https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-worldThe paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.
Basically, what they're describing is the classic IMF loan requirements. And it's found that these requirements don't actually lead to growth, and destabilize economies. What they do however is create investment opportunities for the wealthy nations. And when it fails, as it often does, then the IMF does a "bailout" by which western taxpayer's money is paid out to the creditors of the failed loan-recipient. e.g. the bail-out money actually goes to the wealthy western investors who benefited from the IMF's enforced deregulation / privatization. It means that the
taxpayer pays for all of this, wealthy investors get to invest and make a profit, and if you don't make a profit, then the taxpayer covers your losses. It's a "win-win". For the rich person ... and the IMF director, who then gets a job with your bank afterwards.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/30/fear-of-violence-hangs-over-venezuela-assembly-election
But even in that article, it says the opposition are firing guns and explosives:
the prosecutor’s office confirmed at least six people were killed by gunfire, including one national guardsman. Seven policemen were wounded in an explosion in the opposition stronghold neighbourhood of Altamira.
So ... the opposition are also terrorists, according to your first article. At least one national guard member was shot, and we can't really tell from this which side the other 6 were even on (there have been shootings of pro-government people at rallies too. or of innocent bystanders trying to avoid opposition street barricades).
As for the 2014 protest deaths, there are breakdowns of the details of each death, many more were attributed to the protestors than to authorities:
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Heres-Your-Guide-to-Understanding-Protest-Deaths-in-Venezuela-20170422-0016.htmle.g. one of the deaths claimed was that of an 83 year old woman who needed an ambulance but couldn't get to hospital
because of the protests. She's counted as being Maduro's fault, as are people who weren't even
in protests, or were shot by right-wing opposition supporters when they were attending pro-socialist rallies. Tons of people seem to have been randomly shot while trying to
avoid pro-opposition roadblocks, while there are basically no examples of the people
manning the opposition roadblocks being shot at. the article I linked has names, details and locations for all the victims, so you can in fact
google the names to get more details. Basically the other side has
details here that you can read and go and fact-check, while the opposition only wants to vaguely hint at deaths and claim that only the other guy is doing it. The opposition is
shooting people then adding up the bodies and saying "look what Maduro did!". It really doesn't help their case.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-inflation/venezuela-2017-annual-inflation-at-2616-percent-opposition-lawmakers-idUSKBN1EX23B Hundreds of people mobbed some supermarkets on Saturday after authorities promised price cuts.
How is this different to America then? People stomp each other's heads in to get the Black Friday specials.
This one you link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31178692Venezuela's economy has been heavily affected by the drop in oil prices.
Which is a rare article where they let some reality seep through the "socialism did it!" facade.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/business/venezuela-general-motors-business-protests.htmlThey took over the plant. However, the plant had already been
closed down, it's similar with a bunch of the other ones in the article.
Another key metric is looking at how much the country actually consumes. Beef is a good metric. In 1998, Venezuelans consumed 415,000 tons of beef. That grew to 590,000 tons of beef in 2015, when the food crisis was supposed to be really hitting.
http://beef2live.com/story-venezuela-beef-production-imports-consumption-1960-2015-0-120921Venezuela consumed about the same amount of beef per person as Singapore in 2016:
http://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita-ranking-countries-0-111634There are a ton of articles claiming the extent of the crisis is exaggerated, and they don't come from Venezuela:
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-severe-is-venezuelas-crisis/http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/venezuela-crisis-20131129123811227680.htmlhttps://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13478
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Topic: Latin American Politics: Moralism (Read 101155 times)