Venezuela (2006-2018)

**bourbon** · 02-05-2011

Originally Posted by AdamG

"Accident"
<pinky to lips, Dr. Evil style>

Chavez got lucky post-9/11 with the War on Terrorism, the retired covert action / dirty tricks / Iran-Contra types were in demand elsewhere. Heck, I even read in the NYT last month that Dewey Clarridge is still running around, said he was throwing dirt on the Karzai’s.

**davidbfpo** · 10-03-2011

A short article by an ICG expert:http://www.opendemocracy.net/silke-p...e-and-politics

I have read about the scale of violence and the police being brutal, but the details are new to me and alarming. So taking one paragraph:

The former interior and justice minister Jesse Chacón recently claimed the government had inherited the problem from former administrations. Fair enough: when Hugo Chávez took over the presidency in 1999, homicide rates had already tripled over the previous decade. But what Chacón did not mention is that they almost quadrupled in the following twelve years, from 4,550 in 1998 to 17,600 in 2010.

This insight speaks volumes:

The daily killings in Venezuelan cities so far do not seem to have significantly affected President Chávez’s popularity.