The U.N.'s Venezuela Crush Gets Orwellian
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Lunacy: The U.N. will honor — get this — Venezuela as "the country that has fought hunger the most in the world." Given the country's self-induced shortages, this is pure Orwell. And it's contradicted by the U.N.'s own data.
If you thought the United Nations' scaremongering global warming shop was daft, a look at its Food and Agriculture Organization should assure you the rot goes all the way to the bottom.
President Nicolas Maduro announced Thursday that he would be traveling to Italy to receive an award for Venezuela's "food missions," according to El Universal.
If correct, it would not be the first time the U.N. has held Venezuela up to global praise for its handouts.
In June 2013, the FAO honored Venezuela for "making big strides in reducing hunger."
Welfare can temporarily reduce hunger so long as the cash lasts, but it's come at a massive cost — in the creation of mass impoverishment across the country.
Currency controls, expropriations and state corruption have left Venezuelans standing in multiple lines for much of the day just to get access to basic foodstuffs. The last official data, issued two years ago, show supplies of basic foodstuffs are 28% below 2004 levels.
Fights are now commonplace in food lines. Medical shortages are so severe that the country has resorted to fingerprinting to catch thieves, and Maduro blames "hoarders" and "CIA plots" for the failures. With scapegoats aplenty, don't expect him to fix the problems soon.
At last month's Summit of the Americas in Panama, there was open talk from Latin American leaders of sending food-aid caravans to ease the hunger.
"We'll expropriate whatever needs to be expropriated," Maduro told his country last year, threatening to seize farms and food production companies.
He's now in the midst of seizing Polar — Venezuela's largest and best-run food company — in a sign that this was no idle threat. Three years ago, 988 farms and businesses were seized (they've stopped reporting those data since), leaving a gutted food base and massive shortages that will only get worse.
Which brings us to the U.N.'s own data. According to the FAO website, Venezuela's per person food output fell 6.3% from 2007 to 2012. Those data alone are an indictment of Venezuela's failed socialist food policies.
It's a joke that the U.N. should honor Venezuela, the great creator of hunger in the Americas, with anything.
If you thought the United Nations' scaremongering global warming shop was daft, a look at its Food and Agriculture Organization should assure you the rot goes all the way to the bottom.
President Nicolas Maduro announced Thursday that he would be traveling to Italy to receive an award for Venezuela's "food missions," according to El Universal.
If correct, it would not be the first time the U.N. has held Venezuela up to global praise for its handouts.
In June 2013, the FAO honored Venezuela for "making big strides in reducing hunger."
Welfare can temporarily reduce hunger so long as the cash lasts, but it's come at a massive cost — in the creation of mass impoverishment across the country.
Currency controls, expropriations and state corruption have left Venezuelans standing in multiple lines for much of the day just to get access to basic foodstuffs. The last official data, issued two years ago, show supplies of basic foodstuffs are 28% below 2004 levels.
Fights are now commonplace in food lines. Medical shortages are so severe that the country has resorted to fingerprinting to catch thieves, and Maduro blames "hoarders" and "CIA plots" for the failures. With scapegoats aplenty, don't expect him to fix the problems soon.
At last month's Summit of the Americas in Panama, there was open talk from Latin American leaders of sending food-aid caravans to ease the hunger.
"We'll expropriate whatever needs to be expropriated," Maduro told his country last year, threatening to seize farms and food production companies.
He's now in the midst of seizing Polar — Venezuela's largest and best-run food company — in a sign that this was no idle threat. Three years ago, 988 farms and businesses were seized (they've stopped reporting those data since), leaving a gutted food base and massive shortages that will only get worse.
Which brings us to the U.N.'s own data. According to the FAO website, Venezuela's per person food output fell 6.3% from 2007 to 2012. Those data alone are an indictment of Venezuela's failed socialist food policies.
It's a joke that the U.N. should honor Venezuela, the great creator of hunger in the Americas, with anything.
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