https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...8d&oe=5CC38813
You Cant Fix Stupid; Stupid is FOREVER
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...83&oe=5CBC3C03
Defending A Venezuelan Homestead: "Eventually People Will Come For What You Have"
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/s...?itok=vprGfgS3
"Chances are that after the first successful trespassing, next time they decide to get a little more. The only possible defense against this… is numbers and silent, dangerous long distance weapons that don’t use powder and are untraceable..."
Wed, 01/16/2019 - 19:05
165 SHARES
Authored by JG Martinez D. via The Organic Prepper blog,
My cousins there in the open country of Venezuela tell me that nights are dark. The government cut the power, and hungry people use this to go to the farms and see what they can steal.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ge-gallery.jpg
Don’t rely on your elaborate systems too much.
I must tell you that those who rely on power and water off-the-grid, are wrong. Use it while you have it, but plan for when you stop having it. You will not be able to get supplies for your systems.
Oversize your systems; use industrial and heavy duty equipment. If you can afford buying some additional meters of extra pipe and have storage space, do it. It won´t rot and can be very useful. Design with time. Learn to get pleasure from customizing your designs, and discuss it with your family and like-minded friends over a couple of beers. I used to do this with my dad and we both enjoyed it a lot. I miss him.
The quality of the tap water is... similar to what you could get in a third-world nation. Not surprising. Therefore, I would not recommend you tie yourself to replaceable filters. Use the kind of filter that could be cleaned properly with a hard brush if needed. I would invest in UV lamps for the sterilizer and direct the money to a good quality battery pack.
A crossbow is a fine investment
I mention this because, on my wish list back in the homeland, there was a good, simple, and robust crossbow with a sight and a night vision scope. Maybe even three or four would be better, just in case. Use a tall tree for a camouflaged surveillance post, and leave the crossbow there with enough arrows to make a real mess in a roving band.
Don’t get rid of that smartphone just yet, even if you have no service. Just invest in a good waterproof case and an IR heat tracing device that you may fix to it, perhaps a new battery, and you will have a wonderful device for night-watching that should last for a few years if cared for properly.
If you are skilled enough, I would suggest you try to make your own crossbow and arrows. I am not especially gifted for handcrafting, but if I have to repair my crossbow and my life and my beloved ones’ lives depend on that… you get it.
A simple sheet of 3-4mm or thinner steel will give you plenty of tips. You can store them also, and they are cheap, too. Oil them and they won’t rust. So making your own even if you are a couch potato (like me, sometimes, at least LOL) will provide you with an additional edge. No thief that is trespassing on your property at night is aware that an arrow will cross the night silently to get stuck in a tree one or 2 meters away from their chest. It should work as a deterrent, and a very good one. Worst case scenario, this will make them much more aggressive the next time they decide to trespass, and you should be prepared to respond accordingly.
Eventually, people will come for what you have.
This is no joke.
There could be a lot of people, even people you know. They will have watched what you have, or what they think you have, and sure as heck they have had time to plan, and decide. Among them, it is very likely that you could have met them in a nearby town, and even had some light chat. I know that some farms have been attacked after some intel has been collected.
This is not uncommon. It happens in places like Colombia all the time, where rich coffee farmers suffer kidnappings and stuff. It’s only a matter of time until Crime Inc. (Castro’s maybe?) decided to “export” their modus operandi to Venezuela.
Chances are that after the first successful trespassing, next time they decide to get a little more. The only possible defense against this… is numbers and silent, dangerous long distance weapons that don’t use powder and are untraceable.
I have been informed of people in numbers of 12, 15, or even 20 persons storming a place.
The invaders don´t need other weapons for this if their gang is big enough: stones and sticks are enough. Young, hungry, but still strong, they will come at night, take what they can. Oh, and remember, this is the Caribbean tropics, so they have very sharp machetes. And being country laborers and workers, they know how to swing them pretty well. Something to consider.
If you have numbers enough, and a silent alarm system is in place, drills have been done… a small compound can make a mess of a decent amount of night attackers. The most dangerous approach someone can do, is going at someone’s door in the middle of the night. Even in regular times, it is something very stupid to do, because good people don’t come at night.
The real problem comes afterwards.
It’s not like the movies. You repel the attack, the guys run leaving behind trails of blood and stuff. You still have to live THERE. Perhaps with women, elders, children, perhaps someone ill, injured or disabled – and now there are a good number of “neighbors” (the bad kind) all p***ed off and humiliated.
Because that is how the criminal thinks: if someone stops them, they FEEL humiliation. This makes them angry. This makes them even more dangerous. They have plenty of time to plan another attack, though.
What you can do to avoid it, is something that everyone has to resolve on their own. I would leave some stuff in their path, something enough for them to consider a success. Next time, they would find something less…with a note. Perhaps some crossed long bones that mimic human ones or something creative.
Let’s say 20 persons, 5 of them with edged weapons, and your defense line is just 7 persons, including perhaps some teenagers that can’t re-cock the crossbow. Using 3 crossbows for each person, the attack can be avoided. It is going to be a mess, but you will survive to tell the story. If just 3 of the 7 men (or women, or grandpa/grandma) of the defense team can re-cock a couple of crossbows for the younger, it is a very good tactical advantage. Go with a very simple cocking mechanism, and make sure the cords used are abundant, and perhaps even able to be hand made with ancient techniques.
Why do I write about this now?
Because these are the types of things some of my extended family still there are facing. Their protein intake has become much lower because the roving bands are desperately looking for meat and poultry. If things go so bad that one is able to get into the property of someone they know face to face, in the middle of the night, and with a sharpened machete… it should not be so difficult to shoot an arrow, if your kids are in the panic room shaking in fear, don’t you think? Use some light armor, provided some of your members are young, and agile (not like me), and get closer than what you need.
This is why I identified those IR devices as being very useful for this kind of night operation. They could even record some footage if needed for further investigation if some kind of law enforcement team is operating.
I designed all of this after contacting them and asking them how things are around their place: a farmer’s town where everyone used to know each other.
Less than 2000 population. Peaceful and quiet. Until now.
People will do anything to survive.
We have to be ready for that, not just in our equipment selection. In our minds.
A bad choice is something that we will have to face for the rest of our lives. I know.
Thanks for your support fellows, and your encouraging comments.
Be safe, and may the good Lord bless you all.
* * *
About Jose
Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They are currently setting up a new life in another country.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-what-you-have
Military mutiny in Venezuela: It Has Started
January 21, 2019
It's on. And it's only going to get worse for the illegitimate Maduro dictatorship pretty soon.
lllllllllllllllll
INSANE! People are shooting live ammo Into the crowd in Venezuela. Pres. Maduro refuses to step down! He is breaking ties with the US and giving our personal 72 hours to leave the Country! Be safe and get home fast! We have 72 diplomats there!
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...tT8_normal.jpg Sotiri Dimpinoudis
12:48 PM - 23 Jan 2019
5,925 Retweets
6,553 Likes
Video https://twitter.com/Jamierodr10/stat...76549612978179
Yes, Socialism brings death. Just ask the New York Times:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/10861...g&name=600x314
Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals
Venezuela’s Public Health Emergency
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016...isable=upscale
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/w...hospitals.html
Yes, Socialism starves children. Just ask the New York Times:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/10866...g&name=600x314
Hunger has gripped the nation for years. Now, it’s killing children.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-starving.html
Yes, Socialism causes people to eat their pets out of starvation and contract rampant diseases Just ask the New York Times:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/10856...g&name=600x314
‘We’re Losing the Fight’: Tuberculosis Batters a Venezuela in Crisis
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/w...erculosis.html
Yes, Socialism kills all wealth. Just ask the New York Times:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxoIFoTW0AEa9ra.jpg
Venezuela Cuts to Fight Inflation (Zeroes From Its Currency, That Is)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/w...-currency.html
Yes, Socialism caused inflation of 1 million percent over the last five years in Venezuela. Just ask the Washington Post:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/10850...g&name=600x314
Venezuela’s inflation will hit 1 million percent. Thanks, socialism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.44892f62c7b1
1 US dollar = 250,000 Bolivars
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxoIvetWwAArZvb.jpg
Convert US Dollars (USD) to Venezuelan Bolivars (VEF)
https://www.exchange-rates.org/Rate/USD/VEF
Yes @AOC - the Socialists of Venezuela are *literally killing* their own people as I write this thread. What was their crime? Protesting socialism & its evils. Tell the broken people of Venezuela that "Socialism just has not been tried yet" I dare you
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/10881...g&name=600x314
Venezuela protests: 'Four dead' as thousands rally against Maduro
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46970620
Venezuela already ran out of other people's money; which happens to be the only way Socialism functions in the first place.
https://scontent-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...09&oe=5CFFE3B1
They have plenty of OIL to pay for their medicine.
No more foreign aid, no money and no oatmeal to countries who have land and resources to pay for their OWN people!
No more sending our Navy hospitals ships! Latin America needs to resolve this problem...not the USA or it's taxpayers!
How about Navy hospital ship in San Francisco to take care of our starving homeless people with NO home or medical care!!!
We are 22 trillion in debt! And no more refugees, TPS, or asylum. Stay home and solve your own problems and get on birth control!
I bet they do; but that is the framework needed to start the socialist state
https://external-mia3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...CMH89J1JOBBeTf
thetruthaboutguns.com
Venezuelans Now Regret Giving Up Their Guns - This is What Happens to a Disarmed Populace - The Truth About Guns
THIS is what happens when you elect a socialist to run a country...
Eventually the government runs out of other people's money and it becomes necessary for the people to take back power!!
https://amp.miamiherald.com/latest-ne…/article225129345.html
https://external-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...AipIWUnPL7Qv5v
miamiherald.com
“Enough already!’ Venezuela’s highest ranking military diplomat breaks with Maduro
And then these foreigners come here and vote Democrat and the very same failed policies they fled in their country.
Deport them all, no more immigration for 10 years and clean this mess up!
No refugees, no TPS, no asylum and no illegal aliens!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7g0ym4M_vA
Youtube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7g0ym4M_vA
OPUS 118 Trump's Coup Venezuala
18,947 views
1K 83 Share
https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AAuE7mBBDea...ffffff-rj-k-noSteve Pieczenik
Published on Jan 25, 2019
Venezuela between a soft and a hard coup. Plz note position on map: Caribbean, South America etc.
Escape from Venezuela
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/s...?itok=PnrPit9b
...7 percent of the country's population.
Sun, 01/27/2019 - 20:40
20 SHARES
A host of foreign powers including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and over a dozen Latin American states were quick to recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela's president earlier this week. The opposition leader declared himself interim president in a move embattled President Nicolas Maduro labeled a U.S. orchestrated coup. As well as having the support of Venezuela's military, Maduro still has widespread international backing including support from Russia, China and Mexico, amongst others, according to Bloomberg.
https://infographic.statista.com/nor...d_maduro_n.jpg
You will find more infographics at Statista
https://static.apester.com/<acronym ...er_100x100.gif
The declaration from Guaido comes after two nights of protests in the country which have led to the deaths of at least 14 people.
As Statista's Martin Armstrong notes, Venezuela's problems are extensive and varied, with political, social and economic crises making life in the country very difficult. As Statista's infographic shows, this has led to a huge increase in migration out of the country.
https://infographic.statista.com/nor...igration_n.jpg
You will find more infographics at Statista
In 2015, there were almost 700,000 Venezuelans living in other countries. Fast forward to July 2018 and this figure has risen to 2.3 million - representing 7 percent of the country's population. These are only the official figures, too. The actual number that have fled the country is thought to be much higher.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...cape-venezuela
stuff like this is done intentionally
"5,000 Troops To Colombia" To Quell Venezuela Crisis? John Bolton Flashes Notepad Contents At Briefing
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/s...?itok=wqu9kCNV
If confirmed, a serious operations security classified breach...
Venezuela - A Case Of Socialist-Organized Theft
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/s...&itok=s6L8Xk-U
"What has happened to Venezuela is not a disaster or a coincidence, it is socialism..."
Mon, 01/28/2019 - 23:20
11 SHARES
Authored by Daniel Lacalle via DLacalle.com,
Much has been written about the economic disaster perpetrated by the Maduro-Chavez regime in Venezuela. The magnitude of it is simply difficult to match. A sad global example of how to destroy a rich country.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ect-060116.jpg
The mistake that many make is to think that this wreck has been caused by a combination of incompetence and folly. And they are wrong. The Venezuelan socialist regime has carried out the largest organized robbery in history and has done so with a perfectly designed plan.
The plan was always to expropriate the wealth of the whole country for the benefit of a few political leaders through plundering, destruction of currency and decapitalizacón of the state oil company
What has happened to Venezuela is not a disaster or a coincidence, it is socialism.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...-mb_orig_0.jpg
It is important to start by debunking the lies of the regime propaganda:The nonexistent blockade. The United States is one of Venezuela’s largest trading partners. Trade between the United States and Venezuela in 2018 grew by more than 9%. Venezuela has bilateral trade agreements with more than 70 countries. Chavismo, like the Castro regime in Cuba, manipulates its followers by calling the sanctions against members of the regime and the fraudulent use of the country’s funds a “blockade”. The only blockade suffered by Venezuela is that of Chavismo against its citizens.“It is not real socialism”. Many say that Venezuela is not true socialism. If anything has characterized the Venezuelan regime is that it has applied the socialist recommendations and policies by the book: Systematic attack against property rights and nationalization of means of production as established in the National Socialist Plan 2007-2013: expropriate companies, use the box of state companies to political purposes, impose intervened prices and print money massively.
The nonexistent excuse of oil prices. Venezuela is the only OPEC country in economic depression and hyperinflation. All the oil-producing countries have adapted their economies without falling into the economic destruction and generalized poverty created by Chavismo in Venezuela. Chávez used to say “put the price of oil at zero and Venezuela will not enter into crisis”. It was not necessary. Venezuela squandered the oil revenues received during the first decade with Chavez when crude oil prices rose exponentially and destroyed any hint of wealth later.
The real coup d’état. The only coup is the one that Maduro perpetrated when he manipulated an election whose result was not recognized by the majority of Western countries, with a totalitarian constituent process whose result is not recognized even by the company in charge of the voting system (Smartmatic). Chavismo has used seemingly democratic instruments to silence and destroy the National Assembly and perpetuate Maduro in power through fraudulent elections.
The Venezuelan economic wreck is the biggest organized robbery in history:
First robbery: Expropriation. The Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (Cedice) estimates that more than 2,500 companies have been expropriated by the Chavez-Maduro regime. Of these companies, the vast majority are now bankrupt and have been devastated by socialist management. The NGO Transparencia Venezuela, in its report Property Owned by the State in Venezuela, describes as “terrible” the management of expropriated companies using ideological and political criteria: “Instead of increasing production, it has decreased.”Venezuela is today the most unequal country in Latin America (ENCOVI, 2017) and one of the poorest. In 2014, extreme poverty was 23.6% and in 2017 it was 61.2%. Total poverty exceeded 87% in 2017 (according to a study by the Central University of Venezuela and the Simón Bolívar University). Venezuela’s economic freedom score according to the Economic Freedom Index of the Heritage Foundation is 25.9, making its economy the 179th in terms of freedom in the 2019 Index. One of the least free economies in the world. According to the Index “monetization of large public deficits, coupled with mismanagement of the state-dominated oil industry, has led to hyperinflation and shortages of foreign currency, basic goods, and industrial inputs. An economic plan launched in August 2018 included the removal of five zeroes from the currency, a massive devaluation, and another large increase in the minimum wage amid persistent ad hoc policy interventionism, heavy state control of the economy, and blatant disregard for the rule of law”.
Second robbery: the decapitalization of PdVSA. In 1998, PdVSA produced 3.5 million barrels per day, today it does not reach 1.3 million. Meanwhile, the government multiplied the number of employees, firing many excellent Venezuelan engineers and filling the company with crony political supporters, going from 25,000 employees in 1998 to 140,000 in 2017.
PdVSA went from being one of the most efficient and important oil companies in the world to a disaster on the verge of bankruptcy. From their financial statements, it appears that the government drained up to 12 billion US dollars in some years to finance political spending, destroying the cash-flow, balance sheet and the future of the company. These funds have disappeared in a network of clientelistic interests and offshore accounts of regime leaders. Brutal cost increases, spectacular worsening of production and plundering of the cash flow to pay for political spending led the company to increase debt to more than 34 billion dollars, after having been one of the most profitable and with the best balance sheets in the world.
Third robbery: Savings and wages. Inflation, the tax of the poor. The Chavez regime economic advisers repeated, “printing money for the people does not cause inflation”… Money supply has been increasing exponentially, by 3,000% in a single year, 2018, destroying the purchasing power of the currency.
The strategy is simple, and it is textbook socialism: The government massively increases spending, subsidies and public employment printing local currency thinking that the dollars come from heaven because the Government says so. Then, it destroys its economy by expropriating companies, sinking the private initiative and imposing prices that do not cover the cost of production due to the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency. As such, the economy enters into a downward spiral, so the government continues to spend even more in nominal terms and finances it by printing more worthless paper notes while its foreign exchange reserves plummet. The currency becomes worthless and the government generates hyperinflation and poverty.
During the dictatorship of Maduro inflation has reached one million percent and the IMF estimates that it will be 10,000,000% by 2019. Ricardo Hausmann, a professor at Harvard University, perfectly explained the destruction via printing of currency: “When Chávez came to power, the dollar was at 0.547 bolivares (547 of the old). When Maduro arrived it was 26 bolivars: 48 times more expensive. Now Maduro devalued to 6,000,000, 231,000 times more expensive than he found it and 11,000,000 times more expensive than when Chávez arrived. ” Thus, after several increases in the minimum wage on paperless paper, that minimum wage has been at less than $ 17 per month. “Printing money for the people.”
The result of this organized robbery? More than 300 billion US dollars stolen, according to the National Assembly, a devastated economy and massive poverty. Textbook socialism, same results as always.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...rganized-theft
https://scontent-mia3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...6e&oe=5CEEFEBD
97,906 Views
Debbie D'Souza knows exactly what caused Venezuela to fail—socialism.
Video https://www.facebook.com/DSouzaDines...0148348700795/
Free Healthcare is just around the corner... so dont bring your retarded backside here, we are all full up on simpletons. You voted for that retarded crap, you need to ride that retarded monkey
https://external-mia3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...Bfd3a7Ry7Ab4TU
weaselzippers.us
Inside The Hell Of ‘Communist Heaven’: Robert Hardman On The Collapse Of Venezuela | Weasel Zippers
Its time to do the right thing America.... do a 1 for 1 swap; 1 Hard Working Venezuelan thats had enough of Socialism for 1 retarded socialist from the states that want to live that dream..... its a Win, Win, Win situation
Inside The Hell Of ‘Communist Heaven’: Robert Hardman On The Collapse Of Venezuela
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9063906179.jpg
Chickens coming home to roost.
Via Daily Mail:Jose Moncon was on the way home from his school for the mentally disabled, clutching nothing more threatening than his colouring book, when a demonstration blocked the road ahead and forced him to take a detour.
Moments later, a police snatch squad coming the other way scooped him up and put him in prison for unspecified crimes against the state.
He is severely epileptic and has the mental age of a ten-year-old. But because Jose is 21 and classed as an adult, he shares an airless cell with 18 other adult men, many of them hardened criminals. As Venezuela is jostling for top spot in the world homicide league, there are plenty of those around here.
Jose’s mother Maria, 44, is distraught as I meet her outside the terrifying Soviet-style ‘Palace of Justice’ in Maracay, a garrison town 60 miles from the capital, Caracas. It is more than a week since her terrified son was taken and his lawyer says the police have no idea how to treat his epileptic fits.[…]
Yet things are changing here — and fast. In recent days, the U.S. and much of the free world have recognised the country’s new young opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela’s legitimate interim head of state.
The U.S. — the main importer of Venezuelan oil — has now imposed a ban on all payments to the state-owned oil company, thus depriving the Maduro regime of 80 per cent of its income.
On top of that, the Bank of England is refusing to return £1 billion of gold bars currently in its vaults, saying Maduro is not their rightful owner. The dictator must now turn to the drug cartels for cash.
Keep reading…
https://www.weaselzippers.us/409951-...47kt8BgxJXEUWo
Inside the hell of 'communist heaven': Corpses dug up for jewellery, children jailed and a gangster regime that has looted billions. Read this searing dispatch from a Venezuela on the brink of revolution
By Robert Hardman for the Daily Mail
Published: 18:49 EST, 1 February 2019 | Updated: 03:07 EST, 2 February 2019
1.8k shares
1k
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Jose Moncon was on the way home from his school for the mentally disabled, clutching nothing more threatening than his colouring book, when a demonstration blocked the road ahead and forced him to take a detour.
Moments later, a police snatch squad coming the other way scooped him up and put him in prison for unspecified crimes against the state.
He is severely epileptic and has the mental age of a ten-year-old. But because Jose is 21 and classed as an adult, he shares an airless cell with 18 other adult men, many of them hardened criminals. As Venezuela is jostling for top spot in the world homicide league, there are plenty of those around here.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9063310885.jpg+9
President Nicolas Maduro is clinging to power in Venezuala as opposition against his socialist regime increases as a result of the nation's economic collapse
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9063372144.jpg+9
President Maduro, pictured addressing troops at Libertador Air Base in Maracay on January 29, has lost the support of people who were loyal to his predecessor Hugo Chavez
multiple videos at the page link
Jose’s mother Maria, 44, is distraught as I meet her outside the terrifying Soviet-style ‘Palace of Justice’ in Maracay, a garrison town 60 miles from the capital, Caracas. It is more than a week since her terrified son was taken and his lawyer says the police have no idea how to treat his epileptic fits.
With her is Rosanna Paz, another mother frantic with worry. Her daughter Ana Paula, 16, was returning from the gym when a snatch squad grabbed her off the street. A week on, Ana Paula is in jail, waiting to hear what crimes she is supposed to have committed.
‘She’s in her last year of high school. She’s never been in any sort of trouble,’ says Rosanna, who had been so proud when Ana Paula was chosen to organise this year’s school prom. Now she has a criminal record for life.
Human rights lawyers here call it ‘human hunting’. They know of more than 75 children aged between 12 and 16 who have been arrested in the past week alone, though there are thought to be many more.
They are a fraction of the total number of people detained for allegedly protesting against a brutal kleptocracy clinging ruthlessly to power as its authority, like its stolen wealth, crumbles by the day.
Most of the free world has finally decided it is time to topple Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Yet a few unreconstructed neo-Trots, including much of Britain’s hard Left, still cling to the myth that Maduro’s narco-gangster regime is some sort of socialist utopia. Only yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn was calling for an end to all outside intervention. Venezuela, he said, simply needs ‘dialogue’.
As far as apologists like Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are concerned, Jose and Ana Paula are not innocent children. They’re part of a huge CIA conspiracy orchestrated by Donald Trump and American oil suits. Throw away the key, comrades!
Yet things are changing here — and fast. In recent days, the U.S. and much of the free world have recognised the country’s new young opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela’s legitimate interim head of state.
The U.S. — the main importer of Venezuelan oil — has now imposed a ban on all payments to the state-owned oil company, thus depriving the Maduro regime of 80 per cent of its income.
On top of that, the Bank of England is refusing to return £1 billion of gold bars currently in its vaults, saying Maduro is not their rightful owner. The dictator must now turn to the drug cartels for cash.
So might this be the end of this tragic country’s 20-year experiment with ‘Chavismo’, the bonkers socialist economics of Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chavez?
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9063743171.jpg+9
He was at the airbase to witness a military exercise to show he still has the loyalty of his army
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9063906179.jpg+9
The U.S. — the main importer of Venezuelan oil — has now imposed a ban on all payments to the state-owned oil company, thus depriving the Maduro regime of 80 per cent of its income
We may have a clearer picture this weekend as Venezuela steels itself for mass demonstrations. But like any cornered animal, Maduro is now at his most dangerous. Reprisals could be bloody.
I have spent the past week in a country where graves are routinely ransacked for a corpse’s jewellery; where nurses must choose which premature baby gets the only functioning incubator and which must die; where 10 per cent of the population have fled over the borders with just the clothes on their back; where presidential cronies have looted billions of U.S. dollars from the economy; where inflation is set to hit ten million per cent this year; where parliament has been sidelined by a puppet assembly; where children are arrested on the whim of a Stalinist commissar with a grudge — and all this while sitting on the world’s largest untapped oil reserves.
Petrol is cheaper than water here, but most people can’t afford a car and the average weekly wage is £1.50 — barely enough for a couple of eggs.
I meet a group of cowed but angry residents of El Junquito, one of the poorest slum districts or barrios in Caracas. The capital is surrounded by these shanty cities, clinging to near-vertical hillsides amid unrelenting squalor.
I ask them what they would say to Corbynista supporters of the Maduro regime. ‘These people are just playing politics with our poverty,’ says Omaira, 27, a mother of two, as she shows me a grotesque mobile phone image of a local teenager shot dead by the National Guard during last week’s protests.
We are joined by two of her neighbours, Jose, 21, and Jesus, 19. Both have a hunted look — the two men took part in the recent protests and live in fear of being denounced by the collectivos, the regime spies who permeate every community. Yet there is a palpable spirit of revolution in the air. ‘We feel it is now or never,’ says Jesus.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/02...9079360756.jpg+9
The latest turmoil began with last year’s presidential elections. Maduro won by a landslide — although millions boycotted the poll
The latest turmoil began with last year’s presidential elections. Maduro won by a landslide — although millions boycotted the poll.
Many nations — including, crucially, almost every other South American state — rejected the result. When the new presidential term of office began on January 10, most of the world ignored Maduro’s inauguration ceremony.
Opposition politicians invoked the Venezuelan constitution. It states that, in the absence of a legitimate president, the speaker of the national parliament becomes acting head of state. Step forward the current incumbent, Juan Guaido, an earnest 35-year-old former engineer and social democrat MP.
Standing in a city square, he duly proclaimed himself acting president before disappearing on the back of the motorbike that has been at his side ever since. He was swiftly endorsed by the U.S., Canada and most of South America.
Many European nations, including the UK, have given Maduro until tomorrow to announce fresh elections or they will follow suit.
Needless to say, Maduro has angrily denounced this upstart, pointing to all those honest countries that have endorsed him, namely Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and Turkey, plus terror movements including Hezbollah and Hamas. Sinn Fein, it should be noted, proudly sent a delegation to his inauguration.
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Many European nations, including the UK, have given Maduro until tomorrow to announce fresh elections or they will follow suit and endorse the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president
When Guaido called for demonstrations against the regime last week, Maduro’s response was brutal. We can expect more of the same today at marches across the country. Most embassies have repatriated all but essential staff. Foreign journalists are being arrested.
No one seriously believes Maduro’s promise of a new ‘Vietnam’ against the ‘Yankee’ imperialists, any more than they expect Donald Trump to invade. But those with cars are filling their tanks and those without are pouring Molotov cocktails.
Violent protest has been part of Venezuelan life for years, but now it has spread from the city centre to those slums that once adored Chavez and Maduro.
The daily struggle to exist here defies belief. Water and electricity come and go at random. In the countryside, people have had neither for months. Banknotes are almost worthless. Last year alone, Maduro lopped five zeros off Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, in a vain attempt to stabilise prices.
Yet it is so often the small things that tell the big picture. On my last visit here, I was struck by the dismal scenes in Caracas’s zoo, where many animals had been eaten by the locals. One survivor was a lone elephant with a huge weeping sore. I was going to look her up this week, until I heard she starved to death last summer.
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No one seriously believes Maduro’s promise of a new ‘Vietnam’ against the ‘Yankee’ imperialists, any more than they expect Donald Trump to invade. But those with cars are filling their tanks and those without are pouring Molotov cocktails
The abiding image from this visit will be one of the city’s main cemeteries. Almost every grave has been torn open in the quest for bodies buried with jewellery (a skull can also fetch a few bolivars from followers of a voodoo cult).
One tomb is daubed with a furious message in red paint: ‘Cursed be those who dig out our dead. I will kill the one I catch.’ The lid of the tomb has been smashed open regardless.
My guide urges me to leave. The cemetery is overlooked by a famously violent barrio from which gangs prey on isolated mourners.
His own mother, Josefina, was attacked last year while visiting her father’s grave. A robber demanded her wedding ring. When it wouldn’t budge, he tried to bite off her finger until his saliva miraculously loosened the ring.
It is the stuff of horror films — but everything about Venezuela is surreal, even getting here. In the boom days, you could fly from Caracas to Paris by Concorde. These days, the few airlines still operating all stop in neighbouring countries to change crew. Cabin staff refuse to stay overnight in Venezuela, as it is too dangerous.
It’s not great for passenger morale to see all your flight attendants abandon ship in this way (and there is no one to complain to when your luggage vanishes, as mine did).
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What next? It all hinges on the military. Hugo Chavez was a soldier. Portly 56-year-old Maduro, however, is an ex-bus driver. For now, the armed forces are on his side. He has made his senior generals dollar millionaires. But how long will the troops endure meagre pay and rations?
I am keen to track down Juan Guaido, the man who claims he can sort all this out. Understandably, he is hard to pin down. On Thursday, police raided his house (he wasn’t there), while Maduro has frozen his assets and banned him from getting on a plane.
I find him making a surprise visit to a hospital, where medical staff have given him a white coat covered with handwritten messages — ‘Save Our Nation’ and the like.
He seems almost bashful. Charismatic he is not. But he is friendly and clearly brave.
I introduce myself and he smiles broadly at the mention of the UK and shakes my hand.
‘I just had an amiable conversation with your Foreign Secretary,’ he says, adding his thanks to the British people. And with that, he jumps on the motorbike and is off via a side road, avoiding the riot police at the main gate.
What next? It all hinges on the military. Hugo Chavez was a soldier. Portly 56-year-old Maduro, however, is an ex-bus driver. For now, the armed forces are on his side. He has made his senior generals dollar millionaires. But how long will the troops endure meagre pay and rations?
I drop in at the offices of Alfredo Romero’s law firm. Educated at Harvard and the London School of Economics, he is a law professor and director of Foro Penal, the charity that defends political prisoners. Last weekend, so many detainees packed the main justice building in Caracas, he was in court until 3am and emerged to find a wheel missing from his car.
Over the years, Romero, 50, has helped defend more than 14,000 victims of ‘Chavismo’ but says there has been a major change in recent days. ‘The police are now breaking into homes to arrest people and almost all of them are from the poorest areas,’ he says. ‘The other big change is that they are detaining children.’
Romero says he has no time for ideology. ‘I am not Left or Right. It’s just about natural justice.’ By rights, he should be a darling of global bien pensant society — an award-winning and genuine human rights lawyer (not some huckster chasing British Army veterans).
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Juan Guaido, pictured at a rally in Caracas on January 26, has to keep details of his movements confidential as he is likely to be arrested following a raid by police this week on his house
Yet to the British Left, he and his ilk are in cahoots with evil Trump. Does he care? He laughs. ‘They are just ignorant hypocrites.’
I hear the same thing from one of the country’s best-known opposition figures still at large. ‘It’s very sad that Left-wing politicians don’t understand the magnitude of our problems,’ says Maria Corina Machado, an MP who has been subject to a travel ban for the past five years. She has been attacked many times and once had her nose broken in five places by a Maduro crony inside the parliamentary chamber.
She believes this week’s events have been a game-changer. ‘The international coalition is getting broader by the day and this is no ordinary dictatorship. There is no ideology,’ she says. ‘It’s a criminal state and when a criminal state runs out of money, it collapses.’
Few expect change to be swift. The likeliest scenario, say Western analysts, is that moderate Chavismo elements will begin furtive talks with the opposition and cracks will start to appear — then Western governments stand ready to bombard the country not with weapons but with humanitarian aid.
Venezuela is not an Iraq or Libya, where the demise of the strong man allowed anarchy to fill the power vacuum. It thrived as a democracy before and can do so again — with our support.
Just don’t expect Her Majesty’s Opposition to help.
For nothing, surely, proves the moral inadequacy of our hard Left as eloquently as its bovine insistence that we should stand back and leave Maduro and his fraudsters to plunder what is left of their ruined state.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Venezuela.html
The Joys Of Socialism: Venezuelans Are Looting Corpses For Jewelry And Bones
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"This is a lawless land, there is no respect for anything here. God will punish those people that are doing this."
Tue, 04/09/2019 - 15:15
46 SHARES
Venezuelans, desperate to find anything of value in their country where the currency has collapsed and widespread political and economic chaos rules, are now targeting whatever commodity they can get their hands on: this includes jewelry and human bones, which desperate locals can then sell for a profit, according to the BBC.
The British network spoke to relatives of those who had family members at one cemetery, the Cementerio del Sur, who are now standing guard at their relatives tombs to keep looters away.
Eladio Bastida, whose wife is buried in the cemetery said: "I come here every week, or every two weeks. I keep watch. I worry I’ll arrive one day and she’ll be gone. When I buried her, you could just walk in here, but lately you can barely reach her grave, because every tomb has been opened and the remains taken out."
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Looters are primarily looking for jewelry, gold teeth, and skeleton remains that can be sold for use in various rituals. Damage at cemeteries is so widespread that workers can't keep up with repairing graves. Even historical figures like novelist and former Venezuelan president Rómulo Gallegos have had their graves looted.
Bastida continued: "This is a lawless land, there is no respect for anything here. God will punish those people that are doing this."
One resident, Jorge Liscano, told the BBC he plans to exhume his relatives’ remains to keep them safe: “This is the result of social collapse, a lack of education, the loss of values in our homes and our institutions. In recent years, this country has only focused on politics. We have forgotten about the things that make us human.”
The crisis in Venezuela has escalated recently as the national electric grid has broken down and left residents without basic human needs. Managing the remains of the deceased continues to be a challenge in the country.Reports from local morgues last year revealed exploding corpses due to a lack of effective refrigeration. Most corpses placed in morgues quickly enter what is known as the emphysematous phase of decomposition, where they can no longer contain the gases and putrid fluids accumulated inside and burst as a result.And even the country's criminals are now seeking greener pastures:
Many morgues are also struggling to handle the sheer number of arriving dead bodies, many of whom have died as a result of violence or lack of basic medical care. A report from the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV) published last December found that murder rates actually fell over the course of 2018 because violent criminals joined the millions of people fleeing the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis.But why worry about the borders, right?
Meanwhile, it was just days ago that we reported on the "Zombie Apocalypse" that the country has become, sharing photos of Caracas, looking empty and desolate. A series of AP photographs presented Caracas as essentially becoming a ghost town after sunset, painting eerie scenes of the empty streets and stores.
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When dusk turns to night, the AP reports, "the once-thriving metropolis empties under darkness" after recently "a string of devastating nationwide blackouts last month dramatized the decay." Horrifyingly for common Venezuelans, years of mismanagement under the Maduro government and externally imposed isolation along with biting US sanctions have further sent Venezuela's health care system into "utter collapse," a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also finds.
The population has also witnessed a rapid resurgence of preventable deadly diseases. With near constant electricity shortages and sometime complete mass outages, once popular shops in upscale Caracas neighborhoods have struggled to stay open at all.
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US officials have repeatedly blamed President Nicolas Ocasio-Cortez Maduro for overseeing a socialist system of vast corruption; however, Caracas officials have blamed a decade of US sanctions for exacerbating the suffering of ordinary citizens.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...elry-and-bones
This is what the DemonRats want to turn our country into.
All these illegals pouring over the border need to go home. Same culture, same lawlessness, committing crimes, no morals!
Cannibalism next? Socialism’s collapse of Venezuela now leading to citizens looting human corpses for anything that can be traded for food
Friday, April 12, 2019 by: Ethan Huff
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(Natural News) Hoping to stumble upon something, anything, that might help them gain the upper hand amid the ongoing, socialism-induced collapse of their native land, a growing number of desperate Venezuelans is now resorting to looting dead people’s graves, new reports warn.
At Cementerio del Sur, for instance, the largest cemetery in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, most of the graves have already been dug up and ransacked. Folks are apparently stealing things like jewelry, gold teeth, and even dead people’s bones, which they’re then selling on the black market to others who use these remains in various religious rituals.
“Stolen bones sell for use in rituals of the cult-like religion, Santeria,” reports the United Kingdom’s BBC News. “Criminal gangs are also looking for gold teeth and valuable jewelry.”
Video footage captured by BBC News shows some of the devastating wreckage left in the wake of all this grave digging, revealing toppled tombstones, dirt piles scattered all over the place, and all-around mayhem.
“I come here every week, or every two weeks,” laments Eladio Bastida, whose now-deceased wife is one of the bodies currently buried at Cementerio del Sur, in Spanish to BBC News. “I keep watch. I worry I’ll arrive one day and she’ll be gone.”
“When I buried her, you could just walk in here,” he adds. “But lately you can barely reach her grave, because every tomb has been opened and the remains taken out.”
For more related news, be sure to check out Collapse.news.
“Lawlessness” now rules Venezuela, local man laments
Things used to be a whole lot different in Venezuela, back when society wasn’t collapsing, and people were more grounded in their moral values – as opposed to just grossed in the political happenings of the day.
Speaking from his heart, Bastida basically told reporters that it pains him to witness this continued decline – but he also says he’s confident that one day justice will be served.
“This is a lawless land. There is no respect for anything here,” Bastida laments. “God will punish those people that are doing this.”
“The damage is so widespread, cemetery workers say they are unable to stop it,” further reveals BBC News. “Even the tombs of historical figures have been broken into,” the news outlet adds, pointing to the grave of Romulo Gallegos, a revered Venezuelan novelist and former president, that was recently dug up and looted.
As for the country of Venezuela as a whole, things are hardly on the verge of improving anytime soon. Not only are cemeteries being destroyed left and right, but Venezuelans are repeatedly being left without power as a result of rolling blackouts, depriving them of basic services and sanitation.
While the Venezuelan government admitted back in 2016 that it has a major security problem on its hands as a result of this collapse, to which it responded by trying to increase police patrols, the situation is still much the same.
“The theft in this cemetery has reached such a point that some families even write the words, ‘this has been robbed,’ to prevent a repeat experience,” says BBC News correspondent Will Grant. “Grave robbing for gold teeth and bones with impunity. For the families affected, this is a metaphor for the country as a whole.”
A man named Jorge Liscano actually wants to exhume his relatives’ remains from one of the last intact tombs at Cementerio del Sur before thieves get the chance to ruin it along with all the others.
“This is the result of a social collapse, a lack of education, the loss of values in our homes and in our institutions,” Liscano is seen stating in a BBC News video report of the situation. “In recent years, this country has focused only on politics. We have forgotten about the things that make us human.”
Sources for this article include:
BBC.com
Breitbart.com
NaturalNews.com
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-04-...n-corpses.html