What You Need to Know About the Presidential Crisis in Venezuela

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Socialist autocrat Nicolas Maduro helped continue the downward spiral in Venezuela for what was once a promising and growing state, leading to a full-blown economic, societal, and now a political crisis.

On Wednesday, the United States government threw its weight behind the legitimacy of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido. In the span of minutes, the Trump administration built a rapid-fire, almost instant global coalition behind the removal of the Venezuelan dictator Maduro.

The country’s economy is in a state of collapse. Once private and thriving companies were forcibly overtaken by state authorities, with disastrous consequences for some 500 or more businesses. Socialist management of Venezuela’s oil riches has led to major output issues. Inflation continues to devalue its already worthless currency. Its GDP contracted by more than 10 percent in 2018. Political and societal instability has resulted in a substantial brain drain. High taxation and regulation have made it pretty much impossible to become a successful businessman or entrepreneur without working hand in glove with the state. And given that the socialized system delivers no incentive to make a living, logistics are a national nightmare, resulting in empty supermarkets and shuttered stores.

Life in general for the average Venezuelan remains exceedingly difficult. Law and order are basically nonexistent. The government regularly engages in extremely violent crackdowns on who they perceive to be political opponents.

These realities have created a massive humanitarian crisis in Venezuela affecting tens of millions of people. The past year has seen hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans regularly taking to the streets, in defiance of Maduro, to raise awareness about their desperate and horrific conditions.

President Trump recognized Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela just minutes after Guaido declared himself “acting president” at a protest in Caracas on Wednesday.

“In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant,” President Trump said in a statement. “The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law.”

The vast majority of countries in the Western Hemisphere have backed Guaido. Eleven countries in the 14-country Lima Group — Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru — released a statement backing Guaido. Mexico, Cuba, and Bolivia support Maduro, while a few, such as Guyana, Uruguay, and Saint Lucia, remained neutral.

Across the globe, several powerful authoritarian nations continue to put their weight behind Maduro. Turkey, Russia, Iran, China, and others have expressed their support for Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. The European Union backed Guaido and urged immediate democratic elections.

Both Maduro and Guaido continue to claim the mantle of the presidency. Maduro justifies his legitimacy by pointing to his victory the 2018 elections, which international observers considered to be rigged in his favor. Guaido is currently the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. In that position, he becomes interim president of the country if there is a presidential vacancy. Guaido claims that Maduro’s 2018 election was illegitimate, and therefore Guaido should be president.

It remains too early to tell who will persevere as the ultimate authority in Venezuela. A former Venezuelan ministry says that ultimately, the “guys with guns,” or the Venezuelan military, will determine the outcome of the political crisis, putting aside the prospect of foreign intervention. (For more from the author of “What You Need to Know About the Presidential Crisis in Venezuela” please click HERE)

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Strong Trump: President Recognizes Opposition Leader as Leader of Venezuela

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On Wednesday, taking a typically unequivocal stance, President Trump recognized Juan Guaido, 35, the president of the Venezuela National Assembly who is in opposition to socialist President Nicholas Maduro, as the interim president of Venezuela just minutes after Guaido announced himself as the head of state.

As Bloomberg reports, at a protest in Caracas before hundreds of thousands of people, Guaido stated he would assume the powers of the Venezuela presidency, citing a constitutional amendment that permits the head of the legislature to do so. He said, “I swear to formally assume the powers of the national executive as interim president of Venezuela to achieve the end of the usurpation.” NBC News noted, “The protests were called to coincide with the anniversary of the 1958 coup that overthrew military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez – a historic date for Venezuelans.”

Guaido became the president of the Venezuela National Assembly on January 5. Roughly two weeks ago, Maduro was inaugurated for a second, six-year term, but many countries, including the United States, have called his election illegitimate.

Trump released a statement asserting:

In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant. The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law … We encourage other Western Hemisphere governments to recognize National Assembly President Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela, and we will work constructively with them in support of his efforts to restore constitutional legitimacy. We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people.

(Read more from “Strong Trump: President Recognizes Opposition Leader as Leader of Venezuela” HERE)

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Mexicans Are Paying in Blood for Our Central American Amnesty Policies

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Evidently, it’s not in vogue for politicians to care about the ill effects of illegal immigration on Americans, but perhaps it’s politically correct to finally take action based on what our open border is doing to Mexico.

According to information released this week by Mexico’s interior ministry, a record 33,341 murder probes were opened in Mexico last year. That in itself is a 15 percent increase from 2017’s record of 28,866. In 2014, the number of murders in Mexico stood at 16,108 after peaking the previous years during the decade-long drug war between the Mexican government and the cartels. Why has the number of homicides doubled since 2014? The rival cartels are fighting with each other to gain control over the lucrative smuggling routes, because of the DACA amnesty driving the smuggling from Central America.

What has happened over the past few years? In fiscal year 2012, before Obama enacted his illegal DACA program, in which Central Americans were encouraged to come here with children and never be deported, the number of family units caught at our border from the northern triangle countries (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) was 1,489. By FY 2014, that number surged to 61,334. In FY 2018, it was up to 103,509, but most of the surge was in the latter part of the year, a trajectory that has only grown this year without any plateau. The numbers will likely top 200,000 for FY 2019.

Likewise, the number of UACs in FY 2011 from those same three countries was 3,912. It exploded to 51,705 just three years later, a baseline that has held steady the past year and a half.

The rise in UACs grew with DACA, and the rise in family units with kids rose with recent court opinions on top of the promise of “dream” amnesty.

The trip northward is no picnic. Every Central American must pay $5,000-$10,000 to be smuggled through Mexico and eventually over our border. They either have to pay the money to whichever cartel controls that given plaza, or they have to work it off by doing drug smuggling or other work for the cartels. The women are forced to pay either by being raped by those in charge or by serving in brothels.

As Jaeson Jones, retired captain in the Texas Department of Public Safety, said on my podcast earlier this month, “Children and people are now a commodity to the drug cartels.” He explained that the way the cartels make their money is “through controlling the plazas throughout Mexico.” “Once you’re in control of a plaza, everything that moves through is paid for,” he said. “That’s why they battle for control of that space. It’s also why you are not going to enter the United States without working and contracting with the Mexican cartels.”

Thus, the Central American wave of migration spawned by unique magnets in our legal system has now forced the Mexican people to deal with the cascading effects of hundreds of thousands of migrants coming through their territory and empowering the cartels. Not only does the promise of amnesty for “children” empower evil-doers, it also creates endless bloodshed between the cartels both at Mexico’s southern border and its northern border, competing for the business of the migrants. Much of this bloodshed spills over to innocent victims not engaged in cartel warfare.

Consider this tragic absurdity of the amnesty-driven migration. The political class and the media lie to us by suggesting that bogus asylum helps people escape violence (which is not synonymous with persecution, the legal requirement for asylum). As I’ve explained before, violence in Central America, while is still high by our standards, has plummeted since before the migration of Central Americans. Overall, while asylum petitions have spiked by 1,744 percent since 2009, homicide has dropped 16 percent in El Salvador, 35 percent in Honduras, and 43 percent in Guatemala.

But it gets even more absurd. Migration from Mexico to the U.S. is actually down, even as violence skyrockets there. The number of family units crossing from Mexico is down almost 50 percent since FY 2015. So this has absolutely nothing to do with violence and everything to do with Central Americans coming for economic reasons and to “reunite” with illegal family members already here.

Pelosi and Schumer are selling their policies as compassionate to those suffering from violence, yet their policies are actually inducing unimaginable violence upon the Mexicans while the Mexicans aren’t even coming here any more in large numbers. Yet violence is down in Central America, and Central Americans are more likely to experience violence while making the trip.

American blood from the endless criminal alien crime doesn’t seem to motivate our politicians to act, but will the blood of Mexicans make it fashionable for them to care? (For more from the author of “Mexicans Are Paying in Blood for Our Central American Amnesty Policies” please click HERE)

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No, Forever War in Syria Won’t Protect the United States

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Army Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida. Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent, 35, of Pine Plains, New York. Defense Intelligence Agency civilian Scott A. Wirtz, 42, of St. Louis, Missouri. Interpreter Ghadir Taher, 27, from East Point, Georgia.

The bodies of the four Americans from four separate parts of the country—victims of a January 16 Islamic State suicide bombing near a popular restaurant in the Syrian city of Manbij—made their final return home to Dover Air Force Base on January 19. It was a vivid and graphic reminder to the American people that U.S. forces remain very much in harm’s way.

To the politicians back home, the deaths of four Americans in a Syrian town few in the United States could find on a map is a sign of ISIS’s sudden resurgence. The American people have been led to believe that President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria is emboldening the enemy. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the interventionist who has never seen a world problem that couldn’t be solved through military force, even suggested that Trump’s decision may have laid the groundwork for the bombing in Manbij. Sen. Jack Reed said the attack is proof the administration needs to “reevaluate” a troop departure. . .

First, the Islamic State’s territorial “caliphate” is for all intents and purposes destroyed. At the height of its power in 2014, ISIS managed to control land roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom. ISIS fighters were present from the northern outskirts of Baghdad to the rural towns of northwestern Syria. Approximately eight million people in Iraq and Syria were under ISIS’s thumb, a valuable financial asset the group fully exploited through a system of taxation. . .

Those who say U.S. forces should remain in eastern Syria even after their primary mission is over are moving the goal-posts in a frantic attempt to justify a continued U.S. military presence in a country that is strategically unimportant to U.S. national security interests in the region. Don’t be fooled: the commentators, ex-officials, and lawmakers who oppose a U.S. troop withdrawal today are in essence arguing for another indefinite U.S. deployment in the Middle East. (Read more from “No, Forever War in Syria Won’t Protect the United States” HERE)

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Israel, in Rare Move, Announces Attacks on Iranian Targets

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Israel confirmed early Monday that its military attacked Iranian targets in Syria, in a rare statement on such an operation.

“We have started striking Iranian Quds targets in Syrian territory,” the military statement said. “We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory.” . . .

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently confirmed that Israel had struck hundreds of targets in Syria linked to Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, including a weapons facility two weeks ago. Iran and Hezbollah are allied with the Syrian government in the civil war.

Two hours after the reports that Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted a rocket fired toward the Golan Heights, Netanyahu, who currently is on a visit to Chad, said in a statement: “We have a defined policy: to harm Iranian entrenchment in Syria and to harm anyone who tries to harm us.”

Earlier Sunday, a roadside bomb went off south of Damascus; the extent of the damage and any possible injuries was unclear. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors Syria’s war, said the bomb targeted the vehicle of a “security personality” that it did not identify. The Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said it was unclear whether the individual was killed or wounded. “It was not a random act,” he added. (Read more from “Israel, in Rare Move, Announces Attacks on Iranian Targets” HERE)

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China Trying to Rewrite the Bible

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The Chinese government is supervising a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism in which there will be a “rewrite” of the Bible, a prominent religious freedom activist has told Congress.

The Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organization China Aid, provided great detail during a House hearing Thursday about a plan enacted by leading state-sanctioned denominations in China to “Sincize” Christianity.

As China’s crackdown on religion has seen many house churches demolished and thousands of crosses removed from churches nationwide, Fu warned upfront that what is happening right now in China represents the highest degree of persecution for independent faith groups the country has seen in decades. . .

In a written testimony, Fu said that under the new regulations religious activity sites will “accept the guidance, supervision, and inspection of relevant departments of the local people’s government regarding the management of personnel, finances, assets, accounting, security, fire protection, protection of relics, health and disease prevent and so forth.” . . .

“There are outlines that the new Bible should not look westernized and [should look] Chinese and reflect Chinese ethics of Confucianism and socialism,” Fu told The Christian Post after the hearing. “The Old Testament will be messed up. The New Testament will have new commentaries to interpret it.” (Read more from “China Trying to Rewrite the Bible” HERE)

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Pope Francis Knew About Argentina Bishop’s Sexual Misconduct Prior to Vatican Promotion

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Pope Francis promoted one of his protegés within the Vatican, Argentine bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, despite the Vatican having received evidence prior to the bishop’s promotion of sexual misconduct, which included accusations of “sexual harassment” of adult seminarians, taking “nude selfies,” and exhibiting “obscene” behavior.

The Rev. Juan José Manzano, the former general vicar of Zanchetta in Argentina, told these facts to Associated Press, which released its report today. He stated that already in 2015, and then in 2017, Pope Francis spoke with Zanchetta twice about his misconduct.

The news comes on the heels of the Vatican announcing earlier this month that Zanchetta was under investigation for sexual abuse and had been removed from his post. Vatican press speaker Alessandro Gissoti said at the time that “there had been no accusation of sexual abuse” against the bishop after he resigned from his diocese of Oran in 2017.

“No charges of sexual abuse had arisen at the time of appointment as advisor [to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, which oversees the various real estate and other properties of the papacy]. The accusations of sexual abuse date back to this fall,” he stated.

As the Miami Herald reports today, the Rev. Manzano – who is now a parish priest – said that he started to “raise alarm” already in 2015 about his superior who had even taken “nude selfies.” Manzano is one of three diocesan officials who at the time contacted the Vatican, first sending in some nude “selfies” of Zanchetta. In 2017, these officials made a second complaint to the Vatican “when the situation was much more serious,” not only because of the sexual abuses, but also because the “diocese was increasingly heading into the abyss.” (Read more from “Pope Francis Knew About Argentina Bishop’s Sexual Misconduct Prior to Vatican Promotion” HERE)

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Remains of 132 Sacrificed Children Found in Peru

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Archaeologists exploring an area of north Peru formerly inhabited by the Chimu civilization have found the remains of 132 children, evidence of one of the largest human sacrifices in world history.

The remains, along with those of 260 young llamas, were found near the coastal town of Huanchaco, about 352 miles northwest of Lima, El Comercio reported Tuesday.

“This is about four sacrifice events carried out between 1200 and 1520, or one per century. This shows that even after the Inca conquest they continued with human sacrifices,” archaeologist Gabriel Prieto told the newspaper. . .

Last April, National Geographic reported a different finding of 137 children and 206 llamas in the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas area, located about a mile away from the new discovery. . .

The Chimu, their capital in Chan Chan, created the second-largest empire in the history of the ancient Andes. It’s known for its architecture and gold artworks. They also built an extensive irrigation system using canals that made it possible to cultivate desert areas. (Read more from “Remains of 132 Sacrificed Children Found in Peru” HERE)

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White House Releases Statements on ISIS Attack Against U.S. Troops in Syria

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By Townhall. The White House released a series of statements Wednesday afternoon condemning the ISIS attack on U.S. troops in Syria.

“Our deepest sympathies and love go out to the families of the brave American heroes who were killed today in Syria. We also pray for the soldiers who were wounded in the attack. Our service members and their families have all sacrificed so much for our country,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

(Read more from “White House Releases Statements on ISIS Attack Against U.S. Troops in Syria” HERE)

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U.S. Troops Killed in Syria Suicide Attack Claimed by ISIS

By CBS News. Four Americans, including two U.S. service members, were among those killed in an attack in northern Syria Wednesday, the same day Vice President Mike Pence said ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the attack, “has been defeated.”

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Wednesday that an apparent explosion killed two service members, a Department of Defense civilian and a Pentagon contractor while they were “conducting a local engagement in Manbij, Syria.” Three service members were also injured.

“Initial reports indicate an explosion caused the casualties, and the incident is under investigation,” the statement said.

The attack comes just weeks after President Trump declared ISIS defeated and said U.S. troops were coming home. Speaking to a gathering of U.S. ambassadors at the State Department on Wednesday, after the Pentagon confirmed the deaths of American troops in Syria, Pence repeated both of Mr. Trump’s assertions. (Read more from “U.S. Troops Killed in Syria Suicide Attack Claimed by ISIS” HERE)

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Senate Rejects Resolution to Block President Trump From Lifting Sanctions on Russia

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The Senate failed to advance a bill to prevent President Donald Trump from lifting sanctions on three Russian businesses. Eleven Republicans joined 46 Democrats to vote for cloture on the bill, but they fell three votes short of the 60 votes needed to end debate. . .

In April, the Trump administration placed U.S. sanctions on three businesses connected to an oligarch associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, had also been cited by prosecutors as a financial supporter of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s alleged criminal activity in Ukraine. Deripaska accused Manafort and Rick Gates (Trump campaign’s former deputy chairman) of disappearing with $26 million of his money.

In December, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was lifting sanctions on these three businesses. Sanctions on Deripaska will remain.

“Treasury sanctioned these companies because of their ownership and control by sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, not for the conduct of the companies themselves. These companies have committed to significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control. The companies will be subject to ongoing compliance and will face severe consequences if they fail to comply,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in the department’s news release. (Read more from “Senate Rejects Resolution to Block President Trump From Lifting Sanctions on Russia” HERE)

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