ialdabaoth posted:

in the 6 december 2015 elections, the opposition democratic unity roundtable claimed 112 of the 167 seats in the national assembly, which would give it a super-majority of 67% of the legislature. on 30 december 2015 the supreme court accepted requests to challenge the results of four seats (3 opposition, 1 socialist) due to allegations of electoral irregularities such as fraud, large number of blank votes, and vote buying, and temporarily suspended the swearing-in of the pertinent deputies. early in january 2016, the new opposition president of the national assembly ignored the supreme court ruling and swore in the three opposition deputies. in response, the supreme court declared subsequent actions of the national assembly void

https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/Fraud-Allegations-in-Venezuelan-Elections-Explained-20160104-0015.html
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11814

in may 2017 due to civil unrest and the continued absence of a legitimate legislative body, maduro invoked article 347 of the venezuelan constitution to call for the establishment of a constituent assembly, which has supreme power over all other governmental bodies and can draft a new constitution. elections for the constituent assembly were held in july, though the opposition did not participate. in august the constituent assembly set up a meeting to coordinate with the national assembly, which the national assembly boycotted. the constituent assembly then assumed most state legislative powers. the national assembly has not been dissolved, but remains constitutionally powerless

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13260
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13322

Owned

ialdabaoth posted:

in the 6 december 2015 elections, the opposition democratic unity roundtable claimed 112 of the 167 seats in the national assembly, which would give it a super-majority of 67% of the legislature. on 30 december 2015 the supreme court accepted requests to challenge the results of four seats (3 opposition, 1 socialist) due to allegations of electoral irregularities such as fraud, large number of blank votes, and vote buying, and temporarily suspended the swearing-in of the pertinent deputies.

so the 108 seats the opposition won were legit?

https://www.thenation.com/article/elliott-abrams-its-back/ posted:

Elliott Abrams: It’s Back!
By David Corn
June 14, 2001

“How would you feel if your wife and children were brutally raped before being hacked to death by soldiers during a military massacre of 800 civilians, and then two governments tried to cover up the killings?” It’s a question that won’t be asked of Elliott Abrams at a Senate confirmation hearing–because George W. Bush, according to press reports, may appoint Abrams to a National Security Council staff position that (conveniently!) does not require Senate approval. Moreover, this query is one of a host of rude, but warranted, questions that could be lobbed at Abrams, the Iran/contra player who was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan years and a shaper of that Administration’s controversial–and deadly–policies on Latin America and human rights. His designated spot in the new regime: NSC’s senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations. (At press time, the White House and Abrams were neither confirming nor denying his return to government.)

Bush the Second has tapped a number of Reagan/Bush alums who were involved in Iran/contra business for plum jobs: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich and John Negroponte. But Abrams’s appointment–should it come to pass–would mark the most generous of rehabilitations. Not only did Abrams plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress about the Reagan Administration’s contra program, he was also one of the fiercest ideological pugilists of the 1980s, a bad-boy diplomat wildly out of sync with Bush’s gonna-change-the-tone rhetoric. Abrams, a Democrat turned Republican who married into the cranky Podhoretz neocon clan, billed himself as a “gladiator” for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America–which entailed assisting thuggish regimes and militaries in order to thwart leftist movements and dismissing the human rights violations of Washington’s cold war partners.

One Abrams specialty was massacre denial. During a Nightline appearance in 1985, he was asked about reports that the US-funded Salvadoran military had slaughtered civilians at two sites the previous summer. Abrams maintained that no such events had occurred. And had the US Embassy and the State Department conducted an investigation? “My memory,” he said, “is that we did, but I don’t want to swear to it, because I’d have to go back and look at the cables.” But there had been no State Department inquiry; Abrams, in his lawyerly fashion, was being disingenuous. Three years earlier, when two American journalists reported that an elite, US-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in El Mozote, Abrams told Congress that the story was commie propaganda, as he fought for more US aid to El Salvador’s military. The massacre, as has since been confirmed, was real. And in 1993 after a UN truth commission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies, Abrams declared, “The Administration’s record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.” Tell that to the survivors of El Mozote.

But it wasn’t his lies about mass murder that got Abrams into trouble. After a contra resupply plane was shot down in 1986, Abrams, one of the coordinators of Reagan’s pro-contra policy (along with the NSC’s Oliver North and the CIA’s Alan Fiers), appeared several times before Congressional committees and withheld information on the Administration’s connection to the secret and private contra-support network. He also hid from Congress the fact that he had flown to London (using the name “Mr. Kenilworth”) to solicit a $10 million contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei. At a subsequent closed-door hearing, Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton blasted Abrams for having misled legislators, noting that Abrams’s misrepresentations could lead to “slammer time.” Abrams disagreed, saying, “You’ve heard my testimony.” Eagleton cut in: “I’ve heard it, and I want to puke.” On another occasion, Republican Senator Dave Durenberger complained, “I wouldn’t trust Elliott any further than I could throw Ollie North.” Even after Abrams copped a plea with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, he refused to concede that he’d done anything untoward. Abrams’s Foggy Bottom services were not retained by the First Bush, but he did include Abrams in his lame-duck pardons of several Iran/contra wrongdoers.

Abrams was as nasty a policy warrior as Washington had seen in decades. He called foes “vipers.” He said that lawmakers who blocked contra aid would have “blood on their hands”–while he defended US support for a human-rights-abusing government in Guatemala. When Oliver North was campaigning for the Senate in 1994 and was accused of having ignored contra ties to drug dealers, Abrams backed North and claimed “all of us who ran that program…were absolutely dedicated to keeping it completely clean and free of any involvement by drug traffickers.” Yet in 1998 the CIA’s own inspector general issued a thick report noting that the Reagan Administration had collaborated with suspected drug traffickers while managing the secret contra war.

So Bush the Compassionate may hand the White House portfolio on human rights to the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human-rights abusers. As Adm. William Crowe Jr. said of Abrams in 1989, “This snake’s hard to kill.”

Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

In the absence of an announcement on the organisation of fresh elections with the necessary guarantees over the next days, the EU will take further actions, including on the issue of recognition of the country’s leadership in line with article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution.

this comes a few days after an EU FBPE person at work hit me with a firehose of hysterical bullshit when i said that guy verhofstadt commenting on venezuela's internal affairs was a big reason why a lot of UK leftists distrust the EU and worry how it would react if a corbyn government ever happened. their argument was " doesn't speak for the whole of the EU". well what about this, partner?

So this notepad that National Security Advisor John Bolton was holding today at the White House briefing on Venezuela says:

"Afghanistan -> Welcome the Talks. 5,000 troops to Colombia."

If confirmed this would be a pretty terrible OPSEC breach.https://t.co/KS0Issfvps pic.twitter.com/IOrSprG567

— Rao Komar (@RaoKomar747) January 28, 2019