The Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela Mess or Let's Place Bets on How Long Before the U.S. Backs a Colombian War With Venezuela

We can't tell Maduro to step down? That pony's already out of the barn.

However, I'm just imagining there is quite a decent chance the situation improves under the conditions of an American-backed coup

Its going to improve for middle-class Venuzuelans and landowners who will be ok with fascism only.

Well to be fair if a Venezuelan would think Trump should step down, I would agree with the Venezuelan.

There is enough fair journalism to know how shitty the situation is.

It's not that I am for interventionism. Is that interventionism already happened in Venezuela in such a large extent that I personally believe it is worth asking ourselves 'should we let that situation go on'? If you think that we should, then that's a fair position. I don't think we should, nor should I think Bolton and Abrams have the best solutions, far from it, just a slightly better alternative to the present.

We can't tell Maduro to step down? That pony's already out of the barn.

― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, 10 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obviously the likes of Fred and Trump will tell Maduro to go - they love shouting and when anyone disagrees they will say they are doing a great job and the problem is YOU. No saving those ppl.

But I think others should take a step back from adventures in Latin America/middle-east because of so-called humanitarian reasons. That stuff is very distorted in the media, and its often caused by sanctions from western governments that are not happy the ppl might want something else. Our system of governance is broken, many of us in these rich countries are sleeping rough and children are in dire poverty. Lets look at ourselves.

Its going to improve for middle-class Venuzuelans and landowners who will be ok with fascism only.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, February 10, 2019 3:38 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is Guaido a fascist? A neo-liberal lackey I would accept at this point but fascism is something specific and I will wait for more information to make that claim (if you have it please link it to me).

must say an rud nua of picking one (easy target) person in each thread and petulantly referring everything mockingly back to them without any seeming point and more aggression than wit doesnt fill me with confidence that whatever radical burn-it-all-down social philosophy you're boosting atm is the answer xyzzzzz

Look at how economic loosening has been applied in the likes of Russia. Or the neo-liberal continuum in the UK that has paved the way for Brexit and the rise of insecurity for migrants. I wouldn't be welcoming neo-libs.

Again you can say what you would accept but equally you won't have to live with the consequences if it goes wrong.

xyzzzz specifically doesn’t want to burn it all down - as SV has set out above, the approach that guaido is taking risks (at best) seeming highly dubious and illegitimate and (at worst) civil war

using mexico and uruguay as honest brokers for s good faith negotiated settlement seems like the best way to thread the needle here

he can speak for himself ofc but I’m sure he’d only say “who da fuq is fred”

Apologies for this interruption. I fully admit to knowing very little about politics but I always thought the reason Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea are judged as being so much worse is that they seem to treat their people with a cruelty that Tories and Republicans can only have wet dreams about?

Darragh, do you want me to pull your ban Fred b thread?

it wouldnt be undeserved or anything but yknow i offer the above without rancour

I don't really want to see the guy banned or anything. But if anyone says things like 'sanctions are punishment' or 'lose electability to the coup plotters', or 'fuck parties that have 40% support this is nothing to me' I mean you might want to keep quiet but I don't want to be a saint, maybe you do idk.

cultural catholic man wcis

Whatever you think of the BBC its good they published this transcript of an interview with Maduro.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47211509

http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/07-minister.jpg

Rep. Omar asks if Abrams will back genocide in Venezuela like he did Guatemala. He's refusing to answer. She's not taking his BS.

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) February 13, 2019

Loved the US is governed by the KKK bit!

lmao @ how much is a kilo of cheese

That Corbyn bit at the end was another good lol

The Center for American Progress weighs in

I worked for Elliott Abrams as a civil servant. He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We all have a lot of work to do together in Venezuela. We share goals.

— Kelly Magsamen (@kellymagsamen) February 13, 2019

A great rationale for for moving the national capital to Guam and turning inside the Beltway into a lovely pastureland where cows may safely graze.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) February 13, 2019

Whatever you think of the BBC its good they published this transcript of an interview with Maduro.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47211509

I think it's shameful they haven't released the video. Reporter got rinsed.

I was thinking whether its normal practice to release a full video of an interview or not? I mean I would encounter this as edited extracts in a wider report at 11pm on newsnight or something, when I used to watch it.

if they thought they'd skewered him it'd be all over newsnight

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n04/tony-wood/the-battle-for-venezuela

Greg Grandin! Good.

the not-at-all-lefty National Post reports:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is undergoing the biggest crisis of his tenure, after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself president and was swiftly backed by countries around the globe, led by the U.S.

In the secret cache displayed by the Maduro government were 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges, dozens of military radio antennas and more. Putting on a show for the cameras, the government displayed AR-15 rifles, a Micro Draco semi-automatic pistol and a Colt 7.62 rifle with telescopic sights.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/was-a-u-s-cargo-jet-smuggling-arms-to-rebels-in-venezuela-these-flight-patterns-sure-look-weird

I was thinking last week that what this story needed was Richard Branson popping up out of nowhere with a weird front organisation and agitating to open the border with Colombia...

lol what jokers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/20/pink-floyd-roger-waters-condemns-richard-branson-venezuela-aid-concert

Pink Floyd are...good now?

Another day another centrist rinsed:

Euronews journalist asks President Maduro if he recognizes Venezuela's problems.

Listen to Maduro's answer. pic.twitter.com/5vIEQYVpxb

— MV English (@MV_Eng) February 20, 2019

An extraordinary interview.

I know Elliott. He has been a colleague of mine at the Council on Foreign Relations, and I think that he is a very smart person. I think he is basically a good person and he is somebody who I don’t see as being terribly ideological. I really see him as a foreign-policy professional who has served the country a long time. I think you can certainly attack him for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. I think that’s legitimate. The fact that he did plead guilty in two misdemeanor offenses of misleading Congress, that’s never O.K., but I think it’s unfair of Congresswoman Omar to suggest that he is somehow an enabler or an apologist for genocide, because, in fact, anyone who knows anything about the history of American policy since the nineteen-seventies knows that Elliott has actually been one of the most influential and eloquent voices for putting human rights and democracy front and center in American foreign policy.

Man, xyzzzz, you've become like my youtube recs on a particularly bad day. 'Milo DESTROYS feminist'

You should give up film reviewing and go into political reporting and interview Maduro sometime. I would like to see you being DESTROYED too.

All that aside it was an excellent answer. The concern trolling from centrists only applies to countries which try a different system to capital. No one goes to this or that region in India (Maduro gives Colombia as an example) and looks at the daily struggle because they are undergoing liberal reforms and so are good.

There's literally been a Netflix show and a James Bond movie based on Columbia? It's just a straight up lie what he says. And I've read tons of articles about poverty India, which, btw, is governed by a religious populist who overthrew a basically neoliberalist regime that did all the typical reforms in the nineties. You're really living in tankie fantasist land.

I've written a really good article on depictions of politics in Indian cinema on Netflix :) I'll post it if anyone wants to google translate it.

Bond movie was about Bolivia? Unless there have been two recent Bond movies about S. American geopolitics (haven’t seen anything since QoS)

License to Kill. I'm thinking of Escobar. Unless he's claiming that 15 million Columbians has left in the last year, which I doubt very much.

But this is just a pointless debate. Anyone who thinks 'capital' is scared of Maduro is a deluded tankie. He's as much a gift to capital as Trump has been to the DSA. What's going on in Venezuela is basically the capitalist version of accelerationism.

lol sure tell that to the good folks at The Economist!

Capital doesn't have a problem with Modi who carries on the neolib reforms.

Its not about being scared of Maduro or otherwise - its about interventionism, which the US are very much keen on. His point is pretty good, what is the poverty level in Colombia or in the rest of Latin America? Nobody cares.

There's literally been a Netflix show and a James Bond movie based on Columbia?

lol fomenting a coup vs airing Narcos

lol sure tell that to the good folks at The Economist!

Capital doesn't have a problem with Modi who carries on the neolib reforms.

Its not about being scared of Maduro or otherwise - its about interventionism, which the US are very much keen on. His point is pretty good, what is the poverty level in Colombia or in the rest of Latin America? Nobody cares.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, February 21, 2019 8:36 AM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not really a very good point. the poverty level in venezuela is incredibly high and millions of its people are moving to other countries in the region for economic reasons. that's a pretty simple fact. for example chile has 200,000 venezuelans living there, a tenth of all foreign residents of the country, and the nationality that makes up the greatest proportion of foreign residents in chile. ten years ago venezuela wouldn't have been in the top 5

It’s not a good point because Venezuela is getting worse and Colombia is mostly just not getting better. It’s a valid point in the sense that nobody would use the immense poverty and displacement in Colombia, and the government’s long-term failure to address it, as the pretext for regime change. Colombia’s problems are allowed to be complex, historically-rooted and partially out of the government’s hands. Venezuela’s problems are assumed to be the fault of the dude with the moustache.

im obv opposed to regime change but i just have never been very convinced by that variety of whataboutery. and there is a difference between getting worse and not getting better of course

The US has intervened in Colombia plenty, no? + The collapse of the Venezuelan economy isn't really due to problems that are 'complex, historically rooted and partially out of the goverment's hands.' It's mostly failed oil policies...

Colombia after the violencia is a great example of how bad elite consensus rule can be for a country, though.

Also, just lol at the idea that critics of chavist Venezuela are too focused on single persons. You're an endless fount of well-informed but inane bullshit, SV.

shut the fuck up fred