Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the Black Lives Matter founder who said, “We are trained Marxists,” has just purchased a $1.4 million home in an area where only 1.6% of the population is black
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvOyW5vIdg
Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Buys $1.4 Million Home in Area With Just 1.6% Black Population
She chose to live in one of the whitest areas possible.
By Paul Joseph Watson
April 9, 2021
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors has chosen to live in one of the whitest areas of California after purchasing a $1.4 million dollar home in an area that has a black population of just 1.6 per cent.
A report by real estate website Dirt reveals that Khan-Cullors, who started the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal, has purchased a “secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon.”
“A winding 15 minute drive from The Commons at Calabasas and a slightly longer and somewhat less serpentine drive from Malibu’s Getty Villa, the pint-sized compound spans about one-quarter of an acre. The property’s not-quite 2,400 square feet is divided between the a three-bedroom and two-bath main house and a separate one-bed/one-bath apartment capable of hosting guests long term with a private entry and a living room with kitchenette,” writes Mark David.
According to official data, non-hispanic white people make up 82.3% of the population in Topanga Canyon while African-Americans comprise a mere 1.64% of the population.
Other counties in California boast a substantially higher black population, including Alameda (12.5 per cent) and Sacramento (10.2 per cent).
According to an L.A. Times report, Topanga Canyon is noted for its population’s “privilege” and “geographic isolation from the mellow-harshing realities of modern American life.”
Although black lives may matter to Khan-Cullors, it appears as though she isn’t too keen on living amongst black people.
Social justice hypocrites who often spout anti-white rhetoric while choosing to live in gentrified white areas is nothing new, in fact it’s a common theme.
Celebrities and politicians who espouse pro-mass immigration sentiment routinely live in the least diverse areas possible.
The Maduro diet: How most Venezuelans lost an average of 43 pounds in two years
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 15, 2020
In May 2017, the Washington Post reported:
In a recent survey of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities, three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of 19 pounds… a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague.
In February 2018, Reuters reported:
Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year… according to a new university study…
That’s 43 pounds in two years.
Before I explain how this came to happen, I want to start out by explaining what did not cause this to happen.
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Here’s a video of Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors saying, “We are trained Marxists”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
June 17, 2020
Patrisse Cullors is a founder of Black Lives Matter.
Here’s a screenshot from wikipedia, showing that Cullors is one of the founders of Black Lives Matter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
Here’s a YouTube video of Cullors saying:
“We are trained Marxists”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvOyW5vIdg
And in case Youtube censors it, here’s the same video from Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BubetteS/status/1273628656447811584
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Note from Daniel Alman: I’d like to recommend that you visit Whatfinger News. It’s a really awesome website.
Bernie Sanders said it’s a “good thing” when people have to wait in line for food. Meanwhile, in the real world, this is what it’s actually like to wait in line for food in Venezuela.
Bernie Sanders said that it’s a “good thing” when people have to wait in line for food.
These are his exact words:
“It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, cause people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
You can see him saying it in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBjjP8WSbc
Meanwhile, in the real world, this is what it’s actually like to wait in line for food:
Bernie Sanders in the 1970s urged nationalization of most major industries
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html
Bernie Sanders in the 1970s urged nationalization of most major industries
March 14, 2019
Bernie Sanders advocated for the nationalization of most major industries, including energy companies, factories, and banks, when he was a leading member of a self-described “radical political party” in the 1970s, a CNN KFile review of his record reveals.
Sanders’ past views shed light on a formative period of his political career that could become relevant as he advances in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Many of the positions he held at the time are more extreme compared to the more tempered democratic socialism the Vermont senator espouses today and could provide fodder for moderate Democrats and Republicans looking to cast the Democratic presidential candidate and his beliefs as a fringe form of socialism that would be harmful to the country.
Aspects of Sanders’ plans and time in the Liberty Union have been reported before, but the material taken together, including hundreds of newly digitalized newspapers and files from the Liberty Union Party archived at the University of Vermont, paint a fuller portrait of Sanders’ views on state and public-controlled industry at the time.
In a statement to CNN, Sanders campaign spokesman Josh Orton said, “Throughout his career, Bernie has fought on the side of working people and against the influence of both the powerful ultra-rich and giant corporations who seek only to further their own greed. The record shows that from the very beginning, Bernie anticipated and worked to combat the rise of a billionaire ruling class and the exploding power of Wall Street and multinational corporations. Whether fighting to lower energy prices or expand access to capital for local development, Bernie’s first priority has always been — and will always be — defending the interests of working people across the country.”
After moving to Vermont in 1968 several years after graduating college, Sanders became an active member of the left-wing Liberty Union Party. Under the Liberty Union banner, Sanders, then in his early 30s, ran for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and as a candidate for US Senate in 1972 and 1974. Sanders, also served as chairman of the party from 1973-1975. During this time, Sanders and Liberty Union argued for nationalization of the energy industry, public ownership of banks, telephone, electric, and drug companies and of the major means of production such as factories and capital, as well as other proposals such as a 100% income tax on the highest income earners in America. Sanders also rejected political violence and criticized the anti-democratic nature of communist states such as the Soviet Union.
“I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” Sanders said in one interview with the Burlington Free Press in 1976.
In his career as a US Senator, Sanders has backed away from such ardent calls for nationalization, but maintained similar rhetoric on wealth inequality.
In one 2015 speech, he said he didn’t want the government to take over private business or “own the means of production.” But his early views are notable because they are far to the left of the current Democratic party and most candidates running for office.
Sanders left the Liberty Union Party in 1977, over what he said was the party’s lack of activity between elections. Sanders said in his farewell that workers would need to take control for the country to be sustained.
“The function of a radical political party is very simple,” he said. “It is to create a situation in which the ordinary working people take what rightfully belongs to them. Nobody can predict the future of the workers’ movement in this country or the state of Vermont. It is my opinion, however, that if workers do not take power in a reasonably short time this country will not have a future.”
The energy industry
In 1973, during his time as chairman of the Liberty Union Party, Sanders took to a Vermont paper to oppose Richard Nixon’s energy policy and oil industry profits, calling for the entire energy industry to be nationalized. Consumers at the time had been facing steep price increases and heavy shortages as a result of the OPEC oil embargo.
“I would also urge you to give serious thought about the eventual nationalization of these gigantic companies,” Sanders wrote in a December 1973 open letter to Vermont Sen. Robert Stafford that ran in the Vermont Freeman. “It is extremely clear that these companies, owned by a handful of billionaires, have far too much power over the lives of Americans to be left in private hands. The oil industry, and the entire energy industry, should be owned by the public and used for the public good — not for additional profits for billionaires.”
Electric and telephone utilities
Efforts to push for public ownership of Vermont’s utilities like telephone and electric companies played prominently in Sanders’ political career in the 1970s. Sanders ran for Senate in a January 1972 in the special election and governor in that year’s November election, registering in the low single digits in both races.
When he launched his first campaign for the Senate in 1971, Sanders said state utilities needed to be run by the state of Vermont on a nonprofit basis and that if revenues exceed expenditures they could be used to fund government programs and lower property taxes. In 1976, Sanders went even further: calling for the state to seize ownership of Vermont’s private electric companies without compensation to investors. He defended his proposals routinely by pointing out that municipally owned utilities, not uncommon throughout the country, often had lower consumer prices.
Utilities like the Green Mountain Power company and the New England Telephone company had been steadily pushing, successful and unsuccessful at times, for approval from state regulators for rate increases. Sanders was particularly incensed by a proposed 27% rate hike by the New England Telephone company, and it became a rallying cry for his political campaigns.
In 1973, as chairman of the Liberty Union Party, Sanders had organized boycotts to stop proposed rate increases from New England Telephone company. Sanders’ efforts through the “The Vermont Telephone Boycott Committee” — a committee he coordinated that year — proved successful in blocking NET rate increases. Newspapers commended Sanders for efforts when the rate increases were blocked by the state’s utility regulators.
Sanders would declare for the Senate again the following June in 1974 and for governor in 1976, and Vermont’s utilities would remain a major focus point of his campaigns and Liberty Union Party. Sanders’ rhetoric was strongest during his 1976 campaign for governor of Vermont, his last before he left the Liberty Union Party.
In a press release on his policy positions, Sanders campaigned on the public ownership of the state’s electric companies, without compensating the banks and stockholders.
“I will be campaigning in support of the Liberty Union utility proposal which calls for the public ownership of Vermont’s private electric companies without compensation to the banks and wealthy stockholders who own the vast majority of stock in these companies,” he said in a July 1976 press release. “I will also be calling for public ownership of the telephone company — which is probably the single greatest rip-off company in America.”
Sanders argued utility companies engaged in “economic blackmail,” saying the state gave the companies the right to charge “outrageous” rates for utilities or have consumers suffer from poor service.
Sanders’ comments went beyond the Liberty Union’s proposal for public takeover of state utilities, which said investors and bondholders with more than 100 shares would have to convert their holding to non-voting stock and income bonds which carry no fixed claim to dividends or interest payments.
Public ownership of banks, corporations and the major industries
Sanders’ policy proposals that year also included an ambitious plan to deal with companies attempting to leave towns.
“We have got to begin to deal with the fact that corporations do not have the god-given right to disrupt the lives of their workers or the economic foundation of their towns simply because they wish to move elsewhere to earn a higher rate of profit,” Sanders said in a press release in August 1976.
Sanders’ plan would require large businesses attempting to leave cities to get permission from the towns and the workers in them. If the company did not get that approval they would be required by law to pay a guaranteed two years of severance for workers and 10 years of taxes for the town.
Nationally, Sanders said, legislation corporations leaving cities would have to be dealt with by turning the means of production over to the workers.
“In the long run, the problem of the fleeing corporations must be dealt with on the national level by legislation which will bring about the public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises,” he said.
Campaign literature that year from Sanders, including a 1976 brochure for the party, said, “I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves.”
Public control of the economy would become the key issue in his race. Speaking at one forum, Sanders called for workers to control of capital, factories, banks and corporations.
“There is a handful of people sitting at the head of the main banks controlling the destiny of underprivileged nations, the country as well as Vermont’s economy,” Sanders said. “That is not tolerable. That control cannot be held by them. We need public control over capital; and the capital must be put to use for public need not for the advancement of those who made the investments.”
In an interview with the Burlington Free Press, Sanders argued the richest two or three percent should not control capital.
“I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries. In Vermont we have some $2 billion of deposits in our banks,” Sanders told the paper. “In Vermont, as well as nationally, it is not tolerable to me that the control of capital would remain in the hands of the richest two or three percent of the population to do with it as they like.”
Sanders called that year in a policy paper for Vermont’s banking laws to be “radically” revised, so that the public and the state “determine in what manner our savings are invested so as to make Vermont a better place to live.”
Socialized medicine and public ownership of drug companies
Asked about healthcare, Sanders said there would need to be publicly-controlled drug companies.
“I believe in socialized medicine, public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on salaries. The idea that millionaires can make money by selling poor people drugs that they desperately need for highly inflated prices disgusts me,” he said.
Taxing assets at 100%
Heavy taxation of wealthy people played prominently into Sanders’ plans to pay for expanding government services.
In February 1976, Liberty Union put out a state tax proposal calling for a radical revamping of the system, including the removal of all taxes of sales, beverages, cigarettes, polls, and the use of telephones, railroads or electric energy. Tax rates for those earning more than $100,00 would be 33.47%, $50,000-$99,999 would be 19%, $25,000-$49,000 would be 13.56%, and $10,000-$14,999 would be 4%. Anyone earning less than $10,000 would pay no state income tax.
But Sanders’ rhetoric at times went much further.
During his 1974 Senate run, Sanders said one plan to expand government included making it illegal to gain more wealth than person could spend in a lifetime and have a 100% tax on incomes above this level. (Sanders defined this as $1 million dollars annually).
“Nobody should earn more than a million dollars,” Sanders said.
The Democratic Socialists of America supports the same policies that have destroyed Venezuela’s ability to feed itself
The New York Times just published this article, which is titled “The Millennial Socialists Are Coming.” The article talks about the growing popularity of socialism among Millennials, and points out several examples of socialist candidates beating long term Democrats in primary elections.
The New York Times article includes this link to the constitution and bylaws of the Democratic Socialists of America. Here is a brief excerpt from it (the bolding is mine):
“We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power, discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability status, age, religion, and national origin, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.”
Let’s take a look at what those two bolded parts manage to achieve when they are adopted in the real world. Specifically, let’s take a look at what’s currently going on in Venezuela, which I have previously described in great detail in this lengthy and well sourced blog post, which I have titled, “The Maduro diet: How most Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in 2016, plus another 24 pounds in 2017.”
The Democratic Socialists of America claim that they “reject an economic order based on private profit.” That’s exactly what Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was doing when he started implementing price controls on food in Venezuela in 2003. These price controls caused shortages of food. Anyone who understands Economics 101 knows that price controls cause shortages.
The Democratic Socialists of America claim that they support “popular control of resources and production.” This is exactly what Hugo Chavez did when he had the government seize more than 10 million acres of farmland from private owners. As a result of these land seizures, food production fell substantially.
Before Chavez died, he appointed Nicolas Maduro to be his successor. After Chavez died in 2013, Maduro continued Chavez’s policies.
In 2018, all of Chavez’s food policies are still in effect. The profit motive has been taken away from food production. Ownership of the means of producing food has been collectivized.
Because the Venezuelan government adopted the exact same polices that are supported by Democratic Socialists of America, most Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in 2016, plus another 24 pounds in 2017.
And you don’t have to take my word for this. My blog entry that I mentioned earlier contains a very large number of links to sources which document exactly how this happened.
One thing that’s interesting about the links in my blog entry on Venezuela is that many of my sources are links to articles in the New York Times. And yet the current article form the New York Times on the Democratic Socialists of America makes absolutely no mention of the the kinds of horrible disasters that happen when such policies are adopted in the real world.
And before anyone goes and mentions the Scandanavian countries, I would like to point out that those countries have by no means adopted the polices supported by the Democratic Socialists of America that I quoted and bolded above. They have not abandoned the profit motive, and they have not turned their means of production over to collective ownership.
On the contrary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark all have thriving private sectors with huge corporations that make massive profits.
In just three minutes, Jordan Peterson gives the most accurate description of 21st century Marxists that I’ve ever heard
In this three minute video, Jordan Peterson says that is is morally reprehensible for anyone who knows anything about 20th century history to support Marxism in the 21st century.
I’ve never heard a better criticism of 21st century Marxists than what’s in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p2QfjaSIUo
Here is the text of his speech:
The fact that the post-modernists dare to be Marxists is also something that I find I would say not so much intellectually reprehensible as morally repugnant. And one of the things that the post-modern neo-Marxists continually claim is that they have nothing but compassion for the downtrodden.
And I would say that anybody with more than a cursory knowledge of 20th century history who dares to claim simultaneously that they have compassion for the downtrodden and that they’re Marxists, are revealing either their ignorance of history that is so astounding that it’s actually a form of miracle, or a kind of malevolence that’s so reprehensible that it’s almost unspeakable, because we already ran the equity experiment over the course of the 20th century, and we already know what the Marxist doctrines have done for oppressed people all over the world. And the answer to that mostly was imprison them, enslave them, work them to death, or execute them.
And as far as I can tell that’s not precisely commensurate with any message of compassion. And so I don’t that think the post-modern neo-Marxists have a leg to stand on ethically, or intellectually, or emotionally. And I think that they should be gone after as hard as possible from an intellectual perspective – an informed intellectual perspective. And this is fundamentally a war of ideas.
And that’s the level of analysis that it should be fought upon. And not only is it a war of ideas, I think it’s one that can be won, because I think that especially the French intellectual post-modernists are a pack of – what would you call them? Well we could start with charlatans – that’s a good one. Pseudo-intellectual would be good. Resentful would be another.
And then I would also consider them highly – they’re highly deceptive in their intellectual strategies because almost all of them are Marxist student intellectuals and they knew by the time the gulag archipelago came out, and even before that, that the nightmares of the Soviet Union and Maoist China were of such magnitude that they had completely invalidated any claim to ethical justification that the fundamental Marxist doctrines had ever managed to manifest. And so, it’s a no go zone as far as I’m concerned.
Intellectually, the game’s over. We’ve already figured out that there are finite constraints on interpretation. And we also understand why those exist, and how they evolved, and from the perspective of political argumentation, there’s absolutely no excuse whatsoever in the 21st century to put forth Marxist doctrines as if they are the balm that is administered by the compassionate to the downtrodden.
Sorry.
Tried that.
Didn’t work.
We’ve got a hundred million corpses to prove it. And that’s plenty for me. And if it’s not enough for you, then you should do some serious thinking – either about your historical knowledge, or about your moral character.
Venezuelan government tells doctors and hospitals not to list starvation as cause of death for babies and children who starve to death
For a detailed explanation of how Venezuela went from being a rich well fed country, to a poor country with severe shortages of food, please see this previous blog post that I wrote, which is called “Here’s how most Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in 2016, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again in 2017.”
Now the latest news.
The New York Times just published this article about the situation in Venezuela.
According to the article, even though large numbers of babies and children are starving to death, the government is telling doctors and hospitals not to list starvation as the official cause of death.
In addition, the Times kept track of 21 pubic hospitals over a period of five months. During that time period, the Times was unable to get any kind of official starvation counts from any of those hospitals. However, doctors at nine of those hospitals told the Timed that they had kept at least a partial count, and that of these partial counts at nine hospitals, nearly 400 children had starved to death. The cause of these deaths was not listed as starvation in the hospitals’ official records, but the doctors know that starvation was their true cause of death.
The Times also reports that the food shortages are so severe that even most hospitals do not have enough baby formula to meet the needs of their patients.
And it’s not just food that’s in short supply. The Times also reports that many of these hospitals don’t have enough of basic supplies such as soap, syringes, gauze, diapers, and latex gloves.
Please keep in mind that before Hugo Chavez implemented price controls and seized farms, factories, businesses, and other private property, the country was quite affluent and had a first world standard of living.
There’s a huge lesson in all of this.
No matter how well off and prosperous a country is, it simply cannot maintain anything even remotely close to such levels of prosperity when it adopts communism.
My new book “The Maduro Diet” is ranked #1 in the amazon sales category Books > History > Americas > South America > Venezuela
My new book The Maduro Diet is ranked #1 in the amazon sales category Books > History > Americas > South America > Venezuela
Here’s a partial screen capture:
Full title: The Maduro Diet: How three-quarters of adults in Venezuela lost an average of 19 pounds in 2016
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075W2LXT8
Some Venezuelans have not had a full meal in days
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hungry-venezuelans-turn-colombia-plate-food-49206924
Hungry Venezuelans turn to Colombia for a plate of food
Associated Press
CUCUTA, Colombia — Aug 14, 2017
Under a scorching sun just a short walk from Colombia’s border with Venezuela, hundreds of hungry men, women and children line up for bowls of chicken and rice — the first full meal some have eaten in days.
An estimated 25,000 Venezuelans make the trek across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge into Colombia each day. Many come for a few hours to work or trade goods on the black market, looking for household supplies they cannot find back home.
But increasingly, they are coming to eat in one of a half-dozen facilities offering struggling Venezuelans a free plate of food.
“I never thought I’d say this,” said Erick Oropeza, 29, a former worker with Venezuela’s Ministry of Education who recently began crossing the bridge each day. “But I’m more grateful for what Colombia has offered me in this short time than what I ever received from Venezuela my entire life.”
As Venezuela’s economy verges on collapse and its political upheaval worsens, cities like Cucuta along Colombia’s porous, 1,370-mile (2,200-kilometer) border with Venezuela have become firsthand witnesses to the neighboring South American nation’s escalating humanitarian crisis.
According to one recent survey, about 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds (8.7 kilograms) last year.
The Colombian government has crafted contingency plans in the event of a sudden, mass exodus, but already church groups and nonprofit organizations are stepping in, moved by images of mothers carrying starving babies and skinny men trying to make a few bucks on Cucuta’s streets to bring back home.
Paulina Toledo, 47, a Colombian hairstylist who recently helped feed lunch to 900 Venezuelans, said seeing how hungry they were “hurt my soul.”
“Those of us here on the border are seeing their pain,” she said.
People living on either side of the Colombia-Venezuela border have long had a foot in both countries: A Colombian who lives in Cucuta might cross to visit relatives in San Cristobal; a Venezuelan might make the reverse trip to work or go to school.
In the years when Venezuela’s oil industry was booming and Colombia entangled in a half-century armed conflict, an estimated 4 million Colombians migrated to Venezuela. Many started coming back as Venezuela’s economy began to implode and after President Nicolas Maduro closed the border in 2015 and expelled 20,000 Colombians overnight.
Oropeza said he earned about $70 a month working at the Ministry of Education and selling hamburgers on the side — twice Venezuela’s minimum wage but still not enough to feed a family of four. Once a month his family receives a bundle of food provided by the government, but it only lasts a week.
“So the other three weeks, like most Venezuelans, we have to make magic happen,” he said on a recent afternoon.
Desperate for money to feed his family, he left his job and traveled to the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio. He wakes up at 4 a.m. each morning to be among the first crossing the bridge into Cucuta, where he earns money selling soft drinks on the street.
He goes straight to the “Casa de Paso,” a church-run shelter that has served 60,000 meals to Venezuelans since opening two months ago. On an average day, 2,000 Venezuelans line up for meals, getting a ticket to reserve their spot and then waiting four hours for a meal served at outdoor plastic tables.
Workers stir gigantic metal pots filled with chicken and rice set on the bare dirt floor. Volunteers hand out boxes of juice to tired-looking children. Adults sit quietly, savoring their bowl of food as chickens waddle between them.
“Every day I have to remind myself why I am here,” said Oropeza, dressed in a faded striped collared shirt. “I try to repeat it to myself so that I won’t, you know, so those moments of weakness don’t affect you so much.”
When he’s not helping out or waiting in line at the shelter kitchen, Oropeza sells malted soft drinks for about 50 cents each. He’s been able to bring money back to his family and has earned enough to buy a cellphone, which he’d lacked for two years.
Jose David Canas, a priest, said his church will continue to serve food “as long as God allows.”
“Until they close the border,” he said. “Until everything is eaten or until the province tells us that they no longer have lunches to give out. And then it’s the end.”
Black Lives Matter crowd cheers as activist calls for an end to capitalism, demands white people give up all of their possessions, and says “we need to start killing people”
The fact that abolishing private property has been a total failure in each and every country where it has been tried, and has led to nothing but misery, poverty, hunger, famine, empty shelves in stores, dictatorship, oppression, censorship, political imprisonment, and a shortage of toilet paper, the crowd cheers as this Black Lives Matter activist calls for the U.S. to do the very same thing.
They also cheer as she says, at 1:50, “we need to start killing people.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIlsMKu67q0
Venezuelan military tells supermarket customers not to take pictures of empty shelves
The Venezuelan military has troops stationed in supermarkets, and they are telling customers not to take pictures of empty shelves. But that hasn’t stopped people from doing it. During the first week of 2015, the Twitter hashtag #AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela (“Empty shelves in Venezuela”) listed more than 200,000 tweets.
For example: (posted here under fair use from https://twitter.com/Indiferencia/status/551547489565016064/photo/1 )
From a different website, here’s a picture of people waiting in line to buy food: (posted here under fair use from http://www.businessinsider.com/long-food-lines-are-in-venezuela-2014-2 )
Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship
In this excellent 14 minute speech, Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship.
He asks what good is Cuba’s high literacy rate if the government prevents the people from reading the things that they want to read.
He asks what good is Cuba’s medical care if doctors can make more money from driving a taxi than from working as a doctor.
He asks why, if Cuba is as great as its supporters in the U.S. say it is, do so many refugees, doctors, and baseball players flee Cuba for the United States, instead of it being the other way around.
He says the reason Venezuela has a shortage of toiler paper is because communism doesn’t work.
He talks about the arrests and censorship of protestors in Venezuela.
He argues for a U.S. embargo against Venezuela, which is the only thing he says that I don’t see agree with. I think an embargo would hurt the people of Venezuela, and would make it easier for their government to censor and oppress them. I also oppose the U.S. embargo against Cuba. I think the U.S. should offer citizenship to every anti-communist citizen of Venezuela and Cuba. I think we should send lots of large ships to Cuba every day and bring back every Cuban citizen who wishes to live in the U.S. After a few months, Castro wouldn’t have anyone to rule over, because everyone would have left the country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI
Hugo Chavez was an incompetent, communist dictator, who wreaked havoc on Venezuela’s ability to produce goods and services
Last year, Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, died.
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Argentina just set price controls on food – let’s see what happens as a result
Prices are not just random numbers that get picked out of thin air. Instead, prices communicate information about supply and demand. So when the supply and/or demand situation changes, it makes perfect sense that the price would change accordingly.
Economic theory predicts that when the government sets the price of something lower than the supply/demand equilibrium, the demand will exceed the supply, which is the definition of a shortage. More than 4,000 years of various examples of price controls from all over the world show this to be the case.
Today, the BBC reported:
Argentina pegs supermarket price rises for two months
February 4, 2013
The Argentine government has put a temporary price freeze on all products sold in the country’s main supermarket chains to try to fight inflation.
Argentina’s commerce ministry has asked consumers to monitor prices in the chains.
It wants them to keep receipts and has set up a hotline for shoppers to call if they spot any price rises.
The inflation that’s referred to in that article is caused by the government increasing the supply of money with nothing of real value to back it up. This makes the money worth less, and causes prices to rise. But that’s not a real price increase. So, as inflation devalues the currency, the government’s price freeze will actually force food sellers to lower their (real) prices.
If it really is a “temporary” measure for only two months, it’s possible that inflation might not be severe enough for the price controls to result in a substantial drop in (real) food prices.
But I am skeptical about these price controls being “temporary.” My guess is that the price controls will last a lot longer than two months, and as time goes on, inflation will devalue the real value of the currency enough so that the (real) prices will fall significantly, which will cause shortages. And then the government will wrongly blame the shortages on the supermarkets and farmers, and instead of getting rid of the price controls, the government will take action against the supermarkets and farmers, which will cause the situation to get even worse.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this.
Anyway, let’s see what happens in Argentina as a result of these price controls.
For the record, here’s what happened after Venezuela set price caps on food a decade ago:
Since 2003, Hugo Chavez has been setting strict price controls on food, and these price controls have been causing shortages and hoarding.
In January 2008, Chavez ordered the military to seize 750 tons of food that sellers were illegally trying to smuggle across the border to sell for higher prices than what was legal in Venezuela.
In February 2009, Chavez ordered the military to temporarily seize control of all the rice processing plants in the country and force them to produce at full capacity, which they had been avoiding in response to the price caps.
In May 2010, Chavez ordered the military to seize 120 tons of food from Empresas Polar.
In March 2009, Chavez set minimum production quotas for 12 basic foods that were subject to price controls, including white rice, cooking oil, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, cheese, and tomato sauce. Business leaders and food producers claimed that the government was forcing them to produce this food at a loss.
Chavez has nationalized many large farms. Chavez said of the farmland, “The land is not private. It is the property of the state.” Some of the farmland that had been productive while under private ownership is now idle under government ownership, and some of the farm equipment sits gathering dust. As a result, food production has fallen substantially. One farmer, referring to the government officials overseeing the land redistribution, stated, “These people know nothing about agriculture.”
Chavez has seized many supermarkets from their owners. Under government ownership, the shelves in these supermarkets are often empty.
In 2010, after the government nationalized the port at Puerto Cabello, more than 120,000 tons of food sat rotting at the port.
In May 2010, after price controls caused shortages of beef, at least 40 butchers were arrested, and some of them were held at a military base and later strip searched by police.
South Africa’s communist redistribution of farmland has been a colossal failure
In their 1848 publication Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote:
“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
In 2009, the people of South Africa elected communist Jacob Zuma to be their new President.
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Frank Dikotter, author of “Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe,” talks about China’s collectivization of farmland
This video is a real life horror tale of famine, torture, murder, and other unimaginable, real world brutalities that happened after Mao collectivized the farmland, housing, tools, food, and other property in China. The author explains that without private ownership, there was no incentive to grow food, housing literally disappeared, everyone became a thief, and people sold their own children for a handful of grain.
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Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 