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More than 1,000 opposition demonstrators in Venezuela have marched through the streets of Caracas in new protests against the government. At the end of the march, activists clashed with police in the wealthy neighbourhoods of Callao and Altamira. President Nicolas Maduro extended the traditional carnival holidays until the end of this week and asked Venezuelans to rest and celebrate peace. At least 17 people have been killed in more than three weeks of unrest. Opposition leaders have asked people to ignore the carnival season, when many Venezuelans traditionally go to the seaside. They are demanding the release of dozens of...

Genesis Camona was a 22-year-old college student who participated in the protests. She was also a beauty queen, having won the title of Miss Tourism in her home state of Carabobo. According to her uncle, she and her mother were peaceful protestors wanting an end to the 15 years of socialism that have plagued the nation. He stated: ‘There’s no food, no milk, no baby food … It is horrible what is happening in this country,’ Gil said. ‘That’s why she was out at the protest.’ During the demonstrations, she was gunned down by members of armed militias known as...

What could go wrong? A lot, if you consider the former peanut farmer and president’s last intervention in Venezuela.Joshua Goodman of AP reports on Carter’s expressed interest in going to Caracas: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expressing concern about Venezuela's escalating political crisis and wants to meet with leaders on both sides in an upcoming trip. Carter, a mediator of past political conflict in the deeply polarized South American nation, made the offer in private letters he sent this week to President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Expressing "grave concern" about the loss of life in recent...

Russia, flush with new-found wealth from oil exports, expands its military reach and political influence abroad. A war-weary America slashes defense spending and retreats from the world. The president embarks on a massive government-subsidized program to develop alternative energy to replace fossil fuels. Pundits cluck about America in retreat, and point to the rise of an Asian economic superpower. That’s the world circa 1976, but it sounds like quotes ripped from today’s headlines. History has a way of repeating itself, or to quote the great Yogi Bera, it’s déjà vu all over again. The Obama administration is looking a lot...

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Mike's America Welcome to Mike's America, a view of news and opinion that has caught my attention. You're welcome to share your thoughts by commenting on posts. Tuesday, February 25, 2014 The People of Venezuela Demand FREEDOM! Where is the American left? Latest news has the death toll in the Venezuela freedom protests at 13. Initially, the protest involved students who protested a rape attempt on a college campus and were abused by the police. The protests spread and violence by enforcers of the Maduro regime followed. Protests now include others opposed to the left wing fascist regime but...

Last week Jimmy Carter fired off letters to Venezuela’s fraudulent President Nicolas Maduro and to Venezuela’s defrauded Presidential candidate Enrique Capriles expressing “grave concern” regarding the political turmoil and bloodshed convulsing their nation. From his pulpit at Emory University’s Carter Center, the former U.S. president calls for “dialogue” among the embattled Venezuelan parties and offers to visit the troubled nation--but not as a formal “mediator.” The news of Carter’s proposed Venezuela visit was only hours old when alarmed Venezuelan anti-socialists sent out an SOS: “Please, desist from your trip,” reads an open letter from Venezuelan blogger/journalist Daniel Duquenal. “You have...

(CNSNews.com) – At a time of escalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore. “We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying. Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when...

<p>People line up to buy food at a supermarket in San Cristobal, about 410 miles (660 km) southwest of Caracas, Feb. 27, 2014. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Pope Francis called Wednesday for an end to violence in Venezuela that has killed at least 13 people and urged politicians to take the lead in calming the nation's worst unrest in a decade.</p>

(Reuters) - Venezuelans began a week-long national holiday on Thursday as some protests still simmered, but President Nicolas Maduro's government was hoping the break would take the heat out of the nation's worst unrest in a decade. The 51-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez brought forward by two days a long national holiday weekend for Carnival when Venezuelans traditionally abandon cities and head for Caribbean coast beaches to unwind and party. There will be another day off for the March 5 anniversary of Chavez's death from cancer, meaning a week-long break that officials hope will dampen student-led street protests. In the...

What motivates people to demonstrate in central squares, day after day and week after week, against repressive regimes at the risk of life and limb? It's a question raised most recently by events in Ukraine and Venezuela. The leaders and backers of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine and the Maduro regime in Venezuela have had a ready answer. The demonstrators are fascists, neo-Nazis and criminals. Russian President Vladimir Putin's sidekick, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, called the demonstrators "masked and armed people" with "black masks and Kalashnikov rifles" using "terrorist methods." Backers of the Venezuelan regime, headed by Hugo Chavez's chosen...

In this excellent 14 minute speech, Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship. He asks what good is Cuba’s high literacy rate if the government prevents the people from reading the things that they want to read. He asks what good is Cuba’s medical care if doctors can make more money from driving a taxi than from working as a doctor. He asks why, if Cuba is as great as its supporters in the U.S. say it is, do so many refugees, doctors, and baseball players flee Cuba for the United States, instead of it being...

For some reason the left can never see the dark red side of communism. Yet they'll trumpet every flaw about America!Yesterday I posted in pictures the story of student protests in Venezuela and asked why the left was either silent in support or on the side of the oppressive government thugocracy? A day earlier, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), an arch liberal reported on a recent trip to Cuba where he swallowed every bit of left wing propaganda that was served up to him by the Cuban government. Senator Rubio (R-FL) followed Harkin to the floor with the real story about...

A new low in the disgrace of the American political class was reached when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) took the floor this week to extol the virtues of Cuban communism. A new high immediately followed, as Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) rose to annihilate Harkin, and all the other miserable apologists for left-wing tyranny. The civilized world continues to pay an appalling price for failing to cast out communism with the same vehement disgust we showed towards fascism. Among other things, the difference in our attitude toward these monstrous evils blinds us to their similarities. Too many Western politicians and academics...

CARACAS, Venezuela—A gun-toting retired Venezuelan general has become a folk hero to the country's opposition and galvanized a protest movement by defying the government of President Nicolás Maduro, engaging in a Rambo-like standoff with security forces sent by the president to arrest him. Angel Vivas has been holed up in his home in a hilly Caracas suburb since last weekend, when Mr. Maduro, on live television, ordered his arrest for having backed student protests that have convulsed this oil-rich nation. When black-clad officers from military intelligence went to the retired Army general's house Sunday morning, he emerged wearing a flak...

San Cristobal on Tuesday night Dear International Editor:Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood.Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting.People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO...

(AFP)—A Russian warship was docked in Havana Wednesday, without explanation from Communist Cuba or its state media. The Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat, measuring 91.5 meters (300 feet) long and 14.5 meters wide, was docked at the port of Havana's cruise ship area, near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The ship is reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles.

The U.S. Senator from Florida had listened patiently to Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa speak favorably about his recent trip to Cuba, all the while omitting any real references to the oppression of the totalitarian government there. To Rubio, like many Cuban exiles and their descendants, it was too much to bear. “Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at,” Rubio said Monday when he took to the Senate floor. “What they are really good at is repression…They have exported repression in real time, in our hemisphere, right now.” This wasn’t some Cold War-era fulmination about Castro’s...

Half as many Americans view Iran as the United States’ greatest enemy today as did two years ago. As a result, China now edges out Iran and North Korea atop the list. After the top three countries, 9% of Americans mention Russia, 7% name Iraq, 5% Afghanistan, and 3% Syria. Gallup first asked this open-ended question in 2001, and opinions have shifted over that time. In the 2001 survey—10 years after the Persian Gulf War but before the 2003 Iraq war began—Americans named Iraq as the greatest U.S. enemy by a large margin. …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI