Free Republic

VENEZUELAN tyrant Nicolas Maduro is not merely complicit in organised crime — he leads it. From generals to judges, the very top of Venezuela’s political and military elite are deeply embedded in a powerful, sprawling cocaine trafficking network, experts say. Cartel de los Soles, translated as Cartel of The Suns, isn’t a cartel in the traditional sense. It’s a web of Venezuelan military, intelligence and political elites accused of taxing, protecting and moving cocaine with state resources. With parts of Maduro’s government deeply enmeshed in the drug trade, the lines between state power and organised crime have been blurred. Dr...

One by one, they are singing, the men who used to do dirty deeds for the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether the United States will attack, and whether Maduro will fall. But these Venezuelans sniff change in the air. As more countries exit Venezuela’s orbit, more allegations are likely to emerge. Two of the men are in prison here in the U.S.: Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former spy mastermind, and Cliver Alcala Cordones, a former general, both of whom have written letters to President Donald Trump airing...

SALEM, Ore. -- The Chicken is barking. His breath comes in short, loud bursts, straining to escape the narrow opening in his foam beak. He sprints through the warm night, off the faded field, into a windowless concrete storage room, plopping down on a folding chair. Outside, in the aluminum bleachers that ring this tiny baseball stadium in the Northwest woods, the laughter dies. Inside, the Chicken gasps. "Was it funny?" he asks. Full story here.