Tuesday 22 October 2013

Cargo cult and the pseudo-revolution


You only need to check out a picture in Twitter to see how screwed up the Venezuelan society is. There, a government supporter shows Venezuelan who is proud new owner of a Chinese "free-standing" cooker. The cooker was produced by the Chinese corporation Haier and the Venezuelan government probably acquired it through dollars destined to FONDEN, the Fund for Sustainable Development. The government has spent hundreds of millions in providing not just Chinese cookers but Chinese refrigerators, Chinese blenders and last but not least, Chinese TV sets, flat screens included. The pro-government Twitter user wrote: "only in revolution can we have happiness in Venezuela, with Mercal. Long live the revolutionary government". Mercal is the place where people can get cheap, heavily subsidized products, to a great part imported from all over the world. It's certainly long-term happiness for the Haier corporation, not for Venezuela's collapsing economy. If there is one example of real cargo cult in the world, it's Venezuela of the early XXI century.

Haier says "xiexie" to Venezuelan TV watchers 

On the other side, you see what is happening in Venezuela's health centres. Only one of the X ray machines of the Henrique Tejera Hospital, Valencia's only general hospital, is working right now. Patients have to queue up for hours.  The Dr. Miguel Pérez Carreño Hospital, the only public hospital for oncology in Valencia, couldn't offer radiotherapy for months because all its machines for such treatment were conked out. It's only now that it is re-opening its services.


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