VENEZUELA UPDATE: Reader Jorge Schmidt forwards this Miami Herald article saying that Hugo Chavez is facing a “storm of coup threats” as “wary Venezuelans hoard food, guns.” He also sends this email report:

I just received an email from Venezuela that confirms today’s story in the Miami Herald. It also conveys the sense of unreality and imminent violence permeating the country. Here it is, translated and redacted to protect the identity of my correspondent:

“Dear [me], the stuffed animals arrived Tuesday. Yesterday I operated on the frog to make it look more like the old one, [baby] did not totally reject it, but also does not totally accept it. The elephant I will not operate because [baby] likes it like that, perhaps not to sleep with, but to relax with. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate you having sent them. Everything here is very tense, everything is expected, we live on the verge of a nervous breakdown, everyday we expect a military coup, it’s been discovered in the past weeks that the government has embezzeled around 11 billion bolivares . . . I don’t even know how many zeroes those are . . . so I have milk and diapers and [husband] and my dad are armed with various weapons and ammunition . . . the gun shops have run out of rifles . . . they seem like bakeries . . . well, I have to go, we’re closing for lunch.”

It seems more and more likely that there will be extreme violence down there soon. I should add that about a month ago, in the wake of the April 11 non-coup, government officials suggested that, in order to reduce tensions around the country, private ownership of firearms should be banned.

Sounds more like they should ban government ownership of firearms, especially after what happened during the last round of protests, but you tend to hear such noises out of a government that’s insecure, or that has tyrannical tendencies, or both. There’s more reportage over on El Sur.