Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
The Russians, overcome with awe of the West and doubtful of their own validity, must have been absent when Hugo Chavez gave the most famous speech ever given at the United Nations on September 20, 2006. Paraphrasing his words, this is what Chavez said referring to US President George W. Bush:
“Yesterday, at this very podium, stood Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulphur.”
A national guard member patrols a supermarket in Caracas in February of last year. (Juan Barreto/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/Getty Images)
Moisés Naim is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry from 1989 to 1990. Francisco Toro is the founder and editor in chief of the Caracas Chronicles news site.
Today, Venezuela is the sick man of Latin America, buckling under chronic shortages of everything from food and toilet paper to medicine and freedom. Riots and looting have become commonplace, as hungry people vent their despair while the revolutionary elite lives in luxury, pausing now and then to order recruits to fire more tear gas into crowds desperate for food.
Surveillance camera footage shows violent looting take over a bakery in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas as the country battles widespread shortages of basic goods amid a reeling economic crisis. (Reuters)
Continue reading “Venezuela’s democratic façade has completely crumbled”