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[smjjames]

Also Teneb, the farc is still a very real thing. It might not have the might that once had, but the fact they publicly "lay down their arms" doesn't mean all of them did or they still don't enforce their will through violence. ELN is still at large too.

Re: Farc: Yeah, but FARC is now a political party, yet the election propaganda acted as if they were still in their old, jungle-stalking form. As in, as if they had never laid down arms officially, and etc. Which is straight-up fear-mongering.

Old habits die hard? There was also that breakaway group who refused to lay down arms, but the leader of that got killed a bunch of months ago and I don't know what became of that breakaway group.

[Reelya]

Colombian Ex-president Uribe was against the FARC peace treaty. My guess is that it's related to (1) most of the drugs are grown in areas controlled by Anti-FARC paramilitaries, allied to the government and (2) a number of Uribe's close family are in prison convicted of connections to said paramilitaries (see links for some sources for these claims). Keeping the FARC around was convenient political cover for neo-nazi drug-cartels closely allied to the army, police and ruling political party.

Here's a timeline for 2008 in Colombia. In early 2008, Uribe was facing scandals related to his family's involvement with drug-trafficking death squads. Shortly after, Uribe's forces kill the FARC's peace negotiator, Raul Reyes, then after that, Uribe takes the credit for ordering a "daring" raid to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, a FARC hostage for several years.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/23/colombia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jaque
Firstly, Raul Reyes was actually working on getting Ingrid Betancourt released at the time of his death. Uribe's forces therefore allowed him to take military credit for something that would have happened anyway, without bloodshed.

Secondly, it came out that there was no "raid" at all. Leaked footage shows FARC militia merely handing over Ingrid Betancourt (and some other prisoners) to Colombian army officers illegally disguised as International Red Cross members. Uribe then changed his story: they'd infiltrated FARC's command structure and were able to trick them into doing a prisoner transfer (via the Red Cross apparently). However, the question must be asked: exactly how long had Uribe had these infiltrators in place? Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped in 2002, while she was running against Uribe for the presidency, then a few years later he conveniently snaps his fingers and gets her released. Both occurred at opportune times in Uribe's political career, and Uribe apparently had an easier time getting her out without a fight than a number of senior FARC people such as Reyes who were trying to negotiate the same thing. It's all too convenient.

(as an aside, when people pointed out that if the guerillas handed over prisoners to the International Red Cross then they were in fact releasing the prisoners not merely transporting the prisoners, Uribe tried to lump the International Red Cross in with the terrorists saying the FARC expected the Red Cross to merely help them move prisoners around. I'm 100% sure this is bullshit and the Red Cross doesn't in fact assist hostage-taking terrorists. But this is standard rhetoric from the Colombian right: all types of journalists, NGOs, unions, human rights activists, etc, are in league with the terrorists).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/colombia-president-alvaro-uribe-brother-charged-death-squad
President's brother convicted of running death squads.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/08/alvaro-uribe-accused-paramilitary-ties
Ex-death squad leader accuses president Uribe of personally funding his group. There are more, these were just a few seconds worth of googling. Here's one about his cousin going to prison for the same stuff:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12532826

Here's a wider overview:
https://colombiareports.com/uribes-cartel-years/

Here's the nail in the coffin in the "FARC = Drugs" argument.
http://library.aceondo.net/ebooks/HISTORY/Drugs__Oil__and_War__The_United_States_in_Afghanistan__Colombia__and_Indochina.pdf

Page 81 citations:
"Newsweek, May 21, 2001: “Colombian intelligence sources now estimate that 40 percent of the country’s total cocaine exports are controlled by these right-wing warlords and their allies in the  narcotics underworld.” San Francisco Chronicle, June  21, 2001: “The Colombian government’s planning department estimates that FARC earns $290 million  yearly  from  the  drug  trade. That represents less than 2.5 percent of the value of Colombia’s estimated annual cocaine output of 580 tons.” "

This was the FARC at their absolute peak of power, as well, before Uribe got elected. So, right wing = drugs in Colombia but their propaganda is to blame the Left for the whole shebang. I've see Docos where DEA guys go deep into FARC-controlled areas to destroy coca crops. This is corrupt politcal BS at it's worst. They're just taking out the competition while tacitly leaving the government-allied nazi drug lords alone.

[smjjames]

Colombia is terrible, got it.

Anyways, as far as Brazil goes, an article I found in a Vox article says that the Brazillian generals have ruled out military intervention outside of humanitarian missions.

[Kagus]

Well that's something, at least. Unless they classify lead donations as a humanitarian mission.

[LordBaal]

Which is excellent and terrible news for us.

At one hand you have to a foreign military lees to worry about filling your ass with bullets, on the other hand there are already thousands of Cubans in disguise within our armed forces, Hezbola in the eastern states and both FARC and ELN operating in frontier zones and the Orinoco mining arc, that's without counting the Russians, Chinese, Turks and I suspect to some degree North Koreans.

In the gripping hand our own armed forces are nothing but a joke resembling more the brownshirts of Hittler than anything, at least that's what the generals and other high command show when they knee to suck Maduro's dick and in the case of Fidel's this was almost literal.


They have declared themselves deeply aanti-imperialist, revolutionary, chavist, socialist and compromised to the project. So, unless there's a large change or uprising on their ranks, there would not be a change here, hence why it seems a intervention seems to be the only way out.

[Teneb]

Which is excellent and terrible news for us.

At one hand you have to a foreign military lees to worry about filling your ass with bullets, on the other hand there are already thousands of Cubans in disguise within our armed forces, Hezbola in the eastern states and both FARC and ELN operating in frontier zones and the Orinoco mining arc, that's without counting the Russians, Chinese, Turks and I suspect to some degree North Koreans.

Baal, do you got any evidence to back that? Like, even a newspaper article? Because I seriously doubt some of those. Hezbola? NK?


Anyway, we take a regularly scheduled break from Venezuela's death throes because Yet Another Mining Dam in Brazilian state of Minas Gerais has burst and destroyed a huge area and claimed around 200 lives. This time in Brumadinho. This is going to be Mariana 2: The Sequel. No one's gonna get punished, because the law is actually insufficient and does not hold corporate leadership as responsible, and Brumadinho is gonna be another muddy wasteland.

This shit is what I mean when I talk about Mariana, which is the oldest damn settlement in that state.

And of course, of course, the Pocket-naro wants to reduce legislation regarding this shit and its monitoring. Oh those wacky fascists.

EDIT: It's in PT-BR, but here's a Before and After comparison

[LordBaal]

Baal, do you got any evidence to back that? Like, even a newspaper article? Because I seriously doubt some of those. Hezbola? NK?

News paper article:
http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/columnista/hezbollah-venezuela_220823
To further know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita_Island#Terrorism

Anyway, we take a regularly scheduled break from Venezuela's death throes because Yet Another Mining Dam in Brazilian state of Minas Gerais has burst and destroyed a huge area and claimed around 200 lives. This time in Brumadinho. This is going to be Mariana 2: The Sequel. No one's gonna get punished, because the law is actually insufficient and does not hold corporate leadership as responsible, and Brumadinho is gonna be another muddy wasteland.

This shit is what I mean when I talk about Mariana, which is the oldest damn settlement in that state.

And of course, of course, the Pocket-naro wants to reduce legislation regarding this shit and its monitoring. Oh those wacky fascists.

EDIT: It's in PT-BR, but here's a Before and After comparison

That seriously sucks balls, I hope it didn't affected anyone you knew.

[Magistrum]

I knew it was far too calm, no ridiculous shit had gone for almost a week.

Damn Brazil, why do you make it so hard to like you. No one will be punished, as usual.
I'm sure Pocket will be able to loosen regulations on mining, there is no oposition right now, the green party holds basically nothing.

[hector13]

Bolsonaro is pocket?

Why is he called pocket?

[Magistrum]

"Bolso" is a common shorthand for him, and "bolso" translates neatly to "pocket". (His name has no etymological relation to the root word for bolso, it's just a pun.)

Bad literal translations are a running joke among most Brazilian bilingual groups (that I've known at least), so we always try to find a nice bad translated name for presidents.

Our recent vampire was called "Fear", because his name is "Temer", written in the same way as fear in portuguese. The pronounciation is different though, the intonation changes from a oxitone to a paroxitone.

Lula is "squid".
Dilma doesn't gives anything good to work with, if anyone could help that would be great.

[LordBaal]

 Fun fact Bolso and Temer mean exactly the same and are written the same in Spanish too. Well, bolso means more baggage or backpack but is the same something you trow stuff in.

Dilma is hard because is not a word or combination of words....

[Magistrum]

We also can have "Maduro" translated to "Ripe", but it seems he has gone bad already

[Kagus]

Dilbert?

(Dill) Pickle?

Dildo?

[Culise]

What was the deal with the elections anyway? As far as I can tell from the unclear reports, it seems that the opposition encouraged all its supportersto boycott the election (thereby increasing Nasty M's vote share) then turned around and said "look! Maduro has a much bigger margin than he should have! Rigged!"

I'm fairly sure thats a misunderstanding, but what was actually going on?

The idea behind any electoral boycott is to present it as illegitimate: the typical claim is that the election was going to be rigged, illegitimate, illegal, or what-have-you in either case, so there's no point in pretending to legitimize it by participating and treating it as such.  Basically, if you're going to lose anyways or you refuse to work within the system as presented by the governing authorities, then there's every reason to reject the electoral process.  The Maoist parties of Nepal and India are the immediate example that strike me; convincing the former to be willing to work with the electoral process instead of continuing the ongoing civil war was a key part in both legitimizing them and the government as a whole, while their Indian Naxalite counterparts still reject the right to rule of the Indian government and remain committed to a violent overthrow of the New Delhi government.

In 2017 Venezuela specifically, Maduro declared a need by decree for a Constituent Assembly to create a new constitution in response to a narrowly-dodged attempt at a recall referendum in late 2016 which the National Electoral Council squashed, and under ongoing opposition from the National Assembly.  The opposition parties which held most of their power in the legislature stand to lose the most from a Maduro-led constitution declared this a fairly blatant attempt to bypass the National Assembly and hang on to power, and they thus refused to legitimize it by participating.  This has indeed had the obvious side-effect of denying them any voice in the Constituent Assembly, but considering that from their perspective Maduro was never going to permit them a voice in the first place, it's not a significant difference.

[smjjames]

On the name stuff, that mostly only seems to work in Brazillian-Portuguese and Spanish though.

Maduro has backed off on the diplomat rejection demand, so, the situation has been defused somewhat.