Government, Incompetence, Oops, Energy, Socialism

Walking for hours, making oil lamps, bearing water. For Venezuelans today, suffering under a new nationwide blackout that has lasted days, it's like being thrown back to life centuries ago.

  El Avila, a mountain that towers over Caracas, has become a place where families gather with buckets and jugs to fill up with water, wash dishes and scrub clothes. The taps in their homes are dry from lack of electricity to the city's water pumps.

  "We're forced to get water from sources that obviously aren't completely hygienic. But it's enough for washing or doing the dishes," said one resident, Manuel Almeida.

Incompetence, Degeneracy, Socialism

Contagion from Venezuela’s economic meltdown is starting to spread to neighboring countries—not financially, but literally, in the form of potentially deadly diseases carried among millions of refugees.

  The collapse of Venezuela’s health system has turned what was once Latin America’s richest nation into an incubator for malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, dengue and tuberculosis, as well as the virus that causes AIDS, medical officials in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela told The Wall Street Journal.

  The diseases, many of which had been considered all but eradicated, are now cropping up beyond Venezuela’s borders...

  Earlier this year, Elainy Portela watched with alarm as measles reappeared with a vengeance. Telltale red rashes covered six children near her home in Manaus, just off the highway used by Venezuelans escaping misery at home.

  The highly contagious airborne disease was declared vanquished here 18 years ago. In March, the city had four possible cases. But by early October, there were nearly 1,000 people with measles here and about 2,000 total for this state

Incompetence, Oops, Economy, Socialism

Under-fire Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro admitted his economic model has "failed" in the wake of food and medicine shortages and public service paralysis, such as Tuesday's power failure that affected 80 percent of Caracas.

  "The production models we've tried so far have failed and the responsibility is ours, mine and yours," Maduro told his ruling PSUV party congress, as Venezuela looks to tackle chronic inflation the International Monetary Fund predicted would reach one million percent this year.

  "Enough with the whining... we need to produce with or without (outside) aggression, with or without blockades, we need to make Venezuela an economic power," he added late Monday, with the country grappling with a four-year long recession.

  "No more whining, I want solutions comrades!"

Degeneracy, Economy, Socialism, Jobs

At a squat, concrete brothel on the muddy banks of the Arauca River, Gabriel Sánchez rattled off the previous jobs of the women who now sell their bodies at his establishment for $25 an hour.

  “We’ve got lots of teachers, some doctors, many professional women and one petroleum engineer,” he yelled over the din of vallenato music. “All of them showed up with their degrees in hand.” And all of them came from Venezuela.

Government, Incompetence, Socialism

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has invented a 'rabbit plan' where he is encouraging residents to start viewing rabbits as protein instead of pets in order to tackle the country's food shortage.

  Venezuela's crippling economic crisis means that eating meat is a luxury for many.

  'For animal protein, which is such an important issue, a 'rabbit plan' has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits,' President Nicolas Maduro joked on state television, introducing the idea as a cheaper alternative to other sources of meat.

Government, Incompetence, Oops, Socialism

Toilet roll has been in short supply in the South American country in recent months, with economists blaming price controls imposed by the government.

  The new programme, launched last week, uses crowdsourcing technology to enable users to let each other know which supermarkets still have stocks of the tissue.

  He said: "Lots of things are in short supply, but what people are most worried about is finding toilet paper. People never knew how much they needed it until it started running out."

Incompetence, Degeneracy, Socialism, Healthcare, Murder

Maternal and infant mortality have skyrocketed in Venezuela in the past 2 years, and diphtheria and malaria, diseases that were once controlled, are on the rise according to data released by the country’s Ministry of Health.

  The epidemiological data show that maternal mortality rose by about 9% between 2014 and 2015, then jumped by nearly 66% by the end of 2016—-with 756 deaths. Infant mortality rose by about 30% between 2015 and 2016—-11,466 deaths in 2016—-according to government figures.

Government, Incompetence, Demagoguery, Socialism, Regulation, Theft

Facing a bread shortage that is spawning massive lines and souring the national mood, the Venezuelan government is responding this week by detaining bakers and seizing establishments.

  In a press release, the National Superintendent for the Defense of Socioeconomic Rights said it had charged four people and temporarily seized two bakeries as the socialist administration accused bakers of being part of a broad “economic war” aimed at destabilizing the country.

  In a statement, the government said the bakers had been selling underweight bread and were using price-regulated flour to illegally make specialty items, like sweet rolls and croissants.

Government, Incompetence, Degeneracy, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare

In a new sign that Venezuela’s financial crisis is morphing dangerously into a humanitarian one, a new nationwide survey shows that in the past year nearly 75 percent of the population lost an average of 19 pounds for lack of food.

  The extreme poor said they dropped even more weight than that. The 2016 Living Conditions Survey (Encovi, for its name in Spanish), conducted among 6,500 families, also found that as many as 32.5 percent eat only once or twice a day — the figure was 11.3 just a year ago.

Socialism, Murder

Prisoners are dying of hunger and disease inside a prison as horrific footage emerges of the men looking like concentration camp victims. In the video, smuggled out of the jail , the inmates film their frail bodies and that of a man who died just the day before.

  Food and medicine has dried up in the Venezuelan prison as local police are reportedly blocking deliveries of supplies, including clean water. The footage has shocked many across the country and has left the inmates families calling on authorities to act, before any more die.

Incompetence, Oops, Economy, Waste, Socialism

A new study finds Venezuela on the brink of famine, with an alarming fifteen percent of citizens saying they can only feed themselves with “food waste discarded by commercial establishments,” while nearly half say they have had to take time off work to search for food.

Hypocrisy, Government, Incompetence, Degeneracy, Narrative, Oops, Economy, Socialism, Jobs, Theft

International human rights activists are complaining that new laws have introduced forced labour in Venezuela. "A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country's fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor," Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday.

  President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order "all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how" to join a government drive aimed at increasing food production.

Government, Incompetence, Oops, Socialism, Regulation

Bogota (AFP) - Venezuela's economic crisis has sent a huge but largely ignored wave of people into Colombia, and many more could be on the way, a senior UN refugee official said. "It's a silent arrival of a lot of people who are crossing the border and staying illegally on the Colombian side," said Martin Gottwald, the United Nations Refugee Agency's representative in Colombia.

  Venezuelans are also sneaking across the border even when it is closed, driven abroad by the economic crisis, violent crime and a health care system teetering on the brink of collapse.

Government, Incompetence, Socialism

The fight for food has begun in Venezuela. On any day, in cities across this increasingly desperate nation, crowds form to sack supermarkets. Protesters take to the streets to decry the skyrocketing prices and dwindling supplies of basic goods. The wealthy improvise, some shopping online for food that arrives from Miami. Middle-class families make do with less: coffee without milk, sardines instead of beef, two daily meals instead of three. The poor are stripping mangoes off the trees and struggling to survive.

Crime, Government, Incompetence, Narrative, Socialism, Regulation, Theft

With the food shortage seriously escalating over the last few months in Venezuela, criminals have thought out a new place to steal from: public schools. In the past two months, the National Federation of Parents (Fenasopadres) received more than 25 reports of break-ins in schools around the country in which thieves took non-perishable food items from the pantries.

Government, Incompetence, Oops, Socialism, Metaphor, Jobs

Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao in Caracas, said the streets of the capital of Venezuela are filled with people killing animals for food. Through Twitter, Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger.

Liberal, Incompetence, Financial, Socialism

An emaciated lion whose skin hangs loosely because it hasn’t eaten in days. Elephants, bison and monkeys that have gone hungry because there is no food to feed them. This is the dire situation at the zoos in Venezuela, where at least 50 animals have died in one zoo the past seven months because of problems related to malnutrition.

Government, Incompetence, Threats, Oops, Economy, Socialism, Law, Regulation

President Nicolas Maduro threatened Saturday to take over idle factories and jail their owners following a decree granting him expanded powers to act in the face of a deep economic crisis... Speaking to supporters in the capital, Caracas, the president ordered “all actions to recover the production apparatus, which is being paralyzed by the bourgeoisie.” He also said that businesspeople who “sabotage the country” by halting production at their plants risk being “put in handcuffs.”

Hypocrisy, Government, Incompetence, Degeneracy, Narrative, Oops, Economy, Socialism, Regulation

Malnourished children who faint in class. Children who, in the worst cases, die from hunger, their bodies nothing but skin and bones, the outlines of their ribs visible. Images like those have become common in Venezuela, where critical food shortages are pushing hundreds of thousands of children under a blanket of misery and hunger more often seen in the poorest countries in Africa...

  Experts say the Venezuelan economy began imploding three years ago, with the collapse of the late President Hugo Chávez’s populist model, which asphyxiated domestic production by tightening controls on the private sector while stocking shelves with imported goods.

Government, Incompetence, Financial, Education, Socialism

Klaireth Díaz is a 1st-grade teacher at Elías Toro School, one of the biggest public schools in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Last year, she says, attendance was painfully low. Every day, of a class of 30 children at least 10 would be absent. “The reason was always lack of food,” she told Fox News Latino.

Incompetence, Socialism, Healthcare

His name was Kevin Lara Lugo, and he died on his 16th birthday. He spent the day before foraging for food in an empty lot, because there was nothing to eat at home. Then in a hospital because what he found made him gravely ill. Hours later, he was dead on a gurney, which doctors rolled by his mother as she watched helplessly. She said the hospital had lacked the simplest supplies needed to save him on that day last July.

Government, Incompetence, Socialism, Healthcare, Metaphor

It was one of the more macabre stories to emerge out of socialist Venezuela -- and served as a metaphor for the final days of the rotting regime. In a hospital morgue, a bloated corpse exploded.

  The morgue's barely functioning cooling system was to blame – hardly a surprise in the oil-rich yet impoverished nation whose health-care system has collapsed under the socialist government. Decomposing for two days in the tropical heat, the corpse finally exploded in a spray of toxic fluids and gasses.

Incompetence, Oops, Socialism

Last month 20 Venezuelans were arrested as they were trying to sneak into Curaçao, the island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, using a small boat — just like Cubans rafters do to make their way to Florida.

  According to a Datin Corp poll released last week, 57 percent of Venezuelan registered voters want to leave the country. This means that approximately 12 million people want out, almost half of the 30 million who populate the country if we take out children and teens.

Violence, Government, Guns, Incompetence, Socialism

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he will expand the number of civilians involved in armed militias, providing guns to as many as 400,000 loyalists... The Bolivarian militias, currently at approximately 100,000, were created by the late Hugo Chavez to assist the armed forces in the defense of his revolution from external and domestic attacks.

  "A gun for every militiaman!" he cried.

Crime, Government, Incompetence, Funny, Oops, Press, Socialism, Metaphor, Theft

Venezuela's dictator detained Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, an American citizen, for hours Monday after Nicolas Maduro was angered by the journalist playing a video of Venezuelans forced to find food in the garbage...

  When Maduro got angry about the questions dealing with Venezuelans' poverty -- and the video Ramos recorded on his cell phone in Caracas -- he ordered that the news crew's equipment and tapes be seized and the journalists detained...

  After their release, Ramos said on Univision, "I never thought they were going to do something stupid like this, I never thought they were going to take the whole interview and rob us."

Crime, Guns, Degeneracy, Socialism, Metaphor

Venezuela's crippling economic spiral is having a negative impact on an unlikely group in society: criminals, who are struggling to afford bullets, and unable to find things to steal as the country's wealth declines rapidly.

  The Associated Press (AP) spoke with two gangsters in Petare, a notorious slum in the outskirts of Venezuela's capital, Caracas, who said they now struggle to make a living off muggings, a previously lucrative source of income.

  While bullets are widely available on the black market, many muggers cannot afford the $1 price tag anymore, a criminal known as "Dog" told the news organization.