The reasoning I heard on the BBC was economic instability, but I have no idea exactly what they mean. Could be anything from “we won’t get fuel and maintenance” to “OMG they’re looting the Food King!” I guess. Maybe both.
Or worry that the government would simply seize the aircraft on some pretext.
Yeah, that too. I would suggest that people I don’t like take their vacation in Caracas though!
The thing is, there is a sizeable American expat community in Venezuela. If shit goes south, there will be tremendous pressure for the US to do something, from intervention to armed evacuation. Which would only play into the regime’s hands.
Didn’t a bunch of those folks head down there after Chavez took over?
There’s always been a large community down there; lots of oil industry folks who stayed there.
Won’t someone think of the poor patriotic Americans who fled the inevitable horror of the disastrous pending collapse of the USA by relocating to Venezuela!
No, they’ve been there a lot longer than that. Decades, mainly thanks to the oil industry. Then you have the fair share of retirees who went somewhere warm and where the dollar goes a long way. They’ve been there a long time too.
Here there’s talk of maybe a civil war brewing (our politicians are trying to help mediate, but I’m afraid Maduro won’t go). There’s a very even splity in the population between support for the regime and opposition, so things could get ugly (what I don’t think is that there’s any major power willing to support Maduro if things came to the worse, while the opposition right now would have a lot of support).
It’s sad it’s getting to this point. While Chavez had the legitimacy of actually having won elections and being wanted by the people, Maduro now doesn’t and should go.
Even the OAS is pretty much saying the regime is a bust, and Maduro has alienated pretty much all of his former supporters outside of the country it seems.
Venezuelans are starving, scavenging for food on the streets. At least they are according to the neoliberal shills at Al Jazeera:
Thankfully the government is springing into action…by banning the media from publishing videos of lynchings, which have become increasingly common in the country. Reason given was that such videos increase “anxiety and uncertainty”.
It’s Saramago’s Blindness without the blinding.
Yeah, seeing people pop up here and there on forums I read, it really is as bad as the news articles make it out to be. Horrific. I’d love to see the US step in with aid although it looks like the government is reluctant to show weakness by accepting it.
Just air-drop supplies covered in American flags down to people.
If Venezuela wants to make a stink about it… well, who cares? They’ve used us as the boogeyman for quite some time now, it’s not like it would worsen our relations with them.
Just read this. Thanks for sharing. It is indeed remarkable.
Famine.
That’s incredibly sad.
Venezuelans crossing the border to buy food in Colombia.
First they take your money, then your labor, soon you are nothing but a slave.
Well, they made the official price of food cheap enough that no one could afford to make it. It reminds me of trying to legislate the value of pi.