Month: June 2020

Video obtained by Fox 5 shows Washington, DC, residents having a wild west shootout right along the street Friday just before 7 p.m.

Fox 5 reports the shootout lasted just under two minutes and left one person injured.

Sirens can be heard on the video toward the end of the shootout and the shooters nonchalantly put their guns in their cars and walk toward a house as police cruisers roll up.

Some of the gunmen can be seen assisting another individual who was wounded in the exchange.

Six people were arrested after police arrived on scene.

Gun violence is raging in other Democrat-controlled cities too. Breitbart News reported over 30 were shot this past weekend in Chicago, two fatally, and 35 were shot, five fatally, the weekend prior.

Breitbart News reported seven people were shot in six hours June 8, 2020, in Democrat-controlled St. Louis and shootings and murder surged in Democrat-controlled New York City amid the riots and protests.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

 

Imagine having to submit your biometric data at a gas station, which is then cross-referenced with your nation’s socialist system database, to receive a monthly ration of fuel. Such a dystopian concept is now a reality in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Having the world’s cheapest gasoline was the nation’s last remaining selling point, even though acquiring a modest vehicle is an impossible dream for most. For as long as anyone can remember, gasoline was virtually free here. Until recently, completely filling up a vehicle’s tank would cost you less than 100.00 Bolivars, or roughly less than $0.0005.

That reality is no more as of this month.

Maduro’s socialist regime has implemented a new system for the control and distribution of gasoline in Venezuela. Refueling a vehicle is no longer as simple as driving to a station and doing the deed. Now, you are only allowed to do so on specific assigned days according to the last number of your vehicle’s license plate.

This new system has two modes: The first one, a subsidized one, involves signing up to the regime’s

Fatherland System

and obtaining your “Fatherland Card.” This system was created with the aid of China and contains all sorts of information, including your vehicle and your biometric data. It is through this system that you will

receive

a monthly allotment of subsidized gasoline: 120 liters if you have a regular vehicle, or 60 liters if you have a motorbike.

The subsidized price might seem generous. After all, it is only 5,000 Bolivars per liter, which roughly translates to $0.025 per liter. But for those who earn minimum wage (which as of the time of writing this is 800,000 Bolivars per month), 40 liters of fuel represent 25 percent of your income.

If you exceed your monthly quota, or you simply refuse to sign up for the Socialist Fatherland system, then fuel will be sold to you at a rate of $0.50 per liter — twenty times more expensive than the subsidized price.

This tier can be paid with our local currency, the regime’s “Petro” scam cryptocurrency, and even with the once demonized and capitalist U.S. dollar — the one that the regime wishes you to pay them with, and the only form of payment that’s being accepted in some gas stations.

Regardless of the mode you choose, all transactions will eventually pass through the regime’s biopago system, which will now use your biometric data to track your sale and fuel consumption.

The first days of the implementation of this system have seen endless and torturous lines. Take this one, for example – this is one long line of vehicles queuing up with no guarantee that they’ll get fuel on that day, and this is in one fuel station, in one city.

In this other example, vehicles had been queuing up since 05:00 a.m. There are members of my family that live outside of Caracas and they have had to queue up on Sunday night, spending all night in the queue, just to be able to refuel close to noon on Monday.

As for myself, because of a nightmarish bureaucracy conundrum due to the fact that my mother’s vehicle was still under its previous owner’s name at the time of her passing, I haven’t been able to transfer legal ownership of her vehicle. In theory, this creates an incongruence that may very well lock me out of the new system if they double down on it but, luckily, the car had some electric issues that were being checked for right before the lockdowns – the one and only reason that I can at least put the gasoline headache aside for now.

While they can implement all the systems, checks, and controls that they can conjure, the truth is that there simply isn’t enough gasoline left in the country. This socialist regime, in its infinite incompetence, has destroyed Venezuela’s once robust oil industry through years of corruption and mismanagement, leaving it so crippled that it can only put out a fraction of what it used to — not to mention that a permanent oil tithe to the Cuban regime must be paid no matter what.

For the past two and a half months, obtaining gasoline in this socialist nation has become a via crucis of its own. At first, the shortages were obfuscated by the start of the nationwide Chinese coronavirus lockdowns and palliated by a growing black market where fuel can be found at steep prices. The shortages have rapidly turned Venezuela from the country with the world’s cheapest gasoline to the most expensive.

The situation has become so severe that some citizens have begun to modify their vehicles to make them run using cooking gas. As outlandish and dangerous as this sounds, this has become the only alternative for those that need to use their vehicles to provide food for their families.

Aided by one of its partners in crime, Maduro’s regime received a supply of oil from Iran to prevent the crisis from getting any worse. The arrival, of course, was presented as a triumph, as something worth celebrating — to the point that members of the U.S.-sanctioned National Constituent Assembly have made calls to plaster the Iranian flag and Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian terror chief the U.S. military eliminated in January, everywhere. The Iranian flag has since been raised in several places.

It’s worth mentioning that if I were to do the same with the American flag then that’d be the end of me even though I wouldn’t be breaking any laws by doing so.

The circus built around the arrival of Iranian fuel hasn’t distracted us from the truth: that a country cannot function without gasoline, and it goes without saying that people’s lives have been greatly affected by these drastic fuel shortages. Mobility around large cities such as Caracas has been greatly limited, impairing people’s ability to work if they have to move through longer distances to reach their workplaces — not to mention that, if there’s no supermarket or grocery store near your household, then your ability to easily restock on food gets impaired as a result.

It’s alright though, you can always follow our glorious socialist state media’s advice: Don’t go out. If you don’t go out you won’t need gasoline, ergo, you don’t need to wait in line for endless hours — brilliant. Somebody call the guys at the Nobel Prize to hook this guy up with one. I’d do it but it’s been years since I’ve been able to make international phone calls.

For the past two decades, the solution to each and every shortage that has originated as a consequence of this Bolivarian Socialist and their Fatherland Plan has been rationing, quotas, systems, and regulations, all of which have ended in corruption—this new gasoline system will be no exception.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, no one stays sane in this country, and the anger and exhaustion of this inhumane nightmare is building up. From the wrath unleashed upon a fuel station that charged its customers in U.S. dollars, to the despair of a woman that had been queueing since early morning hours.

Meanwhile, Juan Guaido, the “interim” President of Venezuela, not content with forging a collaborationist pact with Maduro, has released some lukewarm and vague statements, with hypothetical promises of gasoline returning to the country within a fortnight if and when Maduro is ousted. These statements are as helpful to this ongoing crisis as me laying on my bed and staring at the ceiling.

Once again, the socialist regime of Venezuela has proven to be capable of doing the impossible. Venezuela, the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves in the world, has run out of gasoline. Such a monumental feat is yet another miracle that can only happen in Revolution.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.

President Donald Trump criticized American sporting organizations for making steps to allow players to kneel in protest during the national anthem.

“I won’t be watching much anymore!” Trump wrote, sharing an article reporting the United States Soccer Federation repealed a rule banning players from kneeling during the national anthem.

In a statement, U.S. Soccer apologized for the rule, that kept their players from protesting during the anthem.

“We have not done enough to listen — especially to our players — to understand and acknowledge the very real and meaningful experiences of Black and other minority communities in our country.” the statement read “We apologize to our players — especially our Black players — staff, fans, and all who support eradicating racism.”

U.S. Soccer implemented the rule banning kneeling during the anthem in 2017 after Megan Rapinoe knelt during the anthem in solidarity with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Trump also noted that the NFL would likely allow kneeling during the anthem after commissioner Roger Goodell said the league was “wrong” for not listening to their players on the issue.

“It looks like the NFL is heading in that direction also, but not with me watching!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

 

Saturday, Fox News Channel’s Jeanine Pirro used her show’s “Opening Monologue” segment to protest the “anarchy” allowed in some parts of the country, under the guise of protests spurred by the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody.

Pirro said the trend toward anarchy was unacceptable.

“Law and order is essential,” she said. “It’s real simple — without law and order, there is no freedom. Without law and order, freedom ends. Without law and order, there is anarchy. What’s happened in Seattle this week is but a small example of how far the left will go to satisfy the progressive extremists and surrender our cities to them, of what it will be like without law and order. And we cannot have it.”

The “Justice” host questioned the sustainability of some of the proposals on the table from the so-called “defund the police” movement.

“[P]ermit me to have a politically incorrect question: How many families in this country whose loved ones were victims of brutal homicide were allowed to blow off steam, to pillage and plunder because the system didn’t work the way it was supposed to?” Pirro asked. “When the rights of law-abiding citizens are subjugated and destroyed by those seeking change by committing crimes? We must demand they be stopped. When anarchists want to end civilized society by defunding police, they throw us back to the wild west when vigilante justice reigned.”

“Taking large chunks of police budgets to give to mental health and community groups and eliminating police response on calls like domestic violence, which by the way, is one of the most dangerous calls police respond to, I fear for battered women,” she continued. “Should we now start negotiating violent crimes against women? Is that even a negotiable issue? Or do we wait until the first social worker or mental health worker is killed, and then we demand the cops be brought back?”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh (D) is considering removing the Emancipation Memorial, a statue of President Abraham Lincoln (R) and a freed slave that has stood in Park Square since 1879.

The statue, located near Boston’s Public Garden, is a replica of one in Washington, DC, designed by Thomas Ball of Charlestown, Massachusetts. The original statue was built with funds donated by former slaves to honor Lincoln after his assassination.

The memorial depicts Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared all slaves in the Confederate states “forever free,” next to a freed slave with broken shackles.

Wonderland editor Greg Cook explains further:

The freedman is an idealized portrait of Archer Alexander, who escaped from slavery in Missouri in 1863, and is often said to be the last man recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act. At the bottom of the Boston statue it reads: “Emancipation.” The base is inscribed: “A race set free / and the country at peace / Lincoln / rests from his labors.”

“I think the exact same thing as I did when I was a kid, that it’s ridiculously awkward,” Tory Bullock of Dorchester told CBS Boston. “A lot of people look at it like it represents freedom, but for me as a black man, walking down here, I don’t see freedom.”

According to the news report, Bullock describes himself as a “professional agitator” who uses social media to create narratives about social justice issues.

He created a petition to have the Emancipation Memorial removed. Bullock wrote:

My name is Tory Bullock and I’ve been watching this man on his knees since I was a kid. It’s supposed to represent freedom but instead represents us still beneath someone else. I would always ask myself “If he’s free why is he still on his knees?” No kid should have to ask themselves that question anymore. If you feel the same then sign the petition!

He said most members of Boston’s black community agree with him about the statue.

“I don’t know maybe they should be standing equal to each other,” Bullock commented. “Maybe shaking hands, I don’t know maybe wearing clothes and not chains.”

Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards told CBS Boston, “It doesn’t make you feel good.”

“It’s OK to see a statue in modern eyes,” she added. “What was interpreted one way can be interpreted another way in the future.”

“The message is plain and simple, take it down,” Bullock insisted. “Hashtag, take it down. The bottom line, City of Boston, the people who look like me, we really don’t like this very much.”

Boston’s Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded earlier this week as rioters targeted statues and monuments during violent protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

According to the news report, Boston’s mayor is “willing to talk to the community about the future of the statue.”