When Accounts Come Due
I marched and shouted in the streets
I started fires and fed the heat
Expecting I’d be queen of all
Expecting I’d stand ten feet tall
And no one told a fool like me
That monsters like them just used me
It wasn’t all it seemed
I lost my dreams
It appears that Venezuela’s government (Maduro) is scrapping elections, including the various gubernatorial elections, because he doesn’t want to find out how truly unpopular he is. The Chavismo party (Chavez) is cracking down on everything. Elections are great when you’re popular; not so much when people want to see you dragged through the streets or something.
Medicine is not just in short supply, it is nearly nonexistent. The bolivar is worthless. There is little to no food on store shelves, bakeries have been seized by Maduro’s government, including two owned by immigrants, and OTC medicines are generally missing from drug store shelves. What do you do when you can’t get aspirin? Chew on willow bark?
The real problem is that Maduro knows now that his popularity has crashed and doesn’t intend to hold the promised elections, period. While there are people in several of the states in that country running for governor, the probability of an election actual appears to be nil for the foreseeable future.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-elections-suspended-1.4036425
Even the Cuban doctors who went there voluntarily found chaos and were forced by Maduro to lie about the conditions they found there, and the pay they received, in order to provide the statistics he wanted. They went to the US embassy in Colombia back in October 2016 to get away from it and tell the truth.
Nothing to fear from las comunistas. eh? Bolivaristas, comunistas – it’s all the same thing, no matter what the moronic know-it-alls or any other poo-flinging SJW howler monkeys think or say. The difference is that in this country, we’re awake, we see the reality of that crap, we grew up under that kind of threat, and we are not as easily subjugated or fooled as people who’ve grown up in serfdom or dictatorships.
Category: Reality Check
Is Sean Penn available for comment?
Just let him open his mouth….
The guy who supports women’s rights by beating women? That guy?
Send everyone of the communist maggots in our govt down there and leave them, they like that sick communist bullshyt so much!!
Wow, Ex-PH2, you’re really primed for our weekly Lars-snarking this week, aren’t you?
Having lived in Venezuela as a child, I am saddened by what has become of the country. Natural resources are not destiny.
Who??? 🙂
Don’t you kind of wonder what things will be like in 10 years?
In 10 years? We will be flying around in self-driving passenger drones.
Passenger drone in Dubai
This is what happens when Democratic Socialism fails. It ceases to be Democratic.
I’m wondering how much worse it is going to become down there. I don’t know how much the military backs Maduro, but right now, they’re behind him, as far as I can tell.
Whatever happens, I know that it will be bloody, the body count will be very high, and the innocent will suffer the most.
Some good friends of mine have close family down there. They are constantly on my mind as I read the news coming out of Venezuela.
That is exactly what I fear, Graybeard.
I once talked with a Romanian immigrant who said that their army was behind Ceaucescu right up to the moment that shit got real, because the troops in Bucharest were mostly local boys. So when they were supposed to shoot their own families and friends, it rapidly turned into “Fuck you, boss!” and Ceaucescu got shot instead.
Don’t leave out the part where they gave him and Mrs. Ceaucescu a fair trial, which lasted about five minutes, before his soldiers shot them. I’m a big fan of due process.
I remember the news headline statement from Romania that Christmas Day, the statement from there was “It’s Christmas Day and the Anti-Christ is dead!” referring to Ceaucescu’s execution.
It is neither Democratic or Socialism. It is outright incompetence and thievery.
No Government no matter what it is called would function with this scenario.
Stalin managed to keep the citizens of the Soviet Union under his thumb for decades.
Remember, he’s the genius who approved of Lysenkoism, which resulted in the starvation of millions of Soviet citizens, as well as 30++ millions of Chinese under Mao when that idiot also thought Lysenko’s idiocy was a great idea.
Not much difference under Pol Pot, either.
It may be outright incompetence and thievery, but it will still be labeled ‘socialism’ by its users.
Socialism
noun
1.
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2.
procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3.
(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles
Communism
noun
1.
a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
2.
(often initial capital letter) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were full blown dictators in Communist countries. Them calling it Socialism was akin to “Shell Shocked” becoming “Battle Fatigue”. Terrible thing with a nice new name.
Way to roll out the Bogey man though.
No argument there, just referencing the fact that in that kind of environment, denial of reality is everything.
Oh Venezuela is well on it’s way to being someone else’ idea of a Workers Paradise. That is the problem, when you let that someone else define that Paradise. Definitely looking like stage 2.5. Soon to reach stage 3.
Seems you are fond of Socialism or its dictionary definitions. Can you please provide the stated goal of those who codified Socialism and Communism? Please start with the obvious – Marx, but also include his associates such as Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Heinrich Heine. What is the endstate for societies adopting Socialism?
Fuck Off. Take your smarmy homework assignment and stick up your ass.
No I am fond of un-bending pretzels that people love to bend themselves into around here.
On reflection, I prefer your answer.
End state? Economic wreckage, grinding poverty, humanity enslaved, and mountains of corpses furtively buried.
Well, smartypants, you left out his ORIGINAL associate, Friedrich Engels, didn’t you?
And YOU, doggy15, missed the entire point of this post — well, if I HAVE to explain it to you, then I’m doing YOUR homework for you.
But I’ll give you a little quote from Voltaire: In “Zadig”, one of Voltaire’s characters says,”It’s important to have in mind that evil is essential to the order of the world and to the birth of the good.”
We aren’t here to defend socialism. We are here to advertise how VERY BAD IT IS for everyone.
ALL SOCIALISM FAILS, it always has, always will! leaves no room for initiative, invention, FREEDOM!
SOCIALISM, a system so great that it has to be forced upon a populace once it’s installed.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” – Lady Margaret Thatcher
Wow, a two-fer today. Norkiland and Venezuela. Surely Lars will be along soon to sneer down his nose at us and tell us that we’re all wrong, that “American” socialism is DIFFERENT.
You are a funny, funny girl, Eden.
In case anyone is wondering, those verses are part of something I scribbled out the other night. If you remember the tune to Janis Ian’s ‘At Seventeen’, they fit that tune.
It is odd that the article on the real world disillusionment about North Korea and this article at Venezuela coincided with each other, but I thought they made two good short articles, instead of one long one.
Always liked “Boy I Really Tied One On” more. I suspect I prompted more than a few to remember those lyrics in my younger days.
This is what the Berniebots want. They just don’t realize this is the end point of their wish list.
Sad part is, with their oil and natural resource reserves, they SHOULD be a fairly well-off nation.
What most people don’t understand is that the Saudis set the price on benchmark crude. OPEC doesn’t. Venezuela is a member of OPEC. The Saudi Arabian Oil Co, owned by the state, raised the price in February by $.30/bbl. They also cut production. Venezuela’s oil is not nearly as good as Arab Light crude.
Chavez came to power during the oil price bubble ($140/bbl), but that peaked and crashed and hasn’t recovered since.
Now there isn’t even enough money to buy the 30 tons per day of wheat required to put bread on store shelves. That means that Maduro’s move to seize those bakeries says he’s the most incompetent ass ever at management. I guess he thought the bakeries were withholding bread or something. Well, you can’t make bread without flour and yeast, so now, instead of nothing, there will less than nothing on the shelves.
Actually, Chavez came to power in 2002, when the price of crude was about $26/bbl.
It currently stands at $55/bbl. And while that is substantially less than the $147 peak in 2098, or the $100 level it was at in 2013 when Chavez kicked, it takes 33 bushels for one ton=about 2000 bushels of wheat per day to provide what the Venezuelan government has so totally fucked up.
Current price of wheat is $4.25/bushel. Multiply that by 2000, you get $8500/day. That’s 154 barrels of oil. Basically, that’s less than half of what one tanker truck holds.
Put it into that perspective, and it show how miserable the failure of socialism really is.
And I used 60 tons of wheat, so the comparison is even more stark than my estimates.
Yeah, I said 30 tons of wheat per day, but I think what is actually needed is 4 times that amount for the entire country. And no one wants bolivars as payment.
Sorry, I did get the date wrong on Chavez.
Obviously that’s just one of many commodities Venezuela needs, but even in a “depressed” oil market, they exported nearly $28 BILLION worth of crude, in a nation of just over 30 million.
And then, you have to ask, where the hell is the money going? Brazil may have been going through a drought, but it still has a thriving agriculture, as does Chile. About half of my fresh vegs in the winter come from Chile through Canada.
Where is that money going?
They were 30 days late on their most recent debt payment to the U.S.
As of September 2016, the inflation rate in Venezuela was 275%. When Maduro used decree powers to enact legislation to deepen the state’s role as the primary buyer and distributor of imports, further tighten currency controls, cap business profits, and extend price controls, he made it nearly impossible for importers to obtain sufficient dollars to purchase goods needed to maintain their operations.
Put simply, he has destroyed the economy faster than you can blink. And there is no explanation about where that income has gone.
How much more damage can he do before people do to him what was done to Ceaucescu?
The money is no doubt going into Swiss bank accounts or other locations in the name of certain individuals in positions of government/military authority.
The truth is, Socialism fails because it gives power to a few, and people are greedy, self-centered creatures. It is part of what in Judeo-Christianity is known as the ‘sin nature’.
We cannot trust any human being, even ourselves, to not at some point act in a self-centered manner. We need a system of checks and balances, of accountability, a buddy system, to keep ourselves in line.
Even more so our governments.
Think Bolivia. Evo Morales is butt buddies with Maduro. Non-extradition with Venezuela, perfect place to hide one’s ill-gotten booty.
Is it any wonder that Chavez’s daughter is one of THE richest people in Venezuela?
Chavez won the election of Dec 6, 1998. I remember because I was boarding and Alaska Airlines flight to go to Prudhoe Bay and there was a Wall Street Journal in my seat. There was a front-page article about the importance of the Venezuelan election in which Chavez was a candidate. Of course the media said nothing about the outcome of the election or its importance. Someday I will track down that Wall Street Journal article. It was prescient.
Maduro actually accused the bakeries of making pastries instead of bread, and used that excuse to seize the bakeries.
“Let them eat cake,” vol. 2?
Pretty much. The bakeries weren’t making bread because they couldn’t get flour, not because they used it all for pastries. Maduro and his cronies are too corrupt to see that. And of course, anyone whose business is seized is automatically considered a criminal, put on Venezuela’s “no-fy” list, and arrested.
Damn! Is this Lenin and Trotsky redux?
Of course. These Venezuelan socialists learned their lessons well.
Oh, PH, my girl, you’re a hopeless romantic. At Seventeen, by, I think, Janis Ian.
Spot on, Chief. That’s only a couple of verses.
Lars aka Poodle Dick, is busy changing his wet bed sheets before his mother comes down in the basement!
Are you going to wake him up?
Oh, let’s don’t. I don’t have the energy today for his verbal diarrhea.
That’s okay. He doesn’t usually regain consciousness until around 10PM CDT, so he’ll find his way here, and A Proud Infidel and others can stand in for you.
I think on this thread and the Norkiland thread he won’t have the courage to say anything until 0300Z.
So far so good, but I’m going to bed now, just in case. Y’all have the watch.
Normally I’d say something to the effect of pleading not to conjure his presence and that I enjoy the absence of him but he never showed up on the last thread about Venezuela and the failures of socialism.
But (adjective) Socialism is -different-, because it actually works! See, there will always be plenty of other peoples’ money to spread around in the (adjective) Socialism system, thus it succeeds. Especially because it will be done right, by the right leaders, thus the People will support (adjective) Socialism and make it work. (Especially those other folks who’s money we plan to spread around, or else)
Cuz (adjective)! And Leaders! And it will be -different- this time!
….
And you are all doubters and wrong and meanies, and lack the wider view and knowledge to understand this stuff.
……
Nah. No one would actually say something like that….
Don’t forget about having “empiric data” to prove their point… it’s all about the “empiric data”.
No. It will be the same.
Once the glamour wears thin,
and reality sets in,
the discontent will begin.
Chile: Pinochet: 10,000 to 30,000 people tortured and murdered.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR): Stalin: 56 to 62 million, not including wartime casualties, between 1924 and 1953
Cambodia: Pol Pot: 2,000,000 Cambodians
tortured and murdered, some by children under the age of 14
China: Mao Tse-Tung: 45 million in 4 years
Ain’t socialism just wunnaful? Anyone want to see ‘The Killing Fields’?
My in-laws saw them up close already. They don’t recommend it.
I do not mean to open old wounds, TOW.
There are too many still who need to have their ignorant noses rubbed in this kind of sewage.
Didn’t think you did, Ex. Just thought I’d reinforce your point.
Several years ago, the Protest Warrior group was selling a T-shirt that said: “Communism has only killed about a 100 million people, but let’s just give it another chance.” I almost bought one just to piss off the super proggie I worked with, when we went to the gym near the office. He was also a Berzerkley grad who never stopped drinking their Kool-Aide.
You forgot to add EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE!!
Check that, Proud. I think it’s called “empiric evidence”.
From BBC News this morning, Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan-born Marxist militant who bombed trains and businesses in France and wrought havoc in teh Middle East, is getting a 3rd life sentence this week from the French judicial system.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39421429
Why don’t they just shoot his ass and be done with it?
They are French.
I will say that with all the opportunities offered him, the Piuperdink failed to raise his left head and chime in. I slept in peace last night, knowing that he’d been handed his ass without my lifting even half a finger.
I was very sure he wasn’t going to show up and so far I’m right. I still stand by my hypothesis I stated earlier, Milady!
This update is current at 03/30/2017.
Maduro has essentially assumed complete control of the government by allowing Venezuela’s Supreme Court to take over the functions of the Congress. He has in effect become the dictator of that country. Peru has withdrawn its envoy in a protest over Maduro’s violations of democracy, while Brazil, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala are deeply concerned. That means they’re about to cut off relations with Maduro, period.
“The head of the 34-nation Organization of International States (OAS), Luis Almagro, said the Venezuelan court had dealt the final blows to democracy and accused Maduro’s “regime” of carrying out a “coup.”
Oddly, Maduro is trying to make nice with Vlad Putin (to get cash) by making a deal with Vlad’s Rosneft company. Apparently, he is unaware that Vlad sold 50% of the drilling rights for Rosneft a few weeks ago to Oman and Swiss-based Glencore. This is the problem when you’re a self-involved, incompetent jackass with a brain the size of a pea.
Also, foreign-based oil companies are withdrawing their interest in doing business with Venezuela. Can’t say as I blame them.
The Reuters article is at the link below.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKBN17122M
I’ll try to update this again over the weekend. Things are happening in Syria, too.
Let’s hope the crypto-commie/”socialist” asshole self-implodes, and he and his government and its bootlikers end up like that Romanian commie, Ceaucescu.
“bootlickers.”
Scary stuff. My friends’ relatives in Venezuela are never far from my mind. I’m praying they can and will get out before it’s too late.