Venezuela allows security forces to use firearms in protests

Associated Press ^ | Jan 30, 2015 6:19 PM EST

[Olog-hai]

Human rights groups and Venezuela’s opposition are criticizing the government’s new authorization for riot police to use firearms to control protests. […]

Venezuela’s constitution bans the use of firearms and toxic substances to control demonstrations, although in practice such means have long been used, including during last year’s deadly street battles between police and anti-government demonstrators. …

[Olog-hai]

. . . and Seán Penn was nowhere to be found.

[sickoflibs]

Good idea!

[DanielRedfoot]

Wow!
Great point, someone should be shoving a microphone into his face about now

[HotHunt]

And so it begins. The final stages of a totalitarian government. Maduro will be run out of office on a rail within a year. His vacuous leadership can’t last on thin air forever.

[mrsmel]

LOL, his name was the first thing to mind when I read this!

[aimhigh]

Venezuela is following the standard Communist timeline. Promise the moon, eliminate political opposition, destroy the economy, crack down on the people, destroy religion, . . .

[PapaBear3625]

The final stages of a totalitarian government. Maduro will be run out of office on a rail within a year. His vacuous leadership can’t last on thin air forever.

Won't end as simply as that. The country has a large percentage of people who live off the government, have done so for a long time, and would have difficulty getting a private sector job.

They will kill rather than allow the fall of the system which supports them.

[HotHunt]

To cover the freebies for the poor, Maduro needs $200 a barrel oil. Oil is currently at $45 per barrel. He doesn't have the money anymore to keep giving the poor free stuff at the rate he and Hugo had been. The money has dried up. He just got back from a tour of the world with his hand out and no one gave him a dime. The poor in Venezuela are not like the low information voters in this country. They are dirt poor and wouldn't be able to stop a revolution from Maduro's political opposition if they tried. There are no jobs in Venezuela just like there are no jobs in Mexico. The place is a mess.

He will get thrown out of office within a year.

[HotHunt]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/02/nicolas_maduro_s_venezuela_erupts_in_violence_the_venezuelan_president_appears.html

[PapaBear3625]

They are dirt poor and wouldn't be able to stop a revolution from Maduro's political opposition if they tried. There are no jobs in Venezuela just like there are no jobs in Mexico. The place is a mess.

Chavez and Maduro recruited their storm troopers from among the poor. The poor have nothing to lose but their lives.

This will end in blood. I don't see any way to avoid it.

[Popman]

The country's main opposition group says it will denounce the measure to the United Nations.

Well, that will certainly put Maduro on notice...

What exactly will the U.N. do ? ....Nothing...

Has there ever been a more useless international body than the U.N. ?

To bad our Golf Emperor had turned the CIA and other covert agencies into tools of American oppression rather entities to help overthrow POS like Maduro like they used to be able to do...

[HotHunt]

I agree. A bloody revolution will happen. But I still maintain Maduro will end up on the losing end. He no longer has the money needed to back up the only thing he has to offer his supporters and that is government giveaways to the poor. Who, by the way, are still extremely poor after all these years support from Chavez and Maduro.

Typical socialist/communist leaders who promise what they can't deliver on a sustainable level. I mean, when you can't even keep toilet paper and soap on the shelves for the population, that's a real problem.

But people and politics are strange bedfellows. Look at the blowback by the Greek people when they were forced to cut back. And now Spaniards are showing that they don't like the austerity efforts to turn their economy around and are looking at far-left leadership again....the same leadership that got them into the mess to begin with. People are not to smart in the head sometimes. They want theirs and that's all that matters to them.