Post: #351

These chinese investments are like the fables russian investments, and the iranians too in the last past years. The money will go to Maduro´s pocket, and little in infraestructure or industry will be seen by the comon people.

Post: #352

‘Maduro Diet’: 3 Out of 4 Venezuelans Lost ‘At Least 19 Pounds’ in 2016

Quote:A poll released this week among Venezuelan nationals found that 75 percent of Venezuelans reported losing “at least 19 pounds” in 2016, while 93 percent of Venezuelans said they do not have the money to secure three meals a day for themselves.

The Living Conditions Survey, organized in part by three national universities, also found that 83 percent of Venezuelans were below the nation’s poverty line.

While 78 percent of respondents confirmed that they eat breakfast, only 32 percent said they eat two meals a day.

A poll released in September found that 15 percent of the nation relied on garbage, most from industrial businesses like groceries and restaurants, to eat. Over half of Venezuelans said they had experienced going to bed hungry, and a similar amount said they were forced to take days off from work to search for food.

Video surfacing this year appears to indicate that scavenging in garbage dumpsters for food has become so popular that Venezuelans now stand in line in front of dumpsters to look for food. Venezuelans have begun sharing their findings of garbage piles with high potential for containing sustenance on social media.

Venezuelans eating rotting food risk their health on a regular basis, and incidents of entire families dying due to eating old or rotted food have occurred.

Desperation has also fed crime in one of the most violent countries in the world. The Miami-based El Nuevo Herald published a report last month detailing new robbery tactics growing increasingly popular among Venezuelan youth. Gang attacks on people leaving markets have become more common, while the frequency of robberies in general increased between 15 and 20 percent in most municipalities nationwide in 2016.

Maduro has responded to the growing threat of famine with a number of measures that appear to have worsened the situation. Last year, Maduro ordered the military to take full control of the nation’s food supply. Soldiers in charge of the food subsequently began demanding bribes to ship it around the country. When they were not paid, the food sat in docked cargo ships, rotting on many occasions and worsening the scarcity.

Maduro also created a government unit called the CLAP (Local Committee for Supply and Production) to monitor the distribution of food packages in urban areas. Anti-socialist groups have accused the CLAP of distributing the food only to known government supporters and threatening not to feed households that have expressed opposition to socialism.

Maduro announced this week that he would expand the CLAP program to government salaries, meaning government workers would be paid with CLAP food packages. In some cases, government workers would receive ration tickets to be used at government-controlled markets for food.

“A food ticket is not a salary,” protested Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, an opposition politician. He added that the tickets may soon be worthless thanks to hyperinflation: “What does someone do when 100,000 bolívars in food tickets disappear thanks to inflation, because the price of food goes up every day?”

Summary:

• Venezuela is starving
• People literally eat garbage
• Venezuelans have social media, but nothing to eat
• Gangs are now formed just to acquire food
• Food is rotting in cargo ships thanks to corruption
• Access to food is restricted to government supporters
• Opposition to socialism could mean no food for you or your family
• Government workers will soon be paid in food stamps
  

How glorious is socialism!

But wait, I saved the best part for last:

Quote:Maduro has previously joked that his mismanagement of the economy has made Venezuelans fitter and more sexually virile. Referring to “Maduro’s diet” in September, the head of state said on national television, “Maduro’s diet gets you hard – no need for Viagra!”

Post: #353

Venezuela is down to its last $10 billion

Post: #354

(03-01-2017 02:33 PM)MOVSM Wrote:  Venezuela is down to its last $10 billion

Me too.

Post: #355

(02-21-2017 02:37 PM)Belgrano Wrote:  Summary:

• Venezuela is starving
• People literally eat garbage
• Venezuelans have social media, but nothing to eat
• Gangs are now formed just to acquire food
• Food is rotting in cargo ships thanks to corruption
• Access to food is restricted to government supporters
• Opposition to socialism could mean no food for you or your family
• Government workers will soon be paid in food stamps
  

How glorious is socialism!

But wait, I saved the best part for last:

Quote:Maduro has previously joked that his mismanagement of the economy has made Venezuelans fitter and more sexually virile. Referring to “Maduro’s diet” in September, the head of state said on national television, “Maduro’s diet gets you hard – no need for Viagra!”

If only we could deport all our fat socialists to Venezuela to "help with the relief efforts".

We lose them, they lose weight. It's a win-win

Post: #356

Protip: when you smell smoke in a crowded theatre, the best course is to stand up and walk calmly and quietly towards the nearest exit. Because you sure as fuck won't be able to get out that door when someone yells "Fire!"

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/09/...ation.html

Quote:Along with basic food, medicine and even toilet paper, Venezuela now lacks the materials to meet to the soaring demand for new passports – making it almost impossible for those few Venezuelans with the monetary means of escaping the troubled Latin American nation to do so.

While estimates of how many passport requests the socialist government received last year vary from between 1.8 million to 3 million, only 300,000 of the elusive documents were doled out. Everyday, hundreds of people line up outside the passport agency, known as Saime, in the capital of Caracas in the hopes of obtaining one.

...

Tomás Páez – author of “The Voice of the Venezuelan Diaspora” – told Bloomberg that since Chávez took power in 1999 nearly 2 million Venezuelans have fled the country and hundreds of thousands are marking their time until they obtains the funds and the passport that will allow them to leave.

Maduro has acknowledged the issue of the chronic shortages in passports and last week launched a new “online” option that will rush a passport to customers within 72 hours for about double the price of waiting in line. The website, however, has crashed numerous times and it is unclear how many passports have been expedited through this process.

Saime has stated that the backup in processing passport applications is because the agency lacks enough “materials,” but did not specify what that means.

Hahahahahahahahahayeah no.

Quote:Observers say that while the government may not be able to afford the paper to make the passport. Paper products in the country, including toilet paper, are in short supply in Venezuela.

Therefore: if you're in a hyperinflated country and can't get out, stockpile small consumer goods. It may well keep you from starving. A guy with a shed full of toilet paper is going to be eating while his neighbour with a Ferrari loses 50 kg.

Quote:But skeptics think the Maduro government may also be trying to keep people from leaving the beleaguered nation.

“People with the means to get out want to, but the problem is you need a passport and you can’t get it,” Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center told Fox News. “It’s kind of an excuse by the Venezuelan government that they don’t have materials, because they know the real reason people want a passport is to leave the country.”

The difficulty obtaining passports has led those wealthy enough to pay off government officials or those with connections to fixers to cough up hundreds of dollars to expedite the process. Most of Venezuela’s 30 million resident, however, don’t have that kind of money as the monthly minimum wage in the country comes to less than $30 a month on the black market.

And if you're in a hyperinflated country and you have a passport, get the fuck out. Ultimately this is one strategy John T. Reed suggests; a US passport, funds physically outside the US, and a series of short-term tourist visas may well be just as good an option as a SHTF bugout plan and a log cabin somewhere in the Rockies.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #357

Related news: nobody with half a brain is going into Venezuela on an ongoing basis, either, thanks to the World Bank:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezu...SKBN16G38C

Quote:A World Bank tribunal's order for Venezuela to pay $1.4 billion in damages to Exxon Mobil Corp over nationalizations has been annulled, a lawyer for the Venezuelan government said on Thursday.

The case at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes is one of many arising from nationalizations during late President Hugo Chavez's 1999-2013 rule of the South American OPEC member country.

"We were confident all along that our position was correct and are very pleased that the annulment committee agreed," Venezuela's lawyer George Kahale said.

A reduction to the overall $1.6 billion award would be welcome news to President Nicolas Maduro's cash-strapped government as it faces heavy foreign debt repayments amid a deep economic recession that has led to widespread shortages.

The ICSID ruling, dated Thursday, said "portions of the award" were annulled but did not give a breakdown of figures.

A spokesman for the U.S.-based oil company, Todd Spitler, did not confirm financial details, but said: "Exxon Mobil will continue to evaluate its legal rights and determine next steps."

Venezuela had challenged the 2014 award with various arguments, including that a previous decision from Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce to award Exxon $908 million should be deducted from the ICSID award.

Chavez, the firebrand socialist leader whose rule was cut short by death from cancer, nationalized a range of oil ventures, including the Cerro Negro heavy crude project and a smaller project called La Ceiba, both operated by Exxon.

Despite its appeal of the World Bank court's initial ruling in the Exxon case, Venezuela's government had hailed that as a success because the company had been seeking compensation of up to $10 billion.

Chavez led a wave of takeovers that also encompassed the electricity, telecoms, metal and agricultural sectors. Many companies deemed the takeovers unlawful, and Venezuela faces more than 20 international arbitration cases.

Supporters of Chavez's nationalizations say he was right to take back control of Venezuela's commodities riches to channel the profits into social programs at home rather than profits for multinational companies.

I'd say this means no large multinational will be going anywhere near Venezuela to set up any time soon. You would have to be mad to do so: what these idiots get away with once via nationalisation, they will do again. The problem being that large multinationals are basically the only bodies (outside desperately selling oil for cut-rate prices) that can inject any substantial real money into Venezuela right now.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #358

My bet is that the smart money is going to promise big bucks to Maduro and get him on the hook, then string out the implementation "because we're just ironing out the details" while his nation rots and he gets more desperate.

Eventually they will buy Venezuela under the table for pennies on the dollar, and this time around there will be no democratic renegotiations over who owns what and who owes who.

Post: #359

Is this a support of the fact that globalists love communist/socialist states? They get to rush in and buy it all up and control another country once it falls ... like they tried to do in Russia before Putin banished the jewish bankers

Post: #360

I am loving the fact that i am seeing more venezuelan qts around Bs As streets.

Post: #361

(03-10-2017 12:34 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  Is this a support of the fact that globalists love communist/socialist states? They get to rush in and buy it all up and control another country once it falls ... like they tried to do in Russia before Putin banished the jewish bankers

The deliberate collapse of the Venezuelan economy was part of a wider campaign to undermine Moscow. The globalists stunned by a resurgent Russia, decided to punish it by its actions in Syria and Ukraine, instructed the Saudis to turn on the taps back in 2014 and turn them on they did. What we are now left is an oil glut on the market which has hurt Russia and Russian aligned states like Syria, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, not to mention tonnes of crazy jihadis running amok in the Middle East and Europe. The entire system is rigged.

Post: #362

^ Isn't this more of happenstance rather than conspiracy? Isn't it just as likely that the Saudis realized they need to get more cash by producing more because soon the USA will just put more on the market, anyway?

and that had a downstream effect as a result, not necessarily to "punish" Russia and similar oil dependent states

Post: #363

I assumed the wealthy Venezuelans already had passports since they would probably travel abroad. I know those folks love going to Miami and Europe (Spain).

Post: #364

(03-11-2017 02:14 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  I assumed the wealthy Venezuelans already had passports since they would probably travel abroad. I know those folks love going to Miami and Europe (Spain).

I like this one: https://www.xvideos.com/profiles/veronic...tabAboutMe

Post: #365

Maduro's rhetoric now heading for Iraqi Information Minister levels.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/13/...th-us.html

Quote:Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro called his U.S. counterpart "Comrade Trump" and told his people to expect "surprises" in the relationship between the two countries.

The socialist leader also hinted a deal is in the works to provide the hunger-stricken country with food imported from the U.S. "at a good price."

“We are bringing products imported by the revolutionary government from several sister nations: Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua ... and even the United States. Comrade Trump is offering me [basic food products] at a good price," Maduro said Sunday on his weekly TV show.

"There are going to be surprises," he added.

Tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela have been on the rise for years, but Maduro has notably softened his tone ever since Trump took office.

In a military ceremony a month ago, Maduro said that "bandits" with the Venezuelan opposition were traveling to Washington to "put a bug in Trump’s ears" trying to push him into an intervention.

"If you ask me, I would say I do not want a fight with Mr. Trump. No. I say it [on behalf of] Venezuela, I want a relationship of respect, of dialogue, but it seems that they are pushing him and they are going to fall into the same hole the Bush clan and the Obama-Clinton clan fell into.”

He warned that imperialism is "threatening" Venezuela.

"Imperialism is there, threatening, but here we are stronger than ever. We do not want problems with Trump, he should know that I do not want problems with his administration," Maduro said.

Bear in mind that international trade deals for imported food necessarily tighten Maduro's grip on the country: the country imports a large proportion of its food, the military controls the ports and the food industry is nationalised, which means that the food is going to be distributed at high prices to the poor bastards who have to live under him. And there'll be no local competition because of both military standover and because the currency is hyperinflated.

And if the US is trading in anything other than oil or US dollars, they're bloody fools.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #366

It would also appear that Venezuela really is a long way to being a communist state. Many of the businesses are owned by the government ... and because Maduro and Chvez fucked the country over, those businesses are mostly failing.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-w...02248.html

Quote:icycles, coffee, medicine, cellphones, aerospace components, petroleum, milk, hotels. Venezuela’s state-run companies are producing a dizzying array of products and services, as the socialist administration has morphed into a sprawling conglomerate that would be the envy of any capitalist.

The nonprofit Transparency International says it has identified at least 511 companies that are either wholly or majority owned by the government of Venezuela — and 70 percent of them are losing money, potentially adding to Venezuela’s economic meltdown.

The sheer number of companies under state control seems to put Venezuela in a class of its own, the group said. Brazil, which has about six times the population of Venezuela, has 130 state-run companies, and Argentina, a third larger than Venezuela, has 52.

“We started this study because nobody really knows how many companies the state is running,” said Mercedes De Freitas, the director of the Venezuelan branch of Transparency International. “The state has invaded every sector imaginable.”

Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption organization with chapters in more than 100 countries, will be producing its full report in April with the hope of developing a better picture of the government’s role amid a crushing economic crisis.

Even so, De Freitas said the initial findings paint a picture of an oversized state hemorrhaging money — at a time when the country desperately needs it. The organization found that 70 percent of the 511 companies have produced losses in 2016 totaling 1.29 trillion bolivares — or about $129 billion dollars. That amount is 14 percent higher than what the government earmarked for education, health, housing, and social security that same year.

Those losses come as payrolls at the ventures appear to be soaring. In the early 2000s, for example, the state-run oil company PDVSA, the crown jewel of Venezuela’s state-run enterprises, had about 20,000 employees. Now it’s thought to have 120,000 workers, even as oil revenue and output have fallen, De Freitas said.

“What does this mean?” she asked. “It means that the company has turned into a burden on society. Many jobs have been created that are simply not sustainable.”

The government is likely to dismiss the findings. Transparency International, which receives U.S. and European funding, is often accused by the administration of being an opposition mouthpiece. And its annual “Corruption Perception Index,” where Venezuela ranks 167 out of 170 countries, is a continual source of tension.

The threat of government seizure was also used against those he saw as obstacles to his “socialist revolution,” and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, has carried on the tradition.

Over the weekend, Maduro threatened to expropriate industrial bakeries, saying they were behind a “bread war” responsible for widespread shortages. Last year, he told workers to seize any company that was promoting anti-government demonstrations.

During his 14-year tenure, the late President Hugo Chávez was a fierce advocate of state control of strategic sectors, and he went on to nationalize steel mills, agribusinesses and, most importantly, the critical oil industry.

The process was sometimes chaotic, with Chávez announcing the seizure of companies on national television. At one point, he walked through the center of Caracas — again on live TV — pointing to buildings and ordering his ministers: “Expropriate it!”

The threat of government seizure was also used against those he saw as obstacles to his “socialist revolution,” and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, has carried on the tradition.

Over the weekend, Maduro threatened to expropriate industrial bakeries, saying they were behind a “bread war” responsible for widespread shortages. Last year, he told workers to seize any company that was promoting anti-government demonstrations.

Of the 511 state-run entities Transparency International has identified, 70 percent were created starting in 2001, as the socialist administration was building up steam.

The study comes as Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy is in crisis. The government hasn’t released inflation figures since 2015, but private groups estimate the 2016 rate at more than 700 percent. The economy is shrinking, and shortages of food and medicine sweep through the country.

Maduro routinely blames the private sector and his opponents of waging an “economic war” against him. But his critics say it’s government policies — particularly expropriations — that are at the root of the problem.

“Maduro is causing deaths in Venezuelan society with the weapons of shortages and lack of economic productivity,” Omar Gonzalez, an opposition congressman from Anzoátegui state, said recently. “He pulls the trigger on shortages and expropriations that kill thousands of citizens daily.”

The government takes pride in its state-run companies. Caracas’ subway, which is government owned, is often full of posters and banners touting the success of state-run coffee, steel and sugar companies.

But the full scope of government’s business activities is something of a state secret. Transparency International said a team of researchers have spent eight months trying to track down basic information that is publicly available in other countries.

After releasing an initial list of 505 state-run companies, researchers stumbled across an additional six in recent weeks. Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency last year said Venezuela had “thousands” of state-run companies.

Even basic questions have been hard to answer: How much revenue do they generate for the country? How many employees do they have? Who’s on the board of directors?

Investigators had to comb through the national registry and press clips to begin developing a snapshot of state enterprises. The secrecy is not simple disorganization, but a matter of “state policy,” De Freitas said.

“If you ask for the information, you never get it,” she said. “And they consider you an enemy of the state for simply asking for it.”

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #367

Pure communist run enterprise is totally inefficient - always was and always will be.

The only way how the state can sensibly meddle into it is to have shares in strategic businesses (can be even as high as 40-60%) or it can operate monopolistic enterprises like rail, energy by hiring independent expensive managers who come from well-working countries like Switzerland or Germany. If they give those managers free hand at reorganizing for example public transportation, then it is possible to create a viable state-run alternative only in areas that are monopoly-centered anyway.

As for the majority of his businessess - he can shove them - no way how they will make money in socialism. Eastern Germans were the most intelligent and productive people of the old Communist system and they could not make it work. The Venezuelans have no chance of success.

Post: #368

It's interesting how the whole Venezuela story is garnering minimal attention in Western media. It just doesn't fit the dominant narrative that elitist planning and control is good for us all.

Post: #369

(03-17-2017 05:28 AM)rockoman Wrote:  It's interesting how the whole Venezuela story is garnering minimal attention in Western media. It just doesn't fit the dominant narrative that elitist planning and control is good for us all.

While there's probably an element of that, I would say these things are also significant:

(1) There's comparatively little blood to flash up on the evening news. Maduro has an iron grip on the military at the moment and as a result nobody's going to war in there. If there was a revolution down there the Western media would be all over it.

(2) Because there's no civil war, it's a lot easier for Maduro to control the borders and therefore keep journalists out. News media have been refused passage into Venezuela frequently and the independent media is under control, as you'd expect given Maduro controls their fucking food. (Indeed the largest daily shut down because Maduro refused to sell them newsprint.) This is the same dude who basically said fuck you to CNN and outright pulled their plug, something that can't be done in the US. I'm surprised Hannah Dreier hasn't been disappeared before now; I guess the ((tribe))'s pussy pass is still functioning in Caracas.

Still, you also can't get away from the fact the local Venezuelans are morons.

http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-venezu...SKBN15V0GC

Quote:Venezuela Catholic Church feels backlash after chiding Socialists

On a recent Sunday morning, several hundred Catholic worshippers were at Mass inside a hillside church of a poor Caracas neighbourhood when there was a sudden commotion at the back.

About 20 people barged in, mainly men with some wearing red shirts, to shout insults at the clergy like "Satan in a cassock!" and "Fascist!" witnesses said.

They also used the ruling Socialists' rallying cry, "Chavez lives!" in honour of late President Hugo Chavez.

"Some people were scared, obviously, but no one was hurt," recounted Luis Arias, 67, a catechism teacher at the San Pedro Claver church in the "23 De Enero" community, long an area of militant support for Venezuela's 18-year socialist government.

"They said 'because the priests have spoken about politics, we have the right too," added Arias, who was present throughout.

The leader of the group, who works at a nearby radio station, took the pulpit to give a political speech and denounce the local priest who had been publicizing church pronouncements critical of President Nicolas Maduro's government.

The San Pedro Claver fracas was the latest of half a dozen incidents in recent weeks, some violent, that have outraged Venezuela's Roman Catholic hierarchy and reawakened long-simmering church-state antagonism in the South American nation.

A month ago, government supporters protested against an archbishop, Antonio Lopez, at his home in Barquisimeto city after he gave a speech saying socialism had brought "misery."

Caracas' main cathedral was stoned in the middle of the night.

And on the same day as the interruption at San Pedro Claver church in Caracas, Jan. 29, police entered a church in Venezuela's second biggest city Maracaibo and interrupted the sermon - apparently to enforce traffic fines.

Also just before Jan. 1, masked and rifle-wielding assailants entered a Trappist monastery in the Andean state of Merida, robbing and terrorizing monks.

Though that incident had the hallmarks of gang crime that has become commonplace across violent Venezuela, it came after thugs beat up and stripped naked some Catholic students in the same state earlier that year - leaving the church suspicious.

"This list, in my opinion, shows they are not isolated events," Archbishop Diego Padron, who heads the main church authority Venezuela's Episcopal Conference, told Reuters.

Enumerating the incidents one by one, Padron drew a parallel with the jailing of priests and hostility toward the church in 1958 near the end of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez' rule.

"There must be a line, an order, to intimidate the church, to lower its discourse, to be silent," the 77-year-old cleric added in an interview at the conference's headquarters on a hillside of west Caracas. "The government's retaliation against the declarations of the Conference is intimidation."

Though government officials have frequently spoken in public about the church, to chastise clergy for taking political stances, requests to discuss the specific recent incidents went unanswered. Members of the group who entered the San Pedro Claver church, contacted by Reuters, declined to comment.

"FAILED 21st CENTURY SOCIALISM"?

After numerous frays with Chavez during his 1999-2013 rule, the church has once again taken its gloves off, with a series of highly critical speeches and proclamations since late last year.

Despite its oil wealth, the OPEC nation of 30 million people is suffering an unprecedented economic collapse, with inflation the highest in the world, long lines at shops, and basic foodstuffs and medicines running scarce.

Venezuela's murder rate is one of the world's highest, and foes say the state has morphed into dictatorship by jailing protesters, sidelining congress, and dragging its feet on elections.

"We locate the root of such a tough crisis in the application of a failed political system they called '21st century socialism'," said Padron, referring to Chavez's radical revamp of Venezuela's economy and political system.

Venezuela is a deeply religious country, and politicians on all sides flaunt their faith. But senior officials say church leaders have long been in bed with the elite and wealthy, and are allying with the opposition to seek Maduro's downfall.

"They are part of the right wing. They should take their seat as a political party in the opposition," the Socialist Party's powerful No. 2 Diosdado Cabello scoffed recently.

Seeking to show that plenty of rank-and-file churchgoers were behind Maduro, despite church leaders' anti-socialist rhetoric, at one rally Cabello asked for a show of hands from those who both backed the government and were Catholics.

"Here are 'Chavista' Catholics too, not all Catholics are 'squalid'!" he said, using a pejorative term for opponents first coined by Chavez, who never forgave some in the Catholic hierarchy for endorsing a short-lived 2002 putsch against him.

Underlining the latest flare-up in enmities, another senior official this month accused the Church of seeking war, while a bishop alleged clergy's telephones were being tapped.

The Vatican did step into Venezuelan politics toward the end of last year, facilitating talks between the Maduro government and the opposition coalition. But the dialogue quickly collapsed amid incriminations between both sides.

Outside the San Pedro Claver church in "23 De Enero," a painted figure of St. Peter sits on a wall next to the slogan "We are with Chavez and Maduro."

Most worshippers there simply hope there will be no repeat of last month's scary incident, when the group disrupted Mass and also barricaded the road outside to block a procession.

"It's no secret the country is very needy at the moment and the Church is trying to tell the truth," said Samuel Gamboa, 21, who plays the guitar there. "But everyone needs to stay calm and handle all this in peace."

If any of these idiots still believes in socialism after this, they deserve every bit of misery they get.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #370

A massive amount of South Americans in almost any country there believes in socialism and even outright communism. Obviously the Eastern Europeans and Russians did it wrong, they can do it much better.

Their systems usually fluctuate between robber-baron capitalism and various degrees of socialism. And the best part is that they will remain in this flux for next decades to come.

Post: #371

(03-17-2017 07:02 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  A massive amount of South Americans in almost any country there believes in socialism and even outright communism. Obviously the Eastern Europeans and Russians did it wrong, they can do it much better.

Their systems usually fluctuate between robber-baron capitalism and various degrees of socialism. And the best part is that they will remain in this flux for next decades to come.

They used to say about the GDR (East Germany) - that socialism is so pathetic that even the Germans can't make it work.

Post: #372

(03-17-2017 07:02 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  A massive amount of South Americans in almost any country there believes in socialism and even outright communism. Obviously the Eastern Europeans and Russians did it wrong, they can do it much better.

Their systems usually fluctuate between robber-baron capitalism and various degrees of socialism. And the best part is that they will remain in this flux for next decades to come.

I avoid political discussion with Colombians, especially the more educated ones because they are all champagne socialists. During my last trip down I had a few arguments about Trump's election with the locals and one quick way to shut them up was to ask them what they thought of an open border with Venezuela. Lower class Colombians are much better to talk with but pretty uneducated, more than once I've had to take out my phone and prove to them that Mexico is part of North America and not South.

Post: #373

I've been saying that Venezuela was USSR on fast forward. That was until the toilet paper shortage, anyway. That was "communism with a human face" stage. Now they have reached the stage of "Let's starve all opposition".

Also I disagree with the above that journalists don't have access in Venezuela. They do. CNN was kicked out last month for "fake news". Others are still there.
It is only because they are incorrigible leftists that they don't report on news there. It is lies by omission.
Bernie Sanders used to sing praises to Chavez's economy. Now that it's gone bust, he's been suspiciously silent on the matter.


Venezuela has a bread shortage. The government has decided bakers are the problem.

Quote:In a press release, the National Superintendent for the Defense of Socioeconomic Rights said it had charged four people and temporarily seized two bakeries as the socialist administration accused bakers of being part of a broad “economic war” aimed at destabilizing the country.

The government said bakeries are only allowed to produce French bread and white loaves, or pan canilla, with government-imported flour. However, in a tweet on Thursday, price control czar William Contreras said only 90 percent of baked goods had to be price-controlled products.

Post: #374

(03-17-2017 07:02 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  A massive amount of South Americans in almost any country there believes in socialism and even outright communism. Obviously the Eastern Europeans and Russians did it wrong, they can do it much better.

Their systems usually fluctuate between robber-baron capitalism and various degrees of socialism. And the best part is that they will remain in this flux for next decades to come.

Socialism=Genocide of the Proletariat. There is going to be so much death perhaps there will only be underground capitalists left alive.

Post: #375

(03-18-2017 09:43 PM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  

(03-17-2017 07:02 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  A massive amount of South Americans in almost any country there believes in socialism and even outright communism. Obviously the Eastern Europeans and Russians did it wrong, they can do it much better.

Their systems usually fluctuate between robber-baron capitalism and various degrees of socialism. And the best part is that they will remain in this flux for next decades to come.

Socialism=Genocide of the Proletariat. There is going to be so much death perhaps there will only be underground capitalists left alive.

At the moment the closest thing Venezuela has to capitalists are the black marketeers. Seriously.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm