The Morphing of a Nation (Updated)

Venezuelans waiting in line to buy milk were issued numbers representing their position in the line. The first step to a Ration Book.




ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ spent many years of his life cruising aboard a small sail boat visiting countries and places where the ordinary tourist does not venture. Two of the most interesting and contrasting cruising experiences were Venezuela and Cuba.

The Venezuela of the mid to late 1980s was a prosperous and cosmopolitan nation populated for the most part by a happy and relatively easy going citizenry with a large foreign expatriate community. The government, although left-leaning as evidenced by having nationalized the petroleum industry during the 1960s and implementing features of the welfare state, was on the whole, mostly democratic.

Venezuela has been exporting crude oil to the U.S. and other countries at the world market price (currently approaching US $90 per barrel) for at least 3 generations as well as trading freely with all nations. Evidence of this vigorous trade could be seen by visiting any supermarket such as Mercal or the other Venezuelan retail outlets where all consumer goods were available at prices the general population could afford.

The contrast with Cuba was as night and day. All Cubans must have a ration book to obtain any food items (with a daily calorie allowance of under 2000) even as the suitability of soil and climate makes Cuba one of the most fertile nations of the earth. Cubans are forced to endure the most primitive and abysmal health care in the western hemisphere, Michael Moore's socialist propaganda notwithstanding. In public, Cubans dare not speak a word of criticism of the regime but in private they related stories of terror and oppression that would curl one's hair. By forcing Cubans to use a Ration Book the regime has another way of forcing the population to obey its orders. If you do not march when the dictator wants you to march, or if you demand respect for your human rights, the regime can take your Ration Book away and make life even more difficult for you and your family.

In 1965 the currency exchange rate was 1 Ven Bolívar= 1 US dollar and many Venezuelans traveled to Miami on shopping excursions. By 1986 the rate was 1 Ven B= US $0.19. Since the so called "Bolivarian Revolution" implemented by Hugo Chávez since 1999 with his price controls and out of control spending on such items as 100,000 Russian automatic rifles, dozens of attack helicopters and two Kilo class Russian submarines, the official exchange rate is 2,144.5 VenB= US $1.00 with the "parallel" (black market) rate approaching 6,000 VenB= $1.00.

Hugo Chávez insists that Fidel Castro should be the model emulated by all "just and freedom loving societies". As in Cuba, expect the colas (consumer lines) to be blamed on the nonexistent "yanqui blockade". Heaven help the unfortunate Venezuelans.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Update 10/30/07 @1730

Venezuelan newspapers are reporting that people who were waiting in line this weekend to buy milk, bread and other food staples at government run markets, instead of receiving a number, like it has been happening up to now, had to allow soldiers to write the number on the palm of their hands!

And after they were able to buy the products, they had one of their fingers marked with indelible ink, to prevent them from going to another market to buy more.

Several consumers complained that when they tried to go to other markets to buy more milk, they were refused service when the manager saw that their fingers were marked.

This is happening in Venezuela, when oil is selling for $92 a barrel and without the excuse of an US embargo.

Welcome to the Socialism of the XXI Century.

hat tip: The Real Cuba

Useful Idiots

Recently Michael Moore contacted ailing responders to the cleanup project at Ground Zero at the World Trade Center in order to offer them medical treatment in the health care system in Cuba. His most recent sleight of hand stunt is designed to illustrate the superiority of medical care in the island "workers paradise" of Cuba as compared to the U.S.

There is little doubt that foreigners can receive decent medical care in Cuba if they are prepared to pay for it with hard currency. In fact, Cuba trains medical doctors and exports them to various countries around the world where they are paid what amounts to slave's wages and used as propaganda tools of the Castro regime. A good number of these doctors have defected from their assigned tasks in Venezuela and fled to Colombia where they are awaiting refugee status in order to emigrate to the U.S.

Meanwhile in Cuba, the citizens are forced to suffer hospital and medical conditions that civilized humans would avoid imposing on their pets.
This is typical of the Castro regime which showcases its facilities for foreign tourists and Hollywood useful idiots while forcing Cubans to suffer the indignities of third class citizens in their own country.

Many foreigners (especially Hollywood celebrities) believe that the facilities used by regular Cubans are the same as those that they use and when they return to their countries they help spread Castro's lies and propaganda about the "excellent, free healthcare" that Cubans receive.

While visiting Cuba aboard our sailboat, and ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ being able to understand and speak Spanish, we were able to observe the flagrant disparity in the treatment of Cubans versus visiting foreign tourists and Communist Party aparatchiks.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Socialist Birds of a Feather

During a cruising visit to the "People's Paradise of Cuba" ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ had the dubious "honor" of visiting some of the Spanish financed resorts east of Havana along the 30 kilometer beach of Varadero. The only Cubans allowed on the premises of these oases are Communist Party apparatchiks, or the "employees" who are paid by the Cuban government at a fraction of the rates paid for their salaries by the Spanish "investors".

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Tuesday that his country plans to renew cooperation with the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, four years after the European Union imposed sanctions on the island over the arrest and execution of Cuban dissidents.

"It is absolutely unthinkable for the Spanish government not to sustain, defend and develop an intense and constructive policy with the Cuban authorities" based on dialogue, Moratinos said after a meeting with Felipe Perez Roque.

What is absolutely unthinkable is that the Spanish government would send its Foreign Minister to set up a farce, trying to confuse the other countries that are part of the European Union, claiming that it was beginning a "dialogue" that would include monitoring the human rights situation in the island, when in reality Moratinos refused to meet with any of the dissidents and all he did was to consent to everything that the Castro regime asked, in exchange for Spanish companies to be able to continue exploiting Cuban workers, dealing in stolen properties and for thousands of shameless Spanish sexual "tourists" who satisfy their disgraceful instincts on needy Cuban women and minors, engaging in a kind of sex acts which are reminiscent of the rape of slaved female Cuban natives and African women during the abominable colonial era.

According to Guillermo Morales Matos, Professor of Geographical Analysis at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, approximately 200,000 sexual tourists travel from Spain to Cuba each year.

"We will have to await the results, the Zapatero government has always ignored all the pleas from Cuban dissidents to help improve the human rights in the island," said Vladimiro Roca, one of Cuba's best known dissidents. "What he really came to do was to guarantee the Spanish investments in Cuba."

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Stand By With the Vaseline

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ and family are currently entertaining family guests from the socialist kingdom of Sweden. We have been spending an inordinate amount of time accompanying them on "shopping" expeditions. They are amazed by the "cheapness" of items as compared to equivalent items in the socialist paradise where they reside and are puzzled by the reasons for it. Typical consumer items in the U.S. which are taxed at 7% cost about half what comparable items cost in Sweden and ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has attempted with limited success to explain to them the reasons for this.
Two of the visitors are employed by small businesses in Sweden that must pay the government an "employment tax" on each of their employees equal to 100% of the employee's salary. This covers the government mandated 5 weeks paid vacation per year as well as their health insurance which has been experiencing an exponential increase in co-payments for the last several years. (Also and additionally there is a "Value Added (sales) Tax" on ALL goods and services of 25%).
During the absence of employees for the mandated 5 weeks per year vacation plus the government mandated paid sick leave and "personal" time the employer must pay replacements who are entitled to the same benefits. If employers are unable to pass these costs on to consumers they must go out of business with the resulting unemployment benefits paid by other taxpayers.
Not surprisingly, the results of this system are prices for all consumer products of about twice that of the "evil" U.S.
These folks protest that medical treatment (usually after a substantial waiting period and increasing co-payments) are "free" not to mention the "free lunches'' at all government centers of socialist indoctrination (schools).
Welcome to the plan that the Dhimmocrat party envisions for US.

Venezuelan XXIst Century Socialism

CHAVEZ'S XXI CENTURY SOCIALISM

Hugo Chavez has been in power since 1999. When he was first elected president, the price of oil was around $20 a barrel. Since 2001, it has tripled to more than $60 a barrel.

This has allowed Chávez to spend billions of dollars to keep Cuba's economy afloat and to buy politicians in Central and South America that are willing to participate in his "anti-imperialist" crusade, in exchange for Venezuela's petrodollars. He has also spent billions of dollars buying arms from Russia, Spain and other countries. In 2005, Chavez spent $2.17 billion to acquire Russian assault rifles and helicopters, Spanish transport aircraft and missile-capable corvettes, and Brazilian turboprop light attack aircraft. That figure increased in 2006.

But has the oil bonanza benefited Venezuela's poor? Judge for yourself.
Source

Next Step: Ration Books!!

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 16 "Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls."

By George Reisman

Venezuela’s collectivist dictator Hugo Chavez is surprised by the fact that there are shortages in Venezuela. Despite the fact that the science of economics has been explaining it for over two hundred years, he didn’t know that inflation of the money supply serves to make prices rise. Again, despite the centuries-long teachings of economics, he didn’t know that when the rise in prices is prohibited, the effect of inflation is to increase the quantities of goods that people want to buy, but not the quantities available for sale, and thus results in precisely the situation that is described as a shortage, i.e., people attempting to buy more of a good than is available for sale.

Chavez doesn’t know, and probably doesn’t want to know, that if he wants to end the shortages, all he has to do is abolish the price controls. The rise in prices will serve to reduce the quantities of the various goods demanded to a point within the limit of the supplies available. He doesn’t know and probably doesn’t want to know that if he then wants the rise in prices to stop, all he need do is stop the inflation of the Venezuelan money supply.

Finally, Chavez doesn’t know, and undoubtedly doesn’t want to know, that if he would then want prices actually to fall, and for goods to become more and more affordable by more and more of his countrymen, what he would need to do is make a 180-degree turn in the rest of his policies. What this means is that he would have to replace his policy of socialization/nationalization with privatization, and his policy of ever increasing regulation and controls with economic freedom. These are the polices that would provide the incentives and opportunity to rapidly increase production and thus make goods more and more abundant and thus lower-and-lower-priced and ever more affordable.

But all of this is way too much to expect. Because this is, after all, the same Hugo Chavez who apparently slept through the collapse of the Soviet Union and of socialism almost everywhere in the world but Cuba and North Korea, where it’s still maintained by dictatorship in the face of starvation. As such, he’s a man who gives new meaning to the expression “out of it”—he’s so far out of it, so incredibly ignorant, that one may wonder what century he’s in and what planet he’s on.

Apparently, Econ 101 is not taught in the barracks of La Guardia Nacional in Venezuela.

What stops the antics of this collectivist throwback from being laughable is the fact that many people are suffering from them and soon will probably suffer a lot more. Large numbers of Venezuelans may even be killed before this buffoon leaves office.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ