Saving the planet, one failed socialist state at a time.
Thousands of workers are fleeing Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, abandoning once-coveted jobs made worthless by the worst inflation in the world. And now the hemorrhaging is threatening the nation’s chances of overcoming its long economic collapse, union leaders, oil executives and workers say.
Desperate oil workers and criminals are also stripping the oil company of vital equipment, vehicles, pumps and copper wiring, carrying off whatever they can to make money. The double drain — of people and hardware — is further crippling a company that has been teetering for years yet remains the country’s most important source of income.
The timing could not be worse for Venezuela’s increasingly authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, who was re-elected last month in a vote that has been widely condemned by leaders across the hemisphere. Prominent opposition politicians were either barred from competing in the election, imprisoned or in exile.
No more. Carlos Navas, 37, worked on a drilling crew outside of this oil city, El Tigre. He had a house here, with air-conditioning, and a car. He never imagined he might not make enough money to buy food for his wife and three children.
But he quit his job late last year, he said, because he couldn’t live on what had become starvation wages.
On a recent evening, with the sun slanting low over the plains, Navas prepared to leave. He was boarding a bus to the malaria-infested gold mines to the east, where he hoped to scrape out enough money to buy food for his family and, eventually, finance an even longer journey: to Ecuador or Peru, where he would follow a stampede of his fellow Venezuelans fleeing the country’s economic cataclysm.
“Before, you worked and you were rich,” Navas said of his oil company job. “Your salary bought anything you needed. Now you can’t buy anything, not even food.”
Smells a lot like inflationary Germany in the twenties…they are in for a very rough time.
Prosit!
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group ‘True North’
They voted for it.
The end result of sheltering people from the consequences of their own bad decisions, is to fill the world with socialists. I mean fools. No, socialists is right. Nope, it’s fools. Wait a minute… Is socialist a synonym of fool?
For the first time a major political party has gone into an election with an anti-green platform and won big time. Specifically the Conservative Party platform for the Ontario election on 7th June promised:
This means no carbon tax or cap-and-trade schemes.
Stop sweetheart deals by scrapping the Green Energy Act.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/15/the-land-that-global-warming-forgot/
And yet, a comment to an article in today’s National Post says that the CPC on Thursday fast tracked Trudeau’s bill to enforce a carbon tax on provinces not already having one.
Anyone know anything about this? I have not been able to track down any links or articles.
You might be thinking of the Senate,Ken,where they fast tracked the carbon tax bill to spend more time on the marijuana bill.
That probably is the one. The commenter did not elaborate.
What is even more delicious about this? Patrick Brown was pro carbon tax, McGuinty / Wynne lite. Not sure if the accusations against him have any merit, but there are issues with the stories, and definitely the timing of these years old accusations are obviously not just suspect but 100% orchestrated by someone.
And they lost, to ‘Trump north’, Ford.
The gurgling painful noise you hear is the federal green agenda choking on its blood. Even with acquiescence from nearly all provincial governments it was going to be difficult. This is a mortal blow.
I just really hope Ford just kills the Green Energy Act. The carbon tax and even cap & trade are much less harmful than the awful renewable quotas in that act. It doesn’t need to be tweaked or even truncated, it just needs to die. I am also concerned about Ford’s focus. I read in an article that he warned gas distributors about ‘price fluctuations’, and a week ago or so he said he wanted to ban Al-Quds demonstrations. That’s unacceptable the government has no business telling businesses their prices or people what they can say.
Just prior to the most recent election, about a month ago, the Venezuelan Bolivar was trading with the US dollar at about 700,000 : 1 … in the past month, falling by almost 2/3 value and now trading at 2,300,000 : 1
https://dolartoday.com and I suspect this site is not keeping up to date as it’s been stagnate for a few days, often only changing twice a week whereas it used to change twice a day.
The people I knew and stayed with while visiting Venezuela lived 20 minutes from El Tigre which the article references. Daily average high / low is 36 / 24 celcius, and it’s “windy” if the wind is above 20 kilometres per hour. They’ve moved out of the country now to Quito, Ecuador. No food or reason to live in the plains where food used to be grown. They earn US dollars now, she has savings every month.
You know what they don’t have in Ecuador?
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2018/06/12/guess-whos-back-back-again-polio-is-back-tell-a-friend/
“You know what they don’t have in Ecuador?”
In addition to polio: a national currency. Ecuador dollarized in 2000. That’s the main reason why things never got anywhere near as bad there as they did in Venezuela or Argentina (which is also going through a currency collapse because their reformist government did not reform enough). Too bad Ecuador dollarized at the worst possible time just when Bush started collapsing the USD.
Fun thing is, Ecuador is turning around. The new president was supposed to continue his leftist predecessor’s policies (he’s even named LENIN) but he’s instead ending or at least attenuating them. They hate each other now.
Nicholas Maduro = Latin American version of Nicolae Ceasescu.
The only things Maduro needs to do to make Venezuela like Ceasescu-era Romania is to outlaw his subjects from listening to foreign media and use lethal force to keep his subjects from fleeing the gulag that Venezuela has turned into.
My girlfriend and I toured Romania for four weeks in during the summer in 1979. We passed a big building in the middle of Bucharest, the capital city. The tour guide proudly told us that “all newspaper in the country were written and published in that building”. Btw, in 1979 food shortages were starting to take hold. In restaurants where we ate there was only one thing on the menu: chicken, rice and green beans.
The military used to have a good reason for propping up Maduro. The higher ranks got rich from the national oil company. The lower ranks got to feed their families.
But even that deal is breaking down. With soldiers going hungry, I can’t see Maduro in office for much longer.
And none of the upper ranks are retiring, in the US it’s “up or out” in Venezuela it’s “up and collect rations” at the moment. I don’t know how the lower ranks get fed if they aren’t actually stealing it.
There’s no reason this won’t continue as long as someone is producing enough oil to provide for their minimal needs. They all owe their dinner to Maduro, Maduro owes his to the military. Cubans, and military.
Nobody in the military, has the slightest idea of how to produce oil or nat gas out of the earth. It’s as though it’s magic.
Starve the beast, be free again.
Many higher-ups in the military make money through drug trafficking.
What’s the Canadian bolivar trading at today?
On the plus side, you may be pleased that obesity is no longer a problem in Venezuela.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=VBf66wAMpVQ
The Hitler Of South Africa Tells White People, He Won’t Kill Them…Yet!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-15/hitler-south-africa-tells-white-people-he-wont-kill-themyet
Earlier this week while most of the world was transfixed on the World Cup, the Trump/Kim handshake, or a multitude of other sundry events, Julius Malema, aka the Hitler of South Africa, was busy telling white people in his country that he’s not going wage genocide against them. Yet.
In an interview with TRT World News published this week, Malema said, “We have not called for the killing of white people. At least for now. I can’t guarantee the future.”
When the reporter mentioned that some people might view these remarks as a call to genocide, Malema responded, “Crybabies. Crybabies,” but later warned white South Africans that “the masses are on board” for “an un-led revolution and anarchy”.
Genocide as accelerated socialism…who would have thought.
Prosit!
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group ‘True North’
Genocide as accelerated socialism…who would have thought?
How about the two behemoths of socialism:
Mao – 70 million killed
Stalin – 50 million killed
He’s basically black Trump. Must be devastated at the turn of events in Zimbabwe.
and McDonalds and the zoo’s have much more in common now!
Bill Whittle
SOCIALISM IS FOR SUCKERS: VENEZUELA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zocMv3OU2c
In this video from November 2017, Bill Whittle refers to dog food costing a day’s pay at an average Venezuela salary. That same dog food from November, now 8 months later in June 2018 costs a month’s pay, if you can find that dog food to buy.
When I was a kid I remember Sally Struthers and others celebrities on Tv asking for money saying those in Ethiopia earned only a couple of dollars a month. I recall mom telling me this, the neighbours with their NDP signs on their front lawns saying the same. The people I know that lived in Venezuela were earning a couple of dollars a month, and rarely with enough food in the supermarkets to buy. Their currency has been so devalued it’s virtually worthless. “Big corporations” didn’t do this, the USA didn’t do this, only their government printed the money they didn’t have, distributed it to “the people” and like most things you get without a cost, it’s now worthless, without a real face value and weighed in bundles resembling what happened in the Weimer Republic of Germany in 1921-22.
*I’m quite a fan of the Bill Whittle videos too.
just sent another email to ms naomi klein’s handlers demanding to know why she has refused to weigh in on venezuela situation NOW.