Venezuela supermarket looting leaves one dead, dozens detained

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters

CARACAS (Reuters) - One person was killed and dozens were detained following looting of supermarkets in Venezuela's southeastern city of Ciudad Guayana, the state governor said on Friday, amid the ongoing food shortages in the recession-hit OPEC nation.

Shoppers seeking scarce consumer staples including milk, rice and flour broke into a supermarket warehouse on Friday morning, leading businesses in the area to shut their doors, local newspaper Correo del Caroni reported.

State governor Francisco Rangel of the ruling Socialist Party said the looting was politically motivated.

"A group of armed motorcyclists arrived and said they were going to loot certain establishments," he told Venezuelan television station Globovision. "I'm sure it wasn't spontaneous but rather planned with a political motive."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-supermarket-looting-leaves-one-dead-dozens-detained-202420128.html

[EL34x4]

1. Armed motorcyclists

Keep this in mind if the economy collapses.

Men with guns will eat first.

[rwsanders]

4. Men with guns and full bellies will soon sleep.

[snort]

9. Lol

[FrodosPet]

12. All of them at once? Or will they take turns sleeping, like most groups of men with guns?

Waking up grumpy men with guns often has a bad outcome.

[rwsanders]

22. Groups of men with guns are even easier. It won't take long for them to turn on each other

as supplies dwindle. Such is the fate of those trying to buy masculinity.

[Archae]

2. I'm going to suprise the crap out of some people here...

I don't blame Maduro for this.

There are thugs out there who will loot stores and warehouses.

Mostly so they can sell stuff on a black market for grossly inflated prices.

[joshcryer]

7. The legitimization of armed colectivos did this.

Maduro didn't help matters but once the colectivos were allowed to go around with impunity it is impossible to sequester the good ones from the bad ones (and in many cases it's impossible to even distinguish them).

You can't crack down on these large motorcycle gangs for fearing that they could be supporters of the government. So what happens is that they wear the colors of the revolution, if they are questioned, they call out in support of the revolution.

It's Mad Max realized.

[rwsanders]

3. Not surprised: you did know there was a reason gas prices were so low didn't you?

When I first started hearing complaints from the beltway that Venezuela wasn't playing nice and setting up a more left leaning government and trying to pull other central and south american governments out of the US "sphere of influence" I guessed there would be efforts to destabilze the government. By pushing prices so low they are hurting them badly. And the sale of new fighter planes to Saudi Arabia is there to ease the pain for them.

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. Do you have proof for anything you just said, or is this all in your head?

[MyNameGoesHere]

11. It is really strange that

the Saudis (OPEC) have taken this price drop so well. Both Iran and Venezuela have asked OPEC to stabilize prices. But OPEC hasn't done anything.

So the two countries the USA has been trying to strong arm are having the greatest impact on falling prices? Wow that is some coincidence.

[hack89]

13. The Saudis are trying to kneecap US and Canadian fracking industries

by making them uneconomical. The US just became the largest petroleum producer in the world - the Saudis don't like that.

[rwsanders]

21. You really need proof for something like this?

OK sorry life is happy and everything is just as it appears. Sorry to disturb your worldview.

[wolfie001]

23. Under 1000 posts, that's what you get.

Geopolitical politics in the US has been influenced by oil companies for over 100 years. Your speculation has many supportable arguments: the failure in Iraq was another gambit influenced by that turd Cheney and the oil industry. I'd race you to 1000 posts but I figure I'm too far behind. Kudos.

[rwsanders]

24. Doesn't matter to me one way or the other, but thanks.

It's pitiful if that is what passes for credibility here.
I think the record we have of interventions world wide make this valid. I read L. Fletcher Prouty's book on the JFK assasination and it kind of fills in the record after Major General Smedley Butler's era.
I think Tarheel Dem needs to take up her fight with them.
I think the failure of that gambit is what swung a lot of the behind the scenes crowd away from the Rebublicans for a while. I think that is why their candidates are such a collection of clowns.

[Amishman]

25. I want proof for everything

anything less is still being a child believing in Santa

and that desire for proof goes double when a conspiracy theory is involved

[rwsanders]

30. First of all your charactorization of requiring "proof" for believing anything is ridiculous...

I guess you need "proof" of how your car works before you turn the key?

What I presented would appropriately be called a hypothesis that fits the available evidence. Proof will be there 10 years down the road or so, or buried in Wikileaks. There would be no way to have "proof" at this point in time. But like I told the other person, if it bothers you just go back to hiding in your basement and pretending we still live in a "Leave it to Beaver" world like the rest of the baby-boomers. Your need for "proof" is one of the reasons that this country is so screwed up, because people like you just can't believe that "we" would do anything like that. Grow up.

So it fits with

This: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/02/1408026/-A-century-ago-we-invaded-and-occupied-a-nation#

This: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31871-documents-published-by-wikileaks-reveal-the-nsa-s-corporate-priorities

This entire book: http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated-ebook/dp/B0082GYYNI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438631789&sr=8-1&keywords=smedley+butler

This entire book: http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Vietnam-Plot-Assassinate-Kennedy/dp/1616082917/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438631408&sr=8-1&keywords=l.+fletcher+prouty

This entire book: http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Cruise-Secret-History-Empire/dp/0316014001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438631461&sr=1-1&keywords=the+imperial+cruise

Let's not forget this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

[Little Tich]

6. Or perhaps the current leadership of Venezuela is incompetent, and doesn't know how to run

a country...

I don't think it's necessary to look outside Venezuela to find the source of Venezuela's woes.

[joshcryer]

8. You can get a tank of gas in Venezuela for like 65 cents.

I'm not exaggerating.

[metalbot]

29. That has actually spawned a huge smuggling problem

Because you can buy gas for submarket rates, there is a huge cottage industry for smuggling gas from Venezuela to Columbia. The price difference is significant enough that even relatively small amounts of fuel smuggled to Columbia can be quite profitable by Venezuelan economic standards.

One of the fundamental problems associated with trying to control the price of a commodity.

[Sunlei]

10. city people looting milk, rice and flour. I guess then they'll starve to death & eat each other...

like the usa first occupiers on the east coast.

can someone please send those city looters a couple goats? & show them how they can turn weeds into 'free milk' and free meat.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. If there are staple foods in the warehouses, why are there none in the stores?

These are privately owned stores, yes?

Normally, if a grocery store runs out of something, it sends to the warehouse for more, unless you have a real shortage due to a blockade or panic hoarding.

Or are we seeing a capital strike, such as the CIA used against Salvador Allende?

If you've never heard of a capital strike, it's business owners refusing to invest or supply goods to markets to create artificial shortages, which they then blame on the government.

(There was even a mini producers'/wholesalers' strike in the U.S. in the late 1970s, when sugar became scarce in stores and prices skyrocketed.)

It would be different if the warehouses were empty, too, and had nothing for the looters to loot, but if the warehouses are full and the stores are empty, I smell a capital strike.

Otherwise, if there are customers willing to buy and stocks that need replenishing, why would business owners NOT replenish the stocks?

Par ejemplo:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110842612

[Dr. Strange]

15. That's an interesting article.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/30/us-venezuela-polar-idUSKCN0Q42JJ20150730

So distribution is being interrupted by the government, because they want to turn a principal dispatch center into housing?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. The article I referenced had the govt. occupying warehouses owned by companies like Nestle

to FORCE them to distribute food.

Nestle would never do anything underhanded, now would it?

[Bacchus4.0]

18. The article you referenced had the gov seizing the food warehouse for creation of housing

which is odd considering their food shortage problems they would make the problem worse. but that is chavismo for you.

[Dr. Strange]

20. No, you referenced a DU thread...

which referenced this article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/30/us-venezuela-polar-idUSKCN0Q42JJ20150730

And that article makes it sound like the warehouses are being seized for the land, to build housing for the poor. (Here's another article that says the same thing: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/31/beer-shortages-loom-in-venezuela-as-troops-occupy-caracas-warehouse , although it says there are no shortages on the shelves.)

[Bacchus4.0]

19. The looting reported in the OP did occur in a store, a supermarket, not a warehouse. nt

[Amishman]

26. because the food is largely imported and the currency spread makes it too expensive for distribution

Most of the warehouses I have seen mentioned are either imported goods (daewoo raid, the diaper raid, etc) or goods made locally from imported materials (Polar beer). The goods are likely dollar valued (or another stable currency) and given the exchange rate, the individual stores cannot pay for resupply given that the stores only have bolivars which are rapidly losing value. Its a desire not to go bankrupt that keeps the goods in the warehouse, not some CIA conspiracy.

[christx30]

27. And when those supplies are stolen by

either the government or the locals, it makes the stores disinclined to simply not bring them into the country at all.

[hughee99]

17. God damn CIA!

Yeah, the looting was "political motivated". I don't think that's what motivates hungry people.

[ananda]

28. Coming soon to a supermarket near you.

TPP! TPP!