Venezuela Prepares for Massive Protests By Arresting Activists, by Anthony Fisher.
As Venezuela prepares for nationwide protests calling for the recall of its wildly unpopular President Nicolas Maduro scheduled for this Thursday, its socialist government is arresting activist leaders and opposition politicians.
In other words, business as usual for the “Chavista” regime, which continues to oversee a complete collapse of the economy and the rule of law in an oil-rich nation once described by delusional liberal economic writers as an “economic miracle,” but which now features forced labor, starvation, triple-digit inflation, extreme scarcity of basic household goods, and frequent political violence.
This is what happens when private property rights are trampled upon. It’s not exactly a secret that there is a strong correlation between societal wealth and economic freedom, or that communist societies end up as police states run by a rich over-class. Sadly, if the activists want change they have to start causing real pain for the over-class, starting with the lower end who are enforcing the regime’s will.
UPDATE: Venezuelan Regime Kidnaps Yon Goicoechea, Friedman Prize Winner, by Ian Vasquez.
Members of what was surely the Venezuelan regime’s secret police yesterday kidnapped opposition leader and 2008 Milton Friedman Prize winner Yon Goicoechea from his car after he left his home.
Diosdado Cabello, the second most powerful person in the regime, publicly announced that the government had arrested Yon on the bogus claim that he was carrying explosives. In the video broadcast on national television, Cabello referred to the $500,000 Friedman Prize award that Yon received as evidence that Yon was some sort of foreign-employed agent bent on terrorism. “That man was trained by the U.S. empire for years,” he said, “It looks like his money ran out and he wants to come here to seek blood. They gave him the order there in the United States.”
Yon won the Friedman Prize in 2008 for having led the student movement that played the central role in defeating the constitutional reform that would have given Hugo Chavez what at that time would have been an unprecedented concentration of political and economic power.
hat-tip Tim Andrews
