CARACAS, Venezuela (PNN) - April 24, 2017 - Venezuela, a country with only $10 billion left in reserves to run on, is in trouble. The people are starving, the government has gone full on authoritarian, and now desperate human beings are dying in the streets. Authorities in Venezuela say 12 people were killed overnight following looting and violence in the South American nation’s capital amid a spiraling political crisis.
Most of the deaths took place in El Valle, where opposition leaders say 13 people were hit with an electrical current while trying to loot a bakery protected by an electric fence.
These are people without options, forced to turn to thievery to stay alive; and they died because of it.
On April 6, The Economist reported that over the past year, 74% of Venezuelans lost an average of 20 pounds. Venezuela, incidentally, has topped Bloomberg’s Economic Misery Index for the past three years.
The country began its slide downward into chaos with the election of President Nicolas Maduro, who immediately began implementing socialist programs and has since taken extreme measures to secure his position.
For instance, at the end of March Maduro effectively shut down Venezuela’s Congress - his primary political opposition - and gave those legislative duties to his puppet Supreme Court.
The latest news coming out of the South American nation - aside from the deaths of people trying to steal bread to live - is that General Motors, whose Venezuelan production facility was taken over by local authorities, has now ceased all operations in the country.
To put that in perspective, consider that in 2016, only 3,000 vehicles were sold in Venezuela, a country of 30 million people.
The Fascist Police States of Amerika Southern Command has floated the idea of using the FPSA military to contain unrest in Venezuela, though historically Amerikan intervention in South America is both widely unpopular in the region and wildly unsuccessful.
As we look on at the continuing horrors in the Middle East and what seems, at the moment, to be the makings of World War III in Asia, let’s not lose sight of the fact that right now, the people of Venezuela are in pain.
