As Venezuela Burns

Made me laugh how that woman said "there is poor people here too! I didnt use to be poor" yeah well
 
OfficePants said:
Thank socialism.
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Olo we used to switch both cars every year till 2010, then to avoid problems we bought cars for mid 2000's. Old car, no one gives a shit about you. One of my friends dad bought a 4runner, then put burned oil all over the car and let it rest for a couple or days so it wouls look older.
 
Last two days have been very hectic for me in Venezuela. Will disclose the full info later on, but it is a damn good story.
 
Venezuela Is Starving

Once Latin America’s richest country, Venezuela can no longer feed its people, hobbled by the nationalization of farms as well as price and currency controls
By Juan Forero

YARE, Venezuela— Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds.

His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive.

“I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”

Her country was once Latin America’s richest, producing food for export. Venezuela now can’t grow enough to feed its own people in an economy hobbled by the nationalization of private farms, and price and currency controls.

Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation—estimated by the International Monetary Fund to reach 720% this year—making it nearly impossible for families to make ends meet. Since 2013, the economy has shrunk 27%, according to local investment bank Torino Capital; imports of food have plunged 70%.

Hordes of people, many with children in tow, rummage through garbage, an uncommon sight a year ago. People in the countryside pick farms clean at night, stealing everything from fruits hanging on trees to pumpkins on the ground, adding to the misery of farmers hurt by shortages of seed and fertilizer. Looters target food stores. Families padlock their refrigerators.



Three in four Venezuelans said they had lost weight last year, an average of 19 pounds, according to the National Poll of Living Conditions, an annual study by social scientists. People here, in a mix of rage and humor, call it the Maduro diet after President Nicolás Maduro.

For more than a month, Venezuelans have protested against the increasingly authoritarian government of Mr. Maduro; by Friday, more than 35 people had been reported killed in the unrest. The country’s Food Ministry, the president’s office, the Communications Ministry and the Foreign Ministry didn’t return calls or emails requesting comment for this article.

“Here, for the government, there are no malnourished children,” said Livia Machado, a physician and child malnutrition expert. “The reality is this is an epidemic, and everyone should be paying attention to this.”

Dr. Machado and her team of doctors are seeing a dramatic increase in emaciated infants brought to the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, where they work.

The problem is no better in towns like Yare, south of Caracas, where the government’s leftist movement was long popular. “To eat,” said Sergio Jesus Sorjas, 11 years old, “I sometimes go to the butcher and I say, ‘Sir, do you have any bones you can give me?’ ”

The boy receives nutritional formula or a traditional Venezuelan corncake from the parish priest. Sergio said he hasn’t tasted meat in months: “Sometimes, I don’t eat at all.”

The Catholic charity Caritas and a team led by Susana Raffalli —a specialist in food emergencies who has worked in Guatemala, Africa and other regions tormented by hunger—are monitoring conditions here.

The most recent Caritas study of 800 children under the age of 5 in Yare and three other communities showed that in February nearly 11% suffered from severe acute malnutrition, which is potentially fatal, compared with 8.7% in October. Caritas said nearly a fifth of children under age 5 in those four communities suffered from chronic malnutrition, which stunts growth and could mark a generation.

“What’s serious is not that we’re at the crisis threshold, but rather the velocity at how we got there,” Ms. Raffalli said.

By World Health Organization standards, Caritas’s findings constitute a crisis that calls for the government to marshal extraordinary aid. But authorities have resisted offers of food and aid from abroad.

The country’s growing malnutrition is made worse by a breakdown in health care, the spread of mosquito-borne illness and what the Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela has called a severe shortage of medicines.

Plenty to want
Belkis Diaz watched her newborn, Dany Nava, wither away last summer from lack of food. There was no baby formula, and Ms. Diaz couldn’t nurse, said Albertina Hernandez, the baby’s grandmother.

“We couldn’t find food, we couldn’t find the milk, and he began to get thinner and thinner,” Ms. Hernandez said.

Venezeula's High-Speed Crash
Once Latin America's richest country, Venezuela now has the world's highest inflation rate, making it nearly impossible for families to make ends meet. The economy has contracted by more than a quarter since 2013.

Gross domestic product*, change from a year earlier
Estimated monthly inflation, change since April 2016
Black market currency value, Bolivars to a dollar
Food imports
GP-AA419_VENHUN_G_20170504160008.jpg

GP-AA420_VENHUN_G_20170504160017.jpg

GP-AA421_VENHUN_G_20170504160026.jpg

GP-AA422_VENHUN_G_20170504160034.jpg

*estimates start in 2016
Sources: IMF (GDP); Torino Capital (inflation); DolarToday (currency); World Trade Organization (food imports)
By the time Dany arrived at the hospital, he had a serious cough and soon died. “He was so, so tiny,” his grandmother said.

In past years, the farms south of here produced at capacity, everything from chickens to soybeans.

Alberto Troiani, 48 years old, still works the hog farm that his father, an Italian immigrant, founded in the 1970s. His business has now been battered by price controls, a shortage of supplies and criminal gangs.

The farm has gone from 200 female pigs, each producing a dozen piglets, to 50. Mr. Troiani can’t afford the high-protein feed and medicines he once used. Full-grown pigs now weigh 175 pounds instead of 240 pounds.

What is worse, he said, walking past half-empty pens, is seeing his pigs sometimes bite off the tails and ears of others.

“We used to send 120 to 150 pigs a month to slaughter,” Mr. Troiani said. “Now it’s 50, 60 animals, a joke.” He makes 93 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of meat, he said, but needs $1.17 to make a profit. Since 2012, 82% of Venezuela’s pig producers have closed, and production has fallen 71%, according to industry representatives.

BN-TH622_VENHUN_P_20170504174912.jpg

The corral at Alberto Troiani’s farm was built for 100 pigs but is now near empty. Photo: Wil Riera for The Wall Street Journal
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Alberto Troiani, 48, walks around the farm built by his parents, immigrants from Italy, in the 1970s. Photo: Wil Riera for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Troiani talked about leaving Venezuela with his mother, Yolanda Facciolini, 69 years old, who arrived from Italy in the 1960s. He said he would have no buyers: All around him, people are abandoning their farms. Thieves take what is left behind, he said—copper wire, tractors, weed killer.

The agricultural companies the government has taken over, including milk factories and distributors of fertilizer and feed, are closed or barely operating, according to economists and farm groups.

“The system is created so you can’t win,” said Alberto Cudemus, who heads the national association of pig farmers. “The government thinks its survival is in communism, not in us, not with production. And that’s where they’re wrong.”

Survival skills
Diogenes Alzolay, 65 years old, once had two small construction companies and later drove a cab. He is now trying to sell the freezers of the small store he once ran along with his books, lamps, photocopier and taxi.

BN-TH624_VENHUN_M_20170504174912.jpg

Germain, 11 years old, and his grandfather, Cesar Augusto Palma, eat less food each day so that Germain’s younger siblings and others in the family have enough. Photo: Wil Riera for The Wall Street Journal
He and his wife, Nidea Cadiz, need money to feed their children, who include a 2-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. He also has three teenagers, ages 13, 16 and 19.

On a recent day, Mr. Alzolay was frying sardines. To stretch the food they have, a couple of family members skip eating one day to leave enough for the others. Meals are sometimes the local corncakes known as arepas, vegetables, mangoes and the occasional canned fish.

“I’ve thought about running away, but I can’t do it because of our very little kids,” Mr. Alzolay said. “Getting to this extreme makes me want to cry.”

Nine in 10 homes said they don’t make enough money to buy all their food, according to the poll of living conditions. Nearly a third of Venezuelans, 9.6 million people, eat two or fewer meals a day, up from 12.1% in 2015, the poll found; four of out five in the nation are now poor.

Cesar Augusto Palma, 75 years old, lays out the grim arithmetic of high inflation on a fixed income. His pension is now worth about $10 a month, he said, enough to buy four boxes of milk.

BN-TH618_VENHUN_P_20170504174906.jpg

Alberto Palma, 75 years old, receives a monthly pension now worth about $10 a month. He goes hungry some days trying to feed his grown daughter and her three children, including Germain, right. Photo: Wil Riera for THE Wall Street Journal
BN-TH617_VENHUN_P_20170504174906.jpg

Germain, left, and his younger brother clutch a wood pole at their house in Yare, Venezuela. Photo: Wil Riera for The Wall Street Journal
His grown daughter and three grandchildren are financial dependents. Mr. Palma and his grandson Germain, 11 years old, eat less food to leave more for the two younger children. Germain’s once-thick hair is turning yellow.

“They need it more than me,” said Germain, who weighs 50 pounds instead of 70 pounds, about the average for a boy his age. Nearby, his brothers, Cesar Augusto, 10 years old, and Angel Jose, age 4, try to fly a handmade kite.

BN-TH627_VENHUN_M_20170504174917.jpg

Jean Pierre Planchart in March when he was first brought, severely malnourished, to the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas. Photo: Dr. Livia Machado
“I am hungry,” Germain said. “I feel like a pain in my belly.” Asked his favorite meal, he said, “Arroz con pollo,” rice and chicken, which he last ate in 2015.

At the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, Ms. Planchart cried when she recalled the ways she tried to feed baby Jean Pierre and her four other children. She went through trash bags, searching for bits of corn or bread free of maggots.

“I’d stand there and say, ‘I can’t do it,’ ” she said, worried of being seen by neighbors. “I said to myself, ‘If I don’t do it, this, what will I take to my children?’ ”

Ms. Planchart had a string of jobs: cashier, hair salon worker, cook. Then the work disappeared; inflation and food shortages made everything worse. At one point, she said, a neighbor cooked a dog.

As she watched Jean Pierre grow thinner and then stop moving, she decided to seek help from Dr. Machado and other malnutrition experts at the hospital. The doctors don’t have vitamins, antibiotics or serum for sick babies.

“We’re not feeding him well in this hospital,” Dr. Machado said. “No boy like this is going to get better with bananas and cheese.”

Ms. Planchart, meantime, rocked Jean Pierre in her arms, a balm for both.

“He hasn’t fully recovered,” she said of her baby, who now has chickenpox. “The idea is for him to get his weight up and that we get his metabolism to where it should be. But he’s delicate.”

BN-TH626_VENHUN_M_20170504174917.jpg

Maria Planchart, 34 years old, cares for her son Jean Pierre, who is recovering from malnutrition and chickenpox at a hospital in Caracas. Photo: Miguel Gutiérrez for The Wall Street Journal
—— Maolis Castro in Caracas contributed to this article

Venezuela Is Starving
By
Juan Forero
Updated May 5, 2017 12:39 p.m. ET
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How to make Venezuela's economy great again

"As OPEC meets on Thursday, its most oil-rich member is collapsing into chaos.

While Saudi Arabia, Russia and even the United States and Canada make headlines as petroleum giants, it is actually troubled Venezuela that has the world's largest reserves of crude, something in the order of 300 billion barrels. Even at reduced current world prices, back-of-the-envelope calculations show that oil wealth alone should make all Venezuelan families U.S. dollar millionaires."

I recall reading somewhere a few years ago that oil had to be $160 per barrel for Venezuela to get a profit due to infrastructure and operational inefficiencies.
 
They tried to sell some exploration blocks a couple of years back, no one took them up, as they knew they could be seized and nationalised at anytime. No oil major was willing to take the risk.

Things are no so good in The Kingdom either: reserves being used up to keep their population compliant and fighting the war in Yemen.
 
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/ne...ttps://www.theglobeandmail.com&service=mobile

"What do I have when I go to deliver a baby? Only a pair of gloves and maybe a clamp for the cord," said David Flora, who recently completed a two-year stint as the sole doctor in a referral hospital in Rio Chico, a town three hours' drive west of Caracas. "If the placenta doesn't descend, if I need to stop bleeding, if the baby has respiratory distress – I have no way to attend that. I have one bed and a pair of gloves and a line of women waiting at the door to deliver. Women arrive at 40 weeks pregnant with no file, they have had no prenatal care, and I know nothing about them. I don't even know how many babies are in that belly because they haven't had an ultrasound. I don't even have a fetoscope to listen, so I don't know the size of the pelvis, the size of the baby, if the baby is even alive. If the mother needs a caesarean, she dies."

...

The salt in the wound is the rosy image put forth by Mr. Maduro. The President regularly appears on television celebrating the achievements of the "Bolivarian revolution" begun by his predecessor Hugo Chavez – or, on days with particularly large opposition demonstrations, he takes over the national airwaves to host a salsa music program. In an Orwellian declaration not long ago, he celebrated a reduction in obesity thanks to government health programs.
 
Countdown To War On Venezuela
On Sunday Venezuela will hold an general election of participants of a constitutional assembly. Half of the representatives will be elected from regular electoral districts. The other half will be elected from and by eight special constituencies like "workers", "farmers", "employers", etc. The second part may be unusual but is no less democratic than the U.S. system which gives voters in rural states more weight than city dwellers.

The new assembly will formulate changes to the current constitution. Those changes will be decided on in another general vote. It is likely that the outcome will reinforce the favorite policies of a great majority of the people and of the social-democratic government under President Manduro.

The more wealthy part of the population as well as the foreign lobbies and governments have tried to prevent or sabotage the upcoming election. The U.S. has used various economic pressure points against the Venezuelan government including economic warfare with ever increasing sanctions. The opposition has held violent street rallies, attacked government institutions and supporters and called for general strikes.

But the NYT propaganda pictures of opposition rallies in the capitol Caracas show only small crowds of dozens to a few hundred of often violent youth. The opposition calls for general strikes have had little resonance as even the feverish anti-Maduro Washington Post has to concede:

In the wealthier eastern half of the city, most businesses closed to support the strike called by the opposition, which is boycotting the vote and calling for its cancellation.
The main highways of the capital city were largely closed down in the early morning, and reports surfaced of national police lobbing tear gas at strikers in the center. In the poorer neighborhoods in the west, the strike appeared less pronounced, with more businesses open and more people on the streets.

(Translation of the WaPo propagandese: "Not even the rich opposition neighborhoods of the city closed down completely. Attempts by the opposition to block central roads were prevented by the police. In the poorer parts of the city the opposition call for a strike was simply ignored.") The opposition is only active within the richer strata of the population and only in a few big cities. The poor rural areas have gained under the social-democratic governments and continue to favor it.

In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times the "regime change" lobby of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) laid out the steps towards an upcoming war in Venezuela:

Since the plebiscite, Venezuela’s opposition has taken steps toward establishing a parallel government. This might remain a symbolic initiative. But if the opposition continues down this road, it will soon be looking for international recognition and funding, and will at least implicitly be asserting the parallel government’s claim to the legitimate monopoly on the use of force. After that it will seek what every government wants: weapons to defend itself. If it succeeds, Venezuela could plunge into a civil war that will make the current conflict seem like high school fisticuffs.
(The WOLA was also involved in Hillary Clinton's coup in Honduras.)

The CIA is quite open about the plans:

In one of the clearest clues yet about Washington’s latest meddling in the politics of Latin America, CIA director Mike Pompeo said he was “hopeful that there can be a transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there”.
He added: “I was just down in Mexico City and in Bogota a week before last talking about this very issue, trying to help them understand the things they might do so that they can get a better outcome for their part of the world and our part of the world.”

The piece notes:

In Venezuela, [the U.S. government] has sought to weaken the elected governments of both Mr Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup. Some of the effort has been in distributing funds to opposition groups through organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, while some has been in the form of simple propaganda.
In May 2016 unidentified US officials told reporters in a background briefing that Venezuela was descending into a deepening “crisis” that could end in violence.

We can conclude that the upcoming violence in Venezuela is not a spontaneous action of the opposition but the implementation of a plan that has been around since at least May 2016. It is likely to follow the color revolution by force script the U.S. developed and implemented in several countries over the last decade. Weapon supply and mercenary support for the opposition will come in from and through the neighboring countries the CIA head visited.

The vote to the constitutional assembly will proceed as planned. The opposition will attempt to sabotage it or, if that fails, proceed with violence. Weapons and tactical advice and support have likely already been provided through CIA channels.

The Venezuelan government is supported by a far larger constituency than the U.S. aligned right-wing opposition. The military has shown no sign of disloyalty to the government. Unless there is some unforeseeable event any attempt to overthrow the government will fail.

The U.S. can further hurt Venezuela by closing down oil imports from the country. But this will likely increase U.S. gas prices. It would create a some short term inconvenience for Venezuela, but oil is fungible and other customers will be available.

To overthrow the Venezuelan government has been tried since the first election of a somewhat socialist government in 1999. The U.S. instigated coup in 2002 failed when the people and the military stood up against the blatant interference. The "regime change" methods have since changed with the added support of a militant "democratic opposition" fed from the outside. The use of that tool had negative outcomes in Libya and Ukraine and it failed in Syria. I am confident that the government of Venezuela has analyzed those cases and prepared its own plans to counter a similar attempt.

The U.S. just ordered the relatives of its embassy employees out of the country. Such is only done when imminent action is expected.
 
There was a tiny blip and glimmer earlier this year as they settled some of the outstanding debt they had with suppliers in the oil industry. Now once again they can't pay anyone. One hopes the opposition can do something soon because when those oil refineries go off line, the country will starve literally and we'll see how great and popular the revolution is then. Wiping your ass with your bare hand is one thing, but when you have to go kill your neighbour and boil him for food is another level of socialist savagery all together.

 
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Trump doesn't rule out military option for Venezuela

It's going to be resolved just like North Korea...with fire and fury.

"We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary," Mr Trump told reporters on Friday evening. "We have troops all over the world in places that are very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the people are suffering and they're dying."
 
Fwiffo said:
Venezuela is not very far away and the people are suffering and they're dying."
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He forgot to mention that the CIA is plotting another regime change there. And it shows similarities to other regime changes like the ones in Libya, Iraq and Syria. Sanctions first, freezing bank accounts, more sanctions (which conveniently hit the people they allegedly try to protect most) and eventually military intervention.
Which leaves us with one question: Where in the world is @Rainman right now?
 
Leitmotif is banned. We won't get any more 'firsthand' news.

"Venezuela's president has ordered the armed forces to hold exercises following US President Donald Trump comments about military intervention."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40931216

How capable is the Venezuelan military? Are we talking North Korea or Syria/Iraq type mobilization or something smaller?
 
Fwiffo said:
Leitmotif is banned. We won't get any more 'firsthand' news.

"Venezuela's president has ordered the armed forces to hold exercises following US President Donald Trump comments about military intervention."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40931216

How capable is the Venezuelan military? Are we talking North Korea or Syria/Iraq type mobilization or something smaller?
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When did he ever post "first hand news" about Venezuela?
 
Thruth said:
When did he ever post "first hand news" about Venezuela?
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Wasn't he always claiming how he and his family crawled out from some poverty hole there?

Lord Buckley said:
Looks like Putin's on a winner:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-russia-oil-specialreport-idUSKBN1AR14U

It must be bad when even the Chinese have thrown the towel in because it's too dangerous.
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Isn't this the equivalent to a retail store selling its real estate and then leasing it back for one more cash injection? I could also make an analogy about a junkie.
 
Venezuela's 'Plan Rabbit' encounters 'cultural problem'

"The president urged crisis-hit Venezuelans to breed rabbits and eat them as a source of animal protein.

'When he came back, to his surprise he found people had put little bows on their rabbits and were keeping them as pets, it was an early setback to Plan Rabbit.'

'A lot of people gave names to the rabbits, they took them to bed,' Mr Bernal said.

The minister urged Venezuelans to start seeing rabbits 'from the point of view of the economic war'.

Amid laughter from fellow ministers at a cabinet meeting, he said that 'we need a publicity campaign on radio, TV, in newspapers, in cartoons, everywhere, so that the people understand that rabbits aren't pets but two and a half kilos of meat'."
 
Venezuela's Butt Lift boom

"Though prices vary, a liposuction, breast and buttock augmentation surgery in Venezuela can cost Brazilians around 10,000 real ($3,098). In Brazil the same procedures can cost closer to 30,000 real."

From misery there is money to be made. Is this supposed to enhance or reduce the buttocks? I couldn't tell from the video what would benefit that woman.
 
Fwiffo said:
Venezuela's Butt Lift boom

"Though prices vary, a liposuction, breast and buttock augmentation surgery in Venezuela can cost Brazilians around 10,000 real ($3,098). In Brazil the same procedures can cost closer to 30,000 real."

From misery there is money to be made. Is this supposed to enhance or reduce the buttocks? I couldn't tell from the video what would benefit that woman.
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Plastic surgery is cheap enough in Brazil. I can't perceive any Carioca or Paulista going to Venezuela to get their Brazilian butt job done.
 
Scherensammler said:
Venezuela
a) not a friend of US corporations
b) depending on oil sales for it's prosperity

There you go. US (along with Saudi Arabia) keep the oil price low to make nations that are not their friends suffer, especially Russia.
In the case of Venezuela, after a long phase of suffering and when in need of international financial help, the US loan sharks in form of the IMF will step in.
US friendly government will be established, Venezuela will join whatever trade treaty the US wants them to join.
People in Venezuela are still fucked. Flawless victory.
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USA has a history of getting its way in South America. From the banana republics to Chile.

Chavez was never popular with American politicians. As you point out, military intervention is not always necessary. Once they are in need of a bailout, the various organisations like the IMF and World Bank have the country where they want it.
 
ballmouse said:
Looks like Venezuela is changing their currency. The new bolivar is worth 100,000 old bolivars and the result of "a really impressive, magic formula that we discovered while studying with our own, Venezuelan, Latin American-rooted thinking", according to the president.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/americas/venezuela-currency/index.html

I'd really hate to be there right now.
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We still have an office there. It takes the person 2 days to get in the office and sort out connectivity issues with British Telecom. He literally said one day he has to give up trying to get into the office.
 
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