".......Lisandro Barazarte, a photographer with the local newspaper, Notitarde, caught images of several of the men shooting into the crowd while steadying their firearms on their palms.
"They were practiced shooters," Barazarte said. "More were armed, but didn't fire."
When it was over, two La Isabelica men were dead: a 22-year-old student, Jesus Enrique Acosta, and a little league baseball coach, Guillermo Sanchez. Witnesses told the AP the first was shot in the head, the second in the back. They said neither was at the barricades when he was killed....
....."They put a pistol in my face and said they were going to kill me," said Jhonny Medrano, a 21-year-old student, describing how he and several classmates were beaten with sticks, pipes and pistols by the attackers, whom he quoted as saying, "We are the ones who are defending the government. We are Chavez. We are Maduro."
The students said they were made to walk through a line of attackers, some of whom wore university firefighters uniforms, while they were beaten. As they left, the attackers filled the building with tear gas.
"This can't keep happening," architecture professor Hernan Zamora told the AP, crying inconsolably as he recalled the terror he felt. "This can't keep happening."
March 27, 2014: Lawsuit filed in Miami accuses Venezuela top official, Diosdado Cabello, of bribery “A lawsuit filed in Miami accuses the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly of receiving at least $50 million in bribes from a company doing business in that country....
Joe DeMaria, the companies’ attorney, said Halvorssen’s allegations are absolutely false.
“My clients build power plants. They supply electricity to millions of Venezuelans,” DeMaria, of the firm Tew-Cardenas, said in an email.
....The payment of bribes to high-ranking government officials has become common practice in Venezuela, according to Transparency International, an NGO that ranks Venezuela as the most corrupt country in the hemisphere, second only to Haiti.
And Cabello, one of the most influential officials in the Nicolás Maduro administration, has been accused more than once of being involved in kickbacks.
According to reports by the U.S. embassy in Caracas, made public in 2012 by WikiLeaks, Cabello is the central figure of “one of the three main centers of corruption”
March 26, 2014: 3 Venezuelan generals arrested, accused of coup plot “(CNN) — Venezuela’s President says his country has arrested three air force generals accused of plotting a coup.
“Last night we captured three generals, who we had been investigating...three generals who were trying to turn the air force against the legitimately constituted government,” President Nicolas Maduro said in remarks broadcast Tuesday on state-run VTV. “They were organizing a coup. This captured group has direct ties with sectors of the opposition, and they said that this week was the decisive week.”
The generals, whom he did not name, will be charged in military court, he said.
Maduro revealed the arrests as he spoke to a commission of South American foreign ministers who are visiting his country as part of efforts to facilitate dialogue as political tensions mount........”
March 29, 2014: “Venezuela’s neighbors watch as it spirals downward “VENEZUELANS DESPAIR at the lack of international interest in the political crisis that is rocking their country. Since anti-government protests began early last month, at least 34 people have been killed, most of them opposition supporters gunned down by security forces or government-backed gangs. Some 1,600 people have been arrested, and many say they were beaten or tortured. One of the opposition’s top leaders has been jailed for more than a month.
............A delegation from the UNASUR group — promoted by Venezuela as an alternative to the OAS — subsequently visited Caracas and won a commitment from President Nicolás Maduro to accept a “good-faith witness,” possibly from the Vatican, to mediate talks with the opposition. But there’s not much reason to believe that Mr. Maduro — who refers to opposition leaders as “Chucky,” in a bizarre reference to the horror movie — is ready to compromise, or that the UNASUR group will pressure him to do so.
The problem with this fecklessness is that Venezuela desperately needs outside help. With one of the world’s highest inflation rates and one of its highest murder rates, severe shortages of basic goods, chronic power outages and now daily street confrontations, the country is in danger of collapse............”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3138909/posts#1