I just got back to New York from a three month long visit to Venezuela.
Quite a bit has been happening there since then. When I was there President Maduro was urging the population to have his back in the economic war being waged by the old racist and unpatriotic oligarchy.
I saw armed soldiers patrol inside and outside supermarkets. The government, through actions of the army, (FANB) along with militia and activists, had seized warehouses. as well as a supermarket chain and a nationwide chain of drugstores.
President Maduro was seen on national television marching in a militia parade that was led by an old woman on horseback and waving a rifle. (I searched YouTube for the video but I had no luck).
Yesterday President Maduro announced that security service had thwarted a US backed plot to assassinate him and overthrow the government.
A couple of days ago opposition fringe elements tried and failed to revive the violent guarimba movement of a year ago that saw 43 dead including nine National Guard members. The guarimbaists had infamously decapitated a motorcycle taxi driver by stretching a wire across a street at neck level.
Meanwhile, as though to debunk false allegations that Venezuelans suffer under a dictatorship that denies the right to free speech a Venezuelan blogger at Caracas Chronicles and going by the name Juan Cristobal Nagel inched very close to asking the United States, aka "the international community".to intervene and overthrow the duly elected President of his supposed country.
