"James A. Donald" wrote: > Harmon Seaver: > > Why not the army? > > If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified > specialists, you would not need the army.
Strikers are mostly oil industry. And better-paid workers, technicians, engineers & so on. They might include safety officers, firefighters, truckdrivers, communications engineers, construction workers & so on. I don't know what the Venezualan army is like, but the British army is full of such people, & has been for at least 150 years - the technical branches outnumberd the infantry sometime in the 19th century - though that is partly due to the British habit of counting the Artillery as a technical branch, the others being the Royal Engineers (what you guys call combat engineers), the Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (everything from motor mechanics to network technicians) and the Corps of Signals. They aren't all thick squaddies. Right now the firefighters are on strike in England & the military are running the emergency services. Not as well as the professionals, but better than any other bunch you would be likely to find.
