Currency Exchange Website Accused of Cyber Terrorism By Venezuelan Government (arstechnica.com) 104
braindrainbahrain writes: A U.S.-based website that covers the unofficial exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Bolivar, the Venezuelan currency, has been accused of cyber terrorism in a civil complaint. Venezuela, suffering from ever increasing inflation, maintains very tight controls on currency exchange, and accuses the website operators of racketeering and conspiracy. In an earlier speech, Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro stated he would ask the President of the United States to hunt down the operators of the DT Site and extradite them to Venezuela to be tried as criminals.
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Venezuela is "Little Venice"
Why do I suddenly have a sinking feeling...
Not about the law (Score:5, Insightful)
The coverage I've seen of this today has emphasised that the Venezuelan Government's filing has essentially no chance whatsoever of success. That's undoubtedly true, but I suspect it misses the point.
This is unlikely to be about the law, or even about an attempt to stifle the website in question. Rather, it's likely to be gesture politics aimed at a domestic audience. Maduro, like Chavez before him, keeps his political base motivated by constructing elaborate theories to show that almost the entire world (and particularly the US) is conspiring against them. The sense of victimhood and isolation this creates is a useful political tool.
When this filing is rejected (likely at the first hurdle) it becomes another piece of "evidence" that the US is seeking to destroy Venezuela.
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While it certainly true that the Chavistas are exaggerating stories of US meddling, it's not as if there isn't ample precedent. The whole continent has suffered from US-backed dictatorships for many decades, so even if the current Venezuelan reaction is much overblown, I imagine it doesn't take much to convince the populace otherwise, backed by history.
Re:Not about the law (Score:4, Insightful)
Latin America has been a disaster since the Spaniards first set foot on it. The US may not have helped, but let us be frank much of the region would be a mess US or no.
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"Latin America has been a disaster since the Spaniards first set foot on it. The US may not have helped"
Not *may not have helped* but *made things worse*
"let us be frank much of the region would be a mess US or no"
Lets be frank about what
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Re:Not about the law (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't he just point out all the great things that socialism has done for the people? It should be easy to find an audience. These people waiting in line for food [wsj.com] would have to listen.
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Re:Not about the law (Score:5, Insightful)
He can't, because the U.S is working hard since the elections to wreck their economy. Do you think socialism is bad? Look in northern Europe where people can move boxes in a warehouse and still put the equivalent of $1000 in their savings account after all the bills are paid. Don't use a small country under economic siege as an argument that socialism or socialistic democracy doesn't work.
Yeah, it's amazing how there's always an external bogeyman whenever socialism makes things worse.
And always a story about northern European success. Northern European socialists do ok. Northern European capitalists do ok. Maybe northern Europeans just have a strong, resilient culture?
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"Maybe northern Europeans just have a strong, resilient culture?"
Maybe that *and* the US has made messes in South America like peer reviewed research shows
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Yeah, it's amazing how there's always an external bogeyman whenever socialism makes things worse.
And always a story about northern European success. Northern European socialists do ok. Northern European capitalists do ok. Maybe northern Europeans just have a strong, resilient culture?
Or maybe socialism and capitalism are both viable social models but require the correct foundations to flourish?
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Yeah. Blaming a foreign bogeyman doesn't count as a foundation. Really, "blame" in general seems to be mostly useful to losers and failures and people who want to succeed by leading losers and failures.
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Does Venezuela have oil?
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Does Venezuela have oil?
They used to. Then they nationalized the oil business. Then they discovered that maintaining oil fields is a complex business requiring highly skilled workers, all of which had been foreign contractors. Then they discovered the various oil companies whose oil fields they seized were, for some reason, not interested in training or contracting that work. Oil production isn't going so well these days, and prices have fallen far.
Norway has a great model for sharing the proceeds of natural resource exports w
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Venezuelan oil production is doing ok. Not great, but ok. What you're saying is more propaganda than truth. The current selling price is a much worse problem than the amount of production.
Venezuela should be producing 3.5 million barrels daily according to their own projections, yet they struggle to produce even half.
The root reason being Chavez' firing of all managers of PDVSA (the oil company) in a national broadcast in 2012, tooting a whistle and pulling out red cards, like a football referee; and the subsequent firing of most employees. This was his short sighted reaction to their joining of a national strike that lasted a month, aimed at pressuring him into leaving office.
These people
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Venezuela should be producing 3.5 million barrels daily according to their own projections, yet they struggle to produce even half.
So you're saying that Venezuela struggles to produce 1.75 mbd? Do you realize it's a bit hard to give credit to anything you say after this?
The new PDVSA only hires people loyal to the government, everything else is secondary, resulting in accident after accident, the biggest of all [csmonitor.com] resulting in one of the biggest explosions in history.
If you read the article you linked, Venezuelan officials say it was sabotage. Of course, maybe they lie, or they're sincere but wrong. All I can see with my own eyes is that the whole western world seems so intent on destroying them that people even post ridiculous numbers to discredit them on slashdot forums. So it could also be that they're right.
That is why the government is now focused on begging the other OPEC members to lower production. Oil price is their convenient excuse, the real reason is their inability to compete with well run companies.
Venezuela pushing to
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Re:Not about the law (Score:4, Informative)
And always a story about northern European success. Northern European socialists do ok. Northern European capitalists do ok. Maybe northern Europeans just have a strong, resilient culture?
It's a very collective culture, if you start bragging about a Norwegian he's probably going to blush and start listing all the other people he shares credit with. Or to discredit himself as special, even though he's done something few others can. Even when in fact you've worked very hard and long for it, you are supposed to undersell your accomplishments and let others talk you up. It makes for good teamwork but less competitiveness, so it's got both pros and cons. Particularly in early education and youth sports there's been a strong opposition to measuring and competition, focusing on learning and improving yourself and being part of a team.
It also has lead to a culture of everybody's job being important, if we didn't have construction workers the brain surgeon wouldn't have a hospital to operate in. Nowhere else in the world is the burger flipper at McDonald's paid so well compared to doctors, engineers, lawyers and so on. And those relatively low differences between "ordinary" people - we still have the 1%'ers - has lead to a very non-aggressive society and good universal services like public education and healthcare, that by far most of the population use. I also think WWII had an effect there, there was an enormous sense of unity built by the occupation and rebuilding the country, even though the generation that remembered that is dying out.
That collective culture also makes people want collective systems to work, rather than abandon it. You shouldn't have to send your kids to private school to get a good education, you shouldn't have to arm yourself because the police doesn't protect you. It's also expected that the government intervenes in the market on behalf of the consumer, like when Apple tried to exclusively bundle the iPhone to a single vendor. The government said we don't like that kind of lock-in, users must be able to terminate for a reasonable fee. So people signed up to get the iPhone, terminated immediately and signed up with their preferred vendor. And the lock-in went away.
If there is a downside, it's that the collective culture also tends to say we know what's good for you and through prohibitions, restrictions and taxes we're creating something of a nanny state. Maybe particularly taxes, I'm paying eight times as much for a beer here in Norway as when I go to Germany. On the other hand when I look at the capitalist US there's everything from dry communities to Las Vegas, so I'm not sure it's really related to economics. Maybe we just have a puritan streak, even though in other ways we're very liberal. And sometimes odd, I think we and Israel are the only two countries with conscription for both sexes. It only took a few insinuations of females being the weaker sex and we had feminists on the barricades to get equal duties and they did.
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The economy in Venezuela is in shambles because 40% of government revenue, 11% of GDP [cia.gov] is based on oil exports. And oil just dropped from over $100/bbl to $35/bbl in less than 2 years. Diversification helps shield you from major fluctuations in a single economic sector, much less a single commodity. (A lot of the blame goes
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A lot of the blame goes to the Venezuelan government though, for using those oil revenues for welfare programs instead of modernizing the country like Iran and many other OPEC nations do. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.
The chavists do try to modernize the country. The have built houses, schools, hospitals, ... They have tried and still try to "teach people to fish", they even produce some laptops locally (not sure how good they are, I suppose it's more something like OLPC). Their efforts are not enough, but the situation when they arrived wasnt great, and the "capitalists" who still own a good part of the country are indeed not very participative, it's not just paranoia and political scapegoating. "Not participative" can
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The most eloquent and persuasive explanation may be found in Niall Ferguson's book "Civilization: The West and the Rest". I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Civiliza... [amazon.com]
http://www.pbs.org/show/civili... [pbs.org]
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It could also be that the US paid for a goodly bit of their infrastructure, after they bombed themselves into ruin, and didn't even make them pay all the money back. Well, the UK did. The US also footed their defense bill for a very long time (and still does fund quite a bit of it) so they have money to invest in other areas.
See? There's all sorts of fun ways to look at things.
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He can't, because the U.S is working hard since the elections to wreck their economy.
Compared to the Chavistas illegally appropriating the oil industry, running it into the ground, then blaming the competent oil workers who said the government was fucking up, causing the government to force them to flee to Canada and the Middle East, the rest of the world didn't need to TRY to wreck Venezuela's economy, all they had to do was WATCH the Chavistas do it.
Do you think socialism is bad? Look in northern Europe where people can move boxes in a warehouse and still put the equivalent of $1000 in their savings account after all the bills are paid.
Ever notice how northern European cultures and methods pretty much dominate the world? As another poster pretty much said: northern Europea
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It is unlikely the domestic audience will listen much as they prefer the illegal exchange rate. Official exchange rates are to allow the government to keep the vast bulk of hard western cash value, trading it for very few units of worthless domestic paper.
"The People" down there know this and realize what a scam it is and what a disadvantage they are at.
Speaking of which, are all our H1b buddies from India required to convert all their dollars back to rupees on return at horrible official exchange rates?
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It is unlikely the domestic audience will listen much as they prefer the illegal exchange rate
Most of the domestic audience doesn't have dollars to exchange, legally or illegally (if they are trying to buy dollars, they prefer the legal exchange rate, but have trouble getting it).
Just like most Americans don't have a steady stream of income in a foreign currency, that they're trying to change to dollars. The exchange rate mostly is noticed by tourists and importers (and exporters).
Of course, the people still feel it when they try to pay for imported goods.
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What is the official rupee:dollar exchange rate? What is the unofficial rate?
From what I can see, there's no significant difference between the two. Which would suggest that you don't think about things very carefully, and that colours the whole of the rest of your post.
(I get 1 rupee = 0.015$ f
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"Well yeah, it's an old song and dance written in the "How to be an effective dictator" book used the world over"
But that doesn't say a thing about what is going on in this case
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Does that remind anyone of particular politicians here in the US?
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How come losing 40% of your salary is an improvement? I mean for normal people not for the companies that lower their costs.
Some economists applaud inflation as a way to decrease the costs of production (everyone's salary) simultaneously.
In the case of Argentina, the official exchange rate was a lie, and the only effect was to make it really hard to get dollars (because you couldn't get dollars very easily at the 10 to 1 rate).
And in fact, importers will now be able to get dollars at ~13 to 1 rate, instead of the 15 to 1 rate (or more) that they were paying.
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Argentina's economy is as flaky [cnbc.com] as anybody's.
And as far as Venezuela's victimhood, the American 'big stick' policy and dollar diplomacy over the years has justified the feeling a bit.
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Also, it's good for tourists, too, because trading dollars on the black market was a huge pain, and you had to worry about counterfeit bills. Now you can get the black market rate, but legally from an ATM machine.
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Yeah they had some stuff backwards. The point is that Argentina just relaxed currency controls and the value plummeted. The locals are already feeling the inflation. And the devaluation will make the price of imported goods go up, not down. Exports will be cheaper at the other end though. And yes, tourists get more bang for the buck. The problem is not whether they are socialist or not. The economies of any corrupt regime always suck. The difference between Argentina and Venezuela is a matter of degree, not
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The point is that Argentina just relaxed currency controls and the value plummeted. The locals are already feeling the inflation
You would think so, but the relaxation was merely official recognition of the facts. (Some legislatures demand that pi is 3, Argentina demanded that a dollar be worth 10 pesos). The problem before being that it was impossible to buy a dollar for 10 pesos, no one would give it to you (unless you were very very good friends with the president or something).
In short, people were already paying 15 pesos to the dollar, and now that it's official, it looks like they can get it for 13 to the dollar, which is act
Capitalism is Terrorism (Score:3)
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Terrorism is whatever the PTB (tm) say it is.
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No. People who say "[XYZ] is terrorism" are always wrong. If they were right they wouldn't have to exaggerate.
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Do you mean terrorism doesn't exist
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No one makes a point of saying "suicide bombing is terrorism" because it's obvious. Terrorist acts are terrorism. XYZ other bullshit (capitalism, Santa Claus, eating meat, not bowing to statues of political leaders, whatever else some fool says) is not terrorism. People who say "[XYZ] is terrorism" are wrong. If they weren't wrong, they wouldn't need silly exaggerations.
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"No one makes a point of saying "suicide bombing is terrorism""
Of course they do. In other words your heuristic "people who say ..." is not useful
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Maduro is trying to create a whole new parliament from scratch to suit his needs and deny his people any semblance of democracy: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
That's a new one, AFAIK not even african dictators had pulled that off before. Your people have voted you out of their assembly ? Decree yourself a brand new "people's assembly" in its place !
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[...]Maduro doesn't have control of the military. [...]
Source? (btw, I don't believe any military uprising would be necessary to oust Chavez. If he loses the presidential election, he will leave.)
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[...]Maduro doesn't have control of the military. [...]
Source?
(btw, I don't believe any military uprising would be necessary to oust Chavez. If he loses the presidential election, he will leave.)
Well, yes, ever since he died from cancer, he doesn't care so much about staying in office...
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Source?
(btw, I don't believe any military uprising would be necessary to oust Chavez. If he loses the presidential election, he will leave.)
Well, yes, ever since he died from cancer, he doesn't care so much about staying in office...
Oh I just realized that you were talking about Maduro, not Chavez.
It is an understandable mistake, since they often speak through birds [youtube.com].
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( for the sarcastically challenged: the above are not a recipe for creating a sound economy, just so that we are clear)
So is 1985 not a recipe for fuctioning happy society, and it was used verbatim, just look around ;)
Re: Government terrorism (Score:2)
1985? Check your code for an off-by-one error. Or is it like a new version; 1984++ or something?
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1985? Check your code for an off-by-one error. Or is it like a new version; 1984++ or something?
I doubt GP meant this... But there is a novel called 1985 [wikipedia.org]. Not all that impressive, I thought, certainly not nearly as good as Clockwork Orange.
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( for the sarcastically challenged: the above are not a recipe for creating a sound economy, just so that we are clear)
I wish people would stop attempting sarcasm on the web. Sarcasm becomes completely invisible against the background noise, and it's impossible to tell a troll from somebody trying to be ironic (usually unsuccessfully).
Poe's law [rationalwiki.org] doesn't just apply to fundamentalism any more.
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That's the reason that economics is a sham.
Economics is ultimately about the study of people and they are a difficult thing to study and understand. Computer science has unsuccessfully being trying to mathematically recreate them for a long time.
Economics also suffers a lot from politics and wishful thinking.
"High finance" is at best fraud obscured by math.
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To win a Nobel prize in economics today a person needs to have no idea about real economics and instead he needs to support the idiotic Keynesian ideas that let the governments do what they want to do anyway: print paper money and pretend that central planning is what builds the economy. In the beginning of 20th century USA had under 20 formal economists and a sound economy. Today USA has tens of thousands of 'economists' and a shadow of its former economic power.
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Fantasy and wish-fulfillment have always been a hallmark of the science of Economics. And bad math. Some of the biggest names in Economics (Milton Friedman, Keynes, etc) are basically just self-justifying cheerleaders.
Economics is a softer science than parapsychology. I'm not exaggerating, either. I
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Well, while I agree with you that finance is harder than people who are totally ignorant of it are likely to realize, it's unlikely to be 4x harder than the theory of computation or advanced algorithms courses I had to take to get my BSCS, otherwise (a) a lot fewer people would be able to do finance, or (b) a lot more people would be able to do stuff like amortized analysis of algorithm complexity. It seems more likely that the CS program you attended was weak.
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I'm not saying finance isn't hard. That said, linear algebra isn't hard, either. What I'm saying is that computation theory is as hard as any subject gets before only a tiny fraction of the population can do it.
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Of course you can group things together with the same preface and have a rhetorical argument.
Snowden is not a terrorist, because we know from WikiLeaks that most of this information is available for purchase via third parties who get databases full of information about Americans. Other intelligence agencies likely know all about the internal spying, but he spooked the public and corporations not in the know. Plus, he isn't spreading fear for an agenda: we have news agencies who do far more of that.
Keynesian
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Snowden has never been accused of terrorism. If you are going to make claims like that, back your shit up with citations.
Same goes for Assange.
Making shit up to attack is silly when there is so much to point out that doesn't need to be made up.
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Of course. In this world nothing is a bigger crime than honesty and nobody is a bigger terrorist than somebody telling the truth to power. Snowden is a terrorist to the USA government, same as Assange.
But dolartoday doesnt tell the truth. Ask any Venezuelan, nobody changes at this rate. (not much lower, though)
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How could this possibly be racketeering? (Score:3)
While I understand the charges are likely based on political paranoia within Venezuela's government and a desire to find a scapegoat for their financial issues, how could a website that merely reports an exchange rate (the site in question appears to be a news site and not an actual currency exchange) be guilty of racketeering? If the exchange rate was wrong, no one would use them as a reliable source of information in the first place. This would be like trying to charge the New York Times with securities fraud because they report stock prices.
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