QED

Let Us Not Become Veneztralia

Venezuela,  the richest country in South America not so long ago,  is sliding into the abyss of civil war and bloodshed. The shops are empty and astronomic inflation has rendered worthless the national currency,  the Bolivar. Oil production, the economy’s mainstay, is reduce to a trickle and  default on overseas loans is likely. Venezuela’s military, up to its neck in drug-trafficking, has been shooting people on the streets, with 26 are dead by the latest count. The country is in torment and turmoil. Whether one calls the massive protests and demonstratikons a rebellion, a revolution or an insurrection makes no difference; suffering is the same no matter what name you give it.

This tropical country, blessed with abundant fertile soil, an extensive coastline and one of the world’s largest known oil reserves, is motherless broke. People are emigrating in droves to anywhere they can, voting with their feet. The only governments which support the present regime are the usual suspects: Moscow, Moldova and the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, plus China, Turkey, North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe.

How beautiful the beginning was, though!  Hugo Chavez, unreconstructed neo-Marxist and firebrand class warrior, promised his country’s proletariat a socialist nirvana, supposedly the result of nationalising just about everything and dispossessing the hated oligarchs. The resulting rewards, Chavez promised, would  be re-distributed to the poor, the oppressed and dispossessed.

True to his word, generous social programs, unrivalled anywhere in Latin America, were instituted and the masses were jubilant.  New and promising friendships were established. Instead of ‘imperialist America’ and its Latino American ‘lackey’, fraternal nations were welcomed to the venezuelan hearth. The attraction was instant and mutual.  Russia’s Vladimir Putin invested $US6 billion of hard cold cash, buying into the State-run oil company. He also sent long-range Soviet-era nuclear bombers to demonstrate the strength of the new alliance.  The Chinese went much further and bought into infrastructure projects to the tune of $US23 billion.  Penniless Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea, owing to their lack of cash, contented themselves with declarations of eternal friendship.

Venezuela’s proverbial ‘man on the street’ was aglow with triumph. The millennial dream of  universal brotherhood and equality had been fulfilled! Everyone was equal. At long last, there were no capitalist bloodsuckers to exploit the masses. The formerly impotent victims of that exploitation would no longer slave to make the rich richer. As Lenin said at the dawn of another, earlier workers’ paradise, “Revolution, the necessity of which the Bolsheviks were talking about for so long, had happened at last!”

Everything was honky dory until the voters began to notice things were not quite as they had been led to believe, that something was not quite right. Despite massive oil reserves, fuel shortages developed. Then the shelves in the shops became empty. It grew so bad the military, the most trusted part of the government, were rewarded toilet paper instead of medals (and yes, I kid you not).

Then Hugo Chavez upped and died, but not before managing to make sure successor Nicholas Maduro was installed in the presidential palace. The successor stayed the course with all the previous socialist policies, kept the same friends, took hostility towards America and its ‘lackeys’ to new heights and, indeed, transformed the anti-gringo rhetoric of his government almost into an art form. As things grew steadily worse, proletarian to the bone Maduro was disinclined to give up power. As proletarian presidents normally do, he cheated at the recent elections and had remained in the palace.

By now things were getting a bit too much, even for the proletarian masses, and the current wave of protests erupted. Governments around the world, including all Venezuela’s neighbors, decided no longer to recognize the Caracas government as legitimate.  The Bank of England refused to return the cache of Venezuelan gold stored in its vaults, pointing to the illegitimacy of the country’s ruling regime. The US  then began targeting  Maduro’s ill-gotten wealth. In response, he  severed  diplomatic relations with Washington and expelled the diplomats of nations that incurred his wrath.

The Americans forbade their diplomatic staff to leave, citing the illegitimacy of the country’s government and allowed Venezuelan diplomats to remain in the US. The leader of the Opposition in the Venezuelan Parliament declared himself president and pronounced Nicolas Maduro dislodged. Mr. Putin, fuming at ‘American meddling in the internal affairs of other countries’ while overlooking his likewise meddling, decided to send a Russian security team of highly-trained mercenaries to guard Mr. Maduro. He does not wish for Maduro to experience a dismissal of the type that saw the ends of  Nicolae Ceausescu and Muammar Kaddafi. 

In a meantime, Venezuelan blood is spilling on the streets of Venezuela’s cities and people are dying. Nothing to laugh about, nothing at all.

What I do not understand is Venezuelans’ voting for the very policies which subsequently devastated their country. The socialists were quite clear and honest about their intentions. They carried out their promises exactly as promised.

Wherever such policies are implemented the result is the same, no matter where the country is located, how rich or how poor the country might be, what race, skin color or religion of the people living there. History is awash with horrible examples of socialist promises.

How many times will people step on the same garden rake? As the government in waiting of Bill Shorten pushes the class-war rhetoric it hopes will be its passport to the government benches, should not Australians take heed?

Michael Galak came to Australia with his family from the Soviet Union

8 thoughts on “Let Us Not Become Veneztralia

  • Les Kovari says:

    What happens in a socialist wet dream.

  • padraic says:

    Interesting comment “Venezuela’s military, up to its neck in drug trafficking….” When you link that to the support from China, Russia and North Korea it is pretty obvious that cyber warfare is not the only type of non-military warfare being aimed at the USA and other western countries. The beauty of drug abuse warfare against the USA for the Venezuelan generals is that it is not fatal for them as when “fighting” an external enemy. At home they can display their military prowess (without being killed themselves) by shooting unarmed civilians for which they gain a brace of medals across their chests. The Russians and Chinese are big producers of harmful illicit drugs pouring into western countries and are well aware of the damage drug abuse on a large scale can do to the social fabric of a country. They know they can rely on governments in western countries treating drug abuse as a “human rights” issue rather than a socio-medical issue. Canada has obliged by making marihuana a mainstream product and that example has been followed by some states in America, contrary to the UN Conventions signed by the US Federal Government. In recent days there has been a drive by activists here in Oz to make MDMA available through your friendly neighbourhood pharmacy. MDMA never made it to the legitimate market because it did not satisfy the safety criteria of the FDA and other national regulatory bodies so there is no such thing as “overdosing” if you don’t know the dose. Law faculties are becoming activist factories many of whose graduates gravitate to the MSM and if the cannot get mainstream employment in the traditional legal world they join an anti-progress group funded by crackpot billionaires. Needless to say, this minority of aberrant law graduates do not study pharmacology but that does not stop them from pontificating. We saw the Taliban growing opium to make heroin and sending it to America in an effort to weaken the USA. Western countries are finished unless they wake up to this insidious kind of warfare.

  • ianl says:

    > “What I do not understand is Venezuelans voting for the very policies which subsequently devastated their country. What I understand even less are the polls indicating Australian voters are buying Bill Shorten’s Chavez-lite policies and class-war rhetoric”

    The Robin Hood myth never dies. That is because it is based in envy, which is ineradicable.

  • Alistair says:

    I dont know about Venezuela, but Victoria shows why Australians will line up to vote for Shorten.
    Try this, usually attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler (or Alexis de Tocqueville):

    “Democracy ends when the voters discover they can vote themselves the contents of the treasury. … From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

    My own corollary adds to this and states:

    “When the treasury is empty, they will force the treasurer to borrow extensively to keep the benefits flowing on the baseless assumption that the future will be more prosperous than the present and will therefore be untroubled in repaying the debt. It is the extension of the personal joke ‘Ha Ha! I’m spending the kids’ inheritance’ to the level of a national, economic policy.

  • Alistair says:

    I think we need a comment from Philip Adams here.

  • en passant says:

    Until we clear out the ‘mainstream’ politicians Oz has no hope

  • Bushranger71 says:

    Respectfully Michael; the US was/is deeply involved in drug dealings in many of their military escapades – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and so forth.
    You cannot ignore the adverse consequences of rampant capitalism worldwide with the privileged elite (including the Davos crowd) pushing globalization.
    Some countries having Communist systems of government seem to be functioning okay; Vietnam for example.
    Australia’s flawed electoral system and compulsory voting by unfettered economic refugees will of course point an increasing proportion of the electorate toward progressive social benefit.
    But neither of the major political parties will entertain electoral reform.
    And when the electoral cycle again approaches time to splash cash, it usually becomes a spendathon competition.
    On July 1 2007, in the final year of the Howard Coalition government, net debt was minus A$24.2 billion. The government’s financial assets, such as those held in the Future Fund, were greater than government bonds on issuance, putting the government in a net asset (positive) position.
    At the time of the election of the Labor government in November 2007, Australia’s net debt position was still negative (at minus A$22.1 billion) – meaning the government held A$22.1 billion more than it owed. By July 1 2013, in the final months of the last Labor government, net debt had risen to A$159.6 billion.
    The Liberal-National Coalition won the federal election on September 7 2013. At September 30, net debt was A$174.5 billion (meaning that net debt rose by about A$5 billion per month in the three months before the 2013 election).
    As at July 1 2018, the budget estimate of net debt in Australia was about A$341.0 billion. That’s roughly a 95% rise since the Coalition took office in 2013.
    Alas; much said in this forum is too flavoured with political bias.

  • padraic says:

    Some very sobering comments, Bushranger. Electoral bribery and subsequent government debt is a disgrace. What used to be the personal responsibility of the citizen – school books, child-care, post birth purchases etc is now part of the drive to get votes. What are your policies? Don’t worry about them – trust us, but here is some free bread and jam. Also your comments about the US being involved in drug dealing in recent wars is relevant to the discussion, in that it shows our society is not squeaky clean when it comes to looking after our populations. If other countries are going to employ the drug abuse warfare model they need quislings in the targeted countries to do the dirty work. Vietnam was a classic example where US citizens were flying into southern China to pick up consignments of heroin and bringing it back to Vietnam where it was on-sent to America and some was sold to the troops in Vietnam. Milo Minderbinder and his activities in Catch-22 pal into insignificance in comparison. Having said that, nothing could be worse than an overt totalitarian regime to live under.

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