Here we go...
Venezuela's Food Shortages Trigger Long Lines, Hunger and Looting - Wall Street Journal http://t.co/q2JHwgrh67 #colombia
— Colombia Reports (@colombiareports) August 26, 2015Venezuela's Food Shortages Trigger Long Lines, Hunger and Looting - Wall Street Journal http://t.co/q2JHwgrh67 #colombia
— Colombia Reports (@colombiareports) August 26, 2015
12 comments:
SA keeps lower prices to break down the OPEC and other oil producing nations. Amongst others: Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc.
Thank them, not the fracking producers!
US sanctions imposed on Venezuela are economic warfare aimed at regime change, that is, overthrowing a democratically elected government that refuses to be a US vassal. This has little to do with either either the economic incompetence of the Maduro government or even the low oil price. This is war by other means. and when the scale is of the parties is considered it is bullying. The US should be ashamed.
Tom is not a excuse, Venezuela has plenty of resources to be self-sustainable. If it looks bad then how would the majority of Europe look which is really starved on resources? If we were cut from NA and Russia NG during a winter it would be a disaster. That's what happened in Greece, politicians are scared that they cannot get out of euro w/o massive starvation in basic needs (food and medicines), it's real.
The current international trade and payment system has no resilience, and is abused by some institutions and governments with power with embargos, inducing recessions and depressions (lower commodity prices) etc. But most of the time is a self-inflected wound (in the case of Venezuela) for not building up their capital. Is understandably in cases like Cuba, as those places have really no resources, and they end being not worse than their "capitalists" counterparts like far right dictatorships in Central America, or other corrupt regimes.
But in other cases, is hardly an excuse.
The current régime in Venezuela is deeply corrupt, and built on clientelism of the worst kind, tied directly into the drug trade. Over 30 opposition mayors are imprisoned for "plotting" without any evidence being provided. Even "pro-revolutionary" military officers are being summarily imprisoned for decrying the corruption. Venezuela is the second most violent country in the world and the violence is growing. The Chavez-Maduro régime allowed and promoted unfettered oil extraction to such an extent that Dutch disease, combined with massive corruption, has destroyed non-oil-and-gas extraction sectors. With the decline in foreign currency to buy the products that Venezuela no longer produces, there are shortages in things like toilet paper. It is time for progressives to wake up -- Chavez and Maduro are neither democrats nor progressives. They did not nationalize the oil sector, rather their social democratic opposition did in the 1970s. They did not create "systema": that too was established under the opposition. The Venezuelan government is giving the left a bad eye around the world. Almost any non-junta government would be better than what Venezuelans now face. US sanctions are having little or no effect: the problems in Venezuela mostly stem from the idiocy of those in power.
IN addition to sanctions, Venezuela, like most other Latin American socialist countries, has a John Galt problem. The people with the property and wealth don't want to share with the majority poor population and are doing what they can from their side to cooperate with the US toward regime change. Very difficult to reform in such situations.
The major problem in Latin America and why it remains a social, political and economic basket case is the have/have-not divide and the often violent attempt on the part of the haves to keep it that way, with the active assistance of the US, which still regard SA nations as its colonies.
Tom, right again as usual, and everyone else is wrong. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
Chavez and Maduro aren't revolutionaries in any sense. They're old fashioned leftwing social democrats who wanted nothing more than the same standard of living in Venezuela as in North America and Western Europe. For that they were subject to a military coup (which is a declaration of war), sanctions (to all intents and purposes, a declaration of war) and nonstop propaganda in the western media. Through it all, democratic elections were held and Chavez and Maduro won staggering majorities. The media that complains so loudly and spouts such absurd lies about Venezuela were nowhere to be seen or heard of during the years of dictatorship.
Perhaps Chavez and Maduro could have done things differently, and they're not perfect by any means, but when you look at the forces of demented reaction and violence they're facing, they'll make some missteps along the way.
They had decades to develop Venezuela and now time is running out. What do you expect ordinary people to do? Keep them in power for old time's sake? Out of a sense of loyalty?
When you don't perform, you get sacked. No excuses.
The Maduro government still has majority support as does the Correa government in Uruguay. The people working toward regime change by non-democratic means are neoliberals that have democracy and think that those who own property should rule. Basically haves versus have-nots with the have-nots in the majority and voting their interests. They are under no illusion about what would happen to them under a neoliberal regime in which the country (read elite) was doing better economically.
BTW, the US not much better. The GOP immediately started to undercut the Clinton presidency and finally moved to impeach him. At the outset of the Obama presidency, Jim DeMint declared, "We'll break him," and the GOP opposed every one of the president's initiatives, even those that were originally proposed by the GOP.
Neoliberal elites really have hate democracy when they fail to win, even after cheating as much as they can.
Should we be surprised that they eat their own?
Tom: don't compare Correa and Maduro. They are nothing alike. Correa's a democrat and a sensible economist. Maduro is a corrupt moron, and the actual legitimacy of his election win over Capriles is very doubtful. Maduro still has a lot of rural support, but his party is in power largely through subterfuge. When it seemed that the opposition might win a majority of seats in the legislature, the government changed the electoral system: the MUD, with almost half the vote, was awarded just 65 of 165 seats. When Mr Capriles challenged the result of the April election, the CNE and the supreme court refused to review the evidence. Opposition mayors and state governors find their budgets, largely dependent on transfers from central government, slashed and their powers transferred to unelected officials. Maduro is no Ayende, and Obama's CIA, while still ugly, is not Nixon's.
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