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Currently a US-supported coup ongoing in Venezuela?

Thoreau72:

Democracy is a very fragile thing, especially in countries which do not have the solid institutions and the mind-set to safeguard their democracy. The Venezuelan Constitution provides a recall election option allowing the people to petition he TSJ (Supreme Court) to dissolve the Presidency of a sitting president and to have a recall election within thirty consecutive days of the dissolution in which the removed incumbent can run. Chavez was recalled and had the guts to run and won. President Maduro should follow his mentor's example and move to defend his presidency by peaceful democratic means rather than by force of arms. A simultaneous national election for the a National Assembly should also happen in order to give moderate Venezuelans a chance to elect a National Assembly which will work to reform Venezuela peacefully. The likely outcome would be an end to the Maduro Regime but the maintenance of Chavismo in Venezuela and a purge of the violent elements in the National Assembly. That would make room for political, rather than military, solutions mandated by the Venezuelan people themselves. That's a good thing.

Venezuela is on the verge of civil war and its population is becoming increasingly radicalised and polarised. This polarisation has gone past political divisions to deep and irrational factional hatreds. The Maduro Regime has taken the very real threat of outside military intervention as an opportunity to arm large numbers (approx. 2 million) paramilitary Colectivos to enforce his rule. The opposition is calling for and receiving arms for military mutineers and for opposition paramilitaries to fight the regime. Both sides are gearing-up for a fight and that will quickly escalate into a bloody and protracted civil war which will almost certainly kill democracy in Venezuela for a long time to come. There are many Venezuelans on the left, on the right and in the centre who are willing to negotiate with each other to fix the mess caused by the Maduro Regime and outside state intervention and to make those fixes peacefully and constitutionally. That is a much better option than standing on some abstract principle and plunging the State of Venezuela into a fratricidal civil war where power will be kept or transferred by force of arms.

War is the shameful option in this crisis and moderation is the one grace which can avoid war and save democracy in Venezuela.

I have constantly mentioned the sanctions, restraint of trade and unconventional warfare being waged against Venezuela since 1998. So you are way off base there.

I have never harassed or interfered with legitimate aid being brought to Venezuela and have sharply criticised the seizure of Venezuelan state assets which could be used to buy such aid by the Venezuelan state itself. I have written in support of the peaceful preventative occupation of the Washington DC Venezuelan Embassy by peace activists seeking to block the entry of the pretender Guaido's appointees. You should be more careful in throwing around baseless accusations.

You can add my name to any list you want but I vehemently oppose US militarism and the wreckless actions of President Trump, Vice President Pence, Sect. of State Pompeo, Nat. Sec. advisor Bolton, Special Envoy Abrams, intusive meddler Rubio and maniacal mercenary Erik Prince for their positions, policies and misdeeds regarding Venezuela.

You really ought to read my many posts on Venezuela before declaring me to be something I am not.

No cheers for you.
Evilroddy.

Apologies for mis-categorizing you. Your last several sentences redeem you, but in contrast your first 2 paragraphs are really nothing but western media talking points and propaganda, suggesting you buy into the official line somehow.

Have you any thoughts that I've missed regarding the legitimacy of the elections that put Maduro in for his second or third term?

Any thoughts on the legitimacy of Guaido's claim to being Jefe?
 
The question in my mind is whether the proposed alternative is better.

The free market is far superior to crony capitalism. The sooner S. America learns the better.
 
They sure did. Buncha America-hating mother****ers. Just rewards.

Well, you are certainlygoing all out to swell the ranks of the American haters. I think you must be a Russian - anyway I hope you fail in your dastardly endeavour.
 
Thoreau72:

Apologies for mis-categorizing you. Your last several sentences redeem you, but in contrast your first 2 paragraphs are really nothing but western media talking points and propaganda, suggesting you buy into the official line somehow.

Well I don't think I'm in need of wholesale redemption but maybe some periodic tuning-up. No apologies necessary as you were speaking your mind. Some more research and caution perhaps but apologies are unnecessary. The first and second paragraphs are not Western propaganda or inspired by same at all. They are Real Politik. Maduro can stand on principle but then Venezuela will fall into civil war. Or Maduro can take a chance to save his country by perhaps sacrificing his regime's hold on power through consenting to a recall election if and only if the National Assembly agrees to hold simultaneous elections for the MNAs..

Have you any thoughts that I've missed regarding the legitimacy of the elections that put Maduro in for his second or third term?

The election of 2013 was legit and fully endorsed by international monitoring bodies. The 2018 election was more complicated. The opposition boycotted the election and called it illegitimate from the get go. The opposition was wrong on this ground because they themselves were the "delegitimising agents" through their own collective choice to not participate and so can not lay the blame on the Maduro Regime in this instance. So from the boycott angle the 2018 election was legit.

The problem was in the Electoral Council of Deputies which oversaw the elections. Between 2013 and 2018 Maduro's regime packed the council with sympathetic or outright partisan deputies and thus created an institutional preferential bias favouring his regime and the Chavistas. This is not really different from American Tweedism and electoral engineering by gerrymandering but it does tarnish the election results to a degree.

Likewise Maduro has stacked the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (The Supreme Court) with pro-Maduro judges and thus has politicised the STJ and has effectively blocked all recall elections which need STJ approval to go forward. This is a serious threat to democracy in Venezuela.

Although it has nothing to do with electoral legitimacy, it is clear that a majority of Venezuelans no longer have any faith in the Maduro Regime. Whether fairly elected or not, it has through corruption, cronyism, mismanagement and by arming the paramilitary Colectivos delegitimised itself and through its stacked STJ has refused to act on a legitimate recall election petition which met all the constitutional requirements to trigger such an election. So the question of legitimacy goes beyond the elections of 2013 and 2018 and to the Maduro Regime's behaviour while in office. The Regime has delegitimised itself.

Any thoughts on the legitimacy of Guaido's claim to being Jefe?

Juan Guaido is a pretender and puppet of Leopoldo Lopez and other extreme right-wing leaders who collectively control only about 45-50% of the seats in the National Assembly. The Lopez-Guaido party Popular Will only controls about 14% of the seats. Guaido, even as president of the National Assembly, is no more legitimate than any pretender is or ever was. He is as legitimate as Nancy Pelosi would have been if she had stood in public and declared herself the interim president of the United States by swearing herself in because Hilary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in the Presidential elections of 2016. It wouldn't fly for an instant in America and it doesn't fly in Venezuela. Juan Guaido has no legitimacy as a self-declared president of Venezuela as even Envoy Eliott Abrams bumblingly admited in a press conference about six-weeks ago IIRC.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
The free market is far superior to crony capitalism. The sooner S. America learns the better.
I'm not sure we've learned it here in the USA yet.

Although, to be precise, the market is never free, although it can be free of cronyism.
 
Although it has nothing to do with electoral legitimacy, it is clear that a majority of Venezuelans no longer have any faith in the Maduro Regime. Whether fairly elected or not, it has through corruption, cronyism, mismanagement and by arming the paramilitary Colectivos delegitimised itself and through its stacked STJ has refused to act on a legitimate recall election petition which met all the constitutional requirements to trigger such an election. (...) The Regime has delegitimised itself.
That's the important part. And given how the situation has been dire for the people, and how this country is sinking into the deepest hole one can imagine, Maduro needs to go. I don't care if Guaido is legit or not. What I care for, is that Maduro needs to go. Once this corrupt and dictatorial regime is out, then the Venezuelans can sort it out, have new elections, vote Guaido out, whatever. But Maduro? No. His regime needs to be terminated, hopefully by peaceful means, but if getting it done peacefully is not possible, then by any means. I just met a Venezuelan woman, a refugee that successfully obtained her legal status in the US, at the Orlando International Airport. While I waited for my baggage, we chatted at length about the situation in her country (I speak rather decent Spanish). She shares my conclusions above. Sure, it's just one opinion, and by someone who was actively opposing the Maduro regime (which is why she had to flee to the US), so bias is not excluded, but she sounded very convincing, and regardless of her opinion, that's what I already thought, anyway. (By the way, very attractive woman...)
 
The free market is far superior to crony capitalism. The sooner S. America learns the better.

So level the place. That'll learn 'em.
 
That's the important part. And given how the situation has been dire for the people, and how this country is sinking into the deepest hole one can imagine, Maduro needs to go. I don't care if Guaido is legit or not. What I care for, is that Maduro needs to go. Once this corrupt and dictatorial regime is out, then the Venezuelans can sort it out, have new elections, vote Guaido out, whatever. But Maduro? No. His regime needs to be terminated, hopefully by peaceful means, but if getting it done peacefully is not possible, then by any means. I just met a Venezuelan woman, a refugee that successfully obtained her legal status in the US, at the Orlando International Airport. While I waited for my baggage, we chatted at length about the situation in her country (I speak rather decent Spanish). She shares my conclusions above. Sure, it's just one opinion, and by someone who was actively opposing the Maduro regime (which is why she had to flee to the US), so bias is not excluded, but she sounded very convincing, and regardless of her opinion, that's what I already thought, anyway. (By the way, very attractive woman...)

GreatNews2Night:

Interesting Airport anecdote. As to "the important part", well you have focused on what you view as important, and that's fine by me. But should Maduro bend and allow a recall reelection as he should by Venezuelan constitutional law, then he has every right to rerun in those new elections and should he win, then the opposition and its foreign backers should accept the will of the Venezuelan people and butt out. I don't think such a victory is very likely, given Mr. Maduro's unpopularity in Venezuela but sometimes strange things happen in democracies. Look to America in 2016 for strange and unexpected results.

A far more likely outcome would be another Chavista or former Chavista/socialist would be elected and Chavismo or a flavour of Chavismo would continue to dominate Venezuelan politics and economics for years to come. That is why the opposition has turned its back on the constitution and seeks to seize power rather than win it by election. They know that their neo-liberal and defacto right-wing agenda will never fly with the majority of Venezuelan voters and so the opposition wants to tear down the Venezuelan state and rebuild it in a way that will allow them to eliminate Chavismo as an electoral and political option. However there are 6-9 millions of hard-core Chavistas in Venezuela and they will not go quietly into political oblivion. Thanks to President Maduro's regime they are now armed to the teeth. Therefore there will be a period of very illiberal and undemocratic history following any opposition win and during that time there will be horrendous human rights abuses as the opposition forcefully tries to reprogramme, dissuade, disappear or liquidate (kill) hard-core Chavistas. Such treatment or even the threat of such treatment will very likely trigger a Venezuelan guerrilla civil war and a ruthless foreign-backed COIN campaign to suppress the other side, like those which occurred in Brazil in the 1960s, El Salvador in the 1980's or in Colombia in the early 2000's. The price for accelerated political reengineering of the Venezuelan body-politic will be crimes against humanity.

That is why both the Maduro Regime and the radical opposition must both put themselves up for reelection simultaneously and if the democratic results require it, they must step aside for more moderate and more compromising elements in Venezuela to make a slow transformation to a more centrist style of governance, rather than a precipitous and likely violent revolution by force of arms to an opposite political pole. Alas, that is not what US foreign policy demands as it is driven by strong neo-liberal ideology (AKA greed) and a desire to dominate Venezuelan oil reserves as it moves away from Saudi Arabian dependency. So Venezuela is fu..., ahem, screwed.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
The free market is far superior to crony capitalism. The sooner S. America learns the better.

ecofarm:

That lesson must be learned by North America and Europe too, where crony-capitalism and corporatism are rampant. In other words, "Physician, heal thyself.".

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
Better than starving? I would hope so.

If any Venezuelans are starving, it is caused by USA economic warfare. a/k/a sanctions, embargoes, threats, theft of Venezuelan's monies and assetts. Killin' poor people just comes natural to the USA gubmnt, don't ya' know?
/
 
GreatNews2Night:

Interesting Airport anecdote. As to "the important part", well you have focused on what you view as important, and that's fine by me. But should Maduro bend and allow a recall reelection as he should by Venezuelan constitutional law, then he has every right to rerun in those new elections and should he win, then the opposition and its foreign backers should accept the will of the Venezuelan people and butt out. I don't think such a victory is very likely, given Mr. Maduro's unpopularity in Venezuela but sometimes strange things happen in democracies. Look to America in 2016 for strange and unexpected results.

A far more likely outcome would be another Chavista or former Chavista/socialist would be elected and Chavismo or a flavour of Chavismo would continue to dominate Venezuelan politics and economics for years to come. That is why the opposition has turned its back on the constitution and seeks to seize power rather than win it by election. They know that their neo-liberal and defacto right-wing agenda will never fly with the majority of Venezuelan voters and so the opposition wants to tear down the Venezuelan state and rebuild it in a way that will allow them to eliminate Chavismo as an electoral and political option. However there are 6-9 millions of hard-core Chavistas in Venezuela and they will not go quietly into political oblivion. Thanks to President Maduro's regime they are now armed to the teeth. Therefore there will be a period of very illiberal and undemocratic history following any opposition win and during that time there will be horrendous human rights abuses as the opposition forcefully tries to reprogramme, dissuade, disappear or liquidate (kill) hard-core Chavistas. Such treatment or even the threat of such treatment will very likely trigger a Venezuelan guerrilla civil war and a ruthless foreign-backed COIN campaign to suppress the other side, like those which occurred in Brazil in the 1960s, El Salvador in the 1980's or in Colombia in the early 2000's. The price for accelerated political reengineering of the Venezuelan body-politic will be crimes against humanity.

That is why both the Maduro Regime and the radical opposition must both put themselves up for reelection simultaneously and if the democratic results require it, they must step aside for more moderate and more compromising elements in Venezuela to make a slow transformation to a more centrist style of governance, rather than a precipitous and likely violent revolution by force of arms to an opposite political pole. Alas, that is not what US foreign policy demands as it is driven by strong neo-liberal ideology (AKA greed) and a desire to dominate Venezuelan oil reserves as it moves away from Saudi Arabian dependency. So Venezuela is fu..., ahem, screwed.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Well, the reasonable solution you're proposing will never happen. I think the likely outcome is civil war. So, yes, Venezuela is fu..., ahem, screwed. But the truth is, it's been screwed for a long time, already. This is the continuation of it.
 
Thoreau72:



Well I don't think I'm in need of wholesale redemption but maybe some periodic tuning-up. No apologies necessary as you were speaking your mind. Some more research and caution perhaps but apologies are unnecessary. The first and second paragraphs are not Western propaganda or inspired by same at all. They are Real Politik. Maduro can stand on principle but then Venezuela will fall into civil war. Or Maduro can take a chance to save his country by perhaps sacrificing his regime's hold on power through consenting to a recall election if and only if the National Assembly agrees to hold simultaneous elections for the MNAs..



The election of 2013 was legit and fully endorsed by international monitoring bodies. The 2018 election was more complicated. The opposition boycotted the election and called it illegitimate from the get go. The opposition was wrong on this ground because they themselves were the "delegitimising agents" through their own collective choice to not participate and so can not lay the blame on the Maduro Regime in this instance. So from the boycott angle the 2018 election was legit.

The problem was in the Electoral Council of Deputies which oversaw the elections. Between 2013 and 2018 Maduro's regime packed the council with sympathetic or outright partisan deputies and thus created an institutional preferential bias favouring his regime and the Chavistas. This is not really different from American Tweedism and electoral engineering by gerrymandering but it does tarnish the election results to a degree.

Likewise Maduro has stacked the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (The Supreme Court) with pro-Maduro judges and thus has politicised the STJ and has effectively blocked all recall elections which need STJ approval to go forward. This is a serious threat to democracy in Venezuela.

Although it has nothing to do with electoral legitimacy, it is clear that a majority of Venezuelans no longer have any faith in the Maduro Regime. Whether fairly elected or not, it has through corruption, cronyism, mismanagement and by arming the paramilitary Colectivos delegitimised itself and through its stacked STJ has refused to act on a legitimate recall election petition which met all the constitutional requirements to trigger such an election. So the question of legitimacy goes beyond the elections of 2013 and 2018 and to the Maduro Regime's behaviour while in office. The Regime has delegitimised itself.



Juan Guaido is a pretender and puppet of Leopoldo Lopez and other extreme right-wing leaders who collectively control only about 45-50% of the seats in the National Assembly. The Lopez-Guaido party Popular Will only controls about 14% of the seats. Guaido, even as president of the National Assembly, is no more legitimate than any pretender is or ever was. He is as legitimate as Nancy Pelosi would have been if she had stood in public and declared herself the interim president of the United States by swearing herself in because Hilary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in the Presidential elections of 2016. It wouldn't fly for an instant in America and it doesn't fly in Venezuela. Juan Guaido has no legitimacy as a self-declared president of Venezuela as even Envoy Eliott Abrams bumblingly admited in a press conference about six-weeks ago IIRC.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Good, we're back on the same page. This post restores my respect for your posts here.

That said, your first two paragraphs may not be western propaganda talking points IN YOUR VIEW, but in matters of substance they are pretty much identical to the statements of Pence, Pompeo, Bolton and Rubio over these last several months.

Is it really difficult to imagine any politician in any country "stacking" courts or legislatures in his (their) favor? I think not.

As this has been going on for so many months now, it appears the claim that most Venezuelans reject Maduro is a specious claim, another western propaganda point.

What evidence is there to support it? Because Marco Rubio says so does not count for me.
 
If any Venezuelans are starving, it is caused by USA economic warfare. a/k/a sanctions, embargoes, threats, theft of Venezuelan's monies and assetts. Killin' poor people just comes natural to the USA gubmnt, don't ya' know?
/

Incorrect on so many levels.

Why don't you at least try telling the truth....
 
Incorrect on so many levels.

Why don't you at least try telling the truth....

Correct on so many levels. The truth really hurts you, doesn't it! Swallow the turd.
/
 
Because I don't know and saw that somewhere, I'm starting a thread on it.


Something something for the oil

Putin is keeping Maduro in power and we are doing nothing to stop him. Our Manchurian Candidate did not even ask him to stop meddling in our hemisphere.
 
And you still lie about the origins of the starvation....

Get your head out of Sputniks ass some time.

It is a planned policy of the USA to starve the Venezuelan populace until they rebel. Standard Operating Procedure for the USA. In Syria. In Iraq. In Libya. All over the World. You're the cheerleader for this behaviour and should be ashamed of yourself.
/
 
It is a planned policy of the USA to starve the Venezuelan populace until they rebel. Standard Operating Procedure for the USA. In Syria. In Iraq. In Libya. All over the World. You're the cheerleader for this behaviour and should be ashamed of yourself.
/

The riots that led to the sanctions were due in part to the government's inability to feed the Venezuelan people...

At least that is what reality-based people know.

Please check RT.COM for your next lie.
 
The riots that led to the sanctions were due in part to the government's inability to feed the Venezuelan people...

At least that is what reality-based people know.

Please check RT.COM for your next lie.

You wouldn't recognize reality if it was a bulldog biting your ass. You are the local propaganda troll.
/
 
Well, you are certainlygoing all out to swell the ranks of the American haters.

Oh noes! I'm gonna cry so much!

How stupid.
 
The riots that led to the sanctions were due in part to the government's inability to feed the Venezuelan people...

At least that is what reality-based people know.

Please check RT.COM for your next lie.

As designed to occur based on US sanctions and economic policy

Dave Fagan is correct, it is standard operating procedure by the US to do that when desiring regime change.

The US did pretty much the same thing in Chile when Allende was elected. Nixon was quoted to say "make their economy scream". The documents showing the US involvement and intent have been declassified regarding US involvement in Chile. The actions in Venezuela follow a very similar pattern of action

I suggest reading the Pinochet Files for information regarding what the US did in Chile and after doing so, one can easily see the same patterns in Venezuela
 
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