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Keyword: hugochavez

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  • Maduro Orders Seizure of Closed Venezuela Factories, Jailing of Owners

    05/14/2016 5:39:09 PM PDT · by Publius · 198 replies
    MSN ^ | 14 May 2016
    Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered authorities to seize factories that have stopped production and jail their owners, a day after declaring a state of emergency to combat the country's economic crisis. "We must take all measures to recover productive capacity, which is being paralyzed by the bourgeoisie," he told a rally in Caracas. "Anyone who wants to halt (production) to sabotage the country should get out, and those who do must be handcuffed and sent to the PGV (Venezuelan General Penitentiary)," he said.
  • “Venezuela Is on the Brink of Social Collapse,” National Guardsman (coup time?)

    05/14/2016 5:23:34 PM PDT · by dynachrome · 47 replies
    PanAm Post ^ | 5-14-16 | Staff
    At the moment, the armed forces’ position vis-à-vis the government is not clear. Some speculate that the Bolivarian National Guard is divided. Others claim that the regime exerts full control over the Bolivarian National Guard’s members. The only certainty is that uncertainty abounds. The PanAm Post had the opportunity to interview a Bolivarian National Guard member of middle rank, who asked to remain anonymous since his views could expose him to danger. Why has the state launched an offensive against criminal groups? The situation was getting out of hand for political reasons. The state has no means to control criminal...
  • Venezuela president declares emergency, cites U.S., domestic 'threats'

    05/13/2016 10:38:46 PM PDT · by Dallas59 · 9 replies
    Reuters ^ | Fri May 13, 2016 | Reuters
    Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency on Friday due to what he called plots from within the OPEC country and the United States to topple his leftist government. Maduro did not provide details of the measure. A previous state of emergency, implemented in states near the Colombian border last year, suspended constitutional guarantees in those areas, except for guarantees relating to human rights.
  • U.S. intelligence warns of Venezuela collapse (Socialism)

    05/13/2016 10:34:18 PM PDT · by Dallas59 · 18 replies
    LA Times ^ | 5/13/2013 | LA Times
    With dire shortages of basic goods, a looming foreign debt payment, horrific street crime and intransigent political divisions, Venezuela is in danger of collapsing into waves of deadly violence, U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday. Venezuela, which controls the world's largest reserves of crude oil, is in the throes of a potentially explosive political stalemate after opposition parties gained a majority in the national congress in elections late last year. President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist, faces a possible recall vote sponsored by the opposition that he is maneuvering to block.
  • Leader opposition party in Venezuela assassinated

    05/07/2016 8:53:55 PM PDT · by Kush · 26 replies
    Fox News latino ^ | 5/7/2016 | Unknown
    Venezuelan politician German Mavare, leader of the opposition UNT party, died Friday after being shot in the head, an assassination that occurred in the western state of Lara, his organization said. latino.foxnews.com
  • How bad is it in Venezuela? Soldiers are stealing goats

    05/04/2016 10:01:43 AM PDT · by C19fan · 36 replies
    CNBC ^ | May 4, 2016 | Fred Imbert
    The situation in Venezuela has become so bad that even soldiers are struggling to support themselves. Over the weekend, six members of the Venezuelan military were detained by local authorities for stealing goats, the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported Sunday. It said the soldiers confessed to stealing the goats and said they did it to feed themselves, since they had no food left in their barracks.
  • Venezuela opposition submits 1.85 million signatures in recall effort

    05/02/2016 2:28:25 PM PDT · by StCloudMoose · 7 replies
    reuters ^ | 5/2/16
    see what happens when they run out of beer: Venezuela's opposition said it delivered 1.85 million signatures to the country's elections authority on Monday as part of the process of seeking a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro. Food and medicine shortages, triple-digit inflation, rampant violent crime and increasingly frequent water and power cuts have stoked anger against Maduro. The Democratic Unity coalition (MUD) gathered far more than the required 1 percent of voters' signatures, or nearly 200,000, needed to trigger the next phase of a recall referendum. "With this successful strategy the MUD has progressed in achieving urgent political...
  • Beer Becomes the Latest Scarcity in a Venezuela Crippled by Shortages

    04/30/2016 2:57:13 PM PDT · by PJ-Comix · 69 replies
    Wall Street Journal ^ | April 29, 2016 | JUAN FORERO and MAYELA ARMAS
    CARACAS, Venezuela—The largest private Venezuelan company and producer of 80% of the beer consumed here began to shut down its last beer plant on Friday, the latest deprivation in a country crippled by shortages. After Empresas Polar SA closed its three other beer plants over the past several days, the shutting of the San Joaquin plant, near Valencia, will leave just a week’s supply of beer, the company said. Like many other firms here, Polar blames the government, which hasn’t allocated the dollars the company needs to pay for imported raw materials such as malted barley. President Nicolás Maduro’s government...
  • Looting On the Rise As Venezuela Runs Out of Food, Electricity

    04/28/2016 4:55:05 AM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 50 replies
    PanAm Post ^ | April 27, 2016 | by Sabrina Martín
    Food Producers Alert They Have Only 15 Days Left of Inventory amid Rampant Inflation. Despair and violence is taking over Venezuela. The economic crisis sweeping the nation means people have to withstand widespread shortages of staple products, medicine, and food. So when the Maduro administration began rationing electricity this week, leaving entire cities in the dark for up to 4 hours every day, discontent gave way to social unrest. On April 26, people took to the streets in three Venezuelan states, looting stores to find food. Maracaibo, in the western state of Zulia, is the epicenter of thefts: on Tuesday...
  • This Is The End: Venezuela Runs Out Of Money To Print New Money

    04/27/2016 5:29:50 PM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 54 replies
    Zero Hedge ^ | 04/27/2016 | Tyler Durden
    Back in February, when we commented on the unprecedented hyperinflation about the be unleashed in the Latin American country whose president just announced that he would expand the "weekend" for public workers to 5 days...... we joked that it is unclear just where the country will find all the paper banknotes it needs for all its new physical currency. After all, central-bank data shows Venezuela more than doubled the supply of 100-, 50- and 2-bolivar notes in 2015 as it doubled monetary liquidity including bank deposits. Supply has grown even as Venezuela has fewer U.S. dollars to support new...
  • Venezuela Doesn't Have Enough Money to Pay for Its Money [Bloomberg Link Only]

    04/27/2016 10:12:27 AM PDT · by C19fan · 17 replies
    Bloomberg [Link Only] ^ | April 27, 2016 | Andrew Rosati
    here
  • PROTESTS AS VENEZUELA EMBRACES 2-DAY WORKWEEK TO SAVE POWER

    04/27/2016 10:01:06 AM PDT · by PROCON · 31 replies
    AP ^ | April 27, 2016 | HANNAH DREIER
    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan cities cleaned up from a night of looting and fiery protests Wednesday as government offices closed their doors for the rest of the week in the face of a worsening energy crisis that is causing daily blackouts. The socialist administration began imposing a four-hour daily blackout around the country this week to save power. Then on Tuesday, President Nicolas Maduro announced that millions of officials will now work only Monday and Tuesday.
  • Venezuela Imposes 2 Day Work Week To Save Energy

    04/27/2016 7:32:32 AM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 34 replies
    The Huffington Post ^ | April 26, 2016 | by Andrew Cawthorne and Daniel Kai
    CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's socialist government ordered public workers on Tuesday to work a two-day week as an energy-saving measure in the crisis-hit South American OPEC country. President Nicolas Maduro had already given most of Venezuela's 2.8 million state employees Fridays off during April and May to cut down on electricity consumption. Water shortages and electricity cuts have added to the hardships of Venezuela's 30 million people, already enduring a brutal recession, shortages of basics from milk to medicines, soaring prices, and long lines at shops.
  • In Venezuela, Former Chavistas Risk Lives Fighting over a Bag of Onions

    04/27/2016 7:55:23 AM PDT · by detective · 20 replies
    Breitbart ^ | 26 Apr 2016 | Frances Martel
    A disturbing video of a crowd physically beating each other to get at a select few bags of onions outside a supermarket in Venezuela highlights the struggle the average Venezuelan must endure to keep his or her family fed in the increasingly impoverished socialist nation.
  • Venezuela Runs Out of Beer

    05/01/2016 6:12:45 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 50 replies
    Reason ^ | 04/30/2016 | Ed Krayewski|
    Venezuela's largest privately-owned beer company has stopped producing beer after running out of malted barley (or, more specifically, running out of foreign currency with which to buy malted barley). The company, Empresas Polar, stopped production yesterday—it warned last week that it would run out of malted barley by then. Polar is putting "your drunk uncle's favorite political forecast to the test," Francisco Toro of the Caracas Chronicles wrote. "You know the one I'm talking about, right? That one uncle of yours who gets drunk at every family gathering and starts to rant about how the only way we're going to...
  • Venezuela’s Empresas Polar May Have to Stop Making Beer Because of Dollar Shortage

    04/22/2016 12:11:44 PM PDT · by PJ-Comix · 20 replies
    Wall Street Journal ^ | April 21, 2016 | JUAN FORERO
    Venezuelans grumbling over the scarcity of food and toilet paper may soon face another shortage, beer produced by Empresas Polar SA., the country’s largest private company and biggest beer maker. Polar said on Thursday that it will be forced to stop producing beer next week because it cannot get the U.S. dollars, which are controlled by the government, to import the malted barley needed to brew. Under Venezuela’s stringent currency exchange system, only the government can legally control dollars, which companies need to import raw materials, food, machine parts and other supplies.
  • Venezuela to begin electricity rationing

    04/22/2016 12:00:04 PM PDT · by Truth29 · 18 replies
    Al Jazeera ^ | April 22, 2016 | Staff
    Venezuela's government has said it will turn off electricity supply in its 10 most populous states for four hours a day for at least 40 days to deal with a severe power shortage.(Snip)Recently, the country's main brewery Polar, which is part of Venezuela's largest cooperative Empresas Polar, announced that it would stop production as a result of financial difficulties. The company, which produces 80 percent of the country's beer, says thousands of workers will lose their jobs as a result of the stoppage.
  • Venezuela is shipping gold to pay debt

    02/25/2016 5:44:22 PM PST · by BenLurkin · 24 replies
    krcrtv ^ | 02/25/2016 | Patrick Gillespie
    Venezuela sent $1.3 billion worth of gold bars to Switzerland in mid-January, according to data from the Swiss Federal Customs Administration. That gold was shipped out just weeks before two big debt payments due this month, totaling $2.3 billion. On Friday alone, Venezuela has to pay bondholders $1.5 billion. Venezuela is running out of cash and many experts believe there's a high chance it will default by this fall when a string of big debt payments are due. "It's a question of when Venezuela will default, not if," says Russ Dallen, managing partner at LatInvest, a firm that invests in...
  • Venezuela: Opposition Claims Gov’t Hiding Up to 500,000 Zika Cases

    02/23/2016 6:47:47 AM PST · by C19fan · 3 replies
    Breitbart ^ | February 22, 2016 | Mary Chastain
    Venezuelan opposition legislator José Manuel Olivares claims the country has under-reported cases of the Zika virus and the country lacks necessary medical supplies to properly combat the outbreak sweeping the region. “I hope that President Nicolas Maduro will not continue putting policy and ideology before the health and life of Venezuelans,” he declared.
  • Small problem: Socialist Venezuela has run out of food

    02/19/2016 2:13:00 PM PST · by Sean_Anthony · 53 replies
    Canada Free Press ^ | 02/19/16 | Dan Calabrese
    Oh, and the power's out, so they can't preserve what little is sitting around. I’m sure the Bernie lovers will come up with a reason this is different and not the same, but every policy the Chavistas have put in place in Venezuela since the revolution has more or less tracked to what Bernie Sanders would do here - with one exception. At least Hugo Chavez and his hapless successor Nicolas Maduro believed in exploiting the country’s oil resources. It’s just that they used them to grease their own palms rather than meet the needs of their people, which is...