As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html

Maduro regime is simply indefensible.

[dead0man]

would you still take him over the Venezuelan right?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

would you still take him over the Venezuelan right?

No.

[Zioneer]

Maduro is a craven tyrant who doesn't know when to step down.

[Lumine]

And yet some people in Chile have the nerve to say they'd like us to be like Venezuela...

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html

Maduro regime is simply indefensible.

Has it started ripping babies from their incubators yet?

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At least here in the US, unlike Venezuela, we aren't living in a country where the government is cracking down on factual reporting of national medical statistics.... bCDC banned from using 'evidence-based' and 'science-based' in official documents: report

Well, NVM about that. It does sound pretty awful in Venezuela, though. I mean look at these numbers from the article:

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What kind of effed-up developed country has such high infant mortality rates?


Well, whatever's going on in Venezuela, it's totally not OUR fault, right?

US Congress passes bill to impose Venezuela sanctions   11 December 2014

Okay, so maybe that's didn't help. But surely, we're not actively making this worse, right?
White House imposes fresh sanctions on Venezuela 'dictatorship'  25 August 2017
Rubio warns that Venezuela’s tipping point is coming

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Okay, but, you know, it could always be worse! This is fundamentally a case of self-proclaimed Socialist (and de facto autocracy) mismanaging their country. It's not like being forced to starve their people for a bunch of deplorable bankers here in the US or something along those lines.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/-hunger-bonds-sink-into-default-adding-to-goldman-s-headache

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-bonds/venezuelas-pdvsa-pays-bond-default-jitters-ease-for-now-idUSKBN1CV39C

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-debt/venezuelas-pdvsa-begins-making-delayed-bond-interest-payments-idUSKBN1E91C6?il=0

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-debt/venezuela-default-more-likely-on-sovereign-bonds-than-pdvsas-bondholders-idUSKBN1E92UX

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Okay, so maybe, broadly speaking the US does bear some responsibility for this, but at least we're not profiting off this horror. Dozens of U.S. mutual funds and big banks, which invest on behalf of millions of Americans, own portions of the debt.


Well, crap. I guess we'd better start bombing Venezuela soon, before it becomes a hellhole like Yemen. Bomb for the sake of the starving children (and the banks)!

[dead0man]

2 percent is much more than 6.1 out of a 1000....just sayin'


(why would we expect someone who would defend Maduro in 2017 to be good at math?)

[DavidB.]

Runeghost's argument: "Nothing's going on, Venezuela is doing great, and oh, it's our fault!"

[Oryxslayer]

Conservative candidates are running ads across south america like this: " Mr. (Left-Wing Candidate) wants to make us like Venezuela. Look whats going on in Venezuela. Lets not become Venezuela. Vote For me." And they are winning. Just goes to show what people more closely connected to the situation believe.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I wonder what Maduro's tweety bird is saying to him now?

[Santander]

2 percent is much more than 6.1 out of a 1000....just sayin'


(why would we expect someone who would defend Maduro in 2017 to be good at math?)

Great example of why you should actually read the "evidence" you are quoting...

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

We're talking about a government that, aside of turning into a blatant dictatorship with a body count, is simply corrupt and highly incompetent, leaving Venezuela with no freedom and no basic welfare for the people. This makes any attempt to defend Maduro and his thugs from the left... weird.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We're talking about a government that, aside of turning into a blatant dictatorship with a body count, is simply corrupt and highly incompetent, leaving Venezuela with no freedom and no basic welfare for the people. This makes any attempt to defend Maduro and his thugs from the left... weird.

Oh, I've no real interest in defending them. But 'OMG The children!' in a piece that doesn't even mention how the Venezuelan government is choosing debt servicing (to the benefit of US-based vampire squid capitalists) over feeding their own public seems misleading and reminds me of Iraq War propaganda.

[Santander]

We're talking about a government that, aside of turning into a blatant dictatorship with a body count, is simply corrupt and highly incompetent, leaving Venezuela with no freedom and no basic welfare for the people. This makes any attempt to defend Maduro and his thugs from the left... weird.

Oh, I've no real interest in defending them. But 'OMG The children!' in a piece that doesn't even mention how the Venezuelan government is choosing debt servicing (to the benefit of US-based vampire squid capitalists) over feeding their own public seems misleading and reminds me of Iraq War propaganda.

Stop digging.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We're talking about a government that, aside of turning into a blatant dictatorship with a body count, is simply corrupt and highly incompetent, leaving Venezuela with no freedom and no basic welfare for the people. This makes any attempt to defend Maduro and his thugs from the left... weird.

Oh, I've no real interest in defending them. But 'OMG The children!' in a piece that doesn't even mention how the Venezuelan government is choosing debt servicing (to the benefit of US-based vampire squid capitalists) over feeding their own public seems misleading and reminds me of Iraq War propaganda.

Stop digging.

Ty, but no. I'll stick my flag on this hill. Maduro (and before him, Chavez) led their coutry in a bleak direction, but we are not blameless in what's going on their now. And this piece reeks of propaganda. Just because it's about real suffering doesn't mean it isn't pushing an agenda, and a potentially nasty one at that. I hope I'm overreacting when I say I'm opposed to a US intervention in Venezula.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I can't figure out what that infant mortality statistic is supposed to mean since not even any country in Western Europe has an infant mortality rate as low as 0.02% as it said Venezuela used to have.

In any case it is a truly heartbreaking article.

[Gustaf]

That Venezuela is in trouble for some other reason than the disastrous policies of its government is a comfortable myth perpetuated by parts of the left and nothing more.

A happy aspect of not identifying as a leftwinger is that I feel not the slightest itch to defend this regime and I never did.

[Zinneke]

That Venezuela is in trouble for some other reason than the disastrous policies of its government is a comfortable myth perpetuated by parts of the left and nothing more.

Its not a question of whether the government policies are bad or not (any government that lets starvation happen in their territoriality should be criticised, barring a massive catastrophe). Its that the way that this country's issues are framed in the Left vs Right Tug O War is really intellectually limiting oneself to a world that has only apparently existed since Hugo Chavez was first imprisoned in the early 90s.

Venezuela had been a petro-state before. There have been attempts to remedy it, but the greed always gets the better of the powers that be. Latin America in general has been the continent with the most issues between civil and military actors due to the power balance between the two not being properly maintained for various reasons.

These are structural factors that explain the current situation just as much as "Chavismo" socialism, which consists of running a for needs economy that actively rewards the scaling back of production and rentier capitalism; an idea the "evil" entrepreneurs probably borrowed from Chavez himself when he joined OPEC and scaled back oil production. He was probably the biggest exploiter of market forces in all Venezuela.

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Just because you identify as a left-winger does not make you a Chavista. It seems "The Left" will never cease to be considered as some kind of uniform way of thinking when you only have to attend a single local meeting of a single "leftist" party to realise they are just as plural as the rest of you. I recognise that amongst "the Right" there are all sorts of people who probably don't identify with Adolf Hitler. Now if they are consciously engaging in a political party that has WW2 revisionists or Maoist or Chavista apologists, then you can load up your shotguns all you want.

I await the usual responses : you're a Chavez apologist, you only use "True Socialism" argument to shirk responsibility, and so on.
This is how every Venezuela conversation ends on the internet. Boring.