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Old 01-07-2018, 19:30   #151
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“I can’t feed my kids with this,” said Jesus Gudino, a 29-year-old moto-taxi driver and father of three, sneering at the small plastic bag in his hand. “I’ve been here since 4 a.m. This is a mockery. What can I do? I have to leave this country.”
Get a gun and go to work for the revolution. Viva!

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Old 01-12-2018, 12:00   #152
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Unrest over food shortages spreads through the country

Unrest over food shortages spreads through the country

https://news.trust.org/item/20180112035017-q9adf

".....Looters plundered a truck carrying corn, a food collection center, and a state-run supermarket, according to Paparoni, and a vet who witnessed the mayhem.

A video on social media also showed around a dozen men running into a lush pasture, chasing a cow, and then apparently beating it to death....."

Starting to get nastier down there.
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Old 01-12-2018, 14:59   #153
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A video on social media also showed around a dozen men running into a lush pasture, chasing a cow, and then apparently beating it to death....."

Starting to get nastier down there.
Watch here: http://www.wmal.com/2018/01/12/video...sm-is-awesome/

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Old 01-12-2018, 22:24   #154
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Didn't some guy just describe countries like this as "shitholes" ????
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Old 01-13-2018, 05:34   #155
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EXACTLY !!!!

ALL THE ASSHAT DEMOCRATS SHOULD GO THERE ON VACATION & TAKE THEIR FAMILIES....AND AS FAR AS THE STATUE OF LIBERTY !!! SEND IT BACK TO FRANCE WITH THE DACA.... THEY CAN DREAM IN PARIS.
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Old 01-13-2018, 14:35   #156
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Chaotic, impoverished, dysfunctional, crime-ridden, unsanitary, grid failures, lack of medical care...

...sure sounds like a SHITHOLE.
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Old 01-13-2018, 21:18   #157
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Chaotic, impoverished, dysfunctional, crime-ridden, unsanitary, grid failures, lack of medical care...

...sure sounds like a SHITHOLE.
Does having your own cryptocurrency elevate you above shithole status perhaps?


But wait, you need electricity to mine them. Hmm... a conundrum.
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Old 01-13-2018, 22:18   #158
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Does having your own cryptocurrency elevate you above shithole status perhaps?
But wait, you need electricity to mine them. Hmm... a conundrum.
Nothing all that oil and a little capitalism and individual freedom can't fix !
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Old 01-14-2018, 08:50   #159
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Nothing all that oil and a little capitalism and individual freedom can't fix !
saudi, iraq, iran, syria, yemen all shitholes........ even capitalism can't fix everything.
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Old 01-14-2018, 10:19   #160
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saudi, iraq, iran, syria, yemen all shitholes........ even capitalism can't fix everything.
A common denominator to many shitholes appears to be widespread corruption.

Perhaps we were a mere HRC away from our own shithole...
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Old 01-17-2018, 12:10   #161
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The socialist implosion continues.

Wave Of Looting Shutters Stores, Spreads Fear In Venezuela
January 17, 2018
By Alexandra Ulmer and Anggy Polanco
OANN

CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (Reuters) – A wave of looting by hungry mobs across Venezuela has left streets of shuttered shops in provincial towns and pushed some store owners to arm themselves with guns and machetes, stirring fear that the turmoil could spread to the capital Caracas.

Worsening food shortages and runaway inflation have unleashed the spate of pillaging since Christmas in the South American country, in which seven people have reportedly died.

The unrest was sparked by shortages of pork for traditional holiday meals, despite socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s promise of subsidized meat to alleviate shortages.

Looters have ransacked trucks, supermarkets and liquor stores across the nation of 30 million people, which ranks as one of the most violent in the world.

The plunder is heaping more pain on battered businesses, raising questions about how much longer they can survive. Venezuela, once one of Latin America’s richest countries, is suffering a fifth straight year of recession and the world’s highest inflation rate, which the opposition-run Congress says topped 2,600 percent last year.

In the first 11 days of January alone, some 107 lootings or attempted lootings have taken place, according to the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict, a rights group.

In one of the most dramatic incidents, a mob slaughtered cattle grazing in a field in the mountainous western state of Merida.

Skeptical that authorities can protect them, shopkeepers in the Andean town of Garcia de Hevia in the neighboring state of Tachira have taken matters into their own hands.

“We’re arming ourselves with sticks, knives, machetes, and firearms to defend our assets,” recounted William Roa, the president of the local shopkeepers’ association.

Roa, who owns a restaurant and liquor store, estimated that more than two-thirds of stores in the small town near the Colombian border were shut.

“A person spends the night in each store and we communicate using WhatsApp groups, coordinating by block 24 hours a day,” he said.

In Ciudad Guayana, a former industrial powerhouse on the Orinoco river in eastern Venezuela, many stores remain closed after a wave of nighttime lootings.

Garbage fills the streets and few cars circulate, though buses crammed with people crisscross town looking for places to buy food.

Businessmen in Caracas now fear the lootings, so far concentrated in the poorer and more lawless provinces, will spread to the sprawling capital, with its teeming hillside slums.

The owners of patisserie Arte Paris, in the city’s gritty downtown, reinforced the storefront with metal shutters last month. They now only stock ingredients like sugar for a handful of days and have considered hiring a costly nighttime guard.

“The fear is real,” said Sebastian Fallone, one of the owners, as men and children begged patrons for food. “I leave at night without knowing what I will find the next morning.”

‘NO HOPE’

Government critics say Maduro’s refusal to reform the OPEC nation’s floundering economy is to blame for the chaotic fight for survival in the country home to the world’s largest crude reserves.

With a presidential election looming this year, Maduro retorts that Venezuela’s oil-reliant economy is under attack by U.S.-backed saboteurs seeking to stoke conflict and discredit socialism in Latin America.

While videos of ransacking have gone viral, Maduro’s government has stayed largely mum. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for information on the scale and impact of the looting.

The unrest has also stoked fears Venezuelan society could unravel as chaos sets in, fuelling mass emigration to nearby South American countries or a full-blown social explosion at home.

“Small-scale protests will be numerous and increasingly violent; any of these protests could contain the spark to serious unrest,” said consultancy Teneo Intelligence in a note to clients about the year ahead in Venezuela.

In an effort to curb voter anger over inflation, the government agency tasked with ensuring “fair prices” ordered some 200 supermarkets to slash their rates this month, triggering frenetic buying.

Roadside lootings have also scared truck drivers, disrupting the food distribution chain that is traditionally slower anyway in January because of holidays.

For Mery Cacua, manager of La Gran Parada, a supermarket chain in Tachira’s state capital San Cristobal, it has become too much to handle.

“We’re closing in two weeks. There’s no hope anymore,” said Cacua, adding she and her siblings had not yet mustered the strength to break the news to their 87-year-old father, who founded the business 60 years ago.

The family does not know what to do but is considering starting from scratch in Colombia.

Venezuelan supermarkets that remain open are often a shadow of what they once were. Many shelves are barren and poor Venezuelans increasingly mass outside stores, imploring entering shoppers to buy them goods.

“What are they going to loot here? There’s nothing. The warehouse is empty,” said an employee at a big supermarket in Caracas, as a colleague behind him filled empty shelves with water bottles to make them look stocked.

http://www.oann.com/wave-of-looting-...-in-venezuela/
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Old 01-17-2018, 12:42   #162
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Gen Z'ers, this was Socialism-101

Quote:
Katya: I will take you to where we can have lunch. If you do not mind, I will first buy shoes.

Barley: Shoes?

Katya: Today there is a shipment of shoes. With perestroika, there is even less available than before.

Barley: Really? I thought things were improving.

Katya: Everything is corrupt and incompetent. Perhaps different people are now stealing. I don't know.

Barley: Keep your voice down.

Katya: Complaining is our new human right. Glasnost gives everyone the right to complain and accuse... but it doesn't make more shoes.
Venezuela is an AP-class; study hard.
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Old 01-17-2018, 12:52   #163
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"Katya: Complaining is our new human right. Glasnost gives everyone the right to complain and accuse... but it doesn't make more shoes."

Just like BIGGOV creating "universal health care" ...it does NOT create more medical professionals.

The curtain has been pulled aside for all to see in real time - on that scam that is communism/socialism.

Equal misery...and an untouchable elite.
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Old 01-18-2018, 08:56   #164
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Venezuela’s Oil Production Is Collapsing

Venezuela’s Oil Production Is Collapsing

https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezue...all-1516271401

Behind the WSJ wall but you get the idea from the first paragraph.

"CARACAS, Venezuela—Venezuela’s oil output is collapsing at an accelerating pace, deepening an economic and humanitarian crisis and increasing the chances the country will default on its debts...."

Down 216,000 barrels from November to December. Total for December 1.6 million barrels.

November article from Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-v...-idUSKBN1DD1QD
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Old 01-18-2018, 10:07   #165
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Atlas is shrugging in Venezuela. In an oil-rich country, only progressives could screw up oil production.

Even the hydro-cepheletics in the middle-east had enough sense to hire capitalists to develop their oil industry.
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