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Thread: Venezuela's Latest Response to Food Shortages: Ban Lines Outside Bakeries

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    Venezuela's Latest Response to Food Shortages: Ban Lines Outside Bakeries

    1984

    Venezuela's Latest Response to Food Shortages: Ban Lines Outside Bakeries

    The tragedy of Venezuela continues unabated, but that doesn't mean the government of President Nicolás Maduro has stopped trying to fix problems like the devastating scarcity of food which has led to malnutrition, riots, food truck hijackings, vigilante lynchings of petty thieves, and the starvation of zoo animals.

    No, Maduro hasn't admitted the failure of Chavismo — the brand of Bolivarian socialism imposed on the oil-rich country by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez — instead, Venezuela's embattled leader has launched a war on "anxiety."

    The National Superintendency of Fair Prices has reportedly instituted a policy of fining bakeries that allow lines to stretch out their front doors, according to PanAmPost. The head of this particular bureaucracy, William Contreras, claims the lines aren't a true indicator of a severe shortage of bread, but rather, a political "strategy of generating anxiety."

    ...

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    Truth Detector (08-26-2016)

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    Leftist policies work!


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    MisterVeritis (12-12-2016)

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    Price controls beget shortages which beget queues, every single time. It's happened since Diocletian made the Edict on Maximum Prices.

    Of course this epitomizes an extreme version of the hubris of the left in dictating what things should cost because that's what they feel things should cost.

    Prices aren't arbitrary!

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    Chris (08-22-2016),Truth Detector (08-26-2016)

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    Red face

    Venezuela gonna fix Policies Blamed for ‘Economic Disaster’...

    Venezuela Gov’t Doubles Down on Policies Blamed for ‘Economic Disaster’
    August 25, 2016 – The administration of Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro is doubling down on policies blamed by some for the country’s massive recession and widespread shortages of food and medicines, according to a Caracas business leader.
    “The government has become more radical,” Victor Maldonado, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services told CNSNews.com by phone from Caracas. Ministers who “were talking about allowing for more freedom in the economy” have been recently fired, he noted. “If the current government maintains its economic policies, Venezuela will not exit its current crisis and the problems will only become greater,” Maldonado said. According to the IMF, Venezuela’s economy is expected to shrink by 8 percent this year, with inflation ballooning to 700 percent.

    In a dismal 2016 economic outlook for the country, the IMF cited “widespread price and other administrative controls and regulations” and a “worsening business climate.” Maldonado predicted the current situation will likely get worse and could end up with a total collapse of the government and the economy, once Venezuela’s reserves are depleted and the government can no longer pay its debts or fund basic services. Current reserves total $11.8 billion, down from $16.3 billion in January, Maldonado noted. A financial expert on Venezuela’s debt told CNN earlier this month that the government will “run out of money within a year.” “The root of Venezuela’s current problems are government controls on prices, labor and the foreign exchange rate,” Maldonado argued. “All of this has hurt productivity. If the government continues to exercise controls over the economy, the crisis will get worse.”

    Citizens have gathered enough signatures to hold a referendum vote that could remove Maduro prior to the next presidential election in 2018. But Maldonado said the government is working to slow down the recall effort at every step. In spite of the economic and political crises, Venezuela has not reached the point where the government no longer has control, he said. Maldonado predicted that social unrest would not likely result in change, given the degree of government repression. Just back from a two-week visit to Caracas, Canadian economist Fred McMahon said the capital “looks more or less normal during the day except when you are close to a supermarket or drug store where you see lines that don’t seem to move.” The city, however, was “shockingly deserted at night,” added McMahon, a resident fellow at the Fraser Institute in Canada.

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    Venezuela is that shining example of well intended Socialism that has been proven over the long history of man to be a failure. Why do these well intentioned leftist programs fail so badly? Because they completely ignore human nature and falsely believe that only Government can make things right and equalize outcomes.

    You cannot raise a ship by sinking another one.

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    Axiomatic (11-08-2016)

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    Red face

    Granny says, "Dat's right - dey oughta tar an' feather him - an' run him outta town onna rail...

    Irked by food crisis, protestors chase Venezuelan president at local political event
    Sunday 4th September, 2016 - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was caught amid angry protestors at Margarita Island on Saturday.
    Banging on pots and yelling at the leader, the protesters chased the president at a political event, local media reported. Many Venezuelans blame the country’s unpopular leader for the nation’s food crisis. Grainy and unclear mobile phone videos emerged on social media where the president is seen running through the protests, dodging irked protesters. “Right now, there are more than 30 people detained… as a result of the incident in Villa Rosa,” Alfredo Romero of Penal Forum right groups said on Twitter.

    Reports pointed out that all except Braulio Jatar - a local pro-opposition lawyer - were detained. Jatar was released the following afternoon. Maduro had travelled to the country’s northern coast to inaugurate a number of new public housing units. Although the president’s office has remained silent about the incident, Henrique Capriles, an opposition governor, said, “The people of Vila Rosa in Margarita have no fear. Through banging pots, Maduro was run out of town.”

    Information Minister Luis Marcano, on the other hand, published a video on Twitter showing the president being cheered in Margarita Island. He wrote, “What you didn’t see in the videos manipulated by the right wing.” The protest came after a march in Caracas on Thursday where more than one million people took to the streets to demand his removal from the office. The anti-government protestors are calling for a referendum to recall the president amid the economic crisis faced by the country that has led to a severe food shortage in Venezuela.

    However, the government said that it prevented a coup plot following the demonstration. Addressing reporters, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez, said, “The national government's action prevented a massacre. Snipers looked to assassinate citizens to sell to the world a not so nice image of our country. And we have been perpetually denouncing this. The top and elite of the Venezuelan opposition is spraying this to the world, discrediting Venezuela.”

    http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/2...olitical-event

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    Venezuela seized guns, but if this continues the people will tear the politicians apart with their bare hands. As it should be.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    waltky (09-04-2016)

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    Exclamation

    Possible diphtheria outbreak in Venezuela...

    Diphtheria, eradicated in Venezuela in 1940s, may have killed 3 children
    Sept. 19, 2016 -- The Venezuelan Society of Public Health has warned that diphtheria, an easily contagious infectious disease eradicated in Venezuela in the late 1940s, could be the reason three children recently died.
    The health group said the suspected diphtheria cases occurred in Venezuela's Bolivar state, where the children presented symptoms. Diphtheria, caused by the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae, leads to a thick covering in the back of the throat that can lead to difficulty breathing, heart failure, paralysis and death. Diphtheria is easily prevented through a vaccine. The group has urged Venezuela's health authorities to warn the public of a possible diphtheria outbreak in Bolivar and to supply prophylactic antibiotics and vaccines to children near where the suspected cases occurred, El Nacional reports.


    The group also called on the Venezuelan government under President Nicolas Maduro to expand healthcare to cover vaccination plans that include diphtheria in children. "Diphtheria once was a major cause of illness and death among children. The United States recorded 206,000 cases of diphtheria in 1921 and 15,520 deaths. Before there was treatment for diphtheria, up to half of the people who got the disease died from it," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. "Starting in the 1920s, diphtheria rates dropped quickly in the United States and other countries with the widespread use of vaccines."

    The CDC said that there were 7,321 reported cases of diphtheria worldwide in 2014. Venezuela is facing an economic crisis in which food, basic goods and medicines are either in short supply or not available.

    http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...?spt=sec&or=tn

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    Angry

    Venezuela takin' Suriname down with it...

    Suriname slides into economic abyss, in shadow of Venezuela
    [i]Sep 21,`16) -- It is a South American nation in crisis: Businesses are closing, food prices are soaring and hospitals are running out of basic supplies such as paper towels and bandages.[/b]
    No, this isn't Venezuela but rather nearby Suriname, a multi-ethnic former Dutch colony where the economy is in freefall amid collapsing global commodity prices and the local currency's resulting slide against the U.S. dollar. Life has become exceedingly difficult in this isolated country of about 540,000 people on South America's northeastern coast, which the World Bank says now has the world's third highest rate of inflation, behind Venezuela and South Sudan. "I am absolutely worried my country is becoming another Venezuela," said Umar Nazier, who closed his Texas-style grill restaurant in June because the cost of ingredients had doubled. "I had no other choice but to adjust the prices on my menu, but these new prices scared the customers away."

    The International Monetary Fund, which authorized a $478 million loan to Suriname in May, expects the economy to contract 2 percent this year. Suriname's Bureau of Statistics says inflation is running at an annualized 64 percent, up from an average 4 percent in 2013-2015. The main reason for the collapse is falling prices for Suriname's main exports, gold and oil, and last year's closure of the Alcoa aluminum refinery, long a pillar of the economy. President Desi Bouterse likely also contributed by spending heavily before the May 2015 election, exhausting currency reserves. Bouterse has frozen retail fuel prices and backed away from energy price increases, against the IMF's budget-protecting recommendations. He has also vowed to stabilize the exchange rate of the Surinamese dollar, which has fallen by more than half against the U.S. dollar over the past year.

    The president said at a news conference Tuesday that the IMF requirements are "very harsh" and that his government may move to withdraw from the loan agreement and seek support from other sources such as the Islamic Development Bank. "The IMF is cold and only thinks about the numbers and the deadlines we had agreed to," Bouterse said. "If the agreement with the IMF becomes too difficult to follow, if we risk becoming victims of the agreement ourselves, we will have to look for other options." As in other import-dependent countries, health care has been hit particularly hard. Doctors at the Academic Hospital Paramaribo, the country's largest, recently posted a YouTube video pleading for help from Surinamese living abroad, saying they lacked such things as sterile tubes. "We have reached the point that people will die an avoidable death," one said.

    Hospital officials and doctors declined interview requests but accounts of shortages are widespread. Amanda Palis said she visited four pharmacies seeking a medicine to treat nausea and vomiting for her 2-year-old daughter before giving up and trying something else recommended by a pharmacist. "I eventually gave my daughter medication that was not prescribed for her," she said. "What else could I do?"

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    Pray for Ashley...

    A child's scraped knee a life or death matter in Venezuela
    Oct 4,`16) -- It was just a scraped knee. So 3-year-old Ashley Pacheco's parents did what parents do: They gave her a hug, cleaned the wound twice with rubbing alcohol and thought no more of it.
    Two weeks later, the little girl writhed screaming in a hospital bed. Her breathing came in ragged gasps as she begged passing patients for a sip of water. Her mother stayed day and night in the trauma unit. She kept Ashley on an empty stomach in case she might cut in front of hundreds of other patients for emergency surgery in one of the hospital's few functioning operating rooms. Her father scoured Caracas for scarce antibiotics to fight the infection spreading through his daughter's body. They had no idea how much worse it was going to get.

    If Venezuela has become dangerous for the healthy, it is now deadly for those who fall ill. One in three people admitted to public hospitals last year died, the government reports. The number of operational hospital beds has fallen by 40 percent since just 2014. And as the economy fails, the country is running short on 85 percent of medicines, according to the national drugstore trade group. "I really don't know of any other country where things have deteriorated so quickly, to such an incredible extent," said Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a Yale University School of Public Health professor who has worked in Latin America and Africa. "Venezuela's health system was a model for Latin America. Now you are seeing an implosion where people cannot get basic care."

    With so little room for error, the tiniest slips, like a little girl's tumble while chasing her brother, can lead to life-or-death crises. Ashley's parents had been determined to shield her from the chaos engulfing their country. As the public school system collapsed , they sent her to a private Catholic preschool. As food grew harder to find, they made sure she had protein at every meal. When water began coming out of the taps with a foul smell, they boiled it before her daily bath. But a week after her fall in mid-July, Ashley started to run a fever. At the local clinic, doctors said she would soon be on the mend. Yet the fever kept rising, and her knee was swelling. So Maykol and Oriana Pacheco loaded her between them on their motorcycle and took off, determined to find a hospital that would take their case more seriously.


    Ashley Pacheco

    They went first to the public children's hospital nearest their home, which had been hit with a wave of poisoning cases. As shortages worsen, parents are giving their kids homemade medicines and food such as bitter yuca that can be toxic if not prepared correctly. With few supplies, doctors can do little but ease some of these children into death as painlessly as possible. They didn't have medicine for Ashley. Next, the family tried the country's main pediatric hospital. There, the smell of religious incense hung thick in rooms of children with milky eyes and swollen heads. Doctors were waiting for parents to bring in shunts to drain the extra fluid from their children's brains. There were no beds for Ashley.

    As their little girl grew warmer between them, Maykol and Oriana went to the city's largest hospital. Men were lying mostly naked on the floor in the emergency room, IV lines snaking down from poles above them. There was no room for a sick 3-year-old. By the next morning, Ashley's temperature had spiked to 103 degrees (39.4 degrees Celsius). Maykol was growing desperate. Out of options, he turned his motorcycle toward University Hospital, once one of the best hospitals in South America but lately better known for gang shootings in the operating rooms and stickups in the stairways. They arrived around noon on a Saturday. Ashley's left leg had swollen from the tip of her toe to the top of her thigh. All at once, she was whisked into emergency care.

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