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Venezuela Drifts Into New Territory: Hunger, Blackouts and Government Shutdown
NYT ^ | 5-28-16 | NICHOLAS CASEY and PATRICIA TORRES

Posted on 05/28/2016 7:18:58 AM PDT by dynachrome

The courts? Closed most days. The bureau to start a business? Same thing. The public defender’s office? That’s been converted into a food bank for government employees.

Step by step, Venezuela has been shutting down.

This country has long been accustomed to painful shortages, even of basic foods. But Venezuela keeps drifting further into uncharted territory.

In recent weeks, the government has taken what may be one of the most desperate measures ever by a country to save electricity: A shutdown of many of its offices for all but two half-days each week.

But that is only the start of the country’s woes. Electricity and water are being rationed, and huge areas of the country have spent months with little of either.

Many people cannot make international calls from their phones because of a dispute between the government and phone companies over currency regulations and rates.

Coca-Cola Femsa, the Mexican company that bottles Coke in the country, has even said it was halting production of sugary soft drinks because it was running out of sugar.

Last week, protests turned violent in parts of the country where demonstrators demanded empty supermarkets be resupplied. And on Friday, the government said it would continue its truncated workweek for an additional 15 days.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: communism; feelthebern; maduro; shutdown; socialism; socialisthell; totalitarianism; venezuela; venezuelacollapse
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To: going hot

Even 21st Century Bolivarian socialism failed catastrophically.

You can dress it up all you want but it has never worked anywhere, period.


21 posted on 05/28/2016 7:35:10 AM PDT by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever))
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To: dynachrome

In it’s best Walter Duranty fashion, The New York Times just could not bring it’s self to criticize the socialist (to be charitable)regimes of Maduro and Chavez before him.
but I was happy to see the old Soviet problem with drought has been resurrected.

I am sure writers, Nicholas Casey and Patricia Torres are being nominated for Pulitzer Prizes as we speak.


22 posted on 05/28/2016 7:36:21 AM PDT by Tupelo (we vote - THEY decide.)
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To: goldstategop

Post number 15 expanded nationwide is why.


23 posted on 05/28/2016 7:36:43 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma deuce)
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To: Travis McGee

Interesting photo. Summary: someone has to be buying the expensive “capitalist” burger to pay for the “free” “socialist” burgers.


24 posted on 05/28/2016 7:37:07 AM PDT by dhs12345
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To: Patriot Babe

When Paul Ryan heard ‘government shutdown’ he reflexively whipped out the checkbook and asked Obungo how much money we should send them.


25 posted on 05/28/2016 7:38:20 AM PDT by FirstFlaBn
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To: dhs12345

“Wonder what Bernie has to say about it?”

Maybe the Bern can discuss it on live TV during the Trump debate...


26 posted on 05/28/2016 7:39:53 AM PDT by mowowie (`)
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To: redfreedom

It says right in our own Declaration of Independence that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”; so they understood the tendency of people towards inertia.


27 posted on 05/28/2016 7:40:34 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: FirstFlaBn

When I saw this headline, I immediately thought of how our press refuses to admit that it’s the lefties that shut down the government in times of economic crisis and blame it on the opposition.


28 posted on 05/28/2016 7:42:31 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: redfreedom
I bet there is a minority in Venezuela just like us at FR, just hating every moment of what’s going on, feeling so helpless.

Venezuela has described as a dictatorship, but it really isn't. It is a perfect democracy, the kind our founding fathers specifically didn't want and didn't implement, for the exact same reasons we are seeing in Venezuela.

Venezuela is a democracy where Chavez got over 50% of the vote each election, because he stole from the 49% that didn't vote for him and gave things to the people who did. He was supported by the 50% because they got things for free that they couldn't have gotten from working.

But he bought that 50% by diverting money from other things, like maintaining their power grid, and oil infrastructure. So now the bills are coming due for the lack of maintenance, and relying on high commodity prices. Maduro can't buy 50% anymore.

I hope that the Venezuelans get rid of him, but that they do it legally, like Honduras did a while back.

29 posted on 05/28/2016 7:43:07 AM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: dynachrome

The government shuts down?

Maybe there’s a silver lining to socialism after all.


30 posted on 05/28/2016 7:43:09 AM PDT by moovova
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To: NohSpinZone
Just pick your commie country over the last 100 years and you have exactly what Venezuela is going through.

No, you don't. Unlike past socialist failures which were hidden by the press at a time when people could get news no other way, Venezuela's failure is taking place in an environment where anyone who wants to see it, can. Social media is the enemy of the left.

31 posted on 05/28/2016 7:43:18 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: redfreedom

PS. By “they” I mean the Founding Fathers of the USA.


32 posted on 05/28/2016 7:43:22 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: dynachrome

Next migrant crisis, coming soon, here.

And then, “How could Trump be so heartless to deny them entry?”


33 posted on 05/28/2016 7:43:54 AM PDT by ReaganGeneration2
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To: dynachrome

The wonders of a workers Paradise. :-)


34 posted on 05/28/2016 7:45:48 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: goldstategop
A sorry excuse for journalism - but this is what we have come to expect from the New York Times.

No, the New York Slimes have been a Commie Propaganda organ for a VERY long Time

Walter Duranty (May 25, 1884 – October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born, Anglo-American journalist who served as the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times for fourteen years (1922-1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918-1921).

In 1932 Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, 11 of them published in June 1931 (see below, "Works"). He was criticized as being a pro Stalinist then by Gareth Jones and other writers and again later for his denial of widespread deaths by the man made famine (1932–33) in the USSR, most particularly the Holodomor, the mass death by starvation of Ukrainians, Tartars, Kazakhs, and other non-Russian ethnic groups in the Ukraine, the south, and Siberia. Years later, there were calls to revoke his Pulitzer; The New York Times, which submitted his work for the prize in 1932, wrote in 1990 that his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper

35 posted on 05/28/2016 7:46:38 AM PDT by DanZ
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To: mowowie
That would be nice. Make Bernie explain himself?

Lemme guess — Venezuela isn't socialist or it was someone else’s fault, maybe the United States is to blame, or some other lame excuse.

36 posted on 05/28/2016 7:46:44 AM PDT by dhs12345
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To: dynachrome

It sounds exactly like the late stages of the body of someone in a deep coma dying. One organ and one system at a time stopping and putrefying. In this case it’s the late stages of Socialism.


37 posted on 05/28/2016 7:46:47 AM PDT by katana
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To: redfreedom

“so brainwashed that socialism will work under the right leader?”

I believe so.


38 posted on 05/28/2016 7:48:45 AM PDT by dynachrome (We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.)
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To: Tijeras_Slim

“demanded empty supermarkets be resupplied”

I demanded a Ferrari. Same result


39 posted on 05/28/2016 7:49:51 AM PDT by dynachrome (We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.)
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To: exDemMom

That is true though that isn’t keeping the MSM from trying to cover this up.


40 posted on 05/28/2016 7:50:15 AM PDT by NohSpinZone (First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers)
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