Comment by mananoreboton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mananoreboton | Hacker News Reader

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Don't get me wrong, but perhaps what was missing was greater media coverage and genuine interest in Venezuela's situation. María Corina Machado orchestrated a HUGE covert months long operation to collect tally sheets from the overwhelming majority of voting machines during the 2024 presidential election. Her team trained poll watchers to demand vote receipts (as legally permitted) then capture and transmit that data through various channels, even from the most remote regions of the country. There are documented cases of people—poll workers and participants in the plan—being imprisoned or even killed for their involvement. Thanks to this operation, the website resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com exists, where venezuelan can verify the actual vote count per candidate, backed by fingerprint records and the serial numbers of both the software and hardware used. These verified results confirm that Edmundo González was the true winner of the election. The data provides undeniable evidence that Nicolás Maduro installed himself as a dictator, with the full support of the national electoral authority, which, to this day, has refused to release the official election results (a procedure that has historically been routine).

You can also verify the results here https://macedoniadelnorte.com/ (a whole story behind this hostname). Again, only possible by the María Corina's huge effort

This episode of TAL discussed vote tracking in Venezuela, might be interesting to HN folks.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/848/the-official-unofficial...

Stunning. For making people realise this alone she deserved the prize.

I was surprised to see https://macedoniadelnorte.com/ shows maduro as getting 30% of the vote.

Any explanation on why the site is named that way? Venezuela seems a far way off from "North Macedonia"

Sounds more like a Pulitzer than Nobel Peace Price.

On the other hand, Gore got one for less.

It's a better recipient than pretty much all of the recent previous ones, definitely better than all the presidents.

There is even a Wikipedia section for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Peac...

Well Kissinger got one, so by that logic the bar is set as low as it can be.

If Kissinger got one, maybe BB Netanyahu or Trump can get them too :D

Next year. Assured. It maybe a trio including Tony Blair too - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5j989107lo .

Imagine them being awarded the prize for a war they could have stopped from the beginning. What a travesty that would be.

A little premature, anyway. Let's get through 24 hours of a ceasefire first. That'd be an achievement these days ...

I think the method should also been taken in to consideration.

>Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas.

That's not negotiating.

But in that case let's do a rename! Nobel War Prize! That would also fit the ministry of war more.

Sounds right from the playbook of the superpowers, when an oil rich country has a government that doesn't allow them to profit from their oil resources - (1) demonize the current leader and government, (2) Give international publicity and recognition to a politician ideologically friendly to them (3) Destabilise the unfriendly government by launching an internal / external war against them (4) Install the friendly puppet politician as the leader of the country (while shouting "democracy has won", if you are western superpower) (5) Profit!

This comment reads as deeply ignorant and callous toward the treatment of the Venezuelan people by their government. Fully 1/3 of Venezuelans have fled the country due to repression and economic decline due to Maduro’s mismanagement. As someone who reads Spanish I can tell you the the media in non US aligned Latin American countries is regularly reporting on the dictatorship in Venezuela.

Not everything is about oils or some conspiracy of western governments.

And what’s funny is that I’m even willing to trade oil deals if someone gets rid of the murderer kleptocracy that stole Venezuela from us. So yeah let’s do some oil deals if you help us get back to democracy.

Will you still have democracy once Corina Machado realizes her plan to privatize oil companies?

I have little doubt she did a lot of good practical work for Venezuelan democracy (to expose Maduro's government). But her ideology - accept foreign invasion (which will inevitably kill innocent venezuelans) and privatizing oil reserves (which will inevitably result in undemocratic fallout of the profits) - is unfortunately not that of peace and democracy.

I wish she would more look at Norway as an example, which is a rare case of oil profits being shared collectively and democratically.

I’m not advocating for an invasion don’t get me wrong.

Venezuela had the biggest oil earnings of its history during the early Chavez years and all that money was pilfered. The oil industry infrastructure, the electric infrastructure is currently in shambles due to lack of investment, maintenance and corruption. Part of the recovery of Venezuela will require external investments just to get production back to the levels we had before this calamity.

They also took massive loans in exchange for future oil at insane prices, when people argues that we are going to lose our oil if X or Y happens to me it doesn’t mean anything, because we already lost it with these inept criminals in the government anyway.

Edit: even Maduro is now offering our country’s riches to the US in exchange for remaining in power:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...

> I’m not advocating for an invasion don’t get me wrong.

Note that while you're not, the Nobel Peace prize winner unfortunately is. And honestly, much more so than privatizing oil, I think this would be the end of even the sham democracy that currently exists. The examples of countries becoming more democratic after a foreign military invasion intent on regime change are entirely restricted to the losing powers in WW 2.

> Will you still have democracy once Corina Machado realizes her plan to privatize oil companies?

Yes. Norway is basically the only real democracy with a nationalized oil firm, and they found oil after having been a democracy for like 100 years. Everywhere else state oil companies are piggy banks for tyrants and prevent the country from investing in economic development because they don’t need private tax revenues. State oil companies are a trap.

I think you missed my point - how can you claim you have democracy if you're not allowing your citizens to decide what to do with national resources (by privatizing them)? Privatization is a trap as well.

Private/state distinction matters only a little in practice for democracy. What matters is whether people have democratic control (equal participation on decision-making) over these structures.

You're creating a false dichotomy. It is true that Venezuela is very poorly governed, and it's also that the the US is doing everything they can to prevent Venezuela from monetizing their natural resources, oil in particular, in order to try to inflict economic suffering on the common people. This is the whole sadistic, and nonsensical, point of sanctions - inflict suffering on common people in hopes they'll blame their government instead of people inflicting suffering on them, overthrow their government, and then align themselves with the people inflicting suffering on them.

Without US sanctions Venezuela, and Venezuelans, would be in a dramatically better place today.

The countless human rights violations, stealing elections etc. predate the sanctions. This honestly feels like patronizing. Look up the UN reports of all the human rights violations happened over the last couple of decades there.

> Without US sanctions Venezuela, and Venezuelans, would be in a dramatically better place today.

No. They wouldn't. The Venezuelan government has proven extremely incompetent to produce oil.

What the Trump's tariffs have shown to the world is that, in the scale globalization is today, trade with the US doesn't matter that much anymore. Case in point: Brazil. After Trump stuck 50% tariffs on them, their exports to other countries grew much more than enough to offset the loss to the U.S.

The US embargo on Venezuela is a lot like its embargo in Cuba, Iran and North Korea: it is not the cause of people suffering but is an excuse by those corrupt and incompetent regimes to hide their failures.

Don't think you know what you're talking about. The sanctions to the country came way after the economic, social and political chaos.

Wiki conveniently has a nice graph demonstrating the real GDP/capita in Venezuela [1], which is reasonably reflective of the economic crisis. In 1980 it was around $16,000. By ~2013-2014 it had peaked a bit higher than $18,000 and had risen dramatically faster than the average for Latin America.

In 2014 there were mass protests against the government, in reality it was an attempt to overthrow the government, which was responded to with brutality. That brutality was met with sanctions. Today their GDP/capita is about $5000. That's obviously going to be explained in part by the decline in oil prices around the same time, but not to that degree, to say the least.

* - As an addendum here it's also unclear to me how exactly Wiki is calculating that figure and whether it accounts for, in any way, the substantial scale of emigration from Venezuela. If not, then the relative decline is even larger than it sounds.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela#/media/Fil...

No, those sanctions were on very specific people, not companies or industries. Those came later in 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuela...

Not quite. A useful term related to sanctions is overcompliance. You can read the exact verbiage of some of the earliest sanctions here. [1] In a nutshell engaging in any form of trade (including transfer of expertise or whatever else) that directly or indirectly benefited a sanctioned person could trigger extremely harsh penalties.

Many government officials in Venezuela have direct involvement with various industries, including oil. So it suddenly becomes this extremely complex and dangerous mess when doing any trade whatsoever with Venezuela. This is why their economy completely collapsed following the sanctions.

[1] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/03/11/2015-05...

Our collapse predates the sanctions.

Also, Maduro is willing to trade our natural resources if it gets him more years in power:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...

Absolutely, which makes this whole thread all the more absurd, or at least typical. It seems increasingly likely we'll get a war in Venezuela, likely supported by this Nobel Peace Prize winner, with the goal of installing her in power. It seems Guaido is out of fashion? Anyhow, if "we" win, and she gets installed, you know the first thing she's going to do? Trade access to your natural resources for wealth and power. They're the only reason the US is there. And then in a decade you'll be ranting against her.

Look at the history of people the US sponsors in regime change operations around the world, and how things turn out. So long as they're loyal to the US, first and foremost, anything goes. Carlos Castillo Armas, Fulgencio Batista, Humberto Castelo Blanco, Augusto Pinochet, Efrain Rios Montt and many more though I'm limiting myself to the Americas. Of course I can fully understand the perspective that 'anything must be better than this shit show.' But it often turns out, in hindsight, that that's not exactly the case.

And in general this is a big part of the reason that I'm highly opposed to the US meddling in countries around the world. There's always such a heavy price to pay in American dollars and the blood of others. And.. for what? Yeah yeah, this time it's different...

My man the alternative we are currently suffering is WAY worse, you think we care if we do business with the US once we recover our democracy? It’s what I’m expecting. The country needs a lot of foreign investment, the US was our main partner before these criminals came to power.

And look, what a coincidence that this so called neo-liberal "opposition" leader of Venezuela plans to privatise her countries oil companies (and other industries) again, and return it to their original owners (again, just another remarkable co-incidence that her father was the President of such a private company that was nationalised):

> Machado defines herself — and her party, Vente Venezuela — as “liberal” (or neoliberal, depending on how you look at it), both politically and economically. Her political vision revolves around reducing the size of the state as a provider of public policies, supporting entrepreneurship and promoting the free market, as a means of creating wealth and jobs in a devastated economy. Her vision of government is similar to what Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan had in mind ... The presidential candidate has proposed privatizing the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) — a taboo in local politics — and returning all the companies that have been expropriated by the Chavista regime to their rightful owners. This also includes Siderúrgica Venezolana — a company that her father (who died this year) was the president of, before it was seized ... Her vision on the distribution of social funds is somewhat more American than European, as is her deeply anti-communist discourse.

Source: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-01/maria-co...

> and it's also that the the US is doing everything they can to prevent Venezuela from monetizing their natural resources, oil in particular

This is not at all true. A large share of Venezuelan oil is refined in Texas by Citgo for PDVSA. The US could easily stop that but doesn’t. The sanctions are on regime ghouls, the military, and some state companies run by the security apparatus. None of which existed before the 3rd time the Chavistas stole an election and jailed their opposition.

Sure, I am maybe ignorant about local Venezuelan politics, but I am quite tuned to what is happening to it internationally. And I can confidently state that Trump or the US don't have the best interests of Venezuela when it tries to bring "democracy" there through war (internal or external). We all know that it is rubbish to call Venezuela a "narco-state". And we all know how much the Trump administration truly cares about "democracy", whether in the US or in Venezuela. The simple fact is that, along with Cuba, Venezuela remains a persistent thorn for the Americans in South America (their "backyard") because of their inability to dominate them politically. To make matters worse (for Venezuela), Venezuela has the world's largest proven reserves – roughly 18% of the global total – in the vast Orinoco Belt. (That’s more than Saudi Arabia and Canada, though Venezuelan crude is harder to process). Russia and China have invested in Venezuelan oil industry and that has further rattled the US as it brings both the Russians and the Chinese to their "backyard".

(I'll believe the west's "concerns" on Venezuela's "democracy" and "human rights" when they overthrow the dictators in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE - where western companies are allowed to profit from oil resources in these regions - and bring "democracy" there).

You may also want to educate yourself on the real reason for the Gaza Genocide and why Trump and Tony Blair ( https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5j989107lo ) now plan to "directly administrate" Gaza - (1) https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/trumps-gaza-takeover-all-about... (2) https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-israel-brutal... ... As always, the sudden interest by the ex-colonials to bring "democracy" in Palestine is also about oil and gas.

Don’t make everything about yourself. We are in a big trouble just as it is and we could use all the help we can, even from the US regardless of who is at WH at the moment.

Imagine telling venezuelans living in venezuela, to go educate themselves about venezuela

Sire thing your links will be right and all my years suffering here are BS

> Sure, I am maybe ignorant about local Venezuelan politics

You should have stopped right there.

The reason western countries care about Venezuela’s democracy is twofold it was prior to the Chavez coup the oldest democracy in South America, and Maduro helps other anti-democratic leaders in Latin America rig elections and suppress opposition. He’s a regional destabilizing force.

If you think this is about oil it shows how little you know, please read a bit more before spouting off here, this isn’t Reddit.

> due to repression and economic decline due to Maduro’s mismanagement

Let's be real, sanctions play a big role in the economic decline of Venezuela.

Saudi Arabia isn't a democracy. In fact, it's a very problematic totalitarian regime, where women have limited rights and the royalty has been known to kill enemies. They very much mismanage money, with ridiculous projects, ostentatious lifestyles if you're royalty or the elite, and have the "highest prevalence of modern slavery of all countries in the Arab States region" [1].

Saudi Arabia is doing well economically though because it isn't sanctioned by the USA, and you don't hear bad press about it's totalitarian regime, or corruption, etc. because it's a USA ally.

If the USA cared about how people are treated by their government, they'd be in Sudan or Congo. The USA cares about getting rid of Maduro, so they will make it as difficult as possible for the Venezuelan regime to make money from its oil, while pointing out all that's wrong and blaming Maduro for everything.

I'm not saying things are well in Venezuela, or that Maduro is a good leader. I'm saying this is all part of a playbook that's been successful before, and it's reductionist to not blame the USA for Venezuela's decline.

[1]: https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...

Sanctions are absolutely not the reason for economic decline. Chavez installed cronies into the national oil company who ran it into the ground, and Maduro spent the everything they had on the security state. Both successive regimes have made private industry nearly impossible.

This is an utterly cartoonish take.

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