Venezuela the failed socialist state - Rising tensions.

[terley]

Has anyone been following the recent developments involving Venezuela?

Apparently, Venezuela lead by Nicolás Maduro have cut all diplomatic relations with the United States after Trump recognised the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the new president of Venezuela after Guaidó claimed himself as president only two weeks after Maduro was sworn in for a second six-year term. In light of the crisis inside Venezuela, namely mass starvation, hyperinflation (1m%) and violence...

Venezuela was once the richest country in South America due to its huge natural oil reserves. Hugo Chávez installed a mirror socialist state based on the system installed by his friend, mentor and father-figure Fidel Castro in Cuba. This was initially very successful, but since the economic crash in 2008, the country rapidly declined due to this as well as the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013 leading to the socialist party nominating Nicolás Maduro.

This seems to be an issue the UK is being dragged into due to the bank of England recently blocking Maduro from accessing $1.2b worth of gold at the request of the US government.

Pompeo the US secretary of state earlier at the UN called Maduros regime in Venezuela an "illegitimate mafia state"

Another quote from Pompeo:

“Today nine out of ten citizens living in poverty. Millions lack access to drinking water and food," Pompeo said. "Three out of four hospitals have been abandoned. Three million Venezuelans have been forced to flee their homelands thereby flooding the region and threatening international peace and security.”

There is also some pushback from the international community, namely Russia and China disagreeing with the stance the US is taking, with Russia sending operatives to Venezuela in recent days.

It seems like a rapidly escalating issue that could snowball very quickly

PS. Before anyone says it, this is not an attack at socialist ideology.

 

[StriderX]

I'm pretty sure they've more or less sold the oilfields to Rus-Sino interests, so it's not a surprise they're unhappy about it being irritated. Just another day in the increasingly turbulent 21st century. Completely ******* irrelevant when we're heading for ecological collapse, it's a waste of everyone's time discussing this, we need to start rapidly ignoring small-fry political problems, because we're missing the bigger picture by such a long margin, it simply won't matter.

 

[terley]

I'm pretty sure they've more or less sold the oilfields to Rus-Sino interests, so it's not a surprise they're unhappy about it being irritated. Just another day in the increasingly turbulent 21st century. Completely ******* irrelevant when we're heading for ecological collapse, it's a waste of everyone's time discussing this, we need to start rapidly ignoring small-fry political problems, because we're missing the bigger picture by such a long margin, it simply won't matter.

Couldn't agree more, however, I do occasionally like to talk about something other than climate destruction, it feels very hopelessly depressing in reality. Especially when the two countries absolutely destroying the planet are India and China.

 

[Hades]

I'm pretty sure they've more or less sold the oilfields to Rus-Sino interests, so it's not a surprise they're unhappy about it being irritated. Just another day in the increasingly turbulent 21st century. Completely ******* irrelevant when we're heading for ecological collapse, it's a waste of everyone's time discussing this, we need to start rapidly ignoring small-fry political problems, because we're missing the bigger picture by such a long margin, it simply won't matter.

Completely agree with this. We're missing the bigger future, global, picture.

 

[Caracus2k]

Socialism absolutely is the fault

Que the usual it's not 'real' socialism arguments

Or its all the fault of the USA and their allies with their sanctions and boycotts ... (lets ignore the Venezuelan establishment seizing foreign owned industries within its borders and terrorising masses of its own citizens) Venezuela totally would have otherwise been a Socialist paradise apparently ..

Socialism always fails because its fundamentally flawed.

Why? Because socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.

And in practice this means a society moving towards two things

1) state ownership of the means of production and distribution as there is no workable way of having a wide array complex, intertwined, modern industries held in collective ownership by the local communities around them

And 2) the forced expropriation of private industry into the ownership of the state and the tendency towards the prohibition of any new private or even personal production (even of food) arising.

Hence socialism always graviates towards authoritarian state control with a poltical elite class corruptly running chunks of the economy for their own personal benefit but devoid of the profit motive and competition that in capitalism results in new, better and more innovative products and services being provided at competitive prices.

Never forget the enthusiasm for Venezuelan style socialism held by politicians and commentators in this country until it became clearly apparent what a **** show it had all become.

 

[Malevolence]

Fracas in Caracas.

Wonder how long before Russia's 'little green men' and/or contractors from Wagner Group start showing up on the streets?

 

[jsmoke]

Socialism absolutely is the fault

Que the usual it's not 'real' socialism arguments

Or its all the fault of the USA and their allies with their sanctions and boycotts ... (lets ignore the Venezuelan establishment seizing foreign owned industries within its borders and terrorising masses of its own citizens) Venezuela totally would have otherwise been a Socialist paradise apparently ..

Socialism always fails because its fundamentally flawed.

Why? Because socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.

And in practice this means a society moving towards two things

1) state ownership of the means of production and distribution as there is no workable way of having a wide array complex, intertwined, modern industries held in collective ownership by the local communities around them

And 2) the forced expropriation of private industry into the ownership of the state and the tendency towards the prohibition of any new private or even personal production (even of food) arising.

Hence socialism always graviates towards authoritarian state control with a poltical elite class corruptly running chunks of the economy for their own personal benefit but devoid of the profit motive and competition that in capitalism results in new, better and more innovative products and services being provided at competitive prices.

Never forget the enthusiasm for Venezuelan style socialism held by politicians and commentators in this country until it became clearly apparent what a **** show it had all become.

Do these people sit at a table with a socialism handbook and decide to shape their economic policy around it or is it just a natural/evolution road they take.

Have they read socialism economic policy 101 in other words, have a few people they admire like Stalin, and carefully craft they country around this.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Venezuela now = UK after 5 years of Corbyn as PM.

 

[Rroff]

I've been passively following it for awhile. While I'm kind of against world policing of countries and there are many more factors to it I think it is long past time we accepted situations like Venezuela at a global level.

 

[StriderX]

I've been passively following it for awhile. While I'm kind of against world policing of countries and there are many more factors to it I think it is long past time we accepted situations like Venezuela at a global level.

Wasting resources on pointless conflicts when we have bigger problems is frankly treasonous. Iraq and Afghanistan alone costs several trillion dollars, and the result was largely irrelevant. The cost of "fixing" (in reality just justifying huge expenditures in US states) other countries (Venezuela, Zaire, Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Zimbabwe, Philippines, Burma, Chechnya, Cambodia, Syria, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia/Kosovo, Pakistan, Turkey, Arab states...) would literally bankrupt the world many times over and would do literally nothing when most of these countries are destroyed by encroaching drought/extreme weather events.

People need to give up their boring politically charged **** for a moment, rationally realise that the world's problems are not fixed with more intervention.

 

[jsmoke]

I still hold that there are flavours of socialism such as the NHS. All depends on who implements it and runs it, we are too spoiled in this country, a few wrong turns and we would have ended up like Venezuela.

 

[Participant]

Wasting resources on pointless conflicts when we have bigger problems is frankly treasonous.

Quoting 'bigger problems' as though we should only ever worry about climate change like it's mutually exclusive of tackling other problems, is frankly a bit simplistic and is in fact - contrary to how you see yourself judging by your attempts to be seen to have the 'bigger picture' - narrow minded.

 

[Rroff]

Wasting resources on pointless conflicts when we have bigger problems is frankly treasonous.

Referencing Carl Sagan humanity is an organism at war with itself none of the bigger problems will ever get solved until we deal with certain other issues first. If we haven't left it too late.

 

[StriderX]

Referencing Carl Sagan humanity is an organism at war with itself none of the bigger problems will ever get solved until we deal with certain other issues first. If we haven't left it too late.

We literally do not have time, human time scales as active belligerents is about 30-40 years at most, we only have that long in the grand scheme of things before the oceans themselves are functionally dead. How do you think coastal states will react to this when a huge chunk of their food source disappears, never to be see again? The Great Migration hasn't even begun yet and the West is destroying itself.

I know for a fact that it will be too late (as it would appear we'd need to basically stop all production right now to make sure it's reversible in a timescale that isn't inhumane), but you know at least Venezuela was fixed for a few years at most, hurrah. But then who would the Right-wing militants complain about if Venezuela was no longer justifiably socialist? It probably suits to leave it be right?

 

[Participant]

The Great Migration hasn't even begun yet and the West is destroying itself.

Drama queen much. But humouring your hyberbole for a second, can you see any precedent in history for failed socialist states threatening to destroy the West?

Ruskies moving into Venezuela en masse has got to be fairly high up on the USA's 'hmm don't fancy this' list. Google Cuban missile crisis.

 

[StriderX]

Can you see any precedent in history for failed socialist states threatening to destroy the West?

I don't see Venezuela as threat to anyone but themselves. Frankly we should let South America as a coalition deal with Venezuela, it's not our problem.

Our concerns should be dealing with Russia, China, Biological/Chemical/Nuclear arms, preparing for viral/parasitical outbreaks and ultimately what i've already said.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Drama queen much. But humouring your hyberbole for a second, can you see any precedent in history for failed socialist states threatening to destroy the West?

Ruskies moving into Venezuela en masse has got to be fairly high up on the USA's 'hmm don't fancy this' list. Google Cuban missile crisis.

I think he means Africans and middle-eastern peoples migrating into Europe when their countries become inhospitable due to climate change.

 

[LabR@t]

Socialism lol

 

[Dolph]

It must be pure coincidence that Venezuela has failed in the exact same way as every other country that had tried this sort of thing. It couldn't possibly be the natural outcome of the policies..

 

[MBennett]

Hugo Chavez made a huge song and dance about repatriating their 211 tonnes of gold in 2011 which the eventuality got - I’m not sure how the BoE is meant to be blocking anything?