Venezuela, The Starving Socialist Dystopia (Part 1)

[Rozko]

It's covered fairly regularly by news organizations that focus on international and Latin American news.

Americans would rather hyperventilate about the European immigration crisis as though that has any impact on them while ignoring the humanitarian crisis brewing a few hours away from our border.

The print media yes, but news channels are not covering shit at the moment

 

[Rational Poster]

The print media yes, but news channels are not covering shit at the moment

uhhhh

 

[Arkain2K]

Where do you think @Arkain2K gets this stuff?

Actual news sources. He doesn't actually write it himself.

Like, shit dude, for real?

Real news that actually matters today, foreign and domestic, are being buried to the forehead either by sensational tabloid-esque hit pieces or partisan commentaries that only serves a certain political agenda.

The kind of shit threads typically found in the WR are often EXACTLY the same shit "news" that TV analysts and newspaper editors would spend hours to dissect each day. Why? Because a very large portion of the population is hooked on that worthless garbage. Some random person can post a random tweet from Alabama or farted in Florida and it would be considered breaking news, if the news station can use it to push something else from their echo chamber.

The only reason why I can only update my mega-threads once or twice a week is because out of 10 articles that I read on the subject, may be 1 or 2 can honestly be considered neutral, non-partisan, responsible reporting. Brexit is probably the worse one to cover in particular, because the media in Britain is even more fucked up than ours and don't even try to hide their political bias.

On the other hand, most American news sources generally don't give a shit about the earth-shattering news development happening around the world, unless they can some how use that development to either blame it on, or to vindicate, U.S President Donald J. Trump. Even when he has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. Everyone knows this.

If you think it's easy to maintain a real news & discussion thread like this, without falling into the media's narrative trap, who loves to bury certain angles and elevate others to suit their political agendas in order to turn the people against each other, I invite you to choose an important topic and give it a shot, we will see how many pages it will lasts before descending into complete chaos, just the way the MSM wanted.

 

[MadSquabbles500]

Where do you think @Arkain2K gets this stuff?

Actual news sources. He doesn't actually write it himself.

Like, shit dude, for real?

sorry I meant on TV. I dont see much about it on CNN, Fox news etc.

 

[ShinkanPo]

The situation in Venezuela is depressing,

So the people are now so desperate they no longer fear soldiers and would target them to rob them of their guns and rations.

This is what happens when people get desperate they resort to desperate measures but not all desperate people are dumb there will be others who will attack during the night terrorize the families of the Military men attack them when they are asleep when they are alone.

There will be a point that if you are a soldier the only safe place for you and your family will be at the barracks at that point the salary and incentives that Maduro gives you will be useless as you can't enjoy a normal life your kids are at risk if they go out you can't even party, I see drug use and other substance abuse in the military to sky rocket and this will fragment the Military bit by bit.


They better Kill Maduro before this thing gets even worst.

 

[Thycidides]

It kind of does.

Read about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Mexico#1982_crisis_and_recovery

It was a similar scenario to that of Venezuela.

You really think something like that happens today? A new government is able to implement a free trade agreement with USA?


"The following year, Salinas took his next step toward higher capital inflows by lowering domestic borrowing costs, reprivatizing the banking system, and broaching the idea of a free-trade agreement with the United States. These announcements were soon followed by increased levels of capital repatriation and foreign investment."

I don't see that happening at all. Trump is against trade agreements, and Mexico in the 80's had valuable industries to sell.

That might have something to do with the fact that Chavez straight up nationalized all the private industries, seized all the foreign companies' assets, and promptly ran the economy to the ground with his ridiculous price-control policies that forced domestic producers to sell their products below cost of production, without subsidizing for the losses that he continue to force upon them long after the subsidy money dries up as global oil price plummets.

That's why a powerhouse once known as an exporter of foodstuff now can't even make enough food to feed themselves. The fertilizer makers went broke long ago, along with the manufacturers of farming equipment, and then the farmers themselves.

Now Maduro is actually forcing people to work on the fields, because there's not enough food to go around, thanks to Chavismo.

Then again, that's just commonly-known information, freely available to everyone who have actually read the first 4 pages of this thread before jumping into the discussion.

Sure that is all true but I don't see any reason the opposition or a new government would do anything different. Why would a investor buy privatized PDVSA stock when ARAMCo is up for sale?

 

[Rod1]

You really think something like that happens today? A new government is able to implement a free trade agreement with USA?


"The following year, Salinas took his next step toward higher capital inflows by lowering domestic borrowing costs, reprivatizing the banking system, and broaching the idea of a free-trade agreement with the United States. These announcements were soon followed by increased levels of capital repatriation and foreign investment."

I don't see that happening at all.

Sure that is all tue but but I don't see any reason the opposition or a new government would do anything different.

1.- NAFTA wasnt the thing that stopped hyperinflation.

2.- Venezuela doesnt needs a FTA with the USA, it has tons of natural resources it can export.

 

[Rod1]

Sure that is all true but but I don't see any reason the opposition or a new government would do anything different.

I already pointed out 2 things that could be made different.

Venezuela was built from the ground up after all, there is no reason why it cant be done again assuming the new government follows fact-based economics.

 

[Greoric]

I already pointed out 2 things that could be made different.

Venezuela was built from the ground up after all, there is no reason why it cant be done again assuming the new government follows fact-based economics.

Or better yet, if its disbanded completely .

 

[Rod1]

Or better yet, if its disbanded completely .

 

[Thycidides]

1.- NAFTA wasnt the thing that stopped hyperinflation.

2.- Venezuela doesnt needs a FTA with the USA, it has tons of natural resources it can export.

I dunno why you used Mexico as an example then.

Lots of countries have natural resources like Libya or Congo. That doesn't mean they are good places to invest. A culture of corruption doesn't change over night.

Lopez and Caprilis are the two opposition leaders yeah? What is their plan to fix the problem?

 

[Rod1]

I dunno why you used Mexico as an example then.

I specifically linked to the 1982 crisis which was caused by the exact same reasons the Venezuela crisis happened.

You ignored that part and talked about NAFTA something that happened 12 years later.

 

[Rod1]

Lopez and Caprilis are the two opposition leaders yeah? What is their plan to fix the problem?

There are plenty of things that can be done, i already pointed out the 2 biggest ones.

 

[Greoric]

There are plenty of things that can be done, i already pointed out the 2 biggest ones.

There's nothing more you can do. You just have to let the cognitive dissonance do its work outside of here.

 

[Thycidides]

t

I specifically linked to the 1982 crisis which was caused by the exact same reasons the Venezuela crisis happened.

You ignored that part and talked about NAFTA something that happened 12 years later.

So you were referring to this?

"Throughout the 1980s, the productive sectors of the economy contributed a decreasing share to GDP, while the services sectors expanded their share, reflecting the rapid growth of the informal economy and the change from good jobs to bad ones (services jobs). De la Madrid's stabilization strategy imposed high social costs: real disposable income per capita fell 5 percent each year between 1983 and 1988. High levels of unemployment and underemployment, especially in rural areas, stimulated migration to Mexico City and to the United States.


This doesn't sound good at all. I mentioned NAFTA because it seems to actually have led to sustainable growth and outside investment despite a currency collapse in 1994.

It seems to me some sort of bailout by the IMF, EU and USA is needed and maybe the creation of a sovereign wealth fund. Maybe advisers from OPEC help repair oil industry?

 

[Rod1]

t


So you were referring to this?

"Throughout the 1980s, the productive sectors of the economy contributed a decreasing share to GDP, while the services sectors expanded their share, reflecting the rapid growth of the informal economy and the change from good jobs to bad ones (services jobs). De la Madrid's stabilization strategy imposed high social costs: real disposable income per capita fell 5 percent each year between 1983 and 1988. High levels of unemployment and underemployment, especially in rural areas, stimulated migration to Mexico City and to the United States.


This doesn't sound good at all. I mentioned NAFTA because it seems to actually have led to sustainable growth and outside investment despite a currency collapse in 1994.

It seems to me some sort of bailout by the IMF, EU and USA is needed and maybe the creation of a sovereign wealth fund.

Doesnt sounds good at all, but compared to the shit going in Venezuela, it is indeed a big improvement.

 

[Arkain2K]

For five months, The New York Times tracked 21 public hospitals in Venezuela.
Doctors are seeing record numbers of children with severe malnutrition. Thousands have died.

SAN CASIMIRO, Venezuela — Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death.

His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals.

Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected. Aunts shooed away curious young cousins, mourners arrived with wildflowers from the hills, and relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families increasingly depend on amid the food shortages and soaring food prices throttling the nation. They gently placed the tiny wings on top of Kenyerber’s coffin to help his soul reach heaven — a tradition when a baby dies in Venezuela.

When Kenyerber’s body was finally ready for viewing, his father, Carlos Aquino, a 37-year-old construction worker, began to weep uncontrollably. “How can this be?” he cried, hugging the coffin and speaking softly, as if to comfort his son in death. “Your papá will never see you again.”

Hunger has stalked Venezuela for years. Now, it is killing the nation’s children at an alarming rate, doctors in the country’s public hospitals say.

Venezuela has been shuddering since its economy began to collapse in 2014. Riots and protests over the lack of affordable food, excruciating long lines for basic provisions, soldiers posted outside bakeries and angry crowds ransacking grocery stores have rattled cities, providing a telling, public display of the depths of the crisis.

But deaths from malnutrition have remained a closely guarded secret by the Venezuelan government. In a five-month investigation by The New York Times, doctors at 21 public hospitals in 17 states across the country said that their emergency rooms were being overwhelmed by children with severe malnutrition — a condition they had rarely encountered before the economic crisis began.

The Venezuelan government has tried to cover up the extent of the crisis by enforcing a near-total blackout of health statistics, and by creating a culture in which doctors are often afraid to register cases and deaths that may be associated with the government’s failures.

But the statistics that have come out are staggering. In the Ministry of Health’s 2015 annual report, the mortality rate for children under 4 weeks old had increased a hundredfold, from 0.02 percent in 2012 to just over 2 percent. Maternal mortality had increased nearly fivefold in the same period.

For almost two years, the government did not publish a single epidemiological bulletin tracking statistics like infant mortality. Then in April of this year, a link suddenly appeared on the Health Ministry’s official website, leading to the unpublished bulletins. They showed that 11,446 children under the age of 1 had died in 2016 — a 30 percent increase in one year — as the economic crisis accelerated.

The new findings made national and international headlines before the government declared that the website had been hacked, and the reports were swiftly removed. The health minister was fired and the military was put in charge of monitoring the bulletins. No reports have been released since.

Doctors are censored in hospitals, too, often warned not to include malnutrition in children’s medical records.

“In some public hospitals, the clinical diagnosis of malnutrition has been prohibited,” Dr. Huníades Urbina said.

But doctors interviewed by The Times at nine of the 21 public hospitals said that they had kept at least some count. They encountered nearly 2,800 cases of child malnutrition in the last year alone, with starving children regularly brought to emergency rooms. Nearly 400 of the children died, the doctors said.

“Never in my life had I seen so many hungry children,” said Dr. Livia Machado, a pediatrician who gives free consultations at her private practice to children who had been hospitalized at Dr. Domingo Luciani Hospital in the capital, Caracas.

The hospital is one of the few still accepting malnourished infants for treatment. Other hospitals often turn them away, telling desperate parents that they do not have enough beds or medical supplies to treat their children. Nearly all of Venezuelan hospitals report shortages of basic provisions like baby formula.

President Nicolás Maduro has acknowledged that people are hungry in Venezuela, but he has refused to accept international aid, often saying that Venezuela’s economic problems are caused by foreign adversaries like the United States, which he says is waging an economic war against his country.

Read the rest of the report at:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html

 

[Social Distance Warrior]

My God, what the fu*k is happening here?
is that a supply truck being run off the road and looted?

 

[lifelessheap]

Bernie came so close to winning. Shocking. Let this be a lesson.

 

[SammyPops]

Very sad they cannot do communism correctly like the Chinese.