6 ms·

As a US citizen, whatever happens, I really hope America doesn't get involved in arming the protesters. Voice support for them but do not get involved in any ma

As a US citizen, whatever happens, I really hope America doesn't get involved in arming the protesters. Voice support for them but do not get involved in any material way. We don't need another Syria on our hands, where two sides of a civil was were aided and armed by great powers who didn't care enough to significantly involve themselves in the conflict but cared just enough in principle to prolong it, destroying the nation in the process. I recognize that Venezuela is far from being Syria, but at the end of the day, prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gtirloni 9y ago
For comparison, Venezuela had a 57.15 murder rate in 2015 (per 100k habitants) while pre-war Syria had 2.23 in 2010. My point being that many countries in LatAm live in a disguised civil war state and it's just "normal" (far from it, actually).
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Wow. How much of that is due to drug cartels and gang violence though?
  - sseveran 9y ago
    A lot. However drug cartels often also fill in as a form of local government in the areas they control. Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      I wonder how the graph would look if you included police violence? If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison. I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ provides the numbers for the US (it's up to 714 this year - 23 more than last year by this date). Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.
      - MichaelGG 9y ago
        In 2014, estimated murders in US is about 14,249. Estimated people killed by police is 1111 according to one site. So a 7-8% increase. Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
      - meri_dian 9y ago
        Police killings are hardly equivalent to gang and cartel killings. Gangs murder people out of cold blood. The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.
        tyingq 9y ago
        That's generally true, but there are places where the police and cartels are intermingled.
        meri_dian 9y ago
        Yes, I was writing about the US specifically
    - distances 9y ago
      > Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles. I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        Some but I'm guessing it is minimal. The countries from Mexico to the south have had unstable regimes and violence for a long time (probably because the Spanish institutions were exploitative and exacerbated differences between the landholders/other and Europeans/natives). There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Brazil is also a huge producer of guns. Given Venezuela's location at the edge of Central and South America, its hard to say where they would get most of their guns from.
      - justadeveloper2 9y ago
        People have been killing each other long before guns were invented, so I doubt very much it has any real effect. The "uncontrolled US weapons market?" Give me a break! The biggest seller of weapons to those countries is the US Government itself!
        distances 9y ago
        The scale of potential violence with guns vs. without guns should be obvious, so not commenting on that. As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right? To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets". [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/in-mexico-tens-of-thousands-of-illegal-guns-come-from-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins
  - mikaeluu 9y ago
    Imagine the amount of suffering these countries could be spare their people if they just legalized drugs of any kind (it's not like it not freely available anyway), and just swept the cartles income from under them.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      It's too late for that. The cartels are up and running in various industries like extortion and sex trafficking. The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      The drugs are mostly for export. Legalising them would run an increased risk of US military intervention.
    - neves 9y ago
      Nothing would change much. The countries would still be exploited by small a oligarchy. They would still have one of the worst wealth distribution in the world. And they would still have a ultra violent police that routinely kills a lot of poor, black and indigenous people.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Infographic showing per capita murder rates for that region, by country: http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1-HOMICIDE-RATES-MAP.jpg http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1... Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.
- elcapitan 9y ago
  Syria being a dictatorship that makes people 'disappear' without official statistics, though.
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    Are you implying that the Salafist-Jihadist rebels in Syria don't do the exact same? Because they make people "disappear" too, in addition to brutally and savagely executing people in public (decapitation, mutilation, etc). And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion. There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      No, he's not implying that. He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government. CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.
      - elcapitan 9y ago
        Exactly. Thanks.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- simonsarris 9y ago
  Constant low grade civil war and dictators has been the offhand history of south america for a very long time, sadly. Definitely predates drug cartels and US influence. See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=183 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&... I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.
rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
Venezuela has one of the biggest petroleum reserves on the planet, and is responsible for 10% of America's oil imports. That is a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of oil. Only a geopolitical fool would allow a crisis/opportunity like this slip by without at least claiming a little side action. Even Goldman Sachs has skin in the game.
- empath75 9y ago
  Which should make you question all of the American news on what's happening there.
  - varjag 9y ago
    Should it also question all German, British, Australian and so on news on what's happening there? (Oh right they are all the U.S. sockpuppets of course)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - qubex 9y ago
    Not particularly, no. One should merely be conscentintious regarding the potential for bias in all accounts of everything, but not to the point of self-confirming paranoid delusion. Being critical, even skeptical, should not depend on one's perception of who stands to gain or lose from something (in no limited part because even informed observers can end up being very wrong about who eventually profits from an undeniably complex sequence of events).
- sasper 9y ago
  95% of export income in Venezuela is from oil. It's the lifeblood of the country.
  - FRex 9y ago
    And somehow it's still a shit country, apparently. Look at how Saudi, Emirati, Bruneian and Qatari live off of their smaller oil reserves. Something is clearly up with Venezuela's governance if they can have that much oil and do that badly.
empath75 9y ago
And if you don't want a new wave of refugees coming to the us, you shouldn't be backing a civil war, either.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  If its okay for europe its okay for america.
  - geofft 9y ago
    I realize you're making a snarky political point, but, "Refugees are bad for a country's culture but we should still let them in if they exist" is a perfectly consistent position. It's trading off prevention of something unwanted but not an evil (cultural dilution) in order to prevent an actual evil (death of the refugees). "We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one. (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)
    - nolepointer 9y ago
      Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.) And are instrumental in making it happen again.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos. That really depends on what timescale you care about and who's side you're on. Would Korea be better off if the US never got involved? What about if the Chinese never stepped in? What if the US had tried harder to prop up the Shah in Iran? What if the US hadn't backed Saddam in the 80s? What if the US had never backed the Mujaheddin against the soviets? Backing them caused a lot of bad stuff but bleeding the USSR to death may have averted continuing the cold war and another Vietnam somewhere else in the world decades later. Time only goes one way. You never get do-overs. You just get to make the best decision you can for the current situation. I'm also in the camp of "we're not world police"
tomjen3 9y ago
The current government caused the caos. As long as they are in power, it will continue.
Entangled 9y ago
I hope a burglar breaks into your house and starts raping your daughters, cutting the throat of your sons, blows your head with a 9mm, then when a neighbor calls 911 I'll say "As a community member I hope they don't send the Swat team, he should solve his own internal problems peacefully".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cr1895 9y ago
  >I hope a burglar breaks into your house and starts raping your daughters, cutting the throat of your sons, blows your head with a 9mm Did you read what you typed after you typed it!? Shameful, much less relevant.
omurphy27 9y ago
America barely armed any Syrian rebels or protestors. Much of the DC establishment and military community wanted to arm them, but Obama was against it and therefore any real military aid was severely limited: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 The conflict in Syria was started and escalated by Assad. It was prolonged by a number of actors, including Russia and Iran supporting Assad, and the gulf states / Turkey etc., supporting the other side. America is a common boogeyman for whenever something goes wrong in the world (Venezuela's Maduro never misses an opportunity to blame the US for his own regime's multitude of failures and crimes).
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  If the press reported it correctly, weapons stolen from Iraq's army were a big enabling factor for the ISIS fast growth. They would invade a new region and get for free a big enough supply for invading the next place. Venezuela, by its turn, is mostly Brazil and Argentina's fault. The US gave some financing to the current government, but it's a rounding error overall. The Brazilian government even helped organizing their dictatorship at the time it was trying to do the same here.
  - neves 9y ago
    This is true just if you believe the right wing Brazilian press. Fox News would be ashamed of our journalist ethics.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      What are you claiming to be false? That he and Chaves were financed by the same mafia running the Brazil and Argentina governments, or that our criminals helped on their logistics?
justadeveloper2 9y ago
I'm not sure how I feel about your statement. I see a lot of Venezuelans with no recourse other than to start fighting. I don't see how order is more important than having a chance at a future at all? It is frustrating to watch a socialist country fail yet again. Downvote that statement all you want, it's the truth--the idea of ceding more and more power to a central state always ends up with dictatorship and now it's the world's problem. It's stupid human behavior over and over again and we never learn our lesson. What I simply can't get my head around is why aren't there enough Venezuelans resisting this nightmare? Is everyone just a sheep, go along to get along, afraid to pop their head up lest it get lopped off by government thugs?
- wooter 9y ago
  As a Venezuelan that left long ago, I feel you. I have had to argue for years with people here that Vzla isn't some socialist paradise. The worst part? The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! Even without tampons and basic medicine they won't admit they are wrong.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    > The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! But are they communist? Or do they just support a welfare state? (Like many of Brazilian extreme right would be confused with the left if they ever traveled to the US. Is it the same case?) I got the impression they were mostly formed by the business people that didn't flee your country.
neves 9y ago
Sorry to tell you, now you just need to found a political party in USA that won't support dictatorships around the world. BTW, the USA is has a great dose of responsibility for mess in Venezuela is in. Maybe if it were not for your interventionist politics, Venezuela wouldn't be living all this radicalization. Search in YouTube for the impressive documentary "The Revolution won't be televised".

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gtirloni 9y ago

For comparison, Venezuela had a 57.15 murder rate in 2015 (per 100k habitants) while pre-war Syria had 2.23 in 2010. My point being that many countries in LatAm live in a disguised civil war state and it's just "normal" (far from it, actually).

meri_dian 9y ago
Wow. How much of that is due to drug cartels and gang violence though?
- sseveran 9y ago
  A lot. However drug cartels often also fill in as a form of local government in the areas they control. Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    I wonder how the graph would look if you included police violence? If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison. I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ provides the numbers for the US (it's up to 714 this year - 23 more than last year by this date). Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      In 2014, estimated murders in US is about 14,249. Estimated people killed by police is 1111 according to one site. So a 7-8% increase. Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      Police killings are hardly equivalent to gang and cartel killings. Gangs murder people out of cold blood. The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        That's generally true, but there are places where the police and cartels are intermingled.
        meri_dian 9y ago
        Yes, I was writing about the US specifically
  - distances 9y ago
    > Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles. I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      Some but I'm guessing it is minimal. The countries from Mexico to the south have had unstable regimes and violence for a long time (probably because the Spanish institutions were exploitative and exacerbated differences between the landholders/other and Europeans/natives). There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Brazil is also a huge producer of guns. Given Venezuela's location at the edge of Central and South America, its hard to say where they would get most of their guns from.
    - justadeveloper2 9y ago
      People have been killing each other long before guns were invented, so I doubt very much it has any real effect. The "uncontrolled US weapons market?" Give me a break! The biggest seller of weapons to those countries is the US Government itself!
      - distances 9y ago
        The scale of potential violence with guns vs. without guns should be obvious, so not commenting on that. As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right? To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets". [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/in-mexico-tens-of-thousands-of-illegal-guns-come-from-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins
- mikaeluu 9y ago
  Imagine the amount of suffering these countries could be spare their people if they just legalized drugs of any kind (it's not like it not freely available anyway), and just swept the cartles income from under them.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's too late for that. The cartels are up and running in various industries like extortion and sex trafficking. The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    The drugs are mostly for export. Legalising them would run an increased risk of US military intervention.
  - neves 9y ago
    Nothing would change much. The countries would still be exploited by small a oligarchy. They would still have one of the worst wealth distribution in the world. And they would still have a ultra violent police that routinely kills a lot of poor, black and indigenous people.
tyingq 9y ago
Infographic showing per capita murder rates for that region, by country: http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1-HOMICIDE-RATES-MAP.jpg http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1... Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.
elcapitan 9y ago
Syria being a dictatorship that makes people 'disappear' without official statistics, though.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  Are you implying that the Salafist-Jihadist rebels in Syria don't do the exact same? Because they make people "disappear" too, in addition to brutally and savagely executing people in public (decapitation, mutilation, etc). And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion. There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    No, he's not implying that. He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government. CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.
    - elcapitan 9y ago
      Exactly. Thanks.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
simonsarris 9y ago
Constant low grade civil war and dictators has been the offhand history of south america for a very long time, sadly. Definitely predates drug cartels and US influence. See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=183 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&... I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

Venezuela has one of the biggest petroleum reserves on the planet, and is responsible for 10% of America's oil imports. That is a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of oil. Only a geopolitical fool would allow a crisis/opportunity like this slip by without at least claiming a little side action. Even Goldman Sachs has skin in the game.

empath75 9y ago
Which should make you question all of the American news on what's happening there.
- varjag 9y ago
  Should it also question all German, British, Australian and so on news on what's happening there? (Oh right they are all the U.S. sockpuppets of course)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- qubex 9y ago
  Not particularly, no. One should merely be conscentintious regarding the potential for bias in all accounts of everything, but not to the point of self-confirming paranoid delusion. Being critical, even skeptical, should not depend on one's perception of who stands to gain or lose from something (in no limited part because even informed observers can end up being very wrong about who eventually profits from an undeniably complex sequence of events).
sasper 9y ago
95% of export income in Venezuela is from oil. It's the lifeblood of the country.
- FRex 9y ago
  And somehow it's still a shit country, apparently. Look at how Saudi, Emirati, Bruneian and Qatari live off of their smaller oil reserves. Something is clearly up with Venezuela's governance if they can have that much oil and do that badly.

empath75 9y ago

And if you don't want a new wave of refugees coming to the us, you shouldn't be backing a civil war, either.

honestoHeminway 9y ago
If its okay for europe its okay for america.
- geofft 9y ago
  I realize you're making a snarky political point, but, "Refugees are bad for a country's culture but we should still let them in if they exist" is a perfectly consistent position. It's trading off prevention of something unwanted but not an evil (cultural dilution) in order to prevent an actual evil (death of the refugees). "We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one. (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)
  - nolepointer 9y ago
    Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.) And are instrumental in making it happen again.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos. That really depends on what timescale you care about and who's side you're on. Would Korea be better off if the US never got involved? What about if the Chinese never stepped in? What if the US had tried harder to prop up the Shah in Iran? What if the US hadn't backed Saddam in the 80s? What if the US had never backed the Mujaheddin against the soviets? Backing them caused a lot of bad stuff but bleeding the USSR to death may have averted continuing the cold war and another Vietnam somewhere else in the world decades later. Time only goes one way. You never get do-overs. You just get to make the best decision you can for the current situation. I'm also in the camp of "we're not world police"

tomjen3 9y ago

The current government caused the caos. As long as they are in power, it will continue.

Entangled 9y ago

I hope a burglar breaks into your house and starts raping your daughters, cutting the throat of your sons, blows your head with a 9mm, then when a neighbor calls 911 I'll say "As a community member I hope they don't send the Swat team, he should solve his own internal problems peacefully".

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cr1895 9y ago
>I hope a burglar breaks into your house and starts raping your daughters, cutting the throat of your sons, blows your head with a 9mm Did you read what you typed after you typed it!? Shameful, much less relevant.

omurphy27 9y ago

America barely armed any Syrian rebels or protestors. Much of the DC establishment and military community wanted to arm them, but Obama was against it and therefore any real military aid was severely limited: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 The conflict in Syria was started and escalated by Assad. It was prolonged by a number of actors, including Russia and Iran supporting Assad, and the gulf states / Turkey etc., supporting the other side. America is a common boogeyman for whenever something goes wrong in the world (Venezuela's Maduro never misses an opportunity to blame the US for his own regime's multitude of failures and crimes).

marcosdumay 9y ago
If the press reported it correctly, weapons stolen from Iraq's army were a big enabling factor for the ISIS fast growth. They would invade a new region and get for free a big enough supply for invading the next place. Venezuela, by its turn, is mostly Brazil and Argentina's fault. The US gave some financing to the current government, but it's a rounding error overall. The Brazilian government even helped organizing their dictatorship at the time it was trying to do the same here.
- neves 9y ago
  This is true just if you believe the right wing Brazilian press. Fox News would be ashamed of our journalist ethics.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    What are you claiming to be false? That he and Chaves were financed by the same mafia running the Brazil and Argentina governments, or that our criminals helped on their logistics?

justadeveloper2 9y ago

I'm not sure how I feel about your statement. I see a lot of Venezuelans with no recourse other than to start fighting. I don't see how order is more important than having a chance at a future at all? It is frustrating to watch a socialist country fail yet again. Downvote that statement all you want, it's the truth--the idea of ceding more and more power to a central state always ends up with dictatorship and now it's the world's problem. It's stupid human behavior over and over again and we never learn our lesson. What I simply can't get my head around is why aren't there enough Venezuelans resisting this nightmare? Is everyone just a sheep, go along to get along, afraid to pop their head up lest it get lopped off by government thugs?

wooter 9y ago
As a Venezuelan that left long ago, I feel you. I have had to argue for years with people here that Vzla isn't some socialist paradise. The worst part? The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! Even without tampons and basic medicine they won't admit they are wrong.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! But are they communist? Or do they just support a welfare state? (Like many of Brazilian extreme right would be confused with the left if they ever traveled to the US. Is it the same case?) I got the impression they were mostly formed by the business people that didn't flee your country.

neves 9y ago

Sorry to tell you, now you just need to found a political party in USA that won't support dictatorships around the world. BTW, the USA is has a great dose of responsibility for mess in Venezuela is in. Maybe if it were not for your interventionist politics, Venezuela wouldn't be living all this radicalization. Search in YouTube for the impressive documentary "The Revolution won't be televised".