The last twenty years of socialism in Venezuela already did that. Have you seen the extreme poverty there? The once nice, now crumbling infrastructure? The Venezuelan people have already had most of their assets stolen.
That's a pretty good reason for these corporations to keep their grubby hands off Venezuela. At least give the people some time to recover, before stepping in to strip mine their economy again.
And when I say 'again', you know that it was the exploitation by US companies that led to Hugo Chavez ascending to power, right?
Venezuela requires billions of dollars to rebuild its pillaged industry and infrastructure. There will be no economic recovery for the people without that. Where should that investment come from?
Venezuela is now an American colony, do you not know how colonialism works? Do you need to read a history book?
We're the ones doing the pillaging. We're going to strip them of what resources they have left, take their wealth for ourselves and leave them with nothing. We're going to make the people an underclass in their own country, serving the rich white colonizers who come in to stay at the luxury hotels and casinos Trump will be building there. Or maybe the Saudis, who knows? The world is full of rich vultures. We'll build data centers over the carcasses of their cities and shoot anyone who wants the water. We're going to rape their women and children.
And then we're going to do it to Cuba. And then maybe Mexico.
You’re describing a hypothetical future, and I’m telling you that all that bad stuff has already been done to the Venezuelan people by the Chavistas. About 90% of the population lives in poverty and 50% in extreme poverty. Maduro’s government shot about two dozen people who had the nerve to protest the last election. Violence against women and children doesn’t get much worse.
What incredible privilege you have to be worried about future labor exploitation at yet-to-be-built resort casinos.
> What incredible privilege you have to be worried about future labor exploitation at yet-to-be-built resort casinos.
This is an incredibly dishonest take on this situation. You ignore the innumerable historical precedents out there. And you call it hypothetical when they have already made it clear that economic exploitation is exactly what they plan to do. Heck! What is the story of this discussion even about? You're displaying willful and selective ignorance here.
> Maduro’s government shot about two dozen people who had the nerve to protest the last election. Violence against women and children doesn’t get much worse.
How did Maduro get into power in the first place? What is the situation in the other natutal resource-rich countries you invaded in the name of freedom? The US didn't spend all that money to invade a nation to replace its dictatorship with something better, did they?
These self-righteous self-aggrandizing justifications are just too disturbing to read. This is one of those harrowing comments that justify utterly reprehensible and psychopathic behavior.
Let's be honest here. Venezuela's people are not going to see any benefit from the investment that US is planning over there, besides some token development to show the international media. Any sort of investment is going to be for pillaging their economy and resources even further. If Trump and his cronies haven't made that clear by now, the history of US involvement in that country in the past is evidence enough. This is neocolonialism - the unholy amalgamation of colonialism and capitalist exploitation. Pretending that this is for the benefit of Venezuelans is just dishonest, to put it mildly.
I simply don't believe that there can exist even a tentative plan this soon after breaking news, when it's still not clear what the Venezuelan government will even look like in March. I can imagine a lot of reasons why the "chairman of consulting firm Signum Global Advisors" might want to create FOMO about it though!
Seems a bit premature. Maduro is gone but nothing has fundamentally changed. His government is intact, just with a warning from Trump to follow orders “or else”.
Anything printed in mainstream Western press in the immediate aftermath of something like the Maduro op should be read as perception management first and foremost, with only a tangential relationship to disseminating truth.
I feel like they've mostly dispensed with the pretense of needing "consent" from anyone who isn't calling shots on what to print in the newspapers in the first place. This seems more like "we'll do what we want and don't care to even conceal our motives anymore." And other commenters are right to point out that it's very premature when it's not clear there's been a genuine change in power, so it may be calculated to make that seem inevitable as well.
"Manufactured consent" was a term Chomsky introduced for the way in which US mass media operates, so it shouldn't be terribly surprising to find that the pattern matches. (One thing I'd encourage people to think about: would it be better to have a media that avoids manufacturing consent by never challenging the general public's biases and preconceptions?)
Are you saying the opposite of manufacturing consent would result in a media that isn’t challenging and conforms to people’s biases?
The way I see it you can do both at once. Exaggerating/downplaying stories in a way that confirms biases is something the media does today (see MSNBC/Fox News), and I’d argue it’s absolutely a form of manufactured consent.
I'm saying that it's wrong to understand "manufacturing consent" as some specific action a news outlet might or might not be performing. Most nontrivial reporting involves shaping the public's perspective of events, and that shaping is always going to be subject to the biases and incentives of the people reporting it. The thesis of the original book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) was that modern mass media is structurally biased towards advertisers and government sources, not that specific people are making bad or corrupt editorial decisions and mass media could become unbiased if we found a way to make them stop.
Seems like our leaders laundered our money through the US military and government apparatus, to the tunes of billions of dollars, so that they could carry out the dirty work of overthrowing the Venezuelan government in order to enrich Exxon and other oil companies. That's our money doing this. My money doing this. Boomers are cooked, man.
Might be redundant after Trump pardoned the former Honduran president who'd been convicted of drug trafficking. He's friendly to the Srinivasan/Thiel/Andreessen plans for the Prospera city-state in that country.
All of this is disgusting theft, and is plain old imperialist colonialism. Let’s not pretend there is even a shred of legitimacy to the claims about drugs or whatever - Trump recently pardoned a major drug lord. This is entirely about enriching Trump, his family, and friends. The people of Venezuela will still be left poor but will lose their natural resources.
Venezuelans already have been losing their natural resources. Venezuela's major exportable resource is oil, and guess what happened to that export industry?
Sanctions, open-sea piracy (in the guise of drug raids) to seize Venezuelan oil tankers, and regime changes to put puppets to squeeze everything out of an oil-rich nation. The result is poverty, social strife, healthcare woes, etc.
Even if it’s unfortunate, you must find a way to take advantage of every world event for investment opportunity, or you risk falling behind and ending up on the wrong side of inequality.
No, to avoid ending up on the wrong side of bond markets, which at this point can force even rich governments to avoid things like raising taxes or limiting the "right" of foreign invaders to buy up assets inside the country.
Sounds like Yeltsin-era privatization is on the menu. “What assets can we strip from the Venezuelan people, for pennies on the dollar?”
Similar to what Eastern Germany had done to it as well.
Vultures doesn't even begin to describe it.
The problems with the post soviet economy had nothing to do with FDI.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...
Yep. Plunder Mode activated. After paying your entrance fee to [insert Trump-affiliated entity here], of course.
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It's a tit for tat game, as so happens in geopolitics. Thinking one side is "wrong" or "right" misunderstands the nature of what's being played.
The last twenty years of socialism in Venezuela already did that. Have you seen the extreme poverty there? The once nice, now crumbling infrastructure? The Venezuelan people have already had most of their assets stolen.
Oh, yeah the US meddling had nothing to do with anything happening there.
This seems like a thought-terminating cliche. If US meddling was so effective, why wasn’t Venezuela already doing what the US wanted?
> If US meddling was so effective, why wasn’t Venezuela already doing what the US wanted?
Messing up the situation and leaving the natives to clean up after them is what the US does every time.
> This seems like a thought-terminating cliche.
The US excuses to military aggression is a cliché. Responses to clichés with a cliché should come as no surprise.
That's a pretty good reason for these corporations to keep their grubby hands off Venezuela. At least give the people some time to recover, before stepping in to strip mine their economy again.
And when I say 'again', you know that it was the exploitation by US companies that led to Hugo Chavez ascending to power, right?
Venezuela requires billions of dollars to rebuild its pillaged industry and infrastructure. There will be no economic recovery for the people without that. Where should that investment come from?
Venezuela is now an American colony, do you not know how colonialism works? Do you need to read a history book?
We're the ones doing the pillaging. We're going to strip them of what resources they have left, take their wealth for ourselves and leave them with nothing. We're going to make the people an underclass in their own country, serving the rich white colonizers who come in to stay at the luxury hotels and casinos Trump will be building there. Or maybe the Saudis, who knows? The world is full of rich vultures. We'll build data centers over the carcasses of their cities and shoot anyone who wants the water. We're going to rape their women and children.
And then we're going to do it to Cuba. And then maybe Mexico.
You’re describing a hypothetical future, and I’m telling you that all that bad stuff has already been done to the Venezuelan people by the Chavistas. About 90% of the population lives in poverty and 50% in extreme poverty. Maduro’s government shot about two dozen people who had the nerve to protest the last election. Violence against women and children doesn’t get much worse.
What incredible privilege you have to be worried about future labor exploitation at yet-to-be-built resort casinos.
> You’re describing a hypothetical future,
> What incredible privilege you have to be worried about future labor exploitation at yet-to-be-built resort casinos.
This is an incredibly dishonest take on this situation. You ignore the innumerable historical precedents out there. And you call it hypothetical when they have already made it clear that economic exploitation is exactly what they plan to do. Heck! What is the story of this discussion even about? You're displaying willful and selective ignorance here.
> Maduro’s government shot about two dozen people who had the nerve to protest the last election. Violence against women and children doesn’t get much worse.
How did Maduro get into power in the first place? What is the situation in the other natutal resource-rich countries you invaded in the name of freedom? The US didn't spend all that money to invade a nation to replace its dictatorship with something better, did they?
These self-righteous self-aggrandizing justifications are just too disturbing to read. This is one of those harrowing comments that justify utterly reprehensible and psychopathic behavior.
>What incredible privilege you have to be worried about future labor exploitation at yet-to-be-built resort casinos.
What incredible privilege you have to not care about exploitation as long as capitalists are doing it.
Anything Maduro has done to the Venezuelan people is going to pale compared to what Trump and Western business interests are planning.
I promise you things can get worse. Making things worse is what Americans do.
Let's be honest here. Venezuela's people are not going to see any benefit from the investment that US is planning over there, besides some token development to show the international media. Any sort of investment is going to be for pillaging their economy and resources even further. If Trump and his cronies haven't made that clear by now, the history of US involvement in that country in the past is evidence enough. This is neocolonialism - the unholy amalgamation of colonialism and capitalist exploitation. Pretending that this is for the benefit of Venezuelans is just dishonest, to put it mildly.
How’s socialism working out in China? Maybe it’s the US sanctions and meddling..
Yeah, the special economic zones, foreign direct investment and cut throat competition among private enterprises are all hallmarks of socialism. /s
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I simply don't believe that there can exist even a tentative plan this soon after breaking news, when it's still not clear what the Venezuelan government will even look like in March. I can imagine a lot of reasons why the "chairman of consulting firm Signum Global Advisors" might want to create FOMO about it though!
“Investment” is a way to put it.
Shameful.
Seems a bit premature. Maduro is gone but nothing has fundamentally changed. His government is intact, just with a warning from Trump to follow orders “or else”.
Anything printed in mainstream Western press in the immediate aftermath of something like the Maduro op should be read as perception management first and foremost, with only a tangential relationship to disseminating truth.
perception management
Is this any different from manufactured consent?
I feel like they've mostly dispensed with the pretense of needing "consent" from anyone who isn't calling shots on what to print in the newspapers in the first place. This seems more like "we'll do what we want and don't care to even conceal our motives anymore." And other commenters are right to point out that it's very premature when it's not clear there's been a genuine change in power, so it may be calculated to make that seem inevitable as well.
"Manufactured consent" was a term Chomsky introduced for the way in which US mass media operates, so it shouldn't be terribly surprising to find that the pattern matches. (One thing I'd encourage people to think about: would it be better to have a media that avoids manufacturing consent by never challenging the general public's biases and preconceptions?)
Are you saying the opposite of manufacturing consent would result in a media that isn’t challenging and conforms to people’s biases?
The way I see it you can do both at once. Exaggerating/downplaying stories in a way that confirms biases is something the media does today (see MSNBC/Fox News), and I’d argue it’s absolutely a form of manufactured consent.
I'm saying that it's wrong to understand "manufacturing consent" as some specific action a news outlet might or might not be performing. Most nontrivial reporting involves shaping the public's perspective of events, and that shaping is always going to be subject to the biases and incentives of the people reporting it. The thesis of the original book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) was that modern mass media is structurally biased towards advertisers and government sources, not that specific people are making bad or corrupt editorial decisions and mass media could become unbiased if we found a way to make them stop.
Is the VEF going up again?
Where's the guy with the archive article
Seems like our leaders laundered our money through the US military and government apparatus, to the tunes of billions of dollars, so that they could carry out the dirty work of overthrowing the Venezuelan government in order to enrich Exxon and other oil companies. That's our money doing this. My money doing this. Boomers are cooked, man.
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A new crypto haven ?
Wasn't that El Salvador? I wonder how that's going.
Might be redundant after Trump pardoned the former Honduran president who'd been convicted of drug trafficking. He's friendly to the Srinivasan/Thiel/Andreessen plans for the Prospera city-state in that country.
All of this is disgusting theft, and is plain old imperialist colonialism. Let’s not pretend there is even a shred of legitimacy to the claims about drugs or whatever - Trump recently pardoned a major drug lord. This is entirely about enriching Trump, his family, and friends. The people of Venezuela will still be left poor but will lose their natural resources.
Venezuelans already have been losing their natural resources. Venezuela's major exportable resource is oil, and guess what happened to that export industry? Sanctions, open-sea piracy (in the guise of drug raids) to seize Venezuelan oil tankers, and regime changes to put puppets to squeeze everything out of an oil-rich nation. The result is poverty, social strife, healthcare woes, etc.
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Even if it’s unfortunate, you must find a way to take advantage of every world event for investment opportunity, or you risk falling behind and ending up on the wrong side of inequality.
No, to avoid ending up on the wrong side of bond markets, which at this point can force even rich governments to avoid things like raising taxes or limiting the "right" of foreign invaders to buy up assets inside the country.
The state gets to say what the limits on private property held by people and entities outside its jurisdiction are.