Venezuela is a train wreck…
…and as a result, South America has its own refugee problem:
On one end, these countries are trying to pressure [President] Maduro now to step down, because they know that this migrant crisis is going to get even worse the more politically unstable the country gets. Countries like Colombia understand that Venezuela used to be a country that took their immigrants, especially during the darkest days of the paramilitaries and the guerrilla fighting, but at the same time, they understand they can’t take every Venezuelan that comes.
And not only that, because of this crisis that’s getting worse and worse, because of lack of medicine mainly, people are coming into these countries with diseases that should be controlled in Venezuela — diseases like diphtheria, malaria, tuberculosis have made a huge comeback in Venezuela. So if you’re a neighboring country like Brazil or Colombia or a country like Ecuador or Peru, who are farther away but are also taking immigrants, this is a very scary situation that’s right on your doorstep.
That article is at NPR, and I wonder whether they acknowledge the fact that those arguments are similar to what President Trump and the right are saying about our very own illegal immigrants.
Here’s an interesting piece from someone who’s not a Trump lover, criticizing the left for its embrace of Maduro. I think some of these clips of Democratic Maduro-love could make a good campaign video for Republicans in 2020:
“That article is at NPR, and I wonder whether they acknowledge the fact that those arguments are similar to what President Trump and the right are saying about our very own illegal immigrants.” – Neo
That’s a rhetorical question, right??
AesopFan:
Yes.
The problem with the Left (including NPR) is that they don’t recognize that their actions are directly related to the consequences they find so “unimaginable.”
Anyone sane imagined them long ago, and knows what causes them.
It’s like Mike K said here (scroll on down in that thread for another list of “unexplainable” consequences). Forest fires in the west also come to mind.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/04/02/a-reminder-of-how-much-the-climate-has-changed-in-the-past/#comment-2429573
Mike K on April 3, 2019 at 9:42 am at 9:42 am said:
because other eco aims took priority in water management actions.
This was an obvious problem in Britain several years ago. The flood control channels had been left uncleared because of a leftist “Return to nature” thing and they were heavily over grown. The result was massive flooding.
Be sure and read this section at the link.
“On how President Maduro forced visiting Cuban doctors to use access to medicine as a way to gain votes for Maduro right before an election”
The Left lies.
Always.
And manipulates the lying to their advantage.
Always.
Aesop Fan brings up a very important point: the Maduro regime relies heavily on Cubans to keep in power. The lefties who denounce “outside interference” in Venezuela make no mention of Cuban intelligence and military personnel in Venezuela. If one brings it up, they will often deny the Cuban presence in Venezuela.
Bloomberg News had an appropriate article recently. How Has Maduro Survived? With Lots of Help From Cuban Operatives.
More at the link.
Joanna Hausmann, featured in the NYT video, has been making hilarious videos for years. Here is a favorite of mine. Tu, Vos or Usted? It’s Complicated – Joanna Rants.
As I worked in areas of Latin America that used Vos- Bolivia, Argentina, Maracaibo Ven., Guatemala- I became quite familiar with, and fond of, Vos instead of Tú. The explanation for Vos is simple. It’s an archaic form that got preserved in isolated parts of the colonies while its use withered away in the mother country. Four to five hundred years ago, Vos is what Spain used. Isolated areas of the Spanish empire didn’t pick up the change that Spain later made to Tú.
Venezuela today is what Chile would have been in 2 or 3 more years without CIA helping Pinochet to stop socialist Allende.
Magic thinking — socialism — taking from the rich to give to the poor.
It’s fine. Until a la Thatcher:
you run out of Other People’s Money
Which happens faster if the cronies put in place because they’re such good boot-lickers are so stupid to make bad investment & operational decisions and think those are good decisions.
Trump should be pushing/ supporting the other countries in getting rid of Maduro, so that free elections can be held.
It’s not clear a Democratic Socialist will really be a lot better, but at least has a chance to take the gov’t boot off the faces of the poor folk (most of whom supported the dictator policies and promises of “free money”.)
https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/
History of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
People keeping fall for socialism because they aren’t allowed to see the truth. And they also dislike the truth.
I understand that some relief supplies are getting into the country now. That can help slow the humanitarian crisis, but only a complete change of government policies can turn the country around. That means that Maduro must go. But he is propped up by Cuba, Russia, and China. China has financial interests in the issues – Venezuela owes them a lot of money. If Maduro goes, a new government might renege on the debts. The Chinese don’t want that. And they don’t care how many Venezuelans starve, die of disease, or leave. The Cubans have been long term backers, but they have no money either, so their help is mainly advice from advisors. The Russians are there just to tweak the U.S.’s nose and create mischief. Putin has dreams of resurrecting the old Russian empire and tries to be a bully boy wherever he can. He cares nothing for the Venezuelan people either.
It is hard to watch the potentially richest country in South America sink into such a dystopian nightmare, but other than an invasion, what can we do but offer aid? More questions than answers answers.
Typical willful liberal blindness; if only the tyrannical Maduro wasn’t in charge, if ever the right people are in charge…
They’re incapable of examining their original premises because they’ve enthroned dogma over reason.
Maduro’s foreign minister has been in the Middle East the last few days visiting Maduro allies Turkey and today, Lebanon, i.e. Hezbollah. So.
Chances Maduro will depart peaceably can be reckoned as extremely low now, a pity for those innocents who will perish in the events to follow. The long game seems to be a strategy to starve Maduro of the cash with which he pays off his support. Whether the mass of Venezuelans can survive the wait is the rub. In the meantime the Venezuelan armed forces appear disinclined to switch sides in sufficient numbers and firepower to make any regime change immediate. More suffering appears to be required to induce that mass defection, which mayhap will yet come. External force does not appear to be in the cards. I mean, does anyone think Canada will march to the rescue? France? Britain?
Tom Grey
Venezuela today is what Chile would have been in 2 or 3 more years without CIA helping Pinochet to stop socialist Allende.
From my reading about Chile over the years, my conclusion is that the coup was made in Chile- a coup that had substantial civilian support. Recall what the Church Committee concluded about the 1973 coup in Chile. Covert Action in Chile: 1963-73 (page 6)
From josepinera.org/articles, one can find good,short summaries of the Allende and Pinochet years. Few people realize, for example, that three weeks before the coup, the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution that condemned the Allende administration by a strong 63% majority, a 81-47 vote. From the article titled “How Allende Destroyed Democracy in Chile:”
The Supreme Court had issued a similar denunciation.
Allende correctly stated the Resolution “promoted a coup.” Where Pinochet and the politicians parted ways is that the politicians expected elections within several months. Pinochet saw the whole system, not just Allende, as the problem. If you are going to invite the fox into the henhouse, you may be surprised at what the fox does.
In the 1988 Referendum, which voted on allowing Pinochet another 8 years in power, Pinochet lost by a 56%-44% vote. Result: new elections, with no Pinochet running. The “democratically elected” Allende became President after winning 36% of the vote in the 1970 election, which is substantially less than the 44% that Pinochet got when he lost the 1988 Referendum. One irony of history.
A further irony involves Pinochet and the coup. From what I have read, Pinochet was wishy-washy about the coup, and joined it only at the last minute.
Some have wished for a Pinochet to arise from the Venezuelan military. This is very unlikely, for at least three reasons.
1) Two decades of Chavismo have seen supporters promoted and opponents retired.
2) Cuban intelligence (DGI) agents are embedded in the military, keeping a close eye- and ear- on things.
3) Military higher-ups are raking in bribe money from drugs and gasoline smuggling. They support Maduro because they realize that under an honest government, they would be convicted and imprisoned.
“other than an invasion, what can we do but offer aid?” J.J.
Aid will enable the continuation of the oppression. Invasion will allow the Left, Cuba, China, E.U. and U.N. to weaponize the politics. There is no easy answer because evil’s agents will not allow a straightforward resolution to the problem.
It just seems to be so very difficult to dislodge a muscular autocracy. Imagine if France, Britain, Canada, or the US intervened in VZ to help Guaido, as sdferr suggested. Can you hear the shouts of “Imperialist”?
Meanwhile Russia is landing large planes full of people and who knows what, and most of the Russian citizens are probably cheering.
Is there any hope of significant action from Columbia or Brazil?
Thanks for the ABC-type news, Gringo.
“Is there any hope of significant action from Columbia or Brazil?”
Seems to me unlikely in either case TommyJay, though on different grounds in each. Colombia has too many problems already at hand to be capable of such an undertaking short of absolute dire necessity. Jai Bolsonaro in Brazil is still in process of getting his great change underway, nor have his people evinced any sign of inclination to take on Venezuelas’ miseries. The northern Brazilian state of Roraima is in an electricity pickle however, due to dependence on purchasing same from Venezuelan power company, power which hasn’t been available since roughly March 7th last.
“The northern Brazilian state of Roraima is in an electricity pickle however, due to dependence on purchasing same from Venezuelan power company, …”
Wow! I made some money owning shares of CPFL Energia (a utility corp.) years ago & got out when the tide turned. The real started declining and I read that the board of directors changed their mind, and hydro-power is now bad, and burning sugar cane stalks is good. Or they (probably the wrong region) could just buy the power from Venezuela, Easy-Peasy. Ha!
The vast Belo Monte hydropower complex is underway but many years from completion on the Xingu river. I think there are four generators up and running at the largest dam, out of, I dunno, 18 proposed at that location alone. Two other dams in the whole scheme haven’t broken ground yet, with one of those getting a number of other generators eventually. Think the complex is supposed to produce 11,200+ MW ultimately.
Bottom line, simple of coarse. Socialism/communism are ultimately mass murder/death regimes. Period, why waste words?
Thanks sdferr,
Glad to hear that Brazil hasn’t done the full Chouinard on hating hydropower.
Very few words are necessary. The left is the side of death and destruction. Period, end quote. Sheeesh.
Gringo has it right. From someone who lived there for a long time until recently and has followed the politics intensely, believe me when I say that he has the inside track on this.
My analysis is that the opposition believes they can win by calling for a massive uprising, but that they are reluctant to do this for two reasons:
1. This will probably result in thousands of deaths as their supporters take on armed troops and Chavista colectivos (gangs).
2. This could result in the institutional failure and breakdown of command structure of the Venezuelan army.
Winning the army over intact is essential, because they are necessary to provide order and security during the transition. The army is needed to defeat the Colombian paramilitaries operating in Venezuelan territory. They are needed to defeat the armed criminal gangs that currently operate with impunity.
Without the army, Venezuela will descend into anarchy while the remaining infrastructure of the country is looted.
Therefore, they are desperate for the army to switch sides. Unfortunately, it may not be possible. The generals are all people that are thoroughly corrupted and the institution is completely infiltrated with Cuban spies.
We do not know how this is going to end.
Caracas is a trainweck, well duh.
Went to a recent lecture on Marx’ ideas, and the lecturer said that just because Communism has failed in every country it has been tried in to date, doesn’t mean that it won’t succeed in the next country it’s tried in, and that assuming that it will fail again is using faulty inductive logic.
On a practical level, though, the question is, how many deaths are acceptable before we can declare the next attempt to implement Communism a failure–a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, a million, ten million, twenty million, a hundred million?
I don’t think that any deaths due to trying to implement Communism are acceptable.
Venezuelan FM Jorge Arreaza is in Damascus today, the cozy ideological birthplace of chavismo (a latin-american version of Baathism), consulting with Bashar Assad. Who better to advise on the annihilation of one’s own country while surviving to tell about it?
See: Hudson Institute discussion
https://youtu.be/wGE6bNZAsWw
People who believe they’re building a perfect world do think deaths are acceptable – even large numbers of deaths. Robert Conquest, in “Reflections on a Ravaged Century,” quoted a Marxist intellectual who said that if Stalin had succeeded in implementing true communism but had killed 20 million more in the process, it would have been worth it. The problem is that people who get absorbed in Marxist ideas care only about the “Idea.” Ideologues care about Ideas more than they care about people. It’s like how I, and other gun rights advocates, think about gun rights, quite frankly. There’s no statistic or anecdote you could give me that would make me stop believing in gun rights (though I think on the statistical argument, we also win); I think civilian gun ownership is a good idea in and of itself. Well, a similar thing is going on with the Marxists. There’s no number or other type of hard evidence you could give them that would convince them to give up their dreams.
The pretentious Spanish accent got to me. I had to stop watching.
You might remember Larry Grathwohl, a police undercover agent who infiltrated the Weathermen, and his statement that he was in a meeting, attended by a couple dozen members of the Weather Underground, where the Weatherman were discussing the fact that–when they took over–there would likely be 25 million or so recalcitrant people–“die-hard capitalists”–who would resist being “re-educated” in the re-education camps they were going to set up in the Southwest U.S.–and that these 25 million people would have to be “eliminated.”
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBtANp4IKVk
Unfortunately, it may not be possible. The generals are all people that are thoroughly corrupted and the institution is completely infiltrated with Cuban spies.
We do not know how this is going to end.
People thinking about the US Army need to remember that, above O-6 (Colonel) all officers are politicians. The US Army and Navy are run right now by incompetents. At least at the General/Admiral level. This is probably true of all militaries. Obama got rid of those who were not pliable to his ideology.
After Pearl Harbor, the Navy called back Admiral King. He said, “When the going gets tough they call on the sons of bitches.” I’m not sure that is true anymore. After Major Hassan killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, General Casey said, “I hope this doesn’t affect the Army’s diversity.” The other medical officers had been afraid to report Hassan’s jihadism.
It is very ironic that Weathermen Bill Ayres switched from trying to use urban terrorism to bring about a violent Communist revolution and, instead, reinvented himself as an “educator,” and that Bill Ayre’s popular and well-regarded textbooks, model curricula, and reading lists–that are widely used in teacher’s colleges around the country–have resulted in having many of the graduates of those teacher’s colleges turning many of our K-12 schools, colleges and universities into, in effect, the Leftist “re-education camps” that the Weathermen wanted to establish.
shadow on April 4, 2019 at 9:08 am at 9:08 am said:
You have expressed a number of interesting ideas. I’ll comment on two.
1. The appeal and intractability of an idea, or ideal, touches on a recent conversation here, as to just what exactly drives someone toward or intellectually convinces them that, collectivism is the only answer to the “human condition” as they might refer to it; and, in addition, how it appears as an answer which is worth exterminating half of the human race in order to realize.
The answer of those commenting here, and who were once of the less militant and more idealistic type, was that it was based on an emotionally driven aspiration, or a vision of things imagined. This admission would be considered by true believers to be a canard, if it were dismissively leveled as a charge by a conservative or libertarian against a socialist during a debate. They would flat out deny it.
But introspective political changers of the type commenting here say that in retrospect, it is the best explanation they can come up with for what impelled them at the time. It was not syllogisms, it was not a utilitarian calculus with independently defensible moral premisses; it was what we can only call aspiration, desire, or even emotion.
2. When you say that there is no statistic that could make you stop believing in gun rights, we have to think about what “gun rights” actually represent; or maybe what it is that presents in our time and situation as gun rights.
And that question is an anthropological question having to do with the nature of man, if any; and those foundational and absolute individual or human rights which must follow in law from that nature, if any; and what means are rightful or even essential to the maintenance of those rights in a society wherein the individual is considered the real moral locus of value.
We can easily see how this works by asking what if guns had not been invented. And we see that the question was taken up by Aristotle, who remarked that in a constitutional polity [as he defined it] where government is limited, the people possessed the arms. The question of the right to self-defense and the means of it as an inalienable right of the free men and woman, existed before the invention of guns, and will continue to exist after they become practically obsolete.
Ok collectivist, we ban all guns not used for hunting, but we allow each citizen a laser beam device capable of doing much more? Does that make you happy? Obviously not.
What if government tries to reduce firearms deaths by excluding all persons categorized as black males between 12 and 50 years old because of the FBI homicide figures, and regardless of their virtues or achievements or citizenship status, from firearms possession; or sends all mentally ill persons who have ever expressed any violent thoughts, interests or imaginings to an island because of mass shootings? Good idea? If not why not? What say we just prohibit the ownership of firearms everyone: including body guards and police and politicians as well? Good idea Mr. Collectivist, or not? If not, why not?
In trying to break through and get to the heart of the difference in worldview and moral anthropologies that underlay the dispute between the RKBA advocates like myself on the one hand and the collectivists on the other, I would occasionally ask what look almost like preposterous questions, until you think it through. They are not preposterous, they are just rude and sometimes offensive means to reveal what is really at stake..
For example, dear collectivist, do you have a right to continue draw a breath (as in normal breathing)? If not, do you have a valid moral complaint which anyone else is morally bound to recognize if you are commanded to stop, or forced by majority opinion to stop? If you do have a right to draw a breath normally, is it contingent on social permission?
Do you have a right to your own blood? Do you have a right to seek water to drink without permission? Do you have a right to ignore a command to die of thirst for the amusement of others though it be couched in legal language and issued by a law making body?
Do you have a right to ignore the absurd commands of impossible laws, such as an ordinance that you jump straight up 10 feet when it is demanded by roving bands of meter-maid types or pay a fine for failure to do so?
Do you have a right to resist rape by any focused means which are necessary to use against the would be rapist?
It’s these kinds pf sometimes seemingly obvious and sometimes seemingly near absurd questions which contextualize the place wherein the right to an implement or means, meets a right to self-defense. If you have one.
And ultimately, many on the left neither believe you have a right to self-defense, nor anything else in the way of rights that amount to more than social permissions, or conventions.
Why they believe this, may say more about themselves than anyone else
Venezuela may be a train wreck…but it’s “OUR train wreck”!
https://twitter.com/ilhanmn/status/1088599057981943809?lang=en
Venezuela today is what Chile would have been in 2 or 3 more years without CIA helping Pinochet to stop socialist Allende.
See Henry Kissinger’s memoirs. See also the Church Committee. Pinochet and his confederates were their own bosses.
Today: “In Soviet Union and its satellites, Cambodia, Cuba, Central America, Venezuela, etc — Socialism wasn’t done correctly. WE will do it correctly in the USA”
Yesterday: “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
Barry Meislin on April 4, 2019 at 11:53 am at 11:53 am said:
Venezuela may be a train wreck…but it’s “OUR train wreck”!
https://twitter.com/ilhanmn/status/1088599057981943809?lang=en
* * *
Check Barry’s link to see commenters, especially Venezuelans, totally pwn Omar.
Her Tweet:
If you take out the partsian spin, the generic statements are basically true.
“A [foreign-backed] coup is not a solution to the dire issues they face.”
Cf. comments on Pinochet and Chile.
“Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region.”
This only expands on the first sentence; note the commenters’ rebuttal of the “far right opposition” characterization, and their recognition that Trump is not trying to install anybody.
“We must support [Mexico, Uruguay & the Vatican’s] efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue.”
Why should these three be the ones to dialogue, and who are they dialoging with, if not the “far right opposition” that Omar castigates? If these are the agents of “peace” then why aren’t they liable to the accusation of “installing” a winner — which would be a “coup” if anyone other than Maduro, by Omar’s reading.
ymarsakar on April 3, 2019 at 5:51 pm at 5:51 pm said:
https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/
History of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
People keeping fall for socialism because they aren’t allowed to see the truth. And they also dislike the truth.
* * *
And most of the rank anti-Semitism in this post is not the truth.
Solzhenitsyn is entitled to his opinions and observations: he paid the price.
The rest is classic anti-Jewish libel.
AesopFan: Congresscritter Omar tweet:
Wiki: Juan Guaidó
Maduro calls a founder of Popular Will/Voluntad Popular, a rightest.
Socialist International: Full Members includes Venezuela’s Voluntad Popular (Popular Will)- the party that Juan Guaidó helped found.
Like Maduro, Congresscritter Omar considers Juan Guaidó ,a founder of Voluntad Popular/Popular Will, a party that is a full member of Socialist International, to belong to the far right. That says a lot more about Congresscritter Omar lining up with the Maduro narrative than it does about Juan Guaidó being on the right.
@Roy Nathanson
We do know how this will end. It will end in the normal fashion of such declines – very ugly.
Past time to deal with Cuba very harshly.