Like what they do in some Latin American cities where cars have to remain off the road on certain days. People will get branded and be able to purchase flour on just a certain day.

Viva la revolucion!! Viva el pendejo Maduro!!! Viva el pendejo!!!

get in the way of the glorious Bolivarian revolution.

Maybe the problem is that there is not enough food , that the people is hungry. I don't know where you live but I won't like to go to a supermarket here , stand in line for hours, get a number written on my arm, just to get the basic to feed my family. And meanwhile, Maduro traveling with a big group or more than 200 people, staying in a luxury hotels, and buying support with Venezuela's oil.

I don't know -- I've been marked like that a hundred times for all kinds of stuff. It doesn't faze me to see that.

I've been marked for permissions to re-enter a club, but never to buy food.

This whole thing is lost on me.

So you don't see anything wrong in having to do long-ass lines and needing to be assigned a number to be able to buy one of the most basic grocery items in the Venezuelan diet? It's not the fact that it's people being marked with simple ink on their skin, it's the fact that they have to be marked in the first place to obtain an item that everybody in the country consumes and is almost a basic necessity for them. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from a country that is going through war, not an oil-exporting country which is enjoying its highest oil prices in history.

...much more permanent than a temporary 3-digit number that washes off.

The moral panic is cute, though.

none whatsoever.

You don't need a credit card to buy food.

Limited quantities and first come first serve and all.

But they're paying with their hard earned money to buy something.

This is basically Wal-Mart receipt checking at the minimum. Which I am against and glad they stopped doing (it was humiliating and insulting at the same time).

It's not even comparable to a release of a new popular electronic item (like the iPhone, PS3 or Xbox 360). Those items are not needed. Food is needed.

Venezuela's constitution demands agricultural self-sufficiency. The people in power there have failed hard in that regard.

That's why it's a problem.

How can it not make them yearn for the days of the oligarchy's beloved President Carlos Andres Perez, who was later impeached, and imprisoned, who during his 2nd term, declared all out war on the poor, raised the cost of their transportation, oil, groceries so high the poor couldn't possibly cope, which sent the poor into the streets to protest. When the poor were in the streets protesting these acts he had sworn, as a candidate, to NEVER do, he had his military take tanks, trucks, etc. into the neighborhoods where poor people lived, and MOW THEM DOWN where they stood in the streets, and they chased them through roads and alleys, shooting them when and where they could.

THAT'S the way the oligarchs like to see the poor dealt with. Carlos Andres Perez until he died several years ago, was beloved by the Venezuelan wealthy to his dying day. He publicly called for Hugo Chavez to be shot down in the streets like a dog. He seemed very attached to the thought of destroying leftists, leaving only those who were too frightened to struggle for help anymore to do all the world for the filthy oligarchs, to keep them free from laboring, so they might have more time to spend on their own fat asses.

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Once the right is fully in charge again, they won't have to cough up the change to pay off idiot propagandists to infest message boards meant for human beings.

Does it have anything at all with what was posted or could you have just posted that in any thread?

they are rationing the most basic foods. Its sad.

I believe that is the proper question.

Rationing presumes they have a handle on supplies. Which they clearly don't. A first come first serve numbering system does not bode well for production. It'd be one thing if it was a release of an iPhone or PS4 or Xbox 720.

But this is food.

although, I think they do in fact limit the quantity of flour and other food stuffs one can purchase which is certainly rationing. Also, its not like its sea bass or filet mignon and the quantity is typically limited by what is produced and sold. This is the most basic ingredient in the Venezuelan diet. It would be like going to Idaho and not being able to get potatoes or no corn in Nebraska.

That's like rationing bread.

They are tasty and delicious, but these are a staple in the diet, and this ingredient shouln't be hard to get:

Once again you're spewing nothing but fanatical nonsense. Please try to bring an actual contribution to the conversation next time.

Also, the word "oligarchs"? I do not think it means what you think it means. If you DID know what it meant, you'd notice that the real "oligarchs" right now in Venezuela are the main government scum. Or did you forget that Manuro went to one of those "oligarch" Cirque Du Soleil shows?

The communist thinks "Isn't that wonderful - so many people being fed by the state."

Others, myself included, think "Something is terribly wrong when citizens cannot provide for their own basic needs without dependency on the State."

This is not to lay blame on right or left for the situation. No doubt in many places the rich have such a stranglehold on resources, the economy and the government that the poor are just forgotten and the free market (which isn't really free at all, but a rigged game) fails to work.

But in other places where the left rules, worship of the almighty State is equally misplaced. I think we're seeing, in Venezuela, the results of crony socialism, a system where the incompetent Right is simply replaced by an equally incompetent Left.

Either way, the common folk lose. Either way, there is no freedom.

The teabaggers couldn't have said it better. This is much ado about nothing. The state is trying to make sure that all of its citizens, particularly the most vulnerable, have access to food. The idea that writing a number on them is somehow giving in to tyranny in exchange for food is nuts. Its like the wingnuts who say by using Food Stamps you are given away your freedom. That right-wing bullshit shouldn't fly with anybody with a brain.

that the state even has to "make sure that all of its citizens, particularly the most vulnerable, have access to food."? What has happened in VZLA that it has gotten to this point?

price controls, expropriations, state run entities, government policies = epic fail.

thats why Maduro is traveling to Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina as you will see in a post I am about to make.

people to provide for themselves. That is the opposite of freedom. That is dependency.

There will always be some who are in need due to physical or mental inability to do work, and we should make sure that those folks are helped. But this is ordinary people unable to secure food in an incredibly resource-rich country. Venezuelans should be asking themselves how this can be.

That is achieved by assuring that production meets consumption and implementing import substitution and relaxing price controls.

People heard a rumor that there was flour arriving at a location, so they turned up to get some. Some waited on line for over three hours. Finally 1500 packets of arepa flour arrived.

This is a VZ staple; people shouldn't be queuing for this. That's basically what the quote at the end says, that the person waiting in the line is indignant because this is happening in an oil rich country with lots of natural resources.

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