Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well on the economic sense Colombia has come out the victor. Ultimately in a political sense they will as well. Leftist governments are out in Brazil and Argentina, and I think the Chavistas are doomed.
They are doomed, but its obvious they will not leave without a fight. The loser in all of this is Venezuela as a whole.
Look how their government treat people that want to use their freedom of speech.
I remember seeing an old photo taken in China of a single guy that one time stopped a tanker by standing in front of it as a protest. It was such a powerful photo. Well, in Venezuela that type of protest doesn't work.
Norway wasn't trying to export socialist revolution to other countries.
Also there are limits to worrying about other people. Venezuela should have worried about their own economic development. They did not, and they chose leaders with no education that weren't fit to run a farm, much less a country. And this is how well it worked out for people in Venezuela. Do not chose stupid leaders and a country won't end up like this.
Anyone who had a good education in Venezuela was demonized, but these are the people who can take their money and leave the country. So as things get worse you end up with country with no professional class, including no doctors, teachers, professors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, etc. The ultimately brain drain, and as it gets worse everyone else tries to leave.
I don't know if you know Spanish, but in this interview before he won the first elections Hugo Chavez lied three times to reknown Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos.
The lies were:
1. If his government turns out to be a failure or a 'fiasco,' he would give up power even before his first term is over.
2. That he didn't know why so many sectors of Venezuelan civil society accussed him of being a Marxist with intentions to expropriate companies. He said that he's not the devil, that his government will invite all the multinational companies that want to do business in the various economic sectors of Venezuela.
3. That he will not close any of the media outlets, that all his government will do is improve the public channel to gear it towards educational purposes. All private media companies would remain intact and free of government control.
That was then... and a lot of people ate it up!
Now, yes, politicians do lie during their campaigns, but this is simply taken to the extreme. As horrendous as many politicians, especially Latin American ones, can be; nothing compares to Chavez et al. Perhaps Mugabe in Zimbabwe did it worse, perhaps!
Nicolas Maduro, a bus driver with no real formal education (the guy didn't even finished high school), was personally chosen by Chavez to succeed him. It was truly not a free and fair election, it was decided beforehand. Maduro is quite a nutcase. After Chavez' death, Maduro even went on national television and said that a little bird spoke to him and that it was Hugo Chavez. That the revolution must continue, blah, blah, blah... and many people ate it up! It would had been the most funny thing ever, if it wasn't such a sad situation.
In fact, here is (in Spanish, sorry for English speakers) Maduro talking about his conversation with the little bird that visited him, aka Hugo Chavez reincarnated with wings.
It really is a joke. As one poster said it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. How could've Venezuelans fallen for this? Over half the population at one point literally thought that the US and Colombia wanted to invade them and that they were the cause of all their ills - in a sad turn of irony, now many Venezuelans would love for the US and Colombia to invade and get rid of the regime.
It really is a joke. As one poster said it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. How could've Venezuelans fallen for this? Over half the population at one point literally thought that the US and Colombia wanted to invade them and that they were the cause of all their ills - in a sad turn of irony, now many Venezuelans would love for the US and Colombia to invade and get rid of the regime.
that's what has to be done. well, not an invasion, but a quick and effective coup d'etat by the Venezuelan opposition, backed by USA, Colombia and other countries. it's very obvious that Maduro and his clique won't offer a pacific, negotiated solution to the crisis, and Venezuela can't afford going deeper into the abyss. Colombia can't afford it either.
It's not as easy as just invading a country and then putting a new government there. Sounds like a recipe for a banana republic, or a Latin American version of Iraq
It really is a joke. As one poster said it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. How could've Venezuelans fallen for this? Over half the population at one point literally thought that the US and Colombia wanted to invade them and that they were the cause of all their ills - in a sad turn of irony, now many Venezuelans would love for the US and Colombia to invade and get rid of the regime.
That's the problem with a lot of leftist governments. They always try to deflect all their problems by blaming all their ills on the West. If a person protests in a Western country it means that the West is awful, but if you do much ad try to complain in any of those you are labelled a paid schill, sponsored by the West to destabilise the regime.
Now, granted there have been a number of coups backed by the West that were somewhat deplorable, but it doesn't mean that all of the ills come from there.
I always found it odd, that amongst critics of Western imperialism, a number of coups get brought up, yet the elephant in the room that is Castro is ignored, who came to power himself through a major coup.
This is why the US has a crappy role in the world. It's damned if they do and damned if they don't. If we do nothing, people will say that we sat idly as thousands of people were killed by their government (which is coming). If we do make a move, it will be "blood for oil".
Agree with the post above too. Tinpot dictators keep their grip on power by blaming the US for all the nation's ills and deflecting blame. It's a tried and true method for holding on to power in Latin America. People still lap it up like kittens to milk. We recently had a poster here who said Cuba would have been fine were it not for the US and he excused Castro's death squads and jailing of dissidents as the price for regime change.
Agree with the post above too. Tinpot dictators keep their grip on power by blaming the US for all the nation's ills and deflecting blame. It's a tried and true method for holding on to power in Latin America. People still lap it up like kittens to milk. We recently had a poster here who said Cuba would have been fine were it not for the US and he excused Castro's death squads and jailing of dissidents as the price for regime change.
That's the problem with those regimes. Castro did very little to improve the lives of his people. We always hear about how marvellous their healthcare is, but if that's the only thing the island has going for it then it's doing a pretty poor job. Most of Cuba's infrastructure was developed by the US during the Batista years, yet that aspect is seldom brought up.
Even the embargo excuse has become tiresome. At best you could say the embargo is unnecessary, but it most definitely is not the source of Cuba's problems as they had trade with many other countries, including being the poster boy of communism during the Cold War, so they had a lot of support back then.
Israel is the perfect example that a country can develop while being surrounded by hostile neighbours.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
