Nicholas Maduro

My friend Jose tells me that the electrical outages haven’t so far had too great an impact on him and his family in Merida, Venezuela. I’d asked if the food in his refrigerator spoiled more quickly and he laughed. “Well, you know the ‘fridge stays cold for a while without electricity,” he said. “And besides, these days, there’s very little in the fridge.” He’d just come from spending eleven hours in a line: from 3 a.m. until 2 p.m., to get just two bags of flour, the first he’d had in some two weeks. Food was clearly a bigger concern than lack of electricity.

Sandinistas, Solidarity and the Two Lefts

Five hours after the polls had closed, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced a landslide victory for the opposition in Venezuela’s the National Assembly elections.

Protest, dissent and the destructive terror of war are obviously very distinct forms of expressing opposition and bringing about change. The Obama-Kerry regime support the opposition in Venezuela as a ‘protest movement’ composed of ‘peaceful democratic opponents’ expressing their discontent with economic conditions, while they denounce the democratically-elected Maduro Administration as an ‘authoritarian regime’ violently repressing legitimate dissent.