Here's the second Trump thread I was going to start, although as can be seen it's not all about Trump.
Two questions, really: Is Maduro, the successor to Chavez and current president, or is Guaido, leader of the National Assembly who has declared himself president, the right person to try and repair Venezuela in the wake of its growing economic crisis?
Secondly, assuming that Guaido is your answer to my first question, is Trump right to back him so heavily at such an early stage? He's hinted that military action, while far from a plan, is not "off the table", alongside heavy sanctions and perhaps other action.
I also said that this was going to be a pro-Trump thread, and that tells you what I think the answers to the above are. Perhaps Trump is suggesting too much too soon, but from what I've heard and seen about this Maduro ain't the man to back, and it seems entirely sensible to try and support his opposite number by any means possible to help resolve the situation. Ultimately the resolution has to come from within Venezuela itself, but Trump seems in my view to have picked the right side.
I thought this might be coming Jim ;-) Plainly Maduro is the reason for the dire state of Venezuela today and unusually in a situation like this there is an elected leader (Guaido) already heading a legitimate assembly waiting in the wings. So unquestionably Trump has picked the “right” side. As indeed has most of the rest of the world, with the exception...
Plainly Maduro is the reason for the dire state of Venezuela today and unusually in a situation like this there is an elected leader (Guaido) already heading a legitimate assembly waiting in the wings.
So unquestionably Trump has picked the “right” side. As indeed has most of the rest of the world, with the exception of Russia, China, Turkey and Bolivia. The Russians have propped up Maduro up with billions of dollars of loans as have the Chinese and they can see it going down the Swanee.
Maduro has expelled all US diplomats but the Americans are refusing to leave as they don’t recognise his regime any more. So there’s a standoff they might need military back up.
He could go through the motions of asking the Russians and Chinese to try to persuade Maduro to stand down - he could retire to the same villains’ suburb of Moscow that Yanukovich ended up in - but not sure I can see that working.
But yes, “Go Donald” (no not in that sense - not yet anyway :-) )
mushroom: quite, I'm sure it would have been equally legitimate for me to tie this into a general evaluation of Corbynist Labour's view of how to run a country, but I felt it better to aim for the Trump angle.
Still, I think Corbyn's got it wrong: even if you allow that he was right about Venezuela under Chavez -- and certainly there are plenty of reasons to give Chavez's leadership credit for making significant improvements -- it seems to have broken down since.
Chavez was perhaps unlucky. sitting as it is on one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, it was not unreasonable to have underpinned venezuela's reforms with it, only to have the market start to fall over. a sober lesson for the scots, who were planning to base their economy on "oor oil".....
Trump and America aren't alone in supporting Guaido, as various European countries including the UK joined calls for Maduro to, if not go, then to at least hold fresh, free and fair, elections.
Where next, though? Maduro is bound to pay no attention. Will be interesting, in a morbid sense, to see this one play out.
Bound to play a role -- but, then again, America could get their hands on the oil just as easily, if not more so, by backing Maduro given that he has the army's support for the moment.
There's a long list of Chavez supporters: left wing icons like Chomsky over there and feebler luminaries like Livingstone and Corbyn over here.
And his fans (and apologists) aren't going away any time soon, I see.
That an oil rich country (and original member of OPEC) is now an economic basket case is down to bad luck - collapse in the oil price - rather than economic policy set by Chavez andWell, for som, not for others.
"Why, I've imagined at least six impossible things before breakfast".
I still have some research to do about Chavez-era Venezuela. It does seem that his regime did lead to significant improvements compared to what came before. What's undeniable though is that those improvements have halted or even reversed under Maduro, and Maduro has shown little or no respect for or interest in taking responsibility for those problem, blaming everybody else and responding violently to protest. He has to go. He's become Venezuela's answer to Assad, that much is clear.
//;I still have some research to do about Chavez-era Venezuela. It does seem that his regime did lead to //
Read Chomsky on Venezuela. He'll tell you all you need to know about the Chavez reforms and the conspiracy by "The Masters of the Universe" (i.e. the country surprisingly chooses to live in) to subvert them.
Read Chomsky on linguistics but on previous little else would be my advice lol
Anyway a major fault of the Chavez era was failure to diversify the economy. So when oil prices were high he was able to use the revenue for social reform but when they fell it caused serious trouble. And after his untimely death Maduro’s policies have exacerbated that allied to huge corruption.
I haven’t read up on this for a while, but I know that for a long time while Chavez was delivering high profile speeches denouncing the evils of imperialist America, his country was quietly accepting bailouts of cash from that very source.
// Read Chomsky on linguistics but on previous little else would be my advice lol //
as generativde grammar - yes I did a double take on that one
he majored in Maths
actually he supplied ( generative grammar ) a way of producing ( or generating ) a countably infinite number of sentences -
but since all the linguists who "understood" his ideas didnt have Maff O level he has had to peddle softly on that one
wouldja have Lynn Truss in No 11 ? east shoots and leaves westminster or something ....
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Venezuela Crisis: Trump Backs "opposition" To Maduro
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