Venezuela Is Running Out of Cookies and Coffins

[Bacchus4.0]

http://infovnzla.com/2014/06/27/venezuela-is-running-out-of-cookies-and-coffins/
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Much has changed in Venezuela since Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez shared that anecdote in an article he wrote at the time. But these days, life in Caracas seems even more dire. For a year and a half now, crippling shortages have plagued Venezuela and the capital in particular. In many parts of the city, there’s no running water, let alone peach juice or razor blades. The shortages are so bad that one of the country’s biggest producers of spring water and sodas announced on Monday that it was closing because of lack of materials. Every day, it seems the list of things you actually can buy in Venezuela gets shorter.

The shortages began in early 2013, not long after President Nicolas Maduro became interim president and devalued the country’s currency by nearly 50 percent. Maduro was trying to protect the country’s dwindling national treasury and curb its crippling inflation. But the strategy backfired, and the currency controls spooked foreign companies.


Because Venezuela is so dependent on bringing goods into the country, the result has been a daily struggle to buy ordinary items such as cornmeal, oil, coffee, sugar, milk, deodorant and toilet paper. Take the case of bread, for example. Bakers have found it very difficult to acquire flour because Venezuela imports most of its wheat. Local mills have virtually stopped functioning. Bakeries have reduced their production to peak hours and many ration their bread, selling just two baguettes per customer to those willing to wait in long lines in the hot sun. The shortages, coupled with the government’s decision to regulate the price of bread, have forced bakers to stop making products the government doesn’t control such as cakes, cookies and pastries.

More recently, Venezuela’s shortages have expanded beyond basic goods to affect the country’s health and transportation sectors. The government admitted in May that there isn’t a single new car for sale in a country that boasts the cheapest gas prices in the world. Meanwhile, products for treating hypertension and circulatory diseases, stents and reagents for blood tests and cancer treatments have become difficult to find. “I can still find…drugs for my mom’s chemotherapy with no problem,” says Adriana Pardo, 42, who works in the music industry in Caracas. “But I have to tour a dozen pharmacies to find general medications to relieve the side effects like vomiting and diarrhea.”





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A bakery in Venezuela.

[COLGATE4]

1. Looking more and more like Cuba every day. nt

[Bacchus4.0]

3. That appears to be the model n/t

[Judi Lynn]

2. Another winner from your author, Boris Muñoz:

Newsweek Takes a Page from the Weekly World News in Venezuela Commentary
Written by Dan Beeton
Thursday, 04 October 2012 15:03

Newsweek has a commentary piece this week by Venezuelan journalist Boris Muñoz which cites anonymous sources as suggesting that Hugo Chávez’s cancer is but a cleverly designed conspiracy meant to distract Venezuelans from the country’s problems:

As someone very close to Chávez told me (anonymously as he feared falling out of favor with the supreme commander), it was a welcome distraction from the wear and tear of years of failed policies. Chávez “has drawn attention away from the big problems of his administration such as its incompetence, corruption, and bureaucracy, and the nation’s criminal violence,” the source said. “He has created this dramatic scenario to ... seduce the masses because he knows that, terminally ill or not, this is his last chance.”
…

Indeed, even some members of his inner circle suspect that Chávez’s long battle with cancer is really an elaborate charade masterfully orchestrated in complicity with the government of Havana— and one that might win him yet another term, perpetuating his presidency for another six years.

Never mind for a minute the idea that someone “very close to Chávez” describes his administration as “incompetent” and “corrupt” – “members of his inner circle” suggest Chávez never had cancer at all! With the help of those ingenious Cubans, he successfully duped the Venezuelan people – and so many naïve journalists, including Dan Rather – into believing he was in a life and death struggle against illness, even appearing take on a more plaid complexion, and have his hair fall out! In publishing this article, Newsweek has moved into Weekly World News territory, ala stories such as “Dick Cheney is a Robot” or the harder to believe “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby.”

More:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/newsweek-takes-a-page-from-the-weekly-world-news-in-venezuela-commentary

Clearly, once you start including bizarre trash propaganda, it takes all kinds.

[Bacchus4.0]

4. chavista economy n/t

[Bacchus4.0]

5. .