End of maduro - hopefully. - Page 50 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15022089
JohnRawls wrote:@Patrickov

Regarding the "Spectacular failure": You are looking at it very China centric. The spectacular failure is for Venezuela. The whole point of it was to deversify the purchasers of oil. What it did in reality is that it decreased the profits (because they need to ship it themselves now and further to China) and had marginal effect on diversification(At start majority of this "trade" went to the US with the Chinese basically pocketing the price of shipment in to their pocket). Right now, i am not 100% sure but i doubt that China all of the sudden built facilities to process Heavy Crude. Most of the facilities for that type of oil is in the US.


I discussed about this only in the standpoint of either Venezuela or the United States. In fact, China doing whatever stuff to whatever it has bought from Venezuela, does not change the fact that in the standpoint of Venezuela, their goods were sold to someone other than the United States. Therefore, in my understanding, a spectacular failure for Venezuela can only mean that they failed to sell stuff directly to anybody other than United States, and thus suffer economic collapse.
#15022129
Patrickov wrote:I discussed about this only in the standpoint of either Venezuela or the United States. In fact, China doing whatever stuff to whatever it has bought from Venezuela, does not change the fact that in the standpoint of Venezuela, their goods were sold to someone other than the United States. Therefore, in my understanding, a spectacular failure for Venezuela can only mean that they failed to sell stuff directly to anybody other than United States, and thus suffer economic collapse.


Kind off. It is the same story as in Ukraine that gets coal and gas through intermediaries. Well officially Ukraine stance is that they don't buy gas from Russia(This changed a bit recently) or coal from Donbas but in reality, where the hell is it coming from? Does it matter if somebody pumps Russian gas to Europe and then Europe resells that gas to Ukraine or there is a dummy Turkish/Russian company inbetween for the coal purchases from Donbas.
#15022140
Rugoz wrote:It's an article I read a few years ago and have occasionally linked to when the topic came up. I make no attempt to defend it, only its conclusion. You quite rightly pointed out that it makes little sense to compare China's dollar holdings to the dollar price of daily crude oil production.

I would argue the foreign exchange turnover with dollars (i.e. where the dollar is on one side of the trade) is the relevant number for comparison, as a measure of the daily demand/supply for dollars. In that case, the dollar demand for daily crude oil production would still be only a blip on the radar though. Agree? Disagree?

I can see that you have an argument. I suppose I would like to see additional formal analysis of this question.

Perhaps 'petro-dollar' is sort of a misnomer, and what counts is the function of the dollar for trade settlement across the board. Perhaps its a matter of convention to refer to oil since this is perhaps the most significant single commodity in play, accounting for somewhat less than 0.1% of the total volume of currency trade. I suppose that the principle is still rather the same, and oil is just a representation of the broader principle (though it is misleading to aggrandize the role of oil, if what I speculate here is the case).
#15025634
Just going to leave this here, you are defending incompetence that is destroying its own people: (GDP statistics growth in percentages)

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#15025661
JohnRawls wrote:...you are defending incompetence that is destroying its own people: (GDP statistics growth in percentages)


Says guy who supports sanctions and outright war on the country. :lol:
#15025679
skinster wrote:Says guy who supports sanctions and outright war on the country. :lol:


I support change of the government because people are suffering. Preferably by peaceful means although peaceful means might not always work.
#15025814
The trouble with regime change is that Venezuelans do not want it.

So you would have to impose a government on them at gunpoint. This is also called a dictatorship.
#15025824
Pants-of-dog wrote:The trouble with regime change is that Venezuelans do not want it.

So you would have to impose a government on them at gunpoint. This is also called a dictatorship.


They do not want foreign intervention by military means as for wanting Maduro and his ilk to go this is something that they wanted for some time now. The latest parliament election Maduro and his ilk lost badly. So he started creating a new 2nd parliament, firing high profile judges who told him to fuck off and prosecuting/jailing/dismantling opposition parties and blocks for the presidential election. So after he won, people went to the streets....
#15025825
JohnRawls wrote:They do not want foreign intervention by military means


...and this is why you should also oppose it.

as for wanting Maduro and his ilk to go this is something that they wanted for some time now. The latest parliament election Maduro and his ilk lost badly. So he started creating a new 2nd parliament, firing high profile judges who told him to fuck off and prosecuting/jailing/dismantling opposition parties and blocks for the presidential election. So after he won, people went to the streets....


Yes, I am familiar with the tale.

I just know enough about Latin AMerican politics and history to doubt that the right, the media, and the US are being honest.
#15025832
Pants-of-dog wrote:...and this is why you should also oppose it.



Yes, I am familiar with the tale.

I just know enough about Latin AMerican politics and history to doubt that the right, the media, and the US are being honest.


Just to put it in to perspective, no country/people want intervention by military means. Sometimes it is still necessary because problems have a trend to get out of control if they are not attended to. Current economic situation in Venezuela is causing a flood of refuges to its neighbours, US and Europe. :eek: At some point this will become everyones problem if it hasn't already. This is but one example.
#15025844
JohnRawls wrote:Just to put it in to perspective, no country/people want intervention by military means. Sometimes it is still necessary because problems have a trend to get out of control if they are not attended to. Current economic situation in Venezuela is causing a flood of refuges to its neighbours, US and Europe. :eek: At some point this will become everyones problem if it hasn't already.


With this logic, we should invade and take over the USA to stop their war machine because it causes more refugees than any other country.

Or what about the many capitalist countries in Central America with insane levels of violence? According to you, we need to invade and impose a government that will actually, for example, legalise cocaine distribution or otherwise defang the cartels.

There are many other countries with much bigger problems causing more refugees. Why should we invade or covertly overthrow the government of Venezuela and not these other countries?

The history of Latin America suggests that two factors make Venezuela more likely to be “liberated” at gunpoint:

1. Lots of natural resources. In this case, oil.
2. A leftist government that focuses on keeping the wealth in the country.
#15025873
Pants-of-dog wrote:With this logic, we should invade and take over the USA to stop their war machine because it causes more refugees than any other country.

Or what about the many capitalist countries in Central America with insane levels of violence? According to you, we need to invade and impose a government that will actually, for example, legalise cocaine distribution or otherwise defang the cartels.

There are many other countries with much bigger problems causing more refugees. Why should we invade or covertly overthrow the government of Venezuela and not these other countries?

The history of Latin America suggests that two factors make Venezuela more likely to be “liberated” at gunpoint:

1. Lots of natural resources. In this case, oil.
2. A leftist government that focuses on keeping the wealth in the country.


Venezuelan problems are self made basically and can be self fixed by a different government. Maduro and Chavez took it too far with their variety of socialism. So right now, Venezuela had such a big fall in the standard of living and shortages that from 2015 to 2019 around 10%-15% of the population left the country. (Sources: https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/6 ... -iom.html# or https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... gee-agency )

Just think about. 10 to 15% of the population left the country in 4 years :eek: (May be even more, its hard to say by now). We didn't have that many refugees in Europe during World War 1 and World War 2 as percentage of population. At the end of World War 2 there were 12 million refugees from total European population of 500 million which is around 2.4%. Venezuela is roughly at 4 million from 32 million.

As for other countries in the region they are more or less okay compared to the situation in Venezuela. They are not at least loosing 10-25% of their gdp per year for the last 5-10 years, having shortages of food and other essentials.
#15025986
JohnRawls wrote:Venezuelan problems are self made basically and can be self fixed by a different government. Maduro and Chavez took it too far with their variety of socialism. So right now, Venezuela had such a big fall in the standard of living and shortages that from 2015 to 2019 around 10%-15% of the population left the country. (Sources: https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/6 ... -iom.html# or https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... gee-agency )

Just think about. 10 to 15% of the population left the country in 4 years :eek: (May be even more, its hard to say by now). We didn't have that many refugees in Europe during World War 1 and World War 2 as percentage of population. At the end of World War 2 there were 12 million refugees from total European population of 500 million which is around 2.4%. Venezuela is roughly at 4 million from 32 million.

As for other countries in the region they are more or less okay compared to the situation in Venezuela. They are not at least loosing 10-25% of their gdp per year for the last 5-10 years, having shortages of food and other essentials.


So you agree that the logic you are using would require us to also invade a whole bunch of other countries and impose dictatorships, including the USA?
#15027302
skinster wrote:https://twitter.com/VenSolidarity/status/1162634668044193792?s=20


Guiado has support of around 50 governments. Majority of which are the most prosperous nations in the world. On the other hand what support Maduro has? Russia, China and Turkey are the only relevant ones. Most of them are far from Venezuela and relatively a lot less prosperous compared to the ones that support Guiado. Not to mention a lot more countries actually support Guiado nowadays instead of Maduro from the ones that bothered to take a side in this. As time goes on, more and more cases of torture and executions are coming to light also.

There has been a breakthrough recently though. It appears that Maduro might be willing to do a free elections but it is hard to say because:
1) The Chavistas are fractured right now between the defeatnicks and hard-liners.
2) The opposition is also fractured right now between the soft-liners(let us sort it out already) and the hard-liners(Chavistas have to pay for the killing and torture)

So the problem in the negotiations is that when talking to the Chavistas it is hard to say who holds the cards and who the opposition is negotiating to right now. Defeatnicks are okay with any concessions so long as they can keep their head and perhaps their wealth while hardliners thinks that the opposition can't be trusted and will come for their heads eventually.(We killed them so they will kill us) On the other hand the opposition also has problems where they can't clearly formulate what they want. They understand that they have the upper hand BUT to what point should they drive this upper hand. For there to be a peaceful solutions, the opposition should offer no questions asked amnesty and reintegrate the Chavistas in to the political system. The problem is that blood has been spilled and that in itself is a very massive problem. If there was no spilled blood then the solution would be much easier to reach. I understand that it is Maduros fault to a great degree but nothing can be done now.

On the other hand, if the opposition pushes to hard or the hardliners on both sides aggravate the situation further then there might not be a peaceful solution.
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