Venezuela Superthread- Merged

[CougarKing]

An update: Chavez's/Maduro's socialist dream about to collapse?

Defense News

International Concern Mounts Over Venezuela
Agence France-Presse 4:12 p.m. EDT May 21, 2016

CARACAS — International concerns are mounting over the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the military on Saturday was holding a second day of exercises ordered by embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

With the oil-dependent country's economy imploding under recession and hyperinflation, public sentiment is backing Maduro's ouster.

But the socialist president is digging in.

He imposed a state of emergency this week and ordered the two-day war games to show that the military can tackle domestic and foreign threats he says are being fomented with US help.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[jollyjacktar]

Venezuela collapses and nobody cares

We like to think that progress is irreversible. We look at our roads and supermarkets and hospitals and while we know that everything could be better, we rarely worry it will all collapse. Unhappily, right now Venezuela is proving that all of this can suddenly disappear, and it’s frightening.

The country is falling apart, rapidly and completely. By many measures, it is one of the most blessed nations in the Americas. It has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, almost twice Canada’s. It has rich agricultural land, incredible biodiversity and huge amounts of mineral wealth. And yet its people are now starving; its infrastructure is in tatters; law and order have broken down. And strangely, Canada doesn’t appear to care...

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/venezuela-collapses-and-nobody-cares/ar-AAhipg7?ocid=spartandhp

 

[cavalryman]

Venezuela collapses and nobody cares

We like to think that progress is irreversible. We look at our roads and supermarkets and hospitals and while we know that everything could be better, we rarely worry it will all collapse. Unhappily, right now Venezuela is proving that all of this can suddenly disappear, and it’s frightening.

The country is falling apart, rapidly and completely. By many measures, it is one of the most blessed nations in the Americas. It has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, almost twice Canada’s. It has rich agricultural land, incredible biodiversity and huge amounts of mineral wealth. And yet its people are now starving; its infrastructure is in tatters; law and order have broken down. And strangely, Canada doesn’t appear to care...

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/venezuela-collapses-and-nobody-cares/ar-AAhipg7?ocid=spartandhp

And acknowledge that socialism has, once again, spectacularly failed, after so much of the left (yeah, I'm looking at you, NDP) lionized Hugo Chavez?  [Xp

 

[cupper]

A good interview I heard driving back from a jobsite a couple weeks ago. Nicholas Casey is NT Times Andes Bureau Chief.

Bust Times In Oil-Rich Venezuela: 'The Banks Don't Have Money To Give Out'
New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey talks about life in Venezuela, where the collapse in oil prices has caused shortages of everything, including water, electricity, medicine and cash.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/08/481225008/bust-times-in-oil-rich-venezuela-the-banks-dont-have-money-to-give-out

GROSS: So if Venezuela is an oil-rich country, why is it so poor right now? What happened?

CASEY: Well, yeah. A lot of people are looking at who or what is to blame. There's a lot of things going on right now. One of them is the legacy in the years and aftermath after Hugo Chavez. There was a huge amount of hope throughout the left in Latin America when Chavez came to power.

He was saying many things that no one else was saying and talking about inequality in terms that hadn't been heard in Latin America for years. Unfortunately, what followed was years of mismanagement on every level - a lot of corruption, misunderstandings of how the economy worked or how to fix it.

You know, I'll give you one example that you see a lot. It is causing a lot of the problems in Venezuela - is price controls. During those years, they brought the price of selling something lower than what it cost to make it. So if you wanted to get milk, it was at a very inexpensive price, which was great if you were poor.

The problem was if you were a farmer or, you know, owned an operation that was producing milk. And you couldn't produce it for the price that it was going to be sold for. So what happened next? Well, you just didn't produce it anymore.

So you started to see this huge collapse of production throughout the country. People stopped making beans. People stopped making rice. Venezuela went from being an exporter of meat to importing it. And one by one, all of these things stopped being made in the country.

Well, it wasn't the end of the world then, because there was so much money from the oil that you could just buy it. You could buy it for dollars. And the response was - well, we'll just import it. We can bring all these things in. It's a rich country. Well, this continued for years.

But the problem next came when the price of oil collapsed. And there wasn't any money to buy the imports. And there was no way to make them. So just what happened was - everything started to disappear. So that's part of the reason why Venezuela is where it is. That said, called the proximate cause - is years of mismanagement from these policies, dating back to Hugo Chavez.

But Venezuela has been haunted by what you could call its oil curse for years, which is that because there is so much oil in Venezuela, Venezuela hasn't sought out other ways to make money - other ways to be a productive country.

And Venezuela has depended for years on just one thing - on oil. And when the price of oil goes up, it's a boom time there. And when the price of oil goes down - and this is a very, very dire case because of a number of other things that have happened related to the mismanagement - it turns into, you know, an absolute dystopia.

*****

GROSS: So having covered governments in Mexico, Latin America, the Middle East, you've seen a lot of different governments. And now we're facing the prospect of possibly having Donald Trump as president and certainly as the likely Republican candidate for president. And it's the first time we've had somebody in that position who's had no experience in elected office before. So when you think of Trump and you think of other governments that you've covered, what do you think about?

CASEY: Well, I will just say it - and a lot of people in Latin America will tell you this very quickly - Donald Trump resembles Hugo Chavez. It's a strange thing to think about in the beginning because Trump is from the right - or is painting himself as that - and Chavez was from the far left. But what unites both of them is populism. This populism is bringing together large crowds of people. Some of them are very angry. Trump was described very well by an old mentor of mine from The Wall Street Journal, David Luhnow, in an excellent article he wrote called "The Rise Of Trumpismo" (ph) - like, kind of a Trumpismo - like, often in Latin America you will use I-S-M-O as, like, a Trumpism, there's Chavism, there's Peronism - a whole ideology being established around one person.

And some things he pointed out to were - David - in that article were extremely spot on. Trump and Chavez both rose to power on television. Chavez had a show called "Alo Presidente" where you would see him on a reality-like show. And Trump, of course, we all know, had all of his reality shows as his way of, you know, connecting very directly with people. That ended up becoming a political campaign. Both of them were well-known for trying to foster and harvest this resentment in their countries that many people had. There was a small group of oligarchs, of elites, that were getting a better deal than the rest.

And I think you also see a very close resemblance between Donald Trump and Hugo Chavez in their use of - in their demonization of the media - both use and demonization. They were of both - they're both like masters of being able to be on TV but at the same time spend so much of their time - spend so much of their time in the case of Chavez - of attacking the media as the enemy. What you're seeing, I think, between Hugo Chavez and Donald Trump here is that populism cuts across ideology and basically becomes an ideology unto itself. And you have power that's concentrated not in a movement or in a political party or in an institution but just in one single person. And I think that's why, when you talk to Venezuelans, you will see that people recognize something in the U.S. that they saw for many years in their country.

 

[a_majoor]

Life in Venezuela today. The usual Legacy media spin about low oil prices being the cause is to deliberately obscure the fact that Socialist mismanagement has destroyed what is potentially the richest nation in South America (many of these symptoms were evident even when oil was $100/bbl, the oil wealth just gave them the ability to paper it over for a while):

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/venezuelans-ransack-stores-riot-in-streets-as-widespread-hunger-grips-south-american-nation

Venezuelans Ransack Stores as Hunger Grips the Nation
By NICHOLAS CASEYJUNE 19, 2016

CUMANÁ, Venezuela — With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger.

Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves.

And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.

In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass looting have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed.

This is precisely the Venezuela its leaders vowed to prevent.

In one of the nation’s worst moments,  riots spread from Caracas, the capital, in 1989, leaving hundreds dead at the hands of security forces. Known as the “Caracazo,” or the “Caracas clash,” they were set off by low oil prices, cuts in subsidies and a population that was suddenly impoverished.

The event seared the memory of a future president, Hugo Chávez, who said the country’s inability to provide for its people, and the state’s repression of the uprising, were the reasons Venezuela needed a socialist revolution.

Now his successors find themselves in a similar bind — or maybe even worse.

The nation is anxiously searching for ways to feed itself.

The economic collapse of recent years has left it unable to produce enough food on its own or import what it needs from abroad. Cities have been militarized under an emergency decree from President Nicolás Maduro, the man Mr. Chávez picked to carry on with his revolution before he died three years ago.

“If there is no food, there will be more riots,” said Raibelis Henriquez, 19, who waited all day for bread in Cumaná, where at least 22 businesses were attacked in a single day last week.

But while the riots and clashes punctuate the country with alarm, it is the hunger that remains the constant source of unease.

A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found.

About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation.

In April, it found that a family would need the equivalent of 16 minimum-wage salaries to properly feed itself.

Ask people in this city when they last ate a meal, and many will respond that it was not today.

Among them are Leidy Cordova, 37, and her five children — Abran, Deliannys, Eliannys, Milianny and Javier Luis — ages 1 to 11. On Thursday evening, the entire family had not eaten since lunchtime the day before, when Ms. Cordova made a soup by boiling chicken skin and fat that she had found for a cheap price at the butcher.

“My kids tell me they’re hungry,” Ms. Cordova said as her family looked on. “And all I can say to them is to grin and bear it.”

Other families have to choose who eats. Lucila Fonseca, 69, has lymphatic cancer, and her 45-year-old daughter, Vanessa Furtado, has a brain tumor. Despite also being ill, Ms. Furtado gives up the little food she has on many days so her mother does not skip meals.

“I used to be very fat, but no longer,” the daughter said. “We are dying as we live.”

Her mother added, “We are now living on Maduro’s diet: no food, no nothing.”

Economists say years of economic mismanagement — worsened by low prices for oil, the nation’s main source of revenue — have shattered the food supply.

Sugar fields in the country’s agricultural center lie fallow for lack of fertilizers. Unused machinery rots in shuttered state-owned factories. Staples like corn and rice, once exported, now must be imported and arrive in amounts that do not meet the need.

In response, Mr. Maduro has tightened his grip over the food supply. Using emergency decrees he signed this year, the president put most food distribution in the hands of a group of citizen brigades loyal to leftists, a measure critics say is reminiscent of food rationing in Cuba.

“They’re saying, in other words, you get food if you’re my friend, if you’re my sympathizer,” said Roberto Briceño-León, the director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a human rights group.

It was all a new reality for Gabriel Márquez, 24, who grew up in the boom years when Venezuela was rich and empty shelves were unimaginable. He stood in front of the destroyed supermarket where the mob had arrived at Cumaná, an endless expanse of smashed bottles, boxes and scattered shelves. A few people, including a policeman, were searching the wreckage for leftovers to take.

“During Carnival, we used to throw eggs at each other just to have some fun,” he said. “Now an egg is like gold.”

Down the coastal road in a small fishing town called Boca de Uchire, hundreds gathered on a bridge this month to protest because the food deliveries were not arriving. Residents demanded to meet the mayor, but when he did not come they sacked a Chinese bodega.

Residents hacked open the door with pickaxes and pillaged the shop, venting their anger at a global power that has lent billions of dollars to prop up Venezuela in recent years.

“We are now living on Maduro’s diet: no food, no nothing.”

Lucila Fonseca, 69

“The Chinese won’t sell to us,” said a taxi driver who watched the crowd haul away all that was inside. “So we burn their stores instead.”

Mr. Maduro, who is fighting a push for a referendum to recall him this year over the country’s declines, said it was the political opposition that was behind the attacks on the stores.

“They paid a group of criminals, brought them in trucks,” he said on Saturday on television, promising compensation to those who lost property.

At the same time, the government also blames an “economic war” for the shortages. It accuses wealthy business owners of hoarding food and charging exorbitant prices, creating artificial shortages to profit from the country’s misery.

It has left shop owners feeling under siege, particularly those who do not have Spanish names.

“Look how we are working today,” said Maria Basmagi, whose family immigrated from Syria a generation ago, pointing to the metal grate pulled over the window of her shoe store.

Her shop was on the commercial boulevard in Barcelona, another coastal town racked by unrest last week. At 11 a.m. the day before, someone screamed that there was an attack on a government-run kitchen nearby. Every shop on Ms. Basmagi’s street closed down in fear.

Other shops stay open, like the bakery in Cumaná where a line of 100 people snaked around a corner. Each person was allowed to buy about a pound of bread.

Robert Astudillo, a 23-year-old father of two, was not sure there would be any left once his turn came. He said he still had corn flour to make arepas, a Venezuelan staple, for his children. They had not eaten meat in months.

“We make the arepas small,” he said.

In the refrigerator of Araselis Rodriguez and Nestor Daniel Reina, the parents of four small children, there was not even corn flour — just a few limes and some bottles of water.

The family had eaten bread for breakfast and soup for lunch made from fish that Mr. Reina had managed to catch. The family had nothing for dinner.

It has not always been clear what provokes the riots. Is it hunger alone? Or is it some larger anger that has built up in a country that has crumbled?

Inés Rodríguez was not sure. She remembered calling out to the crowd of people who had come to sack her restaurant on Tuesday night, offering them all the chicken and rice the restaurant had if they would only leave the furniture and cash register behind. They balked at the offer and simply pushed her aside, Ms. Rodríguez said.
 
“It is the meeting of hunger and crime now,” she said.

As she spoke, three trucks with armed patrols drove by, each emblazoned with photos of Mr. Chávez and Mr. Maduro.

The trucks were carrying food.

“Finally they come here,” Ms. Rodríguez said. “And look what it took to get them. It took this riot to get us something to eat.”

Follow Nicholas Casey on Twitter @caseysjournal.
Meridith Kohut contributed reporting from Cumaná, and Ana Vanessa Herrero and María Eugenia Díaz from Caracas, Venezuela.

- mod edit to add article link-

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Evacuate the beautiful women and let the rest sort it out. Funny even in 94 the Venezuelans I met were quite content to let Illegals do the dirty work and Caracas was one of the mist dangerous cites in the world even then.

 

[gryphonv]

This is a disaster. And other countries should extend help. It is no different than sending quake relief to nations, or the EU(Germany) bailing out Greece and Spain.

Sure you can say this is different because it is due to mismanagement and human bungling compared to quake/disaster relief. But it is still a disaster none the less. Innocent people are suffering, that is all that should matter.

This is the stuff we should be looking to as a military, this is the stuff that gives Canada a better standing in the world. Bringing bags of rice will always win you more friends then Boxes of ammo.

Not saying escalation is never required, but this is still a valid situation that should have a coordinated military response.

 

[GAP]

This is a disaster. And other countries should extend help. It is no different than sending quake relief to nations, or the EU(Germany) bailing out Greece and Spain.

Sure you can say this is different because it is due to mismanagement and human bungling compared to quake/disaster relief. But it is still a disaster none the less. Innocent people are suffering, that is all that should matter.

This is the stuff we should be looking to as a military, this is the stuff that gives Canada a better standing in the world. Bringing bags of rice will always win you more friends then Boxes of ammo.

Not saying escalation is never required, but this is still a valid situation that should have a coordinated military response.

What lily pad did you just step off of?   

it's a sovereign  country and not our place to interfere.

If the people want change, they will react one way or another.

 

[gryphonv]

What lily pad did you just step off of?   

it's a sovereign  country and not our place to interfere.

If the people want change, they will react one way or another.

So do you think the country will turn down help if offered by a consortium of other governments? I'm not saying barge in there like Old Saint Nick down a greased up chimney.

 

[Altair]

This is a disaster. And other countries should extend help. It is no different than sending quake relief to nations, or the EU(Germany) bailing out Greece and Spain.

Sure you can say this is different because it is due to mismanagement and human bungling compared to quake/disaster relief. But it is still a disaster none the less. Innocent people are suffering, that is all that should matter.

This is the stuff we should be looking to as a military, this is the stuff that gives Canada a better standing in the world. Bringing bags of rice will always win you more friends then Boxes of ammo.

Not saying escalation is never required, but this is still a valid situation that should have a coordinated military response.

I'm the world of realpolitik, it's better to let the situation continue, even worsen.

To help Venezuela is to help marudo and extend the life of his increasingly authoritarian goverment.

Sometimes when one wants regime change its best to let the people bring it about themselves. Sooner or later the people's suffering will become unbearable and they will try to bring along change, by any means necessary. That doesn't happen if we or anybody else offers marudo a lifeline.

 

[Kirkhill]

I'm the world of realpolitik, it's better to let the situation continue, even worsen.

To help Venezuela is to help marudo and extend the life of his increasingly authoritarian goverment.

Sometimes when one wants regime change its best to let the people bring it about themselves. Sooner or later the people's suffering will become unbearable and they will try to bring along change, by any means necessary. That doesn't happen if we or anybody else offers marudo a lifeline.

A rare moment of concorde.  :nod:

 

[cupper]

It would be akin to putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound.

 

[a_majoor]

The Chinese have been content to bail out Venesuela's corrupt government with multi billion dollar loans. far better the Chinese are on the hook than taxpayers like you or I (and we are already on the hook for a trillion + dollars of Canadian Federal funded and unfunded liabilities, plus whatever the provinces have accumulated, so maybe there is a place closer to home for our funds to be spent...)

 

[Colin Parkinson]

This is a disaster. And other countries should extend help. It is no different than sending quake relief to nations, or the EU(Germany) bailing out Greece and Spain.

Sure you can say this is different because it is due to mismanagement and human bungling compared to quake/disaster relief. But it is still a disaster none the less. Innocent people are suffering, that is all that should matter.

This is the stuff we should be looking to as a military, this is the stuff that gives Canada a better standing in the world. Bringing bags of rice will always win you more friends then Boxes of ammo.


Food is a weapon, do you really think they are going to allow a western capitalistic country to do what they cannot do?
Not saying escalation is never required, but this is still a valid situation that should have a coordinated military response.

 

[CougarKing]

The Venezuela spiral continues as Maduro uses foreign entities as scapegoats.

Reuters

Venezuela to seize Kimberly-Clark factory as production ends

Fabiola Sanchez, The Associated Press
July 11, 2016

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's government said Monday that it will seize a factory belonging to Kimberly-Clark Corp. after the U.S. personal care giant said it was no longer possible to manufacture in this crisis-wracked South American nation.

President Nicolas Maduro accused Kimberly-Clark of participating in an international plot to damage Venezuela's economy and said his socialist government would provide public funds to the workers at the plant.

Speaking on television and radio, Maduro also announced that U.S.-based Citibank, which has handled some of the state's international transactions, notified authorities that it would close the accounts of the Central Bank of Venezuela in 30 days. He linked both actions to the economic war on Venezuela, calling it "the new imperialist inquisition" of U.S. President Barack Obama.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I'm pretty sure Trudeau and Dion are working on a plan to bail out their socialist brothers. Wait for it.

Venezuela can be Justin's Cuba.

 

[the 48th regulator]

I'm pretty sure Trudeau and Dion are working on a plan to bail out their socialist brothers. Wait for it.

Venezuela can be Justin's Cuba.

Now now,

You wouln't want Trump and his Fascist down there, as I am sure it would flush out the Old men from the Reich!

 

[cavalryman]

Now now,

You wouln't want Trump and his Fascist down there, as I am sure it would flush out the Old men from the Reich!

That could actually be entertaining  op:

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Now now,

You wouln't want Trump and his Fascist down there, as I am sure it would flush out the Old men from the Reich!

At least he has some business acumen and can see where the problems are and what to do about them.

Not like those other two that would be throwing money at it like a couple of drunks throwing dollar bills at strippers. 

8)

 

[the 48th regulator]

At least he has some business acumen and can see where the problems are and what to do about them.

Not like those other two that would be throwing money at it like a couple of drunks throwing dollar bills at strippers. 

8)

:facepalm:  :rofl:  well played, well played.  I almost spit up my tea!  I visualize it too, dirty crumpled bills filying!