[pmelendez]

"Their government is saying it's because people are eating more and thus shitting more"

I read that on Twitter yesterday but I couldn't find a source. Not that I don't believe because I had heard worse, but was it true? Who said that?

[alpeb]

I read it here http://www.semana.com/mundo/articulo/no-papel-higienico-porq... which supposedly is a reputed Colombian magazine, but trying to find the exact part in the video I couldn't find it. So maybe it was just a gross misleading misinterpretation by the magazine. Venezuela gives plenty of material to criticize so it beats me why a journalist has to recur to lies...

[rafaelm]

It's not the first time government officials in Venezuela have said something similar. They say that the constant power outages (in one of the largest oil producers in the world) are because now the venezuelan people are so well off thanks to the govt that they have more money to spend on air conditioning,refrigerators,etc... Same reason why you cannot buy a car in a dealership (and used car prices double year after year), why there are constant shortages of basic food,etc.

[spikels]

This is just too hilarious to be true and it seems not to be direct quote from a government official but more the popular interpretation of a widely ridiculed statement by the head of the Venezuelan stats office.

http://en.mercopress.com/2013/05/24/toilet-paper-shortage-is...

[pmelendez]

Thanks for this. I couldn't find that in the video either but that video doesn't show the whole interview, so who knows?

I had heard worse thought, like a congressman asking to investigate DirectTV because it was spying venezuelans through receivers... Oh well...