Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, banned and confiscated all civilian firearms.
And now, as the Maduro regime’s support frays under the complete collapse of the Venezuelan economy, he’s re-arming…
…well, the right Venezuelans:
“A gun for every militiaman!” Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said to uniformed militia members outside the presidential palace, Fox News reported on Tuesday. The Bolivarian militias, created by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, already number in the hundreds of thousands and are being used to supplement the regime’s armed forces. Maduro is boosting the number of armed supporters in hopes of keeping control over the country from what he labels “imperialist aggression.”
Yet again – the necessary precursor to dictatorship was the disarming of the law-abiding.
Just a further lesson – there can be no compromise with the tyrants – be they Nicolas Maduro or Michael Bloomberg or Nancy Nord Bence.
Ever.
I see Venezuela has seized a GM plant.
http://www.fox5ny.com/news/249663443-story
quelle surprise!
In Czechoslovakia, the Communists instituted labor militias in ’48 and armed them, calling them “the fist of the Labor movement”, used to suppress political opponents and later to put down the inevitable protests and riots, especially in 1953 when “currency reform” wiped out most people’s savings. Later, of course, they didn’t even trust the militias. They would have guns for the parades, but were not given ammunition.
As MacArthur notes, good luck to Venezuela keeping the oil fields working without genuine GM parts and service, to put it mildly. I’m guessing a fair number of vehicles necessary to their economy are going to be massive paperweights soon.
Maybe if the militiamen shoot at the vehicles, they’ll start working. Especially if they’ve got troublesome workers in them. Sigh.
BB – Don’t know if you saw it the other day, but there was an article about tankers from Venezuela require extra cleaning prior to entering international ports. It seems the Socialists in all their benevolence forgot to put some of the money from when oil was >$80/bbl into upgrading & maintaining their transfer facilities. So now the one export they can get some hard currency for (although reduced to half what it was – thank a fracker) is further reduced because of their inability to recognize that infrastructure maintenance is as important as producing wells. But then you see they seized a GM plant and you can see the country turning into my native Detroit right before our eyes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-tankers-insight-idUSKBN17K0CE
You mean this? Since it’s from undersea pipes for filling tankers, I dare suggest it’s even worse than you said, Seflores. The question, then, is whether you could persuade most of the New World to say “no” to Venezuelan crude until (a) owners could get their property back and (b) facilities could be fixed.
The Venezuelan government seized the GM plant just to get all the toilet paper in the restrooms.
“…just to get all the toilet paper in the restrooms.”
As PJ O’Rourke was wrote – for all their mucking around in these banana republics, the commies never seem to get any bananas.
Via Powerline, a story about the criminal political gangs who now rule Venezuela, robbing and terrorizing its citizens.
The story is over 1100 words in length, and it mentions ‘socialism’ just one time, in a positive context:
“Experts say the colectivos date to the early days of Mr. Chávez, who originally conceived them as social organizations to advance his vision of a Socialist revolution to transform Venezuela’s poor neighborhoods.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/americas/armed-civilian-bands-in-venezuela-prop-up-unpopular-president.html?_r=0&referer=http://drudgereport.com/
The Venezuelan government wants to ban gun ownership by the non-colectivos, as a crime control and public safety measure:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-crime-idUSKCN10S2I9