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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.
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.
...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...