Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Ottawa to acknowledge Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the victor of the July 28 presidential election in that country—a stance similar to what the United States has taken.
Tens of thousands of angry Venezuelan voters marched through central Caracas yesterday, defiantly pumping the tropical air with their fists. They chanted the decades-old mantra of Latin America’s left: “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” In the upside-down of today’s Venezuela today, this roar of “The people, united, will never be defeated” was a demand to end a quarter century of socialism and the resignation of its leader, President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela's socialist dictator Maduro claims he won re-election. But leaked vote tallies show Maduro lost.
The saying goes, "you can vote your way into socialism … you may not be able to vote your way out."
More: pic.twitter.com/MSO9VWscwL
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) July 30, 2024
Needs no translation …
🇻🇪 | ÚLTIMA HORA
El cofundador de Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, ha expresado su enojo por el apoyo de Elon Musk a la oposición democrática en Venezuela. 👇 pic.twitter.com/1tPIHTUy9k
— UHN Plus (@UHN_Plus) July 31, 2024
Venezuela’s election “result” made it a black Sunday for democracy around the world.
The opposition parties claimed they won the vote in every single state of the country, but President Nicolás Maduro said he won the count , 51 per cent versus 44 per cent for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez.
Exit polls conducted by U.S. firm Edison Research suggested Gonzalez won 64 per cent to Maduro’s 31 per cent . But the electoral council, led by Maduro acolyte Elvis Amoroso, awarded the election to the president, without publishing detailed results.
Security forces in Venezuela have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at people protesting Sunday’s disputed election result.
Thousands of people descended on central Caracas on Monday evening, some walking for miles from slums on the mountains surrounding the city, towards the presidential palace.
Protests erupted in the Venezuelan capital the day after President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory.
Venezuelans are kneeling in the streets and praying for relief against the current dictatorship
Pray for Venezuela 🙏🏼pic.twitter.com/nAH5jXLyq5
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 30, 2024
The US faces a significant threat in Venezuela’s cozy relationship with Iran, with enemy nations using the socialist country as a base in the hemisphere to attack America, experts have warned.
Fears are rising over the influence Iran has on Caracas as the two regimes strengthen economic and military ties and grow more hostile towards Washington DC.
Last week the FBI Miami launched a manhunt to find Iranian spy Majid Dastjani Farahani, who the government accuses of looking for allies to kill US officials while operating from Venezuela.
Beijing has pushed Latin America away from the United States in ways that the Soviet Union never could
Venezuela has become a headache for Washington. Just after the Biden administration engineered a rapprochement strategy, Nicolás Maduro did more than just double down on not following through his promises of democratization: he is now pushing to annex neighboring Guyana. These developments, though, should have been anticipated, as Venezuela becomes a crucial part of China’s geopolitical strategy.
Around the globe, Washington juggles three crises: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s war with Hamas, and Chinese belligerence over January’s presidential election in Taiwan. Now, Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, is adding a new one, on South America’s northern coast.
Thursday, Venezuela’s dictator meets with President Irfaan Ali, the democratically-elected leader of Guyana, Venezuela’s sparsely populated neighbor to the east. The goal is to head off South America’s first war since Argentina and Britain fought over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
I can still hear those chants of “No blood for oil” from forty years ago. Among antiwar activists, it was an undeniable fact that we were bombing Iraq to get at that sweet crude. In reality, American oil companies hardly touched the stuff.
When I was a young boy, we believed that what the world needs now is “love, sweet love” because, if we’re being honest, that’s really the only thing that there’s just too little of. What the world needs under Presidentish Joe Biden is just one more war, this one much closer to home than Ukraine or the Gaza Strip.
Justin Trudeau’s government came to power in 2015 pledging to implement a foreign policy guided by democratic principles and human rights.
Nothing demonstrates the abject failure of its delivery on that promise quite like Venezuela.
On May 17, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro received a delegation group led by Lin Mingxiang, vice minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, and discussed ways to further strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries.
Weeks before this happened, after Maduro met with Chinese ambassador Li Baorong, Bloomberg’s Patricia Laya and Fabiola Zerpa suggested that the two were “re-establishing connections after years of cooling ties, with government contacts resuming.”
Rafael – not his real name – is a massive internet nerd. At 59 years old, he is active on all the main social media platforms, dabbles in cryptocurrencies and even calls himself an influencer.
But that is not all he does online.
Rafael is also part of a group of Venezuelans being paid by the state to tweet propaganda.
He spends at least 30 minutes a day posting pro-government content. “The aim is to amplify the information the government puts on Twitter,” he explains.
Just like Canada!
CARACAS, Venezuela — In the capital, a store sells Prada purses and a 110-inch television for $115,000. Not far away, a Ferrari dealership has opened, while a new restaurant allows well-off diners to enjoy a meal seated atop a giant crane overlooking the city.
“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” the restaurant’s host boomed over a microphone to excited customers as they sang along to a Coldplay song.
This is not Dubai or Tokyo, but Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, where a socialist revolution once promised equality and an end to the bourgeoisie.
In shambles? Venezuela is the embodiment of the socialist vision.
A week ago the Biden administration announced that it had approved an expansion of the license to Chevron so they could resume oil production in Venezuela.
This was a surprise given the administration’s hostility to fossil fuels in general and oil from Venezuela in particular.
The sad truth is that you can’t throw this in Justin’s face as the latest addition to his long list of failures because he considers it a victory whenever an ally gives up on Canada as a source of secure energy and instead opts to take their business elsewhere even if that means making a deal with a totalitarian regime.
Energy prices, even though they have come down a bit, are still sky-high, whether it’s heating fuel, gas-powered appliances, electricity, diesel, or the price for a fill-up at the pump. Over here in San Diego, I saw gas at one station going for $4.99 a gallon, and everyone marveled at how “low” that price was. We had been paying $5, $6, and $7 in the last six months.
