Blinken: Overwhelming evidence Venezuela opposition won election
bbc.com
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His intervention comes as the presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia all called on Venezuela to release the full details of last Sunday's election.
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It has also attracted global criticism, with many governments around the world demanding the Venezuelan government release proof of the result.
The result has been recognised by Venezuelan allies China, Russia and Iran.
But, the US, European Union and other G7 countries have called on Mr Maduro’s government to release detailed voting data.
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The USA has tried to make coups happen in Venezuela like half a dozen times or more over the decades, I just cannot trust anything America says about the internal politics of Venezuela.
Not that it matters what I think, America will do whatever the fuck it wants.
Sigh. What about virtually every other country out there that is not a dictatorship saying it too?
I'm not saying I trust Maduro or anything, but the US making a statement makes me very suspicious about the truth of that, just based on history.
The US weighing in removes credibility to the claim that the election was tampered with.
What if...the US said Maduro won? Would that add any credibility to the claim that the election was tampered with? Is Lula any less legitimate just because his victory was recognized by the US? Or would you just dismiss it and look at other opinions, mainly in SA stakeholders who suffered under US-backed dictatorships?
Yanno that's a good question, I do think if the USA says something about the internal politics of a South American country I tend to believe the opposite is closer to the truth.
That's the point 😁 it's just as silly to decide to believe the US at face value as to believe the opposite just because they said it.
Of course you can formulate this as having a hypothesis based on a prior history. But then you have to look at the evidence too to decide whether to accept or reject your original hypothesis in the face of new data. Some people need stronger evidence based on how strongly they believe their original stance.
I personally was skeptical of the opposition's 66% claim, but so far the mess of the election and not publishing results is too strong for me to ignore. But some people are so entrenched in their position that it would literally take seeing Maduro personally stuffing ballot boxes in front of them to change their mind.
What annoys me in all this is people who just take their hypothesis as all the evidence they need to convict.
Would it help if I said I knew someone from Venezuela who is adamant that Maduro cheated? My old coworker heavily dislikes Maduro
I know someone in the US who is adamant Biden cheated, too. That's not really evidence.
I don't disagree. I just think we shouldn't dismiss the possibility just because the US says it's the case. The US also said Putin was going to invade Ukraine and caught a lot of ridicule online for that, but it turned out to be a spot on prediction.
That's true lol
All US pawns. They said the same thing about the Soviets who brought a workers' paradise to Eastern Europe until the capitalists finally overthrew them.
Lolol. Oh I'm chuckling away here. That's so funny.
People like you make it harder to criticise the US for legitimate reasons.
Hell, "election monitoring" in South America is a pretty historically good reason to criticise them, but now anyone who wants to make this point has to grapple with being called a tankie, and we have to sit alongside statements like "the Soviets who brought a workers' paradise".
Gee, that might have happened if any functioning soviets actually survived the first couple of years of the USSR, and it hadn't become a full-on counter-revolutionary state capitalist empire.
Edit: Actually looking at this person's posts they appear to be sarcastic here. Sorry, but there are ways to do sarcasm that land, and this wasn't it.
"Hadn't become"? The revolution ended de facto with the October "revolution", when Bolsheviks started to control who sat on the councils. There may have been a couple of days or even a month where there existed a USSR but it wasn't full-fledged counter-revolutionary, but only because the Bolsheviks needed some time to boil the revolutionary frog.
Ha ha ha you're so funny.Or stupid. Or paid lol, because you just can't be that ignorant lol fr.
But please continue mr zero awareness guy, at least nobody is going to fall for that level of bs.
Pretty sure they're just stupid.
If true then that's some impressive stupidity 😁
Nice take edgelord. Living standards were quite low in the Soviet Union for the overwhelming majority of the population, and they had very little political freedom to imprpve them. Reforms were met with a coup attempt, and it fell apart into various states where even today many are not aligned with "the big spooky west".
Do you understand what living conditions were like before the revolution? Socialism took an agrarian society and catapulted it into one that won the space race. Literaracy, food output, lifespan all increased during socialism, and they deteriorated again once the USSR devolved back into capitalism.
I think most of this is attributable more so to the abolition of serfdom and the industrial revolution than the communist one. The US also had those improve during the same period too.
Lol it advanced way faster in the west.
Not in the same period of time for the same level of development. And when it did, they accomplished it mostly through colonies and 1800's imperialism.
Cherry picking at its finest.
Start listening in your history classes!
History is exactly why I'm skeptical.
I suspect you are either too young to have even known someone that grew up in a Soviet state or you are just a fucking useful idiot.
Well I'm not that sure about that, it seems that lots of east germany people say they preferred the DDR.
Lots of Americans say they preferred trump to any other president. I don't know what point you're trying to make.
People really not picking up on your sarcasm
It's fine. At least they're making my point for me.
The internet is filled with Schrodinger's Asshole. How is anyone supposed to know if you meant it sarcastically originally or are just claiming it was sarcastic now that it hasn't landed?
I made a ridiculous argument so people could connect it to the ones being made about Venezuela. Sarcasm and satire can be very effective. Just because Poe says there's always one nut out there who actually believes in a ridiculous argument doesn't mean sarcasm shouldn't be used.
NGL my first impression was no sarcasm because of the lack of s/. I thought Lemmygrad just had another leak.
I hate the /s. If your sarcasm is good it should stand on it's own merit.
You're acting like only America says something about it. Only the most scummy countries seem to "believe" maduro.
America is a scummy country:
Yes but the others are definitely worse.
What could be worse than an alliance with a genocidal party like Likud?
No, I've just seen this kinda thing happen again and again, specifically with Venezuela. Sadly, the nation is getting used as a political battleground, so of course America and its allies are on one side and their rivals on the other.
Plus, the US has a long dark history of meddling in the politics of South American countries, this is absolutely the kind of thing it does to extert power.
This is not that.
Most of those failed interventions of Latin America mind you come from conservative administrations. Blinken isn't a Neocon.
Maduro is corrupt as fuck and myriad independent nations and watchdogs corroborate the same point.
Plenty of Democratic administrations have done coups and wars all over the world. It's just a US empire policy, no matter who is President, mostly because of capitalism. Sure, conservatives are usually worse about it, but Democrats do it, too. Biden is supporting a genocide in Israel. McKinley fought the Philippines, Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish American, JFK invaded Cuba and tried to coup it, Truman led the war in Korea and established a US puppet dictatorship in n the south for, JFK and LBJ were also involved in Vietnam, etc.
Blinken hasn't said anything about the IDF committing war crimes in Gaza despite overwhelming evidence, so I'm going to say he's being selective at least when it comes to reviewing evidence.
Yes that sucks. I have my thoughts on the Israeli conflict that add considerable nuance. However, we are discussing Latin America, which what I said is factually correct. Why are you deflecting to Israel now? I could just as easily point to Blinken highlighting the war crimes Russia has committed and which a Neocon never would've cared.
Once again, many nations corroborate this, and Maduro is known to be corrupt from the outset.
The allies supporting Maduro are... China...Iran... and Russia... Just bastions of freedom and transparency, amirite.
Just wanted to chime in and say that pointing to Blinken's inconsistency on addressing oppressive regimes isn't deflection, it's context illuminating his motivations in the public statements he makes, this being one on Venezuela
The way I see the current administration's policy is this:
I think ultimately a lot of the optics right now is framed around getting reelected and ensuring Trump, who would be far more pro-genocide, doesn't get in the White House. Blinken is clearly echoing marching orders from Biden in that respect.
Do I believe this administration at this point wants anything to do with Bibi in reality? Not really.
My point is that Blinken/the state department have been caught lying before, so using them as a source of information is just not something one should do.
I'm probably getting downvoted here, but I agree with your statement of the US having had a problematic history of usurping power from democratically elected governments in Central and South America. You can at least see that some of the countries that support Venezuela's election results are run by dictators. Hell, Cuba and North Korea wouldn't be out of place on that list too. Considering that Maduro lost a lot of popularity after Chavez's death, partly due to the welfare system taking a huge hit when oil prices fell and partly due to him showing opulence in times of hunger.
All of these things may not be damning, but it puts the man in a bad light and makes me wonder if he actually did cheat the system in a way that our own domestic wannabe dictator tried doing just 4 years ago.
It's not really democracies vs dictators, it's countries in the US's sphere vs countries not in the US's sphere. It becomes more obvious and easy to see then. The OAS has been a puppet of US interests since the beginning (there's a reason they didn't let Cuba in). It literally started by a pledge to fight communism in the western hemisphere. Basically, it's the US empire and it's puppets and allies vs a rising new order of old colonized and sanctioned countries, which admittedly looks scary, but hopefully will one day lead to a multipolar world where people can deal with their own local issues without worry of western interference (which has almost always been net bad for the people of those countries in the global south Asia, Africa, and South America).
A country full of resources is very often a curse for its people.
On a note, *meddling.
Here are the results based on the voting receipts that the government doesn't want to release
https://supervisiondev2.metabaseapp.com/public/dashboard/6b2f7b3b-16ec-4af6-84c7-69c39ee2139d?tab=16-english
Surprised you're getting downvoted. People must have a very short term memory. I'd wait a couple days for them to get full results. It took like a week for the 2020 election to get the full results and that's in the US.
I'm Venezuela you can ask for a receipt of the votes for the place you voted at, the results have been compiled and made available by the opposition, Maduro got about a third of the votes, there's a reason why he hasn't released the numbers already.
Even in the US it can take a like a week to compile detailed election results. In the 2000 election, it took more than 30 days to settle the election. They ended up handing it to the conservatives and life has gone downhill for the US since. You may really believe it, but there are people in the US who thought Trump would win every state and have called it a steal ever since.
It's definitely possible he stole it, it's very in character, but the US has a vested interest in helping the opposition make up numbers and it's very in character for them to help with a coup, too. I'm just going to keep an open mind for a couple more days probably, see if any more countries jump in being angry at Venezuela that aren't US aligned or if any more evidence comes out.
You're ignoring what I said on purpose? Voting is done electronically, the results have been released by the opposition, Maduro's side is intentionally not making the proofs public.
Here are the results based on the voting receipts that the government doesn't want to release
https://supervisiondev2.metabaseapp.com/public/dashboard/6b2f7b3b-16ec-4af6-84c7-69c39ee2139d?tab=16-english
There's no way to independently verify that the opposition's source data is accurate. It doesn't mean much until we can see the official data to see if it can explain the discrepancies. If there's no competing data released within the next couple days then we can take it at face value, and I'll 100% accept it, but until then, I'd at least give them as much time as I gave Biden. That seems fair. Especially if they're worried about hacks and opposition messing with the election data (and it's not like the US doesn't have a history of messing with elections so it's not completely unbelievable despite everyone's incredulity here).
Their data matches independent exit polls, the government's data doesn't.
Those exit polls were done by a US research agency that's worked with US government projects before.
The election in 2000 took a long time because it was very close in one state that would make a difference.
The opposition in Venezuela for once was organized and unified. They put observers in most polling places, which is their right in Venezuela. They were still denied access in some of them.
All parties have a right to get the tally from each site prior to it being sent to the central committee. The opposition has presented the tally sheets to the press. The government has not.
The level of proof is incredible. It should not be necessary. And yet even with this in hand, people doubt because they like socialism.
Even in 2020, it took many days before they called the election and released counts. Maduro is saying they tried to release it but got hacked, which I know is unbelievable to people here, but it is 100% within the US's power and interest to do so. I admit it doesn't look good, but if the government doesn't get data out within a couple days, I'd be more inclined to believe the opposition. I just don't want to rush to anything considering the history of elections in this country and US meddling, it's perhaps making me overly cautious lol.
Also, in their defense, socialism has helped people in countries of equivalent development more than capitalism every single time so that makes sense. Argentina has already speed run a higher inflation rate than Venezuela with their great capitalist policies. For globally south countries, "free markets" always means letting foreign companies trade local resources, at the cost of losing sanctions from those foreign companies, which artificially make it seem like those policies were better than they actually were. Maduro has made lots of mistakes but an alternate left candidate would be more likely to help the country than a right-wing one.
Now Venezuela isn't super socialist, and I heard Gonzalez is supposed to be kinda centrist, so hopefully it's not that bad if he ends up in charge. But currently, Machado also seems like the one saying everything and leading the movement, and she's already revealed herself to be pro Zionist, which reveals a pro-imperialist sentiment, which is a red flag to me.
I'm on an instance that doesn't allow downvotes and it kicks ass.
But people are goldfish when it comes to politics. They forget how the US tried to secretly arm groups supporting Juan Guaido so they could put him in charge like just a few years ago.
The US wants to open Venezuela's natural resources, particularly lithium, to the West.
Literally the whole world except dictatorships says it's rigged, it's not about the USA.
The USA is the world's sole superpower and this is in their area of influence. It's always about them when they get involved (as they have in 2002, 2013, 2017, and 2019, etc.).
You’re very naive to say it’s not about the USA.
Here are the results based on the voting receipts that the government doesn't want to release
https://supervisiondev2.metabaseapp.com/public/dashboard/6b2f7b3b-16ec-4af6-84c7-69c39ee2139d?tab=16-english