For our freedom, I offer up a humble thank you to all who have gone before standing endless watch, slogging through the jungle mud, freezing in a foxhole, shooting Nazis with a machine gun at 30,000 feet, doing yet another round of dreary maintenance, brought home a life-long injury, or Read more…
The Venezuelan government has made its choice. Will that choice stand? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The elections in Venezuela were stacked.
Oh, by the way, what economic system produced this human suffering? What political system produced this all-but-in-name dictatorship?
(Cross post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)
10/15/17 – Wall Street Journal – Venezuela’s Latest Election Fraud – More details on how the election results were cooked. Reporter describes more details on manipulation.
After reading my post on Nuclear launch protocol and timing, you may be wondering why the United States built these,
Minuteman II on static display at March Air Base Museum. Photo by James Ulvog.
and why we built 550, 450, and 50 of these,
Minuteman II, Minuteman III, Peacekeaper ICBMs on display at Warren AFB. “Ywwrn_1b” by gvgoebel is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
as well as why we had 1,000 of these spread across the country for several decades:
Oil platform in Venezuela. A view of what used to be and could have been now. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The bad news from Venezuela just doesn’t stop:
(Cross post from Outrun Change.)
8/31/17 – Wall Street Journal – “Hope Is Gone” as Venezuelan Protesters Vanish From Streets – The protests have faded away. The ongoing massive arrests, torture of detainees, widespread human-rights abuses, and frequent shootings seem to have broken the protest movement. A number of senior leaders of the opposition have fled the country in fear for their life. Reports indicate 125 people have been killed and somewhere around 2000 have been wounded, with many of those people with permanent injuries.
One outside observer, who is safe because he is an American living in the United States, observers the president has gained effective control of the entire government. I think if we look at the typical definitions that makes him a dictator.
In the meantime the oppressed people of the country continue to scramble for food, trying to find enough so they don’t starve to death.
9/22/17 – Miami Herald – In Venezuela, they were teachers and doctors. To buy food, they became prostitutes. – A large portion of the prostitutes in Columbia are women who escaped Venezuela. Before transitioning to the world’s oldest profession, many of them were teachers, doctors, professional women. One brothel even has a petroleum engineer.
Venezuelan flag. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
News out of Venezuela keeps getting worse.
8/18/17 – Wall Street Journal – Venezuela’s Former Attorney General Flees to Columbia – The constituent assembly removed the Attorney General earlier in the month and last week took over all legislative powers from the Congress. When the government leveled corruption accusations against the now-deposed Attorney General, she and her husband fled for their lives to Columbia.
As an indicator of why she had to get-outta’-Dodge is that the secret police raided her home last week and the government has now banned 60 other prosecutors from leaving the country.
8/26/17 – Hot air – Girls As Young As 12 Turned To Prostitution To Survive Venezuela’s Socialist Nightmare – (more…)
Shipwreck standing on the beach with the sea in the background. Margarita Island. Venezuela. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
What little that remained of democracy in Venezuela continues to crumble.
8/4/17 –France 24 – Venezuela’s currency crumbles at dizzying speed – The value of the bolivar is shrinking fast.
On Thursday the bolivar dropped to 17,000 to 1 U.S. dollar.
The official exchange rate is 2,870:1.
The reporter interviewed an executive in a reinsurance business. That would be a professional level position. His salary is 800,000 bolivars a month. A year ago that was worth $200 and now it is worth $47.
Two pounds of rice costs 17,000 bolivars.
8/5/17 – Wall Street Journal – Venezuela’s New Assembly Fires Attorney General – Well, the slow-motion coup continues to roll forward.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
An unofficial plebiscite was held to oppose the end of democracy. The vote for a constitutional convention to re-write overthrow the current constitution has been held, with uncertainty as to the actual turnout.
7/15/17 – Reuters – Venezuela opposition hold unofficial plebiscite to defy Maduro – The opposition holds an unofficial vote on 7/16 as a protest against the upcoming official vote which many consider to be the last votes ever in Venezuela as a new constitution will essentially put the legislature under the thumb of the president.
What economic system produces this result? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The political and economic conditions in Venezuela continue to deteriorate.
7/3/17 – Bloomberg – Venezuela’s Poor Rebel, Roiling Maduro’s Socialist Strongholds – The power base for the leaders of the socialist country is poor people.
From previous reading I’ve done, massive subsidies to the poor successfully bought their allegiance. The collapse of services including water outages, random outages of electricity, and empty store shelves are rapidly undermining support from the poor. Protests has spread to many of the poor communities in Caracas. There have been nightly protests in a number of communities for several weeks.
7/5/17 – Wall Street Journal – Maduro Supporters Storm Venezuela’s Congress – (more…)