John Sexton:
It’s beginning to look like people have had enough of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. Protesters burned the childhood home of deceased socialist leader Hugo Chavez. From the Associated Press:
Demonstrators lit the house in the city of Barinas where Chavez spent his early years aflame Monday afternoon along with several government buildings, including the regional office of the National Electoral Council, said Pedro Luis Castillo, a legislator who represents the area.
The burnings capped a violent day in Barinas — known as the cradle of Chavez’s revolution — during which protesters clashed with national guardsmen, businesses were shuttered and roads were blocked with fire-filled barricades…
“It is pretty symbolic that the citizens are venting their frustrations on the author of the Bolivarian revolution,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas.
Ancestral home of Hugo Chávez is literally burning down. Rage manifest because 19 y.o. student Yorman Bervecia was killed by National Guard pic.twitter.com/PW1XP7sHMb
— Thor Halvorssen (@ThorHalvorssen) May 22, 2017
Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro has denounced protesters as fascists and compared them to Nazis. But while Maduro claims he and his fellow socialists are like Jews living under the Nazis, his generals were caught last week calling for snipers to help with crowd control. The discussion, which took place last month, was recorded and leaked to the media. From the Miami Herald:
The meeting, chaired by Division General José Rafael Torrealba Pérez, took place in the last week of April as Venezuela’s socialist government continued to try to contain the unrest…
“There will come a time when we will have to employ them [the snipers] and I want us to be ready for the moment that we have to employ them because the president will not remain at a green [preparation] phase, gentlemen,” Torrealba said, a likely reference to Maduro’s activation of the Zamora Plan, a war plan to be activated in the midst of imminent foreign invasion. “He [Maduro] has already signed a range of operations and as I said here [previously] … we could be at the beginning of a subversive urban war.”
One unidentified general caught on the tape warns that using snipers against unarmed people would result in everyone in the room going to prison. He added, on a more practical note, that one photo of a sniper would be devastating to the government with the media. But Torrealba explained that the survival of the socialist state was going to come down to dead bodies in the street:
Liberals will be heartbroken especialy for airhead hollywood director Oliver Stone who made that putrid movie SOUTH OF THE BORDER about his beloved Chavez and world leaders who attended his funneral will be pulling their hair out