Venezuela heats up
A grave line has been crossed. Real, physical violence is finally catching up with the huge reserve of pent-up rhetorical violence we’ve suffered through since 1999.
We’ve spent 15 years fearing this.
Now we’re living it.
[NOTE: Ukraine violence, too, despite the “truce.”]
I’m old enough to remember when the Russian tanks rolled into Hungary. One hopes Ukraine doesn’t meet a similar fate. Putin can be sure that Obama will only give a speech.
And the response to international media is “crickets.”
That would be “The response OF international media”
This is not simply “violence”. This is a revolution in the making and, possibly, a beginning of a civil war.
This is why there’s a Second Amendment.
I see a disturbing parallel between Chavez and Obama. Both created a large dependent class with a vested interest in maintaining spending that can not be maintained indefinitely. Venezuela has hit the wall. Will we?
There’s an old joke about feeding bears. It’s not dangerous until you run out of food. Then the bear gets angry. Obama and Chavez have been feeding the bear.
America is next. Tyrants never leave peacefully. They don’t
Things are so much better now that GWB is gone and the Nobel winner is running the show.
It’s a bizarre confluence of Clockwork Orange Revolution.
What really struck me as frightening is posters cheering on thugs beating on young women with whips — from the remove of the Internet and pseudonymity.
How repulsive.
BTW, has anyone read Spengler’s take on Ukraine?
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2014/02/20/ukraine-should-vote-on-partition/
His theme is that Ukraine is a cobbled together polity in the first place… kind of like Byelorussia.
Considering Sevastapol’s naval base and the Donets Basin (met) coal fields and nickel deposits, Moscow can never let Ukraine go over to NATO.
Hence, Spengler argues that it’s better for all concerned to get real.
I too am old enough to remember tanks in Budapest. IMO the Ukraine government will request assistance from Putin. Putin wants to put the old Russian empire back together again and will not hesitate to send in tanks to turn Ukraine into a puppet ally. BHO encourages aggression from our adversaries as a means of weakening American power. That is the end all and be all of his foreign policy.
There have been countless occasions when people fighting tyrants have gotten little more than lip service and hand-wringing from the “international community” or the UN. Venezuela and Ukraine are just the latest examples.
So remember one thing: When (not if) this happens here in America, do not expect any sympathy or support from abroad. We will be on our own.
“So remember one thing: When (not if) this happens here in America, do not expect any sympathy or support from abroad. We will be on our own.”
My eyesight is still excellent, my finger is gentle on the trigger, and I can still scoot from cover to cover. I only fear airpower/drones. 😉
Oh yes, it’s coming. With the crash of the dollar as the world currency and the destruction of the middle class.
Soros has been “gabby” lately.
Anyone who genuinely cares about Venezuela would be running guns across the border. This doesn’t end until the death squads (and Maduro) are executed.
Note also: this is the fate of passive resistors in a Communist dictatorship. They will be rounded up in smallish groups and led off to the re-education camps. The media won’t report on it, either in Venezuela or here.
What I’m wondering is, “what’s Sean Penn’s take on this? How about Danny Glover?”
I just read the comments at the Venezuelan site: when some American patriots jumped in to urge them to defend themselves and fight back, they attacked the Americans like good little pinkos themselves.
They are so screwed. And, having read their nasty remarks about Americans, the Second Amendment, and [what they imagine to be] the Tea Party, I can’t say I’m all that sorry. I just can’t. I’m fed up to the back teeth with all these idiots — they really have concrete for brains.
Think about it: they have been under a dictator’s jackboot for years, they’ve run out of food and toilet paper, the dictatorship shut down their televisions and newspapers, AND they’re being shot in the streets like dogs — and they STILL think that shooting back is barbaric. What fools.
That comments section reminded me of why LEOs hate going on domestic violence calls: if they protect the wife, the idiot woman will usually turn and attack the COP to protect her battering husband. Happens all the time.
I don’t know about the Ukrainians, but the Leftist rot has spread so far and deep….
Beverly…
Have you heard of information operations, Astroturf, and advice from Central?
Don’t take such vox populi as being genuine.
Apparats troll the conservative sites ALL THE TIME.
This became extremely pronounced at the Belmont Club during when the Devil Went Down to Georgia. Overnight, they blew in from Moscow and trolled away.
As you might imagine, the xenophobe card was played when Americans pitched the idea of self-defense and advocated for the protection of civil liberties.
BTW, don’t assume that those trolls didn’t come from within the good ol’ USA.
That ACORN crowd is on retainer for a reason.
Spengler simply does not understand that nations are not simply inertial residue of the past history, they can be created by volition of the people at a remarkable speed. And this is what happening now in Ukraine.
Putin has no tanks to send just now. Ukraine is MUCH larger than Georgia. Such operation requires month to prepare, and months from now there will be nobody to “help” in Ukraine. Yanukovich regime is a walking dead, it will be finished in days.
I’ve been following some of the hashtags regarding Venezuela and I’ve learned the following:
The anti-Maduro folks call themselves “Gochos” or “regular Joes.”
The Gochos are desperate to get their freedom back. They’re not trying to swap out one tyrant for another.
The Gochos are NOT anti-U.S. in the least. They hope the U.S. will intervene on their behalf.
The Chavistas believe that the Gocho rebellion is the work of the U.S.
The Chavistas don’t mention us except in the most vulgar terms: “Yanquis de mierda.”
Reading the timeline of a Chavista is like reading the chortling of a brownshirt during Kristallnacht as the Gochos get what’s coming to them. Truly chilling stuff.
Chavistas are extraordinarily worshipful of Ché¡vez – far worse than our Obamabots – but it’s a difference of degree, not kind.
Chavistas are indignant that the Gochos would disturb the peace, “reject democracy” (Maduro having been duly elected), ruin the environment (felling trees to build barricades), and essentially accuse the Gochos of being the violent ones. Same inverted causality and guilt as you find with all who drink such Kool-Aid.
At the insistence of Leopoldo Lé³pez, the Gochos are engaging in passive resistance instead of armed rebellion.
The passive resistance consists in shutting the whole country down, a National Strike, wherein they shut down their own streets and businesses. They also clog the highways with sheer numbers of marchers.
The blockades are called “guarimbas.”
Being mostly disarmed, they’re hella innovative with the weapons. I’m collecting as many examples as I can because we ourselves might need them someday.
I can’t wait. </sarcasm>
@Beverly
I agree with Blert’s assessment completely.
The left’s most potent weapon is lies. They are always trying to distort reality so the people don’t know how bad things are.
That fits in perfectly with their twisted psychology, and denial of objective truth.
dicentra’s analysis seems to confirm this view.
It’s hard to say whether passive resistance is the correct way to go here. On the one hand, Commies have no shame or self-restraint, so protestors may be massacred if they don’t protect themselves.
On the other hand, the Chavistas seem to have a lot of support from the parasite classes, so this isn’t just a case of “the people” versus “the government.”
If I were there, I wouldn’t want to trust in the goodness of the other side.
Buisnesmen on strike? Going Galt? This certainly will greatly accelerate economic collapse, already under way.
“Things are so much better now that GWB is gone and the Nobel winner is running the show.”
Indeed. “Peace for our time.”
Peace, indeed…
Venezuela every day looks more like Chile under Salvador Allende. But have they a Pinochet-like figure?
}}} The Gochos are NOT anti-U.S. in the least. They hope the U.S. will intervene on their behalf.
Tell them to remember how much help we were to the Iranians a couple years back with Mr. Peace Prize in charge, and not to hold their breath.
Until we get rid of The Peaceful One, it’s a sure thing that America is going to tell the world’s tyrants “Have at
it!!them!!!</n?"}}} The Gochos are NOT anti-U.S. in the least. They hope the U.S. will intervene on their behalf.
Tell them to remember how much help we were to the Iranians a couple years back with Mr. Peace Prize in charge, and not to hold their breath.
Until we get rid of The Peaceful One, it’s a sure thing that America is going to tell the world’s
tyrants “Have at
it!!them!!!“dicentra,
That’s interesting information. Although the US survival community tends to have a high level of R/D on the matter of local, tactical, individual preparation.
Few, if anyone, has a longer outlook though.
Think about it: they have been under a dictator’s jackboot for years, they’ve run out of food and toilet paper, the dictatorship shut down their televisions and newspapers, AND they’re being shot in the streets like dogs – and they STILL think that shooting back is barbaric. What fools.
If their info net is cut down, how would they know anything about the 2nd Amendment and the Tea Party? The two easy possibilities, on top of what others here mentioned, is that you weren’t talking to real Vs but Americans imported on the net to look like Vs. Or you were talking to real denizens of V, but they were sort of like the Republicans or Democrats that voted for Obama… their view of Sarah Palin and local domestic riots are significantly different from the other factions.
I only fear airpower/drones.
Human shields. There’s plenty of Leftists and journalists and lawyers sitting around waiting to be of use to the Cause.
Of course, unlike the Pali tards, using valuable family members that are needed for the next generation is a bad idea. That’s why AQ conned a bunch of people into detonating a bomb as a suicider. The people hired, thought it was just a regular delivery job.
When (not if) this happens here in America, do not expect any sympathy or support from abroad. We will be on our own.
I doubt that. If I were the enemy, I would fund and setup a bunch of agent provocateurs, sell weapons to both sides, and try to create as many “incidents” of engineered man caused catastrophe as I could.
Police would be raiding houses, killing everyone in it on a “tip” that may or may not have come from Democrat and foreign national intel agencies. In which the house residents may or may not have been the Opposition Leaders of the rebellion. Then there would be a “peaceful protest” or “truce” ala Ukraine that would be broken because “somebody in the crowd” fired on the security and on the opposition. Somebody.
McCain doesn’t have a tenth of Obama’s synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama’s defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain’s choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.
The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn’t any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president. -Spengler being the oracle at Asia http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JI03Aa02.html
Spengler had no idea what the Left was doing to America. Seeing political issues as all important, he focused on Obama. But that’s only seeing 5 feet in front of your nose. Nice, but not enough.
Those that don’t realize what the Left is doing to America, thinks certain things are needed for a political battle. Things they wouldn’t see in Sarah Palin.
Spengler thinks he has the resume to decide for us the tactical and strategic setup of this war, as well as UKRAINE’s problems, manipulated by the American Devil overseas.
Those age old politicians are going to see something new for once in a war, one that they won’t be able to manipulate from their desk.
When a real war against people begins, the only sensible tactic is to kill the enemy the very second you see them.
Sergey
Venezuela every day looks more like Chile under Salvador Allende. But have they a Pinochet-like figure?
The big difference between Venezuela of today and Allende’s Chile is that Chavismo has had 15 years to increase its control, whereas Allende had only three years to consolidate his power before he was toppled.
For example, in 2002, there was still a lot of military opposition to Chavez. Today, there is much less, as Chavez had a decade to retire opponents and promote friends.
There doesn’t appear to be a Pinochet in today’s Armed Forces in Venezuela. Pinochet, who ironically appears to have been a Johnny come lately coupster, was acting in tandem with all the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces were solidly behind the coup. By contrast, the Armed Forces in Venezuela, corrupted with drug money rakeoffs, are reluctant to change course- especially since they could go to jail for their corruption.
In addition, there was considerable institutional opposition to Allende. One big difference was that there is NO institutional support for the opposition in Venezuela. The media, courts, legislature, and the army are all Chavista-controlled or co-opted. There is practically no local media coverage inside Venezuela of the current protests. Internet has been shut off in the Andean state of Tachira, where the current unrest began.
By contrast, Chile under Allende still had a vigorous non-governmental media. Chile’s Supreme Court had declared that Allende had egregiously violated Chilean law. Venezuela’s Supreme Court is a Chavista tool.
Another large contrast is in the legislative branch. By virtue of gerrymandering districts – such that one Chavista district had 180,000 registered voters and an oppo district had 320,000 voters- Chavismo was able to translate 49% of the vote in the 2010 legislative elections into 64% of the legislative seats. It then expelled a number of oppo legislators on trumped up charges to get a 2/3 majority which then passed an enabling law so that El Presidente could rule by decree.
By contrast, the opposition controlled the legislature in Chile. [Recall that Allende got an overwhelming 36.3% of the vote in the 1970 Presidential election. He NEVER had the support of the majority.] Three weeks before the coup, the Chamber of Deputies passed by 81-47- a strong 63% majority- a resolution titled the “Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy.” An excerpt follows.
In general and in specific, the resolution could be interpreted as an invitation to a coup. Allende himself called it such. The coupsters in the Armed Forces saw the Resolution as support for the coup.
I can see only one way in which the Army in Venezuela would intervene- if the Army would act to get the Chavistas gangs under control. Chavismo has a paramilitary branch, sometimes known as “motorizados” for their riding on motorcycles, sometimes known as “colectivos,” or sometimes just known as gangs. They are better armed than the police. They Chavista gangs have already supplied firepower against the oppo demonstrators. Maduro has recently expressed praise for the “colectivos.”
The fear is that if the Chavista gangs are further unleashed for violence against the oppo demonstrators, they may get out of control and go on a rampage. The Chavista gangs have the firepower to kill thousands and tens of thousands. If the Chavista gangs get out of control, the Army might step in to preserve public order.
http://caracasgringo.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/its-worse-than-you-think/ It’s Worse than You Think. Crime in Venezuela.
From this sad picture I see that no nation can preserve its freedom against tyrannical state if population is not armed. This is necessary but not sufficient and can lead to civil war if nation is deeply divided.
Beverly @ February 21st, 2014 at 1:27 am
I just read the comments at the Venezuelan site…. And, having read their nasty remarks about Americans, the Second Amendment, and [what they imagine to be] the Tea Party, I can’t say I’m all that sorry. I just can’t. I’m fed up to the back teeth with all these idiots – they really have concrete for brains.
You have quickly picked up one of the attributes of many of the Venezuelan oppos which can exasperate USA wingnuts. Venezuelan oppos have no kind feelings for PSF [Pendejos Sin Fronteras. Idiots w/o frontiers. Takeoff on on French Doctors w/o frontiers.] , who are foreign supporters of Chavez and his crew. Examples of some leading PSF from the USA: Joe Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Danny Glover. Have these people ever voted Republican?
Daniel Duquenal, the “owner” of Venezuela News and Views, used to opine frequently on US news. From the standard liberal POV, of course. He did go to grad school in the States, so he does have more knowledge of the US than most Venezuelans. When it was pointed out to him that 1)he didn’t know as much about the US as he thought he knew [a very common occurrence among foreigners] and 2) as US visitors to the blog came from varied political views, he would be better off adapting a more neutral stance on US politics. After having that point repeatedly pointed out to him, he finally cut down on his postings on US politics.
Please go look at the following two blogs about Venezuela, and especially the two posts I listed below. The images of Leopoldo Lopez turning himself in to the government, the crowds, Lopez making a speech from a statue, saying goodbye to his wife, and especially the crowd holding Sra. Lopez up to stand high on their uplifted hands so she can speak to her husband when he stands so far above her on the statue.
Please go and see them. These two sites are worth seeing, and the two posts with their images.
http://devilsexcrement.com/
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2014/02/before-day-after.html
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-deed-is-done-with-lopez-in-regimes.html
A lot of the protest movement is indoctrinated using the old Leftist revolutionary methods. Thus they think peaceful protests and that stuff works, because that’s what the ideology tells them.
The people on the ground in V may be getting an on the job education for why this isn’t quite accurate, but the observers of V are still stuck in Leftist stupid land. Peaceful protests were only an illusion and cover by the tool to expend useful cannonfodder and tools. It wasn’t designed to overthrow the Status Quo powers.
In America, peaceful protests by Martin Luther K would never have worked if the KKK could lynch anyone they wanted to .What stopped that was the Black NRA, Malcom X, and a bunch of black civilians armed with guns. That’s called usage of violence, not peace, in the popular vernacular. We might just call it self defense and common sense.
Sense that isn’t allowed the tools of the Left in V and in the world calling for INTERNATIONAL AID.
The international world is going to aid you? What kind of slave needs help from a foreign power to kill a local tyrant? Isn’t that what they complained about concerning the United States, always meddling in other people’s problems and causing blowback? Yet the international wack fodder thinks they need HELP.
Via the Watcher’s Council, something interesting showed up.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-open-letter-to-men-and-women-of.html
For those that have continually asked themselves what they could do about the situation in America… well, it is what it is.
Even from my perspective, these people (I call them survivalists or the survival community of solo scouts) are crazy. But they’re my kind of crazy, so to speak.
The Ancient Chinese philosophers often noted that the universe was created from an infinite source of energy, that would later bifurcate into what we see as conflict and cooperation or yang and yin. Peaceful protests are yin, whereas violent conflict is yang. Without both powers combined, people have a hard time finding harmony.
Gringo Says:
February 21st, 2014 at 12:37 pm
Wow, Gringo. I haven’t read the whole link, but points 5 and 6 that you quoted apply perfectly to Obama.
The Left really hates Pinochet, same for the last Shah of Iran + Rhodesia. They both utilized their security forces to crack down on the Left. The complaint they use to convince the Leftist cannonfodder is that these security forces were killing innocents.
In reality, even if you tally up the number of mistakes, the entire reason the Left went to the trouble of funding propaganda on that level is because 1. the Ayatollah was their ally and they preferred that ally in power in Iran rather than the Pro US Shah and 2. Pinochet really killed the Left’s minions in his country.
The Left screams the loudest when it hurts. Whenever a government’s security forces really crack some heads, the Left responds via propaganda. But that’s how you know it’s hurting their forces on the ground, that they even resort to propaganda to target security responses. If they could neutralize the security forces using death squads, bribes, blackmail, and threats, they would already have done it at the highest political levels.
The Leftist alliance follows a normal SOP. Hussein in the US is just a local lord. The Left has plenty of replacements and they have refined the method of human control over the decades.
Pingback:Dinocrat » Blog Archive » “Hello. Fantasy, is that you? Reality is calling.”
}}} What stopped that was the Black NRA, Malcom X, and a bunch of black civilians armed with guns.
Not really. That certainly restrained them locally in their actions, but the fact that the Federal government clearly would not stand for it — and would send in the military if needed (Eisenhower sending in the military, in the school instance against Wallace is a prime example that made that clear).
I suspect, had the Fed made a clear “hands off” attitude, there probably WOULD have been a lot of lynchings and assassinations as a result, on both sides. More than likely, the black supporters — many of whom were white, which you fail to note — would have shot some black leaders, and the whites would have lynched some blacks as a reprisal, then a lot more white leaders would get shot, and so forth, until the military really DID have to step in. It would certainly not have been pretty.
I also think it’s clear — an awful lot of people in the South were not “severe” racists — they certainly thought blacks were “less”, and shame on them for that, but few did not agree they were HUMANS and deserved to be treated as such — and many of them probably represented a restraining factor in what the KKK and their racist ilk could believe they could get away with in terms of a general mistreatment of blacks. The Dixiecrats were not an insignificant minority, though I would ack that, despite their defection in 1948 over the issue of race, the Democrats still won the Presidency in 1948 — but the Dixiecrats managed to get about 10% of the electoral votes for Strom Thurmond. Final tallies suggest they were about 1 voter in 40.
}}} would have shot some black leaders
Doh. “Would have shot some white, racist, KKK type leaders”…
}}} This is why there’s a Second Amendment.
AND why the price of gas has jumped up 20c in the last five days….