Venezuelans Throng Grocery Stores Under Military Protection
Source: Bloomberg News
Shoppers thronged grocery stores across Caracas today as deepening shortages led the government to put Venezuelas food distribution under military protection.
Long lines, some stretching for blocks, formed outside grocery stores in the South American countrys capital as residents search for scarce basic items such as detergent and chicken.
Ive visited six stores already today looking for detergent -- I cant find it anywhere, said Lisbeth Elsa, a 27-year-old janitor, waiting in line outside a supermarket in eastern Caracas. Were wearing our dirty clothes again because we cant find it. At this point Ill buy whatever I can find.
President Nicolas Maduro last week vowed to implement an economic counter-offensive to steer the country out of recession, including an overhaul of the foreign exchange system. He has yet to provide details. While the main government-controlled exchange sets a rate of 6.3 bolivars per U.S. dollar, the black market rate is as much as 187 per dollar.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/venezuelans-throng-grocery-stores-on-military-protection-order.html
The "Revolution" continues; 14 years & counting......
juxtaposed
(2,778 posts)progree
(10,908 posts)At least they aren't in Minnesota suffering through another friggin' polar vortex winter with daytime high windchills of 20 F below. (nights: 40 below windchills). Oh, these are Minneapolis windchills -- "enjoying" the urban heat island effect, and being way down in the southern part of the state. Way the hell worse in northern Minnesota.
Archae
(46,328 posts)I live in Sheboygan, so we get a lot of that "lake effect" snow.
(We have more colorful names for it...)
I hate winter.
project_bluebook
(411 posts)winters are just too long and brutal.
Fearless
(18,421 posts)They did make ~$114B USD in 2014. Where is it?
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)quadrature
(2,049 posts)you can barter for it later.
especially useful,
liquor and cigarettes.
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)#LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads
The protests this week have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.
George Ciccariello-Maher February 22, 2014
~ snip ~
Venezuelas Bolivarian Revolution leapt forth from the historical collision of radical social movements against a repressive, neoliberal state. Fifteen years ago, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela amid the collapsing rubble of the old two-party system, but the revolution over which he would preside has far deeper roots. For decades, armed guerrillas, peasants and workers, women, Afro- and indigenous Venezuelans, students and the urban poor struggled against a system thatwhile formally democraticwas far from it in practice. These revolutionary grassroots movements, which I document in We Created Chávez, blew a hole in what Walter Benjamin would call the continuum of history in a massive anti-neoliberal riot that began on February 27, 1989.
This eventtwenty-five years ago this weekwas henceforth known as the Caracazo, and irreversibly divided Venezuelan history into a before and an after. Its importance is not limited to the resistance to imperialism that it embodied, however, but also the slaughter that marked its conclusion. Numbers often fail us in their false equivalence, but there is much that they can make clear: some 3,000 were killed in 1989, many deposited unceremoniously in unmarked mass graves. But the movements struggled forth, building popular assemblies in the barrios and making increasingly militant demands against a flailing state, which responded with targeted killings and the occasional massacre. The mayor of greater Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, who today positions himself as an opponent of repression, himself presided over the murder of dozens of students in the streets in the early 1990s, not to mention a notorious 1992 prison massacre at the Retén de Catia.
It was into this gaping wound in history that Chávez stepped, first with a failed coup in February 1992, and with electoral victory six years later. Even then, however, there were still no Chavistas but only Bolivariansa loose and all-encompassing reference to the great liberator, Simón Bolívaror more simply: revolutionaries. The revolution predated Chávez, and it was always about more than the individual; so too for Maduro today. The state has become today an important terrain for hegemonic struggle, but it is far from the only trench, and those who felt the searing heat of state violence in the past have not been today miraculously converted to naïve faith. Instead, the movements persist alongside and occasionally in tension with the government: supporting Maduro while building autonomous spaces for popular participation.
More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/178496/lasalida-venezuela-crossroads#
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)[center]
Carlos Andrés Pérez and his US American friend.
[font size=6]ETC. [/font] [/center]
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Maduro and his cronies are the ones responsible for the state of the Venezuelan economy, not some foreign or domestic boogyman.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Every time there's a negative thread about Venezuela, she can be counted on to try to distract from the topic by posting some bullshit events that didn't even happen in this century.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)With their links, of course.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)In direct reference to the poster's mocking reference to "the revolution" I posted the following in the paragraphs posted above:
~ snip ~
Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela amid the collapsing rubble of the old two-party system, but the revolution over which he would preside has far deeper roots.
~ snip ~
The revolution predated Chávez, and it was always about more than the individual; so too for Maduro today.
Your post has little to do with my post, clearly.
You do need to take enough time to learn about Venezuelan history through other something than right-wing derived propaganda. Most people would not be satisfied with a bogus understanding of real life.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)is just as bad, if not worse, than years and decades gone by.
The collapse of the Venezuelan economy is the sole responsibility of Chavez/Maduro regime, not some foreign or domestic boogyman.
All that petro dollars that were earned were wasted on social programs rather than rebuilding the infrastructure, crime is rampant, with 15-20% of it committed by the authorities, the electric grid is failing rather quickly, there are chronic food shortages, and all this was happening before the current crude oil price drop.
Venezuela's economy is 95% dependent on crude oil exports, that's significant, if Venezuela wants to halt the total collapse of it's economy, it needs to diversify it's economy and clean up the corruption in the govt, until that happens, then Venezuela is in for more painful economic times.
7962
(11,841 posts)Pointing out stuff from another failed regime doesnt justify continuing the present one.
Ever since I've been posting here, I've said it would continue to slide further into the sewer. So far I've been right.
Chavez and his henchmen did their own killing, and it continues today. Those in power want to continue to plunder the country.
Eventually it will implode; then you'll REALLY see violence. Unfortunately for the people.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Support for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro fell to a low of 22%, at a time when his government faces recession, high inflation and record low oil prices in five years, according to a survey published on Friday.
Commodity shortages and high prices are the main concern of respondents, according to the latest poll conducted by research firm Datanálisis, Reuters reported.
José Antonio Gil, director of pollster Datanálisis, told television channel Globovisión that the parliamentary elections this year will not be easy for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), given the difficult economic environment and the usually high correlation between the president's popularity and support for his political group.
According to a previous Datanalisis survey, Maduro's approval in November fell 5.7 percentage points to 24.5%.
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)and that their killing continues today.
It would be important to have that source revealed.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)CARACAS, Venezuela?Up to one out of every five crimes in Venezuela is perpetrated by crooked police officers, Interior Minister Tareck El Aisammi said Sunday on President Hugo Chavez's weekly radio show.
The official said police officers accounted for 15-20 percent of all crimes, notably major felonies such as kidnapping and murder.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)7962
(11,841 posts)Not to mention the number of people killed when Chavez tried his own coup back in the 90s
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Not to mention the chavista paramilitaries known as colectivos nt
Imajika
(4,072 posts)When will people ever learn that price controls, command economies, etc, never ever work?
It's always amusing to read the Chavista's latest excuse for the basketcase Venezuela has found itself in.