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[Paxiecrunchle]

South America getting little, and selective at that, coverage in the US isn't news.

Ah my friend, but it should be not everyone actually knows that the bias is that bad...

[Reelya]

Yep, that was my point: even the most revered liberal papers (nytimes and wapo) are on the level of FOX News when it comes to Latin America. Those "liberal" papers just faithfully reprint articles from Latin far-right news sources which are on par with FOX News or even Infowars. There's basically no quality control there at all. Imagine how much off-base the actual conservative press would be then.

So yeah, it's the scale and pervasiveness of the bias that people aren't aware of. e.g. in the Venezuela study mentioned, 72% of all serious violent incidents were not being reported/represented by nytimes, because those were conducted by right-wing elements. And it's some unwritten rule that nytimes doesn't report on those. Just saying "bias" and "selective" gives you the impression that they're cutting out e.g. 50% of the incidents and that it's 50/50 in reality. But when you realize they're omitting almost all of something, and doing that in a very biased way, you realize that the entire narrative is inherently untrustworthy: if one group is doing 3/4 violent attacks that makes it much more likely that the other group which is doing 1/4 attacks is in fact doing that mainly because they are being provoked. But nytimes' exclusive reporting only on the provoked violence creates a false counter-narrative. Maybe that's wrong too, however without an unbiased source that merely reports things in proportion it's impossible to trust any particular narrative.

[Reelya]

Bump, but Venezuela just had their regional elections, and the PSUV picked up 17 out of 23 governorships. There was also significant international observer presence

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13442

Caracas, October 16, 2017 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) has confirmed that Sunday’s vote in Venezuelan gubernatorial elections was clean and transparent.

“The vote took place peacefully and without problems… the vote reflects the will of [Venezuelan] citizens,” declared CEELA President Nicanor Moscoso during a press conference Monday morning.

The CEELA delegation was comprised of 1300 international observers, including former Colombian Electoral Court President Guillermo Reyes, ex-president of the Honduran Supreme Electoral Court, Augusto Aguilar, and former Peruvian electoral magistrate Gastón Soto.

notice how the international media aren't even touching this news to claim that Maduro is committing voter fraud. It would be a perfect time to do so. But they're being 100% silent on this. Why do you think that is, exactly? It's because they can't spin this to show that Maduro is on the way out, and meanwhile there was a strong international observer presence that found no signs of electoral tampering.

Despite the media narrative there's never been any real evidence of the socialists tampering with the electoral system in Venezuela. Note that the media vaguely hints at it without ever citing incidents when it happened. The closest to "election tampering" that they will cite is not an actual election, it's when the Supreme Court declared a petition to hold a one-off referedum to remove Maduro to be unconstitutional (citing irregularities in the signatures collected). Which - hello Spain? - But Venezuela wasn't in fact beating up 900 people to stop that petition. In fact, given the scale of the opposition violence in the protests, the low response from the Venezuelan government is in fact what's abnormal here on an international scale.

The MUD has accused the National Electoral Council of attempting to suppress opposition turnout by relocating 334 voting centers previously targeted by anti-government violence during July 30’s National Constituent Assembly Elections.

Uhh, so because the government relocated voting centers that the opposition previously tried to burn down, that's oppression now. This is basically the harshest accusation the opposition can apparently come up with to show how Maduro is rigging the system. If that's it, then it's pathetic.

The results have, however, been rejected by the MUD, which has alleged “fraud” and called on its supporters to take to the streets in protest.

So ... election lost, so lets fuck shit up. Good on ya. This sort of fits with what I'm reading about howe the opposition protests are entirely centered arounsd a few upper middle class districts. Basically those guys used to have 100% dominance of social and political life, now that's more spread out with the >60% of the nation who are poor being the support based of Chavez/Maduro. Before Chavez, 53% of the nation was below the poverty line. Things aren't perfect, they have problems, but less people are below the poverty line now than that.
http://cepr.net/publications/reports/update-venezuela-economy

[smjjames]

The MUD is the opposition, right?

Also, apparently the US is taking the side of the opposition and condemning that election.

One of the oppositions complaints is also that there was a lack of independent, credible international observers.

Funny how it's the international media that has jumped on the 'ignore South America' bandwagon when it was just mostly US outlets doing that.

[Reelya]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13446

    Falcon lost by a 17-point margin to socialist party challenger Carmen Melendez, who successfully channeled popular discontent towards the governor’s support for violent anti-government protests earlier this year.

    Speaking Tuesday, President Nicolas Maduro thanked Falcon for his posture and raised the possibility of naming him as ambassador to Colombia.

    “I thank Henri Falcon for all of his efforts… Maybe Henri Falcon can be named to a government post, ambassador perhaps, in Colombia could be,” he stated.

So you have Maduro offering government posts to some of the opposition leaders who lost the regional elections, someone who was vocally anti-government at that.

Hardly seems like something strongman Maduro who dictates party loyalty with an Iron Fist would do. Probably won't be reported in the West, either, because that goes against the narrative.

Former MUD Secretary General Jesus “Chuo” Torrealba took aim at the coalition’s leadership for failing to present evidence of alleged irregularities.

    “The MUD’s declaration worries me because it doesn’t make sense,” he said.

    “It’s not about whether or not you believe the results. The opposition has witnesses at all the voting machines and has a copy of each one of these vote tallies. What they have to say is, ‘Here I have the tallies, and what I have here doesn’t match the results,’” he continued.

    The MUD has demanded a full audit of Sunday’s vote, a call that was previously made by President Nicolas Maduro.

so there you have it from a former opposition party leader. MUD has election observers at all booths, they are provided with full copies of all paper trails from all machines, they observe every vote and transaction. If they're going to cry "fraud" then where are the numbers for that?

Also note that Maduro suggested a full audit even before the MUD brought it up. Ah .. but maybe Maduro is tricking us! Sneaky Maduro! By processing an audit of the entire election along with the MUD he's just doubling down on whatever sneaky trickery he pulled that nobody can explain. He's a like an election David Copperfield.

[smjjames]

I spy a missed opportunity to make a MUDdy pun, but maybe it doesn't work in Spanish. Edit: Yeah, looked at google translate and it doesn't work in Spanish.

[Dorsidwarf]

Let's be honest - the capital w West is never going to stop giving Maduro's Venezuela shit, because Mkay Guys Maybe We Were Wrong About These Socialists Just A Bit is a headline that just won't happen

[Reelya]

Yeah, he's an odd sort of "dictator", when the supreme court thing happened in the apparent coup, he got the supreme court to reverse their order within 48 hours, it actually happened before the first protestor hit the streets. Proper dictators do not back down peacefully because you say you're going to hold a protest.

The guys are in fact softer than most democratically-elected governments. Almost all normal elected governments if they implement something that the public doesn't like just keep going "well screw you" until after the shit truly hits the fan. They've learned to just weather criticism and do what they want. They don't backpedal because you say you're slightly peeved.

[SaberToothTiger]

ptw

I will vote for Maduro as the president of all americas in the 2020 elections.

[Ggobs]

ptw

[Wolfhunter107]

Argentina loses contact with submarine at sea.

Could be just a communications problem, could be something worse. There's really no way to tell at this point, but I will note that that submarine is an old boat(bought in 1985, iirc), and that the Argentinian Navy has had a lot of maintenance issues in the past.

[thvaz]

It would seem nobody is popular in South America, but then I remembered to check Bolivia's Evo Morales, and he's sitting at 75%. Which considering that he's managed to grow the economy at a steady 5% the entire 12 years he's been president is understandable. He's also one of those filthy socialists however, so cognitive dissonance there. If merely being a socialist tanks economies then they need to explain Bolivia.

Well Bolivia in first place is a shit hole*. It is the poorest Latin American country after Haiti, and we are talking African Hell levels of poverty when we talk about Haiti. ANYTHING positive the government does in a place so poor will get instant positive results. And despite being a socialist in name, Evo Morales took many market-oriented policies and is usually very pragmatic, governing with what just works instead of following ideologies that work only in the mind of rebelious youngsters.

*I never went there but lived in a work camp abroad with about 500 bolivians from all walks of life for four years.

[smjjames]

Argentina loses contact with submarine at sea.

Could be just a communications problem, could be something worse. There's really no way to tell at this point, but I will note that that submarine is an old boat(bought in 1985, iirc), and that the Argentinian Navy has had a lot of maintenance issues in the past.

Some good news, no, it hasn't been found yet, but they did attempt to contact Argentine bases yesterday http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/19/americas/argentina-missing-submarine/index.html , which indicates that they are certainly still alive somewhere. The protocol in case of loss of communication is to immediately surface (which is probably universial among navies), so, if they are unable to surface, that could indicate a worse problem.

Assets that the Argentinians requested (not sure if NASA and the US Navy volunteered and went ahead or they volunteered and Argentina had to accept it. There's also a Brirish ship assisting) are either already there or en-route.

[Teneb]

It would seem nobody is popular in South America, but then I remembered to check Bolivia's Evo Morales, and he's sitting at 75%. Which considering that he's managed to grow the economy at a steady 5% the entire 12 years he's been president is understandable. He's also one of those filthy socialists however, so cognitive dissonance there. If merely being a socialist tanks economies then they need to explain Bolivia.

Well Bolivia in first place is a shit hole*. It is the poorest Latin American country after Haiti, and we are talking African Hell levels of poverty when we talk about Haiti. ANYTHING positive the government does in a place so poor will get instant positive results. And despite being a socialist in name, Evo Morales took many market-oriented policies and is usually very pragmatic, governing with what just works instead of following ideologies that work only in the mind of rebelious youngsters.

*I never went there but lived in a work camp abroad with about 500 bolivians from all walks of life for four years.

One thing people need to understand about Evo Morales' popularity is that he is is the first indigenous president of the country. The indigenous population of Bolivia also tends towards xenophobia towards those not of that cultural group. Further boosting his popularity is, of course, his actions to make Bolivia less of a complete shithole and having an anti-USA stance. One of the easiest ways to get popular support in South America (unless you are in Colombia, in which case it's political suicide) is to take stances and measures that (or at least appear to) weaken the grasp of USA imperialism on the country.

[smjjames]

I don't think US imperialism is as severe in South America as it used to be, say 50 years ago. Though granted, we still see South America as being in our sphere of influence and ours alone and see it as our personal backyard from time to time, despite mostly ignoring South America.