Venezuela’s forced labor plans

| July 31, 2016

Venezuela was once the shining jewel of South American economies. They had myriad natural resources, including oil and agriculture that kept the population content. Enter the Bolivarians – Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro – who seized many of the successful industries for the government, and like governments everywhere, they mismanaged once-successful businesses so that even commodities like toilet paper are a luxury in Venezuela.

Yesterday, the border between Venezuela and Colombia opened for the first time in years, and Venezuelans streamed into Colombia on a shopping spree of gigantic proportions;

Venezuela Colombia

The shopping tsunami occurred as shortages reach critical levels in socialist-run Venezuela, where people regularly make huge lines outside supermarkets in hopes of getting rice, toilet paper, or whatever else has arrived in the store that day.

“The government has imposed a barbaric situation on us,” said a Venezuelan woman who walked across the border into Colombia to shop on Sunday.

So, the Venezuelan government has a solution for their shortages on the shelves – they’re going to force citizens into 60-day periods of agricultural labor, according to CNBC;

A Venezuelan ministry last week announced Resolution No. 9855, which calls for the establishment of a “transitory labor regime” in order to relaunch the agricultural and food sector. The decree says that the government must do what is “necessary to achieve strategic levels of self-sufficiency,” and states that workers can be forcefully moved from their jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days.

According to the Financial Times, the Venezuelan military has been put in charge of the economy;

Many were unnerved when Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, this month handed the military extraordinary powers to tackle ravaging shortages in a country where food and basic medicines are increasingly hard to find and the inflation rate is forecast to top 700 per cent.

As well as taking charge of food production and distribution, Venezuela’s ports have come under army control, and several government ministries now report directly to the defence minister and to Mr Maduro.

Giovanna de Michele, a defence expert at the Central University of Venezuela, says that, bolstered by these new powers, Gen Padrino López is now “the most powerful man in Venezuela”.

In an area of the world where military coups used to happen regularly, Maduro handed power to his military in order to placate the generals and secure Maduro’s job.

But, yeah, everyone who is surprised, raise your hands. I think I see Jimmy Carter’s hand up there in the back of the room.

Category: Hugo Chavez

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Frankie Cee "In the clear"

This is a picture of what the Socialist minded Democrat politicians would have happen in America, wanting everyone to be equally poor. The government cannot run its own agencies, and has proven with the Mustang Ranch that it cannot even run a whorehouse that has a liquor license.

Skippy

?????

Hondo

I guess the Venezuelans don’t need to fear Communists, either.

Silentium Est Aureum

Sounds like the Dead Kennedys need to update their song to,”Holiday In Venezuela.”

It’s a holiday in Venezuela,
It’s tough kid, but it’s life,
It’s a holiday in Venezuela,
Don’t forget to pack a wife…

Ex-PH2

While I’m bitching about this, I’d love to see all those CNN and MSNBC reporters spend some time in forced labor camps, just like the Cambodians had to do under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

I think it would do all of those sleazoid skanks a world of good to have a hard dose of that kind of reality forced down their throats.

NR Pax

Do we have to allow them back into the country?

Ex-PH2

No. We do not.

Silentium Est Aureum

And people wonder why I make fun of liberals.

Dear Whoopi, et al, why move to Canada? This is where you should be!

CPT11A

Me: Well, this is what Bernie Sanders’ ideas would lead to.

Bernie Bro: Whoa, hold on, Bernie is a DEMOCRATIC socialist!

Me: Oh right, the reason Venezuela went from potential economic superpower to global tragedy is because Hugo Chavez and his successor stole elections.

The Other Whitey

And yet Bernie supporters still want to have Chavez’s babies…

A Proud Infidel®™

According to one source, Hugo Chavez’s daughter is now THE richest person in Venezuela. Happenstance? Coincidence? Methinks not.
Forced labor in the fields, huh? Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Khmer Rouge also force people to labor in the fields? Yeah, “Nobody should be afraid of Communism or Socialism”, MY ASS!!

“The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” – Lady Margaret Thatcher

CPT11A

Yeah, I was reminded of the Khmer Rouge too.

2/17 Air Cav

Which made me think of their red bandanna–which made me think of the Bloods–which made me think that when it comes to heartless, cold-blooded killing, the Bloods don’t rate when compared to Pol Pot’s gang.

UpNorth

But, they’d exceed Pol’s gang, if they ever found themselves in charge.

MustangCryppie

The Soviets forced most everyone into the fields in autumn too, though they weren’t brutal about it…unless you refused to go I guess.

2/17 Air Cav

“force citizens into 60-day periods of agricultural labor”

I understand Sup Ct John Roberts was heard to say, “It’s just a tax. That’s what it is, but instead of requiring people to buy insurance they don’t want, they are being forced to hold jobs they don’t want. Besides, who ever said taxes had to be currency? I see this to be a labor tax.”

2/17 Air Cav

Oh sure. I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t this conflict with the Constitution prohibiting slavery involuntary servitude? Ever hear of conscription? John Roberts would find forced labor for other national need to be akin to that and it’s a short step to take the rationale for the draft and use it for other purposes. I have no doubt about it.

GDContractor

Work will set them free, the poor bastards.

Waiting for comrade Lars to explain to us that Chavez and Maduro were actually right wing extremists.

Hondo

Work will set them free

I belive that idea is expressed in German as, “Arbeit macht frei”.

MustangCryppie

More “sozialisten!”

Hondo

Ja. Alles klar, Herr Comissar?

A similar concept was implemented in the USSR (mostly in the Ukraine) in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was called forced collectivization. Here, peasants were forced to give up ownership of their lands, incorporating them into collective farms called kolkholzy.

Per the US Library of Congress, during this forcible collectivization, wealthier peasant families – termed kulaks by the Soviet Communists – typically strenuously resisted forcible collectivization. They were thus singled out for particularly harsh treatment by the Communist government.

Some one million kulak families – 5 million individuals – were forcibly deported by Communist authorities during forced collectivization in the USSR. These kulak families were never heard from again.

By 1940, 97% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized. The cost? A massive disruption of Soviet agriculture in the early 1930s, leading to deliberately induced artificial famine in the Ukraine called the Holomodor as well as a general famine in agricultural areas of the the USSR in 1932-1933. That famine is estimated to have killed several million more individuals. The part of that famine targeted at the Ukraine is considered by many to have been deliberate genocide.

But don’t worry. No one need fear the Communists. They are only working with the best interest of everyone in mind.

Those 140 million or so individuals killed outside of war as the result of deliberate acts or policies by past Communist governments since 1917 were merely “unavoidable collateral damage”.

Ex-PH2

In regard to the famines of the 1930s and 1940s, those were the direct result of Stalin’s butt buddy Lysenko, whose ideas of agriculture completely destroyed food crops and people literally starved to death in a land of fertile fields.

If you want to know more about how bad it was, look up Lysenkoism.

Hondo

Later Soviet agricultural shortages, yes. But not the 1932-1933 famine – that was essentially all due to mismanagement and forced collectivization. Lysenkoism didn’t really become the latest “buzzword du jour” in Soviet agriculture until afterwards.

GDContractor

Lest we forget Chairman Mao, that notorious right wing Christian reactionary. This 6 minute video says more than 2 years of grad school curriculum. https://youtu.be/hlbB3cmgPmo

The famine lasted 3 years. It killed and estimated 30 million. What a great leap it was.

Hondo

Yep. Chairman Mao managed to outdo the Soviets during the Great Leap Forward in terms of starving people to death by Communist mismanagement coupled with intent.

Mao in particular was cavalier about murdering his own populace. He once made light of nuclear war in 1957, stating:

“I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.”

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/4758-maos-nuclear-mass-extinction-speech-aired-on-chinese-tv/

And there’s more here:

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Quotes/maoterror.htm

Just An Old Dog

Another way this bit the Soviets in the ass is that they were also forced to use thier Army as a labor force to work the fields just prior to WW2.
When the Germans hit they had millions of troops who were experts at digging up turnips and Planting Wheat who had practically no experience in weapons handling or unit tactics.

Hack Stone

Come to think of it, it has been quite some time since I saw a commercial with Joseph Kennedy telling us how great Citgo and Hugo Chavez are.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2008/01/23/joe-kennedy-uses-latest-citgo-commercial-slam-us-government-and-big

Silentium Est Aureum

Oh, they still try to pull that shit in New England every so often, most typically during heating oil season.

I wonder how many rolls of toilet paper that CITGO sign at Fenway would buy these days?

2/17 Air Cav

People are fighting over used toilet paper in Venezuela. Unused toilet is unavailable. Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Harry Belafonte, Congressman Meeks, and one or more Kennedys are not happy about this.

Ex-PH2

They can go pound sand up their anal orifices sideways. I have no use for any of them. The walls of their little dream world need to crumble away to let in the daylight.

Remember, Pol Pot’s regime didn’t last as long as he thought it would, but the damage he did has lasted for at least two generations.

Hack Stone

From behind the wall of his gated community, Michael Moore was unavailable for comment.

RM3(SS)

The Hillary and Bernie crowd are saying “but this time we will get it right and it will be the worker’s paradise”.

nbcguy54ACTUAL

Are they still going to sell cheap oil to New Jersey this winter??

UpNorth

I think they’re having great difficulty getting the oil out of the ground.
But, it’s only because the right people still aren’t in charge.

sapper3307

Workers paradise?

Ex-PH2

‘they’re going to force citizens into 60-day periods of agricultural labor’

Pol Pot is grinning from ear to ear over this. How many Venezuelans are going to just disappear? How many will turn up in mass graves, after the generals are done with them?

When does this fucking shit stop? When???

Should I repeat Hiram Mann’s poem here?

https://youtu.be/sBqOXf8cMGw

The Other Whitey

My in-laws rarely talk about their ordeal under the Khmer Rouge. It’s kind of a sore subject, as you can probably guess. I don’t ask my father-in-law what it was like to be forced to watch while his preschool-age son was shot, because I don’t want to know. I don’t ask my mother-in-law how many times she was raped, because I don’t want to know.

And why did the Khmer Rouge do these things? Because my father-in-law was a soldier who’d been trained by American advisers and didn’t buy their commie utopia bullshit. Worse, he happens to be half-Chinese. Even worse, he could read and write in both Khmer and French (he has since added English to the list). And worst of all, he had the audacity to commit the unspeakable treason of teaching others to read and write as well! As the mass-murdering Chinese communist pedophile Mao Tse-Tung (or Zedong–whatever, fuck you) said, “We don’t allow our enemies to have guns. Why would we let them have ideas?”

If you don’t think communism/socialism is scary, you’re an idiot.

jarhead

While we all wait for Mr. Know-It-All to resurface and explain how wrong we are about Communism, here is one little paragraph worth reading prior to his blithering.

Communism. a. A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.
Communism – definition of communism by The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/communism

Ex-PH2

If he shows up, he’s toast.

I may just take him apart at the seams.

I’m going to go watch QVC try to sell me kitchen stuff. It’s much more peaceful.

A Proud Infidel®™

Part of me wishes he’d show up to get slammed like a tsunami and the other part couldn’t care less if he did and enjoys his absence!

nbcguy54ACTUAL

He’s on a 60 day sabbatical.

Upon his return, I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us how we’re planting our turnips wrong…

The Stranger

He gave power to a guy with the first name “Padrino”?!? So what you’re saying is that Venezuela is now being effectively run by “Godfather” Lopez? What could possibly go wrong? If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.

Ex-PH2

When are Venezuelans going to start disappearing, as happened in Argentina?

Hondo

Argentina? Pfft. Pikers.

Read my comment above. During forced collectivization, at least five million individuals – men, women and children, whole families – were “deported” by the Soviet Communists for daring to resist giving up their land and way of life. They were never heard from again.

Further, that 5 million is only one group out of several large groups that the Soviet Communists made “go away” prior to and after World War II. The total of those who disappeared on order of the Soviet Communist authorities is many times that.

The best estimate of the number of those who “disappeared” in Argentina during that nation’s “dirty war” is 13,000. That’s nearly 385 times fewer than the number who the Soviets made “disappear” during forced collectivization alone.

The Argentine dictators were rank, incompetent amateurs at “disappearing” political enemies compared to the Soviet Communists.

Ex-PH2

It was a rhetorical question, Hondo.

Hondo

Actually, it was a quite good and timely question. One of the standard techniques used by virtually all Communist regimes is the secret imprisonment of dissenters – “disappearance”, if you will – as a matter of policy. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before that starts happening in Venezuela.

The point of my comment above was to take a cause célèbre of the left – the “dirty war” between the rightist Argentine junta of the mid-1970 thru early 1980s and their leftist enemies – and put it in perspective. The left always holds up the Argentine “Desaparecidos” as an example of how “bad” the Argentine junta were at “wholescale violations of human rights”. In reality, the Argentines were rank and incompetent amateurs when compared to either the Soviet, Chinese, or Khmer Rouge Communists.

In reality, the Argentine junta killed a relatively small number of political opponents, targeting those opponents relatively surgically. The Communist regimes I mentioned did the same – but on an industrial scale, each killing literally millions vice thousands of their political enemies (along with a sh!tload of innocents). Many if not most of those killed by Communist regimes for their political views simply disappeared without a trace.

Yet the left ignores this industrial-scale mass murder by Communist regimes, while raising bloody hell about much smaller-scale atrocities in Argentina. It’s quite obvious that they are deliberately ignoring the far greater crimes against humanity committed by their ideological exemplars because those atrocities “supported the cause”. They don’t really give a damn about the moral aspects; they just give that lip service when it suits them to do so, and stay silent when that suits their purposes.

They’re damned hypocrites, plain and simple. It’s sickening.

Ex-PH2

Agreed. And there is no way to face them down over it, which makes it worse.

The Other Whitey

But it worked so well when Stalin did it!

/sarc

A Proud Infidel®™

“From each according to his ability, to. Each according to his needs.” YEAH, RIGHT. The more ability one has under that system, the more the system “needs” from him to carry those who don’t produce!

Pinto Nag

When I was still Catholic, the local church used that exact slogan for their charitable contribution campaigns. It isn’t a coincidence, either.

HMCS(FMF) ret.

Socialism looks good on paper to libtards / progressives, but when they put that shit into practice, they never seem to get it right. Every time shortages of basic necessities, substandard healthcare, forced labor, collectivization, reeducation camps, people disappearing, etc.

What do you think, Lars?

(crickets)

A Proud Infidel®™

IMHO most libtards are either slackers or underachievers who look at what others have earned and want it taken away and handed to them to waste as they please.

11B-Mailclerk

Once upon a time, there was an expression “Rich as an Argentine”. This was at the beginning of the 20th century, and Argentina had some of the largest gold reserves on earth. Along comes a fellow named “Peron” with a Socialist plan for Argentina.

Now, they no longer have to put up with that silly saying “Rich as an Argentine”.

Now, Venezuela has had its turn at economic buggery, “jewel” to “junk” in a generation.

It is like Socialism is the finger of King Mierdes, who has a magic touch that turns everything to shit. All Socialism really promises is that “those underserving rich bastards” will finally be brought low. Nevermind that the Commissars will take their place, and the whip hand will be even heavier upon the backs of the poor, who will come to know that you can be impoverished and still fall even lower.

Grimmy

Lets not forget that the UN and our very own Jimmeh “the peanut farmer” Carter were instrumental in the commiescum takeover of Venezuela.

nbcguy54ACTUAL

I think what finally pushed them over the edge was the inability to procure the middle bun for their Big Macs…

Semper Idem

H’rm…forced into the fields to work? This sounds…familiar. Worryingly familiar. Cambodia circa 1977 familiar.

How long will it be before the mass graves, killing fields, and rape squads show up? Because you know they will…not a matter of if, but of when.

Pinto Nag

And don’t forget ISIS. I’m sure if they’re in the area, they’ll turn up the heat.

lily

So they are going full communist I see. They must be trying to become the next N. Korea.