Free Republic

Empty shelves in the supermarkets. Never-ending lines forming before dawn to buy whatever basics good from whatever brand arrives to the store. Hostile military officers threaten reprisal, ensuring that those lined up keep their grievances silent. This is how shopping for food or basic household goods looks like in Venezuela today. Rising shortages and inflation have submerged the country in a deep recession. This precarious reality is the result of actions carried out by the ‘revolutionary’ government in the past years: a model of poor economic management in a context of prevalent incompetence, corruption, and human rights violations. Did oil...

Cash-strapped Venezuela has received $5 billion in financing from China, President Nicolas Maduro announced Sunday as his country struggles with an economic crisis. "We just received $5 billion more in financing for development," Maduro said in a radio and television address.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrives in Cuba today (23 March) in a bid to spur sensitive talks aimed at normalizing ties with the Communist island state. The visit comes as previously icy relations between Cuba and the West are thawing, following the dramatic rapprochement between Havana and Washington over the last few months. […] In 2014, the EU launched its normalization process with the Americas’ only communist nation to encourage the country to pursue reforms allowing for private initiatives without having to change the one-party political system. The negotiating sessions earlier this month, initially scheduled for January, had...

NEW YORK – Two Islamist militants were found guilty on Monday by a federal jury of plotting to bomb New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Russell Defreitas, 67, a U.S. citizen born in Guyana, and Abdul Kadir, 58, of Guyana, conspired to blow up buildings, fuel tanks and pipelines at the airport in the New York City borough of Queens. The men, who were arrested in June 2007, face up to life in prison. They are due to be sentenced on December 15. Defreitas, who had worked at the airport, provided knowledge of its facilities and layout, U.S. prosecutors...

President Barack Obama says Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will visit Washington this summer, nearly two years after she canceled a similar trip to protest U.S. spy programs. Her visit is set for June 30. Rousseff canceled a state visit to the U.S. in the fall of 2013 to protest an American spy program that targeted Brazil's government and citizens.

Venezuela's product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday…. "It's an extreme situation," says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. "For over a year we haven't had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared."… Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is the only major Republican likely 2016 presidential candidate who hasn't weighed in on the controversy over Indiana's "religious freedom" law that erupted this week — and his explanation for avoiding the issue is questionable.

Daniel Pardo of BBC Mundo went on a shopping spree to see how many household goods he could find while waiting on the notoriously long lines in Venezuela. On the first day he was able to obtain a grand total of only three items out of a shopping list of eight but promised he would return the next day to see if he could get any of the rest. Well, as far as the world knows tomorrow never came. In fact, following the  March 16 Spanish language broadcast of his first day shopping for the three items, it seems Daniel Pardo never returned....

Venezuela is Latin America's largest oil producer, and its economy depends heavily on oil exports. It's been been hit hard by the tumbling oil prices. "Venezuela is in desperate straits. The oil sector has been deteriorating, and now with the slumping oil prices, they needed cash desperately," says Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C.-based group that studies the region. Shifter says it's no surprise that Venezuela is trimming back a program that provides oil at subsidized, deferred payment rates to many of its Caribbean neighbors that are dependent on energy imports. Petrocaribe — an alliance...

Plunging oil prices have been an economic windfall for U.S. consumers, primarily through greater savings at the pump. In energy-reliant countries around the world like Angola, however, the effect has been far less beneficial. Social and economic turmoil in countries like Venezuela and Russia—largely because of the swoon in global oil prices—has drawn attention away from Angola, an OPEC member that is Africa's second-largest oil producer. The country churns out 1.75 million barrels of oil per day, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). The sub-Saharan country is hugely dependent on oil production to generate revenue for its economy, which...

At least 2,000 jobs will likely be lost in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry in the coming months because of sharp declines in the price of crude oil, according to estimates by the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

Venezuela has cut in half its subsidized shipments of crude oil to Cuba and Petrocaribe member nations to 200,000 barrels per day, down from 400,000 shipped in 2012, a Barclays report says. Also, the British investment bank’s report considered it “ironic” that Venezuela would ship any oil at all, highlighting that while the country is going through extreme difficulties, it continues to subsidize oil sales to countries that have healthier economies. . . Because of the cuts in oil shipments to the Caribbean, the firm reduced its deficit forecast for Venezuela to $22.6 billion, down from more than $30 billion...

An economic implosion is becoming increasingly likely in Venezuela , and the country's debtholders, trade partners and neighbors are bracing for the fallout. The country's energy-dependent economy requires oil prices above $100 per barrel in order to sustain itself. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country's export earnings, and combined with gas, it's 25 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Internationally traded Brent crude prices have fallen more than 48 percent in the past year. Meanwhile, a combination of inflation and currency controls have generated scarcity of basic needs such as flour, toilet paper and medicine. Venezuelans stand...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of three Cuban-Americans in the Senate, is throwing his hat into the ring for the 2016 presidential race today. Cruz has made a career out of slamming President Obama for being weak and presiding over the collapse of countries like Yemen (as though Cruz could have done anything about that if he had been president). I figure if you total them all up, Cruz has called for six or seven strong US interventions abroad, whether in the form of invasions, air strikes, or covert coups d’etat. It is hard to tell exactly, since he doesn’t...

WHY? WHY? WHY?That is what your humble correspondent wants to shout at the computer screen while watching this BBC Mundo report presented by Daniel Pardo in Venezuela. Pardo actually has a good idea, namely to see how long it takes to buy eight basic home products (yes, including toilet paper) while waiting on the notoriously long lines in that country. Unfortunately he does not inform us "why" the situation is so dire even though the S-word providing the answer is proclaimed on wall posters all over that oil-rich but impovershed nation. Therefore Pardo is this week's winner of the John Chancellor Avoidance of...

...Brent for delivery in May fell 1.1% to $54.71 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in May traded at $45.64 a barrel, down 2% from last week’s close. Both contracts gained last week with U.S. crude snapping a four-week losing streak. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s influential oil minister Ali al-Naimi told a conference in Riyadh that there was no conspiracy behind the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision last fall to maintain its output target. He said the group could have lost market share if it...

hina will lend Venezuela around $10 billion in coming months, half as part of a bilateral financing deal and the other half for the development of oil fields, a senior official at state oil company PDVSA said on Thursday. Fresh funds are a boon for financially squeezed Venezuela and will likely increase market confidence over the OPEC country's ability to meet major debt payments and arbitration awards. Venezuelan bonds rose on Thursday following the news. However, relief may be tempered as the loans appear largely earmarked and will only go so far in countering the steep tumble in oil prices...

Gerardo Hernandez, a spy for Communist Cuba and the man responsible for the murder of four humanitarian workers (three of whom were American citizens) over international waters, was freed from prison last year by the Obama administration, due in part to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This was revealed at a February 6, 2015, celebration of Hernandez’s release, along with two of his fellow Cuban agents (collectively known as the “Cuban 5.. At the beginning of the event, an IPS official thanked all who who took part in the 17-year campaign and singled out a number of organizations that...

Mar 19, 2015 Congressional hearing probes Iranian reach in Latin AmericaReaction from Amb. Roger Noriega, former US ambassador to the Organization of American States

An associate sociology professor at Penn State University faces disorderly conduct charges.... .... 52-year-old Karen Halnon started a rant about U.S-Venezuela relations about half way through a Saturday flight from Nicaragua to Miami. A passenger on the plane caught the rant on video, which was posted on local television websites. It also showed her lighting a cigarette and blaming it on another passenger.