310 Comments

I have not scrolled down all the comments, but a related fact to note about Venezuela that would be relevant to the Free Press - what used to be a great country for Jews has become a Jew-hating sh*thole, and 80% of Jews have left. Thirty years ago, there were about 22,000 Jews in Venezuela. Now there are 4,000.

And this is a country that until the Communists came to power, had no history of Jews being persecuted.

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I lived in Caracas in 1978 when I was a senior in high school. I have watched as this beautiful country has been destroyed by the likes of Chavez and Maduro and it breaks my heart. Recently on a mission trip to Quito, I met several people who had left Venezuela for Ecuador. It was not their first choice but they felt they had no other choice. Life had become overwhelming sad and difficult. That being said some still have family who stayed behind and they fear for them. Thank you for this article, though heart breaking, paints a picture of life in Venezuela and why so many have chosen to leave.

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But yet, the Biden administration is buying Venezuelan oil (and by doing so propping up Maduro) so that it can continue to kill off American oil/gas production. You can't make this stuff up!

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I lived in Venezuela for a while in the late 80's in Caracas. It was such a beautiful country and such wonderful people. I can't process what has happened to it over the years, it is such a tragedy. I can understand why people are homesick to go back. When I was there it was a marvelous place to be.

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Maybe we are wrong. Maybe we should let in more Venezuelans to replace the spoiled brats in colleges around the country. How fitting would that be?

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And yet whole sections of the left manage to remain simultaneously in thrall to socialism as well to open borders towards it's refugees.

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Please have Francis Foster write more for you.

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Cubans have similar stories. It's not Venezuela, it's Communism....the same shit it is everywhere.

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My family immigrated to the United States from Venezuela in 1964. Almost every day my mother says to me, "Thank God we don't live In Venezuela any more!"

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It’s incredible that the usual Free Press idiots respond to a heartfelt lament about Venezuela with moronic diatribes about abortion

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Beautifully written. Very sad

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Sounds like where we are headed. Slowly but surely. Since these immigrants will likely be voting whether or not it’s legal, I hope they vote to keep the US from becoming like their native country

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Outstanding. More from Francis Foster, please.

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founding

Horrible. We have a moral duty to warn the world. But I'm confused by the author sometimes using "communism" and sometimes "socialism." What's the dif in this case?

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No worries. According to US leftists they're doing it incorrectly everywhere else. They are committed to making socialism work perfectly in the US. The results we see in the blue utopias are rendering promising results. Oh, you don't believe me? Ask NYT or WaPo. See for yourself.

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Sean Penn, Bernie Sanders, Where are you on all this?

This is all a function of Spanish conquest in the New World. The descendants of Spain and Portugal are among the most corrupt, racist, undisciplined people you can imagine. Maybe the Catholic Church bears some of the blame, too. But, think Serbia, think Afghanistan, think all those -stans of eastern Europe and the Caucasus. No progress, no civil rights, corruption everywhere. None of the cultural thinking of Western European societies (mainly England, France, Germany, etc., but, of course, not including the Iberian peninsula).

I spent quite a bit of time in Venezuela nearly 30 years ago. The little Lt. was in charge. No, not Lt. Dan, but Hugo Chavez. you know the guy who was Bernie and Sean's good buddy. The interior and Caracas is where I hung out. While there was much natural beauty, there was a general lawlessness that destroyed much of that beauty (illicit, uncontrolled gold mining and processing - mercury everywhere; generations to come will have fetal brain damage from mom's ingesting that mercury; the landslides a muddy mess from the mining). Caracas has areas that were beautiful, but danger and corruption was all around you. In the interior, you went nowhere without your own personal armed (with sawed-off shotguns) guards. Fortunately, my client walked away from potential investment there. It has been a steep slide for that country ever since. But Bernie Sanders and Sean Penn are happy!

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