Anthon said:
Again, I will not pretend I know the situation in Venezuela, I just see a lot of very familiar red flags of the situations I'm well aware of, so I'm very sceptical.
I'm just saying the mainstream media lost all its credibility in the past decade, at least for me.
the press has long had their own agendas,,, these days there is so much news you have to edit out the chaff from the wheat.
By 'they' I mean all the mainstream media.
There is absolutely no alternative point of view of foreign matters what so ever.
seriously?
Nobody would even go as far as translating what the foreign leaders have to say. You always get some reporter that says what you need to hear, only 1 interpretation, only 1 part of the story. All supposedly independent media outlets repeat the same thing.
And what you need to hear, is that whoever is inconvenient for the big business is bad and everybody who is convenient is good. The people are not a part of equation here.
Nothing personal, just business.
I have shared this before but I used to watch a cable news show where they rebroadcast news casts from middle east governments. Sometimes translating these into english, and there is a notable difference between what world leaders say for consumption in their home markets and international speeches (made in english for western consumption).
As a kid in the 50s-60s I listened to shortwave radio program in english from radio moscow and radio havana cuba... I am familiar with the concept of propaganda.
I don't see how Russian and Chinese investments in Venezuela are against the rules. Open market? I guess not.
It is all about buying influence and propping up an anti-american regime. China has already blinked and started negotiating with the new government over massive ($Bs) debt. Russia is taking another tact trying to gain leases on major oil assets. The Cuban regime has too much to lose to pull back now.
Yes, I do believe USA acts in the interests of its economy and defends itself from Russian and Chinese competition, but I don't believe it cares about the people.
I think we know what you believe.
Putin also nationalised the oil/gas industry - but it seemed to work in favour of the people. It's when it was it private hands, the most of the profits ended up in foreign offshore accounts.
still enriches Putin's oligarch friends... How much of that oil money was being laundered in Cyprus? As long as oil prices remain high, Putin can keep his economy stable.. but he is already working with the opec cartel to try to keep oil prices high, as we keep finding more.
Putin might be not democratic, but this is Russia. Russians in general prefer seeing 1 strong person in charge that they are familiar with and that can get the things done. Russia is a volatile country, and change of power often led to disastrous results. Even if the ''dictator'' steps down peacefully, the vacuum of power will most likely lead to a civil war. There are plenty of examples of that happening in Russian history.
you mean like 1917... only a century ago.
Not that I believe that there is such thing as democracy, anywhere in the world.
The US is a representative republic... lynch mobs are simple democracies.
You are talking about forecasts of inflation. But are you aware that economic forecasts are a 'self fulfilling prophecy'?
that was IMF a respected financial source.
No I am not aware that economic forecasts are self fulfilling prophecies..
if they were China would be doing better and so would we. We have economic forecasts both higher and lower than reality from the different political teams. I suspect their forecasts are wishful thinking.
If you say the certain currency will become worthless soon, the people holding it will want to get rid of it as soon as possible, which in turn influences supply/demand of the currency, and makes is lose its value.
hyper inflation is well understood phenomenon, played out multiple times in history. It usually ends up with a government change.
If a big agency gives a bad rating to some country, it will struggle attracting investors or getting loans at normal rates. And visa versa. A country with good rating will have investments pouring in.
capital is fungible and pursues stable and safe return anywhere in the world... When Maduro misses a few more bond payments his ability to borrow gets even worse. Russia is already trying to gain control of Venezuela's Citgo assets in the US, to collateralize debt obligations but that is not going to happen.
An active media campaign against a certain country will have a big impact on the economy.
I'm not saying it's responsible for all the problems, but it certainly makes everything even worse.
I believe you overestimate the power of the media, I think they do too... 8)
About the aid being refused:
First of all, it's very cynical to offer couple of millions worth of aid, after you have just frozen billions of assets of Venezuela in foreign banks.
Apples and oranges. Maduro is using oil money to secure his military support to oppose the will of his own citizens, who are starving and in need of better medical supplies/attention. Cuban doctors can't help if there is no medicine/bandages.
Secondly, we don't know what the conditions are. It's never that simple, there is always a fine print.
For example, the infamous 'Bush legs': during the dissolution of USSR, USA flooded the USSR markets with cheap chicken meat as humanitarian aid, which killed already struggling poultry industry. The prices went up very fast, but the competition was completely annihilated. As a result, the USA had about 75% import quota of chicken meat to Russia up to 2009. We are talking billions in profit for the USA meat industry, jobs etc - and less for the Russian economy.
As of 2015, all the Russian chicken meat demand has been covered by the domestic production. Putin banned entire USA import of chicken meat as response to sanctions. Of course this is not something a democratic leader would do.
:
I'm not saying humanitarian aid is always bad, but it does get abused a lot, and the countries that try to make a stand against it are often accused of being dictatorships not caring for the people.
Of course every morally questionable act will be sold as a good deed.
Humanitarian aid when the population is leaving in droves because of intolerable living conditions seems unquestionably a good deed.
Even if you know Venezuelans who take pro-USA point of view, it doesn't mean much.
During the 2014 Ukrainian coup d'etat, after refusing to sign EU-association (which later turned out to be not in favour of Ukrainian economy) pretty much every Ukrainian media outlet was trashing Yanukovich.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were cheering for it, and later regretted it.
5 years later it's safe to say that it was all a huge disaster, even though at the time it looked like it couldn't be worse and that the new pro-EU candidate would finally bring happiness to the people.
Bottom line: I just don't trust media, the tactics of revolutions seems way to familiar to me. I'm experiencing a lot of deja vu's when I hear about Venezuela.
you seem to be arguing a different, or multiple different issues.
The definition of insanity, is, doing the exact same f**king thing over and over again, expecting sh*t to change. That. Is. Crazy.
I guess the time will tell, if removing Maduro will make Venezuela better, then by all means.
I just doubt it, more likely there will be a civil war with foreign interventions to protect their respective interests.
Indeed time will tell... The US has to be careful to not overstep its authority. The opposition leader called for external military intervention but everybody ignored him as that would play into your scenario that outsiders are trying to remove Maduro to take over oil assets. The democratic assembly unseated him officially but he has ignored them so far. We need to allow the democratic process to run its course, they have already declared Maduro no longer in charge, and many countries besides the US recognize the new government. The much shorter list is the countries who still support Maduro and that reads like the USA haters club (Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, etc).
They need to persuade the generals to flip allegiances, many of whom are richly rewarded by Maduro. The sanctions effort is to cut off this revenue buying his top military support. A journalist was recently released who was imprisoned because he refused to give up his sources when he investigated and reported the different sentiment of the regular security forces who are not as well paid as the generals so lack their support for Maduro.
JR
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