diaz-balart Rep
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AN 11 25
The Trump administration’s disregard for Congress’s “power of the purse” has raised alarms across Washington, including within his own party. According to a new report from NOTUS, when one top GOP official sought to rein in the president’s monetary power grab, his efforts were swiftly quashed.
As the U.S. Constitution dictates, only Congress has the power to decide how government funds are spent and distributed. Since taking office for his second term, however, President Donald Trump has largely disregarded this rule, refusing to spend certain funds explicitly allocated by Congress, such as $5 billion in previously approved foreign aid payments.
While many Republicans in Congress have gone along with Trump’s withholding of these funds, at least one leading House GOP member attempted to rein things in. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee, included a provision in a 2026 funding bill for the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Subcommittee that would have blunted the tactic Trump has favored for withholding funds, sources close to the matter told NOTUS.
This tactic, known as “pocket rescission,” involves the president requesting that a piece of allocated funding be withheld, giving Congress a certain amount of days to consider the request. This request, however, is made too late in the fiscal year for Congress to respond, and once the calendar ticks over to the next fiscal year, the White House considers the funding officially withheld.
Back in July, Díaz-Balart added a clause to the fiscal bill that would have given Congress 45 extra days to respond to such requests made late in the fiscal year.
The sources that spoke with NOTUS claimed that Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and originator of the pocket rescission strategy, reached out to the GOP congressman to express the Trump administration’s concern over the provision.
Other Republican members of the Appropriations Committee were also reportedly pressured to get the wording out of the bill. These officials then, in turn, applied their own pressure to Díaz-Balart. In short order, the provision disappeared from the bill.
Several GOP committee members, including Rep. Andrew Clyde and Rep. Andy Harris, confirmed that they had conversations with Díaz-Balart about the issue.
For his own part, Díaz-Balart claimed that the original provision was not specifically meant to target Trump or his administration.
“I’ve always believed that Congress has a tendency to always give too much away to the administration — any president, any administration,” the Florida congressman told NOTUS.
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guk ref 2
no lnx
ENVIRONMENT
JUL 25, 2023
Amid Heat Wave, GOP Adds Climate Denial To Spending Bills
House Republicans are helping their fossil fuel donors with legislative fine print that would block climate action.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook
David Sirota
House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger, R-Texas, speaks with House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
As scientists warn of a mass extinction and ecological tipping points, congressional Republicans are helping their fossil fuel industry donors by quietly inserting provisions into annual spending bills designed to bar the American government from combating and researching climate change, according to the fine print of legislative text reviewed by The Lever. Some provisions also require the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil and gas development, while potentially limiting such leases for wind power.
In all, Republican leaders have added at least a dozen such environmental provisions to four annual government spending bills as property damage and death tolls mount from historic heat waves, floods, and wildfires.
By adding the provisions to annual must-pass spending bills, Republicans who control the U.S. House are attempting to force Senate Democrats to choose between either accepting them or blocking the spending bills and shutting down the government.
For his part, President Joe Biden has declined to issue a climate emergency declaration, which could provide his administration new authority to circumvent at least some of the Republicans’ tactics.
The GOP bills are currently in the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Texas RepublicanRep. Kay Granger, who has received nearly $1.2 million from the oil and gas sectorover the course of her career in Congress. Her second-largest career campaign contributor is the oil and gas industry, and she brags on her government website that she has fought to prevent spending to combat climate change.
Granger’s congressional district has been grappling with a heat-related public health crisis.
Blocking Fisheries Research As Oceans Boil
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One of the most aggressive Republican climate provisions moving through Granger’s panel is buried in legislation funding the government’s science agencies. As waters around South Florida set records for the hottest ocean temperatures ever recorded, a line in the bill would bar the Biden administration from spending any money on “climate change fisheries research.”
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The move comes just weeks after tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore in Texas due to high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, following other recent mass die-offs in Australia. The Center for Biological Diversity notes that intensifying ocean acidification triggered by climate change “could disrupt the entire marine ecosystem.”
The subcommittee that originally authored the fisheries legislation is headed by Republican Rep. Hal Rogers,who hails from the coal-rich state of Kentucky and whose top career campaign contributors include donors from the mining and fossil fuel industries.
Rogers has raised more than half a million dollars from the mining industry over the course of his career, and $390,000 from the oil and gas industry, according to data from OpenSecrets. In the 2019-2020 cycle, Rogers’s campaign paid $66,000 to his wife Cynthia.
The science funding bill also zeroes out funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program at the National Science Foundation, which coordinates research across the federal government “to understand the human-caused and natural processes that influence our planet,” and would additionally block the government from using any funds to carry out climate-related Biden executive orders.
The bill targets a Biden order issued in January 2021 that directed the federal government to use the procurement process, in which it acquires goods and services from the private sector, to mitigate carbon emissions as part of a broader federal effort to address climate change.
The order also specifically directed the Commerce Department to “to collect input from fishermen, regional ocean councils, fishery management councils, scientists, and other stakeholders on how to make fisheries and protected resources more resilient to climate change, including changes in management and conservation measures, and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research.”
The GOP legislation also moves to defund a separate Biden order from April 2022 that sought to enhance the federal government’s forest stewardship and promote “climate-smart stewardship of mature and old-growth forests.”
Requiring Offshore Oil/Gas Leases, Slowing Wind Power Leases
The Republican spending bills contain several more efforts to undermine the Biden administration’s ability to meaningfully respond to the worsening global climate crisis.
That includes the bill authorizing funding for the Department of Interior, which oversees public lands. The legislation contains a provision mandating, “None of the funds made available by this act may be used to consider or incorporate thesocial cost of carbon.” The bill also permanently rescinds $1.3 billion in grant funding under the Clean Air Act to mitigate the effects of air pollution, as more than a quarter of all Americans now live in areas with dangerous levels of such pollution.
The Interior spending bill also includes provisions requiring “the Secretary of the Interior to conduct quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales” as well as fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the bill report
At the same time, the legislation bars the government from issuing leases for offshore wind development in Florida until the completion of a study about windmills’ impact “on military readiness and training, marine environment and ecology, tourism, and other uses of the Outer Continental Shelf.”
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The latter rider is in response to Florida Republican lawmakers’ complaint that “people travel from around the world to see our pristine beaches — not windmills.”
The Department of Interior funding bill has been spearheaded by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Id.), who has received nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions from electric utility interests during the course of his career, as well as roughly $440,000 from oil and gas industry donors. In the last few years, climate-intensified wildfires have caused billions of damage in Simpson’s state.
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Defunding Global Climate Investments
Then there’s the bill funding the Department of State and foreign aid. That legislation would bar funding for theGreen Climate Fund— one of the entities charged with fulfilling the mandates of the Paris Climate Accords — which received a $1 billion deposit from the Biden administration in April.
Likewise, the bill prohibits the federal government from financing the Clean Technology Fund, which helps developing countries transition away from dirtier energy sources, and also explicitly rejects the concept of climate reparations, decreeing that none of the funds may be used “to pay compensation to any country, organization, or individual for loss and damages attributed to climate change.”
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The bill also prevents the funding of an August 2021 Department of Treasuring guidance calling on multilateral development banks like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to limit financing of fossil fuel projects.
The State Department and foreign aid bill is being overseen by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has received nearly $430,000 in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resources industry during his time in office. His district includes locales that a recent climate study said are among the most likely to soon be underwater due to rising ocean levels.
The House bill for funding the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), meanwhile, seeks to bar the agency’s proposed climate disclosure rule, which would mandate that publicly traded companies provide a full disclosure of their climate risks.
The subcommittee overseeing the SEC bill is headed by Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) who has received more than $175,000 from oil and gas interests during his career. Womack’s home state has recently experienced deadly tornadoes and flash flood warnings.
Finally, the GOP bill funding the Department of Labor will maintain a ban from 1976 that has been reapproved annually under both Republican and Democratic control of Congress that bars the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from investigating deaths at farms that employ less than 10 people, including deaths related to extreme heat. (Due to mass automation in the agriculture industry, this exemption includes many farms that are quite large and profitable.)
While OSHA has yet to issue a standard governing excessive heat in the workplace, the agency is tasked with investigating deaths or injuries in cases of extreme heat. At least 436 people died from extreme heat on the job from 2011 to 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The OSHA bill originated in a subcommittee headed byRep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), whose top career campaign contributors include donors from agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry. Nearly a quarter of the Alabama labor force is outdoor workers, and the state recently experienced temperatures above 100 degrees.
The bills will now move to the full House for approval, and then the final bills must be negotiated with the Senate and passed again through both houses of Congress. If the provisions are kept in the text and Biden vetoes the spending bills, parts of the federal government could shut down.
ref
GUK
https://yyytheguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president
‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president
Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative Dharna Noor
Thu 27 Jul 2023
An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.
Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.
[A burned-out car against a background of charred trees and hills
Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show
Read more]
Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.
The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.
“Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people,” the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in an April statement.
The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.
The plan, which would hugelyexpand gas infrastructure,was authored byBernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.
Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.
The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.
[Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections
David Shadburn of the League of Conservation Voters]
Before his time in the Trump administration, Pendley headed the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm where he advocated for selling off public lands. He also authored a book, Sagebrush Rebel, praising Reagan’s anti-regulatory policies.
“He did a bunch of terrible things,” saidKert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, about Pendley’s time at the Department of the Interior. “He worked to dismantle [the Bureau of Land Management] while he was in it.”
The Heritage Foundation has enjoyed a longstanding influence in GOP politics, even helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency, authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway detail in their 2023 book, The Big Myth. Many of Reagan’s policy proposals were cribbed from the pages of the thinktank’s first Mandate for Leadership, published in 1980, which asserted that the US was in the middle of a “crisis of overregulation”.
“It doesn’t trouble me that any individual or institution would develop advisory plans for politicians. What troubles me is the Heritage Foundation’s long history … of working to undermine environmental protection at the expense of health and wellbeing of the American people, at the expense of life on Earth,” said Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard.
[Protesters in October 2021 demanding that the Biden administration to do more to curb climate change and ban fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, House GOP members are also continuing to attack federal climate funding in their spending bill proposals, putting governmental functions at risk.
Earlier this month, the Clean Budget Coalition– – composed of more than 250 advocacy groups – warned that Republican representatives were slipping restrictions on climate spending into the government’s annual spending bills, bills that must be passed before current funding expires on 30 September to avoid a government shutdown. This week, the coalition found that House Republicans had added additional “poison pills” to spending bills, including ones that target environmental funding.
The spending bills are currently in the House appropriations committee, which is chaired by theTexas Republican Kay Granger, who is a top recipient of campaign funding from the oil and gas industry, the Lever reported this week. They will go to a full vote in the House, and then the finalized proposals will move into negotiations with the Senate. If Biden vetoes them, a government shutdown could be on the way.
“Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections and attack anything that would help addressing the climate crisis,” said David Shadburn, a senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters.
Some of the provisions would hamstring the EPA’s powers, blocking the agency from enforcing new pollution limits on power plants and tailpipe emissions or from implementing controls on mercury and other toxic air pollution, and effectively shuttering a critical program for deploying carbon-free energy.
“House appropriations Republicans are abusing the appropriations process to impose a cycle of environmental injustice,” said Deanna Noël, climate campaigns director for the consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.
Other “poison pills” would prohibit listing the dunes sagebrush lizard under the Endangered Species Act, remove protections for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem’s population of grizzly bears, and bar the Department of the Interior from creating a working group to help restore bison populations. Still others wouldrequire the energy secretary to sell 1m barrels of refined petroleum from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and block the implementation of a rule forcing federal defense contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and create emission reductions plans.
These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry
Deanna Noël of Public Citizen
Every GOP representative can submit proposals to the House appropriations committee, and since no member is required to sign off on specific proposals, it is not clear who exactly is responsible for each “poison pill”. But as the Lever reported, many Republican representatives who have effectively championed the provisions are recipients of funding from polluting industries.
For instance, a proposal to halt climate-related fisheries research funding was written by a subcommittee led by Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky, whose top campaign contributors include mining and fossil fuel interests. Another proposal would bar funding for theUN’s Green Climate Fund; it was buried in a bill being overseen by major energy funding recipient Representative Mario Díaz-Balartof Florida, the Lever reported.
“These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry,” said Noël.
The proposals come as waters off the Florida coast reach levels of heat more commonly found in hot tubs, and as much of the nation continues to swelter under triple-digit temperatures.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/proud-boys-try-to-assimilate-into-florida-gop-as-trump-denies-knowing-extremist-group/
Donald Trump isn’t alone in distancing himself from the Proud Boys. Florida Republicans who’ve snapped photos with the group’s members say they don’t know much about the self-described militia group either.About 48 hours after the president told the organization to “stand back, and stand by” during the first presidential debate, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott condemned “all forms of racism, violence, or discrimination, including the Proud Boys” when asked about a picture he took two years ago with the group’s Miami-based chairman. Also Thursday, a spokeswoman for Miami Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart...miami herald
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_D%C3%ADaz-Balart
Mario Rafael Díaz-Balart Caballero (/:{bəˈlɑːrt:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/; born September 25, 1961) is a Republican U.S. Representative for Florida's 25th congressional district. He was elected in 2002, and his current district includes much of southwestern Miami-Dade County, including the city of Hialeah, and much of the northern portion of the Everglades.
- [ Early life, education, and early political career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_D%C3%ADaz-Balart#Early_life,_education,_and_early_political_career)
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Early life, education, and early political career
Díaz-Balart was born in 1961 in Fort Lauderdale, to Cuban parents, the late Cuban politician Rafael Díaz-Balart, and his wife, Hilda Caballero Brunet.
He is a member of the Díaz-Balart family: His aunt, Mirta Díaz-Balart, was the first wife of Fidel Castro. Her son, and his cousin, was Fidel Ángel "Fidelito" Castro Díaz-Balart. His uncle is the Cuban-Spanish painter, Waldo Díaz-Balart. His brother, Lincoln Díaz-Balart, represented Florida's 21st District from 1993 to 2011. He has two other brothers, José Díaz-Balart, a journalist, and Rafael Díaz-Balart, a banker.
He studied political science at the University of South Florida before beginning his public service career as an aide to then-Miami Mayor Xavier Suárez in 1985. In the same year, he changed his political party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.[1]
Florida legislature
Díaz-Balart andMarco Rubio in 2001
He was elected to the Florida House in 1988 and moved to the Florida Senate in 1992. He returned to the Florida House in 2000.
U.S. House of Representatives
2002–2006Elections
Díaz-Balart gave up his seat in the state house to run in the newly created 25th District, which included most of western Miami-Dade County, part of Collier County and the mainland portion of Monroe County.[2] He easily won the seat with 64 percent of the vote. He was unopposed for reelection in 2004, and won a third term with 58 percent of the vote in 2006.
2008
Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2008 § District 25
In 2008, Díaz-Balart faced his strongest challenge to date in Joe García, former Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation and former chairman of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party. Ultimately, Díaz-Balart defeated Garcia with 53 percent of the vote.
Main article:United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2010 § District 21
On February 11, 2010, Díaz-Balart announced his intention to seek election in Florida's 21st congressional district—being vacated by his brother, Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart—rather than the 25th district.[3] Unlike the 25th, the 21st has long been considered the most Republican district in the Miami area. No other party even put up a candidate when filing closed on April 30, handing the seat to Díaz-Balart.[4]
2012
Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2012 § District 25
Díaz-Balart was reelected unopposed in 2012 in the renumbered 25th district.
2014
Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2014 § District 25
In 2014, Díaz-Balart ran unopposed.[5]
2016
Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2016 § District 25
In 2016, Díaz-Balart beat Democrat Alina Valdes by a margin of 62.4% to 37.6%.[6] It was only the third time that a Democrat had even filed to run in this district, which had been numbered as the 21st from 1993 to 2013.
2018
Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2018 § District 25
The Miami Herald reported in April 2018 that Díaz-Balart seemed a shoo-in for re-election in November. Former Hialeah mayor Raúl Martínez, a Democrat who had challenged Lincoln in what was then the 21st in 2008, said the 25th district "is very hard to win for a Democrat, especially if you're not Hispanic and you don't speak Spanish." Valdes, who had lost to him in 2016, was a candidate in the Democratic primary.[7] In April, Annisa Karim, who is active in the Democratic Party, announced that she, too, would run in the primary. In May, the Herald reported that Mary Barzee Flores, a former judge who had at first decided to run in the 27th district, had opted instead to run for Díaz-Balart's seat.[8]
In the November 2018 general election, Díaz-Balart defeated Barzee Flores, winning 60.5% of the vote to her 39.5%.[9]
Committee assignments
Caucus membership
- Assistant Whip
- Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Conference
- Founder of the Protecting Families Online Initiative
- Founding member of the Washington Waste Watchers
- Member of the Congressional Cuba Democracy Caucus
- Republican Main Street Partnership
- House Baltic Caucus[10]
Political positions
As of January 2018, Díaz-Balart had voted with his party in 92.4% of votes so far in the 115th United States Congress and voted in line with President Trump's position in 93.1% of votes.[11][12]
He is a founding member of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, a caucus of Hispanic Republican congressmen.[13]
Vote Smart issue positions
According to Vote Smart's 2016 analysis, Díaz-Balart generally supports pro-life legislation, opposes an income tax increase, opposes mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, opposes federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth, supports lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth, opposes requiring states to adopt federal education standards, supports building the Keystone Pipeline, supports government funding for the development of renewable energy, opposes the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, opposes gun-control legislation, supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, opposes requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship, opposes same-sex marriage, and supports allowing individuals to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts.[14]
Environment
Regarding climate change, in 2007 he said "I know there's a lot of money to be made on the bandwagon of global warming, you can make movies, documentaries, get a lot of research money — and that's okay, I love capitalism...My fear is using the bandwagon of global warming to have Congress act on some knee-jerk reaction which will please some editorialists, will hurt our economy, will not do anything to help us in the future."[15]
As of January 2018, Díaz-Balart was not a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus.[16]
Health care
On May 4, 2017, Díaz-Balart voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and pass the American Health Care Act.[17][18]
Donald Trump
In February 2017, he voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request 10 years of Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session.[19]
Díaz-Balart supported Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, saying "It is clear that Director Comey had lost the confidence of the Deputy Attorney General, Attorney General, and the President. Unfortunately, he became a controversial and divisive figure."[20]
In January 2018, after it was reported that Trump had voiced his opposition to immigration from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries - which he reportedly referred to as "shithole countries" - in a meeting on immigration reform, Díaz-Balart, who attended the meeting, did not say whether the alleged incident took place.[21][22][23]
Economic issues
On September 29, 2008, Díaz-Balart voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which was intended to purchase distressed assets and supply cash directly to banks during the global financial crisis of 2008.[24]
Díaz-Balart voted to promote free trade with Peru, against assisting workers who lose jobs due to globalization, for the Central America Free Trade Agreement, for the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, for the US-Singapore free trade agreement, and for free trade with Chile. He was rated 75% by the National Foreign Trade Council, indicating support for trade engagement.[25]
Tax reform
Díaz-Balart voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.[26] An estimated 41,000 of his constituents are expected to lose their health insurance as a result of the bill's passing.[27]
Foreign policy
Cuba
In 2007, Díaz-Balart advocated maintaining the Cuban embargo, saying "Some people do not understand the embargo of Cuba. Its purpose is to keep American hard currency out of the hands of a Communist thug by restricting most trade and travel."[28]
In an April 2015 essay for Time magazine, Díaz-Balart wrote that President Obama "continues to appease brutal dictatorships while gaining precious little in return. He conflates the Cuban dictatorship with the Cuban people when in reality, their interests are diametrically opposed." Díaz-Balart noted that "all eight Cuban-American senators and congressmen from both sides of the aisle, strongly disagree" with Obama's policy on Cuba, whose people "want to gather peacefully, speak their minds, practice their faiths, access the Internet, and enjoy the fruits of their labor."[29]
In September 2016, Díaz-Balart praised Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump "for firmly stating his commitment today to reverse President Obama's capitulations to the Castro regime" and contrasted Trump's position to what he called Hillary Clinton's "foolhardy stance." The U.S., he said, needs "a president who once again will stand with the Cuban people instead of emboldening and enriching their oppressors."[30]
In a March 2017 memo to the Trump White House, Díaz-Balart argued that if the Cuban government did not conform to the Helms-Burton law within 90 days, the U.S. should revert to its pre-Obama policy on Cuba.[31]
Falklands
Díaz-Balart has strongly supported the right of self-determination on the Falkland Islands, over which there is a sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom.[32] On April 18, 2013, Díaz-Balart introduced a resolution to the United States House of Representatives calling on the United States Government to officially recognize the result of the 2013 Falkland Islands sovereignty referendum in which the Falkland Islanders overwhelmingly voted to remain a British Overseas Territory.[33] Díaz-Balart introduced a similar resolution in 2017, recognizing the result of that year's general election in the Falklands.[34]
Immigration and refugees
In 2014, the Washington Post reported that Díaz-Balart was "eagerly seeking a deal" on undocumented immigrants "that can somehow please enough Republicans and Democrats to advance. And that upsets many Democrats and Republicans." After being "involved in bipartisan talks on the issue for years", he was "one of the guys most skilled on the issue" and hence "gets plenty of flack from both sides." Díaz-Balart told the Postthat "President Obama said that this was going to be one of his first priorities in his first 12 months", but even when "Democrats controlled everything", nothing got done "because they didn't want to do it."[35]
Díaz-Balart supported President Donald Trump's 2017 executive order to impose a temporary ban on entry to the U.S. to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. He stated that "The ban is only temporary until the Administration can review and enact the necessary procedures to vet immigrants from these countries. The ban is based on countries the Obama administration identified as 'countries of concern' and not based on a religious test."[36]
He took part in a January 2018 White House meeting about DACA, and said that nothing would “divert my focus to stop the deportation of these innocent people whose futures are at stake.”[37]
Gun policy
In the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida, Díaz-Balart said gun control legislation would not be effective at stopping mass shootings, saying "I want to make sure we look at things that could make a difference."[38] Between 1998 and February 2018, Díaz-Balart, received $27,450 in campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association, returning $3,000 of those donations.[39]
Drug policy
Díaz-Balart has a "D" rating from NORML for his voting history regarding cannabis-related causes.[40]
Espionage
Díaz-Balart took part in a November 2013 meeting between American legislators and the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee about NSA spying on European officials. Díaz-Balart told his European counterparts that they should realize that the U.S. is their greatest ally. “Part of re-establishing trust,” he said, “is to know who your friends are and treat them accordingly, and to know who your enemies are and treat them accordingly.”[41]
Infrastructure
A 2017 report stated that Díaz-Balart had delivered millions to his district for road and highway improvements.[42]
Personal life
He currently lives in Miami with his wife, Tia, and their son.[43]
See also
References
==
Rafael Díaz-Balart - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Díaz-Balart
2.
Díaz-Balart family - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Díaz-Balart_family
1.
Rafael José Díaz-Balart - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_José_Díaz-Balart
1.
Se suicida Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, hijo mayor del expresidente de ...
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-42827688
1.
Feb 2, 2018 - Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, el hijo mayor del expresidente de Cuba Fidel Castro, se suicidó este jueves en La Habana, según informó la ...
Cuba | Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart
https://mariodiazbalart.house.gov/issues/cuba
2.
Representatives Diaz-Balart, Ros-Lehtinen, and Curbelo issued the following statement after Cubanhealth care workers who were part of the “Mais Medicos” ...
Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, Oldest Son Of Cuban Leader, Takes His Own ...
https://www.npr.org/.../fidel-castro-d-az-balart-oldest-son-of-cuban-leader-commits-suici...
Feb 2, 2018 - Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, the eldest son of the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has taken his own life, Cuba's state media reports.
Fidel Castro Diaz Balart's death and Cuba's revolutionary regime ...
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/.../fl-op-viewpoint-fidel-castro-diaz-balart-death-20180...
1.
Trump to put 'game changer' pressure on Cuba, says Mario Diaz-Balart
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../trump-moving-to-put-game-changer-pressur...
1.
Fidel Castro's eldest son kills himself - NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/.../eldest-son-cuba-s-fidel-castro-commits-suicide-n843946
1.
Rubio and Díaz-Balart want investigation of Raúl Castro | Miami Herald
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/.../cuba/article211696464.html
May 22, 2018 - Two Florida Republicans, Marco Rubio and Mario Díaz-Balart, want President Trump to consider the possible indictment of Cuban leader Raúl ...
==
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuela-coup-leader/254387/
Project — Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s constitution.
But after a single phone call from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.
Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailedGuaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded him for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal declared him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government’s elite regime change factories.Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to undermine Venezuela’s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington’s halls of power.
“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,”Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”
Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet, Mision Verdad, agreed: “Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Sequera remarked to the Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”
While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.
“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to Leon, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”
But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: he is not expected to lead Venezuela towards to democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two-decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.
Targeting the “troika of tyranny”
Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Chavez’s socialist programs may have redistributed the country’s wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target on his back. In 2002, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition briefly ousted him with US support and recognition before the military restored his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chavez survived numerous assassination plots before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has survived three attempts on his life.
The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington’s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a “troika of tyranny.”Last year, Trump’s national security team attempted to recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed. According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a plot codenamed Operation Constitution to capture Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace, and another called Operation Armageddon:{ to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders }
:{ with drone bombs during a military parade in Caracas.}:
More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand selected and groomed by an elite, US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela’s government and restore the neoliberal order.
Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”
On October 5, 2005, with Chavez’s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan “student leaders” arrived in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.
The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal emails fromStratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,”“[CANVAS] may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”
CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame – and Hollywood-level promotion – by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic. This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.
A fence covered with posters of Slobodan Milosevic behind bars, titled “When?” and “People’s Movement Otpor” in Belgrade, Serbia, March 30, 2001. Darko Vojinovic | AP]
Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor’s main trainers, once said the group even received direct CIA funding. According to a leaked email from aStratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, “the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a ;export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;).”
Stratfor revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005 after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.
While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: “Success is by no means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution in Venezuela, but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the ‘Butcher of the Balkans.’ They’ve got mad skills. When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.”
Birthing the “Generation 2007” regime change cadre
The “real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to Washington DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington University under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund who spent more than a decade working in Venezuelan energy sector under the oligarchic old regime that was ousted by Chavez.
That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government declined to to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This privately-owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that promised “to set the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new economic system.”
From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called themselves “Generation 2007.”
The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s ally – a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a “key factor” in defeating the constitutional referendum.The following year, Goicochea was rewarded for his efforts with the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into building his own Liberty First (Primero Justicia) political network.
[milton prize px]
no lnx pix
Goicoechea receives the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, May 15, 2008. Seth Wenig | AP
Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style fiscal austerity. And theCato Institute is the libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks published a 2007 email fromAmerican ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command praising “Generation of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.” Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as “one of the students’ most articulate defenders of civil liberties.”
Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the streets, along with a version of the group’s logo, as seen below:
Otpor | Venezuela px]
“Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez”
In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group “gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,” according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the Commune.”
While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have identified Guaidó as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007 inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:
Juan Guaido | Protest
Is this the ass that Trump wants to install in Venezuela’s seat of power?
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led byLeopoldo López, a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracyprograms and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country’s first president. He was also thefirst cousin of Thor Halvorssen, founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Though Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as “a divisive figure within the opposition… often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in the country’s democratic institutions.
Leopoldo Lopez | Wealth
Popular Will founder Leopoldo Lopez cruising with his wife, Lilian Tintori.]
By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.
Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as April 2010.
“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor internal memo declared. “This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”
By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.
While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.
Towards violent destabilization
In November, 2010, according to emails obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing ofOtto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and theright-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.
Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting.Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual” whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.
Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee of Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program.
Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared that Google’s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.
Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Pedro Mario Burelli
@pburelli
.@NicolasMaduro, jamas me has hecho caso. Me has fustigado/perseguido como @chavezcandanga jamás osó. Óyeme, tienes sólo dos opciones en las próximas 24 horas:
- Como Noriega:pagar pena por narcotráfico y luego a @IntlCrimCourt La Haya por DDHH.
- O a la Gaddafi.
Escoge ya!
1,051
10:09 PM - Jan 16, 2019
1,252 people are talking about this
The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the scheme. A hardliner with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting President George W. Bush in 2005.
maria corina machado | george bush
Machado and George W. Bush, 2005.]
“I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,” Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.
In another email, Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. “I have already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime’s to break the international security ring.”
Guaidó heads to the barricades
That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses known as guarimbas. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.
“None of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,” a guarimba participant said at the time. “They might have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.”
Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba participant said, “Well if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.”
Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.
Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas. In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, “I remember in 2007, we proclaimed, ‘Students!’ Now, we shout, ‘Resistance! Resistance!’”
Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.
On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year’s guarimbas, Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz’s office came under attack by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called “planned and premeditated violence.”
Leopoldo Lopez | Juan Guaido
Guaido alongside Lopez at the fateful February 12, 2014 rally. Photo | PanAm Post]
In a televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.
This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.
Cracking down on Popular Will
As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.
Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours withHuman Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House,the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.
Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.
Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba victims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.
Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.
View image on Twitter
@YonGoicoechea
Hoy, en Caricuao. Llevo 15 años trabajando con @jguaido. Confío en él. Conozco la constancia y la inteligencia con la que se ha construido a sí mismo. Está haciendo las cosas con bondad, pero sin ingenuidad. Hay una posibilidad abierta hacia la libertad
5:10 PM - Jan 19, 2019
136 people are talking about this
David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in 2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas.
Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was handpicked bySecretary of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.
This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with Elliot Abrams,the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy war might be on the way.
David Smolansky
@dsmolansky
Cordial reunión en la ONU con Elliott Abrams, enviado especial del gobierno de EEUU para Venezuela. Reiteramos que la prioridad para el gobierno interino que preside @jguaido es la asistencia humanitaria para millones de venezolanos que sufren de la falta de comida y medicinas.
10:46 AM - Jan 26, 2019
2,619 people are talking about this
Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro, declaring that if he “wants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.”
A pawn in their game
The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela’s least populous states, Guaidó came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections,winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.
Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly’s Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will’s turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.
“There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó’s rise,” Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. “Mejía is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could. For one, Guaidó has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.”
In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.
A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally with Guaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce Guaidó’s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as “Juan Guido.”
Embedded video
Dan Cohen
@dancohen3000
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is attempting to install as Venezuelan President "Juan *Guido*" - as in the racist term for Italians. America's top diplomat didn't even bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet's name.
1:58 PM - Jan 25, 2019
By January 11, Guaidó’s Wikipedia page had been edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous figurewho was now a tableau for Washington’s regime change ambitions. In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia’s elite council of “librarians,” who pronounced him the “contested” president of Venezuela.
Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington’s needs. “That internal piece was missing,” a Trump administration said of Guaidó. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”
“For the first time,” Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela, gushed to the New York Times, “you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys.”
But Guaidó’s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.
On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó’s wife delivered a video address calling on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband’s limited political prospects.
At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó announced his solution to the crisis: “Authorize a humanitarian intervention!”
While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. “It doesn’t matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures,” Sequera said of the coup figurehead. “To the Americans, he is expendable.”
Top Photo | Venezuela’s self-declared interim leader Juan Guaido, center, greets supporters after a rally at a public plaza in Las Mercedes neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 26, 2019. Fernando Llano | AP]
Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and tweets at @DanCohen3000.
Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor of GrayzoneProject.com, the co-host of the podcast Moderate Rebels, the author of several books and producer of full-length documentaries including the recently released Killing Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.
Source | GrayZone Project
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