Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You're intending to leave us?
The current situation in Venezuela
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JimW
支那暗杀团
Who did you back when China invaded Vietnam in the late 70s Donald? Must have been one goody and one baddy.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
I'll admit, I'm warming to this theory of yours. I've spent some time thinking through the various possible explanations, and I have to say I can't think of a single one which explains this weirdo better than yours.
What on earth he hopes to achieve by doing it on U75 is completely beyond me, though.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
actually, either that or some previously banned f-wit returning on a massive windup
Maybe it's because I'm a Canadian and you people just can't tolerate Canadians disagreeing with your US apologizing on your knees. So since you're still obsessing over my comments two hours later, I won't laugh in your face if you feel obliged to take a shot back at me.
They might have Canadian citizenship. They are probably from a CCP family who sent them to study in Canada and then purchased property in Vancouver or something as an investment / way to get their money out of China where it could be confiscated if they find themselves on the wrong side of a political struggle. This is extremely common and there are a lot of people like this. Even Xi Jinping's daughter lives in the USA. (interestingly, if you search her name Xi Mingze 习明泽 on Baidu, you will get zero results - copy the characters 习明泽 into baidu.com and give it a try yourself).
I'm not sure how they get into the work. They could be requested to do it as Communist Party members who speak good enough English, or they could be employed full time by a PR company, which would get a large amount of contracts from the Chinese government and have a Communist Party cell directing things.
But of course, these things aren't in public view, just something like that is how I think it probably works based on what I have seen of how things are ran.
I'll admit, I'm warming to this theory of yours. I've spent some time thinking through the various possible explanations, and I have to say I can't think of a single one which explains this weirdo better than yours.
What on earth he hopes to achieve by doing it on U75 is completely beyond me, though.
Wumao budget has been increased because the CCP have realised they've got a public relations nightmare so I suppose they've started branching out away from Quora, Youtube and Reddit.
Unfortunately for them, as we can see from this strange fellow, it isn't something they can fix by throwing more money at.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
really? That's really intriguing to know.
If this guy's any guide, they badly need to review their hiring and presonnel polcies.
teqniq
DisMembered
Quite a fair and frank article here:
www.bostonglobe.com
Back off of Venezuela already - The Boston Globe
The American campaign against socialist leader Nicolás Maduro is only hurting the people of the country.
www.bostonglobe.com
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
The people's iron fist continues to prevail!
novaramedia.com
Maduro Keeps Winning in Venezuela | Novara Media
Maduro swept the votes at last week’s “mega-elections”. Yet until Biden lifts sanctions that have killed over 40,000 Venezuelans to date, he'll struggle to get the country back on track.
novaramedia.com
Riklet
procrastinación
The people's iron fist continues to prevail!
Maduro Keeps Winning in Venezuela | Novara Media
Maduro swept the votes at last week’s “mega-elections”. Yet until Biden lifts sanctions that have killed over 40,000 Venezuelans to date, he'll struggle to get the country back on track.
This is just an embarrassment. 47% on a a turn out of a whopping 42%. Whoopie. Where did they find this tankie idiot?
I guess there are worse countries to live in the world but venezuela has to be one of the most fucked up in South America right now. Some Novara academic talking head wouldnt last two minutes there on a stroll around Caracas. You have to be totally deluded to think of this as some kind of victory for socialism. Only thing going for it right now is that Covid isnt too bad there and they have vaccinated a lot (relatively) considering hospitals dont even have power a lot of the time. But without Cuban help even that would fall to pieces.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
I want to get drunk with Jeff
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
Victory Gin all round!
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
The nerve!
ska invita
back on the other side
Looks like Guaido and Operation Gideon is officially in the dustbin of history
www.aljazeera.com
Venezuela opposition removes ‘interim President’ Juan Guaido
Three opposition groups backed the bill to remove Juan Guaido and create a 5-member commission to manage foreign assets.
gosub
~#
Venezuela loses UK appeal in long-running gold reserves battle
The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) board controlled by the government of President Nicolas Maduro on Friday lost its latest appeal over $1.95 billion of the country's gold reserves held in the Bank of England's underground vaults.
Happened in June ..
JHE
.
Many people are optimistic that this time Maduro's cronies will be unable to rig the election enough to hide their defeat. This election may well be the beginning of the end of the Maduro regime and of the disaster called the 'Bolivarian Revolution'.
If we learn tomorrow that Maduro has been well and truly defeated, what happens next? It's uncertain.
A week or two ago Maduro declared that the options were either him or a blood bath! That's pretty scary stuff, but one of the observations I've read and heard from various sources is that people in Venezuela have lost their fear.
There are also lots of rumours about top Chavistas in private negotiations with the opposition about a hand-over. These Chavistas are stinking rich and of course they would like to keep their ill-gotten gains, but what they most want is immunity and a comfortable country to escape to and live out the rest of their lives, preferably in luxury as well as safety. But, as I said, these stories of negotiations are just rumours...
If we learn tomorrow that Maduro has been well and truly defeated, what happens next? It's uncertain.
A week or two ago Maduro declared that the options were either him or a blood bath! That's pretty scary stuff, but one of the observations I've read and heard from various sources is that people in Venezuela have lost their fear.
There are also lots of rumours about top Chavistas in private negotiations with the opposition about a hand-over. These Chavistas are stinking rich and of course they would like to keep their ill-gotten gains, but what they most want is immunity and a comfortable country to escape to and live out the rest of their lives, preferably in luxury as well as safety. But, as I said, these stories of negotiations are just rumours...
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teqniq
DisMembered
Maduro wins:
Fairly sour grapes from the FT:
Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro declared election winner
And another perspective:
Fairly sour grapes from the FT:
Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro declared election winner
And another perspective:
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
The leftist president of Chile is pretty scathing of the credibility of these results.
This is looking like an absolute stitch up from Maduro’s lot.
JHE
.
Yes. And among left-wing leaders, it's not only Boric who disbelieves the Chavista's dodgy electoral body (CNC). It's also Lula in Brasil and Petro in Colombia and so on.
There was never any real doubt that the regime would lie and cheat. That's what they do. The question was and is whether they will be able to get away with it this time.
The opposition in Venezuela reckon they won by a big margin. They and all the other sceptics are demanding the official signed minutes from all the polling centres. What will happen? My guess is that the CNC will ignore the demand or just try to fob everyone off for a while.
Yesterday, the armed Chavista thugs on motorbikes ("los motorizados") were out and about, shooting in the air and doing their best to terrify people. People like that are unlikely to accept defeat, but there are many uncertainties. What will the people do? Will Maduro's cronies stick together? Will the generals remain loyal to the regime? Will the troops remain loyal to the top officers?
I think this chapter is not over yet.
elbows
Well-Known Member
If I can rely on crowdsourced realtime translation of an opposition press conference currently taking place, they say theyve got a website with some kind of copy of the voting results on it and from the data they have so far, they claim they got 73% of the vote.
Meanwhile a lot of the protests and law enforcement response so far has been motorbike-based on both sides.
Meanwhile a lot of the protests and law enforcement response so far has been motorbike-based on both sides.
tim
EXPLODED TIM! (Help me!!!)
I don't trust the FT or the NYT but neither do I trust Assadist apologists like Rania Khalek.
Junket journalism in the shadow of genocide
What a visit of a group of journalists and activists to Damascus can tell us about ‘laundering’ genocidal regimes.
ska invita
back on the other side
Yeah this is a situation where it's very hard to get a good idea of the truth, though I expect it lies in between... The west has certainly tried to destabilise and coup in Venezuela since Chavez.... Moduro seems more the authoritarian than Chavez whose democratic credentials were highly praised.
The dynamic looks quite Cuban to me...
The dynamic looks quite Cuban to me...
elbows
Well-Known Member
Chavez squandered his democratic credentials over time, concentrated power to an extent that even some wholehearted supporters couldnt overlook in the end, and even earned some criticism from Chomsky in this respect. He also blew it when it came to the Arab Spring uprisings, aligning himself with a number of tired old regimes rather than the hopes of the multitude.
Thats certainly why I remember going off him, despite the fact that I was a fan of much of what he achieved earlier on. In the years since it seems that things carried on in that direction, with the crude versions of the anti-imperialist left, with all their usual apologists for shit regimes, being the regimes main defenders in the English-speaking press in more recent times. I cannot operate along those lines, even though the leading opposition figures tend to have political and economic stances that I am certainly no fan of either. For example the current popular opposition woman is painted as an 'iron lady' and is of the 'liberal right' for fucks sake, but I dont think that gives me the luxury of turning a blind eye to the state of democracy in the country at all.
I wont try to provide supporting articles for everything I've said right now, so for now I'll just post a link to this one article from 2012 about how he blew it in regards the Arab spring, since the consequences of that alignment with Assadists etc are still highly relevant when we look at who was putting out predictable, template pro-regime propaganda about this current election being fairly won even before it took place.
How Hugo Chavez botched the Arab Spring
If Venezuela had sensible leftist leadership, the country would have pursued a more level-headed approach toward Syria.
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ska invita
back on the other side
I don't doubt any of that. Whatever we may think of him and his politics though is a parallel sideline to the bigger dynamics of foreign interference, coups and democratic electionsChavez squandered his democratic credentials over time, concentrated power to an extent that even some wholehearted supporters couldnt overlook in the end, and even earned some criticism from Chomsky in this respect. He also blew it when it came to the Arab Spring uprisings, aligning himself with a number of tired old regimes rather than the hopes of the multitude.
Thats certainly why I remember going off him, despite the fact that I was a fan of much of what he achieved earlier on. In the years since it seems that things carried on in that direction, with the crude versions of the anti-imperialist left, with all their usual apologists for shit regimes, being the regimes main defenders in more recent times. I cannot operate along those lines, even though the leading opposition figures tend to have political and economic stances that I am certainly no fan of either.
I wont try to provide supporting articles for everything I've said right now, so for now I'll just post a link to this one article from 2012 about how he blew it in regards the Arab spring, since the consequences of that alignment with Assadists etc are still highly relevant when we look at who was putting out predictable, template pro-regime propaganda about this current election being fairly won even before it took place.
How Hugo Chavez botched the Arab Spring
If Venezuela had sensible leftist leadership, the country would have pursued a more level-headed approach toward Syria.
Chavez was always very clear that him being in power would make Venezuela a target for US/Western "intervention" and he tried to find a democratic but strong way through that threat. My impression was no sooner had Maduro taken over from Chavez that there were a series of repeated attempts to destabilise, impoverish, sanction and coup against him. That truly is the ultimate anti-democratic action. The growing response from him and the party has been to dig in.
To what extent things would be different - non-authoritarian, democratic - without that threat and hostility it is impossible to say, but Maduro's politics aren't formed in a vacuum. If this sound like I'm making excuses for him, I'm not. But the role of anti-socialist forces in shaping the world mustn't be airbrushed out...... its easy to miss because their mode feels so much like the norm making it possible to overlook the distortions it creates. Plus much of what they do to undermine is hidden and clandestine. The struggle of Bolivar vs. Monroe is long and real...
But with that said I wouldn't be surprised is he has lost the election, the economy is clearly fucked and people are long-suffering.
elbows
Well-Known Member
For sure thats a factor, but its used as an excuse to overlook other stuff far too often. An additional complication is that 'socialist' vs 'anti-socialist' stuff often ends up getting married to the big power blocks and competition between those around the world. China, Russia etc etc vs the west, the same old shit that relegates populations to pawns in some narratives.
I am also limited because I am not a South America expert. I might hope that an increase in the number of left-leaning governments in various South American countries in recent decades might, at their best, offer a model for getting beyond the usual narratives, getting beyond the cycles of such governments being overthrown by non-democratic means or finding themselves turning despotic and perpetually aligned to dodgy global powers. But I dont know to what extent this is actually the case. Someone can probably point out some examples that at least avoided the worst pitfalls.
If I look back to a period where Chomsky was prepared to raise some concerns about Venezuela, and put up with using a biased source that I cannot trust not to selectively quote (in this case the Guardian), then this sort of thing is certainly worth keeping in mind:
Thats from this 2011 article: Noam Chomsky criticises old friend Hugo Chávez for 'assault' on democracy
I am also limited because I am not a South America expert. I might hope that an increase in the number of left-leaning governments in various South American countries in recent decades might, at their best, offer a model for getting beyond the usual narratives, getting beyond the cycles of such governments being overthrown by non-democratic means or finding themselves turning despotic and perpetually aligned to dodgy global powers. But I dont know to what extent this is actually the case. Someone can probably point out some examples that at least avoided the worst pitfalls.
If I look back to a period where Chomsky was prepared to raise some concerns about Venezuela, and put up with using a biased source that I cannot trust not to selectively quote (in this case the Guardian), then this sort of thing is certainly worth keeping in mind:
Thats from this 2011 article: Noam Chomsky criticises old friend Hugo Chávez for 'assault' on democracy
ska invita
back on the other side
Honestly I agree with all of that... and there were good reports from Venezuelan anarchists shared over the years.
I just brinkle at people who actively and repeatedly overthrow, or support the overthrowing of governments, then getting teary eyed about democracy.
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