…and not just in Caracas. But what’s happening in Caracas is bad enough. Here is a Guardian account, straight out of the history of the Soviet Union with ‘Venezuela’ pasted over the ‘Russia’ part. It is a real escalation of the shortages that are engulfing Venezuela – and soon it will be made worse by the closure of the bridge from the airport and port where 70% of Venezuela’s imported food comes:

Venezuela’s coffee industry in chaos as price of beans doubles ????
Shortages in shops after producers hoard stocks
National Guard (!) told to “find every last kilogram”

Greg Morsbach in Caracas
Tuesday January 10, 2006
The Guardian

An attempt by Venezuela’s leftwing president, Hugo Ch????vez, to double the price that coffee producers pay farmers for a sack of beans has led to empty shelves in supermarkets throughout the country and fears of shortages of other basic foodstuffs.

President Ch????vez, who maintains price controls on basic foodstuffs, raised the price of coffee beans by 100% last month after weeks of protests by coffee farmers.

But most of the country’s coffee producers, who buy, roast and grind the beans, refused to sell on the coffee yesterday, claiming their margins had been cut, and began hoarding thousands of sacks of unprocessed beans.

***

The rest can be read here, and note that detail about shortages of corn (all imported, Venezuela can’t grow it), sugar, powdered milk and chicken. Soviet style shortages are rolling in fast. We’ve already chronicled meat and electricity shortages going on over there here. Note the violence being used by troops to enforce Hugo Chavez’s will on prices. More violence will come of it.

But it’s not just Caracas where the coffee chaos is, due to the Jim-Jonesian policies of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Where else do we have Jim Jones violence around the theme of socialism but Jim Jones’ own stomping ground, the city of San Francisco, California?

There, at my very own Starbucks, the one I actually go to on Van Ness Avenue, right near ‘A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books’ book store, a live bomb was found in the bathroom, put there by bombers.

Who did it? I do not know. But if I were the cops, I’d check out the Revolutionary Communist Party, not only because they like bombs, but because of the vandalism that preceded it, like putting glue in locks. Normal people don’t put glue in locks but these guys do. It is something I witnessed them doing when I lived in San Francisco. For them, it was policy any time a San Francisco demonstration led to flaming garbage cans, broken car windows, or glue in locks, you could count on them being around.

When I was in Caracas, I met exactly one American I’d already known in the course of my travels, from years back. What do you know? He just happened to be a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and he was down there ‘making revolution.’

Coffee connection, anyone? What a coincidence.