The current situation in Venezuela

[elbows]

Looks like the supreme court stuff was severe overreach beyond what they could get away with. Now they have backtracked. This and the appeals to the UN recently are more obvious signs of desperation in a picture that was hardly short of that bleak stuff in the first place.

 

[ska invita]

this can only get more ugly
Venezuela opposition march over Henrique Capriles ban - BBC News

 

[Idris2002]

Further notes on this wretched fiasco:

The "unconditional solidarity" of the left with Chavismo

 

[Idris2002]

This piece from Australia's Green Left Weekly doesn't actually use the phrase 'civil war', but that's what its account of violence in the town of Socopos sounds like:

The war for power in Venezuela’s countryside

Once again, the problem of knowing what's true, what's false, and what's exagerrated is the big one here. What's most likely, I think is that Chavismo is coming to an end in a bloody fashion, and what's going to happen afterwards will be as bad if not worse.

 

[Idris2002]

It's still party time for the Ven millionaire class, though:

Rich Venezuelans eat sushi, guzzle cocktails amid chaos

 

[planetgeli]

If you thought things were getting desperate for Maduro before..

Venezuela: police helicopter attacks supreme court with grenades

What do you get if you add 800% inflation to growing malnutrition and lawlessness? Oscar Perez, right wing death squads pledging allegiance to Christ and increasing subversion from the US.

What a fuck up.

 

[teqniq]

Some really good pics here (paywalled) but 3 free articles a month if you sign up

The Battle for Venezuela, Through a Lens, Helmet and Gas Mask

 

[Riklet]

Gonna be a coup or revolution soon I reckon.

Reallly kicking off but Maduro has got the military etc well paid.

Working classes are turning against the regime slowly but surely tho. Maybe 5 years ago it was more just rich middle class Venezuelans etc but I think things have changed over the past year.

My socialist Venezuelan buddy isnt too optimistic. Whoever wins, most people will lose, fairly badly. This is mirrored in the rise of the 'anti corruption' neoliberal right in Brazil and their own recent successes against the former government and Workers' party. Still, he reckons Brasil is still a better place to be right now, and is staying put.

 

[J Ed]

Trump admin really turning the screws on Venezuela, liberal media breathlessly reporting on Trump run Whitehouse denouncements of democratic elections in Venezuela without any sort of reflection on who is running that Whitehouse and whether they have any right whatsoever to attack anyone else on that basis.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Is there any link to a progressive analysis on the current situation. I think Riklet is probably correct to say that whoever wins the working class lose but I am struggling to find anything that isn't Stalinist and/or lacking in real insight and analysis.

 

[Idris2002]

If this is true, it's damning:

"Earlier in the week, Maduro urged government workers and employees at state-run companies to vote. In a televised address on Saturday, the president said the government would be cross-checking lists of voters with lists of government employees. He said whoever didn't vote would be fired."

'Cheers to Sunday, the end of our damn country': Venezuelans despair after unpopular vote

 

[Idris2002]

Meanwhile, the pro-Maduro Venezuela Analysis site has this pic:

Which is captioned "Right-wing legislator Freddy Guevara shakes hands with a protester, shortly before they attacked the National Guard in Caracas."

My question is the red cross on the white field, which turns up in the photo below as well - is it meant to be some sort of Knights Templar thing?

 

[J Ed]

Meanwhile, the pro-Maduro Venezuela Analysis site has this pic:

Which is captioned "Right-wing legislator Freddy Guevara shakes hands with a protester, shortly before they attacked the National Guard in Caracas."

My question is the red cross on the white field, which turns up in the photo below as well - is it meant to be some sort of Knights Templar thing?

Don't know about this in particular but fashy iconography is v popular on the far-right in Latin America.

 

[1%er]

My question is the red cross on the white field, which turns up in the photo below as well - is it meant to be some sort of Knights Templar thing?

I'll be there again later in the week and I'll ask if its aligned to any group but in my experience it will be to do with the Venezuelan flag where the color red is meant to represent the blood spilled by patriots during the war of independence from Spain.

 

[Idris2002]

The Daily Beast is talking about the opposition's apparent inability to mount a proper challenge to the government:

The Epic Collapse of Venezuela’s Opposition

Irish trade union activist Adrian Kane has some interesting things to say about Ven's current situation:

'Venezuela is a different place to the one you read about in international press'

 

[TomUS]

According to this, Maduro has little more to fear from the US in terms of oil sanctions. It would be political suicide for Trump.

The White House debated stopping all sales of Venezuelan oil to the U.S., but it didn't go that far....The president understands that it's bad politics at home to rise gas prices. Venezuela supplies 10 percent of America's oil imports...making it the third largest supplier behind Canada and Saudi Arabia....oil prices could spike $10 a barrel if Trump does a full ban on Venezuelan oil...."Prices would go up like a rocket,"..."Gas prices in the U.S. would go up 25 or 30 cents a gallon within a couple of weeks."....“Somebody in White House probably recognizes the last thing this president needs right now is to anger people who live paycheck to paycheck and voted him in

Analysis | Say goodbye to $2.30 gas if Trump goes hard after Venezuela

 

[Idris2002]

Army captain leading coup attempt?

Venezuela Official Says ‘Terrorist’ Attack at Military Base

 

[1%er]

My question is the red cross on the white field, which turns up in the photo below as well - is it meant to be some sort of Knights Templar thing?

I've asked about but have been unable to find a name or any information about the group that is using the shields with the red cross, I haven't been back to Caracas where it seems that group is from as I'm staying away from the cities nowadays.

 

[1%er]

I was at the boarder over the weekend, I can't enter anymore without the threat of being arrested and jailed. Having spoken to people it seems things are getting much worse, here is what I was told by people still streaming into Brazil.

Prices are going up by around 50% a month, cash machines can't keep up with demanded and people are now not only short of food, medicine, water, Petrol, electric etc but cannot get to pay for what is little available as they can not get cash. Schools. university's and hospitals are closing everyday as nurses, doctors and teachers are leaving the country in droves. According to reports in Colombia, 250,000 Venezuelans have crossed the boarder in the last couple of months and about 500,000 have crossed into Brazil. This doesn't include the 10's of thousands going to the USA, Europe and other countries in Latin America. Some reports are claiming that between 15% and 20% of the countries citizens have left in the last 2 years

Millions of family's are down to just one proper meal a day, if they can get some rice or beans. Meat and fresh veg has become so expensive if you can find it that many people don't eat it more than once a week. The purchasing power of people who were earning the equivalent of $50 a month is now as low as $5 a month because of hyperinflation. While the official conversion rate set by the government is 10 bolivars to the dollar (which no-one can get) the black-market rate (the only way Venezuelans can exchange money nowadays) is around 100,000 bolivars a dollar. Crime is just crazy and people queuing at banks and shops are being robbed of goods and money as soon as they leave the building, in front of all the other people standing in the queue, the police are nowhere to be scene as they don't have any parts to repair their cars or petrol to run them.

Maduro's answer to this is to create a cryptocurrency called the "petro", this will be a digital currency and will not address any of the problems facing the people of Venezuela. It is the middle-class that are fleeing the country, so even if things get better in the future the country will suffer a skill shortish for many years after that, as it is unlikely these people will return having made lives for themselves and their families in other countries. The poor and working-class who are not able to leave the country are just being left to starve and scavenge for crumbs to eat and have zero chance of medical care or medicine.

 

[Favelado]

Surely the drone bomb is worthy of some idle forum speculation. Maduro has blamed Colombia and the Venezuelan opposition. UK and US media are hedging their bets by implying that Maduro could be making it up. Someone somewhere will blame Trump.

What do you think?

I can't wait for an 8 part podcast in 2025. Will be fascinating.

 

[ska invita]

Id expect a US drone to have hit the target or get a lot closer...my impression is it's a little amateurish?

 

[Riklet]

Gonna end badly.

If the regime faked it to cause a crackdown, pretty nuts.

If genuinely there are groups with drones and explosives trying to kill or attack Maduro and come close to doing so... also nuts.

Gonna get more violent while the country continues to fall apart.

 

[trabuquera]

For once, (at least part of) the PSUV party line - that it's to do with Colombia - might have some weight to it, with Uribe's placeman having just won the election there, whole country swinging (even further) to the right and presumably very up for renewing the old grudge with Venezuela. Particularly if the Colombians are arguing that 'we've got to stop this mad regime so they'll stop flooding over our border' etc. The overall impression of disorganisation doesn't really play in the PSUV's favour even if you accept their account of the event, so I doubt they set the whole thing up. But who knows? It's such a violent shambles that more or less anything is possible. Could have been an exploding gas main and a bit of sfx? or might it be another rogue Venezuelan armed forces element like Oscar Perez?

Interesting that one set of people they *didn't* try to pin the blame on this time was the CIA/FBI/NSA/CubanAmerican mercenaries? I'd have thought that would be the #1 ploy.

 

[kebabking]

Id expect a US drone to have hit the target or get a lot closer...my impression is it's a little amateurish?

Yes and no - on one hand the target set heard the UAV and looked up, that means it was flying within a few hundred metres of them, (a western, or Russian, or anyone elses military UAV's are pootling about at 10,000m, and they make about the same noise as a large car engine when you stand next to them), and the munitions they used look to have an explosive yield about the size of big standard hand grenades - on the other hand they got to the target, dropped their bombs and came pretty close to doing the deed, which isn't that amateurish...

Best bet? The UAV involved is something you could buy in Maplins for £1k, and the bombs are something that anyone with access to explosives and rudimentary electrical knowledge could put together.

Imported and home built UAV's have been used extensively by all sides in Syria, they are cheap, fairly easy to use and can be very effective...

 

[ska invita]

Worth a watch , at least the first 3 minutes for the overview (big pinch of salt with the interview, but still)

 

[Sue]

I'm in Colombia at the moment (nowhere near the border wirh Venezuela) and there are an awful lot of Venezuelans begging in the streets (generally they've signs saying they're Venezuelan or they tell you they are when they approach you).

Ime, Colombians are not specially sympathetic. I asked some people i know and they reckon Venezuelan used to be hard on Colombians so what goes around comes around.

 

[ska invita]

I'm in Colombia at the moment (nowhere near the border wirh Venezuela) and there are an awful lot of Venezuelans begging in the streets (generally they've signs saying they're Venezuelan or they tell you they are when they approach you).

Ime, Colombians are not specially sympathetic. I asked some people i know and they reckon Venezuelan used to be hard on Colombians so what goes around comes around.

That foreign minister in the video above gave the line that those people leaving Ven for Colombia are mainly Colombians returning home...maybe just a little truth in that, but his accounts of internal strife stank of Pravda-ish whitewashing.

That said all the stuff about engineering a coup sounds utterly plausible, as does the role of outside states in bringing the economy down further.

So grim, and personally I cant see any way out of the situation that doesnt end in a coup of some sort.

 

[elbows]

Oh we've finally reached the 'opposition leader declares themselves acting president, and gets recognition from the USA' stage.

US backs opposition as Venezuela president

 

[ska invita]

I guess it's all eyes on the ven army

 

[Smokeandsteam]

All eyes on Trump too I’d suggest. What better than a broken country to beat up by force to boost his popularity domestically?

I’m not a fan of the Maduro regime by any stretch but if Venezuela becomes caught up in wider power games it would be a disaster for ordinary citizens