AI6YR BenWell, that's ONE way to cause a massive increase in gasoline prices. Because "affordability" is very important to voters.
BBC: Fire at UAE port after drone attack as Trump says military targets on Iran oil island 'obliterated'
Janice in GA@ai6yr Dammit, I already lived through gas rationing and long lines at the pumps in the 70s! I shouldn't have to do this again!!!
DianeElectric cars available in the USA are already vastly superior to the ones in the 1980s. And China is currently producing even better vehicles
Taran Rampersad@alienghic @Archergal @ai6yr in #trinidadandtobago people are driving loads of #byd vehicles.
#China is definitely going to win the #iranwar.
Without a shot fired.
Γιανίρης@iriyan @knowprose @Archergal @ai6yr
Yeah decarbonization isn't happening nearly fast enough
largely because there's a bunch of countries who's state budgets are significantly funded by fossil fuel sales, so they keep blocking binding treaties.
As a result, China which doesn't have a lot of oil, just really polluting coal, has had the most motivation to develop renewables to cut their dependence on untrustworthy partners like Russia and the middle east.
@iriyan @knowprose @Archergal @ai6yr
There is an alternate unpleasant decarbonization plan where so much keeps getting destroyed by war and weather disasters that it becomes impossible to continue to maintain fossil fuel infrastructure.
@ai6yr @alienghic @iriyan @Archergal yup. The fossil fuel economy supported by both parties.
3 would be harder to lobby.
@knowprose @ai6yr @iriyan @Archergal
Exactly who "we" is in this situation is quite debatable.
This plot is what fraction of a countries population would be willing to contribute 1% of their income to stopping global warming.
The resistant groups look to be the USA, Canada, Russia, UK, Japan, Egypt, Kazakstan, and Pakistan.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3/figures/1
@alienghic @ai6yr @iriyan @Archergal the 'do as we say, not as we do' group.
That's pretty much the theme. Mia Motley, PM of Barbados, points that out a lot.
Islands see it much more differently. 🙃
Subservient obedient pups who betray their people don't deserve to have their name repeated. She was nobody and will continue to be nobody.
Cuba is an island, big enough not to have to depend on US or Venezuela for survival. They've had 70 years to figure it out, it is insulting to say they are in distress because Russian of Venezuelan oil is not coming.
Venezuela is beyond any excuse ..
You can't use the word socialism and have some form of claim that capitalist markets will recognize a right to participate in them. It is hypocritical, despite of whether we like to support and be on their side.
We can all do better than that.
@iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal you think Mia Motley is a subservient pup?
On that we disagree. She's one of the few vocal critics who has stood at the UN and made the same damned points you are making here.
So... I'd reassess your assessment. 🤣
My mistake, I was thinking of Trinidad/Tobago being the local extension of the 4th Reich ... and there seem to be more SW of Venezuela ... butt kissers of the the Fuhrer
Apologies for Mia, she seems to be having a spine unlike some others.
@iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal well, Trinidad and Tobago, definitely. I presently live there. Here. Whatever. They're definitely orange cheerleaders.
In fact, them winning the election last year has some locals... suspicious of external support.
Cambridge Analytica involved all the major player in both countries. Wink wink.
Barbados is quite different. Mia Motley is a rare bird. Worth paying attention to.
Probably the only voice of the Caribbean I recommend. 🙃
@knowprose @iriyan @ai6yr @Archergal
I wonder if a pan carribean civil society group could provide better & more trustworthy social networking and collaboration tools than trusting the USA
What if #Venezuela hadn't kept oil as a national treasure but as a regional, S.American collective commodity for all S.America to defend and use. Maybe then it wouldn't have been as easy to be taken, and they knew there was plenty for all.
What did Mexico ever gain from passing out all Gulf oil to US oil companies? Better catering at state receptions?
DanieruOtakuBoy@iriyan @alienghic @knowprose @ai6yr @Archergal
That would not have been possible; Venezuela's gross domestic product or source of income has always been primarily oil. And during the last 27 years with multiple oil corruption scandals and expropriations, More than a regional treasure, it would have been an even worse plot of manipulation and corruption.
@danieruotakuboy @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal venezuela, like all countries in the region, has internal issues.
Again, like all countries in the region.
There are deep divisions on incentives, etc.
And Venezuela did share to an extent, despite that. Ask Cuba.
Imperfect situation. The real world.
(Well said Danieru)
@knowprose @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal
No, not all oil-producing countries that have been the richest countries in the world have become the poorest in their region.
And not all countries have a diaspora of 28% of their total population.
@danieruotakuboy @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal agreed.
That largely happened because of sanctions from the US when Chavez nationalized *further*. That's a brief simplification of the causality, but true.
I road a boat from Trinidad in my teens and saw Venezuela in the 1980s. Beautiful country. They have blueberries from the mountains! Their produce is wonderful.
Things have changed significantly.
@knowprose @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal Uh... Nope. The US sanctions began in 2015, after Maduro's first year as president.
The degradation of the Venezuelan economy were something that was beginning to occur in the 1990s, and it worsened in the 2000s with the first monetary reconversion in our history.
The economic crisis of the 1990s was what motivated Chávez to attempt two coups in 1992, killing more than 300 Venezuelans (more than Americans on January 3 of this year).
@danieruotakuboy @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal umm.
Nope.
You skipped a lot in the years in between.
There are sanctions and then there are the shadows. The TRIPS agreements, etc.
As I said, I was brief.
I know the history. I saw it happen.
@knowprose @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal Oh right, I forgot about the arms sanctions, corruption at PDVSA and other schemes of embezzlement of public funds during the Chávez government.
I mean, I imagine the Guarenas-Guatire Metro is finished by now; a billion dollars was allocated for it in 2008. Have you used it yet? Just curious.
@danieruotakuboy @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal you're rather combative and presumptive, so... what Iknow, I know.
I'll leave this conversation.
By all means, have the last word. 🙃
@knowprose @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal
What did you expect? You were arguing about contemporary Venezuelan history with a Venezuelan.
You can't expect to know more than I do about my own country.
@danieruotakuboy @iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal very true.
So fix it.
Whose oil was it before Chavez, was it justifiably passed to US/EU/UK companies to exploit? Did housing and nutrition, living, working conditions change because of Chavez reforms? What would Bolivar say?
Tell us Venezuelan, so we know!
@iriyan @knowprose @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal The life of Venezuelans did not improve after the expropriation of companies in the country. The distribution of Venezuelan oil in became unstable, depending even more on imports of oil due to a lack of production.
There was a huge waste of public funds on social missions, or on construction that were never completed, Several examples include the Guarenas-Guatire Metro, the national railway system, and the Great Housing Mission Venezuela.
So there wasn't waste of public funds and resources before, the colonial corporations were there to the benefit of the majority of Venezuelans, but the waste begun after they got kicked out and nothing really changed.
That is not what even the wealthy Venezuelans say happened for the bottom 2/3 of the population, just that they were burdened and prevented to carry on "development".
I hope your bosses at the state dept. provide you with adequate protection if you are inside #Venezuela, some of your countrymates may find offense with what you are claiming.
@iriyan @knowprose @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal
More than that, you could have taken me to the El Helicoide torture center on charges of "treason, terrorism, and incitement to hatred." Like my grandmother, who was charged with 30 for saying she was tired of living with the situation in the country.
@iriyan @knowprose @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal
In response to the question about "evil capitalist corporations," there is a great example: Agroisleña (expropriated and renamed by Chávez as Agropatria) before, when it was a private company, it granted many benefits and products to the farmers with whom it had allied itself to further boost the production. After Chávez's expropriation, the main facility is in ruins, and farmers were left without the resources to increase their harvests.
True, Cuba doesn't fit the model Caribbean nation I describe, they fought hard to keep it that way and very few recognize the sacrifice. Especially after 1990 Cubans became extremely lonely in a hostile remote controlled world. Whether Venezuela assisted and shared can also be explained in also trying to rub-off a bit of revolutionary character and share some of the solidarity of the global left (what is left out of the left). Unfortunately rubbing goes both ways, with tourism being passed to Canadian and Euro exploiters within a mixed Cuban economy.
Those tiny little oases of resistance in the dried up rock called earth seem to have been an immediate goal of the empire, as most is never enough for them. The notion of #Brics as a new form of resisting the Hydra seems to be evaporating as Trump's dozer moves on. What will be next for totalitarianism, human/political rights of communities within controlled states?
I do like to split things in elements, more than summarize them as a single entity. The US state inwards, the US military machine outwards, and the federated western capital are not exactly one. So everything above this needs to be re-examined through this triple lens.
@iriyan @danieruotakuboy @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal the trouble with the categorization is that they are really axes. And Caribbean nations largely do not fall on one side or the other.
Who feeds the inmate in the cage has sway.
Haiti, Cuba: different.
Jamaica: somewhere closer. The escaped slaves had more land.
Trinidad, Suriname, Guyana: Indian diaspora from indentured labor (in most local discussions, they are included as Caribbean)
So. It's not a matter of simple classification.
Most of the countries in the island continent from Puerto Rico to Margaritas are indirectly under US/European occupation. They have pseudo independence by being silent dependents of the empire. When you are on the hook (on anchor) in the Bahamas for example, DEA aircraft fly over your head inspecting and identifying each and every entity ... local authoirties are a show on the dock when you tie up into one. Defense and law enforcement is all passed to "allies". Not universal but to large extent. Venezuela by such standards is a superpower that dared to raise its head up and look at the master eye to eye.
There is merrit to the decision of surrender to save innocent lives, but people themselves should be informed and empowered to make such a decision.
But then there is so much diversity among Carib-people you can hardly expect them to agree on whether it is day or night. Between Haiti and VI there is a globe of difference.
In one corner you doubt Europeans were ever there, on the other you ask whether they ever left.
Then you have various industries that are peculiar in nature, private banking, medical colleges to provide the wealthy with a degree to kill someone legally .. and traffic that can make Epstein's face turn red.
An amusement park for rich and obnoxious Americans and Europeans.
Then you have a paella of supernatural metaphysical confusion .. .. just when you think you found that single rational person in the island to speak to, you get slammed back to reality. That was my brief experience and assessment.
Do we agree ...
@iriyan @alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal well, that was all for the audience, I am sure, because you would not explain it to me, someone who has been in the Caribbean and traveled the region for some time.
That's a lot of text you wrote to that could be summarized as:
colonialization never left; it simply changed clothing.
You can just write that next time and save your fingers.
🙃
1/
Sorry, Diane, I got distracted by a wall of text.
Pan-Caribbean civil society has been fighting for decades with that sort of thing. I can tell you of all the Culture & ICT meetings I went to, etc - CARDICIS was great (2003) because it tackled the main issue:
Language.
Because of the European colonialization, different nations speak different languages. Spanish, French, English and Dutch are pretty much the order of highest to lowest language.
@alienghic @ai6yr @Archergal 2/ I know people from all the islands with similar views, and everyone's getting longer in the tooth dealing with their own particular nation's... challenges... while eeking out a living.
It would be a good thing, and I have personally pressed on CARICOM as a way to unite to allow that to happen... there have been too many 'fly by night' NGOs that those long in the tooth are short on patience.
It matters a lot for different reasons, it fails. So far.
///
Ah I see, it's hard to find the resources to build up shared capabilities while still getting exploited by the wealthy powers.
You clearly know quite this subject well.
I was just thinking in terms of "more collaboration might increase the chances of being able to limit pressure by the USA"
But having people who can dedicate themselves to do things like tracking foreign disinformation campaigns is a luxury that takes a fair amount of resources to be able to do.
@alienghic Well... do I know it well? I wonder.
In 2003, I hammered a point home that made local news in some Caribbean newspaper about, "You can't preach about not being colonial when you're practicing it".
It was a moment of truth. It still holds true. The issue is the systems around it.
The islands weather storms because of colonial mindsets. They are risk averse. That is because all they see is risk.
Not potential.
It's a hard idea to propagate when everything is hard.
After Pepe Mujica the standard was set pretty high for anyone to reach that far. This is one "left' wing warrior that even anarchists take their hats off. I wish there were more from where he came from.