The US should take heed and remember it. The corruption runs deep in our country and our system has begun a spiral towards a similar destruction. Allowing our country to fall into unAmerican and unconstitutional patterns is leading our own country down the wrong path. We need to wake up and stop the snowball we are creating here.
Disasters do not treat every country equally because governments matter. Engineering matters. Honest contracting matters. Building codes matter. Hospitals, ambulances, ports, roads, fuel, communications, and trained rescue teams matter. Chile and Japan learned from earthquakes and built discipline into their systems. Venezuela had oil wealth and squandered it on patronage, ideology, corruption, and control. The heroes now are not the politicians holding press conferences. They are neighbors, church volunteers, doctors, rescuers, and foreign teams pulling life from concrete. The lesson is brutal: natural resources cannot save a nation whose institutions have rotted. Socialism did not cause the quake. It magnified the ruin.
In 2012 under Chavez Venezuela had its largest GDP ever but then oil prices colapsed and so did their economy. Sanctions ensured it could not recover.
150 million dollars of US assistance is only a fraction of the oil that Venezuela has sold since Maduro's kidnapping. Where are the billions when they are needed?
The US should take heed and remember it. The corruption runs deep in our country and our system has begun a spiral towards a similar destruction. Allowing our country to fall into unAmerican and unconstitutional patterns is leading our own country down the wrong path. We need to wake up and stop the snowball we are creating here.
Disasters do not treat every country equally because governments matter. Engineering matters. Honest contracting matters. Building codes matter. Hospitals, ambulances, ports, roads, fuel, communications, and trained rescue teams matter. Chile and Japan learned from earthquakes and built discipline into their systems. Venezuela had oil wealth and squandered it on patronage, ideology, corruption, and control. The heroes now are not the politicians holding press conferences. They are neighbors, church volunteers, doctors, rescuers, and foreign teams pulling life from concrete. The lesson is brutal: natural resources cannot save a nation whose institutions have rotted. Socialism did not cause the quake. It magnified the ruin.
Israel, a country of 10 milliion people, also immediately mobilized to send aid.
Just what you would expect in California or South American Banana Republic. And remember Franklin Graham and Samaritans Purse are there.
In 2012 under Chavez Venezuela had its largest GDP ever but then oil prices colapsed and so did their economy. Sanctions ensured it could not recover.
150 million dollars of US assistance is only a fraction of the oil that Venezuela has sold since Maduro's kidnapping. Where are the billions when they are needed?