90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Are Their Daughters More Important Than Our Daughters?

Maduro Militarizes Morgues To Hide Genocide Death Toll

In the wake of a massive blackout, the Venezuelan regime is using military personnel to prevent access to morgues and hospitals, in an effort to hide the weekend's death toll

So far, just at the University Hospital of Maracaibo, the Venezuelan blackout has left a toll of 296 dead, among them 80 babies, as the massive power outage now enters its fifth day.

The hunger precipitated by Venezuela’s socialist regime is eerily reminiscent of the situation in Ukraine in Stalinist times.

Without electricity, there is no internet or cell phones, so there is a lack of information on the total number of deaths. There is already talk of genocide, which follows patterns of previous dictatorships that sought to hold on to power at all costs.

IN THE WAKE OF A MASSIVE BLACKOUT, THE VENEZUELAN REGIME IS USING MILITARY PERSONNEL TO PREVENT ACCESS TO MORGUES AND HOSPITALS, IN AN EFFORT TO HIDE THIS WEEKEND’S DEATH TOLL

Since the government is the only supplier of electricity in the country, it bears the blame for this crisis, and its actions are entirely part of a political strategy.
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The morgues at the nation’s main hospitals are already under military custody, and Venezuelan families have no way to communicate with each other, and many with loved ones in hospitals are fearing the worst.

The official figures have reported 17 deaths linked to the lack of dialysis.

Key opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, expressed her outrage at the unfolding disaster: “And babies in incubators? And the patients in intensive therapy? And those who need dialysis today? And those who need to keep their chemotherapy treatments refrigerated?”

Among the most shocking images, is that of a mother with her little daughter in arms turned into skin and bones by malnutrition so severe that she died without being able to access medical care, since the hospitals do not have energy.

The appearance of the girl is typical of the victims of Holodomor, which in Ukrainian means “artificial hunger.” This is how the process that starved 7,000,000 Ukrainians on the orders of Stalin, leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is known.

The famine in Ukraine, in fact, was not due to a lack of food. On the contrary, just as today Venezuela is the country with the world’s greatest oil reserves, Ukraine was the richest area in terms of grain. Under Stalin’s socialist regime, it had to supply the rest of the 15 republics that formed the Soviet Union.

Those who opposed the expropriation, were punished. They were sent to forced labor camps in Siberia, where 1.5 million people froze to death. Those who stayed were condemned to work the land without being able to eat the fruits of their own labor. If a Ukrainian ate what he harvested, he was shot on the spot.

Also during the government of Lenin, the first socialist government inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx, 5 million people died of hunger, when by order of the Bolshevik government, they were denied access to...

Peddlers of the Green New Deal know that the only way for their radical agenda to become reality is if Americans buy into the wildest claims of climate extremists.

It’s clear that some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this radical agenda are young people.

This was on full display in the now viral video of a meeting between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and a group of children from the Sunrise Movement.

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution -- with smugness + disrespect.

This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) February 22, 2019

Perhaps children and young Americans are more likely to buy into the extreme environmentalist doomsaying due to the fact that they weren’t around for the laughably wrong predictions of the past that never came true.

Panics over looming environmental and climate apocalypse have been with us for a long time. Thomas Malthus famously predicted in his 1798 book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” that population growth would overtake food supply and mass starvation would result unless population controls were implemented.

Of course, his predictions were utterly wrong, since free enterprise greatly increased the food supply as the population increased.

The modern environmentalist movement has picked up a Malthusian ethos of its own and, when combined with the politics of climate change, has produced numerous egregiously wrong predictions about global trends.

Here are five of the biggest misses:

1. Population Bomb to Cause Global Famine by 2000

The first Earth Day, in 1970, was filled with hyperbole and exaggerations about mankind’s future. Much of the craziness was unearthed in a remarkable expose in 2000 by Reason contributor Ronald Bailey.

One of the most common ideas, in a throwback to Malthus, was that the global food supply simply couldn’t keep up with population growth.

Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University—now named the University of North Texas—wrote about how mass starvation was in the world’s near-term future. Gunter spoke in language that should be all too familiar to those who have paid attention to the debate over climate change in modern times:

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

Ah, yes, all the scientists agree that the world will end by the year 2000.

Of course, this didn’t come to pass. In fact, a remarkable reduction in poverty has occurred around the globe since 1970. A chart published by Human Progress demonstrated just how dramatically global hunger has decreased in the past few decades.

The total number of undernourished persons is dropping despite population growth. https://t.co/R3hV48GtsI #food pic.twitter.com/PHZhVJbVET
— HumanProgress.org (@HumanProgress) May 18, 2017

Thanks, capitalism.

2. Air Pollution Will Be So Bad That City Dwellers Will Have to Wear Gas Masks
Another grand prediction at Earth Day 1970 (it was full of doozies) was that the air pollution problem common to many American cities would continue to get exponentially worse without widespread government control of the American way of life.

One particularly extreme claim came from the January 1970 edition of Life magazine, as quoted by Bailey:

Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support … the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution [and] by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.

Again, such remarkable accuracy from these all-knowing scientists.

This didn’t happen, in part due to federal, state, and local restrictions on emissions. But it had much more to do with the general societal response to the problem.

Wealthier, more prosperous societies simply have more means and more of an inclination to make trade-offs to enjoy cleaner air. Free societies such as the United States found ways to reduce pollutants as a means to improve quality of life.

It’s very different in countries like, say, China, where pollution in some cities is unbearable due to the developing nature of the country combined with the authoritarian nature of government, which is more preoccupied with growth in gross domestic product than the comfort and well-being of individual citizens.

The fact is, free societies began solving this problem long ago, and our cities have become much better, not worse.

3. Entire Nations Could Be Wiped Out by 1999

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., a self-avowed socialist, recently claimed that the world would end in 12 years if we don’t radically transform our economy to...