mrwil65
Active member
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."
MATTHEW 24:37
Under the cover of darkness, a middle-aged man inched out the window of his seventh-story apartment, then silently repelled seventy-five feet to the ground. A pair of bolt cutters snipped off his ankle monitor, and the man jumped into a waiting car. This was no movie. After fifteen years of imprisonment on bogus charges, Iván Simonovis was escaping Venezuela.
Simonovis had once been a Venezuelan hero. As a key member of an important SWAT team, he ended a seven-hour hostage situation, all of it captured on national television. That propelled him to celebrity status. After being appointed safety officer for Caracas, he dedicated himself to fighting crime and removing the corruption that had defined the capital's police force for years.
Things changed when Simonovis ran afoul of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's Marxist president and emerging dictator. Chávez viewed thedecorated safety officer as a potential rival and accused him of crimes against humanity. The charges were false, and the trial was a sham. In the blink of an eye, Iván was behind bars with no hope for reprieve. For stretches of time, he was allowed to see sunlight for only ten minutes a day.
In 2014, Iván was moved to house arrest to seek treatment for nineteen chronic health conditions, many of them caused by his imprisonment Knowing this was his only chance, he arranged his daring escape. After speeding off in a car, he spent three weeks evading security in a cat-and mouse pursuit. A fourteen-hour ride in a small fishing boat got him to Caribbean island, from which he flew to the United States.
Iván could recall when Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in South America. The per capita income of its citizens was greater than those of China and Japan, almost rivaling the income of US citizens. The people of Ivan's generation enjoyed religious liberty, political freedom, personal dignity, and economic opportunity.
But when oil prices crashed in the 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, the Venezuelan economy experienced a dip. That dip became a dive in 1998 when the Venezuelan people elected Chávez as their president. Once in power Chavez relentlessly implemented the socialist playbook formulated by the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other nations. His first task was to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution, guaranteeing citizens the so called free rights of government-provided health care, college education. and social justice. When the Supreme Court ruled against Chavez on several important issues, he responded by stacking the court with twelve new justices, all loyal to him.
Socialism totally engulfed the country when Chávez was reelected in 2006. Fully in control of the courts and the legislature, he moved quickly to nationalize the media, removing voices of dissent. Then he authorized government agencies to seize privately owned wealth and property from Venezuela's citizens-all in the name of "fairness" and "equality Chàvez took control of the nation's oil industry, expelling foreign investors and influence. He nationalized power companies, farms, mines, banks, and grocery stores. His final step was to eliminate term limits for elected officials, setting himself up to rule for the rest of his life in the style of Russia's Stalin and Cuba's Castro."
Not even Chávez could evade the last enemy. He died from cancer in 2013. But his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued to implement Chávez's agenda-even going further in some areas to force a Marxist agenda on the Venezuelan people. Today Venezuela is descending into anarchy, and record numbers of Venezuelan migrants are fleeing northward, trying to reach the border into the United States.
MATTHEW 24:37
Under the cover of darkness, a middle-aged man inched out the window of his seventh-story apartment, then silently repelled seventy-five feet to the ground. A pair of bolt cutters snipped off his ankle monitor, and the man jumped into a waiting car. This was no movie. After fifteen years of imprisonment on bogus charges, Iván Simonovis was escaping Venezuela.
Simonovis had once been a Venezuelan hero. As a key member of an important SWAT team, he ended a seven-hour hostage situation, all of it captured on national television. That propelled him to celebrity status. After being appointed safety officer for Caracas, he dedicated himself to fighting crime and removing the corruption that had defined the capital's police force for years.
Things changed when Simonovis ran afoul of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's Marxist president and emerging dictator. Chávez viewed thedecorated safety officer as a potential rival and accused him of crimes against humanity. The charges were false, and the trial was a sham. In the blink of an eye, Iván was behind bars with no hope for reprieve. For stretches of time, he was allowed to see sunlight for only ten minutes a day.
In 2014, Iván was moved to house arrest to seek treatment for nineteen chronic health conditions, many of them caused by his imprisonment Knowing this was his only chance, he arranged his daring escape. After speeding off in a car, he spent three weeks evading security in a cat-and mouse pursuit. A fourteen-hour ride in a small fishing boat got him to Caribbean island, from which he flew to the United States.
Iván could recall when Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in South America. The per capita income of its citizens was greater than those of China and Japan, almost rivaling the income of US citizens. The people of Ivan's generation enjoyed religious liberty, political freedom, personal dignity, and economic opportunity.
But when oil prices crashed in the 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, the Venezuelan economy experienced a dip. That dip became a dive in 1998 when the Venezuelan people elected Chávez as their president. Once in power Chavez relentlessly implemented the socialist playbook formulated by the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other nations. His first task was to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution, guaranteeing citizens the so called free rights of government-provided health care, college education. and social justice. When the Supreme Court ruled against Chavez on several important issues, he responded by stacking the court with twelve new justices, all loyal to him.
Socialism totally engulfed the country when Chávez was reelected in 2006. Fully in control of the courts and the legislature, he moved quickly to nationalize the media, removing voices of dissent. Then he authorized government agencies to seize privately owned wealth and property from Venezuela's citizens-all in the name of "fairness" and "equality Chàvez took control of the nation's oil industry, expelling foreign investors and influence. He nationalized power companies, farms, mines, banks, and grocery stores. His final step was to eliminate term limits for elected officials, setting himself up to rule for the rest of his life in the style of Russia's Stalin and Cuba's Castro."
Not even Chávez could evade the last enemy. He died from cancer in 2013. But his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued to implement Chávez's agenda-even going further in some areas to force a Marxist agenda on the Venezuelan people. Today Venezuela is descending into anarchy, and record numbers of Venezuelan migrants are fleeing northward, trying to reach the border into the United States.