Struggling Venezuelans stop putting faith in Maduro’s heated anti-American rhetoric
When Venezuela was awash amid seemingly endless oil dollars, backers of President Hugo Chavez relished the populist strongman’s derisions of what he called the U.S. “empire” and dismissed President George W. Bush as “the devil” and President Obama as “a clown.”
But a decade later, as Venezuelans struggle to survive amid food and drug shortages, they are largely turning a deaf ear to President Nicolas Maduro, Mr. Chavez’s handpicked successor who stubbornly clings to the strategy of blaming the “imperialist Yankees” in Washington for all of the country’s problems.
So when President Trump last month slammed Mr. Maduro as the head of a “socialist dictatorship” and later included high-ranking government officials in his travel ban, the Venezuelan opposition — far from fearing new fuel for the regime’s rhetoric — welcomed the pressure.
“The idea that Trump is helping Maduro’s discourse fails to persuade me,” prominent opposition lawmaker Jose Guerra told The Washington Times. “It’s very attractive, ‘anti-imperialism’ and the like. But in today’s Venezuela, I don’t see it hitting its target.”
Such doubts, of course, were lost on Mr. Maduro. Having dubbed Mr. Trump “the new Hitler,” the Venezuelan president doubled down Tuesday on his critique.
“You saw the measures Donald Trump announced restricting all people of Venezuela from entry to the United States [and] calling the people of Venezuela ‘terrorists,’” he said. “And since the people of Venezuela are terrorists, they do not qualify for U.S. visas, barring exceptions.”
Mr. Maduro’s rhetoric, observers noted, was a classic example of vilification outweighing facts. Mr. Trump did not refer to Venezuelans as “terrorists,” and his travel restrictions singled out individuals and did not target the Venezuelan people at large.
Inaccuracies aside, the populist leader still has an, albeit small, audience, said Juan-Carlos Molleda, a University of Oregon dean who teaches public relations and has written about the propaganda machine in his native Venezuela.
“There is a core — a group of Venezuelans that are still hard-core supporters of the government, and they do believe everything the government says,” Mr. Molleda said. “But [their] number is shrinking significantly.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Molleda said, common Venezuelans’ struggles are so overwhelming that convincing anyone that the culprits are thousands of miles away is a high bar.
Mr. Maduro and his allies “keep on repeating the same language over and over again [and] always want to create stories [about] how the U.S. government is interfering,” he said. “But if you have extreme situations — if people’s priority is mainly to survive, they have [little] effect.”
While most Venezuelans’ trust in Mr. Maduro’s words are shattered, extreme economic hardship helps maintain the patronage relationships that have long kept him in power, said Yorelis Acosta de Oliveira, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas.
“Misery makes [domination] easier, so much so that even now, even though there is no money, they still threaten the poorest of the poor with taking away their benefits,” Ms. Acosta de Oliveira said. “In Chavez’s time, they gave you condos, laundry machines, refrigerators; now, they hand out little bags of food [with a few pounds] of flour.”
‘Military option’
That striking downward spiral means that while Mr. Trump’s tough talk could have done more harm than good a few years ago, the calculus has changed, Mr. Molleda said.
“In the past, I [would have said] I disagree with [Mr. Trump‘s] rhetoric, I disagree with this way to oppose a regime [because] this is giving fuel to the regime” he said. “But the situation in Venezuela has gotten to a point in which I think it’s better than nothing.”
Leading opposition figures, whom Mr. Maduro often characterizes as American puppets, continue to walk a tightrope when they weigh in on Mr. Trump’s comments and actions — especially since the U.S. president has not ruled out a “military option” to diffuse the crisis.
“We’re all over the world, and we have troops all over the world — in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering and dying,” Mr. Trump said in August.
But “[U.S.] Marines disembarking here, that doesn’t seem advisable to me, nor do I believe that it will happen or should happen,” Mr. Guerra said. “A military intervention would never have any support. What is viable is to apply pressure diplomatically and through negotiations, which is what the world is doing now.”
Still, after Mr. Maduro’s violent crackdown of months of street protests and the fraud-ridden election of an all-powerful Constitutional Assembly, his critics are finding it increasingly difficult to explain how their envisioned “domestic” solution might come about.
Mr. Guerra pins his hopes on long-delayed regional elections set for Oct. 15 and insisted that opposition observers can counter the partiality of the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council.
“The problem is, if you don’t go down the electoral route, what route do you have left?” he said. “We found out in 130 days of fighting, with 140 deaths, that it’s not going to work. We have to go down the electoral route, with all its disadvantages.”
A resounding victory in the gubernatorial races might even pave the way to Mr. Maduro’s ouster next year, Mr. Guerra said.
“If we win clear majorities, the political map changes,” he said. “It will force them to allow presidential elections next year [and] give us an enormous possibility of winning.”
Mr. Maduro has already announced that his United Socialist Party of Venezuela would triumph in all 23 states.
Facing continued criticism over his government’s refusal for months to hold the constitutionally required vote, he knew just whom to blame: Foreign news agencies, he said on Monday, had conspired to make the elections “invisible.”
But now, “nothing and nobody will stop us,” the president added on Twitter. “On Oct. 15, we will have elections in Venezuela.”
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2 women plead not guilty in N. Korean scion's assassination
Two women accused of fatally poisoning the estranged half brother of North Korea's ruler pleaded not guilty as their trial began Monday in Malaysia's High Court, nearly eight months after the brazen airport assassination that sparked a diplomatic standoff.
Siti Aisyah of Indonesia and Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam are suspected of smearing Kim Jong Nam's face with the banned VX nerve agent on Feb. 13 at a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur, killing him within about 20 minutes. The women say they thought they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden-camera show.
After asking for the charges to be read in their native languages, the women shook their heads when asked if they were guilty.
The two women are the only suspects in custody in a killing that South Korea's spy agency said was part of a five-year plot by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to kill a brother he reportedly never met. Police say several North Koreans suspected of involvement left the country on the day of the attack. Others who holed up inside North Korea's embassy were allowed to leave in a deal with Pyongyang to ease tensions, despite Malaysia's anger at the public use of a chemical weapon on its territory.
Lawyers for two women, who face the death penalty if convicted, asked the court to compel prosecutors to identify four people still at large mentioned in the charge sheet as having a common intention to kill Kim.
"A fair trial must include the right to know," Gooi Soon Seng, Aisyah's lawyer, told the court. "The charge must be clear, not ambiguous."
Prosecutors will now start to call their witnesses, with the first few likely to be medical experts to establish the cause of death. The trial is expected to last for about two months, after which the judge will decide if there is a strong case for the women to have to mount their defense, said Hisyam Teh Poh Teik, Huong's lawyer.
Kim, who was 45 or 46, was the eldest son of the family that has ruled North Korea since its founding, yet he reportedly fell out of favor in 2001 when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He had been living abroad for years and at the time of his death was traveling on a North Korean diplomatic passport under the name "Kim Chol."
North Korea has a long history of ordering killings of people it views as threats to its regime, though Kim was not thought to be seeking influence over his younger brother. He had, however, spoken out publicly against his family's dynastic control of the reclusive, nuclear-armed nation.
Pyongyang has denied any role in the killing and has not even acknowledged the dead man was Kim Jong Nam. It has suggested the victim died of a heart attack and accused Malaysia of working with South Korean and other "hostile forces" in blaming Pyongyang.
The trial will be closely watched by the Indonesian and Vietnamese governments, which have hired lawyers to defend the women.
Aisyah's core defense will be that she didn't know she had poison on her hand when she smeared Kim's face and was instead the victim of an elaborate trick, her lawyer Gooi said before the trial began. The 25-year-old was at a pub in Kuala Lumpur in early January when she was recruited by a North Korean man to star in what he said were video prank shows, Gooi said.
Over the course of several days, the North Korean, who went by the name James, had Aisyah go out to malls, hotels and airports and rub oil or pepper sauce on strangers, which he would film on his phone, the lawyer said.
Aisyah was paid $100-$200 for each prank and hoped the income would allow her to stop working as an escort, Gooi said.
In late January, Aisyah flew to Cambodia, where James introduced her to a man called Chang, who said he was the producer of video prank shows for the Chinese market, the lawyer said. Back in Malaysia, Chang asked Aisyah to do several more pranks at the Kuala Lumpur airport a few days before Kim was attacked. At the airport on the day of Kim's death, Chang pointed him out to Aisyah as the next target and put the poison on her hand, the lawyer said.
Police say neither Chang nor James were who they say they were. Chang was actually Hong Song Hac, one of four North Korean suspects who left Malaysia on the day of the killing, while James was Ri Ji U, one of another three North Koreans who hid inside their country's embassy in Kuala Lumpur to avoid questioning.
Those three were later allowed to fly home in exchange for nine Malaysians allowed to leave Pyongyang in a deal easing the countries' tensions. Gooi said James was key to Aisyah's defense and that his absence could weaken her case.
Aisyah, who has a son, has wrote to her family and told them to pray for her "so that the case will be over soon and I can go back home."
The 29-year-old Vietnamese suspect Huong was caught on airport security surveillance camera wearing a white sweatshirt emblazoned with the big black letters "LOL" — the acronym for laughing out loud. Little is known about her. Raised in a rice farm in northern Vietnam, her family said they had hardly heard from her since she left home a decade ago.
She made postings on a Facebook page under the name Ruby Ruby, according to her niece, Dinh Thi Quyen.
Photos on the page show Huong wearing a white shirt that says "LOL," like the one seen during the attack. It shows her posing for selfies in January in Cambodia and in Kuala Lumpur a few days before the attack.
Her last post was on the morning of Feb. 11, two days before the attack, from an area near the airport.
Russia giving cover to Iran could doom nuclear deal as Trump considers whether to certify
As President Donald Trump considers whether to certify to Congress the controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, word that the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog can’t verify a crucial part of the agreement could tip the scales with time running out by the middle of next month.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley indicated Thursday that Russia was shielding Iran by blocking the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from verifying part of the deal. The IAEA initially revealed the news to a reporter in a Q&A. Meanwhile, under a requirement from Congress, Trump must choose whether to certify the deal by October 15.
Yukiya Amano, the IAEA Director General, told Reuters that his agency’s “tools are limited,” regarding verification of section T in the nuclear deal.
Section T of the Iran nuclear deal, which is also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), prohibits activities related to “design and development” of a nuclear weapon.
Amano told Reuters that the Russians don’t believe the IAEA has a mandate for that particular section of the agreement.
In response to his admission, Haley, not referring to Russia by name in her statement, said that for the deal to have meaning, “the parties must have a common understanding of its terms.”
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Rouhani slams President Trump over Iran nuke deal
“Now it appears that some countries are attempting to shield Iran from even more inspections. Without inspections, the Iran deal is an empty promise,” she said in the statement released Thursday.
The United States Mission to the U.N. when asked for further comment on Haley’s views on certification and on whether the deal is failing because of Iranian noncompliance referred Fox News to Haley’s latest statement and a speech she made to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. in September.
Haley’s AEI speech was broadly interpreted as laying out the administration’s case for not certifying the Iran Nuclear deal.
Congress requires the president to certify the Iran deal every 90 days under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) — also known as the Corker-Cardin bill — that was passed in 2015, paving the way for the Iran nuclear deal, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy.
David Albright, who has advised the IAEA in the past, is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C. He told Fox News that Russia’s not wanting to let the IAEA verify section T could be problematic.
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Netanyahu praises Trump, denounces Iran's nuclear ambitions
“Amano basically said that the IAEA is not implementing the verification of section T and is unsure how to proceed. He wants guidance from the Joint Commission. However, Russia has said it does not want the IAEA to verify section T. If it sticks to that position in the Joint Commission and blocks instructions to the IAEA to proceed with verifying Section T, and the IAEA does not act on its own to verify Section T or find a work around, then the verification of the JCPOA is incomplete and the deal is not fully implemented,” he said.
“Full implementation is a requirement for the President to certify under INARA (Corker-Cardin). Lack of verification of Section T would also demonstrate that the deal does not deliver like promised and promoted by deal supporters,” Albright told Fox News.
Omri Ceren, a veteran Middle East expert and a leading critic of the Iran deal, said the IAEA’s inability to verify this part of it should make the president’s decision on certification simple.
“There’s no wiggle room here. The law requires the president to tell Congress yes or no, do we know if Iran has ‘fully implemented’ the deal? The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog just said they don’t know if Iran has implemented the section of the deal about nuclear weapons’ work, because Iran won’t let them into military bases where that work is likely to occur. Advocates of the Iran deal are saying the president should certify anyway. They’re asking him to lie to Congress on behalf of the deal,” Ceren said.
Trump recently hinted that he might not certify when the 90 days is up on October 15. Since taking office he has twice certified the deal as required by Congress
