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n Venezuela, a popular uprising threatens to sweep Nicolas Maduro, the heir to Hugo Chavez, from power, along with his brutal, corrupt, viciously anti-American socialist regime. The magnitude of anti-Maduro demonstrations in Venezuela has not been adequately or consistently reported in the American press. Millions have taken part. To take just one example, this aerial photograph of an anti-government demonstration in Chacao last week, conveys some sense of the magnitude of the pro-freedom movement. When Miss Fernandez won the Miss Universe title in 2009, she was the second consecutive winner from Venezuela. I liked her predecessor Dayana Mendoza, who was...

The Vatican said Friday (local time) it was "willing and desirous" to intervene diplomatically in Venezuela's crisis after weeks of deadly unrest but says it must study expectations and options about what role it could play. On Thursday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accepted the idea of a good-faith facilitator after coming under mounting pressure to reconcile with opponents who have been protesting for nearly three months. He mentioned Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, until last year the Vatican's ambassador to Caracas. Critics of Maduro's socialist administration have pressed for Vatican involvement: Shortly before he was arrested, opposition leader...

“Everyone knows that the Cubans control (Venezuela’s) military intelligence and police intelligence. They control the coordination of the armed forces.” Such convictions are held by critics in both countries (Venezuela and Cuba) although they offer little hard evidence to back their suspicions.” (Victoria Burnett and William Neuman, The New York Times, March, 2014.) “Fidel Castro has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution....but it amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist.” (Herbert Matthews, New York Times, February 1957.) “This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the...

[Excerpted from middle]....The fact that we are supporting the Mubarak regime may not be immediately obvious to most Americans, but it is the central fact about America to every Egyptian alive--to 83 million people in the heart of the Middle East. The Mubarak government is basically friendly to the United States, but it is right now crushing its own people. If it succeeds, we will not be identified with the man who is protesting. We will be identified with the men who are acting on behalf of the government. In fact, we already are. If it doesn't succeed, God knows...

Here are ten things you need to know about Turkey. 1. On March 27, the government of Turkey blocked YouTube, less than a week after blacking out Twitter. Ostensibly, this was to prevent the spread of videos that are said to feature the voices of Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief, and a top army general proposing to send the Turkish military into Syria to protect the tomb of Suleiman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty. 2. If these tapes are real, Turkey has been considering staging an attack on itself as a pretext to intervene in...

BARACK OBAMA may recall a tricky moment when he first met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia five years ago. Bending to shake hands with the octogenarian monarch, the taller American appeared to bow deeply. Republican snipers in America gleefully blasted the president for “kowtowing” to rich Arabs. Such protocols should run more smoothly when Mr Obama heads to Saudi Arabia on March 28th for his second time in office. Unfortunately, however, relations between the two countries have seldom been more awkward. Their close alliance dates to the end of the second world war, when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt met Saudi...

President Barack Obama is considering allowing shipments of new air defense systems to the Syrian opposition, a U.S. official said Friday, as Obama sought to reassure Saudi Arabia's king that the U.S. is not taking too soft a stance in Syria and other Mideast conflicts. A key U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia would be likely to cheer a decision by Obama to allow the portable missile launchers into Syria. Saudi officials were dismayed when Obama scrapped plans last year to launch a strike against Syrian President Bashar Assad, and they have been pressing the White House on the issue. The Saudis...

Venezuela is closer geographically than, and at least as important to the United States as, Ukraine. Yet the persistently blurred focus of the Obama Administration has been far less on violent Cuban inspired repression in Venezuela than on Russian repression in Ukraine. Here's a new presentation by Senator Rubio on the continuing mess in Venezuela: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Uz-9HvRgw] Video linkThe constitutional crisis in Venezuela has apparently been far less disturbing to the Obama Administration, and to the "legitimate" media, than the less violent mess in Ukraine. It has drawn far less media attention than the disappearance of Malaysian flight 370, coverage of which has been extensive and continuous but abysmally uninformed. Here's the best...

Access to YouTube has been cut off in Turkey after an explosive leak of audiotapes that appeared to show ministers talking about provoking military intervention in Syria. Other social media have already been blocked ahead of tumultuous local elections. The latest leaked audio recording, which reportedly led to the ban, appears to show top government officials discussing a potential attack on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire. The tomb is in Syrian territory, but protected by Turkish soldiers. On the tape, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄŸlu is heard saying that Prime Minister...

UPDATE: *TURKEY'S DAVUTOGLU SAYS LEAK IS 'DECLARATION OF WAR': TURKIYE As we noted here, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan had blocked Twitter access to his nation ahead of what was rumored to be a "spectacular" leak before this weekend's elections. Then this morning, amid a mad scramble, he reportedly (despite the nation's court ruling the bans illegal) blocked YouTube access. However, by the magic of the interwebs, we have the 'leaked' clip and it is clear why he wanted it blocked/banned. As the rough translation explains, it purports to be a conversation between key Turkish military and political leaders discussing what...

After first blocking Twitter, Turkey has now also blocked access to YouTube, according to numerous reports. The action comes after a recording allegedly containing audio from a meeting among many top Turkish officials was leaked onto the Google-owned service. In the recording, the officials can allegedly be heard discussing possible military actions in Syria. The blocking of YouTube comes a week after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a court order to ban Twitter in the country.

“I'll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey.” This leaked conversation is coming back to haunt the highest echelons of the Turkish government as it plans a provocation in Syria, while scrambling to contain social media internally. The leaked audiotapes that reveal Turkey’s highest ministers staging an anti-Assad military intervention in Syria, have already caused YouTube to be shut down in the country, as well as leading to fevered accusations of treachery and betrayal of Turkey’s political interests – “a declaration of war,” as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu put it. This is of...

Over seven decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia forged a strategic alliance that became a linchpin of the regional order: a liberal democracy and an ultraconservative monarchy united by shared interests in the stability of the Middle East and the continued flow of oil. But with President Obama arriving in Riyadh on Friday, the rulers of Saudi Arabia say they feel increasingly compelled to go their own way, pursuing starkly different strategies from Washington in dealing with Iran, Syria, Egypt and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. “Their view of Mr. Obama is that his entire...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Russia’s Threat in the AmericasPosted By Joseph Klein On March 28, 2014 @ 12:08 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments President Obama dismissed Russia as no more than a “regional power” in remarks he made to the press in The Hague on March 25th, where he was attending a summit meeting on nuclear security. “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness,” he said.True, the Russian Federation is a shadow of the Soviet empire in its heyday. And Russia is...

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world. Rice “Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar...

The media chose to focus the campaign against Ya’alon on his purported irresponsibility and loose lips because they cannot argue with him on substance. If this is a coincidence, it is an extraordinary one. Twice in less than two months, remarks that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made in closed forums about key issues on Israel’s national security agenda were leaked to the media. In both cases, the media used the leaked remarks to foment a crisis in relations between Israel and the Obama administration. In both cases, the Obama administration has used the opportunities created by the Israeli media to...

Ruling Socialist Party legislators seek charges of treason against Maria Corina Machado, one of the opposition's most visible leaders during the demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro ____ Venezuela's Congress on Tuesday requested a criminal investigation of opposition deputy Maria Corina Machado for crimes including treason in relation to her involvement in anti-government protests that have left dozens dead. Mrs Machado, a 46-year-old engineer, has been one of the most visible leaders in six weeks of opposition demonstrations against socialist President Nicolas Maduro that have unleashed the country's worst unrest in a decade. Ruling Socialist Party legislators, who hold a majority...

It's starting. The brave students and people of Venezuela are starting to fight back against the socialist CUBAN-run dictatorship in Venezuela. The brave people there need support. In the meantime, the United States sits on it's hands SHAMEFULLY doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! SEE THE ON THE SCENE VIDEO....... HERE!

As summer approaches, health agencies are warning of the risk of polio spreading across the Middle East from Syria - where now more than 100 children show symptoms of the disease - despite a massive campaign to vaccinate millions of children in surrounding countries. In the back of a car parked outside a Turkish hospital, the shy woman in a long pink velvet dress starts sobbing as she talks about her baby, being treated in an isolation ward inside. "He started to get really sick. I tried to make him stand and use his feet, but it was quite impossible,"...

150 Christian citizens of Israel demonstrated on Sunday (Mar. 23) outside the European Union’s delegation in Tel Aviv against the EU’s silence in relation to what they termed “the ethnic cleansing of Christians throughout the Middle East.” The protesters demanded that the EU act on their own cry for human rights and fight for the Christians throughout the Middle East, who are quickly becoming extinct everywhere but Israel. Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth and strong proponent of Christian enlistment in the IDF, demanded that the attacks on Christians be stopped and thanked Israel for being a...