My point being that many countries in LatAm live in a disguised civil war state and it's just "normal" (far from it, actually).
And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion.
There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.
He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government.
CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.
Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.
See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD
From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&...
I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.
I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.
There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.
As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right?
To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets".
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins
If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison.
I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.
Gangs murder people out of cold blood.
The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.
Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.
The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.
What I simply can't get my head around is why aren't there enough Venezuelans resisting this nightmare? Is everyone just a sheep, go along to get along, afraid to pop their head up lest it get lopped off by government thugs?
The worst part? The opposition in Venezuela is socialist! Even without tampons and basic medicine they won't admit they are wrong.
But are they communist? Or do they just support a welfare state? (Like many of Brazilian extreme right would be confused with the left if they ever traveled to the US. Is it the same case?)
I got the impression they were mostly formed by the business people that didn't flee your country.
The conflict in Syria was started and escalated by Assad. It was prolonged by a number of actors, including Russia and Iran supporting Assad, and the gulf states / Turkey etc., supporting the other side.
America is a common boogeyman for whenever something goes wrong in the world (Venezuela's Maduro never misses an opportunity to blame the US for his own regime's multitude of failures and crimes).
Venezuela, by its turn, is mostly Brazil and Argentina's fault. The US gave some financing to the current government, but it's a rounding error overall. The Brazilian government even helped organizing their dictatorship at the time it was trying to do the same here.
That really depends on what timescale you care about and who's side you're on.
Would Korea be better off if the US never got involved? What about if the Chinese never stepped in?
What if the US had tried harder to prop up the Shah in Iran? What if the US hadn't backed Saddam in the 80s?
What if the US had never backed the Mujaheddin against the soviets? Backing them caused a lot of bad stuff but bleeding the USSR to death may have averted continuing the cold war and another Vietnam somewhere else in the world decades later.
Time only goes one way. You never get do-overs. You just get to make the best decision you can for the current situation.
I'm also in the camp of "we're not world police"
"We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one.
(Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)
Sadly, it is reality. It is happening all the time all over the world - Democratic Republic of Congo makes American press maybe once a year but has been awful for 2+ decades.
And are instrumental in making it happen again.
Is it about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League ?
I agree that stabilizing the region is a better solution than taking in refugees. But stabilizing the region is much, much more difficult and requires time to work, during which individuals are suffering. The solution is to do both: resettle those in imminent danger, while providing aid and peacekeeping support to restore stability to the region.
Of course, the events in Syria have demonstrated, in my opinion, a serious apathy on the part of the west to actually providing that second point. What the US and NATO allies have done in Syria is the bare minimum, and in doing so has allowed dangerous groups to fester and grow, and created a massive humanitarian crisis. The attitude in certain circles seems to be that as long as the West doesn't get involved in this, they can't be held responsible for the outcome, while getting involved means the West owns the issue and any consequences. But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to. We bear some responsibility for what is happening in Syria, whether through action or inaction.
>But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to
I mean, that's your opinion, but I disagree with that completely. Syria, though, is far more complicated than a normal situation.
My opinion is that, when faced with a potential humanitarian crisis, we should evaluate our various options (including inaction) for what leads to the least casualties and highest quality of life for as many people, including secondary factors like the possibility of intervention inspiring terrorists. This model will be far from perfect, as it's impossible to determine true outcomes 5, 10, 20 years down the line, but it will be the best we can come up with. Then we pick the best option (which will often involve a judgment call), and inaction is treated neither more or less important than any other option. From a moral perspective, I think this is the best strategy available.
You raise an important point about optics and the opinion of the world abroad, but I frankly don't care. People can complain and rage against the West for it's policies and decisions all they want. All we can do is our best, and we should do so proudly and openly.
> People in Venezuela are calling for US airstrikes. Like seriously? After all the anti-US/West sentiment now when it comes up in your backyard you want us there? No thanks. Solve your own problems.
Everyone is deserving of help, even those that hate us, even hypocrites. If they are ungrateful, that's there prerogative. We don't do this for approval, we act because it's the best we can do.
I understand and accept that you disagree with my view, and that my view isn't the most popular opinion.
They're asking the US to go and kill their enemies as a favour.
Last year Venezuelans requesting political asylum passed China and is now the number 1 country. 3 years ago we weren't even on the top 10.
https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/...
You may call it cultural dilution, but I call it cultural suicide. Safe zones should be established.
In any case, sure, call it "cultural suicide." I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual.
And no, in the real world you don't get safe spaces.
'Culture' is a broad term, and encompasses the legal and government systems as well. When you say death of a culture, you probably have in mind things like traditional food, music, and clothes.
What about things like legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, the right to free speech or a fair trial, socialized medicine, the educational institutions supporting all of this, and a police and legal system where corruption is rare? They're just as much a part of culture.
Different countries have different amounts of these cultural characteristics. Many lives, far more than one or a thousand, were lost fighting for them, or lost due to their absence, and few would throw them away as carelessly as you.
I think I do not see it as realistic that those things you mention are threatened by mass migration (whether of refugees or otherwise). As a concrete example, I live in Brooklyn, where there is a significant Jewish sub-community with their own cultural identity and in particular very conservative religious/political views. This community showed up in Brooklyn largely because they were part of the Jewish migration from eastern Europe in the early 20th century, escaping anti-Semitism there (so, this was not quite voluntary migration by people who chose America for American values). They're very successful in their own neighborhoods and absolutely maintain their own values, but don't seem to have had any effect on Brooklyn's liberal values or the culture at large; if anything we're one of the communities most stereotyped as liberal to a fault.
Usually when I see fears about cultural changes in European countries receiving migrants, that fear is expressed in racial or at most religious terms, and not in political terms. I see things like "your child will be going to school with Muslims," not "your child will be taught at school that the right to free speech doesn't cover blasphemy." Yes, you can argue in theory that the former could imply the latter. But that doesn't seem to be what's actually happening. (If it is, I'd appreciate being corrected!)
Also, at least as I see it, the lives that were lost fighting for legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, etc. were almost universally not fights between European culture and non-European cultures. They were generally fights within a culture, and occasionally fights between different Western cultures (e.g., the US war for independence). I do not see people arguing against migration e.g. within the US or even between Western states, just from one particular racial/religious origin to any Western nation, whether or not that Western nation believes in legal equality of the sexes, socialized medicine, free speech, etc.
BTW, the USA is has a great dose of responsibility for mess in Venezuela is in. Maybe if it were not for your interventionist politics, Venezuela wouldn't be living all this radicalization.
Search in YouTube for the impressive documentary "The Revolution won't be televised".
Did you read what you typed after you typed it!? Shameful, much less relevant.
Only a geopolitical fool would allow a crisis/opportunity like this slip by without at least claiming a little side action. Even Goldman Sachs has skin in the game.
(Oh right they are all the U.S. sockpuppets of course)
It really isn't that good of oil and requires a higher price to refine. It is somewhat analogous to what the Canadians have to do to the oilsands production. Since it requires more work than say Saudi or North Dakota shale, it has a higher cost of production. Saudi's cost are very low, and the tech is making ND / TX fracking cheaper along with a new pipeline that cuts the cost of ND oil.
So, it requires a bit more competence and investment to get the value and compete in a global market. Sadly, Venezuela is incompetent.
There are also plenty oil less countries that do well, what Venezuela is doing is just pure WTF, even considering their placement.
At the same time Maduro doesn't seem to give a shit and just presses on with his absolute devoted voter base, pure PR and attempts to meddle with the constitution.
We don't need another Syria on our hands, where two sides of a civil was were aided and armed by great powers who didn't care enough to significantly involve themselves in the conflict but cared just enough in principle to prolong it, destroying the nation in the process.
I recognize that Venezuela is far from being Syria, but at the end of the day, prolonged civil war is worse than either side winning outright. Order over chaos.