Venezuela’s constitutional clock starts ticking

In a ruling issued Sunday, the country's rubber-stamp Supreme Tribunal of Justice decided to treat Maduro's current absence as a temporary forced absence. This means the current government stays in place, but a constitutional clock starts ticking until elections are held.

Under this plan,

#Venezuela is so far behind sourcing #Covid19 #Vaccines that it could be 2023 or later before herd immunity could be achieved

Utter disaster, as to be expected...

More than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere, this broken socialist state might need a miracle to defeat the novel coronavirus

From the Washington Post:

Neutralize the coronavirus without a single side effect! No needle? No problem! Just a few drops of the magic liquid under the tongue every four hours and it’s goodbye lockdown, hello good health.

“From Venezuela to the world,” Nicolás Maduro declared in a national address, unveiling two shimmering vials of Carvativir.

Venezuelan medical professionals now say that Maduro’s “miracle drops” — which he pledged would rapidly go into mass production — are actually an extract of the herb thyme, used in homeopathic therapies and ordinary cooking.

Yet one aspect of the marketing blitz did ring true. More than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere, this broken socialist state might need a miracle to defeat the novel coronavirus.

Venezuela is so far behind in sourcing vaccines that analysts say it could be 2023 or later before it acquires enough to achieve herd immunity. That places it in the bottom rung of nations — alongside authoritarian peers North Korea, Syria and Myanmar — 

Maduro’s government missed a critical deadline last month to buy into a World Health Organization-linked vaccine program designed to help developing nations obtain supplies of coronavirus vaccine. Paolo Balladelli, the WHO’s Venezuela chief, tweeted Tuesday that the country still can get up to 2.4 million doses — a decent start for a country of 28.5 million — if it buys into the program by Tuesday.

See the whole story on the Washington Post here: 

Coronavirus Venezuela: Maduro touts supposed covid-19 cure Carvativir - The Washington Post

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#Venezuela's Suffering Shows Where Illiberalism Leads

An excellent piece on Venezuela by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, showing that what we are witnessing there is but a microcosm of so many of the ailments we see in so many countries' political systems / situations throughout the world today.

Long read, but worth it. 

Venezuela Is the Eerie Endgame of Modern Politics

Citizens of a once-prosperous nation live amid the havoc created by socialism, illiberal nationalism, and political polarization.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her latest book is Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.

February 27, 2020

Emin Ozmen/Magnum Photos

Last month, Juan Guaidó appeared in Washington in the role of political totem. Venezuela's main opposition leader—the man who is recognized by that country's National Assembly, millions of his fellow citizens, and several dozen foreign countries as the rightful president of Venezuela—was one of the special guests at the State of the Union address. President Donald Trump welcomed Guaidó as living evidence that his own administration was "standing up for freedom in our hemisphere" and had "reversed the failed policies of the previous administration"; he called Venezuela's current leader, Nicolás Maduro, an illegitimate ruler whose "grip on tyranny will be smashed and broken." He gave no details of how that would happen. Trump, who has never been to Venezuela or shown any prior interest in it—or, for that matter, shown any interest in freedom anywhere else —presumably knows that the country matters to some voters in South Florida. To their credit, members of Congress gave a bipartisan standing ovation to Guaidó nevertheless.

Trump is not the only world leader to cite Venezuela for self-serving ends.

Regardless of what actually happens there, Venezuela—especially when it was run by Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez—has long been a symbolic cause for the Marxist left as well. More than a decade ago, Hans Modrow, one of the last East German Communist Party leaders and now an elder statesman of the far-left Die Linke party, told me that Chávez's "Bolivarian socialism" represented his greatest hope: that Marxist ideas—which had driven East Germany into bankruptcy—might succeed, finally, in Latin America. 

Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of the British Labour Party, was photographed with Chávez and has described his regime in Venezuela as an "inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics." 

Chávez's rhetoric also helped inspire the Spanish Marxist Pablo Iglesias to create Podemos, Spain's far-left party. Iglesias has long been suspected of taking Venezuelan money, though he denies it. 

Everything you Wanted to know about #LavaJato, but were afraid to ask... @ElAmpliPuntoCom

https://youtu.be/YB4Vz8JVEuo

From the creators of Venezuela’s leading satirical fake news site, El Chiguire Bipolar, comes a new satirical Real News site focused on Latin America, Ampli @ElAmpliPuntoCom

This is their first work.

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-- The MasterFeeds

#Venezuela Moves Closer to Ridding Itself of #Maduro & Co., But It's Not Yet A Done Deal

Today has been pretty crazy in Venezuela.  

Caracas woke up to Juan Guaido announcing that #OperacionLibertad was under way.

En el marco de nuestra constitución. Y por el cese definitivo de la usurpación. https://t.co/3RD2bnQhxt

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) April 30, 2019

Venezuelans the world over were (pleasantly?) surprised that Leopoldo Lopez was beside him, and out of his house where he has been under house arrest since his transfer from prison last year. (He was released by SEBIN agents that turned on Maduro, along with some other Political Prisoners.)

Within hours, the streets of Caracas and other cities in the interior, especially those where major military installations are located, were filled with opposition members.  In Caracas, Guaido and his supporters went to the Carlota Airbase on the eastern side of the city. Soon enough the Colectivos showed up.  These are the local militias that Chavez and Maduro armed to "defend the revolution." 

I initially posted a tweet believing the shots were being fired by these Colectivos against the opposition demonstrators. But I quickly found out that this time, it wasn't the usual script playing out.  Instead, it was the national guard and SEBIN forces that had turned on Maduro to support Guaido, that were shooting at the Colectivos that had come to harass and intimidate the demonstrators. 

No sooner had I realized my mistake, I posted a Correction within the hour.

CORRECTION: I’ve been informed by reliable sources that this is actually a video of military supporters of @jguaido fending off an attack by the #Colectivos. So I got a taste of the power of Twitter!

— MasterFeeds (@MasterFeed) April 30, 2019

  It was too late, the power of Twitter had worked its magic.  It had gone (semi) viral.  The susbsequent tweet is still waiting to hit it big....

As opposition supporters gather near the #Carlota Airbase in #Caracas, National Guard troops now loyal to interim president @JGuaido fire on #Colectivos who’ve come to target the demonstrators. #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/qhVqbSD9sM

— MasterFeeds (@MasterFeed) April 30, 2019