Venezuela: Several shot dead in anti-government street protests
At least three people have been shot dead during anti-government protests in Venezuela.
Both sides are blaming each other for the killings while social media reports allege government backed armed groups were responsible.
The protesters are angry with President Nicolas Maduro’s failure to control inflation, crime and a lack of opportunities for the country’s young.
The marches took place on Venezuela’s National Youth Day.
One protester explained why he was there: “Venezuela is waking up, we’ve had enough of so much insecurity and repression on the part of the state’s public authorities and we are tired and showing it.”
It is the worst bout of unrest seen on the streets of the country’s capital Caracas since the turmoil which followed Maduro’s election last year.
The government has accused opposition hardliners of trying to mount a coup similar to the one a decade ago that briefly ousted the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Political tensions in Venezuela have spilled into the streets during recent weeks. The opposition and supporters of President Nicolas Maduro have also taken to social media to spread their messages for and against the regime.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., condemned the Venezuelan government Thursday for human rights violations.
“The world must wake up to what’s happening in Venezuela as the government’s unprecedented wave of repression is beating, jailing and even killing innocent Venezuelans, particularly its young people,” Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “Courageous Venezuelans who want nothing more than a better future dictated by true democratic order deserve the American people’s solidarity.”
In defiance of President Nicholas Maduros ban on public protest, Venezeulans gathered around the country on Friday to protest creeping authoritarianism, devastating inflation, and skyrocketing crime. Dozens of students remain in jail after the third day of mass demonstrations, and the government (despite its denials) has blocked access to Twitter photos, which the opposition had been using to disseminate images of demonstrations. Three protestors have been killed to date, and the growing unrest may well amount to a crisis of legitimacy for the late Hugo Chavez successor...
Chavez economic bomb, as one Venezuelan economist terms it, went off under Maduros Presidency. Venezuelas real inflation rate is an impossibly high 56 percent, and its scarcity index, which measures how hard it is to purchase necessities, has hit a record high. Venezuelans have for months been struggling to find basic consumption items including cooking oil, toilet paper, and corn flour, Reuters Brian Ellsworth reports.
The protestors second big complaint, high crime, also started under Chavez. During Chavez 14 years in power, crime rates roughly quadrupled. The governments inability to successfully prosecute criminals, together with economic insecurity and wide availability of firearms, created an environment ripe for criminal violence.
lack of opportunities for the country’s young.
Something for Republicans to think about as they block minimum wage increases and cut unemployment benefits.
Something for Republicans to think about as they block minimum wage increases and cut unemployment benefits.
This is a picture of our central planners watching the S&P 500 hit all time highs while the underlying economy is a disaster.America
Even simpler: watch California. Venezuela is what California will look like in 20 years. New regulations every day that are nearly impossible to comply with, never ending capital flight, always selling out to the Free Shit Army by promising free everything.Venezuela's problems are complicated. From an American point of view it would be like the Democrats getting full control and going batshit crazy with giving all the poor people houses, forcing Microsoft, Intel, and Oracle to sell their products cheaper, and so on. If the Republicans were to get full control it would be like all the money being funneled to the top 1% and everyone else being told to go fuck themselves. Both result in class warfare and a huge class divide.
Even simpler: watch California. Venezuela is what California will look like in 20 years. New regulations every day that are nearly impossible to comply with, never ending capital flight, always selling out to the Free Shit Army by promising free everything.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is expelling three US consular officials, accusing them of meeting students involved in anti-government protests
That seems to be a common thread in these uprisings around the world. If you're working and happy, you're not protesting. Fortunately in the U.S. there's plenty of opportunity for the young... oh wait.
Americas youth are too busy playing Candy Crush Fantasy football to be concerned with things like jobs or freedom
This is what the U.S. will look like once the unemployed rise up against the Corporations especially the Oil Thugs.
Venezuela has the lowest prices in the world, but no one there has a car to put gas into.
Because we're so pissed off over the low gas prices? Venezuela has the lowest prices in the world, but no one there has a car to put gas into.
They're protesting their Far-Left, socialist, masters who have bankrupted their countries with unsustainable programs used to appease one group, the welfare addicts (and pad their own pockets), at the expense of the middle class, which is disappearing everywhere due to globalization and overly aggressive environmental laws, that are stacked to push manufacturing to the developing 3rd world who doesn't have to abide by them.
Venezuela's Progressive regime is crumbling, and so will the others around the world, when people finally wake up and realize that their governments can't and won't provide for them forever. Hard work won't put everyone into the 1%, that's absurd, luck has a lot to do with that, but it, combined with innovation, lifts everyone up and will provide direct benefits to you, in the form of substantially more money in your pockets.
Sitting online and whining about "the rich", and how you want what they have (even making ridiculous comments about murdering them in their homes and plundering their estates), doesn't help you, what does are ideas and elbow grease.
That's not why.
You have a lot of growing up to do.
You are so wrong on so many things and demonstrate inability to comprehend written words.
What grade are you in? Still in Junior High?
Yes and I can see Americans being pretty pissed off and rising up against their corporate overlords when only the rich can afford to go to $75,000 schools or else have $1,500 /mo student loan payments for their whole lives, there is no vacation, healthcare costs $15,000 a year, and the only thing Americans can afford is cheap gas to get them to work to pay for the right to breath and work.
As with addicts, our nation will have to hit bottom before anything will change. Our political system has become lopsided with the power concentrated at the top instead of at the bottom. Politician's aren't servants, they're our masters. Our founders knew this would eventually happen. Our government has armed themselves against us. We watch it as it unfolds. When someone cries out in concern a cacophony of pro government voices shouts that person down. These people are convinced that our government at the local and national level need armored vehicles, military grade weapons and armaments, as well as the hollow point bullets being purchased by the millions. They believe those bullets are solely for practice. They believe this because they have been taught to trust their government without question. All who doubt the government are the enemy.
We are a people divided and there is nothing on the horizon that will unite us. We have a long fall ahead of us before we hit bottom. How quickly that happens remains to be seen.
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." The Federal Reserve Bank (The FED) is a private bank."
So, what to do? Rein in the government. How? By using the power within the Constitution put in there specifically to rein in an out of control government.Thomas Jefferson knew of the dangers that could appear when BIG government rules over the American landscape.
On the Federal Banks...
I am 100% convinced this is our last hope. We cannot trust politicians to relinquish their power. They will never do so willingly and they will bring this nation down in their relentless quest to "win". To "one up" those they oppose.The Federal Government is broken.
Washington D.C. will never voluntarily relinquish its power. Left unchecked, the government will continue to bankrupt this nation and destroy the liberty of the people. It is time for citizens and the States to act and we have the solution.
Something for Republicans to think about as they block minimum wage increases and cut unemployment benefits.
Yes and I can see Americans being pretty pissed off and rising up against their corporate overlords when only the rich can afford to go to $75,000 schools or else have $1,500 /mo student loan payments for their whole lives, there is no vacation, healthcare costs $15,000 a year, and the only thing Americans can afford is cheap gas to get them to work to pay for the right to breath and work.