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Hugo Chavez was one of the most evil socialist dictators ever. He took the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela, and turned it into a disaster of misery and poverty in only five years. How bad? The people had no food or toilet paper. And critics of Chavez were tortured and murdered. Isn't socialism wonderful? But it gets worse. Just like Fidel Castro, Chavez got filthy rich based on the misery of his own people. His family made billions. Then this evil dictator died of cancer. He turned the country over to his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro ran the...

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign announced that the Vermont senator and 2020 candidate speak next week at George Washington University in Washington, DC defending the supposed virtues of democratic socialism and arguing his case to the progressive base why this economic vision must be embraced to defeat President Donald J. Trump. However, the campaign did not mention if Sen. Sanders will quote the deceased Venezuelan "leader" and democratic socialist advocate Hugo Chavez in his remarks, but Sanders' initial statements on the speech sound awfully similar to the man responsible for the economic ruin of Venezuela. "He will make the case that a...

WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) - The United States on Monday accused Russia of “reckless escalation” of the situation in Venezuela by deploying military planes and personnel to the crisis-stricken South American nation that Washington has hit with crippling sanctions. The Russian planes and military personnel arrived outside the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Saturday, according to local media reports, two months after the Trump administration disavowed President Nicolas Maduro. Washington has recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president and demands that Maduro leave power, which Russia has described as a U.S.-backed coup against the socialist government.

Infant mortality in Venezuela has soared by roughly 50% during the prolonged political crisis in the country. Briefing the UN security council, the UN’s political and peace building chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, depicted a devastating collapse in Venezuela’s health system. She warned that 40% of medical staff had left the country and said hospital stocks of medicine had dwindled to 20% of the required level. DiCarlo said the “protracted crisis” in the country had led in recent weeks to an “alarming escalation of tensions”. Four people died and hundreds were injured in clashes last weekend at the country’s borders.

At least 8 tons of gold were removed from the Venezuelan central bank's vaults last week, an opposition legislator and three government sources told Reuters, in the latest sign of President Nicolas Maduro's desperation to raise hard currency amid tightening sanctions. The gold was removed in government vehicles between Wednesday and Friday last week when there were no regular security guards present at the bank, Legislator Angel Alvarado and the three government sources said. "They plan to sell it abroad illegally," Alvarado said in an interview. The central bank did not respond to requests for comment. Alvarado and the government...

More than 300 Venezuelan soldiers have defected in just four days as the country plunges deeper into chaos. Soldiers who have sought refuge in Colombia since the weekend told the Associated Press that the catalyst for defection was the command from above to keep desperately needed humanitarian aid from their compatriots. "I was tired of people seeing me as just one more of them," Sgt. Jorge Torres said, referring to President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government. "I'm not." A high-stakes plan by the Venezuelan opposition to bring humanitarian aid into the country floundered over the weekend when National Guard troops loyal...

Venezuela's foreign minister Jorge Arreaza on Wednesday called for direct talks between President Nicolas Maduro and his US counterpart Donald Trump, to help ease the crisis gripping his country. "We are proposing the path of dialogue, even with the United States... Why shouldn't they meet, President Trump and President Maduro?" Arreaza said in an address at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. "Enough of all this aggression," he added. The US has led a diplomatic campaign in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido who has declared himself interim president and is recognised by about 50 countries. Maduro has...

A reporter covering the crisis in Venezuela for Telemundo was abducted Tuesday by a group of armed men, according to the network. Daniel Garrido, the reporter, was allegedly forced into a vehicle against his will while covering the detention and deportation of a news crew covering Venezuela for rival network Univision. Garrido was interrogated for six hours and then let go, but the kidnappers kept his equipment. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was detained in the presidential palace of Miraflores in Caracas on Monday, after an interview with embattled President Nicolás Maduro was abruptly ended. Ramos said Maduro stood up and...

Univision's star anchorman, Jorge Ramos, got a taste of what a real dictator is over in Caracas, when, after showing Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro a cell phone video of starving Venezuelans eating out of a garbage truck, found himself and his television crew shoved in a dark room for two and a half hours in detention, only to be released with their expensive television equipment and interview material stolen. Here's the Washington Post report of what went down: Journalist Jorge Ramos and his Univision team were detained at Nicolás Maduro's presidential palace in the Venezuelan capital Monday, reportedly because Maduro didn't like the...

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and members of his team have been detained in Caracas, Venezuela after dispute President Nicolas Maduro "didn't like the questions" they were asking during an interview, the network tweeted Monday night.

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”....