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Reuters: Venezuela opposition activist shot dead, party says


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1 hour ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

Won't be easy and will get very ugly. Besides the military, Maduro also has basically gangs that patrol neighborhoods and act as a paramilitary force. Recall watching interviews that these groups believed that toppling Maduro's government means they will all be rounded up and arrested and vowed to rather die fighting than be captured.

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19 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

So...nothingburger?

 

Also, I’m really having trouble caring about Venezuela.

Why?  There is already a refugee crisis which is directly effecting the US to some degree and it's neighbors to a critical degree.  The situation in Venezuela is disrupting a region that has been making significant economic and political progress over the last 10-20 years.

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26 minutes ago, nonniey said:

Why?  There is already a refugee crisis which is directly effecting the US to some degree and it's neighbors to a critical degree.  The situation in Venezuela is disrupting a region that has been making significant economic and political progress over the last 10-20 years.

 

Deeply interested in the ramifications for the Ecuadorian economy?!?😂😂

 

Look, for the vast majority of Americans, Venezuela is a right-wing meme trotted out around every liberal policy...and it’s been that way for close to 20 years.  This latest “election” might be particularly egregious but this is about the 10 zillionth South American strongman to come down the pike since I’ve been paying attention.

 

They’ll get it worked out down there.

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1 minute ago, TryTheBeal! said:

 

Deeply interested in the ramifications for the Ecuadorian economy?!?😂😂

 

Look, for the vast majority of Americans, Venezuela is a right-wing meme trotted out around every liberal policy...and it’s been that way for close to 20 years.  This latest “election” might be particularly egregious but this is about the 10 zillionth South American strongman to come down the pike since I’ve been paying attention.

 

They’ll get it worked out down there.

 

 

This is just an awfully glib reaction to an entire country in anarchic turmoil with citizens getting shot at and run down in the streets by armored personnel carriers after being starved by an autocratic despot who has turned his nation's economy into  a disaster. "Ho hum, just another day" doesn't quite seem like the normal response.

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10 minutes ago, Dan T. said:

 

 

This is just an awfully glib reaction to an entire country in anarchic turmoil with citizens getting shot at and run down in the streets by armored personnel carriers after being starved by an autocratic despot who has turned his nation's economy into  a disaster. "Ho hum, just another day" doesn't quite seem like the normal response.

 

I think glib is accurate.  Again, I’ve got Venezuela meme fatigue.  I’m honestly way more concerned with Puerto Rico’s recovery...and I’ve put my money where my mouth is on several occasions since the hurricane.

 

Edit:  I missed the truck into the crowd thing.  That’s not good.  Wasn’t trying to make light of that.

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1
46 minutes ago, Dan T. said:

 

 

This is just an awfully glib reaction to an entire country in anarchic turmoil with citizens getting shot at and run down in the streets by armored personnel carriers after being starved by an autocratic despot who has turned his nation's economy into  a disaster. "Ho hum, just another day" doesn't quite seem like the normal response.

with the help of the US sanctions as well.

1 hour ago, TryTheBeal! said:

So...nothingburger?

 

Also, I’m really having trouble caring about Venezuela.

The military industrial complex wants you to care. The US wants that oil.

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4 hours ago, Dan T. said:

 

 

This is just an awfully glib reaction to an entire country in anarchic turmoil with citizens getting shot at and run down in the streets by armored personnel carriers after being starved by an autocratic despot who has turned his nation's economy into  a disaster. "Ho hum, just another day" doesn't quite seem like the normal response.

Well he is a Trump voter.

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12 hours ago, nonniey said:

Well he is a Trump voter.

 

This schtick is fairly played out but, to your credit, it’s a more credible representation of your mindset than the pearl-clutching/virtue signaling you were shoveling out earlier.

 

#refugeecrisis

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2 hours ago, No Excuses said:

 

The last time you said this, you were shown that this view is nonsense and not supported by facts. Why bother repeating it?

It wasn't nonsense then and it isn't now.

 

The sanctions have contributed. That isn't to absolve Maduro at all. Nothing I am saying is in defense of him. But if we are going to pretend the US sanctions I refuse to pretend that our imperialistic practices haven't hurt their economy as well. (which was the point of the sanctions, and what we have done in nations we want to control since WW2)

 

This report came out just last week saying the role the sanctions have played in the current situation in Venezuela.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html

 

And this is just from 2017 sanctions.

 

The US has issued sanctions against Venezuela for the last 14 years in various capacities

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

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25 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

It wasn't nonsense then and it isn't now.

 

The sanctions have contributed. That isn't to absolve Maduro at all. Nothing I am saying is in defense of him. But if we are going to pretend the US sanctions I refuse to pretend that our imperialistic practices haven't hurt their economy as well. (which was the point of the sanctions, and what we have done in nations we want to control since WW2) 

 

This report came out just last week saying the role the sanctions have played in the current situation in Venezuela.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html

 

And this is just from 2017 sanctions.

 

The US has issued sanctions against Venezuela for the last 14 years in various capacities

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

 

You keep claiming that US sanctions had a role in tanking Venezuela's economy, which is absolute nonsense. At the time Venezuela's economy stared crashing, our sanctions were not targeting key sections of their economy. The sanctions were against specific corrupt individuals in the Venezuelan government or companies participating in the trafficking of illegal narcotics.

 

It's a stupid, nonsense claim that is not supported by anything. And if you bothered reading the link to the study you posted, you would also see this:

 

Quote


The report’s authors based their claims on estimates of excess mortalities contained within Venezuela’s National Survey on Living Conditions, known as Encovi. The annual survey of living conditions is administered by three Venezuelan universities. It found there was a 31 per cent increase in general mortality from 2017 to 2018 – representing more than 40,000 deaths.

 

Mr Weisbrot, a cofounder of the CEPR, told The Independent the authors could not prove those excess deaths were the result of sanctions, but said the increase ran parallel to the imposition of the measures and an attendant fall in oil production, which has for decades been a mainstay of the Venezuelan economy.

 

 

And in the actual study itself, you find the following:

 

Quote

By  August  of  2017,  when  the  Trump  administration  issued  its  executive  order  imposing  broad financial  sanctions  on  Venezuela,  the  economy  had  already  been  in  recession  for  more  than  three years. Although there has not been official government data for these indicators since 2015, the best available estimates were that real GDP had declined by 24.3 percent from 2014 through 2016, and consumer price inflation for January to August 2017 was probably somewhere between 758 percent and 1,350 percent at an annual rate.

 

And even the 2017 sanctions probably had minimal effect, considering the government would not have been able to restructure debts, which is one of the main things that the sanctions blocked:

 

Quote

Prior to the August 2017 sanctions, the debt that was up for restructuring was the debt of the state oil company,  PDVSA.  The  sovereign  debt  (from  the  government)  could  not  be  restructured  after  the opposition won a majority of the National Assembly in 2015. This is because the opposition leadership of  the  National  Assembly  stated  that  it  would  not  approve  any  new  foreign  borrowing  by  the government.  Without  this  approval,  new  government  bonds  from  a  restructuring  would  be  of questionable legality under Venezuelan law, and the opposition pledged not to pay them if they were to come to power. On that basis, a restructuring of government debt was impossible at that time.6

 

Now I am sure that crippling Venezuela's oil production probably did have an impact on their economy, but Venezuela was a disaster long before this and the US is will within its rights to close off its financial markets to a country that is (1) poorly managed financially and plagued with corruption, (2) sliding towards autocracy and (2) openly hostile to US interests and aligned with our foreign adversaries.

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5 hours ago, No Excuses said:

 

You keep claiming that US sanctions had a role in tanking Venezuela's economy, which is absolute nonsense. At the time Venezuela's economy stared crashing, our sanctions were not targeting key sections of their economy. The sanctions were against specific corrupt individuals in the Venezuelan government or companies participating in the trafficking of illegal narcotics.

 

It's a stupid, nonsense claim that is not supported by anything. And if you bothered reading the link to the study you posted, you would also see this:

 

 

And in the actual study itself, you find the following:

 

 

And even the 2017 sanctions probably had minimal effect, considering the government would not have been able to restructure debts, which is one of the main things that the sanctions blocked:

 

 

Now I am sure that crippling Venezuela's oil production probably did have an impact on their economy, but Venezuela was a disaster long before this and the US is will within its rights to close off its financial markets to a country that is (1) poorly managed financially and plagued with corruption, (2) sliding towards autocracy and (2) openly hostile to US interests and aligned with our foreign adversaries.

For some people the US is automatically the bad guy in any and all situations and is to blame for whatever problem is occurring.

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1 hour ago, nonniey said:

For some people the US is automatically the bad guy in any and all situations and is to blame for whatever problem is occurring.

Like this situation for instance.  Cuba, China, and Russia are involved in Venezuela helping keep Maduro in power, but the US is imperialist if they’re not entirely hands off.  Even standing on the sidelines now would be too little because what really  made Venezuelas economic house of cards blow over was sanctions.  Those evil imperialist US sanctionsi imposed because kindly socialist Maduro was helping workers and the US simply will not let such a thing stand.

 

 

 

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