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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence plans to have his first meeting with Venezuela’s Juan Guaido in Colombia on Monday, Pence aides said, in a signal of support for the opposition leader after a weekend of violence. On Saturday, troops loyal to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blocked convoys of U.S. humanitarian aid from crossing from Colombia to Venezuela, using teargas and rubber bullets and killing two protesters. The violence could lead the United States to impose new sanctions as early as Monday to cut off the Maduro’s government access to revenues.

And thus Juan Guaido returned to Venezuela. Through the normal entry point at Maiquetia airport. He went in a triumphant caravan all the way to Caracas to attend a rally. That caravan and rally were immense... ….it was a major defeat for chavismo that had to bow to international pressure, and to a popular will favoring Guaido for which denial is now useless. True, several ambassadors were waiting for Guaido in Maiquetia to shepherd him to Caracas. But had the regime wanted to arrest Guaido it would have done so at customs.... ….the regime caved in, at least for now....

Venezuela has been in a deep crisis under the authoritarian rule of President Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Maduro was narrowly elected in 2013 after the death of populist President Hugo Chávez, who had served since 1999. Maduro’s regime has exhibited high levels of corruption and economic mismanagement, which have exacerbated the impact of a decline in global oil prices on the country’s economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela’s economy contracted by 18% and inflation exceeded 1.37 million percent in 2018. Nevertheless, Maduro has used the courts, security forces, and electoral council to...

The mess in Venezuela is getting worse, but while that country is literally starving to death under the yoke of an incompetent, corrupt and malignant socialist dictatorship the hopes of a Ukrainian-style peaceful revolution or bloodless coup that would end the Nicolas Maduro regime are dimming. That was the most apparent conclusion following last week’s attempts by the U.S.-recognized interim president Juan Guaido to ship desperately-needed food and medicine into the country. The government fired on aid workers at Venezuela’s borders both with Colombia and Brazil, setting trucks laden with humanitarian aid ablaze and kicking off civil unrest everywhere. Conditions...

Asdrubal Chavez, chief executive of Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp, boarded the Venezuelan-owned firm's corporate jet in Caracas on Jan. 30, after meeting with top officials of the embattled administration of socialist President Nicolas Maduro about the latest U.S. oil sanctions. Upon landing in the Bahamas - where Chavez has worked for about a year after being denied a U.S. visa - he had received word from Houston that it would be his last trip on a company plane and that his Citgo email account had been shut off. Day-to-day control of the company had passed to Citgo's top U.S. executive,...

Operation Boot Maduro seems to be moving to stage two. Following this week's military mutiny, which was squelched, but not before locals ran out and attempted to defend the troops in pitched street battles, now at least sixty - sixty! - neighborhoods in Caracas have erupted into riots - big riots, with people reported shot dead. Take a look at the series of tweets posted by Caracas Chronicles on its Twitter feed enumerating the names of the neighborhoods now in open revolt. Here was its last tweet: (snip) And to underscore just what this nightmare was about, late last night...

Roberto Micheletti Baín played a significant role in the political crisis that struck Honduras in 2009. He assumed the presidency of the country when the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the arrest of then-President Manuel Zelaya, who was subsequently expelled from the country by the armed forces. Six years on, Micheletti has retired from political life, and lives surrounded by nature and his family. Yet the specter of political turmoil has returned once more to the Central American nation. Late in April, a chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice revoked two key constitutional provisions that prohibited presidential reelection: paving...

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Ex-Argentina president Cristina Kirchner was charged with corruption as a judge asked that her parliamentary immunity be lifted so she can be detained, reports said Monday. She is accused of having accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes in the notorious "corruption notebooks" scandal that has rocked Argentina's political and business elites. As a senator, Kirchner is protected by parliamentary immunity from imprisonment, although not from prosecution. Unless that immunity is lifted, she cannot be jailed, even if found guilty. However, last month the Senate did vote to partially lift her immunity so that investigators...

Ideas run the world. Good ones create freedom and wealth; bad ones, oppression and poverty. You are not what you eat, but what you think. Politicians in particular fall under the sway of ideas. As John Maynard Keynes put it, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. . . . It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” The...

Labour’s Shadow Chancellor and right-hand man to party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said it is his “job” to “overthrow capitalism” and “radically” transform society, whilst praising the former leader of socialist Venezuela. John McDonnell repeatedly and emphatically backed bringing down the UK’s system of free enterprise and trade in an interview with the BBC, as well as calling for private firms to hand over their profits to the state. The man who Labour would put in charge of the Treasury, tasked with running Britain’s economy, said he aimed to transform society “in a way that radically changes the system”....

You've heard of skunks at the garden party? Such as still-ruling Nicaraguan socialist strongman, Daniel Ortega, who got his famous nickname from none other than the great Ronald Reagan? Well, now we have pigs at the garden party of democracy, the Organization of American States' Summit of the Americas, and this time, quite literally. At the globally watched summit, locals released a bunch of pigs through the streets of the Peruvian capital of Lima, around the Plaza San Martin, which is one of its main public spaces, spray-painted with the names of Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and Cuba's dictator, Raul...

The Maduro diet: How most Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds in 2016, plus another 24 pounds in 2017 In May 2017, the Washington Post reported:In a recent survey of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities, three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of 19 pounds… a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague.In February 2018, Reuters reported:Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year… according to a new university study…That’s 43 pounds in two years.Before I explain...

Here’s how most Venezuelans lost an average of 43 pounds in two years In May 2017, the Washington Post reported:In a recent survey of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities, three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of 19 pounds… a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague.In February 2018, Reuters reported:Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year… according to a new university study…That’s 43 pounds in two years.Before I explain how this came to happen, I want...

[FULL TITLE] Journalist Describes How Fusion GPS Smeared Him as a 'Pedophile,' 'Extortionist' and 'Drug Trafficker' The shady, liberal opposition research firm behind the discredited anti-Trump dossier uses smear tactics and intimidation to discredit people who go against its clients, a London-based Venezuelan journalist told Fox News Thursday. In congressional testimony as well, Alek Boyd said Fusion GPS labeled him a “pedophile,” “extortionist” and “drug trafficker” after he criticized Derwick Associates, one of its clients. “I believe that Fusion GPS’s business is to do basically whatever the paymasters tell them to do,” Boyd said in his first American TV interview....

Michael Morell, former acting head of the CIA, became a political animal in August 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. This month, he came to grips with the consequences of that decision -- that it might have played into President Donald Trump's distrust of the intelligence community. It is possible, he told the Review Journal, "I played a role in that." Back to last year. In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Morell not only endorsed Clinton, he also warned that, to the eyes of an intelligence analyst, candidate Trump could be considered "an unwitting agent...

In a 1,500-word article about the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, The Washington Post waited until the 25th paragraph to note that the self-declared socialist faces an “obstacle” to winning the presidency. The paper said that “…Sanders has not faced the kind of media scrutiny, let alone attacks from opponents, that leading candidates eventually experience.” The authors, Philip Rucker and James Wagner, added, “Sure to follow his summer surge is an autumn of investigations that could reveal new details about his personal background and record.” One of the more interesting members of the DSA is Kurt Stand, a communist spy for...

“From the Soviet Union to Cuba, Venezuela, wherever socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish, devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems…”– President Donald Trump, Sept. 19.A big takeaway from my prior years in ministry is that things aren’t always as they seem. Sometimes people hide dark secrets behind nice smiles and happy faces. Here in the U.S., gobs of sorely misinformed people fantasize about the pie-in-the-sky idea of socialism, having no idea all it does is...

Once there was a South American country with a promising future. It had a functioning democracy, a rapidly developing economy and a growing middle class. All the important indicators, including education, health care and foreign investment, were pointed in the right direction. It was far from perfect, but the mood was hopeful – and with good reason. But now all that promise is gone. The country is a failed state, a hollowed-out shell of its former self. Services like power and water are sporadic. The most basic consumer goods--from bread to toilet paper--are in chronically short supply. Crime has skyrocketed....

Hugo Chávez's populist government had expropriated the property from its longtime owners Among the once-productive farms put out of business earlier this decade was this 33,606-acre ranch in Cojedes state owned by the Vestey Group, a British company. El Charcote used to turn out 3.3 million pounds of beef a year, making it one of the country's top 10 producers. Today, the 13,000 head of cattle that once roamed here are gone. New farm machinery, painted the government's trademark red, gathers dust in a lot on the outskirts of this town. Officials, including Chávez, had previously announced that they have...

Well, if you want to lose faith in humanity and see the stupidity of hipster liberals in New York City, this is the video for you. Ami Horowitz took to the streets to talk about income inequality with some of the most insufferable people on the planet: progressives. Of course, they all felt it was a critical issue. One man was a member of the Working Families Party in the state. So, which country can we look to for guidance in solving this issue? How about socialist hellhole Venezuela?  It’s the nation with rolling blackouts, inadequate medical supplies, no toilet...