Meanwhile, at PDVSA (the Venezuelan national oil company), both professional and field workers are quitting in droves according to Reuters. Approximately 25,000 workers have left PDVSA between January of 2017 and January of 2018, despite the fact that a job at PDVSA used to pay so well and offer such financial security that it was considered a plum. It's so bad that at one office of the company the management put up a sign saying that "we are not accepting resignations".

Are Maduro and the other Chavistas in Venezuela fixing the problem? No, they're having "Bolivarian" turf wars in the same way that high-ranking Nazis used to have turf wars over every government agency and nationalized company in the country and Putin's little cronies are having turf wars over every last port, nationalized company and transportation sector in Russia.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/finan...-stampede/ar-AAvYyRS

This bitch is falling apart. I hope the Chevron guys don't have to stay in jail too long. But maybe it's time for Chevron to quit spending good money after bad.

The truly shocking part is that they VOTED for this... This was not done to them by someone else.
California's future:

The other border crisis we don't hear much about

Our border problems appear manageable compared to what's happening on two borders in South America: Brazil-Venezuela and Colombia-Venezuela.

Down in South America, the deterioration of Venezuela is creating a mess for two neighbors, as we see in this report:

The flow of migrants fleeing Venezuela's collapsing economy is increasing every day, putting a strain on Colombia's health and education systems and its jobs market, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said.

"Venezuela is on the verge of imploding," Santos told Bloomberg TV Monday. "What we hope is that this implosion will be peaceful and not violent, because otherwise we will have a tremendous avalanche of more Venezuelans coming to Colombia."

The migrant crisis is probably the biggest challenge facing Colombia at the moment, Santos said. Venezuelans are currently crossing the border into Colombia at the rate of more than 100,000 per month, according to data from the immigration authority, with many more arriving illegally.

Venezuela's economy will contract 15 percent this year, according to the latest forecasts by the International Monetary Fund, while inflation accelerates to about 13,000 percent. As shortages worsen across the country, many people are lacking basic levels of nutrition.

We certainly understand the one about straining health and education systems. Also, I had no idea that it was 100,000 a month, or potentially 1.2 million in a year.

Something similar is happening on the Brazil-Venezuela border. According to a news report, 40,000 have already crossed that border.

Unlike Colombia, Brazil has the advantage of geography. On the other hand, there are Venezuelan cities closer to the border, such as Merida and Maracaibo, the second largest city.

No matter what, the Venezuela problem has now spilled over to other countries.

https://www.americanthinker.co...hear_much_about.html

Why are the promoters, advocates and defenders of Socialism never forced to account for all of the suffering that comes from that failed monkey trap system? I don't just mean embarrassed either. I mean noses rubbed in it and real costs paid; painful, enduring consequences.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Why are the promoters, advocates and defenders of Socialism never forced to account for all of the suffering that comes from that failed monkey trap system? I don't just mean embarrassed either. I mean noses rubbed in it and real costs paid; painful, enduring consequences.

The whole purpose of socialism for the promoters, advocates, defenders to gain money and power. Seems historically the only way they pay for their self-serving fraud is with a revolution and overthrow.

I am understand that the government prohibits most foreign aid whether due to embarrassment or under the theory that starving people don't have the energy to fight a civil war.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Why are the promoters, advocates and defenders of Socialism never forced to account for all of the suffering that comes from that failed monkey trap system? I don't just mean embarrassed either. I mean noses rubbed in it and real costs paid; painful, enduring consequences.

Sarcasm: You don't understand. What is going on in Venezuela is not pure socialism. Therefore, there is no need to account for anything. Instead, socialism in its pure form must be tried. Then people will see the truth /sarc

Aaand ConocoPhillips strikes a blow for freedom - or at least for reimbursement. Note that the Caribbean islands of Bonair and St. Eustatius are Dutch possessions and that any disputes over assets on those islands would be settled under Dutch law.

Note too, if only in passing, that St. Eustatius was a transfer and transshipment point for gunpowder and other goods smuggled around the British blockade and into America during the Revolutionary War.

At any rate, here's the best snippets from the article.

quote:

Conoco Moves To Take Over Venezuelan PDVSA's Caribbean Assets
Marianna Parraga, Gary McWilliams, Reuters, 5/6/2018

U.S. oil firm ConocoPhillips has moved to take Caribbean assets of Venezuela's state-run PDVSA to enforce a $2 billion arbitration award over a decade-old nationalization of its projects in the South American country, according to two sources familiar with its actions.

The U.S. firm targeted facilities on the islands of Bonaire and St. Eustatius that play critical rols in processing, storing and blending PDVSA's oil for export. It received court attachments that froze the assets pending further action, one of the sources said.

The attachments could further impair PDVSA's declining oil sales and the country's convulsing economy. Cash-strapped Venezuela is almost completely dependent on oil exports for revenue. It is in the grip of a deep recession with severe shortages of medicine and food as well as a growing exodus of its people.

----------------------------------

PDVSA has significant assets in the Caribbean. On Bonaire, PDVSA owns the 10-million-barrel BOPEC terminal that has been critical to its logistics and fuel shipments to customers, particularly in Asia.

On the island of St. Eustatius, it rents storage tanks at the Statia terminal, owned by U.S. NuStar Energy.

Over 4 million barrels of Venezuelan crude were retained in Statia following the court order, according to one of the sources. The San Antonio Texas-based firm did not respond to a request for comment.

----------------------

PDVSA on Friday ordered its oil tankers sailing across the Caribbean to return to Venezuela to avoid court action, one of the sources said. Several cargoes of Venezuelan crude have been retained or seized in recent years over unpaid freight fees and related debts.

-----------------------

Conoco had sought up to $22 billion from PDVSA for broken contracts and loss of future profits from two oil producing joint ventures, which were nationalized in 2007 under the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The U.S. firm left the country after it could not reach a deal to convert its projects into joint ventures controlled by PDVSA.

Some corrections ("old" for "oil", "the late Venezuelan" for "late Venezuela"). Full original text at http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/06...-assets-sources.html

Venezuelan soldiers desert in droves...

How long before we see Maduro's body dragged through the streets?

From the article, it appears that the answer is "shortly after enough former junior officers and enlisted rally up on the Colombian side of the border".

Here's hoping for a Venezuelan Eden Pastora!

If Maduro plays his cards right, he'' get to enjoy the Benito Mussolini treatment...

Will they be immigrating to the USA?

quote:

How long before we see Maduro's body dragged through the streets?

Hopefully soon.
Venezuela is a beautiful place, rich in natural resources. If the people could see the light and reject the siren song of socialism... they could once again be a prosperous beacon of freedom.
They will first have to get rid of Maduro AND avoid another strong man from taking over. Then they will have to build legal institutions guaranteeing equal rights, but not outcomes.

May 14, 2018
As the U.S. bails out Venezuela's refugees, why isn't it condemning the horrors of socialism?
By Monica Showalter

With 35,000 hungry, desperate, Venezuelans pouring over the Colombian border every day now, Venezuela has morphed from a socialist nuisance state with a big-mouthed dictator into to a very real foreign aid issue. The Los Angeles Times has a new report from the ground:

The huge increase in Venezuelan migrants fleeing their country's economic crisis, failing healthcare system and repressive government is affecting the Cucuta metropolitan area more than any other in Colombia. It's where 80% of all exiting Venezuelans headed for Colombia enter as foreigners.

...and...

Many arrive broke, hungry and in need of immediate medical attention. Over the last two years, North Santander province, where Cucuta is located, has vaccinated 58,000 Venezuelans for measles, diphtheria and other infectious diseases because only half of the arriving children have had the shots, said Nohora Barreto, a nurse with the provincial health department.

...and...

The hospital's red ink is rising along with its caseload. The facility has run up debts of $5 million over the last three years to accommodate Venezuelans because the Colombian government is unable to reimburse it, said Juan Agustin Ramirez, director of the 500-bed hospital.

"The government has ordered us to attend to Venezuelan patients but is not giving us the resources to pay for them," Ramirez said. "The truth is, we feel abandoned. The moment could arrive when we will collapse."

Foreign aid, indeed. Most of us do pity them. And there is foreign aid flowing, some $18.5 million from the U.S. to clean up after this socialist dictatorship's mess. It's quite an irony to consider that as much as Venezuela's dictators - both Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro - screamed about the hated yanqui imperialistas, and touted their commitment to free health care, quite unlike dreadful us, the actual cost of saving their desperate people is being paid by the American taxpayer. Meanwhile, the international community, which coddled this socialist dictatorship, praised their socialist ideas, and giggled when Chavez 'smelled the sulphur,' has now gone strangely silent as Americans and the hemisphere's frontier states pay the costs of all that fun.

I have no problem with the U.S. giving aid to the desperate Venezuelans, particularly if it diverts U.S. resources from nation-building in Middle Eastern hellholes. But there's a problem with this. Look at what the State Department has had to say about it (emphasis mine):

Colombia's president has appealed to the international community for help. The U.S. government recently stepped up: The State Department announced Tuesday it was contributing $18.5 million "to support displaced Venezuelans in Colombia who have fled the crisis in their country."

Crisis? What crisis? A crisis is when a volcano explodes down your street. What happened in Venezuela is the natural outcome of socialism and its unyielding grip on power, all to the useful idiots' chorus of a Better World. It's the outcome of lies, false promises, and the natural corruption of a monopoly on power, which is socialism in a nutshell. Given the numerous examples of socialism in all its horrors, from the Soviet Union, to Ceausescu's Romania, to Pol Pot's Cambodia, to Mugabe's Zimbabwe, to all the boat people of Vietnam and Cuba, this man-made disaster could be seen coming from a thousand miles away. This is what socialism does.

So why does the State Department refer to this as 'a crisis'? It's not a crisis, it's late-stage socialism. So if we are going to be paying for the clean-up of this socialist outcome, maybe we should be saying something about the problem itself. Calling it a crisis, like it was something that just blew in from out of the blue, is covering up the problem, and deprives us of an opportunity to stomp the idea dead before it recrudesces again. After all, many young people here are enthralled with the idea of socialism.

Might these Venezuelans flooding Colombia just be a population from a country where socialized health care was free and everyone was supposed to be cared for? Why can't the State Department say something about these false promises of socialism, as the U.S. aid gets doled?

Unlike Naziism, this variety of socialism has never had a reckoning, a point where the entire public comes to realize that the idea itself stinks and no one other than the most fringe pariah would endorse such an idea. Socialism is still considered a perfectly respectable alternative system of government, despite the mess and clean-up that inevitably follows. Bernie Sanders is continuing to reap political hay from the fraud, and young people here are eating it up.

With America stuck with the bill for this (and don't think it's not going to get bigger), it's imperative that the cause of the problem be stated plainly, if for nothing else than we don't have to constantly keep mopping up after it abroad and fighting it off over here. The public needs to know, the aid recipients most certainly need to know, the youth here need to know and the sniggering world needs to know that this so-called crisis is really the natural outcome of socialism. There is no better place to underline it than through our aid to those suffering from such socialism's logical conclusion.

https://www.americanthinker.co...rs_of_socialism.html

And still the democrats praise Venezuela and Cuba for their transformation, and want to use them as a model for the US.
I am constantly shocked, amazed, puzzled and saddened that half of the US aspire to this crap! They should just move to Venezuela or Cuba and than maybe they will be satisfied and happy?

Venezuela is a classic example of how policy mistakes are not corrected because to preserve the ideology, displacement of culpability is practiced.

Patient: Doctor, my teeth are rotting out.
Doctor: It's the cable guy's fault.

Leftists do the same thing here.

Random subset of the population: Our lives are miserable!

Leftist SJW's: America is the whore of all the earth!!!

Problem never gets solved.

Venezuela, Cuba, N. Korea will never be prosperous nations as long as they eschew capitalist principles.

quote:

So why does the State Department refer to this as 'a crisis'? It's not a crisis, it's late-stage socialism. So if we are going to be paying for the clean-up of this socialist outcome, maybe we should be saying something about the problem itself.

Technically we're just trying to stabilize Colombia, and we've poured enough money into Colombia's attempt to get out of the narco-state hole that we don't really want to lose the investment. To say that this is subsidizing Maduro somehow is silly unless this becomes some kind of permanent or semi-permanent series of payments. It also ignores the fact that Venezuelan refugees on the Venezuelan border in Colombia are not Venezuelan refugees getting comfortable in Miami.

In this whole sad article there's not one word explaining why these kids are suffering. Typical of Leftism.

(Bloomberg) -- Editors Note: There are few places as chaotic or dangerous as Venezuela. “Life in Caracas” is a series of short stories that seeks to capture the surreal quality of living in a land in total disarray.



Most weekend mornings, you can find Andrea and her cousins juggling on a street corner. She’ll be throwing limes up in the air and catching them just in time to dash over to idling cars before the light turns green.



Early on this Saturday, only a handful of motorists rolled down their windows. Most shook their heads, mouthing, “No tengo, mi amor”—I can’t spare anything, honey. She kept her collections in a pink-plastic purse: 24 bolivars, less than a penny, and a packet of strawberry-flavored wafers. By 11 a.m., that was all she’d had to eat.



Andrea is 9. Her father is dead. Her mother is pregnant, jobless and many miles away in a small town south of Caracas called Yare. Andrea and her cousins—Disbeth, 12, Jocelyn, 11, and Andres and Jose, both 8—come in by bus and subway on Fridays, sleeping for two or three nights on the streets of one of the world’s most treacherous cities. Their weekend jobs are to beg for food for themselves, abating the hunger that dogs them during the week, and for money to bring back to their struggling families. Sometimes Andrea manages to collect as much as 50 bolivars.



Street children have long been a cause for concern in Venezuela. Their numbers have ebbed and flowed with the economy, but it has never before been like this—never before with so many young kids, on their own, all over the city.



They are seemingly everywhere, weighing vegetables at market stands, carrying crates of sodas into diners, cleaning parked cars, begging outside grocery stores, waved away from bars and restaurants where security guards don’t want them bothering the clientele. Many toil as “cloreros,” hawking diluted bleach, or cloro, poured into water jugs.



Sometimes barefoot, often emaciated, many roam in groups for protection, inviting sideways glances and purse clutching. Mostly, though, they’re treated with compassion, as nearly all Caraquenos can see themselves reflected in their misery.



That Saturday, their stomachs growling, the band from Yare cut the line outside a Catholic church serving a special holiday lunch to the needy. They each got a toy, Andrea carefully placing a doll in a checkered dress on her lap. Afterward they bathed at a square near a shopping mall, scooping up dirty water from a pool and pouring it over their heads, giggling as they chased each other around in their underwear.



While their clothes dried, they spent time underneath a bridge covered in graffiti, playing with knick-knacks they’d found: an old keyboard and a bag of tennis-shoe laces. They ignored the trash and feces. At one point, they fought over a plastic bag of the food they’d accumulated: a container of chocolate icing from a bakery and a couple of slices of stale bread. They dipped their hands into the icing and licked their fingers



Later on, they’ll walk to a residential neighborhood to find a quiet place to sleep. If she gets cold, she hugs herself “like this,” Andrea said as she demonstrated, crossing her arms over her bony shoulders. She favored her right wrist, which she injured a few months ago.



Unlike some of her cousins, Andrea goes to school when she’s home during the week. Her favorite class is Spanish, her least favorite is math. She has her future planned.



“I want to be a lawyer,” she said. “That way I can help my cousins when they’re taken to prison.”



©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

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