Venezuela, The Starving Socialist Dystopia (Part 1)

Maduro may allow food aid into Venezuela if opposition recognizes Assembly as legitimate
By Antonio Maria Delgado | January 11, 2018

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Facing an explosive crisis, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is considering allowing international food donations to enter his country, but wants the opposition to recognize the legitimacy of the controversial National Constituent Assembly (NCA).

Maduro also wants to control the distribution of the food donations — so far denied entry by the government despite growing food shortages and looting — according to sources close to the situation.

The proposal has been under consideration during negotiations between the government and opposition this week in the Dominican Republic, said three sources. Two of the sources are diplomats who have been briefed on the conversations, and the third is an opposition official.

The sources agreed that the arrival of humanitarian aid and the legitimacy of the NCA are two of the key issues under negotiation behind closed doors. Also on the agenda are the U.S. sanctions on the Maduro government and early presidential elections.

But the legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly would be difficult for the opposition to accept. The umbrella Democratic Unity Roundtable — known as MUD — has repeatedly called it a fraud organized by Maduro to seize total and unchallenged control of the nation.

“Accepting the Constituent Assembly means surrendering the country. It is legitimizing the regime’s staying in power and driving the final nail into the casket of freedom in Venezuela,” said Diego Arias, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations who lives in New York.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado agreed. “Any decision taken in the Dominican Republic to accept [the NCA] or even ignore it would be absolutely unacceptable to us,” she said.

The Constituent Assembly is a fraudulent entity that could reverse any government decisions, including any agreement reached in the Dominican Republic, Machado added, by phone from Venezuela.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article194269574.html
 
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Now that anti-government protests in Venezuela have been crushed and President Nicolás Maduro has consolidated his power through dubious electoral maneuvers and a crackdown on democratic freedoms, some opposition leaders and international pundits have raised the possibility of a coup d’etat as the only realistic way to bring about regime change.

Julio Borges, head of the opposition-controlled congress, has called on the military to “break its silence”, adding that “the immense majority of officers are against the chaos that is taking hold in Venezuela”.

Writing in the Washington Post, law professor Ozan Varol declared: “The Venezuelan military is the levee that’s keeping the democratic movement at bay to protect the Maduro regime. Only if the military breaks can the river of democracy jump the banks.”

But many political analysts say a coup is unlikely due to a growing and mutually beneficial alliance between the Maduro government and the military. Amid the country’s worst economic crisis in modern history and polls showing that the vast majority of Venezuelans want the president to go, they say the armed forces have helped keep Maduro in office in exchange for a growing list of economic perks.
 
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Venezuela has more oil than any other nation in the world, but it keeps pumping less and less.

Oil production fell in December to one of its lowest points in three decades, further depriving the cash-strapped country of its only major source of revenue and adding to the suffering of its people.

Venezuela produced 1.7 million barrels of oil a day, according to S&P Global Platts, which polled industry officials, traders and analysts and reviewed proprietary shipping data.

That's the lowest since 2002, when a failed coup temporarily took hold of the government-run oil company, PDVSA.

Other than that, oil production is the lowest in 28 years. It's down 27% just since 2014, when the country's economic crisis took hold, according to OPEC and S&P figures.

The decline in oil production is prolonging the misery for 30 million Venezuelans.

People there are losing weight because of food shortages, and children are dying in hospitals because basic medicine and equipment aren't available.

Malaria, infant deaths and maternal deaths have all increased significantly, official figures show. The government uses money from oil exports to buy what little food and medicine actually make it in.

It's also a sign of mismanagement by the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who succeeded the late Hugo Chavez in 2013. And it couldn't come at a worse time: Venezuela has defaulted on some of its debt and owes a lot more.

In total, Venezuela has defaulted on $1.2 billion, according to Caracas Capital, a firm in Miami that tracks the country's debt. That's a relatively small sum in the world of bonds. The trouble is that it's a sign of what's to come, experts say.

Venezuela and PDVSA owe bondholders more than $60 billion. So far, Wall Street is waiting to get paid instead of fighting a long legal battle with Maduro's administration.

Experts say a default on all Venezuela's debt would spell immediate trouble for Maduro's regime. If enough investors of the defaulted debt trigger an "acceleration" clause, meaning they want immediate repayment, investors holding all other Venezuelan bonds can make the same claim.

Investors are used to late payments from Venezuela, which is notoriously behind schedule. They wait because Venezuelan bonds pay hefty returns, with rates as high as 12.75%. By comparison, a typical 10-year U.S. bond pays 2.5% interest.

But Wall Street is starting to sour on Venezuela's lucrative bonds. PDVSA's bond maturing in 2022 is trading at 25 cents on the dollar, down from 48 cents in early November, according to MarketAxess BondTicker.

If investors give up and trigger the acceleration clause, they have the right to seize Venezuelan oil that's in the United States or on tankers in the ocean as collateral.

That would cut off the government's ability to bring in what little revenue it has. And that would cause more suffering for ordinary Venezuelans struggling to live through severe shortages of food and medicine.
 
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How are they inching closer to collapse? That system caved in on itself.

I'd say it's still crumbling in every day.

The Chinese and Russians are still trying to prop Maduro's government up, presumably because they don't want to lose all those billions they have already invested into this dumpster fire.
 
I'd say it's still crumbling in every day.

The Chinese and Russians are still trying to prop Maduro's government up, presumably because they don't want to lose all those billions they have already invested into this dumpster fire.
The roof is gone. They have 3 walls up and the fourth is in the front lawn.
 
This is insane.

Do you guys think it will reach Cuba levels or go as far as North Korea levels?
 
This is insane.

Do you guys think it will reach Cuba levels or go as far as North Korea levels?
NK the people are too starved to fight and the military is being kept comfortable.
 
NK the people are too starved to fight and the military is being kept comfortable.

You are never too starved to fight IMO, what happens in NK is that the security apparatus is insane and there is absolute control on the flow of information.

Venezuela would need to crackdown on the internet and close its borders.
 
You are never too starved to fight IMO, what happens in NK is that the security apparatus is insane and there is absolute control on the flow of information.

Venezuela would need to crackdown on the internet and close its borders.

I dont think so then. My GF is Venezuelan and she readily communicates with her family in the country every day. Here mom and sister were just here last month, and plan on coming back in a few months.
 
You are never too starved to fight IMO, what happens in NK is that the security apparatus is insane and there is absolute control on the flow of information.

Venezuela would need to crackdown on the internet and close its borders.
You need beans, bullets and bandaids to win a war and the govt are the only ones with any of them.
 
I'd say it's still crumbling in every day.

The Chinese and Russians are still trying to prop Maduro's government up, presumably because they don't want to lose all those billions they have already invested into this dumpster fire.
If I was a banker in China or Russia, I'd cut my losses now. They're throwing good money after the bad. Maduro's government is a bottomless pit of corruption and incompetence. No amount of foreign aid money will save it.
 
Ten Dollars Makes You A Millionaire In Venezuela
Kenneth Rapoza | Dec 18, 2017

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A man shows the new local community currency, the panal, launched in the '23 de Enero' working-class neighborhood in Caracas on December 15, 2017. A collective in a hilltop shantytown in Caracas created its own currency, the panal, in an attempt to fight chronic shortages of bolivars, the national currency of inflation-ridden Venezuela. The panal can be exchanged locally for staples like bread, sugar and other farm goods grown or produced in the neighborhood.

Will President Nicolas Maduro please put that worthless piece of paper, the bolivar, out of its misery and adopt the petroleum-backed 'petro' as its digital currency already? At this point, Venezuelans are better off pitching tents on their Caribbean beaches and hunt for rare seashells.

Got $10? You're a Venezuelan millionaire. Got a grand? You're on the Venezuela billionaire list.

Venezuela inflation is over 4,000% annually. To put that into perspective, that would be like a $2 gallon of milk here in the United States now costing about $80, the price of a dinner for a family of four, with appetizers and a glass of wine, at the Olive Garden.

The situation is so bad that local communities are printing their own paper to barter for goods because there are so few bolivars to go around. The currency was named by the late president Hugo Chavez, who renamed Venezuela the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela back in 1998. It was his homage to anti-colonial leader Simon Bolivar. Chavez, and the party he created, the Socialists United of Venezuela (PSUV) has carried the flag of anti-imperialism ever since.

To Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, Venezuela isn't falling apart. It's merely going through a rough patch. He blames the U.S. and the opposition, a mostly unabashed capitalist collection of politicians who -- for some strange reason best left to the Venezuelans to explain -- have failed to get their act together even as leading a majority in Congress. That Congress, known as the National Assembly (also renamed by Chavez), is now about as useful as the bolivar itself. Maduro created a Constituent Assembly this year, a group of PSUV 'yes-men' that make the rules instead of the National Assembly.

Maduro isn't blind. He sees the increased level of poverty and malnourishment happening in his country. He sees the economy going to hell in a handbasket. There is no end in sight.

The country went into a restricted default in November, paying foreign bondholders late on at least three different bond issues. Chinese oil company and bondholder Sinopec is suing PDVSA.

On Dec. 4, Maduro said the country would create its own cryptocurrency, the petro. He said it would be backed by oil. He should do it fast. At the very least, he might get some Asian gamblers to put some money to work in Venezuelan tokens. Hopefully, petro is convertible into bitcoin.

At this rate, Venezuela might end up losing sizable portions of its oil reserves to the Russians and Chinese, two countries that have jointly helped prop up this ailing government.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrap...-you-a-millionaire-in-venezuela/#2595530419ad
 
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You are never too starved to fight IMO, what happens in NK is that the security apparatus is insane and there is absolute control on the flow of information.

Venezuela would need to crackdown on the internet and close its borders.

Would be much easier if they had a 2A protected right, huh?
 
NK the people are too starved to fight and the military is being kept comfortable.

The starvation and hunger is what gets people to start fighting mate. Look at where we are now in the US that the citizenry, especially in places like CA and NY put up with. Do you imagine there would be that kind of leniency if they were hungry?
 
The most beautiful girl I ever met is from Venezuela. White bitch, but got dem tities.
 
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