LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Government Reports Nearly 10,000 Homicides in 2017.

Opposition lawmaker Simón Calzadilla expressed skepticism, citing figures from the nongovernmental Venezuelan Violence Observatory group that show Venezuela’s homicide rate has been increasing in recent years. It reported 27,875 violent deaths in 2015 and 28,468 in 2016.

“And this year it seems that we are going to break all the records,” Calzadilla said at a Tuesday news conference, predicting the homicide count could top 33,000.

Why the wildly disparate numbers? In part, it’s because Venezuela’s government does not include extrajudicial killings in its homicide totals, though human rights group do, two experts with the Brazilian think tank Igarapé Institute wrote in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

You may safely translate “extrajudicial killings” to “political assassinations.”