Thread: American coup in Venezuela

Originally Posted by sabang

You might be surprised how many of those fleeing Venezuela are Colombians, who originally fled their home country because of the widespread repression and violence there.

Oh purlease....

GIYF.

I'm sorry I don't do teenage SMS speak. WTF is that?

Google it yourself fuckwit!

The 'F' threw me until I seen who was being replied to.

Originally Posted by foobar

Google it yourself fuckwit!

The 'F' threw me until I seen who was being replied to.

I'll just leave you two schoolkids to whinge at each other on Line or whatever shit it is on which you mumble incoherent rubbish.

Should probably be entitled "Chavismo lackey announces desperate witch hunt".

Venezuela's Comptroller General Elvis Amoroso on Monday announced an asset audit on the accounts of opposition leader and self-proclaimed "interim president" Juan Guaido.

Amoroso alleged Guaido has "received money from international entities without any type of justification."

The chief national auditor also accused the member of the legislature of hiding or falsifying "data contained in his sworn asset statement."

The comptroller general said that according to the country's constitution, members of the National Assembly cannot "receive any type of payment from other public or private job," and they "cannot be owners, administrators or directors of companies that contract with legal entities."

The investigation against Guaido is partly based on anti-corruption law, Amoroso added.

Venezuela is currently in a difficult economic and political situation. Guaido declared himself "interim president" on Jan. 23 and was recognized by the United States and some other countries, 10 days after Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated as president.

Maduro was reelected in 2018. His first term of presidency began in April 2013.


https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514f3...d54/index.html

Heard an interesting piece this morning that made a sensible observation:

China would be happy for Chavismo and his cronies to leave and a more competent government to be installed, because it would restore the flow of oil and improve the chances of China getting its $60 billions worth back. That's why they have not been vehemently opposed to American moves against Chavismo.

Russia on the other hand benefits from Venezuelan oil production being in the shitter. If Venezuela were to return to full production (3m barrels a day), that would dent the oil price taking a big chunk out of Russian oil revenues.

Certainly explains the very differing statements coming from each country.

Dont believe this it's a CIA financed BBC program to steal Venezuelan oil.

They want Chavismo gone.

US Congresswoman Ms. Omar vs Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams

"That was not a question." "Thank you for your participation."








Bravo to Ms. Omar who has bigger balls than 99.9% of our US Congressmen and male Senators.

Why is it that so many of these high profile US "Semites" act so arrogant, smug and entitled...like the rule of law doesn't apply to the 13th tribe? That's rhetorical btw.

Anyone have any further questions on the roots of 20th/21st century "American Exceptionalism?"


"Gangster" Maduro on the US:

"They are warmongering in order to take over Venezuela," he said.

Venezuela crisis: Maduro condemns 'extremist' Trump
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47209526

Full Transcript of BBC interview:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47211509

I think Chavismo means "They are trying to get me - a corrupt, inept, fat wanker who has destroyed the lives of my countrymen - out of power".

How Much of Venezuela’s Crisis is Really Maduro’s Fault?


"The recognition by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Joe Biden of Juan Guaidó as Venezuelan president is the latest demonstration of the consensus in Washington over the nefariousness of the Nicolás Maduro government. Not since Fidel Castro’s early years in power has a Latin American head of state been so consistently demonized. But the 1960s was the peak of the Cold War polarization that placed Cuba plainly in the enemy camp, and unlike Venezuela today, that nation had a one-party system.

The scope of that consensus was evident by the recent faceoff between two figures as far apart as President Donald Trump and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his State of the Union address, Trump attributed Venezuela’s economic crisis to the failed system of socialism. Ocasio-Cortez responded by arguing that the Venezuelan case is “an issue of authoritarian regime versus democracy.”


President Nicolás Maduro, 2016. (Cancillería del Ecuador via Flickr)

Taken together, the comments by Trump and Ocasio-Cortez complement one another. According to the narrative that dominates Washington, Venezuela is a disaster from both economic and political viewpoints. The exclusive blame for the sorry state of the economy and for the country’s allegedly authoritarian rule lays with Maduro and his cohorts.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media have refrained from questioning these assumptions. Most of their reporting puts the accent mark on state incompetence and corruption, while skirting the detrimental effects of the economic sanctions implemented by the Trump administration.

In addition, many on the left point to the economic sanctions as responsible, at least in part, for the nation’s pressing economic difficulties, but few critically examine the mainstream’s characterization of the state of Venezuelan democracy. Some oppose the sanctions but join the opposition in bashing the Maduro government.

A recent article by Gabriel Hetland, for instance, posted by Jacobin and NACLA: Report on the Americas claims that Maduro “holds onto power through authoritarian means.” The author then turns to the nation’s economic difficulties by arguing that “the primary driver is the government’s mismanagement of its oil revenue” and corruption.

During my participation in a two-month Venezuelan solidarity tour late last year in the U.S. and Canada, I often heard the statement that knowing the specifics about Venezuela’s economic and political problems is not essential because the bottom line is the illegality of Trump’s sanctions and threats of military intervention. But does international law end the discussion?

If it could be proven that Maduro is a dictator and a totally incompetent ruler, would people enthusiastically rally behind his government in opposition to foreign intervention? I don’t think so. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to take a close look at both political and economic fronts because the effectiveness of solidarity efforts hinges on the specifics. The dominant narrative about Maduro and its assumptions cannot be taken at face value, even while there are elements of truth in it.

How Far Back Do the Economic Problems Go?

The Venezuelan opposition frequently argues that neither the sanctions nor depressed international oil prices are to blame for the nation’s economic difficulties, only the mismanagement of the economy. At best, declining oil prices contributed to the problems but was not a root cause. Some opposition analysts deny or minimize the importance of oil prices as a factor by pointing out that the economies of other OPEC nations are as dependent on oil exports as that of Venezuela but have not plummeted to the same levels.

The opposition’s central argument here is that Venezuela’s dire economic problems predate Trump’s implementation of sanctions and even predate the sharp decline in international oil prices beginning mid-2014. That is, government follies with disastrous effects came first, followed by the decline in oil prices and then the sanctions. Two-time presidential candidate for the opposition Henrique Capriles claimed that the crisis began prior to the fall of oil prices but for a long time was “ignored, repressed and covered up” by the government.




Petare, Caracas, 2014. (The Photographer via Wikimedia)

There are two fallacies in this line of thinking. In the first place, the so-called economic war against Venezuela, which eventually included the Trump-imposed sanctions, preceded everything else. Washington almost from the beginning of Hugo Chávez’s presidency in 1999 did not stand by idly while he defied the neoliberal Washington consensus as well as U.S. hegemony. Washington’s hostility seriously harmed the economy in multiple ways.

For instance, the George W. Bush administration banned the sale of spare parts for the Venezuelan Air Force’s costly F-16 fighter jets in 2006, forcing the country to turn to Russia for the purchase of 24 Sukhoi SU-30 fighter planes. Furthermore, the international sanctions did not begin with Trump, but rather Obama in 2015 which were justified by his executive order calling Venezuela a threat to U.S. national security. That order was followed by an avalanche of pull-outs from Venezuela by multinationals including Ford, Kimberly Clark, General Motors, Kellogg’s and nearly all the international airlines.

In the second place, oil prices under Maduro have not only been low since 2014 but nosedived, just the opposite of what happened under Chávez. This is particularly problematic because high prices create expectations and commitments that then get transformed into frustration and anger when they precipitously drop. Prices are currently slightly over half of what they were before the decline, in spite of their modest recovery since 2017.

Three factors explain Venezuela’s economic woes, not one: low oil prices, the “economic war” against Venezuela, and mistaken policies. Prominent in the latter category is Maduro’s lethargic response to the problem of the widening disparity between official prices set by the government on certain items in short supply and their prices on the black market. The government has encountered major problems in distributing basic commodities forcing Venezuelans to buy those same goods on the higher-priced black market. The system is conducive to corruption and contraband as many of the products that are supposed to be retailed at reduced prices end up being sold on the black market or sent off to neighboring Colombia.

The Dictatorship Label Repeated a Thousand Times

The media are in desperate need of good fact-checkers in their reporting on Venezuela. Statements about Venezuelan democracy range from blatantly misleading to accurate with most lying between the two extremes. An example of the former is the Guardian’s claim that the Venezuelan government “controls most TV and radio stations which transmit a constant stream of pro-Maduro propaganda.” In fact, of those who tune into Venezuelan TV channels, 80 percent watch the three major private channels (Venevisión, Televén, and Globovisión) which cannot be seriously accused of being pro-government.

At the other extreme is Hetland’s assertion in his Jacobin-NACLA piece that the decision to strip Henrique Capriles of his right to run for office as a result of corruption charges was politically motivated. The statement is accurate. Actually, the move was worse than what Hetland discusses. For some time before that, Capriles, whose political positions have vacillated considerably, favored a less intransigent stance toward the government than those on the radical right, which has largely dominated the opposition of late. The move, in effect, played into the hands of the radicals and undermined efforts to bring about a much-needed national dialogue.


Those who call Maduro a dictator make two basic assertions. In the first place, the government is alleged to have brutally repressed the four-month long peaceful demonstrations designed to bring about regime change carried out in 2014 and then 2017. In fact, the protests were hardly peaceful. Six National Guardsmen and two policemen were killed in 2014 and protestors fired into an air force base in Caracas and attacked a number of police stations in Táchira in 2017. There are different versions of the circumstances surrounding the numerous fatalities in 2014 and 2017, thus requiring an impartial analysis, which the media has hardly attempted to present. Police repression is reprehensible – and repression there was on both occasions – regardless of circumstances, but the context has to be brought into the picture.



Smoke and fires, Caracas, 2014. (Prensa Presidencial, Govt. of Venezuela via Wikimedia)

In the second place, the opposition denies that Maduro’s re-election in May of last year was legitimate because the election was called for by the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), whose existence allegedly has no legal basis. One of the nation’s foremost constitutional lawyers, Hermánn Escarrá, has defended the ANC’s legality, while others formulate plausible arguments to the contrary. Again, the mainstream media has failed to present both sides or to objectively analyze the issue. Nearly all the opposition parties that refused to participate in the presidential elections in 2018, however, did participate in the gubernatorial elections of the preceding year that were convened by the same ANC. The justification for Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation as Venezuelan president on Jan. 23 was predicated on the illegitimacy of the ANC.

Violation of democratic norms and cases of police repression do not in themselves demonstrate that a government is authoritarian or dictatorial. If they did, the United States would hardly be considered democratic. The real defining issue is whether electoral fraud takes place in which votes are not correctly counted. That accusation has been largely absent in the controversy over recent elections, even along leaders of the radical opposition.

The mainstream media and Washington politicians freely call Maduro an “autocrat” a “dictator” and “authoritarian.” More than anything that is said about Venezuela’s economic difficulties, the use of these terms has had a profound effect on policy making. A nation’s economic problems should not justify intervention of any sort. The real issue of contention, therefore, is the state of Venezuelan democracy as depicted by the dominant narrative. Amazingly enough, there is no major actor in mainstream politics and the mainstream media willing to challenge that narrative with all its questionable claims regarding the Maduro government."

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/1...maduros-fault/

Go Ms Omar ...Fuck America!

Originally Posted by OhOh

How Much of Venezuela’s Crisis is Really Maduro’s Fault?

A: All that bits that weren't Chavez'.

Fucking hell, did you really need that answering?

The mainstream media and Washington politicians freely call Maduro an “autocrat” a “dictator” and “authoritarian.”

That's because he is. Since you're too thick, let's have a quick run through of how he's grabbed power.

- Put 13 cronies on the Supreme Court.
- Filled the Election Commission with cronies
- Created a whole new legislative body under false pretences and fills it with cronies.
- Took all powers away from the ELECTED legislative body and gave it to said cronies.

I just love how you dickheads splutter to try and justify these obviously dictatorial actions, and all because you're chinky and russian sycophants and you'll write anything to support them.

But you're fucking shit at it, because all you do is try and ignore facts, or post the most ridiculous opinion pieces that call gutting an elected body, stealing its powers and stealing the judicial arm of government by the fluffy name of "violation of democratic norms". You even have the gall to call politicial assassinations "police repression" and try and compare that with racist American cops shooting black men.

You're a fucking joke.

Originally Posted by SKkin

What gives the US the standing to step in and interfere in Venezuela's situation given our past record of fucking things up in many similar cases?

People are starving to death you fucking moron.

And they were doing it before the US turned the screw, so don't start that old bollocks.

Chavismo has fucked the whole place up. He's fucked up manufacturing, he's fucked up farming, and he's fucked up oil.

And when people started suggesting he fuck off like he should have, he fucked up the government too.

^The usual strawman reply from Lord Haw Haw...

^^ Harry if we're so great at fixing fuckups maybe we should start here at home. Is Venezuela 23 trillion $$ in debt yet?




Elliot Abrams is the face showing our concern for the Venezuelan people. Now there's the fucking joke.

Originally Posted by foobar

^The usual strawman reply from Lord Haw Haw...

Another vacuous post from the forum fucking idiot.

Originally Posted by SKkin

^^ Harry if we're so great at fixing fuckups maybe we should start here at home. Is Venezuela 23 trillion $$ in debt yet?

Just so it's clear, I don't support a military incursion into Venezuela and I don't expect one either.

The only way this gets sorted is if the military get persuaded to back another horse and are told they can keep all their winnings. In that event, I suspect they'd have Chavismo on a plane to Cuba in no time, or perhaps even buried in a shallow grave somwhere so he can't grass them up.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

People are starving to death you fucking moron.

^Lord Haw Haw really sounds like he cares about starving people....right?

...yet, only two pages ago...

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by foobar

So a dictatorship without a shred of democracy, dismembering a journalist with a bone saw, routine torture, oppressing women, mass murder in Yemen etc etc ...all ok in your book as long as their finances are in order?

An estimated 85,000 children under the age of five have starved to death over the last three years as a result of Yemen’s civil war, a report from Save the Children has found, as the charity urged an immediate ceasefire to prevent more loss of life.

The figure is a conservative estimate based on UN data on severe acute malnutrition, which the international body says has afflicted more than 1.3 million children since the conflict between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition that seeks to restore Yemen’s exiled government began in 2015.

Yemen makes Venezuelan seem like utopian paradise in comparison.

Yeah, I don't give a shit.

Lord Haw Haw will have you believe the US( one of the most powerful countries in the world, but unashamedly refuses to provide free health care to it's own citizens) really gives a shit about people in Venezuela...

Here is the real reason for US interest(read: regime change of a democratic country):

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world...


---------------


It's too far fetched right? ..I mean after Iraq/Libya etc they couldn't possibly be pulling the same stunt again?

Lets see what the POTUS has to say about this subject?




Assuming you have a functioning brain which has just been blown by what was said about Venezuelan oil by the POTUS .....rewind the video and watch all the way from the start.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The only way this gets sorted is if the military get persuaded to back another horse and are told they can keep all their winnings.

That doesn't sound very democratic.

The locals recently held an election and the current crew were elected. Some say the elections were spotless.

Or are you now suggesting that if the enlightened ones don't succeed in forcing election after election, until their man wins, the only solution is an illegal foreign created military coup?

Venezuelans who come to sign a petition against American meddling/invasion, give their opinion.