Is This The Worst Guy On The Planet?

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Jose Rafael Torrealba wins the award for biggest scumbag on the planet today.

Torrealba is a Venezuelan army general who was featured in a leaked audio recording that was just published yesterday.

The recording is of a meeting that took place a few weeks ago in Venezuela in which he and his fellow generals discuss how to keep the civilian population under control.

Torrealba’s solution? Use snipers against his own people.

“There will come a time when we will have to employ them [the snipers] and I want us to be ready for the moment that we have to employ them because the president will not remain at a green [preparation] phase, gentlemen.”

One general at the meeting who could not be identified voiced opposition to the plan, saying that “if we keep going with the issue of the snipers, all of us here will end up in jail.”

Apparently the obvious moral reasons for not using lethal force against your own people didn’t factor into their logic.

Torrealba indicated that he didn’t care for public perception. And even after admitting it was unconstitutional, he ordered everyone at the meeting to make preparations to use snipers.

That was back in April. Since then dozens of people have died, including a 17-year old kid who was shot in the head earlier this week.

Bear in mind that Venezuelans are literally starving; the food shortages that have plagued the country are getting worse, and people have resorted to digging through garbage cans and eating tree bark.

They’ve also taken to the streets to voice their disgust.

Naturally, the government has rolled out the full force of its military to crush any political dissent and anti-government activism.

This is a country that has some of the most abundant resources in the world– massive oil reserves, huge manufacturing capacity, abundant farmland and fresh water supplies, deep water ports, diamonds, gold, natural gas, hydropower, etc.

They have everything. Few nations on this planet are blessed with as much raw potential as Venezuela has.

In fact Venezuela should be, by far, the wealthiest, most advanced country in Latin America.

You have to work REALLY, REALLY hard to screw up something with THAT much potential.

But that’s precisely what’s happened. Frankly it’s astounding to see how much the Venezuelan government’s corruption and socialist bullshit has devastated the country.

And now they’re just flat-out killing people in order to maintain power.

It’s terrible to see so many millions of people suffering and trapped with no way out. And it truly underscores the importance of having a Plan B.

Hopefully wherever you live in the world never turns into Venezuela where murderous thugs like Torrealba are in power.

But if history is any indication, sometimes the world surprises us. Political instability, financial crises, terror attacks, etc. can change everything overnight.

Two days ago Brazil was relatively calm. Then yesterday a major political crisis struck. Within minutes the stock market and currency crashed.

Four years ago in Cyprus, everything was pretty normal. Then everyone woke up the next morning to find that their banks were insolvent and their accounts were frozen.

We unfortunately live in a world where even some of the most advanced, developed countries in the world, including the US, UK, France, Italy, Japan, etc. are buried under mountains of debt.

US government debt is now unofficially north of $20 trillion (officially it’s at $19.9 trillion, but only because of the debt ceiling nonsense…) and household debt just hit another record high.

These aren’t healthy indicators that make for a consequence-free environment.

Acknowledging obvious risks, especially big macro risks that stem from the pitiful, long-term political decisions, is a totally rational thing to do.

Look at the US retirement system–

Social Security’s Board of Trustees, which includes the Treasury Secretary of the United States, publishes a written report each year telling the world that Social Security is running out of money.

The government has completely screwed up this program, and the Trustees are candid about its dire finances.

It’s not crazy to acknowledge this obvious risk to your retirement and take basic steps to protect yourself from the consequences.

This could mean establishing a more flexible, robust retirement account where you can set aside more money and invest in more attractive asset classes.

Simply setting aside an extra $1,000 per year and boosting your returns by just 1% could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra retirement savings.

So when Social Security runs out of cash, you’ll be just fine.

And if by some miracle they’re able to save the program, you’ll still be OK.

It’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off for having a few hundred thousand dollars in extra retirement savings.

You can extend that same logic to so many other aspects of your life.

It’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off because your savings is in a safer, better capitalized bank… or a portion of it is held in physical cash in your safe.

It’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off for having a second citizenship, allowing you and your family the freedom to live, work, travel, and do business in another part of the world, with future generations able to inherit those same benefits.

It’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off for taking completely legitimate steps to reduce the amount of tax that you owe.

And that’s the whole point of a Plan B: taking rational steps that make sense regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen next.

Venezuela is obviously an extreme example.

But anyone who takes an objective look at the numbers, even in the supposedly ‘wealthiest’ countries in the world, can see that there are far too many threats to your long-term wealth and prosperity to ignore.

The solutions are simple, and many of them require almost no investment… simply a little bit of education, and the will to take action.

Do you have a Plan B?

Venezuelan Army Maintains Maduro in Power

(image: www.stratfor.com)

(The Real Agenda News) Maduro enjoys a weak 30% of popular support as Chavistas disagree on what to do with the ongoing popular uprising.

For some sectors of the Venezuelan opposition it is a prophetic act. Dissidents want to believe that Nicolas Maduro is close to political surrender.

They maintain that, as social anger grows in the streets, Maduro will have no choice but to end the repression and accept the call for elections.

During a series of street protests last Friday in the state of Zulia, protesters knocked down a statue of Hugo Chavez and then took it down, as people did in 1989 in some Eastern European countries with some bronze figures of Vladimir Lenin.

While he appears to be relaxed in public, Maduro told the country “nothing is going” and that “everything is under control”.

Some people ask how can the government of a country with an annual inflation of 700% and bills of $13 billion be so bold. Others say that the government’s call for a Constituent Assembly is an act of cunning and false intransigence to then negotiate or otherwise political suicide that can open the door to a major confrontation.

“It’s time to listen to the people: That’s enough,” said the famous orchestra conductor, Gustavo Dudamel. Chavismo, for the moment, minimizes the force of a protest that has left 37 people dead.

“We are on the verge of subversion and armed insurrection,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said of the demonstrations, with words typical of the right-wing South American dictators of the 1970s.

According to surveys, Maduro barely enjoys a 30% of social support. On May 1, the president participated in a mass rally, although the opposition detracted from it considering that the attendees had been dragged by the state.

It is evident that there still exists a “hard core” of Chavismo. This movement is considered, among other things, the sons of the “Caracazo”, the social outbreak against the adjustment that former president Carlos Andrés Pérez tried to set in motion at the end of February of 1989.

Almost 300 people died during 15 days of clashes with the police that had as central protagonists the popular sectors that “descended from the barrios to reject the neoliberal turn of the economy.

So far, this “descent of the hills” has not taken place in Caracas. Nor did the opposition fully set foot in these vital territories to push for any change. Despite the pauperization, they are still on the side of the Government that gave them political identity and benefits.

Maduro counts in his favor with the state resources, the Supreme Court, the intelligence services and, above all, with the Armed Forces. The president does not point out that, in fact, his government is a kind of civic-military coalition.

Not in vain are there generals in one-third of the ministries, at the head of state enterprises and involved in smuggling, according to press reports.

Retired General Fernando Antonio Ochoa Antich, who in 1992 faced the military assault led by the then young Hugo Chavez, warns that there is some discontent among members of the armed forces.

“The military should understand that this position that has been maintained for years is completely wrong and that it might cause a rupture within the institution,” he told Tal Cual magazine.

The opposition knows otherwise that there will be no way out until the army ends its support of Maduro.

There was a time in which the Central Bank of Venezuela got up to $35 billion of reserves. About 96% of that money was the result of the export of hydrocarbons. By then, the barrel of oil was close to 90 dollars.

Part of the economic meltdown is explained by falling international prices. During 2016, the barrel got to be below $30. At the moment it is near the $45. The Government expects that at the end of year the price of crude will climb to $60.

Authorities hope that if prices continue to rise, they will again have resources to improve food distribution, purchase of medicines and improve their image.

Under these conditions, in these difficult days, Maduro would be willing to compete electorally. For the opposition, however, Venezuelans should vote without further delay.

The disagreement is explosive and the reason for the present crisis could be deactivated if the moderate sectors of Chavismo and the opposition reached a minimum level of consensus. An agreement, however, is something that, at this point, glimpses impossible and opens the doors to the worst.