By all means!
If it can lead to a more constructive discussion then I'm all for it.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 10th 2019 at 12:32:06 PM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
roberch:Ok this is not the first time we talk you about it, and is seen you need to get why we are mad about this.
First all, this "there is bad actors in oposition" while true, sound too much to "you know the US did bad thing against the axis" it sound waaaaaaaay to much as bothsiding and making false equivalence here in order to sound cynic and expert.
And second for us venezuelan....WE KNOW, I lived in maracaibo in zulia the eternal bastion of the oposition(until it sudenly wasnt), many of them didnt do shit for my state or the city: Manuel rosale did some(but at times he try to steal credit of Di martino, the mayor) but he fled like a bitch to peru when things got hard, is protege Pablo perez was useless and a drunktard who did jack shit in the city except picking fight while blasted(not kidding, he did this), eveling the rosales was just manuel arm candy and way to kept city in oposition hands.
Or shit like letting mazuco, a guy with mob ties to run political post in the party.
But again....WE KNOW, we know the oposition is stupid, fight like fucking orks, some of them are chavista plant and many are too confortable with US but they are the best we got and so far chavismo have cross so many line they are like republicans, just more open.
So for us, this close to the never ending complaing some dem have in their own party for not meet their standar: is not productive and is not helping.
Got it?
Edited by unknowing on Feb 10th 2019 at 1:47:45 PM
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Exclusive: Venezuela shifts oil ventures' accounts to Russian bank - document, sources
PDVSA’s move comes after the United States imposed tough, new financial sanctions on Jan. 28 aimed at blocking Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro’s access to the country’s oil revenue.
Edit: Wait, fuck, wrong poster. Sorry about that.
Edited by Stormtroper on Feb 10th 2019 at 4:35:49 PM
And that's how I ended up in the wardrobe. It Just Bugs Me!
Disasturbator
So they're saying the United State'congress will not engage in military action Venezuela
This is despite the earlier note pad threat,as one comment on Reddit said "For now,at least until someone attacks their embassy"
New theme music also a box
"They" being a group who does not have a say in this kind of decision, for the most part.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The "note pad threat" was done purely by Bolton, someone who is a known hawk and has no military authority.
The fears of US military intervention have always been more from the anti-intervention left's paranoia than anything actually substantive.
Congress controls funding, it's ridiculous to say they have no authority.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 13th 2019 at 6:22:07 AM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
It's not actually all that hard for the executive branch to essentially force congresses hands when it comes to authorizing military action; nothing is stopping the Trump admin from ordering American military aircraft to violate Venezuelan airspace or doing other things to try and bait Venezuelan security forces into shooting first, and then there's the situation at the embassy; suppose they start funneling weapons to anti-regime groups through the American embassy and leak that fact to the Venezuelans to try and bait them into storming it.
The biggest question is whether Trump's handlers are prepared to go down that route, and considering Bush adminsitration officials faced no consequences for fabricated evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it's likely they'd get away with it just as cleanly.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 13th 2019 at 8:13:46 AM
The biggest question is whether Trump's handlers are prepared to go down that route.
And it's not hard for Congress to make him pay, and Trump's handlers know that.
So yeah, it's definitely not true to say that Congress has very little authority.
Their position is extremely relevant if we're talking about any military intervention.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Disasturbator
> Congress controls funding, it's ridiculous to say they have no authority.
Yeah,but ultimately it's secretary of defence who decides,as well as generals,but yeah they'd have to go to congress to begin with
New theme music also a box
And congress basically doesn't ever say "no" to the Pentagon when it comes to funding.
The entire point of their declaration is that they would say no if it's for a military intervention.
So we're back to square one, it's ridiculous to say that Congress has very little authority.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Talk is easy, actually refusing to sign an Authorization for the Use of Military Force during a hypothetical crisis at the US embassy or denying funding when the administration uses that as a pretext to escalate would be a major break with congress's historical lack of resolve when it comes to exercising their authority over foreign policy.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 13th 2019 at 8:38:44 AM
There's a first time for everything, it would be foolish to ignore the fact they're willing to clearly state their opposition. That means something, even if it's not a complete guarantee.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 13th 2019 at 8:45:46 AM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
I mean, it's not as if the US government is devoid of experience in quietly funding military activities in Latin America without Congressional approval. Hell, they've brought in a bunch of the same people who did it the first time around during the Cold War.
Edited by Iaculus on Feb 14th 2019 at 1:50:39 PM
What's precedent ever done for us?
El cambur volador.
Another part of the humanitarian aid got inside the country today from Bolívar. It has been somewhat succesful getting in from the south, but not so much the rest of the country. Since Maracaibo is close to Cucuta this has me kind of worried, all the more if the US keeps getting more serious when it comes to military pressure.
Visita interiora terrae rectificando invenies occultum lapidem.
From the developing What the Fuck Just Happened Today feed:
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro's foreign minister met secretly with the U.S. special envoy in New York, even while the Trump administration continues to publicly back an attempt to overthrow the Maduro government. While in New York, the foreign minister urged Elliot Abrams to come to Venezuela "privately, publicly or secretly." U.S. officials have said they are willing to meet with officials from the current Venezuelan administration, "including Maduro himself, to discuss their exit plans." (Associated Press / Politico)
Shin Megami Tensei IV
So, USA wants to help Maduro to escape? Being honest, that sounds like a good scenario, given our borderline apocalyptic predictions.
Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 15th 2019 at 2:27:46 PM
Watch me destroying my country
Ironic if so. Will this finally be what gets the Leftists to turn on Maduro now, realizing he's not above colluding with the enemy to save his own skin?
The worst part of this whole mess is that the Venezuelans will surely learn nothing from the past 20 years, as they didn't from the 20 before. Chavez and Maduro are not new phenomenons, just the latest in a string of populists who ride on popular support for a while and fall when people see the logical results of what they supported.
Edited by Kamiccolo on Feb 15th 2019 at 2:53:41 AM
Shin Megami Tensei IV
I don't think that when discussing the possible end of a dictatorship, saying "they should have learned" is productive. And I wouldn't call the the "newest" at all, given that the Chavista regime exist even before I was born.
Watch me destroying my country
Never the less he is not wrong, countries learing from their dictatorship is crucial and I dont know if tha tis posible, chavez is dead and he die in the height of is popularity, is hard to point out guilty peoplem, specially when people vote him every,single,time.
I mean look brazil for a good case of not learing from the past or US for that matter.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
I think it's quite a relevant thing to say given the amount of blame shifting that goes on near the end of said dictatorship, from "Chavez was okay, Maduro was the real problem" to "we would be fine without foreign sabotage!". This happens on both an official and an informal level. And it happens outside of Venezuela as well as within it, for some bizarre reason.
The current dictatorship is a sympton of the true issue with Venezuela, which is (predominantly left-wing) blind populism and the economic destruction and corruption it creates. Until that gets fixed, the process will repeat itself. It must be remembered.
“Venezuela’s new leaders concentrated on the oil industry as the main source of financing for their reformist economic and social policies. Using oil revenues, the government intervened significantly in the economy. […] The government addressed general social reform by spending large sums of money on education, health, electricity, potable water, and other basic projects. Increased public outlays manifested themselves most prominently in the expansion of the bureaucracy…The government established hundreds of new state-owned enterprises and decentralised agencies as the public sector assumed the role of primary engine of economic growth. In addition to establishing new enterprises in such areas as mining, petrochemicals, and hydroelectricity, the government purchased previously private ones.”
This could easily pass as an account of the Chávez years. But it is actually a summary of what happened in the 1960s and 1970s. It was during those years, when the country was awash with oil money, that the Venezuelan economy became a patronage economy, and the Venezuelan state became a client state. Imagine a 1980s Greece, but high-powered with petrodollars. It was a model that was built on high and rising oil prices.
When oil prices peaked in the early 1980s, and then entered a prolonged period of steady decline, the party came to an end. Venezuela was still a rich country, but its economic performance became volatile and erratic. The government tried to maintain the high public spending levels that the population had grown accustomed to by borrowing and printing money. Between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, government debt increased from less than 30 per cent of GDP to around 70 per cent, and inflation increased from about 10 per cent to over 60 per cent.
Successive governments tried to come to grips with these macroeconomic imbalances, but found it politically impossible. Adjustment packages were initiated, but never seen through. It is in these conditions that a peculiar form of left-wing populism, of which Chavismo would become the most extreme variant, was born. Both of Hugo Chávez’s predecessors had railed against “neoliberalism” (i.e. economics), and promised a return to the old, free-spending ways of the 1970s. Once in office, both of them quickly had to U-turn.
Had oil prices remained flat after Chávez’s election in 1998, his presidency might well have followed the same pattern: some initial populist grandstanding, then a U-turn with unpopular spending cuts and adjustment measures. Soon after, the next populist would have emerged, and denounced Chávez as a neoliberal sell-out. But Chávez was lucky. His inauguration coincided with the start of an unprecedented oil price boom, which would last for about fifteen years.
Edited by Kamiccolo on Feb 15th 2019 at 8:51:32 AM
Branson wants a concert to benefit the people of Venezuela and use the funds to help in delivering humanitarian aid.
Roger Waters (Pink Floyd singer) objects to politicizing the use of deliver aid and insists that nothing bad is happening in Caracas.
Because, well, I'll third this one. I've seen genuine apologia here before, but I've also seen a lot of things that weren't such being labeled as apologia.
Edit: Okay, this is my worst pagetopper. Welcome to the thread, everyone!
Edited by AzurePaladin on Feb 10th 2019 at 12:30:54 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer