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Comments
But that's too much to ask, and that's how you get people pretending to be the enlightened saviors of humanity when all they are is a combination of ruffians spouting the same 8 or so catchphrases, plus a horde of wide-eyed useful dumbfucks drooling over them.
Especially when they involve other people you (or I) can't even reach anymore.
Anyhows, this may be depression acting up but I'm finding it difficult to care about what's going on, I've just been trying to keep to myself. Well, okay, I did march yesterday and spent a good deal of today looking up news and arguing with some dude/gal on TVTropes on whether the PSUV's govt is a terrible dictatorship or just kind of not a good govt maybe, so that's something.
tl;dr: Back in 2018 the government held elections in bullshit conditions that we didn't accept, in theory this makes January tenth the end of his term and legitimacy (if he had any left) and if there's no president elected for reals at the time, the president of the National Assembly becomes acting president, something that the opposition had been threatening with.
It was Popular Will's turn at bat for the National Assembly's presidency, namely Juan Guaidó, a not-that-high-ranking among them (the higher-ranking ones are in exile, jail or hiding at the Chilean embassy). Impress your friends by showing that you know it's pronounced guah-ih-doh, with emphasis on the doh.
Anyhows, Guaidó has been acting as president, unofficially since January 10th and formally since yesterday, January 23th (reminder, that's the anniversary of the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and unofficial democracy day), and over time it's turned from "the opposition is again pretending to have power" to "actually this is kind of important", as several foreign governments have acted up on previous threats against Maduro formally recognizing Guaidó as president (or perhaps more importantly, Maduro as ex-president) including much of South America, the US and Canada, and few have done the same with Maduro. So apparently the... opposition? controls Venezuela's foreign policy. Shit's weird. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing being that (Maduro's) govt is expelling US diplomats from their embassy, and the US govt is telling him to fuck off.
Also, although not much happened at first, people have become increasingly incensed and there's been lots of reports of protests in lots of places, including places that typically don't have any, and yesterday's marches were immense, also the MUD is explicitly appealing to the Armed Forces for their support. Overall it's turning out to be another of those years where things happen. Whether this is a good thing or not is something that remains to be seen, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
That wasn't a tl;dr at all.
Also fwiw I was intending to do one of those end-of-year posts in December 2018 with a rundown of what happened then, but it turned out too bleak for the occasion so I didn't. I guess I'll post it one of these days.
Hope you're okay.
Anyhows, I saw videos of repression in Caracas's slums and it's downright horrifying, with the National Guard shooting to kill. 26 dead as of yesterday.
Also, I no longer have a working non-phone connection so I won't be as up to date anymore.
Regardless, this is half a Venezuelan politics update and half an IJBMer update: I, along with much (most?) of the country, have been out of electric power for almost 48 hours and there's no telling when it will be restored. The entirety of Maracaibo is paralyzed except for the very few places with power generators, lots of patients have died after the hospitals' backup systems failed, food is getting spoiled, no economic activity is going on and who knows how long we can keep like this. Itvfeels as if the country is really collapsing now.
The govt. is particularly opaque when it comes to the electrical system and obviously lack of power is hampering telecommunications, so it's hard to tell what's going on, but apparently something happened at the Guri, the dam that supplies the country with the majority of its power.
I'll try to update if I have another opportunity like now.
Also, it's kinda awkward that with oil so cheap you don't have more backup generators. Or even oil-powered plants. Not that they're preferable to hydro, just more expected in an oil-producing country.
Also, I acknowledge I might receive a reply in a week or so, so no pressure.
Anyhows, in addition to fuel, commercial generators also require lubricant, spare parts and maintenance in general, so even with cheap gasoline (other oil-based products are at reasonable prices) it's more expensive than the power service (and louder and unhealthy), which thanks to the Guri dam (formerly the one with the highest installed power capacity in the world, now third) has been cheap, clean and until the late 00s or so, plentiful and reliable, you can imagine why that's no longer the case. We do have thermoelectric plants, but they're mostly used for places where power distribution is troublesome.
Not many things have worked right in Venezuela, but once upon a time power generation was one that did.
Well, alright, there turns out to be a grocery store nearby, open with a generator and working telecommunications (I don't remember if I've mentioned this, but cash scarcity means debit cards, bank transfers (and recently dollars, it seems) are our only way to pay for things), so that will help if we run out of food, of which we still have enough to last for a while. Also according to a friend of a friend this should last until tomorrow.
90 hours and counting.
Hopefully by the day things will improve enough so that people can start sorting out the mess this has caused. It's about time, things where getting chaotic, several places got looted, including two pharmacies near home.
Thank you again for your kind words, guys. They meant a lot to me.
That's good!
It's all I can do. You're an important friend, and all <_<
A lot more places have power now, though most did not open anyways. Maduro decreed today to be non-labourable, but I think yesterday's widespread looting had more to do with it, it wasn't that bad near here, but the north of the city got ravaged, as well as nearby San Francisco. From what I've read it wasn't that bad in the rest of the country.
Thankfully I've never had to go through a natural disaster or even had to think about it (nature has been nice towards Maracaibo) but I figure having prepared for one would have been useful in a case like this, I'm guessing getting stuck with dwindling resources is similar to what people in areas indirectly affected by disasters have to deal with.
As luck may have it we had been having luck getting food and ended up with what worked as a reserve, and water had been incoming the day of the blackout, so ultimately we could keep up for a good while. Could've used more candles, though. Also I hadn't thought about it, but USB ports on cars are a lifesaver, the ones on a friend's car were how I managed to keep phones charged (communication and light source). Also a cousin had recently purchased a power generator so we could recharge there when we had a way to get there, as well as storing perishables.
Speaking of power generators, I forgot to mention that keeping fuel around is a health hazzard, so that's another reason not to use them, though I get the feeling they'll become more common among businesses from now on.
I think I'll begin updating this thread again.
Also, I hope everything ends up fine rather than like always.
I just got my regular internet connection back (good timing), telecommunications are terrible atm and TV is under censorship so for now I don't know more about what's going on than you guys.
I'm not sure what to feel.
Protests have continued, President Guaidó is still free, Leopoldo is now hiding at they Spanish embassy and people are getting arrested at random on the streets. Presumably there will be purges soon.
As usual, it was too optimistic to assume that good things can happen.
Yeah, that was a bit... odd, to say the least.
At least you're okay right now.
he fought the Legions of Hell
Also, this plus the recent events some few hundred kilometers from here makes me think what happened since the last time you gave us a big update. I've come to assume stuff's stabilized on some kind of shitty-but-at-least-not-spiralling-down level.
I could've sworn this thread wasn't that outdated. After the Empire imposed severe, crushing sanctions on our country the economy improved greatly*, unfortunately then came the pandemic and things went back to sucking. I believed I talked about on IJBMer Updates but the gist of it is that the govt. went from denial that the virus could possibly get here to establishing super-strict policies (curfews and stuff), people complied at first but by the four months mark the city seemed to move as usual except with lots of facemasks (though not anymore). It took ages for us to get vaccines but we did get them, and then it took ages for people to get vaccinated but they did.
At some point I stopped reading non-pandemic political news (and then I stopped reading pandemic news too), though there's that part where Manuel Burrosales ran for governor and won, which is not uplifting news but it has the upside that he is not Omar Prieto.
* The powers that be relaxed the Law of Currency Crimes, depending on who you ask these two events aren't unrelated and they did so to get an in flux of much needed imperialist dollars. Regardless, things got better, unfortunately this also means we'll never be the socialist utopia we were about to become.
I heard about it elsewhere, but Spanish wiki says so:
I don't speak the language, but this is I guess a confirmation to the story. So: a warlord Bolivar fought at some point, led an army dubbed "the legions of Hell". Also, I found the story kick-ass.