Rubio and the Return of the Monroe Doctrine

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Florida senator Marco Rubio (R.) to lead the State Department. Rubio is, among other things, a full-spectrum opponent of China's nefarious activities, and the news of his nomination dismayed the soft-on-China crowd. He is also tough on Iran and should focus America's diplomats on promoting the nation's interests rather than exporting the culture wars. But Rubio's most distinctive foreign policy contribution is likely to be in Latin America, where he can bring the Monroe Doctrine back to the center of U.S. foreign policy.

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Court-Packing Is Just One More Way Democrats Would Turn America Into Venezuela

Democrats' court-packing plans would destroy SCOTUS’s independence and the rule of law.

How Venezuela's communist government is using tech surveillance to cling to power



Protests and upheaval have roiled Venezuela following a contested election on July 28. Incumbent leader Nicolas Maduro claims victory by a margin of 51% to 44%, while his opponent leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, says his coalition garnered 66% of the vote. It’s worth noting that Gonzalez was 25 points up in polls through most of July.

The United States has officially recognized Gonzalez as the victor, joining a chorus of international criticism of the election’s lack of transparency.

Reports detail at least 15 protesters killed so far by Venezuelan authorities, including a teenager who stopped to watch the protests on the way back from a party. There have been at least 39 injuries reported, and over 1,000 protesters have been arrested.

The internet has led to significant democratization in many ways simultaneously, as it has allowed the rise of technocracy and autocratic governments to clamp down even farther on popular discontent they dislike.

Prior to the election, Maduro emphasized there would be a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win this time around. He has the wherewithal to make good on his threat, given that he’s in charge of the nation’s army, cops, courts, and most of its lethal paramilitary gangs. Even leftist-led Brazil and Colombia have expressed concerns over the situation and the transparency of Venezuela's July 28 election, urging Maduro to reveal the vote tallies that prove his claims publicly.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the U.S. Department of State is still offering up to $15 million for information or help in arresting Maduro for allegedly drug trafficking and engaging in narco-terrorism. He’s also under investigation at the ICC for violently cracking down on protests in 2014 and 2017.

In the past ten years, almost 8 million Venezuelans have left the country due to the economic and political crisis, which has been worsened by devastating sanctions from the U.S. and its allies. Maduro doesn’t have many options and certainly doesn’t appear to believe he’d receive much leniency if he negotiates with the West, steps down, or redoes an election to placate his critics. So he’s all in.

One key to Maduro’s power is control and leverage over information that reaches citizens, as well as their ability to spread viral messages and activism in a timely fashion. An analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reportedly “uncovered a flood of GenAI dupes, disinformation campaigns, and blocks on more than 100 websites” before the election.

Despotic regimes from North Korea and Iran to Cuba and Syria are well known for limiting and censoring internet access to quell unrest, mitigate the citizenry’s ability to access information and mobilize resistance. This year, countries including Kenya and Comoros have also resorted to shutting down and limiting large areas of the internet to quell unrest.

Various independent outlets have been suspended in Venezuela since the election, including El Estímulo and Analítica, and that number has now climbed to 11, with Maduro authorities shutting down numerous outlets that were focused on exposing government-fueled disinformation and “fake news.”

“They wish to dismantle the sources of news that still spark communities in this country,” says Tinedo Guía, leader of Venezuela's National Journalists' Association.

A blueprint for totalitarian control

Venezuela's government adopts a four-pronged approach to achieve its aims of quashing widespread anti-government unity or mobilization.

  1. Seizing power over what is shown and broadcast to Venezuelans by closing down independent media chains.

“For example, in April 2019, multiple media outlets were shut down after opposition leader Juan Guaidó used Twitter to announce an opposition plan to encourage the military to leave Maduro,” note Moises Rendon and Arianna Kohan.

“The internet was restored 20 minutes before a live-streamed speech given by Maduro in which he denounced the opposition.”

  1. Limiting the ability and ease of citizens to use data, VPNs, and alternate browsers like TOR (the Onion Router).
  2. Using the state-held internet and phone provider CANTV to spy on and track what citizens communicate about. Government agency Conatel also operates under the guise of technical compliance to yank licenses from those who displease Maduro.

Meanwhile, Chinese telecom company ZTE helps track citizens’ trends, habits, and behavior through a “fatherland card” that is required to access any state-subsidized services and social programs including emergency food assistance.

  1. Weaponizing the court system and governmental bodies to prosecute and harass those whose activism, journalism, or online activity irks the regime. This includes the 2013 creation of the Center for Strategic Security and Protection (Centro Estratégico de Seguridad y Protección) to track and stop those who may be spreading information or communicating in ways that allegedly harm political stability.

Then there’s just plain intimidation and chasing down those who cause a headache for the regime. NGO Public Space (Espacio Público) reports 1,317 incidents of attacks on journalists, including arrests and murders, since 2002 in Venezuela. Many are embroiled in court cases and under charges that remain unresolved. In the past two decades under Maduro and former leader Hugo Chavez, Public Space lists 400 media companies that have bitten the dust, from TV channels and websites to radio stations and newspapers.

Most ordinary Venezuelans are focused on having enough to eat for the day and getting the fuel necessary for their daily work and needs. Twitter and other social networks help spread information and the locations of medicine and other services.

But for those who can’t afford internet access or aren’t in an area where they can use VPNs, text messaging on basic flip phones is used to stay in touch about what’s happening. However, the Maduro regime easily taps this, and smartphone ownership has been declining by around 7% per year due to costs. Mesh networks that let people talk offline are also used, although they are illegal and still trackable by the regime. In addition to state-run internet service providers, the Maduro regime has increasingly leaned on private ISPs to report user activity, including Spain’s Movistar, the nation’s only international ISP.

“What I can’t understand is how a company with corporate governance and an ethics code that operates under the European Union principles of free expression is doing what it’s doing in Venezuela,” says César Batiz, editor of the Venezuelan independent news website El Pitazo.

Surveillance politics

Jesus Vargas/Getty Images

Even apart from government control, censorship, and tracking and prosecution of user activity, Venezuela’s physical internet infrastructure has been on a dramatic downward slide for over a decade now, with lagging bandwidth, inefficient DNS servers, and sluggish performance due to lack of submarine cables connecting them to the rest of the world. The country’s millions of poor and various criminal gangs also routinely steal cables and antennae that are needed to keep the internet running smoothly. Only about 40% of those polled in Venezuela’s seven biggest cities report having any internet access.

At the same time as it throttles the internet for citizens, Venezuela’s government has become more skilled at utilizing the internet that does exist to its advantage. This information control has echoes with the past.

The internet and social media played a crucial role in the 2010 Arab Spring, rousing protesters against their governments, and numerous other democratic movements, uprisings, coups, and color revolutions from Nigeria to Ukraine. However, the groundswell of momentum and viral effect facilitated by social media and the internet was also quickly turned into a tool of increased state control. As Marwa Fatafta notes: “Dictators and despots — old and new — quickly learned how to weaponize the same online spaces and tools against their own citizens in order to quash any form of political dissent or mobilization, both online and offline.”

While the internet can be democratizing, it can also be a sand trap, full of mirror sites, tracking, and disinformation. As Venezuela has adapted to a patchy internet infrastructure, it’s also adapted to the reality of ground-level organizing and learning not to rely on digital messaging as the primary conduit of resistance.

The end result is a country in crisis but without much digital unification on the ground for anti-government citizens. The energy is in the streets more than the tweets. Political momentum is hard-won rather than easily disseminated widely or via top-down messaging. In addition to difficulty rallying a broad-based anti-government movement, digital weakness extends to trouble interesting foreigners in the country’s crisis. Tales of breakups and heartbreak ahead of the election are one approach used to try to rouse more engagement around the world in seeing the human side of the crisis.

The internet is both a malleable record-keeping environment and a receptacle of the collective instincts of the citizenry. It can be shaped and guided in many ways, from the bottom up and the top down. It has led to significant democratization in many ways simultaneously, as it has allowed the rise of technocracy and autocratic governments to clamp down even farther on popular discontent they dislike. Venezuela’s difficulty in shaking off Maduro and communications breakdown may seem distant and far more dramatic than anything going on in America, but if anything, it serves as a warning for how slippery the slope becomes when only one version of the political truth is permitted to be broadcasted and believed.

Venezuela Is A Disaster Because Of Socialism, Not ‘Brutal Capitalism’

The New York Times blames 'brutal capitalism' as the root cause of the socialist regime’s economic woes and political chaos.

FACT CHECK: Video Showing Venezuelan Protest Is From 2017

A video shared on X claims to show Venezuelan protests of the 2024 presidential election. 🚨🇻🇪 Venezuela Riots Protestors have completely taken over following election result. Insane footage. pic.twitter.com/xDrMoKDtK5 — Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 29, 2024 Verdict: Misleading The video is from 2017. It is not related to the current Venezuelan protests. Fact Check: Venezuela’s electoral council that […]

Massive crowd of Venezuelans gather at Colorado mall, fire shots in air, leave trash after Maduro allegedly wins election



A massive crowd of mainly Venezuelan immigrants practically took over the parking lot of a shopping mall in Aurora, Colorado, on Sunday night, firing shots in the air and leaving trash everywhere in response to the presidential election in Venezuela, some 3,000 miles away.

Between 5 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, people began flocking to the Garden on Havana shopping center, many waving Venezuelan flags, as early returns indicated that political outsider Edmundo González Urrutia was on track for a landslide victory over Nicolás Maduro, the socialist president who rose to power in Venezuela in 2013 following the death of socialist dictator Hugo Chávez.

However, Venezuelan officials then reportedly kept vote tallies secret over the next several hours, and shortly after midnight, the National Electoral Council announced that Maduro had prevailed, securing a third term in office.

Foreign leaders slammed the apparent election improprieties and demanded transparency regarding the results. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed "serious concerns" about Maduro's alleged victory, as Blaze News previously reported.

'This is in the United States of America... this is in YOUR city.'

The crowd gathered in Aurora was likewise erratic. According to Aurora police, as many as 4,000 people swarmed the shopping center, making nearby roadways "impassable" and preventing mall customers from entering or leaving.

Aurora PD also acknowledged other unruly behaviors from the crowd. "Trash and debris were left behind," and shots were "fired into the air," the department said in a statement.

A Facebook post from Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky gave a similar report. "The shopping centers were invaded and cars trapped in. The streets were shut down. There are reports of assaults, theft, and gunshots in the air. I have not heard of any reported deaths," she wrote.

While there have been no reports of injuries from the gunfire, Jurinsky claimed in her Facebook post that "a police car was shot up." She later walked the assertion back slightly, telling 9News, "That is the way it was conveyed to me, but I have not seen the police car."

Police confirmed that "an unknown object" did strike a patrol unit, causing "minor damage," but could not verify whether the object came from the gathering. The incident remains under investigation.

Officials also disputed Jurinsky's claim that "police were totally over run, and [were] forced to get out of the area for their safety." "Police did not leave and were there for the entire event," Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby countered.

Officers did investigate a possible assault and shoplifting incident at the shopping center on Sunday. Otherwise, they did not make any arrests or issue "any tickets, citations or summons," the department said.

"We recognize that Sunday’s incident was disconcerting and alarming for a large number of our residents and citizens," Aurora police spokesperson Agent Matt Longshore said on Tuesday.

Councilwoman Jurinksy certainly appeared frustrated by an uproar in Aurora over an election in a foreign country. "Thousands of these folks took over and completely shut down a part of our city. ... This is in the United States of America... this is in YOUR city," she wrote on Facebook.

'We are concerned about statements ... that mischaracterize this event and risks inciting fear, division, and violence against newcomers. Aurora has always thrived because of its diversity.'

Mayor Mike Coffman, who previously served in Congress and as the Colorado secretary of state as a Republican, likewise took to Facebook to express concern about what he called "an unfortunate incident" instigated by "members of the Venezuelan immigrant community."

"Their celebration not only closed off access to the stores at the Gardens on Havana shopping center but ... also left a lot of trash, beer bottles and beer cans in the parking lots for the retail stores to clean up at their expense," Coffman continued.

He also demanded an apology:

My message to the leaders of the Venezuelan immigrant community is that while I fully understand the reason for your celebration that doesn't excuse your community from acting responsibly and you owe the residents of my city an apology for the unacceptable conduct demonstrated by far too many of your community members.

SOS Venezuela Denver, a local activist group, quickly offered one.

"It is unacceptable that individuals decided to hold such an event without considering the consequences or assessing the risks," a statement from the group read in part. "This event was a sad display of lawlessness and disregard for the community, especially considering that the city of Aurora has been particularly welcoming to the Venezuelan community," the group said.

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, by contrast, suggested that the demonstration was "peaceful" and therefore protected under the First Amendment. CIRC communications manager Raquel Lane-Arellano even went on to accuse "some city council members" of putting Venezuelan "newcomers" at risk by reporting on the incident.

"We are concerned about statements from some city council members that mischaracterize this event and risks inciting fear, division, and violence against newcomers. Aurora has always thrived because of its diversity. We urge Aurora residents and city council members to reject divisive rhetoric and refrain from sharing unverified information," Lane-Arellano said.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have abandoned their homeland in recent years, and some 40,000 of them have made their way to the greater-Denver area. The Denver Gazette estimates that the large influx of migrants has cost local taxpayers about $72 million in under two years.

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Border Czar Kamala Harris Embraced Socialist Honduran Leader Who's Now Endorsing Maduro's Stolen Election

The Honduran leader whom Vice President Kamala Harris embraced in an effort to stem the flow of illegal aliens on the southern border has joined Russia, China, and Cuba in backing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro's fraudulent electoral victory.

The post Border Czar Kamala Harris Embraced Socialist Honduran Leader Who's Now Endorsing Maduro's Stolen Election appeared first on .

Biden-Harris official, other international leaders question results of Venezuelan election after Maduro declared winner



Even though official tallies from all 15,000 voting stations in Venezuela have yet to be released, Nicolás Maduro, the socialist president of Venezuela, has been declared the winner of this weekend's election, prompting international leaders — including the secretary of state in the Biden-Harris administration — to question the results.

On Saturday, Venezuelans began gathering in long lines, waiting for the chance to cast their votes for their nation's next president sometime on Sunday. They had two options: Maduro, who came into power in 2013 following the death of socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, and Edmundo González Urrutia, a 74-year-old political neophyte who became the opposition leader after María Corina Machado was disqualified from running a year ago "for being involved ... in the corruption plot orchestrated by the usurper Juan Guaido."

Guaido ran against Maduro in the 2018 presidential election and was even recognized as the winner by several foreign leaders, though Maduro was ultimately declared the official winner.

'Look at what happens when c*mmunism takes hold. This is what Kamala wants. She must be stopped!'

The results of the 2024 election began to be tallied on Sunday evening, and Urrutia and his supporters were encouraged when early returns suggested a landslide victory. According to Machado, the tallies she and her group viewed — representing about 40% of the total vote — showed Urrutia with "70% of the votes in this election, and Maduro 30%."

Later that night, Venezuelan authorities reportedly stopped sharing the official results with the opposition, and workers still had not closed the polls an hour after the scheduled closing time.

Then, just after midnight, the reportedly Maduro-friendly National Electoral Council announced that, with 80% of the votes tabulated, Maduro held an insurmountable lead over Urrutia, 51.2% to 44.2%. The president of the Council, whom El País described as "a personal friend of Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores," called the results "irreversible."

"I can say before the world that I am the re-elected president of Venezuela," Maduro said from Miraflores Palace, the seat of the Venezuelan government.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel soon congratulated his "brother" Maduro. "Today the dignity and courage of the Venezuelan people triumphed over pressure and manipulation," Díaz-Canel posted to X at 12:19 a.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also extended a congratulatory message, claiming that Maduro is "always a welcome guest on Russian soil."

Other foreign leaders, however, are troubled by the secretive nature of the vote-counting process.

Rodrigo Chaves Robles, the president of Costa Rica, slammed the results of the election as "fraudulent" and "categorically reputiate[d]" them. "We will work with democratic governments of the continent and international organizations to ensure that the sacred will of the Venezuelan people is respected," Robles said.

Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Alberto van Klaveren said his country "will refrain from recognizing any result" until a thorough "examination of all the minutes" has been conducted and "the opinion of international observers" has been publicly shared. Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, likewise demanded "total transparency" regarding the election results.

Argentina President Javier Milei called Maduro a "sociopath" and a "dictator."

Even Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state in the Biden-Harris administration, has expressed "serious concerns" about Maduro's supposed victory. "We have seen the announcement just a short while ago by the Venezuelan Electoral Commission," Blinken said in a statement while visiting Tokyo. "We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people."

Hours before the Venezuelan polls closed, likely Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted: "The United States stands with the people of Venezuela who expressed their voice in today’s historic presidential election. The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected. Despite the many challenges, we will continue to work toward a more democratic, prosperous, and secure future for the people of Venezuela."

As might be expected, X users took Harris to task in the comments:

  • "Look at what happens when c*mmunism takes hold. This is what Kamala wants. She must be stopped!" said one popular comment.
  • "The US will become Venezuela if trump is not elected," added another.
  • "Commie-la Harris is America’s Hugo Chavez. She wants to take America down the same road," quipped yet another.
As of Monday morning, neither Harris nor Biden has made additional remarks about the Venezuelan election.

For now, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado still considers Urrutia the true winner. "Venezuela has a new president-elect and he is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. We won! And everybody knows it. I want you to know that this has been something so overwhelming and great that we have won in all sectors of the country," she said.

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