Thread: Venezuela ticking time bomb !

This is Chavez's legacy , not one to follow I may add

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Violent streets mean many poor people doing anything to get money.

Indeed. Happening in Brazil now as well. Happens when countries put all their eggs in the oil basket.

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Violent streets mean many poor people doing anything to get money.

Indeed. Happening in Brazil now as well. Happens when countries put all their eggs in the oil basket.

It would appear that you have been following the Brazil Corruption stories Brazil Attorney General: Tourism minister 'had Swiss bank account' - BBC News

WonkblogAnalysis

Venezuela’s death spiral is getting worse
By Matt O'Brien August 8

Venezuela, a once-booming oil giant, is going through an economic crisis marked by severe shortages of food, medicine and basic goods.
Venezuela is stuck in a doom loop that's become a death spiral.

Its stores are empty, its people are starving, and its government is to blame. It has tried to repeal the law of supply and demand, and, in the process, eliminated any incentive for businesses to actually sell things. The result is that the country with the largest oil reserves in the world now has to resort to forced labor just to try to feed itself.

It gives new meaning to the revolution devouring its own.

How has it come to this? Well, Venezuela was always going to have a tough time when oil prices fell from $110 to $40 like they did the past two years. That's because it doesn't have an economy so much as an oil exporting business that subsidizes everything by making up 95 percent of the country's total trade revenue. Even then, though, the oil crash has hurt it much more than any other petrostate. To take one example, the International Monetary Fund estimates that Russia's economy will "only" shrink 1.8 percent this year compared to 10 percent for Venezuela. That's the difference between a run-of-the-mill recession and a complete collapse.

And it's entirely man-made.

The easiest way to think about this is as a four-stage cycle of doom that begins with inflation, continues to price controls, then shortages, and finally nationalizations. Here's how it works, or rather doesn't.

1. Inflation. Even when oil prices were in the triple digits, Venezuela's government was in the red. The problem was that its state-owned oil company stopped producing as much after Chavez took money that should have gone into maintaining its fields and put it into social spending instead. This was the economic equivalent of eating your seed corn when it would have grown you more than ever before. Now, at first, the regime was just spending more than it had, but eventually, after oil's vertiginous drop, this became more than it could borrow as well. So it did what every bankrupt government does: It printed the money it needed. Which is why inflation went from 19 percent in 2012 to, the IMF estimates, 720 percent this year, and a projected 2,200 percent the next.


2. Price controls. Venezuela, for is part, has resorted to a tried-and-untrue strategy for dealing with all these price increases. That's pretending they haven't happened. The government tells businesses what they're allowed to charge, and then given a select few of them dollars at deeply discounted rates so they can afford to buy what they need overseas and still sell at these deeply discounted prices. In effect, the Chavista regime is trying to spend the inflation away. It hasn't worked.

3. Shortages. Something Venezuela's government hasn't quite managed to figure out, though, is that trying to force companies to sell at a loss means they won't sell anything at all. It's better to make nothing than to lose something. And that's even been the case when the government has tried to cover some of their costs. The problem, you see, is that it isn't profitable for unsubsidized businesses to stock their shelves, and isn't profitable enough for subsidized ones to do so either. Why is that? Because companies can sell the cheap dollars they get from the government for more than can resell the imports they're supposed to buy with those dollars.

That's why Venezuela has had shortages of everything from food to beer to medical supplies and even toilet paper. About the only thing it is well-supplied with are lines, to the point that it's had to limit how many of them people are allowed to join. But those are still long enough that as many as 85,000 Venezuelans poured into Colombia to go grocery shopping when the Chavista regime opened the border for 12 hours last month.

4. Nationalizations. So what do you do when businesses refuse to sell things at a loss? Easy. You blame them, and then do so yourself. That, at least, is what Venezuela's government did when it took over toilet paper factories in 2013, and what it's threatened to do with the country's top food and beer brewing company today. But, of course, this means losing even more money that Venezuela's government doesn't have — which, in turn, means it has to print even more money. And round and round it goes.

***


Now, there are two things you need to remember about Venezuela. The first is that if it can get worse, it will get worse. And the second is that it can always get worse. In this case, that means that it might not be long until we look back at all of this as the good old days. How in the name of five-hour long grocery lines is that possible? Well, Venezuela's government might be reaching the point where it can't coerce people economically, but only physically. After all, it barely has enough money to even be able to print money anymore. So it can't buy people off anymore. It has to bully them instead. Indeed, the army has started forcing butchers to sell food at a 90 percent loss, and the government has said it can force anyone to, um, take a break from their job and work for at least two months growing food instead. Amnesty International has said this is tantamount to "forced labor," which is just a polite way of describing what's very close to modern-day slavery.

It brings to mind the old joke: Under capitalism, man exploits man, and under Bolivarian socialism, it's just the opposite.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...getting-worse/

I'm studying Spanish with a Venezuelan teacher and she's been tellimg more details of Maduro and Venezuela's crisis.

Many farmers are refusing to grow crops.

He's a bad dog, Maduro.

Let’s call Venezuela what it is under Maduro: a dictatorship
Reynaldo Trombetta

The opposition to Nicolás Maduro is vast but pessimistic, as elections are cancelled and political opponents jailed. Will Jeremy Corbyn and other supporters speak out?


Thursday 17 November 2016

Very few outside Venezuela seem to have the courage to describe it as such, but the country under Nicolás Maduro is now a dictatorship. The heir of Hugo Chávez has shown that he will happily violate all principles of democracy and human rights to remain in power. For years, Chávez proudly reminded the world how many elections he had won, and how his revolution was giving a voice to the impoverished masses. Today, Maduro has no interest in anybody else’s voice – especially the growing majority that opposes him.

The presidential recall referendum, which could have led to early elections if it had been held this year, was killed off by regional courts that had no say in electoral matters. The elections for governors and mayors, which would have been a major defeat for the “Chavistas”, were arbitrarily postponed by the government-controlled Electoral Council. And the National Assembly, in which the opposition holds a two-thirds majority, continues to be obstructed by a supreme court also controlled by Maduro.

Opposition leaders continue to be imprisoned on trumped-up charges
And then there is the matter of the political prisoners. The most emblematic case is opposition leader Leopoldo López, who was jailed for 13 years for “inciting violence” during the 2014 protests, in which police, military and government militias killed unarmed protesters. Months later, Lopez’s prosecutor, Franklin Nieves, fled the country and admitted that the trial had been a sham. That, however, changed nothing.

Entire:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-jeremy-corbyn

The link below shows a short and detailed video on why Venzuela's hurtin'

Also, the largest money-bill is being cancelled and people had 72 hour notice to deposit their notes in the bank, b/c they will be worthless soon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...new-bank-notes

Hard core socialism.

Originally Posted by pulvarien

Hard core socialism.

Exactly.

Maduro just doesn't get it:

*He nationalized many companies
*He caused companies that produce many good to stop operating, so Venezeala is importing things it used to make domestically - and he stopped buying imports b/c of the Venezualan debt problem.
*He's done an old socialist mistake: farmers have stopped growing crops. Hence the food issue. The domestic food supply is in tatters
*He focused all of the economic attention on oil exports - but in 2013 the price of oil plunged
*He confisctated toys b/c of claims stores were hoarding them

He is violating the Constitution and is not allowed referendums to keep or remove him from power.

Obviously, the polling indicates he's get smoked in a referendum or election.


I would not be surprised if he gets a bullet within 2 years.

Everyone from the political right and the left love to jump on an example to prove their opponents ideas are wrong.
Venezuela is an economic basket case due more to inept government policies falling oil prices, nationalisation and corruption, rather than a particular brand of politics.
If we look at the other side we could hardly blame the great depression or the last GFC on some rabid left wing government, quite the opposite. A type of Freidmanesq open slather capitalism where the market self regulates is an abject failure. Whilst banks fell over all around the world the major Australian banks withstood all, in part due to their strict prudential regulation and govt oversight and still remain some of the most profitable banks in the world.
Rather than blame socialism or capitalism we need to go back further into the history of the country concerned. South America has never been seen as a continent of honest and open government with fiscal rectitude.
It's no accident that countries (states) settled by Britain, (USA, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore etc), are somewhat in better shape than nearly every country settled by the Spanish Portugese etc.
Some of this was due to land distribution and a superior system of governance implemented by the British.
We need to look further back than the inept government of either persuasion before we put the blame squarely at the foot of capitalism or socialism. If we look at the more socialist style of government in Scandinavia and compare it to the much more capitalistic USA we can see 2 different forms that work albeit not perfectly. Personally if I was poor, old or sick, I know which country I would prefer to live in. Conversely, If I was well off or relatively wealthy, then a different story. I have personally travelled extensively through Europe and to a lesser degree the USA and have no political or social axe to grind with either. I am interested in other TDorians views.

Seem to remember just a few years ago we had quite a few solid Chavez supports here on TD. His oil deals with Cuba were held out as a model of generosity and true socialism at work, and his open animosity towards the US and all things western were lauded by our TD communist brigade.

They are still hanging about here somewhere; still preaching the benefits of far left socialist policy and economics. They are feverish in their criticism of everything else....anything involving corporations, development, wealth, and all those connected to it. All the inequalities and injustices in our western democracies are toxic to them.....the want the entire system torn down and replaced with socialism.

Here we have a country that should be awash with money; high living standards; good quality of life and overall a very good place to live......but it's all been squandered on "socialism" ... and now all the socialists are fighting over a few crusts of bread in the streets......

Personally I think I'll just hang on to the inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth we have to endure......I foking hate having to fight over stale bread in the street.

Originally Posted by koman

Seem to remember just a few years ago we had quite a few solid Chavez supports here on TD. His oil deals with Cuba were held out as a model of generosity and true socialism at work, and his open animosity towards the US and all things western were lauded by our TD communist brigade.

They are still hanging about here somewhere; still preaching the benefits of far left socialist policy and economics. They are feverish in their criticism of everything else....anything involving corporations, development, wealth, and all those connected to it. All the inequalities and injustices in our western democracies are toxic to them.....the want the entire system torn down and replaced with socialism.

Here we have a country that should be awash with money; high living standards; good quality of life and overall a very good place to live......but it's all been squandered on "socialism" ... and now all the socialists are fighting over a few crusts of bread in the streets......

Personally I think I'll just hang on to the inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth we have to endure......I foking hate having to fight over stale bread in the street.

Yeah, Reach Around doesn't come around much anymore.

I have a Spanish lesson via online with my Venezuelan teacher living in Venezuela in 2 days and our next topic (that she chose) is Venezuelan politics.


And as Komen noted, regardless of on'es 'political bent' Maduro has failed and is failing 10 times over.

Originally Posted by koman

Seem to remember just a few years ago we had quite a few solid Chavez supports here on TD. His oil deals with Cuba were held out as a model of generosity and true socialism at work, and his open animosity towards the US and all things western were lauded by our TD communist brigade.

They are still hanging about here somewhere; still preaching the benefits of far left socialist policy and economics. They are feverish in their criticism of everything else....anything involving corporations, development, wealth, and all those connected to it. All the inequalities and injustices in our western democracies are toxic to them.....the want the entire system torn down and replaced with socialism.

Here we have a country that should be awash with money; high living standards; good quality of life and overall a very good place to live......but it's all been squandered on "socialism" ... and now all the socialists are fighting over a few crusts of bread in the streets......

Personally I think I'll just hang on to the inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth we have to endure......I foking hate having to fight over stale bread in the street.

Clouding the issue with facts again I see

The dooms day scenario ?Venezuela closes border with Colombia 'to destroy mafia' - BBC News

An article related to the 'bill pull' and the 'mafia conspiracay theory.'

INSULT TO INJURY 12/14/16
Venezuelans fight to protect their savings as government pulls bills from circulation

CARACAS— Venezuelans are rushing to the banks this week in a desperate attempt to protect their savings from the government’s latest spasm of reckless financial policymaking.

On Tuesday morning thousands of people across Venezuela played hooky from work to line-up outside banks and deposit bundles of cash into their savings accounts after the government gave everyone a 72-hour countdown to turn in all their 100 bolivar notes before they’re removed from circulation.

“I’ve been saving for so long, withdrawing money every week and for what? Nothing!” complained José Orozco, who was holding a backpack full of money as he stood in line.

Mariana Zuniga @marazuniga
Thousands rushed to their banks today. The 100 Bs. note will be out of circulation in the next 24h
14 Dec 2016

The 100 bolivar note, the highest denomination of Venezuelan currency, is currently worth about 3 cents on the U.S. dollar. But Venezuela’s government announced on Sunday that it is removing the bills from circulating because they’re being purchased in bulk by “international mafia groups” that are allegedly trying to “overthrow” the struggling socialist government by hoarding money abroad and starving Venezuela of cash.

President Nicolas Maduro said that by making his country’s 100 bill illegal, he is “hitting back” against the mafia groups, who he claims have ties to the U.S. State Department, although he’s never offered any solid proof to back his claims.

“Compadres, you can keep your bills now in Cucuta (Colombia) and Germany,” Maduro gloated during a live TV appearance on Monday.



Maduro also closed Venezuela’s border with Colombia for three days, in a move designed to stop “the mafia groups” from bringing their crate loads of 100 bolivar bills back into Venezuela to deposit at banks.


“We will keep on hitting these mafias,” Maduro vowed.

But not many people believe Maduro’s narrative about withdrawing the currency to fight the mafia. Juan Nagel, a Venezuelan economics professor and co-founder of the Caracas Chronicles blog, described the government’s story as a “wacky” conspiracy theory.

Venezuelans fight to protect their savings as government pulls bills from circulation | Fusion

Lets not forget castro died a billionaire, looted from the desperately poor Cubans who work for a dollar a day on average. Yes a socialist success story if there ever was one.

^

What would be the point of staging a revolution; executing thousands of people who worked for the opposition; and working diligently to supress a whole population if you can't make a few bucks out of it?..... Can anyone come up with a big-named "socialist" leader that has not made a sizable fortune out of their revolutionary zeal.

Originally Posted by koman

Seem to remember just a few years ago we had quite a few solid Chavez supports here on TD. His oil deals with Cuba were held out as a model of generosity and true socialism at work, and his open animosity towards the US and all things western were lauded by our TD communist brigade.

They are still hanging about here somewhere; still preaching the benefits of far left socialist policy and economics. They are feverish in their criticism of everything else....anything involving corporations, development, wealth, and all those connected to it. All the inequalities and injustices in our western democracies are toxic to them.....the want the entire system torn down and replaced with socialism.

Here we have a country that should be awash with money; high living standards; good quality of life and overall a very good place to live......but it's all been squandered on "socialism" ... and now all the socialists are fighting over a few crusts of bread in the streets......

Personally I think I'll just hang on to the inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth we have to endure......I foking hate having to fight over stale bread in the street.

Its highly likely they are still Chavez supporters as Socialism is a difficult disease to shake off , we see it every day on these boards don't we ? the politics of envy and failure .

Think I heard on BBC news today that Venezuela has closed border crossings with Columbia.

Amid Venezuelan Crisis, Some Poor Parents Give Away Children



Struggling to feed herself and her seven children, Venezuelan mother Zulay Pulgar asked a neighbor in October to take over care of her 6-year-old daughter, a victim of a pummeling economic crisis.

The family lives on Pulgar’s father’s pension, worth $6 a month at the black market rate, in a country where prices for many basic goods are surpassing those in the United States.

“It’s better that she has another family than go into prostitution, drugs or die of hunger,” the 43-year-old unemployed mother said, sitting outside her dilapidated home with her 5-year-old son, father and unemployed husband.

With average wages less than the equivalent of $50 a month at black market rates, three local councils and four national welfare groups all confirmed an increase in parents handing children over to the state, charities or friends and family.

The government does not release data on the number of parents giving away their children, and welfare groups struggle to compile statistics given the ad hoc manner in which parents give away children and local councils collate figures.

Still, the trend highlights Venezuela’s fraying social fabric and the heavy toll that a deep recession and soaring inflation are taking on the country with the world’s largest oil reserves.

Showing photos of her family looking plumper just a year ago, Pulgar said just one chicken meal would now burn up half its monthly income. Breakfast is often just bread and coffee, with rice alone for both lunch and dinner.

Nancy Garcia, the 54-year-old neighbor who took in the girl, Pulgar’s second-youngest child, works in a grocery store and has five children of her own. She said she could not bear to see Pulgar’s child going without food.

“My husband, my children and I teach her to behave, how to study, to dress, to talk. ... She now calls me ‘mom’ and my husband ‘dad,’” Garcia said.

Lack of food

Every day at the social services center in Carirubana, which oversees Pulgar’s case, more than a dozen parents plead for help taking care of their children in this isolated, arid corner of Venezuela with a shaky water supply and little food.

Last year, the rate was around one parent a day.

“The principal motive now is lack of food,” said Maria Salas, director of the small and understaffed center, echoing colleagues at two other welfare groups interviewed by Reuters elsewhere in the country.

Salas added that her organization, the Council of Protection for Children and Adolescents, lacked the resources to deal with the situation and had asked authorities for help, even just a dining room, but had no luck.

Not far from Salas’ office, long supermarket lines under a hot sun help explain why parents are finding life so tough, a scene repeated across the country of 30 million people.

Venezuelans suffer shortages of the most basic goods, from food to medicine. Millions are going hungry amid triple-digit inflation and a nearly 80 percent currency collapse in the last year.

The government blames the United States and Venezuela’s opposition, yet most economists pin the responsibility on socialist policies introduced by former president Hugo Chavez, which his successor Nicolas Maduro has doubled down on even as oil prices, the economy’s lifeblood, plunged.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The Caracas municipality of Sucre, which encompasses Petare, one of the region’s largest and poorest slums, has seen an exponential increase in parents needing help, say officials.

“The parents come in crying,” said Sucre welfare director Angeyeimar Gil.

“It’s very dramatic to see parents’ pain when saying they can no longer look after their child,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of cases of malnutrition and children that come to hospital with scabies.”

Two-thirds of 1,099 households with children in Caracas, ranging across social classes, said they were not eating enough in a survey released last week by children’s’ rights group Cecodap.

Children abandoned

In some cases, parents are simply abandoning their kids.

Last month, a baby boy was found inside a bag in a relatively wealthy area of Caracas and a malnourished 1-year-old boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in the eastern city of Ciudad Guayana, local media reported.

Gil said that she had helped find places in orphanages for two newborns recently abandoned by their mothers in hospitals after birth.

There are also more cases of children begging or prostituting themselves, according to welfare workers.

Abortion is illegal in Venezuela and contraception, including condoms, is extremely hard to find.

Back in Carirubana, Pulgar was relieved that her child was being looked after properly by her neighbor.

“My girl has totally changed,” she said as another son clambered over her, adding that even her manner of speaking had improved.

She said she would love to take the child back one day but does not see her situation improving.

“This is written in the Bible. We’re living the end times.”

Amid Venezuelan Crisis, Some Poor Parents Give Away Children

Originally Posted by misskit

Amid Venezuelan Crisis, Some Poor Parents Give Away Children

Struggling to feed herself and her seven children

Caracus,

we have a problem.

Troops, Vigilantes on Patrol After Venezuela Unrest Leaves 3 Dead


People clash with Venezuelan National Guards as they try to cross the border to Colombia over the Francisco de Paula Santander international bridge in Urena, Venezuela, Dec. 18, 2016.

BOLIVAR/TACHIRA —
Soldiers strolled streets, neighbors mounted barricades and businessmen raked through damaged shops on Monday in parts of Venezuela worst hit from violence sparked by a cash shortage.

At least three people died and 405 people were arrested, officials said, in protests and looting over the weekend that followed the socialist government's elimination of the largest currency bill.

The opposition put the death toll at five, though authorities only confirmed a man, a woman and a 14-year-old boy were shot dead in the worst-hit state of Bolivar in the south.

Some rioters targeted Chinese-owned shops, witnesses said, prompting concern in Beijing.

Raimon Moya, 29, stood in the safety of a police station while looters attacked her nearby butcher's shop in state capital Ciudad Bolivar.

“It's like watching them kill a child,” she said. “You work all your life for something, and they destroy it in minutes,” she added. Some 350 outlets were looted in the city.

In response to the mayhem, Venezuela's socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, has postponed the elimination of the 100-bolivar notes until January 2 in order to allow time for new larger bills to enter circulation.

The removal of the 100-bolivar bills, before replacement notes were in place, left many people unable to pay for basic goods and transactions in the busy run-up to Christmas. That heaped hardship onto Venezuelans already suffering scarcities of food and the world's highest inflation.

In Ciudad Bolivar, residents formed barricades in the streets to protect themselves and shops from further violence. Some formed shifts to watch from rooftops all night.

In the Andean highland town of La Fria, in Tachira state, rubble and packages lay strewn on the ground on Monday as National Guard soldiers stood watch.

Eight Chinese-owned food stores were among 16 ransacked, the local governor said.

Some local government offices also were attacked, one by arsonists, and 33 people were arrested in La Fria at the weekend.

“I’m ruined, I don't have words to describe what happened,” said Nelson Roa, owner of a destroyed food shop in La Fria. Roa said he ran for help when looters started throwing stones at his store, and brought back two soldiers in his car whom he found at a traffic light. “They couldn't do anything.”

Maduro said the currency measure was needed to combat criminals on the border with Colombia hoarding bolivars to sabotage his leftist administration.

He also accused political opponents of whipping up violence, at the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, to seek a coup against him.

Washington denies constant accusations of meddling, although government supporters recall U.S. approval of a short-lived coup against Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration.

Opposition leaders say Maduro has only himself to blame for incompetent economic policies that have stirred Venezuelans' anger. Opponents are now calling for Maduro to resign after having had their push for a referendum to remove him thwarted by election and judicial bodies who seldom go against the government.

The 54-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister, who replaced Chavez in 2013, has seen his popularity plunge during a three-year recession. His term runs to January 2019.

Troops, Vigilantes on Patrol After Venezuela Unrest Leaves 3 Dead

The US sanctions dont help :

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12074

Deep problems still deep as the abyss.

COMMODITIES | Thu Jan 26, 2017
Exclusive: Millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil stuck at sea in dirty tankers

By Marianna Parraga and Mircely Guanipa | HOUSTON/PUNTO FIJO, VENEZUELA
More than 4 million barrels of Venezuelan crude and fuels are sitting in tankers anchored in the Caribbean sea, unable to reach their final destination because state-run PDVSA cannot pay for hull cleaning, inspections, and other port services, according to internal documents and Reuters data.

About a dozen tankers are being held back because the hulls have been soiled by crude, stemming from several oil leaks in the last year at key ports of Bajo Grande and Jose, which has resulted in delayed operations for loading and discharging.

Since debt-laden PDVSA cannot afford to have the ships cleaned, they have to wait for weeks to navigate international waters, delaying shipments.

Dirty tankers are the latest of a litany of problems weighing on.....

Exclusive: Millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil stuck at sea in dirty tankers | Reuters

The Che Guevara's idols will be happy to hear this.


(CNN)The Venezuelan government Wednesday ordered cable providers to take CNN en Español off the air, days after CNN aired an investigation into the alleged fraudulent issuing of Venezuelan passports and visas.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez accused CNN of performing what she defined as an "imperialistic media operation" against her country in last week's broadcast of the yearlong investigation.
Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission told cable companies to pull CNN en Español's signal immediately. It called the action a preventative measure and did not say when CNN en Español would be back on cable systems.
The opposition-controlled National Assembly condemned the commission's decision as anti-democratic.
It "gravely affects the human right Venezuelans have to be informed," the legislative body said in a statement.
The commission accused CNN en Español of slander and distortion and said the network was acting in violation of the free speech rights protected by the Venezuelan constitution.




CNN and CNN en Español's investigation, "Passports in the Shadows," uncovered serious irregularities in the issuing of Venezuelan passports and visas, including allegations that passports were given to people with ties to terrorism.
The story, which began airing last week on both networks, revealed a confidential intelligence document that links Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami to 173 Venezuelan passports and IDs issued to individuals from the Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
The two-part report threatened "the peace and democratic stability of our Venezuelan people since they generate an environment of intolerance," the government said.
El Aissami has not responded to multiple requests for comment over several months. Rodríguez said the investigation is "an absolute lie."
CNN en Español released a statement after the government's action.
"At CNN en Español we believe in the vital role that freedom of press plays in a healthy democracy," the network said through a spokesperson. "Today the government of Venezuela pulled our television signal, denying Venezuelans news and information from our television network, which they have relied upon for 20 years.
"CNN en Español will continue to fulfill its responsibility to the Venezuelan public by offering our live signal on YouTube free of charge and news links on CNNEspanol.com, so they may have access to information not available to them in any other way.
"This happens days after we aired our investigation 'Passports in the Shadows' which revealed that Venezuelan authorities may have issued passports and visas to people with ties to terrorism.
"CNN stands by our network's reporting and our commitment to truth and transparency."
Another one of Turner Broadcasting System's cable networks, CNN International, still is being telecast in Venezuela.
The move by the Venezuelan government comes just two days after US authorities said El Aissami is an international drug trafficker and slapped severe sanctions on him.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced the allegations made by the US Treasury Department. Maduro called the US charges "an aggression which Venezuela will respond to step by step, with balance and forcefulness."

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/15/am...zuela-off-air/

Maduro and the whole economy is a dead man walking. Its not if but when he falls and it looks like he is prepared to wreck the country in the process. Its hard to understand how people can follow such a train wreck of a president but then again, people followed Hitler and his mad policies and supposedly intelligent logical people still follow Muhammad who was either incredibly evil or incredibly insane but probably both.
I guess I will never understand the stupidity of some people.