International Venezuela, The Socialist Dystopia, v2: The region's worst humanitarian crisis in decades

Maduro isnt joking around he is clearly trying to build an isolated totalitarian state where people are controlled through hunger.

Is this true? It really sound like fiction with that crazy leader doing what ever that pleases him.
 
I was thinking the same, but as i said, if he gets caught receiving aid from the outside they will take his papers and close that window.

Maduro isnt joking around he is clearly trying to build an isolated totalitarian state where people are controlled through hunger.
I couldn't figure it out. As there isn't an end game, where Venezuela becomes not a crap hole. Seems the plan is to slowly become north Korea, as you said via control of the food supply
 
Journalist killings are also not a new thing in the Philippines unfortunately. But I would still argue there is really no comparison.
Agreed.

Venezuela is really something else rightnow its just so depressing to hear stories like what Rod told us about his friends there.
 
Talked to my buddy today, told me he developed a skin condition and that they are more afraid of a pandemic than starving.

Government already stopped maintaining basic sanitation and drains are clogged, there is no medicine and if you manage to get medicine in the black market there is no doctors so you need to figure out what exactly do you have.

He said he has a skin condition that he thinks he got from working at a Maracaibo Lake oil rig, they werent given soap so they had to wash their cloths with just water so he was always covered in oil and the water was dirty to.
 
Sucks bad, as in Mexico drug wars suck bad.

Philippines is still a tourist paradise with functioning government and society, Venezuela on the other hand hellhole at this point.
we are still far from Venezuela levels of poornes

But we are starting to feel the effects of the Peso losing value againts USD
It is 53.41 Philippine Piso per 1$

Prices of utilities and comodities are increasing.

We could be looking at 55 php per 1 usd by the end of the year
 
we are still far from Venezuela levels of poornes

But we are starting to feel the effects of the Peso losing value againts USD
It is 53.41 Philippine Piso per 1$

Prices of utilities and comodities are increasing.

We could be looking at 55 php per 1 usd by the end of the year

Venezuelan bolivar went from 900 to 1 to 3,500,000 to 1 in 2 years.
 
Talked to my buddy today, told me he developed a skin condition and that they are more afraid of a pandemic than starving.

Government already stopped maintaining basic sanitation and drains are clogged, there is no medicine and if you manage to get medicine in the black market there is no doctors so you need to figure out what exactly do you have.

He said he has a skin condition that he thinks he got from working at a Maracaibo Lake oil rig, they werent given soap so they had to wash their cloths with just water so he was always covered in oil and the water was dirty to.


This is horrible no one should be forced to live like that.
 
I wonder why Venezuela cant have its own Spring Rebellion like Libya, Syria, Egpyt. What ever are they missing?

It wouldn't be the just people against the government.

There are still too many deluded Venezuelans clinging to Chavez' cult of personality. Chavista paramilitary groups that would turn the streets into a bloodbath.
 
Just going by what the UN HDI rankings tell us, bud

Thats like using pre-civil war Syria HDI and claim that its in a pretty good spot right now.

Plus HDI is fundamentally flawed because it relies a lot in self-reporting.
 
Talked to my buddy today, told me he developed a skin condition and that they are more afraid of a pandemic than starving.

Government already stopped maintaining basic sanitation and drains are clogged, there is no medicine and if you manage to get medicine in the black market there is no doctors so you need to figure out what exactly do you have.

He said he has a skin condition that he thinks he got from working at a Maracaibo Lake oil rig, they werent given soap so they had to wash their cloths with just water so he was always covered in oil and the water was dirty to.

The condition there is ripe for the comeback of certain previously-eradicated diseases.

‘We’re Losing the Fight’: Tuberculosis Batters a Venezuela in Crisis
By Kirk Semple | March 20, 2018​

Venez-TB-slide-FNZ0-jumbo-v2.jpg

CARACAS, Venezuela — His family thought he just had a bad cold, nothing serious.

But Victor Martínez kept getting worse. By mid-January, he lay in a hospital ward, wasting away from tuberculosis. A month later, at his wake, stunned relatives tried to reckon with the resurgence of a disease that many Venezuelans thought had been mostly confined to the history books.

“I really don’t know what to think,” said Nileydys Yesenia Aurelia Martínez, his niece. “Even the last thing you’d imagine is happening.”

Tuberculosis, a disease that until recently seemed to be under control in Venezuela, is making an aggressive comeback, overwhelming a broken health care system ill equipped for its return, doctors and infectious disease specialists say.

The illness — like malaria, diphtheria and measles — has surged in Venezuela during a profound economic crisis that has battered almost every aspect of life and driven an exodus of Venezuelans, including many experienced doctors.

Though normally associated with the very poor, tuberculosis has begun to stalk a broader population of Venezuelans, including the middle class. Declining nutrition from food shortages and rising stress throughout the country may be weakening immune systems, doctors say, leaving people more susceptible to illness.

And with more families sinking into poverty, people have been forced to double up in increasingly crowded homes, accelerating transmission of the disease.

“Tuberculosis is the shadow of misery,” said Dr. José Félix Oletta, a former Venezuelan health minister. “If there’s a disease that is a marker of poverty, it’s tuberculosis.”

Venez-TB-slide-MZTU-articleLarge.jpg

The Venezuelan government has not released health statistics since early last year, part of a sustained effort to keep the extent of the country’s decline secret.

But at two vital tuberculosis centers in Caracas, the capital, the share of new patients who tested positive for the disease increased 40 percent or more in the last year alone. Some experts fear that the death rate associated with the illness has increased as well.

“Tuberculosis is hitting us hard,” said Dr. Jacobus de Waard, the director of the tuberculosis laboratory at the Institute of Biomedicine in Caracas, the busiest public testing center in the capital.

“We’re losing the fight,” he said.

The Venezuela government’s tuberculosis prevention and control program was once among the most robust in the hemisphere, with the nation boasting one of the lowest rates of infection in Latin America, experts say.

But as the country has fallen apart under President Nicolás Maduro, who took office in 2013, the government has let the tuberculosis threat slip from its control, losing decades’ worth of gains.

Doctors have also observed the return of particularly complicated varieties of the disease, as well as more cases involving strains that are highly resistant to drug therapies.

“All these forms of tuberculosis that we forget about are starting to reappear,” Dr. de Waard said.

Experts now fear that the nation is teetering on the brink of a tuberculosis epidemic that could spill over its borders as Venezuelans flee in record numbers to escape the economic and political crisis, potentially exporting the illness with them.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/world/americas/venezuela-tuberculosis.html
 
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The condition there is ripe for the comeback of certain previously-eradicated diseases.

‘We’re Losing the Fight’: Tuberculosis Batters a Venezuela in Crisis
By Kirk Semple | March 20, 2018

Venez-TB-slide-FNZ0-jumbo-v2.jpg


CARACAS, Venezuela — His family thought he just had a bad cold, nothing serious.

But Victor Martínez kept getting worse. By mid-January, he lay in a hospital ward, wasting away from tuberculosis. A month later, at his wake, stunned relatives tried to reckon with the resurgence of a disease that many Venezuelans thought had been mostly confined to the history books.

“I really don’t know what to think,” said Nileydys Yesenia Aurelia Martínez, his niece. “Even the last thing you’d imagine is happening.”

Tuberculosis, a disease that until recently seemed to be under control in Venezuela, is making an aggressive comeback, overwhelming a broken health care system ill equipped for its return, doctors and infectious disease specialists say.

The illness — like malaria, diphtheria and measles — has surged in Venezuela during a profound economic crisis that has battered almost every aspect of life and driven an exodus of Venezuelans, including many experienced doctors.

Though normally associated with the very poor, tuberculosis has begun to stalk a broader population of Venezuelans, including the middle class. Declining nutrition from food shortages and rising stress throughout the country may be weakening immune systems, doctors say, leaving people more susceptible to illness.

And with more families sinking into poverty, people have been forced to double up in increasingly crowded homes, accelerating transmission of the disease.

“Tuberculosis is the shadow of misery,” said Dr. José Félix Oletta, a former Venezuelan health minister. “If there’s a disease that is a marker of poverty, it’s tuberculosis.”

Venez-TB-slide-MZTU-articleLarge.jpg


The Venezuelan government has not released health statistics since early last year, part of a sustained effort to keep the extent of the country’s decline secret.

But at two vital tuberculosis centers in Caracas, the capital, the share of new patients who tested positive for the disease increased 40 percent or more in the last year alone. Some experts fear that the death rate associated with the illness has increased as well.

“Tuberculosis is hitting us hard,” said Dr. Jacobus de Waard, the director of the tuberculosis laboratory at the Institute of Biomedicine in Caracas, the busiest public testing center in the capital.

“We’re losing the fight,” he said.

The Venezuela government’s tuberculosis prevention and control program was once among the most robust in the hemisphere, with the nation boasting one of the lowest rates of infection in Latin America, experts say.

But as the country has fallen apart under President Nicolás Maduro, who took office in 2013, the government has let the tuberculosis threat slip from its control, losing decades’ worth of gains.

Doctors have also observed the return of particularly complicated varieties of the disease, as well as more cases involving strains that are highly resistant to drug therapies.

“All these forms of tuberculosis that we forget about are starting to reappear,” Dr. de Waard said.

Experts now fear that the nation is teetering on the brink of a tuberculosis epidemic that could spill over its borders as Venezuelans flee in record numbers to escape the economic and political crisis, potentially exporting the illness with them.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/world/americas/venezuela-tuberculosis.html

Jesus H. Christ.

I just really don't get what Maduro's end game here.
 
Thats like using pre-civil war Syria HDI and claim that its in a pretty good spot right now.

Plus HDI is fundamentally flawed because it relies a lot in self-reporting.

So when it tells me what I want to know it's valid, when it doesn't, it's flawed. Sounds legit.

Would love to see some other measure to gauge a country's overall well-being.
 
So when it tells me what I want to know it's valid, when it doesn't, it's flawed. Sounds legit.

Would love to see some other measure to gauge a country's overall well-being.

1.- Its not valid because a lot of things cant be accurately measured.

2.- PPP
 
Sorry to read several infectious diseases such as active tuberculosis have returned to Venezuela. In the past active tuberculosis (TB) was known as a poor mans disease. If you were wealthy enough to afford animal protein products you tended to not develop TB. It was the improvement in food quality and improved sanitation that largely defeated TB in the west. This is before antibiotics were created.

Today in the west, where food typically is plentiful, it tends to be drug users that weaken their immune systems by taking recreational drugs, and some prescription drugs, that tend to develop active TB.

Cholesterol rich foods might be the best at helping people strength their immune system to fight off TB infections. Some small studies came to that conclusion.

More evidence links higher cholesterol with improved immunity

http://www.drbriffa.com/2014/04/18/more-evidence-links-higher-cholesterol-with-improved-immunity/
 
1.- Its not valid because a lot of things cant be accurately measured.

2.- PPP

Lol you really are shameless.

I distinctly remember having a discussion with you a couple of years ago about PPP. Back then you were arguing how useless it was and how nominal was legit. And true to your style, you posted nonsense after nonsense (cantinfleando all the way) when you got backed into a corner thinking that if you had the last word, you'd win the argument.

Congrats, you win by exhaustion again. I don't have the patience to address the million tangents you'll hop on to avoid facing that you're wrong.

(Even after you searched for all the measures out there to find one where Venezuela's the lowest, there are STILL plenty of Latin American countries worse than Venezuela- which was my point all along)
 
Lol you really are shameless.

I distinctly remember having a discussion with you a couple of years ago about PPP. Back then you were arguing how useless it was and how nominal was legit. And true to your style, you posted nonsense after nonsense (cantinfleando all the way) when you got backed into a corner thinking that if you had the last word, you'd win the argument.

PPP is meaningful when it comes to domestic consumption it doesnt addresses the entirety of quality of life. Just that life is cheaper.

Congrats, you win by exhaustion again. I don't have the patience to address the million tangents you'll hop on to avoid facing that you're wrong.

You could you know address reality?

(Even after you searched for all the measures out there to find one where Venezuela's the lowest, there are STILL plenty of Latin American countries worse than Venezuela- which was my point all along)

Venezuela stopped posting said information, and with shortages, price controls and hyperinflation one can assume its at rock bottom ATM.

There is one place where Venezuela is doing great though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_index_(economics)

So if you are in the market for misery, Maduro is your man.
 
Talked to my buddy today, told me he developed a skin condition and that they are more afraid of a pandemic than starving.

Government already stopped maintaining basic sanitation and drains are clogged, there is no medicine and if you manage to get medicine in the black market there is no doctors so you need to figure out what exactly do you have.

He said he has a skin condition that he thinks he got from working at a Maracaibo Lake oil rig, they werent given soap so they had to wash their cloths with just water so he was always covered in oil and the water was dirty to.


That's terrible...hope your friend is okay .

Keep us posted.
 
Latin America’s socialist support system is crumbling
Economic collapse will eventually break the Cuba-Venezuela-Nicaragua axis
John Paul Rathbone | June 11, 2018https://www.ft.com/stream/543a5a74-eb9b-362e-8f77-7f9770a1fba5

http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-us.s3.amazonaws.com%2F79eac542-6d78-11e8-8863-a9bb262c5f53

Nicaraguan demonstrators protest against President Daniel Ortega's government in Managua on Sunday


A domestic flight crashed in Cuba last month, killing more than 100. The next day, President Nicolás Maduro held mock elections to seal his grip on Venezuela, a country that thousands of his citizens flee from every day. In Nicaragua 10 days later, 19 died after gunmen opened fire on a Mother’s Day march against President Daniel Ortega.

As well as these costs to life, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua have much in common as members of a gaseous project that Hugo Chávez called “21st century socialism”.

For many years, they provided mutual support and learnt from each other’s systems of social control. Suborning the courts and electoral authorities, destroying the opposition, making national parties personal fiefs, they turned their countries into elected dictatorships. That kept them in power, but did nothing for their economies, which are now crumbling — perhaps decisively so.

That is especially so in Venezuela. The Cuban advisers employed by Mr Maduro to maintain political control have no economic expertise, especially in such a corrupt country. Despite the world’s largest energy reserves, Venezuela is wracked by hyper-inflation, shortages and default.

Crucially, oil output has collapsed to a 33-year low. This has sapped Caracas of the oil it once sold to feed its population, and the funds it once sprayed around to buy regional support, including to Cuba and Nicaragua.

Cuba’s Soviet-style economy is also on the ropes. A partial reversal by US president Donald Trump of the detente begun by his predecessor has damped foreign investor interest and curbed tourism. But Venezuela’s inability to supply Havana with subsidised oil has hurt more.

To help its closest ally, Caracas has reportedly spent $440m of scarce foreign reserves to buy crude on international markets, which it then shipped to Havana on soft terms. But that will not reverse years of economic dilapidation: the plane that crashed tragically was an old Boeing 737, leased because much of Cuba’s fleet is grounded for lack of spare parts.

Nicaragua’s economy is in better health — although, ironically, that may make Mr Ortega the weakest of the three. Rather than nationalise businesses, the 72-year-old Mr Ortega let the private sector be, so long as it stayed out of politics. He implemented a US trade deal, which attracted investment and turned Nicaragua into a low-cost textiles exporter. He also bought billions of dollars of subsidised oil from Venezuela, which then returned the funds as loans funnelled through a bank owned by the ruling party.

But Venezuela can no longer provide cheap oil, so Mr Ortega cannot buy the same domestic support he once did. Since April 18, when protests against the president first erupted, business has also worked to see him go. “Nicaragua needs as early an exit as possible,” said José Adán Aguerri, head of the largest business chamber, last week.

Crucially, although Mr Ortega heads the police and armed forces, the military has stayed neutral and could play a central role in a transition. It is less co-opted than the Venezuelan army. It is also more independent than Cuba’s military, where the revolution is deeply institutionalised.

“Nicaragua’s army is in many ways the opposite of Venezuela’s,” said Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the US Army War College. “It began as a revolutionary force and has gradually become more institutionalised and professional. The Venezuelan army was once professional and institutionalised but has since become corrupt.”

Change may well not come any time soon. After all, Caribbean dictatorships are historically long-lasting. The Cuban regime has endured for almost 60 years, Venezuela’s for 19, and Mr Ortega’s latest spell as president is 11 years so far. But international condemnation is growing, especially of Venezuela, which is being investigated by judges in The Hague for possible crimes against humanity.

Perhaps the only silver lining to this desperate situation is that it is that increasingly rare thing in the hemisphere: an issue in which much of the region and US have common cause.

https://www.ft.com/content/df86a792-69c0-11e8-b6eb-4acfcfb08c11
 
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