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CHICKEN FEET! CHICKEN FEET FOR ALL
The Zimbabwefication of Venezuela continues:
Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices ...
Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.
Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 percent in the last four years in an economy awash in petrodollars, and food prices have increased particularly swiftly, creating a widening discrepancy between official prices and the true cost of getting goods to market in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, in Venezuela’s future:
The price of meat, cooking oil and clothing has increased by 223 per cent in the past week, according to a survey by Zimbabwe’s central bank. The annual inflation rate is now racing at 1200 per cent.
Also of possible interest to local supporters of Dear President Chavez; he’s lately crushed dissent:
Last month, Chavez announced that Radio Caracas Television, Venezuela’s oldest private station, would cease broadcasting after its license expires May 27 ...
“It’s hard to imagine a more obvious case of censorship,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “President Chavez decided to punish the television channel because he doesn’t approve its editorial line.”
President Hugo Chavez’s administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators…
Liquidation of the greedy kulaks in 5… 4… 3…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 02 09 at 02:20 PM • permalinkGovernment price controls. Food shortages. Black marketing. Open censorship.
CommunismSocialism in action.Next up for Venezuleans: Food rationing. And re-education camps. If they don’t already exist by other names.
(Note to Chavez apologists: if this is the nightmare that you want to bring to the rest of the world, then I’ll quote a famous conservative pundit: Suck my nuts!)
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 02 09 at 02:38 PM • permalinkDon’t think for a moment we wouldn’t experience the same thing of our enlightened betters were able to grasp the reins of power. For rich Chavez sympathizers, there’ll always be an escape route; for the poorer true believers, the sense that at least everyone else is being made to suffer the same way, regardless of talent, ambition or belief. Socialism in action, 21st century stylee.
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2007 02 09 at 02:42 PM • permalinkAlso of possible interest to local supporters of Dear President Chavez; he’s lately crushed dissent…
Of course, our friendly, ever-so-tolerant leftists will argue that he’s just clearing out a nest of CIA rats and stooges.
Oh wait, they already are. Check out the comments in the sidebar in the second link. “Phil H.” and “Helen & Harry Highwater” are clearly impervious to irony.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 02 09 at 02:52 PM • permalinkSpiny:
The default position for leftist apologists in the face of catastrophic economic failure brought about as a direct consequence of statist mis-management and incompetence is to prattle on about how wonderful the universal health care is.
Using Castro’s performance, Hugo’s got another half century ahead of him of boot licking, kowtowing and adulation from Hollywood film makers and Western university professors.
It is far more important to screech for impeachment of the Bushturkler than to protest the doings of Chavez, Mugabe, Kim jong very ill, or to look without scales on the eyes at the state of South Africa now.
The interminable sickness of Middle Eastern society is also ignored in order to reach the conclusion that it’s all the West’s fault.Wait, if chicken feet are for sale, where’s the rest of the chook? (Hmm, the first line of post six sounds like someone’s hiding a few). Are Venezuelean farmers raising some bizarre upside down perversion of the american big-breasted butterball turkey*? Their proud motto: No meat, all feet!
* Not an Anna Nicole Smith reference
Chicken feet? Chinese resturants must be doing a roaring trade. Maybe Hugo has developed an affinity for Yum Cha. Too many trips to China perhaps?
Socialism, equity for the masses, now everyone is equally poor.
I thought fixed prices were made to avoid inflation. Hugo needs to get out more often, countries like Malaysia invoke fixed prices for cooking oil, rice and sugar during and just after Ramadan to make sure the “Kampung” Malays aren’t priced out of the market due to increase in demand during Aidil Fitri (post Ramadan Celebration). But the fixed prices only happen for 45 days and then it is back to pure “Laissez Faire” economy Asia is famous for.
Not only is Chavez an idiot socialist, he is an idiot administrator.
Posted by CanberraNeoCon on 2007 02 09 at 05:18 PM • permalinkAlso of possible interest to local supporters of Dear President Chavez; he’s lately crushed dissent…
No, it isn’t crushing dissent if you silence people who disagree with lefties, you people! What the hell is wrong with you? This is called “promoting free and open debate” in Leftese. Criticizing lefties is stifling debate - go back and review your talking points.
But why is Venezuela running out of sugar? Can’t Fidel supply all they need?
P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that cigars are rationed in Cuba, and you can’t get good Chinese takeout in Beijing, and that tells you all you need to know about Communism.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 02 09 at 05:20 PM • permalinkThey say that watching Anna Nicole’s life was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Enter Venezuela - the Anna Nicole of South America, only this time far more people are going to end up dead.
How many times does this “socialism” experiment have to fail before people finally get it? Once more it appears.
#15 RebeccaH. No it will not be that easy for the leftoid morons to do that. Now we have the Internet, all the supporters of Chavez will be for ever ingrained in cyberspace. When our non-pants wearing Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, said “My good friend Robert Mugabe” it was published with glee in the local press in 1980. Well I worked in the media at that time, and I had a $20 bet with a workmate, that by the end of the 20th Century, Rhodesia (I never call it Zimbabwe, unlike the left I don’t have penchment for name changes) will be an economic basket-case. The usual ‘aww come on, your letting your right wing views cloud your judgement’. Last year, I collected my $20 and a bottle of ‘Absolut’ Vodka for interest. Now that very same person often emails me about different events, and people. He is no longer enameled with the workings of socialists and other leftist and their political diatribe. So Chavez supporters, with technical advances, time will no longer provide you anonymity.
When George Bush suddenly found himself with a Democrat-controlled Congress, he didn’t send in the marines to clear them out of Capitol. Yet Bush is a bad guy.
Chavez is rapidly turning Venezuela into another Cuba. How soon will it be before he starts purging those he perceives as a danger to his Stalinist revolution. It must be likely that Venezuela will not have another election until he is deposed. And Chavez is a good guy.
Wish the left could explain why.
A sad illustration of the evils of socialism.
Prediction:
And when Chavez and his cronies realize they cannot control supply, they will control demand….by killing millions, either directly or indirectly; and he will blame it on the yanqui Bush
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 09 at 08:39 PM • permalink#13 Spiney, how do you have the time and fortitude to find and read this garbage? I salute you.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 09 at 08:44 PM • permalink#13 “In any other country (notably our own bastion of ‘democracy’ in the US), a television network that openly engaged in the same sort of agitation against their democratically-elected president as RCTV did would find its entire staff, from mailroom to CEO, imprisoned for treason”
Right. CNN NBC ABC etc are all off the air right now.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 09 at 08:47 PM • permalink#27 During the late ‘70s, I was friends with a group of Shona and Matabele Rhodesians, in the UK, who were brought over to train them for governance. I was very optimistic at the time, and they appreciative of my knowledge of their country and my optimism.
Since then, of course, 2002, I was in Fort Worth and ran into some white Rhodesians (the other tribe) and spoke of my complete disappointment with Mugabe having been, after all, just another African potentate.
They were appreciative.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 09 at 09:11 PM • permalinkIf only Hugo would lay off the rhetoric we’d send some plastic turkey feet.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2007 02 09 at 09:45 PM • permalink“When George Bush suddenly found himself with a Democrat-controlled Congress, he didn’t send in the marines to clear them out of Capitol.”
Nobody’s perfect.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2007 02 09 at 10:14 PM • permalinkMeat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet
Well that’s a glimpse into our socialist future here in the US: the “Hillary” special… two large thighs, two small breasts, and two left wings…
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2007 02 09 at 10:18 PM • permalink#24 - They say that watching Anna Nicole’s life was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Enter Venezuela - the Anna Nicole of South America, only this time far more people are going to end up dead.
Yeah, but in Venezuela there’s only one giant tit in charge.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 09 at 11:19 PM • permalink#23 Steve,
P. J. O’Rourke also had a good comment on East Germany. He said that after the wall came down everybody could see the place for what it really was, a poor country with a dictatorship. He said the dictatorship part was understandable, but how had the Commies managed to make a poor country out of a nation full of Germans?The Venezuelans have a choice. They can throw Chavez out now, or they can starve and submit to tyranny. If they choose the former I suggest they don’t wait around for a trial like with Saddam, but shoot him ASAP.
My sympathy for the Venezuealans who put him in power is limited though. They elected this clown after he twice tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government. They knew what they were getting, and chose it anyway.
If Bush wants to live up to his open borders/welcome to illegal aliens rep he should announce that any anti-Chavez Venezuelan will get a green card immediately. We’d get every halfway intelligent person in the country, probably including all the oil workers. Let’s see Hugo pig out as an oil tick then.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2007 02 09 at 11:22 PM • permalink“but how had the Commies managed to make a poor country out of a nation full of Germans?”
The traditional commie method is to carry out mass purges of the owners and managers and replace them with commie bureacrats who couldn’t manage anything more complex than a firing squad.
It works like a charm.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2007 02 10 at 01:26 AM • permalinkHow socialists live out their beliefs, from The Writer’s Almanac for today:
It’s the birthday of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, born in Augsburg, Germany in 1898. He started studying Karl Marx’s Das Kapital when he was a young man. He came to the conclusion that most plays were catering to the rich and privileged, and he developed a revolutionary new theory of drama.
He thought that theaters should be closer to political lecture halls than places of entertainment, and he wanted to encourage audiences to think about issues rather than sympathize with characters. He didn’t use conventional stage props, he flashed slides and written messages on large screens, and he had actors step out of their roles to directly address the audience.
He eventually moved to the United States and settled in Hollywood to write plays and movies.
On the closing of the Caracas TV station, this comment: “They were part of the team of conspirators,” said Saul Ortega, a pro-Chavez congressman. “It’s a subversive channel that is outside the law.”
But isn’t subversion a reqirement of socialist doctrine? As in the Marxist theory of continuous revolution? As in “Inconvenient Truths” must be aired to keep governments on their toes? Besides, keeping the poor masses from watching soap operas is “cruel and unusual” punishment.“Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices ...
Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.”
No problem, they have plenty of oil. Did you know that the price of gasoline in Venezuela is heavily subsidized and is about US30 cents per gallon? (For you ignorants that’s about US8 cents per liter.)
With gasoline priced like that, how many are already drinking it?
Posted by ElectronPower on 2007 02 10 at 07:02 PM • permalinkBTW, there’s nothing wrong with chicken feet. Its quite tasty - just slow boil the feet and other select bones of a chicken, add stuff like Chinese cabbage, soy sauce, rice wine and vinegar, cloves, garlic, onions, sesame oil..
Then again, I’ve lived in Asia for far too long (come March 2nd, for 21 years in fact - to send birthday presents, email me) and have wayyy too many Chinese friends.
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Are those the ‘New York Money People’?