Venezuela nears total collapse as government now unable to provide food, water, electricity and protection for citizens

Friday, April 15, 2016 by: Isabelle Z.

(NaturalNews) Every day seems to bring new evidence that Venezuela's transition from a market-based economy to a socialist one is proving to be every bit as ill-advised as it has sounded from day one. The country is now nearing total collapse as the government is failing miserably to provide its citizens with basic necessities such as water, food, electricity and protection. Meanwhile, inflation is set to exceed 700 percent this year.

The socialist policies put in place by the late Hugo Chavez and perpetuated by current president Nicolas Maduro are driving the country to complete collapse. The fall in oil prices isn't helping matters, as the nation heavily relies on oil exports. Medical suppliers are cutting off shipments, and health organizations warn that people are dying from a lack of medicine.

Unrest is rising dangerously, with protesters regularly clashing with police in bloody demonstrations. Zero Hedge reports that morgues are overflowing as the country descends into chaos, and collapse is pretty much inevitable. Violence is rising sharply, with murders rising dramatically.

Power grid nearing collapse

In the wake of all this unrest, Maduro recently announced that every Friday will be a "holiday" in order to slash electricity usage. State employees will be given Fridays off of work for at least the next two months, and Maduro is urging people to forgo hair dryers, appreciate the country's tropical heat and hang their clothes out to dry. In fact, Maduro even had the gall to say that women look better when they let their hair air dry.

At first, the government tried to pass it off as a desire to be more green, but it's really just a desperate measure to prevent the collapse of the power grid. Venezuela gets 70 percent of its electricity from its hydroelectric plants. Severe drought has led to a water shortage everywhere, and the reduced water levels in the plants mean generators aren't putting out as much power as needed.

The government required businesses to cut their power usage by 10 percent, and police can enter and inspect businesses at will to see if they are exceeding their allotment. The Organic Prepper reports that, in February, stores were forced to turn off electricity from 1pm to 3pm and then again from 7pm to 9pm every day.

In 2014, Natural News reported that food shortages had reached such a critical level in the country that the government instituted an identification system akin to rationing that keeps track of people's purchases and criminalizes hoarding.

It could happen anywhere

All of this should be taken as a warning. This is what a modern economic collapse looks like, and if it can happen in Venezuela, it can happen anywhere.

The Organic Prepper's Daisy Luther wrote:

"These mandated power rations, the limited amounts of food, the government-funded snitches, the tracking, and most of all, the propaganda, are all what await us in an economic collapse situation. While the Venezuelan government will be facing no limits on their use of electrical power, the people will only be allowed allotted amounts."


If the American economy goes the way of the Venezuelan one at some point, being self-sufficient could mean the difference between life and death. The Self-Reliance Summit is one way to educate yourself on these matters. Stocking up on foods and natural cures is one way people can prepare for such a situation and reduce their odds of becoming just another body in the stack at the morgue.

Venezuela is cutting electric power for four hours a day, to save energy. Venezuela is an OPEC member, and ranks #1 in proven oil reserves.

And the country's larges beer brewer will cease operation. It has no dollars, needed to buy grain.

A real socialist paradise there, Bernie.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Onward and upward,
airforce

"It's Pure Chaos Now; There Is No Way Back" - Venezuela Morgues Are Overflowing

by Tyler Durden 04/10/2016


When we previewed Venezuela's upcoming hyperinflation, which in January was predicted to be 720% and as of this moment is likely far higher...



... we said "This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like" and said "there is no good news in any of the above for the long-suffering citizens of this "socialist paradise" which any minute now will be downgraded to its fair value of "socialist hell."

Subsequent news that Venezuela was now openly liquidating its gold reserves while its president, in an amusing twist, announced last week, that henceforth every Friday will be a holiday, (the term there was a slightly different meaning) to cut down on electricity usage (while blaming El Nino for its electricity rationing) merely confirmed that the end if nigh for this once flourishing Latin American nation.

Sadly, while we have been warning for years about Venezuela's inevitable, economic devastation, we said it was only a matter of time before the chaos spreads to broader society and leads to total collapse.

That may have arrived because as even the FT now admits, after visiting the main Caracas morgue, Venezuela risks a descent into chaos.

But back to the morgue of central Caracas, where FT correspondent Andres Schipani writes that the stench forces everyone to cover their nostrils. "Now things are worse than ever," says Yuli Sánchez. "They kill people and no one is punished while families have to keep their pain to themselves."

Ms Sánchez’s 14-year-old nephew, Oliver, was shot five times by malandros, or thugs, while riding on the back of a friend’s motorcycle. His uncle, Luis Mejía, remarked that in a fortnight three members of their family had been shot, including two youths who were shot by police.

Sounds a little like Chicago on a Friday... only in Venezuela things are even worse: "an economic, social and political crisis facing Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, is being aggravated by a rise in violence which is prompting fears that this oil-rich country risks becoming a failed state."

Even the morgue employees are asking if they should give up.

"What can we do?" Mr Mejía asks. “Give up.” The morgue employee in charge of handling the corpses notes that a decade ago he received seven or eight bodies every weekend. These days, he says, that number has risen to between 40 and 50: "This is now wilder than the wild west."

Critics say that the Venezuelan government is increasingly unable to provide citizens with water, electricity, health or a functioning economy which can supply basic food staples or indispensable medicines, let alone personal safety.

In other words, total socioeconomic collapse. This is what it looks like:

Last month alone, Venezuelans learned of the summary execution of at least 17 gold miners supposedly by a mining Mafia, the killing of two police officers allegedly by a group of students who drove a bus into a barricade, and a hostage drama inside a prison at the hands of a grenade-wielding criminal gang. On Wednesday, three policemen were killed when an armed gang busted a member out of a lock-up in the capital.



At least 10 were killed in a Caracas shanty town after a confrontation between local thugs armed with assault rifles, while a local mayor was gunned down outside his home in Trujillo state last month. There are widespread reports of lynchings.



All this is creating a broad unease that Mr Maduro is unable to maintain order... There is a lack of basic goods. Analysts warn that the economic crisis risks turning in to a humanitarian one.

Some refuse to acknowledge that a state erected on so much oil wealth can be a failed state:

“Failed state is a nebulous concept often used too lightly. That’s not the case with today’s Venezuela,” says Moisés Naím a Venezuelan distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The evidence of state failure is very concrete in the country that sits on top of the world’s largest oil reserves.”

Alas, a failed state is precisely what Venezuela has become: Venezuela is already one of the world’s deadliest countries. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a local think-tank, says the murder rate rose last year to 92 killings per 100,000 residents. The attorney-general cites a lower figure of 58 homicides per 100,000. This is up from 19 per 100,000 in 1998, before Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez took power.

It gets worse, because in addition to a soaring murder rate, the government itself is implicated.

"Venezuelans are facing one of the highest murder rates in the hemisphere and urgently need effective protection from violent crime,” said José Miguel Vivanco HRW’s Americas director. “But in multiple raids throughout the country, the security forces themselves have allegedly committed serious abuses.”

Their findings show that police and military raids in low-income and immigrant communities in Venezuela have led to widespread allegations of abuse, including extrajudicial killings, mass arbitrary detentions, maltreatment of detainees, forced evictions, the destruction of homes, and arbitrary deportations.

And like all other failed governments, Maduro's administration is quick to deflect blame, instead accusing violence within its borders on Colombian rightwing paramilitaries "engaged in a war against its revolution." But as David Smilde and Hugo Pérez Hernáiz of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank, recently wrote: “Attributing violence in Venezuela to paramilitary activity has been a common rhetorical move used by the government over the past year, effectively making a citizen security problem into a national security problem.”

For many Venezuelans it no longer matters who is to blame. "It is a state policy of letting anarchy sink in," says a former policeman outside the gates of a compound in Caracas.

The FT adds that the former police station now houses the Frente 5 de Marzo, one of the political groups that consider themselves the keepers of socialism’s sacred flame. The gates bear the colours of the Venezuelan flag and are marked with bullet holes. The man believes there is something akin to a civil war going on.

“Venezuela is pure chaos now. It seems to me there is no way back,” the former policeman says. He is right.

* * *

And since words can not fully do a failed state justice, here is a video clip from Jeff Berwick showing the reality on the ground in the country where "socialism's sacred flame" is about to go out for good.

https://youtu.be/UOQb7Y5QVO8

A nice glimpse of what "fundamentally transforming" a nation looks like!

YES they can!

And Bernie wants to turn The USA into a Socialist Utopia, yep way to go Bernie and your Brain Dead Supporters.

If Burnie wants to turn America into a socialist etopia. He would be a dollar short and a day late.
Take along hard look around. We are Dan near it.

We may be close to it but if Bernie gets his way we will be a Full On Socialist Utopia.

But with the Bad there may be some Good if States like Texas refuse to be Socialist and Secede.

I don't see Texas Billionaires and Millionaires giving 90% of their money to Bernie so he can give it to the Welfare Trash.

And if Clinton gets elected I don't see Texas Gun Owners giving up their Guns, so another reason for Texas to Secede.

One thing no matter who gets appointed. The course of freedoms being lost and continue loss is for sure.
Every time elections come around. Its always the same whether it is this or that canidate. Promising lies only to tell all what they want to hear.
Then after the elections all see the lies.
A little controlled hope goes a very long way in controlling a nation.

I'd like to see the 3 (though one stands zero chance) GOP candidates make an issue of who they would appoint to the Supreme Court. It would let us know more about them as a president, and remind the Dems that BHO will not be choosing.

It seems like you have Hoisted the White Flag and Surrendered and have totally given up on the political process, maybe what you should do on election day since regardless of who gets elected, won't change anything, is stay home and get drunk.

Here is how I feel.

I have not given up, at least not yet.

I do not feel that Trump is just another Politician, I feel that maybe, just maybe, he is for real and that he will do the best he can to correct some of the Problems like unemployment, if he does as he has stated and brings back the jobs that have moved out of our Country.

I feel that Trump deserves the chance to prove he is not just a Lying Politician and is for real.

If Trump get elected and then backs down on what he has said he will do and proves himself a lier, then giving up on Politics and Elections makes a lot of sense. But not right now when we might have a President who will do something to change things for the better.

Just a few more months we will know for sure, so why not wait.

Vader first I don't drink it tends to make one talk shit.
Second I never have and never will give up. I spoke the the truth. For 25 plus years I have heard the election topic. Every 3-4 year same argument maybe this or that canidate won't lie. Then in the end a lie is a lie.

As to drinking I never used to drink very often but lately I have been drinking more and more and I am actually starting to enjoy getting drunk.

I find that it helps me get through an average day and helps me to sleep.

I don't drink and drive I only drink when I am home or with someone else who will do the driving.

Now as to Politics and Voting I used to vote in every election but I have not voted in the past two elections, but I do plan on voting in this one as long as Trump is running.

This is how I am thinking. I feel that Trump is not part of the Political system and he is more of an outsider and if he does as as has stated he will do then there is a chance he will help to change things.

If you believe that Trump is just another Politician and he actually is just another politician and that this election is just more of the same as previous elections, then you are correct.

But if Trump is an outsider as I believe he is and if this election is totally different then past elections as it sure seems like it is and I believe it is, then you are incorrect.

Just going by what I have been seeing the GOP is well on it's way to Self Destruction and this election is totally different then past elections and may be the beginning of the end of the Old GOP and maybe the beginning of a New GOP or ever the replacement of the GOP with a New Conservative Party.
I believe this election is not just the old same old same old and it is totally different then all previous elections and it will be a totally New Ballgame.

So what I am saying we should all wait until after Trump gets elected and and we find out if he is real or if he is a fake before giving up on this election.

It is like having a Lottery Ticket and before the drawing thinking to yourself, what I am stupid I have no chance of winning, so you destroy the Ticket before the Drawing and then you find out your Number Won, wouldn't you feel like idiot that you destroyed a Winning Ticket I know I would.

Here's a novel idea from Venezuela, a weekend that lasts five days . Because there's only enough electricity to work for two days a week.

This is giving the term "worker's paradise" a whole new meaning.

Onward and upward,
airforce

The elections are a sham. I participate but don't believe my vote counts. I'm not too broken up about it because I'm in a state that I think will be able to weather the coming storm.

For Venezuela, it won\'t be much longer.



Venezuela doesn't even have the money to print new money with. You can imagine what grocery stores look like:



Onward and upward,
airforce

Feeling the Bern of socialism!

I imagine most of you have been watching things develop south of the border.

It's not just Venezuela; Brazil, Puerto Rico and others are in various stages of collapse.

Ain't good.

What kills me is that the Sanders flock don't see the parallels or put 2 & 2 together.

President Nicolas Maduro has ordere... exercises to counter "foreign threats." My guess is, this is not going to end well.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Domino effect. How long until it travels north?

No, what would be the problem is the Marxists in our government looting our treasury to bail that country out with restrictions on US produced gasoline while paying the Venezuelans an inflated price for their oil and we get $5 per gallon gas at the pump while they get financial bailout. Only they do so by putting future generations of Americans further in debt.

Remember how it went in 2008, credit stopped, gas went to $5 per gallon and freeways emptied then who got their payoff? The banks and Wall Street...

Watch Venezuela, Because Food Shortages, Looting And Economic Collapse Are Coming To America Too

Just a few years ago, most Venezuelans could never have imagined that food shortages would become so severe that people would literally hunt dogs and cats for food.

Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse - May 16, 2016

The full-blown economic collapse that is happening in Venezuela right now is a preview of what Americans will be experiencing in the not too distant future.

Just a few years ago, most Venezuelans could never have imagined that food shortages would become so severe that people would literally hunt dogs and cats for food. But as you will see below, this is now taking place. Sadly, this is what the endgame of socialism looks like. When an all-powerful government is elevated far above all other institutions in society and radical leftists are given the keys to the kingdom, this is the result. Food shortages, looting and rampant violent crime have all become part of daily life in Venezuela, and we all need to watch as this unfolds very carefully, because similar scenarios will soon be playing out all over the planet.

The funny thing is that Venezuela actually has more “wealth” than most countries in the world. According to the CIA, Venezuela actually has more proven oil reserves than anyone else on the globe – including Saudi Arabia.

So how did such a wealthy nation find itself plunged into full-blown economic collapse so rapidly, and could a similar thing happen to us?

The president of Venezuela has declared a 60 day state of emergency in a desperate attempt to restore order, but most people don’t anticipate that it will do much good. Social order continues to unravel as the economy systematically implodes. The Venezuelan economy shrunk by 5.7 percent last year, and it is being projected that it will contract by another 8 percent in 2016. Meanwhile, inflation is raging wildly out of control. According to the IMF, the official inflation rate in Venezuela will be somewhere around 720 percent this year and 2,200 percent next year.

If people are able to get their hands on some money, they immediately rush out to the stores to use it before the prices go up again. This has created devastating shortages of food, basic supplies and medicine.

Electricity is also in short supply, and a two day workweek has been imposed on many government employees in a desperate attempt to save power. Violent crime is seemingly everywhere, and most law-abiding Venezuelans lock themselves in their homes at night as a result.

Much of the crime is being perpetrated by the mafia and the gangs, but sometimes it is just normal people looking for food. Desperate people do desperate things, and according to the Guardian there have been “107 episodes of looting or attempted looting in the first quarter of 2016″…

Crowds of people in Venezuela have stolen flour, chicken and even underwear this week as looting increases across the country in the wake of shortages of many basic products. Many people have adopted the habit of getting up in the dead of night to spend hours in long lines in front of supermarkets. But as more end up empty-handed and black market prices soar, plundering is rising in Venezuela, an Opec nation that was already one of the world’s most violent countries.

There is no official data, but the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict, a rights group, have reported 107 episodes of looting or attempted looting in the first quarter of 2016. Videos of crowds breaking into shops, swarming on to trucks or fighting over products frequently make the rounds on social media, though footage is often hard to confirm.

One example of this looting took place on May 11th. Thousands of hungry people stormed Maracay Wholesale Market in central Venezuela, and the police seemed powerless to stop them…

“They took milk, pasta, flour, oil, and milk powder. There were 5,000 people,”one witness told Venezuela outlet El Estímulo.

People from across the entire state came to the supermarket because there were rumors that some products not found anywhere else would be sold there.

“There were 250 people for each National Guard officer… lots of people and few soldiers. At least one officer was beat up because he tried to stop the crowd,” another source told El Estímulo.

You can see some rough footage of this incident right here…

¡VENEZUELA TIENE HAMBRE! #Video Saquean Mercado Mayorista Maracay #11May pic.twitter.com/DGRZ1bgkgI vía @venezolanodecen #CNERevocatorioYA

— El llanero (@llaneroVen) May 11, 2016

It is important to remember that this was not an isolated incident. As people have become hungrier and hungrier, there have been reports of looting at “pharmacies, shopping malls, supermarkets, and food delivery trucks“. During some of these episodes there have actually been people chanting “we are hungry”.

Other Venezuelans have resorted to digging in dumpsters and trash cans for food. This many seem detestable to many Americans, but when you are desperately hungry you may be surprised at what you are willing to do.

And as I mentioned above, some Venezuelans and now actually hunting dogs and cats for food…

Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao in Caracas, said the streets of the capital of Venezuela are filled with people killing animals for food.

Through Twitter, Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger.

You may be tempted to dismiss these people as “barbarians”, but someday Americans will be doing the exact same thing.

There has been a breakdown of basic social services in Venezuela as well. Acute shortages of drugs and medical supplies are having absolutely tragic results. When I read the following from the New York Times, this crisis in Venezuela become much more real to me…

By morning, three newborns were already dead.

The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.

Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.

So once again I ask – how did such a thing happen to such a wealthy nation?

Here is Business Insider’s explanation…

The real culprit is chavismo, the ruling philosophy named for Chavez and carried forward by Maduro, and its truly breathtaking propensity for mismanagement (the government plowed state money arbitrarily into foolish investments); institutional destruction (as Chavez and then Maduro became more authoritarian and crippled the country’s democratic institutions); nonsense policy-making (like price and currency controls); and plain thievery (as corruption has proliferated among unaccountable officials and their friends and families).

Are not the same things happening here?

The U.S. government is mismanaging our money too. During Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, the U.S. national debt has risen by more than eight trillion dollars. We waste money in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable, and at this point our national debt is nearly the double the size it was just prior to the last major financial crisis.

Institutional destruction is also a legacy of the Obama regime. With each passing day, our society resembles the Republic that our founders originally intended less and less, and it resembles socialist dictatorships more and more. We may as well not even have a Constitution anymore, because at this point nobody really follows it.

The third thing that Business Insider mentioned, “nonsense policy-making”, is a perfect description of what has been going on in Washington D.C. these days. Perhaps that is why Congress only has a 12.8 percent approval rating right now.

Lastly, thievery and corruption are also out of control in our nation too. The elite and special interest groups spend massive amounts of money to get their favorites into office, and in turn those politicians shower their good friends with money and favors. It is a very sick relationship, but that is how our system now works.

We are sitting on the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and our debt-fueled prosperity is completely dependent on the rest of the world lending us gigantic amounts of money at ridiculously low interest rates and continuing to use our increasingly shaky currency which we are debasing at a staggering pace.

We consume far more than we produce, and unlike Venezuela we aren’t sitting on hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. The amount of “real wealth” that we actually have does not justify our current standard of living. The only way that we are able to live the way that we do is by stealing consumption from the future. One study has found that our debt level is the highest that it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and yet we continue to race down this road to economic oblivion without even thinking twice about it.

What you sow is what you will reap.

And just like Venezuela, America will ultimately reap a very bitter harvest.

They nationalized a massive oil industry and then spent the way profits on stupid shit instead of the basic needs of the population.

Governments have been able to run feeding programs for "dangerous" populations for centuries, in jails, prisons, schools and the military.

Shut down all military chow halls for a week and see what happens.

Now if they "funded military chow" and are not feeding the troops, but everyone in the military chow business gets nice homes and vehicles, it's not hard to figure out. Seems I remember hearing stories about how shortly after Obama took over, prison and military food went downhill, with combat zone troops in Afghanistan being cut back to two meals a day.

The reason the Venezuelans are rioting is they are not stupid people. They know that the fight between elites in their society and government is using food restriction as a weapon.

I'm not hearing much about this on the news, but Moody\'s has downgraded the bonds issued by Saudi Arabia because of falling oil prices.

Is the Venezuela disease spreading to the Middle east? This could get really interesting.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Barter activity explodes across Venezuela as failed socialist economic policies leave entire nation on verge of economic collapse: The bottom line is that Venezuela gets about 70 percent of its goods from abroad, however, the area’s fast-falling oil prices have prevented the government there from importing. As a result, the economy has shifted to a culture where a black market lifestyle is the norm, and people can expect items to cost upwards of three times their original price.

http://www.naturalnews.com/052224_economic_collapse_Venezuela_barter_economy.html#ixzz48YocpE2W


U.S. intelligence officials: Venezuela could be headed for collapse: Venezuela, where clashes erupted this week between security forces and demonstrators protesting food shortages, power blackouts and political gridlock, may be headed toward an all-out popular uprising that could lead to the overthrow of its government this year, senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...-1935-11e6- 924d-838753295f9a_story.html

"Venezuela\'s health care system is the best in the world after Cuba."

The photos pretty much say it all.

Onward and upward,
airforce

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/05/17/video-venezuela-headed-for-an-economic-collapse-or-worse/

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion...-economic-collapse-are-coming-to-america

If you're a foreign visitor to Venezuela - and you have a credit card with a large limit - you can get all the food you want. You just can't get it at the official exchange rate of 10 bolivares to the dollar.

Plan on spending the black market rate of 1000 bolivares to the dollar. That makes your $1.70 cheeseburger a whopping $170 .

And if you're unlucky enough to be a Venezuelan, paid in bolivares, well...

Onward and upward,
airforce

Stupid stubborn ad wasteful. They get free money from the world economy without working very hard for it because in part, oil companies do the bulk of the actual work. Like the Saudis, they are the "legitimate" government which is paid off not to have any trouble, and in that payoff, they make as much trouble as they can.

Barter economy it should be. Pack up a few shiploads of humanitarian ration packs and make that the only thing they get paid with.

That's the whole problem. The Venezuela government owns the Venezuela oil industry. Maduro is using the oil money to pay off his military (and depositing the rest in his Swiss ban account, I'm sure). And since nobody outside Venezuela will accept bolivares at the official exchange rate, it wouldn't work anyway.

Onward and upward,
airforce

According to Wikipedia, they own the CITGO gas station chain, lock, stock and barrel.

Either way, they have money, they just fucked it off and wasted it.

Sooner or later, you run out of other people's money. Greece and Puerto Rico have already found that out, and California and Illinois won't be too far behind.

Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than any other country in the world - and they can't keep the lights on for more than two days a week. That should tell you something.

Onward and upward,
airforce

According to one report their budget was based on selling oil for $104 per barrel. When the price dropped their central planners refused to cut spending.

This is why some of the oil emrates in the gulf have invested so heavily in a trust fund of sorts. They have also tried to spend some of the money to diversify their economies.

A massive drop in oil revenue hurts, but not a catastrophe.

Here are some very interesting comparisons. Contrast Venezuela with Chile, which began to abandon socialism about the same time Venezuela began to adopt it . The charts say it all. On every metric - income per capita, life expectancy, infant mortality, economic freedom, GDP, political freedom - Chile wins.

Onward and upward,
airforce

How much is the bolivar really worth? Well, just to give you some idea, thieves are no longer bothering to steal them .

How can Venezuela work itself out of this mess? Here was Ludwig von Mises suggestions for the Austrian crown, updated to the Venezuelan bolivar:

1. Abandon socialism. A little obvious, but it's the first step.

2. Abandon the bolivar. Ideally, it would go back to the gold standard. And since you're starting over anyway, it wouldn't be all that hard. But any commonly accepted currency - even the dollar - would work.

3. Privatize the Venezuelan economy. Sell off the oil companies, and return the seized oil wells to their rightful owners. Put into private hands, the oil industry would soon flourish again.

4. Abandon "official" currency exchange rates.

5. End prohibitions and regulations on importing and exporting goods and services. Venezuela needs free trade.

That should get the ball rolling. I'm not holding my breath for Maduro to implement them.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Puerto Rico is a real problem and could balloon into a fiasco. Basically they have the ability to hold the US hostage because of their location. If the US doesn't bail them out, then who does? It's like Cuba round 2. That's one damn expensive island.

Ever wonder who President Maduro would like to see get elected? Yep, it\'s Bernie. Big surprise, that one.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Venezuelans Ransack Stores as Hunger Stalks Crumbling Nation+

The New York Times

By NICHOLAS CASEY


CUMANÁ, Venezuela — With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger.

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Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate open and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves.

And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.

In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass lootings have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed.

This is precisely the Venezuela its leaders vowed to prevent.

In one of the nation’s worst moments, riots spread from Caracas, the capital, in 1989, leaving hundreds dead at the hands of security forces. Known as the “Caracazo,” or the “Caracas clash,” they were set off by low oil prices, cuts in subsidies and a population that was suddenly impoverished.

The event seared the memory of a future president, Hugo Chávez, who said the country’s inability to provide for its people, and the state’s repression of the uprising, were the reason Venezuela needed a socialist revolution.

Now his successors find themselves in a similar bind — or maybe even worse.

The nation is anxiously searching for ways to feed itself. The economic collapse of recent years has left it unable to produce enough food on its own or import what it needs from abroad. Cities have been militarized under an emergency decree from President Nicolás Maduro, the man Mr. Chávez picked to carry on with his revolution before he died three years ago.

“If there is no food, there will be more riots,” said Raibelis Henriquez, 19, who waited all day for bread in Cumaná, where at least 22 businesses were attacked in a single day last week.

But while the riots and clashes punctuate the country with alarm, it is the hunger that remains the constant source of unease.

A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found.

About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation. In April, it found that a family would need the equivalent of 16 minimum-wage salaries to properly feed itself.

Ask people in this city when the last time they ate a meal, and many will respond that it was not today.

Among them are Leidy Cordova, 37, and her five children — Abran, Deliannys, Eliannys, Milianny and Javier Luis — ages 1 to 11. On Thursday evening, the entire family had not eaten since lunchtime the day before, when Ms. Cordova made a soup by boiling chicken skin and fat that she had found for a cheap price at the butcher.

“My kids tell me they’re hungry,” Ms. Cordova said as her family looked on. “And all I can say to them is to grin and bear it.”

Other families have to choose who eats. Lucila Fonseca, 69, has lymphatic cancer, and her 45-year-old daughter Vanessa Furtado has a brain tumor. Despite also being ill, Ms. Furtado gives up the little food she has on many days so her mother does not skip meals.

“I used to be very fat, but no longer,” said the daughter. “We are dying as we live.”

Her mother added, “We are now living on Maduro’s diet: no food, no nothing.”

Economists say years of economic mismanagement — worsened by low prices for oil, the nation’s main source of revenue — have shattered the food supply. Sugar fields in the country’s agricultural center lie fallow for lack of fertilizers. Unused machinery rots in shuttered state-owned factories. Staples like corn and rice, once exported, now must be imported and arrive in amounts that do not meet the need.

In response, Mr. Maduro has tightened his grip over the food supply. Using emergency decrees he signed this year, the president put most food distribution in the hands of a group of citizen brigades loyal to leftists, a measure critics say is reminiscent of food rationing in Cuba.

“They’re saying, in other words, you get food if you’re my friend, if you’re my sympathizer,” said Roberto Briceño-León, the director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a human rights group.

It was all a new reality for Gabriel Márquez, 24, who grew up in the boom years when Venezuela was rich and empty shelves were unimaginable. He stood in front of the destroyed supermarket where the mob had arrived at Cumaná, an endless expanse of smashed bottles, boxes and scattered shelves. A few people, including a policeman, were searching the wreckage for leftovers to take.

“During Carnival, we used to throw eggs at each other just to have some fun,” he said. “Now an egg is like gold.”

Down the coastal road in a small fishing town called Boca de Uchire, hundreds gathered on a bridge this month to protest because the food deliveries were not arriving. Residents demanded to meet the mayor, but when he did not come they sacked a Chinese bodega.

Residents hacked open the door with pickaxes and pillaged the shop, venting their anger at a global power that has lent billions of dollars to prop up Venezuela in recent years.

“The Chinese won’t sell to us,” said a taxi driver who watched the crowd haul away all that was inside. “So we burn their stores instead.”

Mr. Maduro, who is fighting a push for a referendum to recall him this year over the country’s declines, said it was the political opposition that was behind the attacks on the stores.

“They paid a group of criminals, brought them in trucks,” he said on Saturday on television, promising compensation to those who lost property.

At the same time, the government also blames the shortages on an “economic war” in which they accuse wealthy business owners of hoarding food and charging exorbitant prices, creating artificial shortages to profit from the country’s misery.

It has left shop owners feeling under siege, particularly those who do not have Spanish names.

“Look how we are working today,” said Maria Basmagi, whose family immigrated from Syria a generation ago, pointing to the metal grate pulled over the window of her shoe store.

Her shop was on the commercial boulevard in Barcelona, another coastal town wracked by unrest last week. At 11 a.m. the day before, someone screamed that there was an attack on a government-run kitchen nearby. Every shop on Ms. Basmagi’s street closed down in fear.

Other shops stay open, like the bakery in Cumaná where a line of 100 people snaked around a corner. Each person was allowed to buy about a pound of bread. Robert Astudillo, a 23-year-old father of two, was not sure there would be any left once his turn came. He said he still had corn flour to make arepas, a Venezuelan staple, for his children. They had not eaten meat in months.

“We make the arepas small,” he said.

In the refrigerator of Araselis Rodriguez and Nestor Daniel Reina, the parents of four small children, there was not even corn flour — just a few limes and some bottles of water.

The family had eaten bread for breakfast and soup for lunch made from fish that Mr. Reina had managed to catch. The family had nothing for dinner.

It has not always been clear what provokes the riots. Is it hunger alone? Or is it some larger anger that has built up in a country that has crumbled?

Inés Rodríguez was not sure. She remembered calling out to the crowd of people who had come to sack her restaurant on Tuesday night, offering them all the chicken and rice the restaurant had if they would only leave the furniture and cash register behind. They balked at the offer and simply pushed her aside, Ms. Rodríguez said.

“It is the meeting of hunger and crime now,” she said.

As she spoke, three trucks with armed patrols drove by, each emblazoned with photos of Mr. Chávez and Mr. Maduro.

The trucks were carrying food.

“Finally they come here,” Ms. Rodríguez said. “And look what it took to get them. It took this riot to get us something to eat.”

I don't think all that "economic planning" turned out quite the way all those socialists predicted.

Onward and upward,
airforce