Most humanitarian groups immediately chastised the US for even trying to send aid in that manner, both because of their history and that it's hard to take their offers in good faith while they simultaneously withold $11 billion of Venezuela's oil proceeds.
The U.S. is imposing sanctions on Venezuela, to the effect of millions of dollars a day lost. As part of the sanctions, the U.S. has also seized hundreds of millions of dollars of Venezuelan assets in foreign bank accounts. There is a direct cause and affect between U.S. policy and life in Venezuela.
This is from an analysis from January last year when Trump announced additional sanctions on Venezuela:
"An even more problematic idea driving current U.S. policy is the belief that financial sanctions can hurt the Venezuelan government without causing serious harm to ordinary Venezuelans. That’s impossible when 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sold by the state-owned oil company. Cutting off the government’s access to dollars will leave the economy without the hard currency needed to pay for imports of food and medicine. Starving the Venezuelan economy of its foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe."
You reap what you sow. I have ZERO sympathy for them. Too bad our president Bolsonaro does not have the balls to close the borders and deport this scum back to the country they ruined.
Regardless of whether this is the "fault" of socialism, socialism demands a lot of centralized government power, which seems like the perfect cover for this kind of horrible government.
(Aside: I think a lot of social programs could be run quite well at a local level, but when a politician asks for immense power at the scale of a nation or large state, I get very worried.)
Getting a lot of downvotes for this comment, but could someone please explain where I'm going wrong? A lot of people think the way I do, so it would be helpful to explain.
A country with a bright future just a couple decades ago experienced a truly remarkable decline after a socialist was elected. I'm sure there are other factors, but surely this is going to be seen as yet another failure of socialism.
Whether this is because the socialism was not "implemented correctly" or not, clearly the socialist label has been used by a number of very bad people as a way to accumulate more power.
For anyone reading: HN encourages us to comment if we disagree, not silently downvote, unless the comment lacks any relevant content, and doesn’t add to the conversation.
This clearly is relevant, and it adds something to the conversation, whether or not you agree with it.
If you’re unwilling to question whether you’re correct, you’ll never be able to adapt your views and become more correct. There’s no shame in being incorrect, if it takes you closer to correctness long-term.
Please remember that, along with the principle of charity— very few people are here to troll. We’re here to critically think about the links and their meanings, consequences, and related debates.
It might not give you an answer but nevertheless quite interesting and might be enlightening to you, there’s a podcast called The History of Oil, it covers Venezuela among other countries.
I think you're being downvoted because specific questions about specific countries, like yours, end up being used as broad-sweeping scare tactics to avoid or shut down discussion of universal health care. In the U.S. even just socializing medicine is seen by some as total conversation to socialism, and in some of the more ignorant cases communism.
I think your questions are triggering that emotional response.
Venezuela IS NOT a Socialist country! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le86H7Xfjrc Even the United States has a larger state apparatus compared to the whole economy (38%). Add to that an insanely well-armed military and a president with almost unlimited power to do whatever the hell he wants using executive orders...
Wrt the downvotes, people on HN have become big cry babies who downvote anything they disagree with. It sucks and it is destroying the site by stymieing rational discourse.
I didn't claim that Venezuela is a "true socialist" country (because no such thing exists). I am just saying that socialism is the perfect cover for a terrible government like the one in Venezuela, because it's the quickest route to immense power.
It would be interesting to know the fraction of totalitarian governments that are socialist or communist. You could probably compile something based off [1] cross referenced with governance style. It is not clear to me that socialism is over-represented in the authoritarian set compared to the non-authoritarian states, but I haven't gone through the list rigorously.
lmfao, the democracy index is such a fucking joke. Developed by capitalists in the UK, It is so incredibly biased in favor of global neoliberal capitalism. Notice how nearly everywhere that isn't considered the "West" culturally is considered "not democracy". Nearly all of Africa, "not democracy". It's just a sad excuse to reinforce existing biases about the rest of the world. Biases which were many times orchestrated by politicians and corporations for their own benefit. Ultimately this index is just a tool for the ruling class to use to reinforce their global hegemony.
Democracy is the empty excuse that global powers have used to exert their political and economic will for centuries. See Vietnam, Iraq, and now Venezuela.
I'm not a socialist. However, the claim that socialism necessiates a central gov is not universally accepted. Furthermore most socialists envision socialism as anarchism, as in self-governing workers' collectives, etc.
Things are bad there. People blame socialism, perhaps that is the cause, perhaps not. But I also see worse images of greater desperation coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Puerto Rico, all in the US.
You're trying to compare things which aren't even on the same scale. "The health system has completely collapsed, hundreds are dead, thousands are sick!" "Yeah, well, a few dozen people got sick due to people being idiots" This isn't comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing an apple to an entire orange grove.
I'd hope there isn't one, as they likely could not cope with such a thing at the moment. They are, however, having issues with many other diseases as their health-care system falls apart due to the economic crisis.
Being homeless in the United States is preferable to having a residence in many parts of the world. Even sleeping on the streets, you're surrounded by a ton of infrastructure that many countries don't have the benefit of.
You can't have seen much of the world. I have not seen Venezuela first hand, but I have seen many, many places a lot worse than LA, SF and Puerto Rico.
Where did I mention the rest of the world? I am comparing the suffering of people in Venezuela to the suffering of people in a number of parts of the US.
> You can't have seen much of the world.
I am positive I have traveled to and lived in far more countries than you have, so do not assume anything about what I have seen. It's true that I have not seen "much" of the totality of the world, no one has. But I have seen a great deal more of it first hand than anyone I have met.
You stated you knew how much I have traveled and were tremendously massively totally wrong. This indicates you have a lack of knowledge and engage in much wrongful speculation, indicators of a person with limited experience and social skills.
There is a lot more that the population accepted, it's not just the gun ban. Venezuela is the right-winger's nightmare scenario, basically where politicians got elected on left wing promises and then switched to being completely corrupt. The gun ban is just one element of their total coverage of every single American right wing fear. Honestly at this point the biggest reason why someone in America might oppose government situations like universal healthcare is out of the reasonable fear that they will be administrated corruptly to the point where they're worse than nothing.
The idea that American gun owners could do anything against the US military is nothing more than right wing masturbatory fantasy. As is stated above, as long as the military supports the government there, the options are limited.
Untrue. Read (for example) Erica Chenoweth's detailed empirical work on civil resistance. Nonviolent resistance has a considerably higher real-world chance of success than armed uprising. It also has the huge advantage of leaving behind less collective trauma, giving post-revolutionary society a better chance of sustaining peace.
Dont forget that Venezuela is now a narco state. As long as this goes on they will keep feeding the rich military heads and screw everybody else over. Nobody will do anything till Forbes magazine makes an article about it though (seems to be a weird meme portayed by Netflix's Narcos series, it wasnt till they wound up on Forbes magazine that the biggest of drug lords were taken down by the DEA for whatever reason).
The decline im Venezuela was quite rapid from a high place. The people there must be in shock and desperate. I'm not wishing for violence, but it seems like the rare kind of scenario where violence might be successful. And Chavez was clearly concerned about it enough to disarm people before the collapse happened.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hear the theory often that armed civilians can't effect positive change, and I don't know where the certainty comes from. Surely it's a longshot, like all violence is because of the ensuing chaos, but it seems plausible when the people at least remember something better.
Violence is chaotic, so usually doesn't work in anyone's favor. But a very bad regime might be deterred from imposing some of the worst policies on people if they are armed, because potential chaos could topple the regime.
For instance, it's hard for me to imagine actually blocking food aid from coming in to hungry people. The people waiting for that food may get desperate and violent. If enough are armed, the ensuing violence and chaos might topple the regime.
So Maduro might have been worried enough not to block the food aid if more Venezuelans were armed.
After socialism took over Venezuela in 2007 through Chavez the "eternal president" of Venezuela I wouldnt consider any votes as valid. I still remember back then knowing that things were wrong and bad in Venezuela. He was president till he died. The elections were a joke.
When they have power, Bitcoin has been a solution for wealth preservation and capital movement given their pariah status with western banks and the never ending destruction of their currency. When the dust clears and capitalism is restored, there will be a fascinating case study on this development.
Hopefully when Bitcoin-Core transaction fees reach $30 again like they did in December 2017, the common Venezuelan people will be able to afford the $60 overhead ($30 opening fee and $30 reserve needed to close the channel in case of counterparty fraud) to open a Lightning Network channel, or simply switch to a more scalable cryptocurrency.
I'm not surprised. I'm betting on Bitcoin Cash, which has recently overtaken Litecoin in tx volume, and has most of the big early adopters in the Bitcoin space (e.g. Bitpay, Coinbase) backing it, and of course, Ethereum. It doesn't really matter what it is, as long as it can gain a sufficient amount of liquidity and number of users.
Missing context: All of this new-found publicity for Venezuela is because Trump supporters are linking America with Venezuela, claiming that Bernie Sanders will turn America into Venezuela if he gets elected.
The world still notices. I've recently seen a number of articles about the protests and the opposition leader Juan Guaido. In fact the New York Times published an op-ed piece by him fairly recently.
Yes, there's been an enormous propaganda push to legitimize a future U.S. intervention - either a direct invasion, or igniting a full-blown civil war by arming right-wing paramilitaries, as was the standard operating procedure throughout the 80's.
The inflation rate is 2688670%, they are refusing aid, they are having widespread electricity outages and food shortages, it seems like their leader has become a despot.
At what point is it reasonable for an outside intervention?
Probably true, but let's face it, there are few good actors in this story. The Venezuelan government is not remotely interested in the actual welfare of its citizens. The US foreign policy establishment is concerned as always only with Empire (the aid story is a lie: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/20/regime-change-we-can-bel...). The nation itself is riven.
Picking a 'side' here could not possibly be done in good faith. And thinking that armed citizens would improve matters is beyond absurd.
I completely agree with you, with one exception. It's easy to see the absurdity of an armed population against a government with a military at its back. Of course the United States was founded by this very contradiction in intuition, but a more modern event is probably a better example. We destroyed Iraq without difficulty, yet never managed to control it. The full force of the US military backed by literally billions of dollars a day, and the best training money can buy, was unable to stabilize control against disparate groups of poorly trained, poorly funded, insurgents armed with little more than 50s eras rifles and some rudimentary homemade explosives. Think about how remarkable it is that these disparate individuals managed to force our military to huddle into small isolated 'green zones'.
The point here is that there's a difference between destroying a location and controlling it. Of course an armed population is not going to stop aerial bombardment and mass destruction, but at the same time it's practically impossible to control a territory when there is a hostile armed population. And there are also morale issues. The government doesn't own the military. Even the military doesn't own the military. The military is made up of real people who, though trained to act as a group, are still independent actors. And when there is real resistance between a population and a government, you can't rely on the military to behave as you might like. Once again - Iraq and the general failure of the Iraq military to enforce western interests is a perfect example here.
Ultimately there is a reason that governments who expect there may be major resistance to future actions tend to work to ban gun ownership. Mao took control of the government by arming a population, and then went to every effort to disarm that very population before engaging in actions leading to the deaths of tens of millions. Shortly after the Bolsheviks overthrew czarist Russia through force of arms - they began working to seize arms from the people. Stalin was already well entrenched in the nation and his actions, once taking absolute control, would come to cost the lives of tens of millions. And perhaps the most well publicized example - Hitler seized all arms from Jews in 1938. The holocaust started 3 years later.
Venezuela banned gun ownership/sales in 2012. This was likely done at the behest of then vice president Maduro. Chavez was terminally ill and would die several months later. It was supposedly done to combat Venezuela's rising murder rate. This [1] is that murder rate. It didn't stop the criminals from having guns, but it did stop the citizenry. Despotism and gun control are invariably tightly linked. So, at the minimum, I think we would be in a different place today if Venezuela did have an armed citizenry. While it's impossible to predict exactly what effect this would have culminated in, I do not find it absurd to suggest it would have been better than the present.
> Despotism and gun control are invariably tightly linked
"Linked" is a tabloid weasel word in this context. It may or may not be true that most despots favour gun control. I'm not familiar with the evidence in that case. But the reverse is not remotely true. Tight gun control has been hard fought for by citizenries of many democracies, and as with other rational policies (eg. real health care systems), once won, populations are loathe to allow corporate lobbies to remove it.
Armed citizenries have a measurably lesser chance of usefully opposing a government (and its military) than do unarmed ones (again, see Chenoweth and others). The post-revolutionary consequences of armed rebellions are invariably unending tales of multigenerational trauma and reciprocal violence.
What is the point of discussion? I'd say it's presumably to convey our ideas and ideally influence one another. I mean we all think we're right about the things that we believe - or we wouldn't believe them. So why don't other people think the same way? Well they must just not be privy to the logic, evidence, and other information that you possess! And so of course the key tools in this are rationale, logic, and evidence. And so let's imagine I'm coming from a different perspective from yourself. Do you think your post is going to help me see your world view in any more clear a fashion?
For instance, I've never heard of Chenoweth. I'd assumed it was some significant revolutionary event I was not familiar with. Search results turn up an actress I've also never heard of. With some degree of effort, I surmise you are talking about some person who wrote some book. Why not share what you find to be the most compelling incident from the book? Major modern events every child is familiar with, from Vietnam to Iraq, demonstrate the power of an armed population. I'm sure your author must have covered this, so why not summarize their logic in practice, offer examples you found particularly compelling and representative, and ultimately perhaps persuade me to their merit?
I pick the side of the Venezuelan people over the US empire. I, as a US citizen, am horrified to watch an oil war play out in real time. Similar to how the US uses siege warfare(a war crime) in Yemen, we are using sanctions against Venezuela to install our dictator of choice. The people of Venezuela decided their leader in free and fair elections. We need to leave them be.
Given the history of previous U.S.-sponsored coup attempts against the Venezuelan government, and given that the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela was responsible for running guns to right-wing death squads in Central America in the 80's, and given that the "outside interventions" in Iraq and Libya killed hundreds of thousands of people and left those countries as smoking husks, I'd say the appropriate time for an invasion is never.
Incidentally, the Venezuelan government is not refusing aid delivered by genuine humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross - they were refusing "aid" delivered by agencies of the U.S. government, on behalf of an insurrectionist leader currently attempting a coup d'etat. This refused aid was later burned down by the paramilitary arm of the rebels.
Imagine that the Iranian government declared that it was recognizing a random U.S. congressman as the legitimate president and then demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be permitted to deliver aid to this congressman's new government. That's basically the situation
>Imagine that the Iranian government declared that it was recognizing a random U.S. congressman as the legitimate president and then demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be permitted to deliver aid to this congressman's new government. That's basically the situation
No, it isn't. The situation is that a despot is in control of Venezuela and it has failed in its contract with the people to provide the basic services required of government, so it is no longer a legitimate government regardless of your rationalizations of the situation.
If Trump refused to cede control, our inflation rate was over 100000%, and there were rampant food shortages and electricity failures then I hope there would be a revolution.
>> No, it isn't. The situation is that a despot is in control of Venezuela and it has failed in its contract with the people to provide the basic services required of government, so it is no longer a legitimate government regardless of your rationalizations of the situation.
That's up to the people of Venezuela, who by and large have continued to stand by the Maduro government, which is why the opposition has resorted to attempting to incite a foreign invasion to seize power.
It's really pretty disgusting that you're so callously willing to condemn the Venezuelan people to the horrifying fates suffered by Iraqis and Libyans after the United States destroyed their countries. It's not your decision to make, it's not the decision of the United States government, and it's certainly not the decision of a cluster of Reagan-era war criminals with long histories of supporting right-wing Latin American death squads.
They are not refusing food aid, the Red Cross etc. have been let on all along. The US announced the Venezuelan government had no sovereignty over their border and sent "aid" trucks in, which were blocked.
Incidentally, "humanitarian aid" is how the person the USA convicted as a criminal - Elliot Abrams - sent weapons to contras in and out of Nicaragua.
The Venezuelan government destroyed the economy. On top of that, the government is using military force to prevent foreign aid from entering the country.
Sanctions make things a little bit worse, and they make Maduro's claims that outside forces are to blame for Venezuela's problems seem more convincing. (Sanctions have the same propaganda effect in North Korea).
But in any case, it is pretty clear that the Venezuelan government's mismanagement of the economy has been the primary factor for almost 20 years: Chavez was first elected in 1999 and the problems began under his leadership.
The economy is predominantly private: it is the sanctions hurting the economy. I refuse to defend Maduro, but he is the peoples’ choice. Yes there are anti-Maduro rallies, but there are also pro-Maduro rallies the media conveniently ignores.
Meanwhile, the idea that the US could help without putting someone right wing in place that happens to benefit the supply of fuel against the interests of the people of Venezuela like Guaidó is absurd.
If you want to help the people of Venezuela, end sanctions. This is an economic siege and we are seeing the consequences.
He isn't. He assumed presidency in violation of the country's constitutional procedure.
You should also read up on that election. IIRC, he was on the ballot 10 times or so out of 20-something options (a few also had the same person as a candidate, but none nearly as much as Maduro).
> If there is power, and I can do my job, I’ve been told by my bosses to be more measured in how I cover what’s happening in Venezuela. They’re terrified of being shut down by the government and having their equipment confiscated. That would spell the end of our station.
Maybe writing a (non-anonymous) article about the situation for the LA Times isn't the best idea?
When Coke pulled out of Venezuela, I felt a tremendous chill that kept me following the whole situation for the last three years. Truly fascinating, like watching a car accident in slow motion. I really do not know what will happen and wonder if there's anything to learn from it other than the prototypical "socialism sucks" type tropes.
You cannot possibly compare central planning as a reaction to the free-market (walmart and amazon) to the central planning of an entire nation's economic output / consumption.
That is so intellectually dishonest, I'm actually speechless.
how are those corporations the result of centralized planning?
Every instance of centralized planning by an authoritarian gov't has ended in disaster. And yet, every time, different excuses have been brought up about why it failed.
> The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
> that centralized planning doesnt work is just wrong :) look to walmart and amazon as examples of efficient central planning.
Walmart is one of many players in the economy and it reacts to consumer demand when it decides what to produce and sell. That is not a form of central planning.
An example of central planning would be the government ordering Walmart to produce ten million bicycles per year and to sell them for $80 each -- regardless of how many people actually want to buy bicycles and how much they are willing to pay.
Invade and keep the oil. The Venezuelan people get to live in a decent country and whoever invaded gets rewarded. Sure the military is on maduros side because he is the one that (barely) feeds them but an organization/government that is well financially supported would have no problems changing their hearts with a little more cash on the table.. this needs to be seen as an opportunity more than it is a crisis
why would any entity invade (which is expensive), but still give back to the people there afterwards if the oil is the only profit from the invasion?
The people needs to rebel, and have a civil war. Take back the country, and rebuild the oil infrastructure. remove price control of goods, and let the market work.
we give countries millions in aid for "humanitarian" reasons without expecting much back, you think we wouldnt be interested in getting our hands in one of the biggest oil reserves in the world? And actually there is nothing to give back directly, the very act of overthrowing the current gov which is the cause of their misery is their aid. Its like removing trees that are blocking a road because you plan to sell them. Your actions have good repercussions even though they are done according to your interest.
The people cant rebel because there is no one with enough cojones or brains to do it. it sounds harsh but it is true. "venezuelan rambo" tried to revolt and even though people supported him through social media, they simply were not willing to die for the cause so the government stamped him out. Besides even if there was a successful revolt the probability of another maduro/chavez rising out of that is high. I am convinced the only way we fix the world is literally by controlling it. We are the only ones doing society right. sounds harsh and not politically correct but its time to leave behind beauty-parlor chitchat and get real with ourselves. the only reason why the US shouldnt directly do it is because we would set a bad example for countries. We couldn't judge Russia with the same yard stick we measure ourselves with
When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. They did so for pragmatic geopolitical reasons but provided the benefit of dismantling one of the most callous regimes in history.
This would go exactly as well as it did in Vietnam and Iraq: The Venezuelan people would slaughter the invading imperialists until they gave up and went home.
The baffling thing about this is the vast oil wealth the country controls. Its oil reserves are the largest in the word, yet its economy lies in shambles.
the oil is poor quality and requires constant reinvestment in extraction and refinement infrastructure to remain competitive with other exporters. for various reasons this investment has been neglected for the last decade or two, but it’s not quite a turnkey fix to just decide to sell more oil.
The oil reserves are in shambles too, due to as you said mismanagement. They are a special type of oil that requires extra investment to produce, and the government has failed to make those investments.
There is no mismanagement. This is what happens when organized crime takes control of a country - they milk it for what it's worth and when they are done it is but a lifeless husk.
They do not care a wit for the future and the need to reinvest into production or safety[0], they'll use it while they can, extract what they can and then try to flee the country. Most engineers and doctors have already fled the country.
[0] This includes the country's power system too, Maduro blamed recent blackouts on US hackers, but the entire system is not even digital, so the attack vector for hacking did not exist in the first place. That, and the recent accident on a hydro plant, reported to have been a diversion, carried out by a lone saboteur with a gun...
The US government seized Venezuelan assets, then started sending US military to the Colombian side of the border. On top of numerous sanctions, calls for military revolt, dictation of who is president. Funny to see Bernie Sanders to Trump to the US press shaking their finger at Maduro and the US deciding who is president, then the US press goes back to bemoaning Russian involvement in US politics (of course the US NED interferes more in Russian elections than Russia ever did in US elections).
Of course the UK seized Venezuela's assets too. Macron took a break from sending his goon squads to assault the yellow vest rural working class of his country to make maudlin statements about how Maduro treated the Venezuelan anti-Maduro protestors who are shooting and burning people to death in Caracas. "Populist" Italy was lambasted for preventing an EU United front for endorsing a new US/EU selection of who should run Venezuela.
Meanwhile Brazil has Lula and the opposition locked up in prison, Obama backed the military coup in Honduras, presidential candidates assassinated , not the endless articles in the western press about problems there though, other than Hondurans are fleeing the chaos to the US border - then they appear on the US news.
It's amusing to see the Macron yellow vest, Brexit/Corbyn, Trump/Bernie western nations, being overwhelmed by their own increasingly angry working class, performing some good old fashioned imperialism, to the maudlin squawks of liberal cheers.
I'm from Colombia and my family lives in one of the biggest cities that is relatively close to the border. I visit frequently and every time I visit, there are more and more venezuelan immigrants. This started happening years ago.
I'm shocked by the people who pretend that this is all propaganda and that the venezuelan people are ok with their government. I'm sure that the people living on the streets here aren't.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadAlso, the word "leader" implies that this is a legitimate democracy, which is not. Venezuela has an authoritarian corrupt government at best, a dictatorship at worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_t...
Some people are just irritated in the US because politics and because the deep state is losing its grip.
Americans are not dying from starvation or being gunned down by the military for protesting the government.
1) laws are never applied selectively
2) there are no secret laws and secret interpretations
3) parallel construction does not happen
?
There shouldn't be secret laws. There are secret interpretations, I hate that. It doesn't mean I just give up and say everything is bad.
I also think parallel construction is very very harmful. Again, knowing it exists and being against it doesn't mean that I am giving up on the general rule of law.
Are you curious to know how many months into the 18-month Russian collusion investigation that Special Counsel Mueller knew the pee dossier, partly paid for by the HRC campaign, was an incontrovertible fake? Did Mueller know before or after the midterm elections? Whether you're curious or not, we're going to learn the truth soon. And that truth could be very painful, especially for deep state actors.
It's very relevant if Mueller was aware right at the start of the investigation that the dossier could not be corroborated. It's already been revealed that the FBI wouldn't have sought the FISA without the dossier. It's also been revealed that the FBI had not corroborated any of the dossier prior to filing the FISA application, nor before any of the monthly renewals.
What's been revealed so far is sketchy, but maybe it will all work out okay for Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein et al. At this point I'm betting Trump is still going to hit back 10x harder. People think Trump is a joke so they write him off, but he's incredibly powerful given the office. I just assume revenge is coming since Trump is who he is.
https://youtu.be/waGnHlRIsWM
We can ride a bike and chew bubblegum at the same time: Trump can be an odious human being (up to/including being unfit to serve) _and_ his political opponents can commit serious crimes in their efforts to defeat him (up to/including treason.)
High-level Obama FBI and intel officials are being investigated for their role in the FISA scandal/lies to congress and most have been removed from their positions.
Just don't want you to be shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when deep state perps get frogmarched off to prison.
Ref. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/world/americas/venezuela-... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/sanctions-venezuela-i...
"An even more problematic idea driving current U.S. policy is the belief that financial sanctions can hurt the Venezuelan government without causing serious harm to ordinary Venezuelans. That’s impossible when 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sold by the state-owned oil company. Cutting off the government’s access to dollars will leave the economy without the hard currency needed to pay for imports of food and medicine. Starving the Venezuelan economy of its foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/12/why-more-sanctions-wont...
The US seized $1 billion from Venezuela, sent the army to the Colombian border, and is calling for the Venezuelan army to revolt.
(Aside: I think a lot of social programs could be run quite well at a local level, but when a politician asks for immense power at the scale of a nation or large state, I get very worried.)
A country with a bright future just a couple decades ago experienced a truly remarkable decline after a socialist was elected. I'm sure there are other factors, but surely this is going to be seen as yet another failure of socialism.
Whether this is because the socialism was not "implemented correctly" or not, clearly the socialist label has been used by a number of very bad people as a way to accumulate more power.
This clearly is relevant, and it adds something to the conversation, whether or not you agree with it.
If you’re unwilling to question whether you’re correct, you’ll never be able to adapt your views and become more correct. There’s no shame in being incorrect, if it takes you closer to correctness long-term.
Please remember that, along with the principle of charity— very few people are here to troll. We’re here to critically think about the links and their meanings, consequences, and related debates.
I think your questions are triggering that emotional response.
Wrt the downvotes, people on HN have become big cry babies who downvote anything they disagree with. It sucks and it is destroying the site by stymieing rational discourse.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Democracy is the empty excuse that global powers have used to exert their political and economic will for centuries. See Vietnam, Iraq, and now Venezuela.
I...don't really think you do, no.
Let us move then to LA.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Wor...
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-toilet...
http://time.com/3681883/los-angeles-homeless-camps/
San Francisco:
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/02/20/san...
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/alexnitzberg/2018/02/21/cesspo...
Absolutely not; I'm just less familiar with it, and so less able to judge arguments about it.
As for your links, that's not remotely on the same scale as what's being discussed in Venezuela.
You need some perspective.
Out of curiosity, if you had to choose where to live right now, would you pick LA or Venezeula?
Meanwhile in Venezuela: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/21/v...
The country is being ravaged by diseases such as malaria, to the extent that there's concern it will impact the entire continent.
Or for another example, rich idiots refusing vaccinations has led to cases of measles in the US. 400 this year, and while nobody’s has died, that's pretty terrible: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/01/health/measles-total-case...
Then we have Venezuela. 6.5k cases, at least 76 deaths, now starting to spread outside of their borders: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/15/6951006...
You're trying to compare things which aren't even on the same scale. "The health system has completely collapsed, hundreds are dead, thousands are sick!" "Yeah, well, a few dozen people got sick due to people being idiots" This isn't comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing an apple to an entire orange grove.
Where did I mention the rest of the world? I am comparing the suffering of people in Venezuela to the suffering of people in a number of parts of the US.
> You can't have seen much of the world.
I am positive I have traveled to and lived in far more countries than you have, so do not assume anything about what I have seen. It's true that I have not seen "much" of the totality of the world, no one has. But I have seen a great deal more of it first hand than anyone I have met.
How could you possibly know how much I have travelled?
Edit: According to parent I am neither well travelled, but also have little experience and have poor social skills :)
But at least I really enjoyed the time I spent living and working in SF and would choose it, and LA or PR, every time over Venezuela!
There are also many Venezuelan civilians who still support the regime. These people would presumably also have guns.
Or the successful ones that just lead to another autocracy?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hear the theory often that armed civilians can't effect positive change, and I don't know where the certainty comes from. Surely it's a longshot, like all violence is because of the ensuing chaos, but it seems plausible when the people at least remember something better.
For instance, it's hard for me to imagine actually blocking food aid from coming in to hungry people. The people waiting for that food may get desperate and violent. If enough are armed, the ensuing violence and chaos might topple the regime.
So Maduro might have been worried enough not to block the food aid if more Venezuelans were armed.
Unlike my idiot Maduro-supporting neighbour with his stupid, socialist ideas - and violent tendencies! I would prefer him to be un-armed.
At what point is it reasonable for an outside intervention?
Picking a 'side' here could not possibly be done in good faith. And thinking that armed citizens would improve matters is beyond absurd.
The point here is that there's a difference between destroying a location and controlling it. Of course an armed population is not going to stop aerial bombardment and mass destruction, but at the same time it's practically impossible to control a territory when there is a hostile armed population. And there are also morale issues. The government doesn't own the military. Even the military doesn't own the military. The military is made up of real people who, though trained to act as a group, are still independent actors. And when there is real resistance between a population and a government, you can't rely on the military to behave as you might like. Once again - Iraq and the general failure of the Iraq military to enforce western interests is a perfect example here.
Ultimately there is a reason that governments who expect there may be major resistance to future actions tend to work to ban gun ownership. Mao took control of the government by arming a population, and then went to every effort to disarm that very population before engaging in actions leading to the deaths of tens of millions. Shortly after the Bolsheviks overthrew czarist Russia through force of arms - they began working to seize arms from the people. Stalin was already well entrenched in the nation and his actions, once taking absolute control, would come to cost the lives of tens of millions. And perhaps the most well publicized example - Hitler seized all arms from Jews in 1938. The holocaust started 3 years later.
Venezuela banned gun ownership/sales in 2012. This was likely done at the behest of then vice president Maduro. Chavez was terminally ill and would die several months later. It was supposedly done to combat Venezuela's rising murder rate. This [1] is that murder rate. It didn't stop the criminals from having guns, but it did stop the citizenry. Despotism and gun control are invariably tightly linked. So, at the minimum, I think we would be in a different place today if Venezuela did have an armed citizenry. While it's impossible to predict exactly what effect this would have culminated in, I do not find it absurd to suggest it would have been better than the present.
[1] - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/19...
"Linked" is a tabloid weasel word in this context. It may or may not be true that most despots favour gun control. I'm not familiar with the evidence in that case. But the reverse is not remotely true. Tight gun control has been hard fought for by citizenries of many democracies, and as with other rational policies (eg. real health care systems), once won, populations are loathe to allow corporate lobbies to remove it.
Armed citizenries have a measurably lesser chance of usefully opposing a government (and its military) than do unarmed ones (again, see Chenoweth and others). The post-revolutionary consequences of armed rebellions are invariably unending tales of multigenerational trauma and reciprocal violence.
For instance, I've never heard of Chenoweth. I'd assumed it was some significant revolutionary event I was not familiar with. Search results turn up an actress I've also never heard of. With some degree of effort, I surmise you are talking about some person who wrote some book. Why not share what you find to be the most compelling incident from the book? Major modern events every child is familiar with, from Vietnam to Iraq, demonstrate the power of an armed population. I'm sure your author must have covered this, so why not summarize their logic in practice, offer examples you found particularly compelling and representative, and ultimately perhaps persuade me to their merit?
Incidentally, the Venezuelan government is not refusing aid delivered by genuine humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross - they were refusing "aid" delivered by agencies of the U.S. government, on behalf of an insurrectionist leader currently attempting a coup d'etat. This refused aid was later burned down by the paramilitary arm of the rebels.
Imagine that the Iranian government declared that it was recognizing a random U.S. congressman as the legitimate president and then demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be permitted to deliver aid to this congressman's new government. That's basically the situation
No, it isn't. The situation is that a despot is in control of Venezuela and it has failed in its contract with the people to provide the basic services required of government, so it is no longer a legitimate government regardless of your rationalizations of the situation.
If Trump refused to cede control, our inflation rate was over 100000%, and there were rampant food shortages and electricity failures then I hope there would be a revolution.
That's up to the people of Venezuela, who by and large have continued to stand by the Maduro government, which is why the opposition has resorted to attempting to incite a foreign invasion to seize power.
It's really pretty disgusting that you're so callously willing to condemn the Venezuelan people to the horrifying fates suffered by Iraqis and Libyans after the United States destroyed their countries. It's not your decision to make, it's not the decision of the United States government, and it's certainly not the decision of a cluster of Reagan-era war criminals with long histories of supporting right-wing Latin American death squads.
Incidentally, "humanitarian aid" is how the person the USA convicted as a criminal - Elliot Abrams - sent weapons to contras in and out of Nicaragua.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/07/americas/venezuela-aid-blocke...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/with-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-diplom...
isnt this what happened with collusion as well? oh yeah https://taibbi.substack.com/
Sanctions make things a little bit worse, and they make Maduro's claims that outside forces are to blame for Venezuela's problems seem more convincing. (Sanctions have the same propaganda effect in North Korea).
But in any case, it is pretty clear that the Venezuelan government's mismanagement of the economy has been the primary factor for almost 20 years: Chavez was first elected in 1999 and the problems began under his leadership.
Meanwhile, the idea that the US could help without putting someone right wing in place that happens to benefit the supply of fuel against the interests of the people of Venezuela like Guaidó is absurd.
If you want to help the people of Venezuela, end sanctions. This is an economic siege and we are seeing the consequences.
You should also read up on that election. IIRC, he was on the ballot 10 times or so out of 20-something options (a few also had the same person as a candidate, but none nearly as much as Maduro).
Maybe writing a (non-anonymous) article about the situation for the LA Times isn't the best idea?
2. Everything but the US point of view seems to have been flagged here. What is the goal of having comments if there is no discussion.
that centralized planning doesnt work is just wrong :) look to walmart and amazon as examples of efficient central planning. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-...
That is so intellectually dishonest, I'm actually speechless.
Every instance of centralized planning by an authoritarian gov't has ended in disaster. And yet, every time, different excuses have been brought up about why it failed.
> The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Friedrich_Hayek#The_curio...
Walmart is one of many players in the economy and it reacts to consumer demand when it decides what to produce and sell. That is not a form of central planning.
An example of central planning would be the government ordering Walmart to produce ten million bicycles per year and to sell them for $80 each -- regardless of how many people actually want to buy bicycles and how much they are willing to pay.
The people needs to rebel, and have a civil war. Take back the country, and rebuild the oil infrastructure. remove price control of goods, and let the market work.
The people cant rebel because there is no one with enough cojones or brains to do it. it sounds harsh but it is true. "venezuelan rambo" tried to revolt and even though people supported him through social media, they simply were not willing to die for the cause so the government stamped him out. Besides even if there was a successful revolt the probability of another maduro/chavez rising out of that is high. I am convinced the only way we fix the world is literally by controlling it. We are the only ones doing society right. sounds harsh and not politically correct but its time to leave behind beauty-parlor chitchat and get real with ourselves. the only reason why the US shouldnt directly do it is because we would set a bad example for countries. We couldn't judge Russia with the same yard stick we measure ourselves with
That takes some serious mismanagement.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/01/29/charting-the...
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/EEPPHOTO...
P.S. I'm Russian and do not have the regional bias.
They do not care a wit for the future and the need to reinvest into production or safety[0], they'll use it while they can, extract what they can and then try to flee the country. Most engineers and doctors have already fled the country.
[0] This includes the country's power system too, Maduro blamed recent blackouts on US hackers, but the entire system is not even digital, so the attack vector for hacking did not exist in the first place. That, and the recent accident on a hydro plant, reported to have been a diversion, carried out by a lone saboteur with a gun...
Of course the UK seized Venezuela's assets too. Macron took a break from sending his goon squads to assault the yellow vest rural working class of his country to make maudlin statements about how Maduro treated the Venezuelan anti-Maduro protestors who are shooting and burning people to death in Caracas. "Populist" Italy was lambasted for preventing an EU United front for endorsing a new US/EU selection of who should run Venezuela.
Meanwhile Brazil has Lula and the opposition locked up in prison, Obama backed the military coup in Honduras, presidential candidates assassinated , not the endless articles in the western press about problems there though, other than Hondurans are fleeing the chaos to the US border - then they appear on the US news.
It's amusing to see the Macron yellow vest, Brexit/Corbyn, Trump/Bernie western nations, being overwhelmed by their own increasingly angry working class, performing some good old fashioned imperialism, to the maudlin squawks of liberal cheers.
I'm shocked by the people who pretend that this is all propaganda and that the venezuelan people are ok with their government. I'm sure that the people living on the streets here aren't.