The sacking of a Venezuelan city

[GatoGordo]

The Sacking of Maracaibo
By Braulio Polanco - March 12, 2019

Even though it had been 50 hours since the blackout started, Maracaibo was rather calm on the morning of Sunday, March 10th. People were talking, playing dominoes or getting together to cook all the meat they had so it wouldn’t rot, even amidst the uncertainty and the rumors that 80% of the country was in the dark.

Some grocery stores were giving away products such as plantain, vegetables or milk before they spoilt; others that had debit and credit card readers had huge lines; while others were already starting to sell anything in cash dollars: from flour and rice, to ice.

The calm ended late on Sunday afternoon with the first reports of lootings. The first stores targeted by the vandals were bakeries and small supermarkets; after that, they charged against the ice factories like Hielos El Toro, on Los Haticos Ave., looted after it started to sell bags of ice for up to $10. “The only thing we want is a small piece of ice to store my mom’s insulin, that’s all,” one of the protesters said.

On Monday morning, downtown Maracaibo became a battlefield until 3:00 p.m., where demonstrators faced security forces; the former with stones and bottles, the latter with pellets and tear gas. However, nobody was looting food there: people were taking toys and baby cradles.

Close to noon, Maracaibo mayor Willy Casanova told Radio Fe y Alegría that 80 people involved in vandalism had been arrested in the Maracaibo and San Francisco municipalities.

But the cherry on top of that day of intense lootings was the Nasa and Centro 99 supermarkets, two of the largest in Zulia’s capital, which people stripped completely clean, even in front of the National Police. Men, women and children, and even the elderly, loaded up with flour, pasta, soda or detergent. A person looting the Nasa supermarket, carrying a few full bags, told me: “The police is there but I told them, straight up: we’re all hungry, even you.”

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2019/03/12/the-sacking-of-maracaibo/

Where are Max Blumenthal and Greg Palast when you need them for "man on the street" interviews?

[Farmer-Rick]

1. It seems that US investment in opposition groups and economic embargoes on Venezuela has panned out

The Trump administration can pat itself on the back for putting the cherry on top of the destruction of a once functioning socialist country. Now back to capitalism so the uber rich can loot legally.

[DetlefK]

2. This has little to do with the US.

Venezuela went belly-up when the price of oil collapsed about 5 years ago and all of a sudden Venezuela could no longer pay for the expensive social security it is ideologically obligated to.

That's when Venezuela started printing money. And that's when the hyperinflation began.

The venezuelan government has lived beyond its means for decades and when the price of oil collpased, they had no back-up plan.

[Farmer-Rick]

3. And yet the US has had a funding line for opposition groups in Venezuela since W

And the Koch brothers have been funding their own little anti Venezuela resistance group too. Then there are all the corporations who have been inflating prices and shorting stock to create problems. And the uber rich who still control the huge media monopolies in Venezuela have been manipulating the news.

But go ahead get back to that capitalist heaven you seem to think exists in utopia land.

[DetlefK]

5. Citation needed.

While we are talking about the US, shall we also talk about the influence the cuban secret intelligence has in Venezuela?



Also, if you want to talk about media in Venezuela, shall we talk about how newspapers are dying because the government is rationing ink and paper?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-media-idUSKBN1KG188

[GatoGordo]

9. "And the Koch brothers have been funding their own little anti Venezuela resistance group too"

That is quite the accusation. Got a source? Got a name for this Venezuelan resistance group? Proof of any sort?

"And the uber rich who still control the huge media monopolies in Venezuela have been manipulating the news."

Got any names for those "uber rich" guys who are controlling the "huge media monopolies" in Venezuela? Got a name for for the media companies that make up this sinister monopoly? Does the monopoly have a name?

Or, are we supposed to just take your word for it, since "everybody knows"?

???

If calling myself a Capitalist is the exact opposite of Chavismo and the utter failure hit has been, then I would HAPPILY and WITHOUT RESERVATION call myself a Capitalist. A vile, unapologetic, disgusting Capitalist. That's me, baby!

[Ghost Dog]

4. I think what you say here is true. I also think that

1) about 5 years ago it was US policy, with Saudi collaboration, to lower oil prices in order to put pressure on Russia and Venezuela, amongst other geopolitical aims; and

2) the US is certainly taking advantage of that situation now in order to further those aims.

[DetlefK]

6. The other way around.

Saudi-Arabia increased the oil-production to kill the upcoming fracking-industry in the US.
But fracking survived and the collapsed price accidently hit Venezuela and Russia.

[Ghost Dog]

7. I think it was coordinated. n/t

[DetlefK]

8. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/30/how-the-us-fracking-boom-almost-fell-apart

In fact, the "fracking revolution" caused U.S. oil production to turn upward in 2009, and then rise over the next seven years at the fastest rate in U.S. history.

While it is still true that OPEC still produced 42.6% of the world's oil in 2017, the majority of new oil production since 2008 has come from the U.S.

...

Of the 10.3 million BPD of new oil production since 2008, the U.S. supplied 6.2 million BPD (60%). The world's two other major oil-producing countries, Saudi Arabia and Russia, saw their production increase by 1.7 million BPD and 1.2 million BPD respectively since 2008.

OPEC overall increased its production by 3.6 million BPD since 2008, primarily as a result of production growth in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. But OPEC's gains were limited by production declines in Venezuela, Libya, and Nigeria. There were also regional production declines in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and Central America.

[Ghost Dog]

10. Exactly. The increase in production drove prices down,

badly affecting Venezuela which, due to economically bad government policies had not diversified its economy sufficiently to weather the foreseeable storm, unlike especially Russia. In spite of lower prices, the new US shale production was able to survive and increase its share.

[GatoGordo]

11. Mark Weisbrot, darling economist and Chavist apologist says you are incorrect

From the New York Times, just before things really spiraled down the shitter in 2012

"Although some media have talked of Venezuela’s impending economic collapse for more than a decade, it hasn’t happened and is not likely to happen.

After recovering from a recession that began in 2009, the Venezuelan economy has been growing for two-and-a-half years now and inflation has fallen sharply while growth has accelerated. The country has a sizeable trade surplus. Its public debt is relatively low, and so is its debt-service burden. It has plenty of room to borrow foreign currency (it has borrowed $36 billion from China [pdf], mostly at very low interest rates), and can borrow domestically as well at low or negative real interest rates.

So even if oil prices were to crash temporarily (as they did in 2008-2009), there would be no need for austerity or recession. And hardly anyone is predicting a long-term collapse of oil prices."

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/why-chavez-was-re-elected.html

So there's that.

[GatoGordo]

12. More from Maricaibo (Aporrea.org)

Maracaibo 100 hours without electricity and general chaos in full development
By: Roberto López Sánchez | Tuesday, 03/12/2019 11:36 AM

translated from Spanish

I write this at 8:00 am on Tuesday, March 12, 2019. In Maracaibo, a city plundered from end to end yesterday by uncontrolled mobs seeking food, water and a few criminals who took advantage to assault indiscriminately everything they found. We have lived in Zulia the reedition of the Caracazo of February 1989. Two long months with a totally restricted and non-existent water service in some parishes of the city were joined with 96 continuous hours without electric service. The citizen chaos has been almost total. Absence of transportation, absence of gasoline (lines of 10 blocks and more in the few stations with electric power plants that worked), lack of cash, absence of food sales, all a dangerous cocktail that has been the product of the absolute incompetence of the government of Nicolás Maduro. A people cornered everywhere, which is in the process of explosion, and although today the light returned at 4:00 am (after more than 100 hours without electricity), I think unfortunately still continue to develop more chaotic scenarios.

Last November I wrote in an article ("Maduro to stay has nothing left but the pure and simple repression" ) in which he stated that the Maduro government, in the absence of a policy of democratic opening and economic rectification, would increase progressively the levels of political repression as the only alternative that remains for him to stay in power. The facts have ratified that assessment we wrote on November 15, 2018. The continued detention of Venezuelan and foreign journalists, and the expulsion from the national territory of those assigned to foreign information agencies. The looting and closure of regional television stations such as Global TV and Aventura TV in Maracaibo. The looting of the premises of the Noticia al Día portal in Maracaibo. The blocking of foreign TV channels like Antena 3 and several others.

Today the progressive blackout has been completed with a total electrical blackout, which in the case of Zulia (Maracaibo is the second city in the country and the state occupies the first place in economic importance) has been more than 100 hours. Up to this moment, the information of what has happened in the cities and municipalities of Zulia has not been able to transcend beyond the scarce telephone mechanisms in operation (Cantv and Movilnet totally fallen, Movistar and Digitel with intermitencias, the TV channels and broadcasters regional radio out of the air, the same happens with private TV channels such as Televén and Venevisión, which at least in Zulia are also off-air, barely tuned in these five days to Radio Nacional and VTV, that is, only the official media).

-snip-

https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a276912.html

Blumenthal and Palast... where are you? These are YOUR people! The Venezuelan Chavistas are giving a 180 degree different version of events than you are giving! I imagine that behind all of this chaos are Vile Capitalists in 3 piece, Brooks Brothers suits, sitting in a mahagony lined office in a downtown Maricaibo office tower, smoking Dominican (not Cuban!) cigars and sippin' Hennessy!