Free Republic

The time has come to discuss what could be done about the Venezuelan narko kleptocracy. And the election of Ivan Duque in Colombia today does affect the possible outcomes...... The thing now is that 1) Colombia has put in office for 4 years an openly declared adversry of the Maduro dictatorship 2) the flow of refugees from Venezuela can only increase now with all the political implications that this can have and 3) Maria Corina Machado is the chosen. Not that it may be the wisest one since she may be articulate and all but she has failed at establishing...

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...

CARACAS, May 22 (Reuters) - Betsabeth Casique saved for eight months for bus tickets out of Venezuela for herself and her three children. At 1.4 million bolivars each, they are worth what she earns in a month working as a nurse. It is less than two dollars at the black market exchange rate. When socialist President Nicolas Maduro won re-election to a six-year term on Sunday in a vote the opposition and foreign governments called illegitimate, Casique decided to leave, first for the western city of San Cristobal and from there to Cucuta, Colombia. "That was the straw that broke...

The Latest on Sunday's presidential election in Venezuela (all times local): 9:22 a.m.The leafy streets in the opposition stronghold of eastern Caracas were largely empty on Sunday, but voters in other parts of the city headed to the polls.Near Petare, Caracas' biggest slum, festive revolutionary music played as a few dozen voters stood in a long line to flash their so-called "fatherland cards" to socialist party volunteers. A woman wearing a Sports Ministry jacket in the red, yellow and blue colors of Venezuela's flag scanned each card with her phone —a form of verifying that cardholders had done their patriotic...

CARACAS — Venezuela's diplomatically-isolated president received a show of support from Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday ahead of a weekend election boycotted by the opposition coalition and decried by Washington. The United States, the European Union and major Latin American countries have criticized Sunday's vote in which leftist President Nicolas Maduro is likely to win re-election to a six-year term. Critics say Maduro, a 55-year-old former bus driver who has presided over an economic meltdown, is virtually assured victory as two of his most popular opponents are banned from running and the electoral council is pro-government. The Trump administration...

An American hostage imprisoned by the Maduro regime in Venezuela begged for assistance in a note as police cracked down on political prisoners demanding an end to their repression on Wednesday. “Helicoide the prison where I am at has fallen [sic] the guards are here and people.are trying to break in my room and kill me [sic],” Joshua Holt wrote on his Facebook page. “Help me please united states, how long do I have to suffer unjustly in this place?” he continued. “They want to kill me and paint the walls with my blood. I am a political prisoner, and...

Mass desertions from the army have forced Venezuela’s government to call up reservists and retired officers to provide security during this month’s much-criticised presidential elections.

The links of the terrorist group Hezbollah with criminal gangs in Colombia to obtain financing With the help of drug traffickers from the Oficina de Envigado, terrorists wash assets and receive money from drug trafficking in the Middle East and Africa 29 mar. 2018 GoogleTranslate: Thus, they are indoctrinated in Islam to convert them into so-called "lone wolves", individuals who carry out terrorist actions alone, without the support of a team. This generates alarm among the authorities, taking into account that in Colombia there are more than 40 thousand Muslims, and five mosques and 10 centers ... ( - Así,...

Claiming he was just trying to free Josh Holt, a devout young Mormon from Utah held hostage by Venezuela's Maduro regime on phony charges, left-wing Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin isn't exactly credible about his real mission in his secret visit to Caracas this past week. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Dallas-based Republican, isn't exactly believable, either, given that he called his secret trip with Durbin "a peace mission" to Caracas last week.

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru’s new foreign minister said on Tuesday that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was still not welcome to attend a regional summit in Lima next week, upholding a decision by Peru’s disgraced former president.U.S. President Donald Trump and heads of state from across the Western Hemisphere plan to travel to Peru for the Summit of the Americas, which will celebrate the theme “democratic governance fighting corruption” from April 13-14. In his first speech as Peru’s foreign minister, Nestor Popolizio said Peru’s decision not to invite Maduro to the event reflects the view of a dozen countries that have...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s unpopular socialist president Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday his right-wing Latin American counterparts showed intolerance by trying to exclude him from an upcoming summit in Lima - and he vowed to go anyway. Peru’s center-right government this week said Maduro would not be welcome at the April summit, reinforcing his growing diplomatic isolation during a crackdown on dissent and a brutal economic crisis in Venezuela. {snip}[Madero]...lashed out at Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, whose parents were of Swiss and Polish descent and who studied at Oxford and Princeton, as particularly out of touch with Latin American...

<p>Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that the U.S. is still considering restricting the sale of oil from crisis-torn Venezuela.</p> <p>Tillerson said in Argentina's capital that the U.S. wants "free, fair, and verifiable elections" in Venezuela, and wants to apply enough pressure to end the crisis in the South American country. The government there has faced widespread criticism over its decision to push up presidential elections under conditions that opponents say overwhelmingly favor President Nicolas Maduro.</p>

With hospital shelves bare and the government stumped on how to settle $5 billion in arrears to pharmaceutical companies, cash-strapped Venezuela recently offered some foreign suppliers alternative compensation: diamonds, gold and coltan, the rare metal used to make cellphones and Playstations. The proposed exchange perplexed the pharma representatives, whose companies had no policies on accepting precious gems and metals as payment, according to three people familiar with the meeting last month where Venezuela’s health minister made the offer. While it isn’t clear if any of the companies accepted it, the proposal underscores how Venezuela’s economic collapse is forcing President Nicolás...

Venezuela — Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death. His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals. Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected. Aunts shooed away curious young cousins, mourners arrived with wildflowers from the hills, and relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families increasingly depend...

Venezuela is rapidly collapsing under its dictator’s extreme folly and malevolence. Changing market conditions will accelerate the demise. What next? Some further research confirms that sanctions are unnecessary. Shortages to the Point of FamineThe situation is so desperate in the capital that the zoo animals that are not starving to death are being routinely rustled and slaughtered for food. Venezuelan journalist Sabrina Martín reports in the Panama Post that dogs, cats, and pigeons are being hunted in Caracas (and we assume most everywhere else). Through Twitter, Muchacho (Mayor of Chacao in Caracas) reported… …there are people “hunting” cats and dogs...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the "petro" backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy. The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that "the 21st century has arrived!" "Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency," backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. The petro, he...

As if on cue, the work has begun to rehabilitate Fusion GPS’s image and normalize its dossier and its behavior. Axios wrote that this is all really normal, and that Glenn Simpson and others at Fusion GPS, many of whom are former senior Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, are just good old regular gumshoe ink-stained, unhappy people trying to make a living. Last week, Hillary Clinton went on the Daily Show to “explain” that it really was just opposition research. To be clear, there is neither anything normal about Fusion GPS dossier nor the way the firm goes about...

Just from the title, I bet you thought I was going to be talking about rabbits, right? Guess again. As the people of Venezuela continue to suffer from a lack of food and medical supplies under the yoke of their dictator, Nicolas Maduro did recently suggest that people begin eating rabbits. That idea didn’t go over very well, as most people consider them pets, though some of the more desperate certainly have resorted to that measure. But this is something different.Some of the people are hungry enough that they are breaking into the local zoos and slaughtering the animals...

You might have missed it in the flood of other news over the past week, but there were elections held in Venezuela! No… not new presidential elections or selections of an actual legislative body. (Don’t be silly… Nicolas Maduro was never going to go for that.) But there were regional elections to select the governors of the various regions, the mayors of the cities and other municipal and regional positions. So how did that turn out? If you’re at all familiar with the methods of the ruling socialist party (harkening back to the days of Chavez) and their peculiar...

Earlier this year we discussed the possibility that sanctions and other international pressure on Venezuela might not do much to deter their dictator, Nicolas Maduro. The reason for pessimism is that Venezuela has powerful friends who have no trouble with a dictator taking control of another nation in the western hemisphere. China is near the top of Maduro’s list of friends, but this week the tyrant will have a meeting with another powerful ally.Maduro will be sitting down today for a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The two leaders will reportedly be discussing a “strategic partnership” for moving...