Miguel Octavio reports a wave of purges in Venezuela for workers who had the temerity to sign the Recall Referendum petition last August. Dictator Hugo Chavez’s vengeful party apparatus is hunting them down, one by one, and either denying them employment or firing them from their jobs. It’s all very redolent of the days of Stalin’s henchmen during the dark days of the Soviet Union or the Castro regime of Cuba over the years, and quite chilling. It heralds the complete politicization of society so characteristic of communist regimes and it will get a lot worse.

Read the whole story of each purge victim and how they were ‘neutralized’ by the state organs here and here.