Online Game’s Currency Is Now Worth 7 Times More Than Venezuela’s Bolivar

The currency in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft is now worth more than Venezuela’s bolivar. File this one under: “Things that happen when socialists take over.”

Although it’s probably not very funny for those who use money as toilet paper in the socialist dystopia of Venezuela, it’s nonetheless, a teachable moment for delusional leftists in the United States who are chomping at the bit for a master like Bernie Sanders Nicholas Maduro. Because of anti-capitalist ideals, the fake gold of Azeroth in the World of Warcraft is now worth seven times what the bolivar is worth.

Here’s the math behind the currency value:

Per Google, one U.S. dollar is worth 68,915 bolivar.

Compare that to the price of WoW tokens, official in-game credits that can be used to extend a player’s play time or buy in-game items. Tokens can be bought with either $20 real world cash or sold for a fluctuating amount of in-game gold. One tracking service lists the current gold price of a token as 203,035 pieces. That works out to about 10,152 gold gaming pieces per USD.

By those calculations, World of Warcraft virtual gold would be worth 6.8 times as much as the bolivar.

If you factor in the black market rate of the bolivar, though, the difference is even more staggering. Dolar Today, which tracks the black market rate of the bolivar, seems to say the currency’s current value is 636,771.03 per U.S. dollar.

By that figure, WoW gold would be worth nearly 62 times as much as Venezuela’s official currency. –Forbes

A big shoutout to Forbes for doing the heavy lifting on the math. But it doesn’t change the fact Venezuela seems to have dug themselves into a pit that they won’t get out of with more regulations and market controls. Of course, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has shifted his support away from the Bolivar and over to the recently-launched national cryptocurrency, the Petro.

Venezuelan citizens, meanwhile, have taken to bartering in their day to day business dealings. Which is a better deal anyway – no sales tax (extortion fee).

5 Things That Disappeared During the Collapse of Venezuela

This report was originally published by J. G. Martinez D. at The Organic Prepper

They say nothing lasts forever. But sometimes, I know there are situations that seem to be eternal, and that is how it has seemed during the collapse of Venezuela.

The agony of the Venezuelan induced crisis is about to produce an output. How this results, it will depend on how much external assistance is required.

Many things have disappeared as the military and government continue to control and subjugate the population.

Self-Defense

Venezuelans do not have weaponry at home. The right to defend our own lives was seized in 2014 under threat of 25 years of jail for those who don´t give their guns. Those who agreed to the registering of their guns had to give them for “ballistic registration” and they were never given back their weapons.

Please note that the gun culture was never as strong in our country as in the USA or other countries. It was just not as common. Most of our society came from the war-devastated Europe and had an intrinsic fear of guns. Perhaps they had their reasons, though.

These days, there are no gun shops, no ammo available other than for the military and “law” enforcement. What were once well-supplied gunshops with lots of varieties of defense tools, all kind of ammunition, accessories and tons of other stuff, have become sporting goods shops to prevent going out of business. Most of them sell as well accessories for the LEOs and NGs: boots, leg holders,  MOLLE vests, bulletproof vests with the official forces logos, riot helmets. Go figure. But the civilians don´t get a chance to defend themselves.

Money

The daily struggle has been these last few weeks intensifying.

The price increases are no longer bi-weekly. They are daily increases.

Prices are different if you pay with cash, or via debit card or interbank transfer. Remember that old saying that says cash is king? It became especially true…even under the hyperinflation rate. Cash prices are half of what you would pay with debit or transfer.

Of course, that will work until the payment systems fall apart. With the currency control, the spare parts and electronic equipment prices have skyrocketed, and the systems are wearing out at an accelerated rate without any hope to be replaced. I have mentioned this disaster in my social network profiles, as being a post-collapse stage, and the people living in the debris, without even noticing it.

The salaries, obviously, have remained the same, especially those of the state workers. Therefore, there are plenty of workers who have just quit via email after leaving the country without looking back. There are “bonuses” and other government handouts (only available for those with the “Carnet of the Patria” that is used as a blackmail mechanism and for fraud in the elections) that instead of solving the problem makes it worse.

The government has driven to bankruptcy over 8000 companies all over the country. This is serious business.

Utilities

The situation with the electrical power crisis is becoming a point of no return. The mafia gangsters know that, after food accessibility, the access to energy is one of the major ways to control the population. They have been using military strategies against the civilian population, not just in terms of repressive techniques, but cutting the supply lines.

The lack of a reliable electrical power supply affects the water supply. As a result, now people in the major cities are not just struggling for food. They have now an intermittent water service. Most of them live in places where they don’t have access to space enough for installing a tank, like small apartments in the nearby smaller, “bedroom” cities. Another remarkable negative aspect is the propane supply. It has completely taken over by the mafias.

This problem with electricity makes the banks and ATMs work at 20% of their capacity. The cash available to each user is limited, rationed. Even if you have millions, the daily quota is barely able to pay for a ride on the bus, not even to take a cab.

In some places, the power is limited to 2 hours a day. Not even in the special period in Cuba was there a similar power rationing. There has been proof that one of the “revolutionary” governors is running a warehouse filled with over 11000 Bitcoin mining machines, and this is one of the reasons for the power rationing in the Zulia state. Go figure.

The lack of the investment in the main infrastructure is monumental. Since Maduro arrived, it seems all the money went to someone else’s pocket, but the maintenance of the power grids was never done. Neither the main generator of that which was once the engine of our economy: the oil industry.

The actual balance sheet of this corporation is a joke. I was in a 25 person group. There are only 3 remaining, who can’t leave because they don’t have any money, nor some way to find it. It is a shame because these are responsible family heads, not the usual joker who used to laugh when I mentioned the need for prepping and having the papers ready to fly away. We are now scattered to the 4 cardinal points of South America and Europe.

Most of us are specialists, so many have been lucky to find jobs in the line of work they were carrying along. The amount of specialists, specialized laborers, experienced technicians that have been forced to migrate is so large, that there is no other output. The power grid is collapsing slowly, but its paralyzation is inevitable.

The politicians and I mean both sides of this apocalyptic equation, simply can’t accept this reality. They lack the needed vision. For this guys, the future is just the day after today. Their concept of tomorrow is just as limited and narrow, as big is their greed and lust for power and control of people´s life.

Food

My wife’s testimony is heartbreaking. She has been struggling until last week with the food scarcity. Her cooking skills worked a lot for creating attractive meals for the kids. Mostly for the younger one, indeed…to be honest, the older one is able to eat stuff unknown in this solar system. Not that this is something bad for a survivor.

The amount of people without a proper nutrition is already getting bigger. My wife mentioned that neighbors and acquaintances with an awesome weight loss are surprising. She has run into some friends after some time without seeing them…and she has found herself in troubles to recognize them.

The prices, as expected in a collapsed, hyperinflationary economy, are rising daily.  The only opportunity for survival is receiving an external steady supply of foreign currency, and even this is not sufficient.

Even if you have money enough, you will have to go from place to place to try to buy some food. There is no guarantee of being able to find food available: the mafias take over the food in large amounts, purchasing in bulk and leaving the shelves empty.  The cash money supply is as well kidnapped by the mafias. They sell 1.000.000 bolivars cash but you have to transfer 1.500.000 Bolivars to the accounts of the mafia. The (now) non legitimate government says this is an “Economical warfare” and they keep blaming the US, the EU, the aliens, and the astronomical conjunctions, or the climate change. This is why no one believes in them anymore.

Transportation

Why do I say the collapse already happened? Because you can’t buy things even if you have the money.

Because now the capability to repair a car or motorcycle is nonexistent. And if you don’t have a bicycle, or some small, gasoline efficient vehicle, dirt cheap and easy to repair, be prepared to walk a lot. My huge cruising motorcycle is now in storage until further notice. I would rather own a small Vespa 250, that have even a spare tire, and carry a passenger with some luggage. This is one of the items I will buy once we are back for the rebuilding. With the gas prices that I expect to be set in the new economy after the recovery, this is going to be a need. My SUV is busted. The engine repairing is on the range of the 1600-1800$. Therefore, I am not repairing anything in the near future.

No concerns here. The mafias are controlling the engine oil, batteries and tires supply, and having an operational car being 4500 kms far away, there is no point on that other than leaving a car in good shape to my dad. But being my brother without a car…well, you get the picture. He is my brother and I love him but I worked way too hard to keep that SUV in good shape.

Leaving was the only option.

I think many of those with some military training reading this will agree with my comment about how are being used military strategies with our civilian population. The reasons are plenty. They have killed people. They know that the international justice is after them and it is just a matter of time before they have to run. They know they have endangered their very own families, in their blindness and immeasurable greed.

They try to cover and silence everyone who is opposed to their plans.

But finally, my family is here, and in good shape. My younger son is under a normal weight for his size, he is happy, and that is what really matters. Thanks to all of those who have found useful our bitter experience and have contributed willingly with some very needed assistance.

It is a journey that I would not wish even to my worst enemy, indeed.

God bless us all, people.

About the Author

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They are currently setting up a new life in another country. paypal.me/JoseM151

Reality Check: What Venezuela’s National Crypto Means for Decentralization (VIDEO)

 

By Ben Swann, Truth in Media | 

President Trump recently announced a ban on Venezuela’s new national cryptocurrency, the petro.

That’s right—Venezuela created its own national crypto, possibly to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

But could the petro do more than that, and actually catalyze government-controlled cryptos around the world?

This is a Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.

President Trump signed an executive order March 21 banning all transactions involving digital currency issued by the Venezuelan government, after it began pre-selling its own cryptocurrency, the petro, in February.

The petro differs from other cryptos because, according to the Brookings Institute, “The price of one petro is pegged to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan oil…” and “the petro/bolivar exchange rate … includes a discount factor determined by the Venezuelan government.”

By making that distinction, the Venezuelan government is now responsible for managing multiple currency systems simultaneously, creating what Dash Force News Editor Joël Valenzuela described as “an accounting nightmare.”

But isn’t cryptocurrency supposed to make accounting for transactions easier?

Well, actually it’s not the cryptos but the tech they’re built on. A few episodes back, we discussed how cryptocurrency is backed by radical transparency due to the power of the blockchain.

Rather than being backed by radical transparency and being a “trustless system”, as Valenzuela called it, the petro is essentially “fiat crypto.”

“When you back it with something that doesn’t have transparency, you have to trust the party that is providing the assets that back the coin,” according to Valenzuela. “It ruins its original value proposition.”

So why would Venezuela create the petro in the first place?

Once a crypto is a national currency, it’s subject to many tariff barriers and, in some cases, sanctions. Which is why President Trump made the first major national decision by the U.S. to ban a cryptocurrency. But cryptos like Dash aren’t tied to a government and weren’t created to bypass sanctions.

Once the richest nation in Latin America, Venezuela had suffered wild inflation, plummeting the standard of living and causing uproar from poverty stricken citizens. Many Venezuelans facing economic hardship are putting pressure on the government to stop the bleeding.

Anything to ease their suffering in the short term will be a boon to the tyrants, according to Valenzuela. But because the petro is not truly backed by trustlessness, critics say the government crypto won’t last long. And that presents a challenge to other governments considering creating their own cryptos.

Russian President Vladimir Putin already announced his government will issue its own CryptoRuble, likely sometime in mid-2019, according to CoinTelegraph.

The CryptoRuble is supposed to be directly tied to the ruble, issued by the Russian government and could not be mined.

More governments are likely to investigate the benefits of state controlled blockchain technology.

But remember, the two major selling points of blockchain are radical transparency and decentralization, meaning no one can manipulate the supply or the transactions.

And it’s those two aspects of blockchain that governments aren’t fans of.

Recently Congressman Brad Sherman of California read a statement that called cryptocurrencies “harmful,” and appeared to accidentally admit that cryptocurrency reduces government control of our currency. He said, “It hurts the U.S. government in two ways. Our contr… …our ability to have the US dollar be the chief means of international finance is what has underpinned our ability to impose sanctions…”

So Sherman doesn’t like the lack of “contr…” that the government has over crypto.

But on the other hand, imagine if the U.S. decided to use blockchain to track how our tax dollars are spent. Remember when the Pentagon admitted earlier this year that it couldn’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars?

What could help prevent data loss like this? The blockchain.

Corporations are already testing out the tech to prevent major data breaches like what happened to Target, Home Depot, JP Morgan, Anthem and others.

John Oliver explained the power of the blockchain in a recent episode of his show “Last Week Tonight.” He said, “The blockchain… a database that is nearly impossible to hack or tamper with, and which could possibly improve security, efficiency and trust. That is why big companies like Wal-Mart, IBM and JP Morgan have all been experimenting with blockchain as a way to potentially share and secure data transactions in a reliable, easy to access way.”

So what you need to know is that the blockchain presents an opportunity for governments to create a more transparent financial system. But Venezuela isn’t really doing that with the petro.

The crypto market has and will continue to fluctuate. Some crypto will disappear, some will stick around.

The question is, who is going to control the crypto? If governments do… they will take away the freedom of crypto… but if crypto currencies remain decentralized, then we will be able to keep a radically transparent financial system for the people.

That’s Reality Check. Let’s talk about that, right now, on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Reality Check: What Venezuela’s National Crypto Means for Decentralization (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Socialist Dystopia: Venezuelans ASSAULTED By Police Outside Socialist Health Ministry

Venezuela should be a lesson to Americans why the concept of tyrannical control (dubbed socialism or communism) should be avoided at all costs. But as many here clamor for more government control over their lives and healthcare decisions, Venezuelans who live under that control, are assaulted by the police outside the socialist health ministry.

It is with a heavy heart that one reports on the inevitable consequence of collectivism, because, since collectivism is predicated on state violence and threats of it, the outcomes are always, always bad. –MRCTV

Desperate Venezuelan citizens were attacked by armed police on April 20 when they protested the dire lack of medicine and healthcare in the socialist nation. According to Breitbart, and Carlos Camacho, of The Latin American Herald Tribune, protesters shouting “genocidas” ( or genocide perpetrators) tried to gain access to the Caracas base of the Venezuelan Health Ministry, but were met by armed police. The police assaulted the protesters, some of whom were suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and HIV, causing multiple injuries and fueling the fires of even greater resentment over Venezuela’s diseased socialist health system.

“The government just does not have the response capacity in the face of the magnitude of what is happening with the medicines’ shortages,” protestor Francisco Valencia told NTN24 following the meeting. “We will have to go to Miraflores to demand solutions from President Nicolás Maduro,” he continued. “Enough with all of the deaths! The government has the solution in its hands by activating international cooperation mechanisms.”

Shocking reports from inside the country include cases of patients being asked to bring their own bandages, gauze, and medicine, while the chronic lack of said items in a nation impoverished by socialism has led to a rise in amputations of infected limbs, and more mastectomies due to a lack of cancer treatment.

No central plan will offer a long-term solution to this. In fact, it is the very collectivism most democrats seek that brought this disaster about. Doctors and drug makers who are controlled by government dictates regarding what they can charge and offer will not long offer much.  And the silence in the mainstream media and American leftists is noteworthy.

Disarmed by the government, desperate and ill Venezuelans are being threatened by armed agents of the state as they try to get the medicine they had been promised by the collectivist system, medicine that only the competitive free market can provide in higher quality at lower and lower prices. (Also another lesson for Americans wondering why the cost of their drugs and medical care is so high.)

As Malnourishment Skyrockets in Venezuela, Unique Blockchain Technology Used to Feed Starving Kids

The face of philanthropy and charity is changing thanks to the blockchain. The power to affect positive change in this world is no longer centralized among the few, but spread out among the many.

The post As Malnourishment Skyrockets in Venezuela, Unique Blockchain Technology Used to Feed Starving Kids appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Venezuela hopes to tackle the world’s worst inflation by deleting zeros from its currency

Intellihub editor’s note: It appears the George Soros-funded attack on Venezuelan currency may be panning out, as former political figures, like Henri Falcon, emerge on the scene to push the U.S. dollar into place.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Economic pledges may be par for the course in election campaigns, but in hyperinflationary Venezuela, the candidates’ dueling promises are going further, with the incumbent vowing to lop a few zeros off the currency, while his main challenger calls for the adoption of the U.S. dollar.

President Nicolás Maduro late Thursday briefly outlined his monetary rescue plan. In a country where a dozen eggs can cost 250,000 bolivars ($5) amid worsening inflation, he would chop three zeros off the currency — arguably bringing the price for those eggs down to 250.

“I ask you all for your prayers and support for the success of the monetary reconversion,” Maduro said in a televised event Thursday night.

Via Washington Post

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Featured Image: SHTFPlan.com

The post Venezuela hopes to tackle the world’s worst inflation by deleting zeros from its currency appeared first on Intellihub.

Socialism: Child Gangs Fight For ‘Quality Garbage’ With Machetes In Venezuela

While many politicians and civilians in the United States focus on making the country a socialist regime, Venezuela’s children are forming gangs and using machetes to fight each other for “quality garbage” so they have something to eat.

Socialism is only good for those already at the very top.  It’s a very important lesson for anyone seeking to “remove the wealth” from the 1%.  Never assume that the rich will allow you vote their money away in the first place. The other issue most socialists forget that the 1% is made up the very wealthy politicians from both parties who will profit immensely from the implementation of socialism.  Of course, when that does happen children starve and become violent as a means to survive and have just one more meal.

The Miami Herald has detailed the lives of children forced to live under the harsh realities of socialism. Liliana, at the age of only 16, has become the mother figure for a gang of Venezuelan children and young adults called the Chacao, named after the neighborhood they’ve claimed as their territory. The 15 members, ranging in age from 10 to 23, work together to survive vicious fights for “quality” garbage in crumbling, shortage-plagued, socialist dystopia of Venezuela. Their weapons are knives and sticks and machetes. And their only prize is garbage that contains food scrapes barely good enough to eat.

Many of the children in the Chacao gang flock to a life of violence but a family-oriented one because there’s no other option if they want to eat.  There are at least 10 gangs in the capital of Caracas according to social workers and police estimate. “There were always children on the street in Venezuela but now we are seeing a new phenomenon — kids who get more food on the street than at their homes,” says Beatriz Tirado, who leads “Angeles de Calle,” or Street Angels, a non-governmental charity.

“Our kids are finding ways to survive because neither in their homes nor in their communities is there enough food,” explains social worker Roberto Patino, who has established 29 public diners all over the country to feed the massive numbers of hungry children. But Patino also bemoans that there are not enough resources to help the children get their lives back on track let alone feed them properly. For now, many have turned to trash bags as a source of nutrition.

But the gang life is dangerous for the children. Often, they venture into the more affluent neighborhoods of the politicians. One of those territories is Las Mercedes. It has high-end restaurants that attract the political elite Venezuelans. Because garbage bags there often contain leftovers and even untouched food, they are sought after by a number of the gangs. The clashes over bags of trash can be deadly.

The children often take to the consumption of street drugs at an early age as well.  They become criminals, tossing the law out the window to survive.  They steal, assault people, and use drugs like crack, sometimes smoked in makeshift pipes made from the parts of discarded plastic dolls, but for a very disturbing reason. “When you smoke you don’t feel hungry,” explains Patricio.

The few failures of capitalism are much preferable to the few success of socialism. Although one can argue that there haven’t been any successes with regards to socialism unless you count the lining of the pockets of the politicians who rule over everyone else.

We Never Could Have Imagined (or Prepped For) What Actually Happened in Venezuela

This article was originally published by J. G. Martinez D. at The Organic Prepper

Can we prepare for everything?

We never could have imagined…or prepped for…what happened in Venezuela.

In this article, I wanted to analyze my preps, and the nature of the apocalypse we have been forced to face. I don’t know about you, but anything that kicks you out of your place, of your warm bed, your pets, kids, wife, and the rest of your family, for me does not have another better word to describe it.

My comfort bubble was destroyed, my work of an entire life was thrown out by the window, my family insurance full coverage policy is gone with the wind (although with no medications to be had and doctors running away to Argentina and Colombia, it’s not like it was very useful though), and the few preps I had for 4 or 5 months are history now. Of course, they worked pretty well, and we stretched it a little bit, but once the system collapsed, there is nothing else we can do but close the place and bug out to some other place where we can at least buy food.

What happened was something entirely different from what we had prepared for.

I guess that what I mean is, that, within our means, we prepared more or less adequately, but what really happened was something entirely different that we had not prepared for.

We prepared for some of the consequences of turmoil, unrest, riots, crime. We were able to hunker down for a while and able to defend ourselves silently and seriously, without having to leave our haven. The scarcity problems started back there around 2013-2014. Those years were the last time I remember we could buy large amounts of wheat flour, corn flour for arepas (yes, those yellow packages you see people fist fighting each other for on the web), pasta, powdered and UHT packaged milk, rice, and other staples.

An economic collapse this long seemed like something that was entirely out of the question. It was entirely unpredictable. I would have expected a pandemics or a coup d’etat long before this hungry zombie-like scenario.

We knew something disturbing was going to happen sooner or later. We could feel it in the atmosphere…but nothing like this. We never thought it would be impossible to find a battery, or engine oil, or gasoline (Jeez, this was an oil-producing country!!) or that kids were going to be endangered in the very door of their schools. In the worst of our nightmares we could have imagined that one of our rescued cats that we relocated with one of our friends in a barrio was going to suffer a horrendous death (please don’t ask for details).

We never could have imagined that the oil and electricity state companies employees were going to be threatened with imprisonment for treason if they tried to quit their jobs to leave the country. Because THAT IS HAPPENING. When I found about this, I felt a deep sensation of relief as never in my life because I had left. The only similar feeling I can think about, was when my last son was born, and the doctors told me he was just fine, like a champion, and no reasons to worry about.

Under the current situation, being accused of such terrible charges is a complete nightmare. But with the income from the online freelance work, we have been able to at least keep the home running, without the tiny salary that once was more than enough for a good living. Without it…our family would have been condemned to doom, no matter our preps.

So quitting and leaving the country (and my family) behind was one of the choices that have been the hardest in our lives, but the most sound, and the most assertive in the long run. Just by avoiding the potential danger of being (falsely of course) accused of treason and getting in a messy problem, it’s already a huge benefit. I have always given trust to female intuition. When my wife and I discussed about how bad things were going, and the decision for me to leave first, I knew it was her intuition speaking.

We never imagine that cash was going to be another commodity, and that the prices were going to be much different if you tried to pay with debit card instead of cash. If you pay with a debit card, the price will be double than if paid in cash. This is not surprising: the rate of the circulating cash to the non-circulating is deeply distorted. There are people even SELLING the cash: you transfer them one million BsF to their bank accounts, they will give you 500 or 600.000 cash. And that is barely enough for two dozen eggs and some cheese.

In retrospect, what could we have done to prepare for the current situation?

Let’s see.

• A 5 years antibiotics supply, for each family member (please include pets, they could be sick or get wounded too, and we consider them members too), with the assistance of good will, close doctors. This should be considered as an insurance policy; a non-transferable, secret stash of medications for the worst scenario. Cefadroxil, penicillin, and some other similar stuff.


• Diarrhea stopping meds


• Serum


• Needles and tubing


• Surgical gloves


• Breath cover masks, and a couple of reusable syringes that you could sterilize in a small backpack stove or a bonfire in the backyard…


• A solar power array with a small battery pack just for lighting


• A large, buried diesel custom-made aluminum tank with a proper sized generator (there is not too much space left in our place: we live in a subdivision, houses are wall to wall next to each other) with a homemade silencer, and adequately rigged to the wiring of the house for the largest systems, like freezers and air conditioning. Specially designed plastic diesel tanks would have been best as they don’t rust and they are cheap and strong; but the aluminum seemed a better idea because they make it with the size you want, and as the space is limited I would have optimized it. It could have been possible even designing an aesthetically attractive setup, something like a strong wood frame with the tank on top, and with a small hanging plants gardening to obstruct the view of the tank, and wrapping the feeding lines to the generator in ivy.


• Enclosing our garage before the steel rebar disappeared from the white market and the production was destined to the black and grey market. (I hate fencing, it is like living in a birdcage, but this would helped a lot for peace of mind).


• A sun-protected small herb garden in the roof of the small workshop in the back of the house, with spices and medicinal plants. The excess of production (These are the tropics, plants here grow like weeds from one week to another, remember, lots of sun and rain) could be exchanged for some staples.


• Perhaps a chicken coop with a couple of hens. The eggs price has been so inflated this days that a single egg costs more than the minimum wage. A hen produces more than a laborer. Do you remember that stories about the eggs, chocolate, and potatoes acting as currency in the WWII? It is becoming currency here too.


• Perhaps even growing our own sugar cane to squeeze, grind and get what we call here “papelon” (solidified sugar cane juice) for sweetening would be possible in our small front garden


• A couple of corn rows, not the hybrid Monsanto genetically modified crap that needs industrial fertilizer, weed killers and unable to generate seed, but the Amazonic variety: larger production in much smaller time, just needs sun (we have more of it than what we would like) and water.


• Another SUV, with a much taller ground clearance, larger tires, diesel-powered with no electronics and a huge front fender. Something heavy, strong, black or dark grey, windows covered by that plastic clear bullet proof sheeting, able to plow a pack of thugs in motorcycles out of the way without a blink.

Yes, I know how it sounds. But I don’t care after some things I have known these MFs can do, like a guy being shot 30 meters from the person who told me the story by a criminal in a motorcycle, and me and my family almost being stopped in a desert road at 8pm in the middle of nowhere with a log in the middle of the way (I just push it to the floorboard, and we jumped over it).

There is no possible way to have stockpiled pasta and other dry goods for such a long period without buying another house, or building a second floor adding about 60 or 70 square meters to the house. And even so it would have been risky: someone watching in the wrong moment and we would have been in deep trouble, accused of “hoarding” and yadda yadda (insert your favorite “socialist” excuse for stealing private property here). Our goods seized, the 10% sold in public to “the poor people” for the government-owned newspapers and the 90% stolen by you-know-who.

Self-supplying proteins with our current setup in a subdivision is much harder. There is not too much space. Rabbits and other rodents are out of the question as the flies their poop attract here in the tropics are a problem, and economically not viable by the way. The cleaning products and food are too expensive and, as you must suppose, scarce. The people in country cottages already will be much better prepared than we nerdy, espresso-addicted, city dwellers.

In this light, it seems that the best choices would have been moving out to a cottage, don’t you think?

It’s not that easy.

Our laws don’t approve home schooling; driving one hour from the country cottage to the school everyday is out of the question because getting car parts and consumables is nearly impossible, or too expensive.

Crime is getting increasingly nasty. A cottage with crops and cattle is an easy target for hungry people that was too lazy and ignorant to prepare themselves when they could. Getting a tool like a shotgun for defense just would bring more problems. Thugs see this as an attraction too big to resist. Since weapons and ammo are scarce, they are a real treasure. They know where you are, and they are organized and have the proper contacts to be able to put you in a  very difficult position.

It would have been much worse to take down something trying to mess with you in your own home, as they never steal alone. The castle laws won’t apply, unless the deceased has been a real pain in the backside and a dangerous criminal in his life, and if that’s the case, chances are that a lot of his friends are similar. A second “visit”, perhaps with more prepared thugs will come, because they know you will be able to do whatever you need and won’t take horse manure from anyone.

Or even worse, LEOs will prosecute the cottage owner because they are a ‘threat to the government.’ They will empty the house of whatever is inside as possible “products of a crime” and the owner will be unable to prove the contrary from inside the jail. I have known from several people who had to pay monthly to the guerrilla militia the products that they preferred to sell at a loss.

Having kids to take care of and provide for, the lone wolf option is not really an option. If the BOL is not far away enough or well hidden enough, sooner or later someone will discover it. The best option is to band together with some other families, each in their cottage, and build a communications network reliable enough and with good backup, in case some packs try to attack. I know this would be much easier for USA people, as their access to all kind of defense tools is much better.

Personal note:

I want to thank to those who have sent assistance, from the bottom of my heart. However, building the needed amount has been slow: I have still to buy some mattresses, a small table with chairs, and some other stuff, despite sending some money home weekly for food as well, before getting the tickets to get my people out. I had to leave all of my gear back at home, and starting from zero.

I appreciate your comments, even if I have not responded to most of them yet, but I promise you I will submit a special article with the answers to all your questions, as they are very interesting and I know you will be interested in a lot of what I have to say about those topics!

Thanks, my dear readers, and see you next week!

About the Author

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. If you’d like to donate to help Jose get his family out of Venezuela, you can do so here: paypal.me/JoseM151

“I Haven’t Eaten Meat In 2 Months” – Venezuelan Oil Workers Are Collapsing From Hunger On The Job

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Those who are unfamiliar with Venezuela’s unprecedented economic collapse might be surprised to learn that the country’s oil production has only slowed, even as the price of a barrel of crude has risen in most international markets.

Unsurprisingly (it’s Venezuela), there’s a macabre explanation for this phenomenon: The workers at PDVSA – Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which once showered Venezuelans with oil wealth – are literally collapsing due to hunger and exhaustion as workers defy their government handlers and flee their jobs in their desperation as the value of their pay has been completely erased.

Bloomberg spoke with several workers in Venezuela’s oil industry about the harsh conditions they face on a daily basis.

Of course, oil workers aren’t the only ones suffering: The situation in Venezuela is getting so dire that ordinary Venezuelans are losing tons of body weight because of the food shortages. Many can no longer afford to buy meat.

One worker told Bloomberg about how his weekly salary barely pays for the corn flour he mixes with water and drinks every morning.

At 6:40 a.m., Pablo Ruiz squats at the gate of a decaying refinery in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, steeling himself for eight Sisyphean hours of brushing anti-rust paint onto pipes under a burning sun. For breakfast, the 55-year-old drank corn-flour water.

Ruiz’s weekly salary of 110,000 bolivares — about 50 cents at the black-market exchange rate — buys him less than a kilo of corn meal or rice. His only protein comes from 170 grams of canned tuna included in a food box the government provides to low-income families. It shows up every 45 days or so.

“I haven’t eaten meat for two months,” he said. “The last time I did, I spent my whole week’s salary on a chicken meal.”

Hunger is hastening the ruin of Venezuelan’s oil industry as workers grow too weak and hungry for heavy labor. With children dying of malnutrition and adults sifting garbage for table scraps, food has become more important than employment, and thousands are walking off the job. Absenteeism and mass resignations mean few are left to produce the oil that keeps the tattered economy functioning.

Researchers at three Venezuelan Universities reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90% now live in poverty, according to a new university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages. That annual survey has become a key barometer of the country’s economic stress since the government stopped releasing reliable economic data, as Reuters reports.

Per Reuters, over 60% of Venezuelans surveyed said that during the previous three months they had woken up hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. About a quarter of the population was eating two or less meals a day.

After winning the presidency in 1999, leftist President Hugo Chavez was proud of improving Venezuela’s social indicators as the country’s economy was bolstered by oil-fueled welfare policies.

But his successor President Nicolas Maduro, who has ruled since 2013, has allowed corruption to flourish. And his political allies have mismanaged the economy to such a degree that the collapse in the price of oil during 2014 had ruinous consequences.

Even as the price of crude has begun to creep materially higher, the situation in Venezuela is only getting worse.

In contemporary Venezuela, currency controls restrict food imports, hyperinflation eats into salaries, and people line up for hours to buy basics like flour.

As a result, 90% of Venezuelans live in poverty.

In what appears to be a last-ditch effort to rescue the country’s economy and his regime, President Nicolas Maduro yesterday began sales of the Petro, Venezuela’s oil-backed cryptocurerency. The launch was so successful, Maduro has assured the public, that he is considering launch a “Petro Oro” – a cryptocurrency backed by gold reserves.

But perhaps even more shocking than the dire circumstances under which PDVSA’s remaining employees go to work every day is the contrast with the country’s prosperous past, as Bloomberg describes it…

For decades, PDVSA was a dream job in a socialist petro-state. The company supplied workers not only with a good living and revolutionary-red coveralls, but cafeterias that served lunches with soup, a main course, dessert and freshly squeezed juice. Now, the cafeterias are mostly bare, the children are hungry and employees are leaving to work as taxi drivers, plumbers or farmers. Some emigrate. Some hold out as long as they can.

…Now, instead of enjoying the trappings of a comfortable, middle-class life (not to mention freshly squeezed fruit juice), desperate employees are risking the government’s wrath – and possibly sacrificing their chance at a government pension someday – to escape not only from their jobs, but from Venezuela.

Those who quit without notice risk losing their pensions, as bureaucrats refuse to process paperwork. Many managers live in terror of arrest since the Maduro regime purged the industry, imprisoning officials from low-level apparatchiks to former oil ministers. In one human resources office, a sign advertised a limit of five resignations a day.

“Management is holding them back to stop brain and technical drain,” said Jose Bodas, general secretary of United Federation of Venezuelan Oil Workers. He estimates 500 employees have resigned at the Puerto La Cruz refinery and nearby processing facilities in the past 12 months – even though superiors have labeled them “traitors to the homeland,” a phrase that often precedes arrest. In the streets, families sell their boots and the red coveralls.

“They’re giving up because of hunger,” Bodas said. “They’re leaving because they get paid better abroad. This is unheard of, a catastrophe.”

In a nightmarish reflection of what life must’ve been like in some of the most poverty stricken areas of the Soviet Union, widespread adsenteeism is forcing those who stay behind to work long hours at the state’s insistence – without any additional compensation.

Sitting in the living room of his house, on his day off, Endy Torres says he has lost 33 pounds over the past 18 months. He shows his PDVSA identification photo as proof: a chubby-cheeked man, weighing 176 pounds.

Ten years ago, he joined the company expecting an ample salary and comfortable pension. Today, his 700,000 bolivars per month, plus a food bonus of 1.6 million bolivars (about $9.50 altogether) can’t fill the fridge at his grandmother’s house, where he lives.

About 10 people from his department resigned in January. There are 263 plant operators remaining and 180 vacancies at the Puerto La Cruz refinery, he said.

Absenteeism forces those who show up to work extra hours and burn precious calories. The lack of investment in equipment and maintenance has increased technical failures, almost all in the early hours of the morning, he said. When they occur, workers are too fatigued to act quickly, and accidents occur.

And the worst part of it all is: Even if oil prices make a surprise comeback, years of favoritism, corruption and – now – international sanctions mean it’s unlikely Venezuela’s oil industry will suddenly blossom once again: For those who stay behind, the formerly wealthiest country in Latin America will probably remain mired in poverty, for as long as it’s ruled by a corrupt autocracy.

Venezuelan COPS Kidnapped Pro Athlete’s Elderly Mom and Held Her For Ransom…and This ISN’T Unusual

This report was originally published by J.G. Martinez D at The Organic Prepper

Our state has failed in many ways. There is no security, there is no a food production system, and the economy collapsed a long time ago. Under these conditions, anyone with the smallest bit of power will do everything they can to keep their life quality. Stealing medicines in the shipments in Customs, openly stealing from law-abiding citizens, taking their cellphones, or anything that could be exchanged for some food, alcohol, or other stuff. This is the current situation here, and I am not sweetening anything.

Some professional athletes come from poor barrios, like El Gato Galarraga, great Omar Vizquel, basketball player Gabriel Estaba, and many from other countries, too. The athletes leave it all behind, but often, their elders refuse to leave their house, friends, and the lifestyle they have enjoyed, They don’t want to move to some other place and leave everything and everyone behind. It makes sense – it’s the place they have called home an entire life. This being said, we have to mention that most of the policemen, military, and other organizations come as well from humble neighborhoods

You may have heard that recently in Venezuela, the mother of Pittsburg Pirate’s baseball player Elías Díaz, was kidnapped.

This old lady was forced to get into an SUV by four armed men, in broad daylight, at 9 AM. I mean, FOUR trained grown-up men to kidnap a granny, is that not a little bit of overkill?

Criminals are getting increasingly organized and disciplined

I have noticed that criminals are getting increasingly organized and disciplined. They roam in numbers. They are packs. They surround their prey. Some of them will get close to engage with their victim while another one is hidden nearby. Any suspicious move, and our hero is history. The lone attacker hardly exists any longer.

Even the street robbers now use a team: two on each motorcycle. They choose their victim, usually a shiny, luxury Japanese SUV, and chase it. The guy in the backseat is packing heat, and the driver usually has a backup. Their modus operandi is increasingly going blitzkrieg style: they move fast, and they take no  cowpie from anyone. They are not afraid to shoot an unarmed person because the chance of getting away unharmed and unpunished is about 90%.

In a devastated economy, they know some people earns lots of money in foreign currency. This is a gold mine for the criminal organizations. So for the professional athletes, these guys’ faces are all over the international TV´s sport channels. This is enough motivation for some greedy, dirty personnel to decide to go grandmother´s hunting, as sad as it sounds. And let´s be honest, people have commited crimes for much less than these morons expected to get out of Elias’s pockets. The guy is famous.

This has been like this for quite some time; but the trend, with the rip of the social fabric, has just spiked up.  This old lady used to sit in front of her house, to chat with her friends and neighbors, in the fresh breeze of the first hours of the evening. An easy target for someone with training, don’t you think?

And that’s the scariest part about this crime…

We have talked before about how it is predictable that cops WILL go rogue when the SHTF.

And that is what is so scary about Elias’s mom’s kidnapping. These guys were policemen. With a gun and a license provided by the State to protect grannies, kids, moms, and dads. There were four of them, and two civillians.

Once the lady was sitting on her front porch, the neighbor, who obviously was being paid to watch her, called the officers’ team. There were 3 other thugs involved, and it is believed that they were the team that looked after the granny in the abandoned house she was kept in.

They kept the old lady in a far away abandoned country cottage. She had just an electric fan and a mattress. No clean clothing, no nightdress for sleeping comfort. Two meals a day for a lady over 70 years old. The morality and respect for elders of this gang just went down the toilet.

Before the granny was rescued, 5 officers of the “Bolivarian” police of the Zulia state were under detention, along with the neighbor. These rogue officers have been given a choice: the wall, or the rope.

It is important to understand this: we have a separated task force, a scientific police, just like your CSI. It is called the CICPC, and they are professionals who are highly trained overseas (in the USA and Europe). In many cases, they are trustworthy and straight officers. Rebel pilot Oscar Perez, illegally killed by armed militias last January because of rebellion against the state, was a member of this task force. This force is much better trained and equipped than the State Police, and they have, among all the institutions, the best reputation, particularly after a group them took over a NGs post, took their weapons but respected their lives and integrity. They did not even shoot one single bullet and took 15 NGs prisoners. The State Police and the NG are two of the dirtiest organizations in the entire country.

A few lessons from this event

As awful as this is, there are a few things you can learn from the situation.

• First lesson: Don’t allow anyone to discover your real financial status. Go grey.


• Second lesson: Don’t get used to routines. Do you have bowling nights on Thursday? Go on another night, for example.


• Third lesson: Give your loved ones some means to be tracked. A small GPS locator device with a $10 prepaid chip inside Granny’s bra would have saved a lot of suffering and grey hair for poor Elias and his mom. And money, because that rescue perhaps needed some oil to get some nuts loose first, trust me.


• Fourth lesson: Just because they are police officers doesn’t mean they are trustworthy.

It is not something that can only happen in Venezuela. I hope that some readers have some tours in Middle East and can bear witness that this is something that happens in other countries too, and not just to grannies, but to other innocent and defenseless members of the families. In 2011 the baseball player Wilson Ramos (Washington Nationals) was kidnapped too.

Why do these kinds of things happen?

Let’s see.

The government forbids access to foreign currency, destroyed our own currency and destroyed our economy. There are a lot of bad guys out there willing to do whatever they think is safe for them to get their paws in someone else’s pocket.

The crime correctional system has become communist re-education camps. They will sing the national anthem first thing in the morning, will be forced to adore Hugo’s posters and to yell phrasing until their minds split open, and once broken they will become members of the “revolution”. I just saw this past week some videos from inside one of such jails. Shaved heads and yellow uniforms, all lined up in a patio jail. Freaking scary, if you ask me.

I have been thinking about this stuff a lot (as I am not a criminal and I can’t explain to myself how they think to be able to behave like that). The simplest answer I see for this is that they commit crimes because they can. Because they won’t be punished, and they know the odds are in their favor. This seems to be the main reason.

Once the system is broken, it’s only a matter of time

Once the system gets broken the entire functionality is lost. Humans are humans, no matter where you are. There is a lot of thugs that are tied only by very thin ropes of fear. Once the system gets those ties loose in some way…then you have a problem, as a citizen. A very big one.

There are thugs kidnapping small children under 10 years old at gunpoint from some private, expensive schools in our hometown. These are not some ambassador’s kids, they are kids belonging to what once was normal people with a bit more wealth than the common citizen. I know, things like this have happened in some other countries with some degree of frequency. I know this is seen in Argentina as well. On an alarming note, we can mention the player Javier Betancourt was shot in an arm last November (2017), in a gunpoint assault.

In this country, there have been many instances where some dirty officers have been the main characters, planners, and executors of Hollywood style robberies. In the 90s a small airplane carrying a gold batch was shot with UZIs by two guys in motorcycles who intercepted the plane in the airport fieldstrip. These were former special operations policemen. The pilot and copilot were killed.

There are a lot of bad things to expect if the major infrastructure of the state crumbles and falls apart. I know it. I have seen it, and going grey perhaps has saved my  backside a couple of times. I used to ride a nice, shiny classic motorcycle, and after a while I started to use my bicycle. It is not exactly much safer; but for taking my son to school it was indeed better. In this peak traffic time, minutes before I arrived at the school in a busy crossroads, two gangsters took some poor guy’s motorcycle at gunpoint. The school guard told me to use other vehicle or walk to pick up my kid, and not to use the motorcycle for a few days.

So I became unpredictable when I was riding the big bike. Sometimes I would speed down an avenue to go for gas in a far away gas station, and would make an entirely unexpected U-turn to speed and come back home using some roads with less traffic. These are the kinds of things that prevent you being from being targeted.

Some officers are good, but many are not.

I know some officers still keep their integrity. I would be unfair without acknowledging this to them. But in our instance the crisis has been way too deep, has lasted way too long already, and this behavior is what would be normal when everything starts to be scarce. For many people, officers, NGs or not, the only way left to make a living is asking for assistance, stealing in the open, or renting their handguns (yes, this happens here, very very often). These officers are even involved even with drug dealing, according to some reports.

They will make whatever is needed, and they won´t be punished. People won´t file a “claim” nor will they use some other civillian right, because this is no longer possible.

It is sad, but this is the status quo now.

My country is a wonderful place, with some of the most remarkable people, now spread in 10 countries. Those who had to stay have become stuck in a harsh situation because of the misbehavior of a criminal mafia that calls itself a government.

We are peaceful people. We have had really bad times, and most of the citizens are not gun friendly. Or they were not, perhaps that is going to change now.

Nothing is permanent, and I am sure we will go through the other side much wiser and much stronger.

Thank you.

I do my best to write for you and document everything I have been going through, so you can learn from this field experience. I want to give thanks to those of you who have sent assistance, with all my heart, every cent counts when the clock is ticking. [Note from Daisy: If you’d like to donate to help Jose get his family out of Venezuela, you can do so here: paypal.me/JoseM151]

Stay safe people, and may God bless us all.

About the Author

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela.

Are You Surprised to Hear that Washington is No Stranger to Election Rigging?

It seems that the US can be considered the only state that has been redrawing the map of the world for it to better suit the interests of its political, financial, military cycles. In fact one can’t help but to be amazed by the maniacal zeal with which the White House advances its agenda on the international stage. It was this zeal that was behind the becision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the stagings of war in Vietnam and on the Korean peninsula, the laucnch of the Cold War against the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries. Those events were followed by countless wars across the Middle East and North Africa: in Iraq, in Syria. Afghanistan, Libya. But the special interests keep on advancing their agenda, now pitting the US against the North Korea and Iran.

In addition to repeated instances of armed aggression against the state that refuse to obey Washington’s dictates, the White House has been engaged in physical elimination of individual politicians that head undesirable governments. It goes without saying is that for a government to fall into this category it’s enough for it to try to defend its national interests in a bid to ensure the well-being of its people. Those politically motivated assinations have been examined in much detail in a number of media publications, including those featured in the New Eastern Outlook.

By establishing an elaborated network of non-governmental organizations in various countries of the world that are being sponsored through a number of off-the-books operations of the CIA, the State Department has been aggravating political contradictions in various countries of the world, while being supported by a number of private foundations, including those financed by George Soros. It goes without saying that this fact constitutes a gross violation of all international norms, since a great many of those aggravation result in coup d’etas that are usually being described by the popular euphemism of “color revolutions”. In fact, there’s a handful of examples to present here.

Iran

Last summer, in a letter submitted to the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, Iran would accuse the United States of repeated attempts of taking down the government of the Islamic Republic. This official appeal to the UN appeared to be Tehran’s reaction to repeated attempts by Washington to interfere in Iran’s sovereign political life, including Rex Tillerson’s statement that was made last June at a hearing in the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which he stated that Washington’s approach to Iran can be summed up in its support of anti-government elements inside Iran, which were aiming at taking power in this Middle Eastern state. Never before such a high-profile diplomat would officially pledge his support to the staging of the so-called “peaceful internal political transition”, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the Algerian Accords of 1981, signed and ratified by both Iran and the United States. After all, according to the existing US-Iranian agreements, Washington promised not to interfere, both directly or indirectly, through the use of political or military force into the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The fact Washington was behind the recent demonstrations in Iran is evidenced by the well-coordinated support that Washington has been providing to the local opposition. The White House has already stated that in the very near future it will allocate yet anoother billion dollars to support Iran’s “freedom fighters”, while imposing sanctions against the key political figures of this state. An attempt to make anti-government rethorics in Iran more popular has also been made by the sittting US President himself. In his Twitter, Donald Trump would urge individual representatives of the Iranian society to get away with the “repressive” regime, while supporting his publications with #IranProtests hastag.

Netherlands

On the eve of the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, that were due to take place last March, local politicians would voice a cocern that the right-wing Party for Freedom has been reciving funds from the US. Among the foreign bodies involved in the sponsoring of this party one can find such American conservative organizations as the Gatestone Institute and Freedom Alliance. It is noteworthy that the Freedom Alliance enjoys the support of Robert Shillman, a prominent supporter of the sitting US president, Donald Trump.

It’s been noted that America’s neoconsorvative David Horowitz donated nearly 150,000 dollars to the Party for Freedom, making it the largest individual official donation that year in the Dutch political system, which may seem a modest contribution compared with donations made in the US. It’s curious that by making this donation that was made by the fund run by David Horowitz, it violated the existing US federal law, which prohibits it from sponsoring political parties.

Ronald van Raak, a deputy of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, on behalf of all Dutch politicians expressed outrage over this instance of foreign interference.

Armenia

The US Embassy in Armenia has been engaged for years in consistent attempts to make the representatives of the local opposition more combative in a bid to prevent candidates that are sympathetic to Russia from coming to power in the upcoming presidential election next March. At the same time, the sitting US ambassador to Yerevan, Richard Mills is known for pleding all sorts of US support to the opposition forces at countless meetings he holds with the representatives of those forces.

Venezuela

In recent years, there’s been a mounting number of well-founded accusations against the CIA and the White House due to their attempts to take down the sitting legitimate government in Venezuela. An Venezuelan-American lawyer, Eva Golinger in her interview for the teleSUR channel shared a number of details about Washington’s role in the staging of the attempted coup d’etat in Venezuela back in 2002 and the possible murder of President Chavez.

Reently, the Venezuelan Commander-General, Jesús Chourio, announced that US-sponsored mercenaries were attempting to pull out yet another coup d’etat attempt last year by launching an attack against a military in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. Earlier that year, according to Venezuelan authorities, a helicopter that opened fire at the building of the Interior Ministry and the Supreme Court of Venezuela was hijacked by a policeman suspected of having links with the CIA.

In order to force Venezuelan authorities into changing their policies that in no way satisfy America’s special interests, the United States introduced a harsh sanctions policy against Venezuela, while providing open support for the opposition forces.

Cambodia

Washington has recently come forward with a direct ultimatum to Cambodia, aimed at discrediting its authorities. This step was provoked by Phnom Penh’s decision to dissolve the main opposition party – Cambodian National Rescue Party. In response, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be as bold as to announce (emphasis added)

As a first step, we will terminate support for the Cambodian National Election Committee and its administration of the upcoming 2018 national election. On current course next year’s election will not be legitimate, free or fair.

End Notes

And list goes on an on, well beyond anybody’s ability to present all of Washington’s sins in a single article! However, it should be added that in a bid to hide from the international community the fact it’s been election rigging central, Washington unleashed a Russophobic propaganda campaign, seeking ways to accuse Russia of the crimes it’s been coming itself. However, realizing the groundlessness nature of such allegations accusations against Russia, a number American political figures have come forward to dismiss those charges. Even the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Pompeo has recently been forced to admit that he was in possession of no evidence of a collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s election campain members.

So wouldn’t it be beeter for Washington, instead of vocing far-fetched accusations against Russia, to admit its destructive role in influencing democratic procedures in other states?

Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”   

Anxiety, Anguish, Anger: How It Feels to Survive a Collapse

This report was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

By J.G. Martinez D

Hello to all those readers interested in learning from my personal experience of surviving an economic collapse.

I decided to write this article, the first of a series of several similar that will be posted because I am experiencing these days a huge emotional mix. I am not embarrassed in any way for this, I am a normal person, I have feelings and emotions like everyone else, and until not long ago I had a home, a job, and a conventional, peaceful life like perhaps many of you are enjoying right now.

May God keep it that way!

As a former oil worker, one learns to control emotions, because being in this business, a bad decision in the field if there is danger present, could cost one’s life. Or someone else’s. This said, when we made the decision (as a family we discuss all this of course) and, once my salary stopped being useful for three weeks worth of food, we decided that was the inflection point. After 14 years in one of the most profitable industries in the world (except in Venezuela), I was left with nothing in my bank account. The hyperinflation ate away all the little money that was there. The next step, fleeing to a foreign country (yes, I had savings in hard currency) and trying to find some stability was relatively easy, as my sister-in-law and mother-in-law were already here, and they had some space. So I started a small business (mainly private lectures) just to meet the ends, and it became more or less profitable. A phone call every two days to home, to speak with my family, and long, newspaper-like emails, social networks sometimes. (We decided to not disclose my departure because of OPSEC).

Anxiety

Everything had been happening more or less in a kind of natural way. I did not realize how deeply all this has affected me on a subconscious level. After the daily struggle ended, I suddenly start to become more and more anxious and sad whenever I received photos from my friends and family. I had never been a very delicate person regarding emotions, and feelings. I had been able to have everything under relative control.

But the uncertainty and stress have started to take their toll. What motivated me to write this, was that I did not even realize it. A grown man, dressed in black leather, riding a big, loud motorcycle, and whose eyes suddenly broke in tears trying to buy some medicines for a little, sweet, granny who sells flowers in a hutch to the side of the road for a living…come on. Yes, that happened to me. Powerlessness, inability to help because I had the money, but could not find the medicines in any pharmacy I went to…it was the first episode, and I should have taken it as the first warning about something was going on back there, behind the curtains. That was a year ago. I never had a similar experience until recently. I have been exposed to a degree of anxiety, just like a normal student and worker could experience. Once one learns to deal with it, everything seems to improve.

But you know what? We have experienced a disaster like few other countries are experiencing. An earthquake is a terrible experience. But it is fast and sudden. The agony of a slow-motion collapse like the one we are having, I am deeply convinced, leaves permanent scars in the minds of everyone who is going throughout. Whenever a natural disaster is present, perhaps we took our time, but we accepted it. It was inevitable, in most instances.

But when the situation is induced, and the only reason you can find is human evil…that changes things radically. The frustration level is very high. So high, that I have found myself walking (in hilly terrain) just to calm down a little bit. The other things that have worked to calm down my anxiety are meditation, a cup of warm milk with some drops of chamomile essence, and rest.

Anguish

I never realized, until some recent events, the level of the threat we are facing. A total disruption to our former way of life. My sensitivity has been so high, that even being in the market and seeing the pet food large bags, makes a knot my throat, knowing that perhaps our furry parts of the family are not being well fed. And I start thinking about all the abandoned pets in the streets…you know how it is. I have a natural love for animals, and this affects me deeply.

After having read a little bit about the topic, I can say that the uncertainty levels are so high that it has been what has overwhelmed my self-defense mechanisms. Upon accepting this, I became aware that we were doing MUCH better than the average. I had a safety net and a parachute. A lot of people is now trying to sell their goods in an economy that is in the bottom of the tank, just to buy the bus tickets to get out of dodge!…Jeez, dude.

I have learned that the natural response of every individual is different, of course. Some face it with courage, some others just crash down, and crumble. The total impact depends on the magnitude of the threat; on how well prepared the person is to deal with it…here I had some advantages, as a family head. I had been prepping for more than 10 years now, and that helped me to overcome that incredible anxiety that has attacked me in the most unforeseen moments. With the good paying job we acquired some equipment, made some smart investments, and on time I developed some alternative income sources that allowed us to sort many obstacles. Good overall health, d a proper mindset has been extremely important for this.

One of our friends, a good fellow, in his 60s, who had enjoyed a relatively comfortable life, was not so lucky. He was the owner of several commercial locations that he had inherited from his family. The inflation rates and the food supply difficulties hurt him badly, financially speaking. He fell into a deep depressive state, and sadly he got sick and passed away some months ago. Heart disease, they told us. Had he put his guts together, asked for hard currency from his tenants, and start behaving like a prepper, maybe he would be still alive. He had properties enough to navigate through the mess by playing his cards wisely. That was a hard hit for us, and as well a close call: an improper approach in the worst of a crisis, can, and most definitely will, get people killed.

Added to the anxiety paroxysms, I have been experiencing something that could be defined as anguish. It is difficult to differentiate one from the other. This anguish is perhaps deeper and longer lasting. It comes around whenever I start thinking in the near future, instead. Not having any medical insurance now, like the full coverage we all had once, and the lack of a fixed employment with proper income is the main cause, maybe. I am sure it will mitigate once this is resolved. But it is there, and yes, the effect is noticeable.

Anger

Another emotion that I noticed is arising is anger. A gut-deep, strong, dark, powerful anger. Rage. Without any specific target. Not good. Anything that can force you to make a non-rational choice is a potential danger and must be assessed and controlled. I am working on that, though.

Something very interesting I recently read about is the perception the subject has about the crisis that generated the uncertainty state. Personality and some other factors like the age group of the individuals are important factors, too. We have to understand the need to overcome our own personal stuff, and take care of those who need us. It is extremely hard to do, but can be done for a while.

And of course, there is that support we receive when facing a crisis. It is hard to provide support when everyone´s life is a mess, too. I have received lots of support, and perhaps being lonely in a foreign place without friends, family and acquaintances is a major factor in this hard-to-overcome emotional state. And I am not exactly that kind of friendly neighbor, just a little below the average maybe (have had really abusive neighbors)…but I am a family man.

In the next article, I will write about the three crisis stages. I admit to having a denial stage until not so long ago. But the recent violent events made me wake up about just how far evil can go.

Dedication: I would like to finish dedicating this article to our friend Nelson “The happy mustache” as we called him, recently deceased, another innocent victim of this economic collapse. He was really a nice, funny guy, and had lots of good vibes to offer.

Fly high, my friend. And don´t get your mustache too wet up there in those clouds…

***

About the Author

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. If you’d like to donate to help Jose get his family out of Venezuela, you can do so here: paypal.me/JoseM151

 

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

How the Collapse of Venezuela Really Happened: Part 2

This report was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

Finally!!!! After Jose left us hanging in Part 1 of How the Collapse of Venezuela Really Happened, he’s back with part 2. In the last installment, he’d been inadvertently swept up in a mob of protesters.

So, I found myself, at age 15 facing a mob coming right straight to me. And of course I did what anyone with common sense would have done: I left. Not running, because my parents always told me that whenever a bunch of people surrounds you, there are usually socially non-adapted thugs within it that will look to hurt whoever they can, and the more harmless they look, the better. These kind of sadistic individuals are in all countries, regardless the cultural or economical general level of it. Look at the hooligans in London if you don´t believe me.

I walked slowly, with the other friends I was with, and shaking myself like a jelly bowl of course, but never turning the back to the mob, and found shelter in a car parts shop owned by a friend of the family.

He came to the door, with the iron bar used to close the steel shutters in hand, just in case, (He is a pretty nice guy, he would make fun of me after years about how pale I was that day. God Bless him!). But the road direction steered away most of the people towards what would be the equivalent to the commercial district, with some large warehouses and bulk shops. Some of them told us not to follow, and to go home immediately. We saw in front of the boys of the high school we were going to, who came in the opposite direction to us, in a huge group and mixed with people of all kinds.

There was a huge mass of people of all ages who were shouting slogans. A huge cacophony was in the atmosphere, and the merchants, nervous, had already begun to close the doors of their shops.

After the mob, maybe 300 or 400 persons, passed, I decided to walk with my friends all the way home. For some reason, I accepted the invitation of my friend Leo and the rest of the kids. We started walking down the hill, along a large avenue with shops on both sides.

We wanted to hang around and have some fun, after all the school was closed. He wanted to show me a US military knife his brother had found in exchange for a work he had done. We still did not realize how bad things were going.

When reality finally hit

We had walked a good distance, when suddenly, a large semi truck with a load of corn flour, a product of common and daily consumption in the country, like bread in other latitudes, was quickly approached by a large group of people who climbed on its platform, and began to grab the corn flour packages of 12, with amazing speed. In a matter of seconds, at least 8 tons disappeared, that is to say, 8 thousand packages of 1 kg. Seeing this, I seriously considered the possibility that things were going to get difficult with the authorities. I did not think at any moment of being involved in a collective quarrel or something like that (how dumb can you be at 15??). So I headed home, with my friends, but that was not so easy.

When we reached a certain distance, a lady from inside a shop, reached out and told us that the authorities (police and national guard) were taking to detention centers all the uniformed students they found in their way and that we should be very careful. Barely starting to realize the danger, when approaching my house (I was the one who lived closest, in the “downtown” near the commercial district, and we thought it was better to stay together for safety) we realized the huge mass of people were looting the shops in parallel streets where my house was. Access was not going to be possible by that route. So, risking at all times to be victims of a (practical) abduction, we walked around the areas of greatest turbulence, walking the most lonely streets, and going through the town to reach the house of one of our friends, Leo. It is interesting to think, nowadays, that never crossed my mind the possibility of the looters invading our homes. It was a very possible scenario, and even more possible these days. But I was young, and that is my excuse.

My mom and dad were very anxious at this point, logically, as they did not know where the H…I was while the entire social fabric of the country was ripping apart before their own eyes.

Meanwhile, as good silly teenagers, we were able to buy some soda and cookies while going to Leo´s place, and fooled around with the new knife, making jokes like kids do about his growing camping equipment. Mine was just a battered cheap hunter small knife in a leather sheath; an old, banged up, aluminum canteen; a small messenger bag made of denim that my mom had used back in the 70s; and my old pair of tall snakeproof boots that are still lying around somewhere.

Back on topic, while we were at Leo’s place his auntie made a landline phone call to my mom (no cellphones those years), and after a while (communication grids were down, totally collapsed) she got her call through and let know my folks where I was (she was a very nice, kind and lovely lady, indeed).

How I finally got home

Leo´s aunt made me take off my uniform shirt, replacing it with an ordinary one that Leo gave me, kindly reminding me that please get it back after washing it, and with my uniform chemise in a small bag, I headed straight home. Which I did, in a single run. Upon arriving, my dad was at home, something odd because he never arrived before 12 M. It was close to 11 AM. My mom and he were watching the scenes of the looting in the major cities, that the channels keep repeating, and informing that the police were not enough to keep up with the looters.

This, of course, encouraged those people that had not dared to hit the streets yet, to go and loot. Jeez.

As our house was (and still is) in the middle of the town. Once the mob started to loot a large clothing warehouse, in a street where there are a lot of shops, the tear gas started to spread all over the place. I still remember how awful was trying to eat a bowl of rice with black beans and white cheese, while smelling tear gas. In Venezuela, most of the houses are open style, like the old Spaniard style of walls surrounding an inner patio. Perfect to enjoy tear gas. After a nice face cleaning with vinegar and a soft cloth, we sat on the veranda.

People with large bags of everything imaginable that they could loot were roaming in the streets. All of our neighbors were on their doorsteps or front porch, watching the incredible exhibition of looting. I even saw a schoolmate with two huge plastic garbage bags on his back, his face red by the weight of the clothes he had looted. He was a black sheep at high school too, so no surprises there.

It was much worse elsewhere.

As our town was relatively small we had it more or less light. The killing was in the major cities: Caracas, Valencia, and other similar ones. Being that Caracas the most densely populated, and the capital, most of the nasty stories came from there.

After the people looted, and nothing was left, then the recovering of the loot started. Where the authorities got a report about someone with looted goodies, they kicked the door, and if the people could not show some proof of possession of, say, a brand new, large TV or tons of new clothing, still with the labels on, the loot and the people were hauled in a military truck, right to jail. I do not know honestly what happened until this day to all that loot. I know that some looters received a lesson from the military personnel. Perhaps some merchants were able to recover some of their goods, I can’t say. Our businesses did not suffer damage. 4 meters walls and a solid steel door large enough to allow for a semi truck to pass for maintenance are good deterrents. Oh, and our nice, lovely Doberman, twice my size and weight that loved to chew telephone guidebooks for fun. He could go through one-third of the phone guidebook with his fangs. I miss him a lot.

The truth be told, most of the looters were discharged after a few days. The turmoil was so massive that if everyone was prosecuted, the jails were not going to be enough, nor would the keepers be able to control them. So, after a good spanking and registering them as delinquents, they were given freedom with a warning: the next time that looting situations arise, the orders were to shoot, and no one would ask them any question later.

Here’s what I learned.

I learned a lot from those experiences, and today, as this young barely adult I am now, my life, and as much the lives of my immediate and extended family have been relatively less affected than most of the people I know in my same economical “status.” That is, if someone considers I have such status living in a rented room in a foreign country after having my own home and a job in the oil industry.

Preparedness is not about stockpiling and isolation. I know that now and I want you please take note of this.

It is about being mentally and psychologically able to respond effectively and efficiently to the changes in the surroundings that could affect you.

But one of the most impressive things I have ever witnessed was the mass behavior acting over the individual psychology, and how it overcomes the inhibition barriers that make people behave in ways that under normal circumstances would never even think about it.

Be safe, wherever you are.

More from Jose

• How the Collapse of Venezuela Really Happened: Part 1


• Christmas in Venezuela: What It’s Like After Socialism Destroyed the Country

About the author, J.G. Martinez D:

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela.

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca