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Venezuelan President Survives Drone Assassination Attempt (cnn.com)
The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has survived an apparent assassination attempt involving drones that exploded close to him while he was speaking at an event in Caracas. State television showed Maduro abruptly cutting short his speech during a celebration of the National Guard's 81st anniversary. From a report: In a tweet, the president of Venezuela's National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, called the incident at the military parade a "terrorist attack against the president and the high military command blaming the opposition for the violence." Venezuela's international government broadcaster, TeleSUR, said on Twitter that the Venezuelan government confirmed an attempted attack on Maduro. Venezuela's vice president for communications, Jorge Rodriguez, later addressed the nation on live TV at the request of Maduro. He said people heard explosions that corresponded to drones and heard drones detonate near a parade for the occasion.
If it was an actual assassination attempt against the Venezuelan President is dubious, given there were at least two explosions and he was healthy enough to appear on live TV a couple hours later. How far away the explosions were from him was only vaguely referenced, but apparently was close enough to the parade that he thought they were fireworks. He was on a stage, which was presumably to the side of the parade's path. A few people supposedly responsible were arrested, so it's not like an anonymous attacker was controlling the drones (or they were, but a convenient patsy was arrested). That said, no evidence was given that drones were involved.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I'll wager dollars to doughnuts that this is a hoax, staged to make Maduro into a sympathetic figure. The rate of inflation is approaching a million percent a year; they've just lopped five zeroes off the value of the currency. The Venezuelan people are fleeing across the border as fast as they can.
Anybody who could afford a drone has already left, and the first world nations don't care enough about South America to bother to assassinate him. Therefore: Probable hoax. He'll use this as a pretext to consolidate power and steal all the rest of the money.
It's funny how people just associate socialism and communism to any government not working out.
They are a democratic presidential republic like the US.... a failed one you can say that fell into dictatorship.... but that doesn't make them commies....
Democracies are not unfailable.... look at the US at the moment... look awefully close.... but I'm sure US will elect someone saner and things will be back to normal after the next election given the deeply ingrained democratic culture and education. That said if a few more populist elections happen .... US could go the way of Argentina...
Yay! Now everybody makes nothing because the paper they print is worthless! Go equality?
Look, I want to take care of the entire world, I'd love it if we had a way to do that. I just don't want to see everyone pushed into poverty in the name of "equality." And maybe the Nordic states are managing on selling oil without corruption stealing that, but it's amazing how many experiments that attempt, but fail, to bring about True Socialism (TM) leave everyone starving.
Keep in mind that Trump is not promoting tariffs and trade wars--he is simply reacting to tariffs in other countries. The media conveniently forgets to mention that Trump has said he will sign a trade agreement tomorrow with any country that agrees to sign a bilateral agreement where both sides agree to lower tariffs to zero. That's his definition of free market. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I agree with him on that.
The Soviet Union showed that a planned economy is workable.....it just doesn't grow as quickly.
Laughable. The Soviet Union ended up dirt poor after decades of lying to each other about what was actually being accomplished. Lost the cold war simply by running out of money. Classic quote from the era: "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." What definition of "workable" is that?
Never mind the police state.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
50% higher tariffs aren't a big difference?
Maybe you should go back to school.
The example of Venezuela doesn't show the failure of central planning. A trained hamster could do a better job with central planning than Maduro does.
This is the with the right leader it would work! argument and it is complete bullshit.
"His name was James Damore."
...and the first world nations don't care enough about South America to bother to assassinate him
Translation: "I don't know enough about geopolitics - who does? - to really have any fucking clue who would or wouldn't want Maduro dead... but damn it sure is easy to send bold declarations like the above ripping forth from my asshole...
No, it is the "Venezuela provably has the wrong leader" argument and if you can't see the difference, you are bullshit.
Better planners would only delay the inevitable coming collapse and prolong the Venezuelan people's suffering.
The problem with collectivist systems is base human nature. Collectivist systems must overcome base human nature to succeed, capitalist systems leverage & harness that same base human nature towards constructive ends.
All collectivist forms of government like socialism and communism are authoritarian by their very nature. The State tells people where they'll live, where they'll work, what work they'll do, how much money they will earn/receive, what sort and how much education they receive, what level medical care they will get, etc etc etc.
Anytime you put people in authority over others without unavoidable and direct consequences for abusing that authority, those people placed in authority will generally become increasingly authoritarian, capricious, corrupt, and cruel the longer the situation exists as was shown by Milgram's experiment.
Socialism and communism provide people with food, shelter, medical care, and work. We have an institution here in the US that provides the same things, but very few are willing to participate voluntarily.
We call it the prison system.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Technically correct, factually irrelevant - due to the tiny difference between 4% and 6%.
What might be relevant is the amount of subsidies each 'nation' pays to their producers.
Got any stats on that?
Funny how fans of socialism always proclaim "that wasn't socialism" every time it fails.
-- Will program for bandwidth