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The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night – and the
International Media Is Asleep At the Switch

By Francisco Toro -
February 20, 2014



Dear International Editor:


Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.
What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood.


Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting.


People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an urgent plea for an investigation into widespread reports of torture of detainees. There are now dozens of serious human right abuses: National Guardsmen shooting tear gas canisters directly into residential buildings. We have videos of soldiers shooting civilians on the street.


And that’s just what came out in real time, over Twitter and YouTube, before any real investigation is carried out. Online media is next, a city of 645,000 inhabitants has been taken off the internet amid mounting repression, and this blog itself has been the object of a Facebook “block” campaign.


What we saw were not “street clashes”, what we saw is a state-hatched offensive to suppress and terrorize its opponents.


Here at Caracas Chronicles we’re doing what it can to document the crisis, but there’s only so much one tiny, zero-budget blog can do.


After the major crackdown on the streets of large (and small) Venezuelan cities last night, I expected some kind of response in the major international news outlets this morning. I understand that with an even bigger and more photogenic freakout ongoing in an even more strategically important country, we weren’t going to be front-page-above-the-fold, but I’m staggered this morning to wake up, scan the press and find…
Nothing.

As of 11 a.m. this morning, the New York Times World Section has…nothing.




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The Guardian’s World News has some limp why-are-you-protesting? piece that made some sense before last night’s tropical pogrom, but none after it.




So…basically nothing.
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.
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The BBC is still leading its Latin America section on a Leopoldo story, as though last night had been just business as usual.


BBC – Would you guess a sort of pogrom took place in Venezuela from looking at that?

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.
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CNN is also out chasing the thing that was the story in the old Venezuela:


CNN: Your breaking news is broken.

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Al Jazeera English never got the memo:


AJE: NPI

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Even places that love to hate the Venezuelan government are asleep at the wheel:





Et tu, Ailes? .
.
.
The level of disengagement on display is deeply shocking.
Venezuela’s domestic media blackout is joined by a parallel international blackout, one born not of censorship but of disinterest and inertia. It’s hard to express the sense of helplessness you get looking through these pages and finding nothing. Venezuela burns; nobody cares.
Let me put this clearly. Y’all need to step it up. The time to discard what you thought you knew about the way things work in Venezuela is now.
Quico
(Damnit, there’s just no way to stay retired in these circumstances…)

Riots Break out in Venezuela.









http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/10780264/In-pictures-Renewed-rioting-in-Venezuelan-capital.html?frame=2889165

Oil didn't wreck Venezuela's economy. Socialism did.



Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

February 19, 2016

Venezuela's economy is collapsing. The country has topped Bloomberg's "Economic Misery Index," which takes into account several economic measures, for two years. Runaway inflation and high unemployment are plaguing the country.


The country's government is taking emergency measures, including increasing the price of gas (which is still among the cheapest in the world) and devaluing the currency to tackle runaway inflation.

If you read much of the commentary, people blame the country's economic woes on the low oil price. It is true that Venezuela's economy is highly sensitive to the oil price, because it is a significant part of the economy. The oil and gas sector accounts for around 25 percent of the country's entire gross domestic product. Venezuela's oil also has high sulfur content, which makes it more expensive to refine, and makes Venezuela's economy more sensitive to oil price drops.

But while the oil price drop may have been a proximate cause, and an aggravating factor, Venezuela's economic woes predate the current oil price drop by many years, and were going on even while the oil price was high, under President Hugo Chavez. The culprit is clear and obvious: The problem is Venezuela's authoritarian socialism.

The country has had food shortages for many years, because many foodstuffs are price-controlled. If there's one thing all economists agree on, it's that price controls lead to rationing. And yet, the government insists shortages are due to greedy hoarders. President Nicolás Maduro has recently taken over a supermarket chain, arguing that it was hoarding. The currency crisis also means that food imports are prohibitively expensive, and capital and exchange controls mean there is often no way to produce the money to buy things even when they are available. Venezuela shows us a sight familiar to those who experienced Soviet Communism — long lines to buy food — in an oil-rich country.

Under Chavez, Venezuela nationalized a swathe of industries, including oil projects, and instituted a 50 percent windfall tax on oil profits, driving away oil companies. Sometimes the government just seized them. The government nationalized agriculture projects and major agricultural companies. It has also nationalized several banks and shut down others. It also took over the cement sector and the country's biggest telecommunications company, as well as utility companies.Transparency International ranks Venezuela in the top 20 of the world's most corrupt countries. According to a Gallup poll, 75 percent of Venezuelans believe corruption is rampant at every level of the government. If you were a business owner in a country where the government is seizing companies left and right, you might believe a bribe is the only way to keep your living. Caracas is the murder capital of the world.

President Maduro recently arrested the mayor of Caracas, a virulent opponent of the regime, on charges of fomenting a coup d'état. TV channels and other media hostile to the regime are frequently harassed, or even shut down. None of these things are due to low oil prices. Instead, they are due to misguided government policies.

And, for conservatives, it's a useful reminder. Socialism is what produces bread lines in an oil-rich country. In developed countries, economic debates often focus on narrow questions, such as raising the minimum wage, where it's possible for reasonable people to disagree. This leads to an impression that the relative merits of free enterprise and big government policies can be in the eye of the beholder.

To a certain extent this is true. Or, at any rate, different economic policies affect individual countries differently. Make no mistake: A free enterprise system requires an important role for government. But while unleashed capitalism can have unseemly side effects, no policy produces the kind of sheer economic devastation that authoritarian socialism does. Sadly, Venezuela gives us yet another example.

http://theweek.com/articles/606693/o...-socialism-did