Terry McAuliffe Under FBI Investigation

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

This should come actually as no surprise as some clues were likely uncovered while the FBI was investigating the whole Clinton email server matter. The timing fits well.

Some even suspect that McAuliffe is on the Hillary short Veep list.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe under federal investigation for campaign contributions

Washington (CNN)Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, U.S. officials briefed on the probe say.

The investigation dates to at least last year and has focused, at least in part, on whether donations to his gubernatorial campaign violated the law, the officials said.

McAuliffe wasn’t notified by investigators that he is a target of the probe, according to the officials.

“The Governor will certainly cooperate with the government if he is contacted about it,” said Marc Elias, attorney for McAuliffe campaign, in a statement to CNN.

As part of the probe, the officials said, investigators have scrutinized McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a vehicle of the charitable foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton.

Related: Report cites favoritism for McAuliffe and brother of Hillary Clinton It faults the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security for creating “an appearance of favoritism.”

There’s no allegation that the foundation did anything improper; the probe has focused on McAuliffe and the electoral campaign donations, the officials said.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment.

Among the McAuliffe donations that drew the interest of the investigators was $120,000 from a Chinese businessman, Wang Wenliang, through his U.S. businesses. Wang was previously delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s ceremonial legislature.

“Neither the Governor nor his former campaign has knowledge of this matter, but as reported, contributions to the campaign from Mr. Wang were completely lawful,” said Elias.

Wang also has been a donor to the Clinton foundation, pledging $2 million. He also has been a prolific donor to other causes, including to New York University, Harvard and environmental issues in Florida.

Related: GOP sues to block McAuliffe order to let 200,000 Virginia felons vote

U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from donating to federal, state or local elections. Penalties for violations include fines and/or imprisonment.

But Wang holds U.S. permanent resident status, according to a spokeswoman, which would make him a U.S. person under election law and eligible to donate to McAuliffe’s campaign.

Neither Wang nor his company used to make the donations have been contacted by U.S. investigators, according to the spokeswoman.

Related: Trump gave him $25,000

McAuliffe is the second consecutive Virginia governor to be investigated by Justice Department and the FBI. In 2014, Bob McDonnell was convicted of corruption charges related to $175,000 in loans and gifts he received from a donor and friend. The Supreme Court is weighing an appeal of the conviction.

It couldn’t be learned what else the FBI and Justice Department are investigating as part of the probe in McAuliffe.

The officials say the investigation remains active and ongoing.

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Related: McAuliffe authored what became known as the “Lincoln Bedroom Memo,” which sparked controversy by offering special White House access to Clinton’s top campaign contributors.

There is much more to know about the Clinton’s and McAuliffe, historical facts are funny things. Going back to 1999:

With Some Help, Clintons Purchase a White House

NYT’s: President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday settled the question of where the First Family will live once their lease on the White House expires, signing a contract to buy a $1.7 million, 11-room Dutch Colonial home in the wooded suburbs of Westchester County. The choice of a home in New York removes one of the chief obstacles in Mrs. Clinton’s path as she prepares for a run for the United States Senate.

The Clintons, indebted by over $5 million in legal bills from the investigations that have marked the Clinton Presidency, were able to buy the white-shingled, five-bedroom home in Chappaqua after Mr. Clinton’s chief fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, personally secured the loan.

The White House said that Mr. McAuliffe had put up $1.35 million of his own money with Bankers Trust. Under the terms of the mortgage, Mr. McAuliffe will get the money back, with interest from the bank, once the Clintons pay back the mortgage, or, as is more likely, refinance it in five years.

The deal was announced in a three-paragraph statement issued by the temporary press office of the White House — a room in the Holiday Inn in Auburn, about seven miles from where the Clintons are vacationing in upstate New York. It apparently concludes one of the more unusual house-hunting expeditions embarked on by any American family, complicated by the Clintons’ station in life, the fact that they have not owned a home in 16 years and Mrs. Clinton’s political ambitions in New York.

”We’re very pleased about the house,” the President said last evening as he and the First Lady left a fund-raiser for her presumed Senate campaign in Cazenovia and headed to another one in Syracuse. ”It’s beautiful. We like it a lot.”

Later, emerging from the Syracuse fund-raiser, Mrs. Clinton declared to cheers: ”As of today, Bill Clinton and I are the newest homeowners in the state of New York.”

”I love it,” she added, ”we’re so happy.”

The choice of a house came after the Clintons, trailed by a Presidential-size entourage of assistants, Secret Service agents and reporters, toured homes in New Rochelle, Greenburgh, Purchase, Mamaroneck and Pound Ridge, all in Westchester County, in two trips this summer. They spent two hours in the Chappaqua house last Saturday; Mrs. Clinton had seen the home before, an aide said.

”Everything about this was normal — except that they are the First Family,” said Kathy Sloane, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens in Manhattan, who guided the Clintons through the process.

The house was shown to the public for only three days. After that, Dr. Jeffrey Weisberg and his wife, Cheryl, who have owned the house for just over 18 years, invited closed bids. The bids were opened at 3 P.M. on Sunday and the Clintons were informed shortly thereafter that the Weisbergs were prepared to sell to them, said people with knowledge of the deal.

Eight bids were submitted on the house, those people said. It was unclear last night whether the Clintons, who offered just over the $1.675 million asking price, had made the highest bid.

There was a clear sense of relief yesterday among Mrs. Clinton’s political advisers, who are concerned that charges of carpetbagging could hurt the First Lady, since she has never lived in New York. Her likely Republican opponent, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, has repeatedly attacked Mrs. Clinton on the issue of her residency.

Mrs. Clinton has begun to visit New York regularly, but her campaign advisers fear that her trips have been marred by images emphasizing that she does not live in New York: she is either leaving to return to Washington or spending the night as a guest of friends or supporters. Accordingly, the First Lady’s advisers have been pressing her to find a house as soon as possible.

The closing date is Nov. 1. Mrs. Clinton’s aides said the First Lady would begin spending a good amount of time there as soon as possible after that. (That said, one complication of the Clintons’ nomadic ways is that they do not have enough of their own furniture to fill a house, particularly one this size, a family friend observed the other day.)

Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman, said that for the remainder of Mr. Clinton’s term, the President and Mrs. Clinton intended to treat their Chappaqua home much the way other First Families have treated their own private residences. ”The Clintons will continue to live in the White House,” Mr. Lockhart said in a telephone interview from Washington. ”As with other Presidents, this house will be their private home and they will spend as much time there as they can.”

New York elections tend to be decided in the suburbs. And while Mrs. Clinton may now be considered a suburbanite, her aides said that political considerations were not predominant in the Clintons’ deliberations. Nonetheless, the Clintons clearly avoided communities like Scarsdale and Bedford, which are well known across New York as among the state’s wealthiest suburbs.

Still, Chappaqua, if not quite as well-known as Scarsdale, is known as one of the more exclusive, and upper-middle-class, bedroom communities of Westchester County. More here.

Psst, Another Scandal, Thomas Pickering/Panama Papers

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

Who is Tom Pickering? He is the fella that Hillary tapped to do the Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi. And, thanks to my buddy Clare Lopez, former CIA, she authored a white paper on ol’ Thomas and his pro-Iran lobby.

Pickering was also part of a secret group to lobby the lifting of sanctions on Iran. The White House lobby operation for Iran was huge, well funded and full of collusion.

Well, there is more to Mr. Pickering.

Panama Papers detail how ex-ambassador helped Russian company

McClatchy: WASHINGTON ~ MarisaTaylor: As Russian software company Luxoft prepared to offer shares on the U.S. stock market, its executives turned to a well-known U.S. diplomat.

Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Bill Clinton, agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc. a month before the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The relationship between Luxoft and Pickering, whose diplomatic career spans six presidents and four decades, is detailed in the massive Panama Papers leak and comes amid a global debate over the role of offshore companies. Luxoft is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

Pickering is the highest-level former U.S. official to be identified as involved in a Panama Papers offshore company so far. The papers, which were leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca to an international group of reporters, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and McClatchy, have already revealed that former and current world leaders had offshore companies and have led to criminal inquiries around the globe, including in the United States.

However, nothing appears illegal or unethical about Pickering’s role, experts said. Pickering said in an interview that he had disclosed his role on Luxoft’s board to the State Department as required under government ethics rules.

“I disclosed about 150 interests, including that I was on this board,” he said. “It is a Russian company and – obviously for tax reasons or otherwise – incorporated itself in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. That I knew. And I didn’t see any problem with that.”

He also said he’d donated his compensation from the company to charity.

Luxoft declined to comment. “As a public company we do not respond to unsolicited enquiries of this nature,” Natasha Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group, wrote in an email to McClatchy. “Any material information about our company is disclosed through our publicly available securities filings.”

Pickering said he’d also disclosed his role and had donated compensation when he served until about four years ago on the board of TMK, a Russian manufacturer and exporter of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry.

“I’ve been very careful in my dealings with the boards,” Pickering said.

Pickering said he had been approached to be on Luxoft’s board years before the company went public on the British and American stock exchanges, by a Luxoft executive he’d known while he was senior vice president of international relations for Boeing Co. from 2000 to 2006. Boeing was a client of Luxoft.

“I got to know them and I got to know the man who ran Luxoft,” Pickering said. “Years ago, he said if we go on the London market or on the U.S. would I join their board. I said in principle I would.”

After the company went public in London, Pickering said, he looked into the company and decided to join the board. He also serves on Luxoft’s audit committee.

Pickering was appointed director of Luxoft Holding at a time when the company still had ties to one of Russia’s biggest banks, VTB Bank. Rus Lux Limited, the VTB-linked company, had a 10.2 percent stake in Luxoft.

Luxoft has generally performed well since its formation. It was among the best-performing major Russian companies on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. And earlier this month it reported that its fourth-quarter revenue had increased 23.2 percent over the previous year.

In the Mossack Fonseca documents, Luxoft reassures the law firm in December 2015 that Rus Lux had sold its shares before the U.S government sanctioned VTB in July 2014. The U.S. Treasury Department issued the sanctions against VTB and other Russian banks in response to Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict.

“Rus Lux Limited was a minority shareholder a long time ago,” wrote Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group. “They fully divested and sold their shares in Luxoft Holding in November 2013 before the sanctions took effect.”

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers said he didn’t see any ethical problem with Pickering’s relationship with Luxoft.

“What else is new?” asked Gillers. “Yes, people sometimes use their former government experience to do exactly this.”

Jay Ritter, a University of Florida business professor, said Luxoft’s inclusion of Pickering on its board was not unusual for foreign companies gearing up for an initial public stock offering in the U.S.

“When you’re dealing with a company in Russia – whether they’ve got to set it up in the British Virgin Islands or not, there’s a required leap of faith for investors,” said Ritter, an expert on IPOs. “Appointing someone like Pickering to the board gives a certain amount of credibility because he’s got his personal reputation at stake. Presumably, he doesn’t want to get involved with something that’s obviously sleazy.”

Pickering has served as the U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria and Jordan, and to the United Nations.

Luxoft also disclosed his role in its public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has its operating headquarters in Switzerland.

State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the Panama Papers.

Kirby said Pickering was required to file financial disclosure forms with the State Department because he served as one of 25 members of the first Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

The board was launched in December 2011 to provide the secretary of state and senior department officials with independent advice on U.S. foreign policy.

Pickering served a two-year term on the board from December 2011 to December 2013. He returned to the board in 2014 and remains a member. Members of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board do not work full time as members of the board, but in an advisory capacity.

The former ambassador also chaired the Accountability Review Board, which investigated the 2012 fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including an ambassador. The panel concluded in its December 2012 report that security at the facility in Benghazi was “grossly inadequate,” leading to the suspension of four State Department officials. They were reinstated by Secretary of State John Kerry in August 2013.

Pickering continued to offer advice to the Obama administration, according to emails that the State Department released during a controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Pickering wasn’t compensated for any position, Kirby said.

Meanwhile, the Refugee Crisis in Germany

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

Attacks on refugee homes soar in Germany: official data

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany recorded nearly 1,000 far-right offences targeting refugee shelters last year, a five-fold annual rise amid a record influx of asylum seekers, the government said Monday.

Presenting the figures, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he did not expect a lull in 2016.

Some 923 offences against refugees and refugee facilities were recorded in 2015, against 175 the previous year, according Interior Ministry statistics on political crime in Germany.

These included 177 acts of violence — including three attempted killings — and hundreds of non-violent acts such as painting graffiti, the use of Nazi symbols and incitements to hatred.

“The refugee topic was of course the focus of politically motivated crime” last year, when Germany took in over one million asylum seekers, the minister told a Berlin press conference.

“A decline in the number of political crimes is not to be expected in 2016 unfortunately,” he said, adding that in this year’s first quarter there had been 347 crimes against refugee centres.

De Maiziere said that in 90 percent of far-right crimes the perpetrators were men, that three quarters were aged 18 to 30, and that most lived close to the crime scene and nearly half were previously unknown to police.

Far-left offences increased by 18 percent in 2015 to 9,600, including 2,246 acts of violence — an increase of nearly 35 percent — mostly targeting right-wing political opponents or police.

**** Forcing a positive spin on a real bad condition where teachers face difficult conditions. A 4 part series.

Inside Syrian Refugee Schools: Syrian Children in Germany

Brookings: Posted on the main entrance to a small village school in Germany is a plain piece of paper with clear black writing. It requests the help of school families to provide for the “new arrivals,” to please send in coats and shoes. At this school, the new arrivals are 14 refugees and asylum seekers. The paper is covered in its entirely with tape, making it waterproof and durable. It is not going anywhere soon.

Despite the permanence with which school staff perceives the presence of refugees and asylum seekers, the situation is anything but stable. On the day that we visited, a new boy arrived from Syria. His hair was slicked back, and he smelled sweetly of his father’s cologne. He joined the 13 other students in this class, set up exclusively for new arrivals. Two of them, a brother and a sister, described traveling almost entirely by foot from Afghanistan. Another Syrian girl told her teacher that the adults on her boat had intentionally punctured it, hoping for rescue and asylum and to avoid refoulement and possible death. The danger of the sea was worth the possibility of safety on dry land in Europe.

In 2015, the German government reported 467,649 formal asylum applications, as well as the arrival of many more as yet unregistered asylum seekers. A much smaller, yet unconfirmed, number of asylum seekers has been granted refugee status, which presents a possible pathway toward permanent residence.

More than one- third of these asylum seekers have origins in Syria. Despite the legal and administrative limbo in which Syrian refugee families find themselves in Germany, all Syrian children with asylum status can access German schools.

As occurs in so many countries with large influxes of refugees and asylum seekers, German schools are now overwhelmed. Schools do not have enough teachers. And, as we documented in Lebanon, teachers in Germany also lack training in how they might meet the needs of their new students, with little knowledge of how to work with language learners or overaged students, or to address issues of trauma. Perhaps they should take Languala German Lessons in Delhi or maybe take online course instead.

However, as we also observe in Lebanon and other refugee-hosting countries, German schools are developing multiple, flexible approaches to educating refugees and asylum seekers. We visited two such models in central Germany: One school integrated the children into existing classrooms and another created a separate classroom for children of all ages.

The first school had been serving migrant children, primarily from Turkey, for decades. The school itself exuded a sense of stability, its golden bricks standing three stories, in stark contrast to the surrounding stucco and concrete of post-war construction. The teacher in the class we observed had more than 10 years of experience working with German language learners and children in economic and legal limbo. She created situations in which children could learn about each other and also about their new home. In a cozy corner of the classroom, on chairs and cushions, students discussed what they did over the weekend. The teacher engaged with what the students shared, patiently explaining a traditional German meal that one student had cooked, what a birthday party might entail, and where a family might go walking. She even explained in Persian when one student did not understand.

The children shared universals experiences as well like Mindcraft, Barbie, and playing with brothers and sisters. When sharing was over, children quietly went back to their seats and took out folders that contained learning materials developed to suit their particular language and developmental stages. The teacher walked around the room, helping where needed, checking in, and tailoring her teaching to the very different needs of each child.

The second school, the same one with the sign asking families to send in coats and shoes, faced a different set of challenges. This school was in a village outside an urban area, close to vacant housing made available to new arrivals. The young principal didn’t have experience with migrant students, but he has made creative use of what’s available. He used funds from various sources to hire a new teacher, who had expertise in teaching German and working with students who have speech difficulties.

This teacher had a classroom full of refugee students from ages 6 to 12. Like the teacher from the first school, she focused her attention on building relationships. The day we visited, she commended a student, who was often late, for arriving at school on time. She placed a gift on the desk of the student whose mother had just had a baby. As a language lesson, she was leading the class in learning the names of the rooms in a house. A beautiful poster of a “typical” German house was at the front of the room and children took turns pointing to the rooms and using verbs to describe the activities that went on in each one. When a student used the verb “sleep” for the living room, the teacher initially said no—the bedrooms were clearly labeled. Staring into confused faces, the teacher seemed to realize that some of the students might indeed sleep in the living room.

It’s scenarios like these that teachers need training and preparation for since refugees and asylum seekers face different circumstances, both at home and in classroom, than other students.

But unlike most countries that host large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, Germany has a stable education system with students who score among the top in the world on international assessments. Still, educating their newest students will require more teachers and also ongoing training on how to create stable, long-term learning environments where refugees and asylum seekers can thrive.

This VA Secretary STILL Does NOT Get it

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

In fact Disney does care about wait lines, apparently he has not been to the theme park. While the FBI is overworked, it is high time to open criminal investigations into the Veterans Administration and the FOIA requests need to be flying, this is shameful and disgusting.

VA Secretary: Disney Doesn’t Care About Wait Times, Why Should the VA?

Mediaite: Secretary for Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald had an interesting take on the criticism of long wait times at VA facilities, arguing Monday that Disney theme parks aren’t judged based on their wait times.

McDonald’s remarks, which were made during a breakfast event held by The Christian Science Monitor, started to gain attention after they were tweeted out by attendee Washington Examiner reporter Sarah Westwood.

“When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what’s important? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?” McDonald said in the full quote. “And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.”

McDonald continued to say that the “create date” metric, which measures how long a veteran has to wait from the moment they first ask for care, is not a “valid measure” of wait time. Instead, he supports measuring wait times from how long veterans have to wait past their “preferred date” for care.

In 2014, an internal VA investigation found that at least 35 veterans in the Phoenix area died as a result of the long waiting times at the local VA hospital or after being secretly removed from the list entirely.

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Examiner/Westwood: McDonald’s comments angered House Speaker Paul Ryan, who tweeted out Monday afternoon, “This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines.”

McDonald faced questions at the breakfast about the VA’s lack of transparency surrounding how long veterans must wait to receive care at VA facilities around the country. The agency has weathered controversy over the past several years due to its struggle to provide timely care for many patients.

The VA secretary said most veterans report being satisfied with their care and argued that the average wait time for a veteran seeking VA treatment is only a matter of days.

He said he did not believe a measure called the “create date,” which gauges a veteran’s wait time by counting from the day the veteran first requests care, was a “valid measure” of a veteran’s VA experience.

The Government Accountability Office released a report in April exploring the metric used to count a veterans’ wait time, called the “preferred date.” The measure does not count from the time a veteran first calls to make an appointment.

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Related: VA bosses in 7 states falsified vets’ wait times for care

The newly released findings of those probes show that supervisors instructed schedulers to manipulate wait times in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Illinois, New York, Texas and Vermont, giving the false impression facilities there were meeting VA performance measures for shorter wait times.

In some cases, the system encouraged manipulation even without explicit instruction from supervisors. A manager in West Palm Beach, Fla., sent out laudatory emails touting the shorter wait times the system showed. Schedulers in Harlingen, Texas, reported being berated by supervisors when they booked appointments showing longer wait times for veterans. (It was “not pretty,” one employee said.) More here.

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Meanwhile, there is this heartwarming story:

Dying veteran’s horses visit him at hospital to say goodbye

Quadrangle: We would like to thank Roberto Gonzales for his service and sacrifice.

As he lay dying in a Veterans Administration hospital he had one wish, to see his beloved horses Sugar and Ringo one last time.

Roberto Gonzales was wounded in battle on May 21, 1970. “He was in Vietnam for a few months when he was shot an injured”, explains his wife, Rosario Gonzalez.

Now, Gonzalez is paralyzed, restricted to a hospital bed and suffering from organ failure.

He recently went to the hospital for a wound on his back, which is when it was discovered he also needed treatment for liver problems and that his kidneys were starting to shut down.

“Horses are his life”, Rosario Gonzales told CNN affiliate KABB.

A paralysed and dying Vietnam War veteran has been reunited with his favourite horses in an emotional final wish.

The visit was also a testament to Roberto’s love of the animals, as both he and his wife trained and raised horses for almost 40 years together.

Two of those animals are Sugar and Ringo, a pair of horses that have become some of Gonzalez’s closest friends. “They came up to him and I think they were actually kissing him”.

Venezuela Now Failed, Neighboring Countries?

Posted on May 22, 2016May 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Beyond Venezuela, Puerto Rico has also failed and thousands from both countries are fleeing with the help of churches. Where are they going? Yup…we are experiencing another incursion. The questions begin, is the United States going to bail out Puerto Rico? Has China made a deal with Maduro of Venezuela for oil?

Venezuela is collapsing and the military just got involved

Demonstrators clash with police during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s Government in Caracas, 18 May 2016. (EPA)

The president deployed troops this weekend claiming the US threatens to invade, as tensions escalate in the Latin American state.

By Ben Winsor

SBS: Troops have been deployed around Venezuela’s capital of Caracas and in ‘every strategic region’ this weekend during the country’s largest ever military exercise.

The government claims the exercises are in response to the threat of invasion from the United States, but the real reason for the government’s state of emergency declaration is likely much closer to home.

For over a year now, Venezuelans have been suffering under an ever deepening economic and political crisis.

Bare supermarket shelves are common. Vital medicines are in short supply. Crime is rising. Blackouts occur daily. To save electricity, the government asked public sector workers to only show up on Mondays and Tuesdays – and this could soon extend to private companies as well.

All this in one of the largest oil producing nations on earth.

After the 2013 death of the country’s fiery socialist president, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has been led by the increasingly unpopular former Vice President, Nicolas Maduro. Since then, economic mismanagement and a massive decline in oil revenues have led to a spiraling crisis.

The president, outnumbered by opposition parties, faces violent protests and a push for new elections. A March poll showed more than 60% of Venezuelans think Mr Maduro should resign or be removed.

It was against this backdrop that the Defence Minister appeared on state television this week.

“Venezuela is threatened,” he said. “This is the first time we are carrying out an exercise of this nature in the country. In terms of national reach, it’s going to be in every strategic region.”

The statement came after the United States – somewhat provocatively – declared Venezuela a national security threat and sanctioned officials they claimed were responsible for corruption and human rights abuses. US Prosecutors have also charged a number of former officials with trafficking cocaine.

President Maduro claims this is evidence of an attempted coup, citing the threat of a US attack when he declared a state of emergency. National security provisions now allow the government to impose tougher security measures, take control of basic goods and services, and distribute and sell food.

Maduro has also made what appear to be anti-democratic statements, telling foreign journalists that parliament has “lost political validity” and “it’s a matter of time before it disappears.”

A handout made available by the Miraflores Press shows President Nicolas Maduro waving as he takes part in an event in Caracas, Venezuela, 19 May 2016.

It didn’t have to be this way

Venezuela was once comparatively wealthy. A decade of high oil prices enabled President Chávez to embark on populist social welfare programs.

According to the World Bank, economic growth and resource redistribution under Chávez led to a significant decline in poverty. Inequality in Venezuela fell to one of the lowest rates in the region.

But the country’s success was built on a house of cards – oil prices.

In 2014 prices were over $100 USD a barrel, now a barrel trades at $48, having earlier dropped to around $30. The collapse has accelerated economic decline in the country, where government run businesses have been accused of corruption and inefficiency.

“They made the assumption that oil prices would remain high and they didn’t use the fat years wisely,” an international development official told SBS, “[they] did the opposite of diversifying the economy, throttling the private sector.”

“Ironic that they demonise the US – yet the US is the biggest buyer of their crude,” they said.

Meat shelves are empty at a supermarket in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, on March 3, 2015.

Colombian tensions

It’s not just the US which has come in for criticism – President Maduro has blamed immigrants from neighbouring Colombia for the economic crisis.

Last year, hundreds of Colombians in the border region were expelled and the border closed. The president accused immigrants of smuggling and paramilitary activity.

“Nonsense, they were mostly poor families,” a diplomatic source in Colombia told SBS.

President Maduro’s actions have been testing the patience and restraint of Colombia, which last week hosted an event bringing together almost all of Colombia’s former presidents in support of the Venezuelan opposition.

Some of the former leaders usually wouldn’t talk to each other, the source said. “Maduro is so disliked that he brought them together,” they said.

The event featured, Lilian Tintori, the wife of a jailed Venezuelan opposition leader, who yesterday ran a “Rescue Venezuela” campaign urging Colombians to donate basic supplies and medicines.

Her husband, Leopold López, was imprisoned for inciting violence, a move criticised by Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Colombians line up to donate medical supplies and diapers during the “Rescue Venezuela” campaign in Bogota, Colombia, Thursday, May 19, 2016.

The military option

With the crisis only deepening, the role of the military may prove significant.

With his militarized declaration of a national emergency, the 53-year-old president appears to believe the armed forces will be useful in holding power.

Unlike President Chávez before him, President Maduro does not come from a military background. He has nevertheless sought to keep top brass on side.

According to Alexandra Ulmer for Reuters, the military controls roughly a third of ministerial posts, is regularly praised by President Maduro, and has been given control of an oil services company.

General Vladimir Padrino, chief of the armed forces, is President Maduro’s Defence Minister. In his statements on television he appears to be backing the president’s crisis strategy.

Members of the Armed Forces including national reserve members take part in military maneuvers at a western district in Caracas, Venezuela, 20 May 2016.

The opposition also believes the army could be key.

Reuters reported opposition leader Henrique Capriles as this week claiming he had “high-placed allies” in the army.

“I want to tell the armed forces that the hour of truth is coming,” he said. “You must decide whether you’re with the constitution, or Maduro.”

The National Assembly speaker, Henry Ramos Allup, has also called for a resolution.

“We don’t want a bloodbath or a coup d’etat,” AFP reported him as saying.

Whatever the resolution, Venezuelans will continue to suffer the consequences of political and economic turmoil.

In the The Atlanic, Venezuelan writers Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro said what their country was experiencing was “monstrously unique.”

“It’s nothing less than the collapse of a large, wealthy, seemingly modern, seemingly democratic nation just a few hours’ flight from the United States.”