Since the US is currently trying to invade Venezuela under the guise of the fight against drugs trafficking I understand Venezuelans being more strict with their borders and would not diacard it being a setup.
There is no need for staging anything, nobody would need a cruise ship full of drugs to think that drugs are coming out of Venezuela...
Staging an event with a cruise ship as an excuse when they could just do the thing anyway seems like an overly complicated conspiracy theory.
I'm not saying, that's definitely the reason they are there, I'm saying it's pretty weird and odd timing to suspect ulterior motives.
Drifting is a common tactic for vessels which don't need to be anywhere specific, and 13 miles offshore is not an unsafe place to be drifting. In this location the wind and current will be mostly from the east, so the vessel will be moving to the west at a low speed. You can see what is in the way and 'oh we will hit an island in 12 hours unless we do something' is not an emergency.
We have done similar things in the past, in Syria and a host of Latin American countries. Even in Venezuela, the US aid Maduro forbid was very likely being used for some kind of smuggling. There is a standard international practice for providing aid that the US completely ignored, earning condemnation from international agencies.
The problem with decrying US participation in domestic political affairs in Latin America during the Cold War is that the US was successful in fending off the spread of Communism, so we will never really know just how much poverty and kleptocracy would have been established if the spread of Communism in Latin America had been successful. Today, the only observable counterfactual is a handful of paranoid, illiberal, dirt-poor nations where the government rules with an iron fist, which is certainly the case in Venezuela.
Right, the rest of Latin America is doing far better than the country under decades of US economic attacks. That's why there's no immigrant problem of overly poor people from countries like Uruguay, basking in that glorious US assisted regime change.
Venezuela was a prosperous and stable country in the mid- to late- 20th century. Declining oil revenues, authoritarian dictatorship, cronyism in PDVSA, expropriation of private assets, unfettered corruption, and narco-capitalism have brought the country to where it is today. Sanctions are a response to the festering illness that has infected the Venezuelan government -- they are not the cause.
Nicaragua is an extremely poor country run by paranoid anti-American leadership that openly welcomes relationships with Russia and China, but Russia is not exactly an economic powerhouse, and China only seeks natural resources and the creation of a second canal via the destruction of Lake Managua (environment be damned).
Cuba is so destitute that its government has had to forbid its citizens from boarding boats.
(Have you ever been to Uruguay? Have you ever had a conversation with a Uruguayan person?)
It is impossible to understand Latin America without considering the effect of American imperialism. But it is also impossible to understand Latin America without considering the effect of American investment. Additionally, it is impossible to understand the mid-20th-century dictatorships that dominated the region without considering them against the backdrop of a Soviet (and then Russian) effort to challenge the interests of the US in its own hemisphere.
So, when you insinuate that the US is the cause of all poverty in Latin America, it demonstrates a one-dimensional interpretation that could never capture the complexity of the full picture.
There are immigrants from all over Latin America living in the United States, from the richest country to the poorest. They want to come to the US because of its economic opportunity, physical security, and greater freedom. I don't understand your point about Uruguay.
Chile has private healthcare (which does not exist in Cuba) as well as taxpayer-funded healthcare programs.
I personally believe that the human right to healthcare is a corollary of the human right to life. Still, I would rather have a surgery in Chile than in Cuba.
Chile's education system has been described as the best in Latin America. And incidentally, the country offers free college tuition to the lowest three-fifths of the income spectrum (https://www.chileatiende.gob.cl/fichas/43203-gratuidad-en-la...). So I don't know what you're talking about.
I would rather get a university degree in Chile than in Cuba.
If you want to go to Cuba for your medical care and education, be my guest. We will see who is healthier and has a more productive career.
Note also that you can't compare a dollar of debt in a productive economy to a dollar of debt in a stagnant economy.
> Nevermind the thousands of tortured, murdered and kidnapped children caused by the US baked dictatorships.
When you compare something, be careful to select the appropriate counterfactual. Arbitrary imprisonment, sham trials, forced disappearances...these are historically quite common in many nations in Latin America, and certainly not unique to US-supported regimes. Nowadays, the most illiberal governments in Latin America are usually those where people are poor and political leaders rail against the USA.
Interesting coming from someone who claims to feel for the hardships of venezuelans.
> Venezuelans are hungry and destitute due to the regime
They are hungry because of crippling economic sanctions.
> and the country's domestic turmoil
Started by foreign desire for regime change.
> It's truly disgusting the kind of inhumanity that Russia and Cuba have propped up in Venezuela.
They are propping up a democratically elected government? Isn't it more disgusting that we are trying to overthrow a democratically elected government in venezuela, like we did in bolivia? Shouldn't you be praising russia and cuba for protecting a democracy?
What's with the ridiculous anti-venezuelan propaganda all of a sudden everywhere on social media? The nytimes op-ed/propaganda by the youtuber daughter of the ousted "venezuelan" central banker wasn't enough?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/vene...
Wonder how the nytimes found this small unknown youtuber to write an op-ed/propaganda about this complex international matter. Also, why does the nytimes, which professes to love democracy, support regime change? I know the nytimes was created by a banker, but does that mean it must peddle bankers' interests even if it means millions of innocent people suffer?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Venezuelan_presidential...
Go to any city or border crossing in Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru and you will find masses of Venezuelan people, many of whom are fleeing their country after having spent years selling their belongings just to have enough money to pay for food. I met a former central bank economist who was running a hamburger stand in Ecuador. I met a former marine biologist who was selling hawking at events in Peru. I met a baker who told me that his family decided to leave Venezuela when they discovered that someone broke into their bakery through a ventilation shaft just to steal some bread dough, and took nothing else -- not even cash.
When I was in Caracas five years ago, I couldn't even find a single bottle of water for sale in the airport. They just didn't have any. Believe it or not, the country has gotten worse since then.
At the time, I wondered why the US is so happy to wage simultaneous wars in the Middle East, yet would not declare a no-fly zone over Venezuela and fly airdrop missions to put food and medicine into population centers.
Venezuela is run by a bus driver. The state oil conglomerate is run by his political party, and headed by a military officer with no formal engineering, geological, or business experience.
I don't blame you for thinking everything is about oil, after what has happened in the Middle East. But Venezuela is a latch point for US adversaries like Russia to operate in the Americas, its people are starving, and the leader jokes about how Venezuelans are on the "Maduro diet" of eating nothing at all while he himself travels to Turkey to smoke cigars while Salt Bae serves up steaks. It's not a socialist country; it's a place where the government steals everything that isn't nailed down while throwing some table scraps to the military, the police, and the poorest of the urban poor...three groups that can incite fear in the rest of the citizenry.
You are quick to accuse people of distributing propaganda. However I would not be surprised, given the timing of your comment several days after this submission fell far off the HN front page, if you yourself are engaged in some kind of state-backed info war. Almost all of your comments on HN are about political positions. If you don't like accusations of nefariousness being leveled at you, then you should be mindful of your own accusations.
If in fact you are just a regular person, then think about whether your ideology is really brought to fruition in countries where kleptocratic authoritarians have unchecked power. Venezuela is not an example of socialism. Rather, it is a cesspool of cronyism.
Also, don't you think it is a "farce" because of once again foreign interference? If it is a farce, then let the venezuelans deal with the matter themselves. What business is it of ours?
It doesn't serve the interests of the american people. The only people who benefit are the international banking cartel.
Also, you keep forgetting that the US has been trying to destabilize venezuela since chavez got elected. So, the election being a "farce" or not doesn't really matter.
One has to wonder, why do you care? What's in it for you? Where is the sudden surge of anti-venezuelan propaganda coming from. Certainly, if you care about elections, there are far egregious cases than venezuela around the world. Bolivia being an obvious one. Have you been pushing propaganda to oust the "unelected" leader of bolivia?
Below, you are shilling for a Bolivian leader who introduced a new constitution with term limits, and then violated those term limits himself by claiming that he had a "human right" to run for reelection.
Shame on you.
That's their right. It's their country. Lots of people are upset at Trump's choices. But that's our business and I certainly would take offense to people says we should be invaded over that.
> and then claiming that the US is responsible for the extreme poverty in Venezuela that predated US sanctions by years.
It's true. Economic sanctions and the efforts to destabilize venezuela is partly responsible for it. If sanctions were not effective, especially against smaller nations, we wouldn't be using it in the first place.
> Below, you are shilling for a Bolivian leader who introduced a new constitution with term limits, and then violated those term limits himself by claiming that he had a "human right" to run for reelection.
Merkel was elected 4 times. Should we invade germany? The bolivian leader got the term limit constitutionally changed. Every country has the right to do that. It is a right of every constitutional democracy. And he won the election by a wide margin. What is there to be upset about?
> Shame on you.
No. Shame on you for being anti-democratic and pushing for invasion of nations and advocating for the suffering of millions of people. Take a step back and look at what you wrote.
Let the venezuelans and bolivians work out their own problems? Why are you so set on invading and destroying these people? What's in it for you? Also, what happened to the throwaways attacking me?