The Guardian has this brief story of Juan Guadio who swore himself in as interim president of Venezuela until honest elections can take place. [Thanks Jean, link has been fixed.]
Reminds me a bit of Vaclav Havel & the 1989 Velvet Revolution pictured here. UPDATE: Looking less like the Velvet Revolution today (1/25) with the Venezuelan military continuing to back Maduro.
Of course, Vladimir Putin objects while Donald Trump applauds (hmmm wonder if either of them smell an equivalent event in their precincts?).
P.S. And this more Brexit ironicism: The BBC to Netherlands? Or perhaps the Republic of Ireland? Wow!
More: Here is another, critical view of events in Venezuela (an opinion piece in the Guardian by a U.S. professor of Latin American studies).
Link to story on Guaido didn't work. This one? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/juan-guaido-venezuelan-opposition-leader-challenging-maduros-rule
ReplyDeleteWhatever happens in Venezuela is going to end badly. People will continue to starve and flee under Maduro until the country implodes. If he is overthrown, rebuilding a country that has, for all practical purposes, collapsed economically and politically will lead to martial law.
I hear Trump is calling on the Venezuelan military to defect to Guaido, who seems young and unexperienced. If the generals defect, will he be any safer with them than as a rogue president under Maduro?
Thanks Jean, link fixed.
DeleteOf course, the situation is fraught. Trump in recognizing Guaido has probably violated international law and broken scores of diplomatic procedures.
Venezuela was once a country with a vital middle class, the rich, and the poor. Now it seems to be a country of mostly poor people. Interesting that the OAS seems to support Guaido having previously criticized Maduro. Neighboring countries have also had to respond to Venezuelans fleeing their own country.
I had not heard that about the OAS. If neighboring countries helped support Guaido, that would be better, but the big bears--Trump, Putin, and China--have already taken sides and started growling at each other.
DeleteMy mother's cousin lived in Venezuela for many years working in the petrol industry, which supported the high standard of living there. Apparently there was also very little industry regulation ...
More Brexit idiocy. People in my cancer group from Europe are asking their docs if their meds come from abroad. Apparently a lot of drugs come from the UK, and shortages are expected if they have to cross the Brexit line. I think ensuring a six-month supply has been recommended.
ReplyDeleteFrom time to time, as I look around at the chaos raging in Syria, Yemen, et al, I rant about the United Nations - how it seems to have forgotten about its core premise of bringing the nations of the world together into a community to promote peace and stability.
ReplyDeleteBut even if the UN were inclined to do something about Venezuela, it couldn't, because the situation with Maduro and Guiado seems to be an internal-to-Venezuela matter.
Yet, as Peggy's post and news reports illustrate, foreign powers are using their leverage to try to tilt the outcome of the crisis. There is are international ramifications. Certainly, the large number of migrants and refugees in the world are directly traceable to situations of national instability, poverty, corruption, violence, war and chaos.
When a country is mismanaged like Venezuela - or Zimbabwe for many years - such that it is run into the ground and becomes a basket case, it seems to me there can be a moral justification for the world community to do something to help get the nation become stable and give it a sort of kick-start to get well again - perhaps some combination of an economic booster shot and internationally managed/monitored elections? There are institutions such as the World Bank to provide some of this. But a bad leader can basically become the obstacle to peace and prosperity.
Somewhere in the dusty history of religion and politics, somebody (a Jesuit?) wrote a treatise justifying Regicide...presumably that might apply to deposing (or disposing) a president!
DeleteYes, I am referring to Maduro! And if Canada is on board for Guaido, how illegal can it be?
Delete"... a bad leader can basically become the obstacle to peace and prosperity."
DeleteYes, maybe we need the U.N. to address our own dysfunctional government!
I agree that an international coalition would be far better than making Venezuela a three-way battleground for the US-China-Russia adversaries to duke it out in.
I still don't get Trump jumping on Maduro. They seem similar enough -- both trying to make a dishonest buck out of a gummint job. Is there a Trump Caracas tower I don't know about?
DeleteSome rich rightwingers wish the commies would come back. Clear enemy that made capitalism look good by comparison and hid their greed, sense of entitlement, and disdain for the lower classes. Maduro is the closest thing to a commie now, and he's little enough to try to shove around. Unlike China. Plus Trump has to be pretty frustrated and angry right now with how things are not going his way on the homefront, so creating an international debacle is both distracting and cathartic for him.
DeleteCthulu lives!
TB @ 4:49: Maybe President Bolton jumped in because Trump doesn't know who or what about Venezuela..no Trump tower!
DeleteThe NYTimes story today has Mario Rubio as a major player in the Venezuela policy.
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Some belated due props (overdue props?) to Jean for her suggestion that the UN remove Trump. Let's add that to the list along with impeachment and 25th-Amendment solutions.
DeleteMuch as I would like Mutti Merkel or some other even-keeled foreign power to come and solve our problems, Nancy Pelosi's "firmly say no to your toddler when he pitches a fit" approach seems to have worked for now.
DeleteTrump is a "problem personality," but I doubt he's 25th Amendment nutsworthy. Most psychopaths know how to act normal enough to stay out of jail; they bait others into doing the dirtywork, as per Cohen, Manafort, Stone, etc.
Impeachment won't happen. If Mueller has anything truly damning, Republicans will try to scuttle it. If they can't, I doubt Mitch McConnell would throw the GOP under the bus to keep Trump in there, and a deputation would be sent to get him to leave with assurances of a pardon from Pence a la Nixon.
Trump might try to get the military to keep him in there, but he hasn't made a lot of friends there.
There will be MAGAteers bloodying up the streets of he leaves. But they're already doing that with him in there.
If Mueller doesn't come up with some breathtaking charges, I think we can expect another four years of Trump.
There's, of course, lot's of schadenfreude from the neoliberal pack about the economic collapse of Venezuela as a socialist experiment. Yeah, but. You need a healthy democracy like Sweden and Denmark to make it work, thus, social democracy. The one-man great leader like Chavez, who whittled away at democratic limits, was not healthy democracy. Also, the collapse of oil prices and economic enmity of the great neoliberal country to the north didn't help.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to the Hetland article: "There is little doubt sanctions have worsened humanitarian conditions. The main reason is that harsher sanctions imposed in mid-2017 severely curtailed Venezuela’s ability to incur debt, and in so doing decimated Venezuelan oil production. This has lessened the public resources available to an increasingly desperate population. Far from being an accidental side effect, this seems to be one of the intents of US policy: make Venezuelans so desperate that they turn against Maduro. The inhumanity of such a policy is clear."
ReplyDeleteI envision some historian in a thousand years assessing American power and influence, and I doubt that our involvement in foreign affairs will have more in the plusses can minuses columns. You can only use the claim that you saved the world from Hitler to cover a multitude of other sins for so long.
Thoughtful piece by Chris Dickey on Venezuela:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-support-for-venezuela-regime-change-is-very-risky-business