From MoA on March 4th:
To cover for the non-legal way Random Guyaidó “swore himself in” the Times now alleges that President Maduro did similar…
Maduro can sit this out. Guaidó’s claims to the presidency are clearly illegal. He has failed to gain support at every step of his way. The army stands strongly behind the government.
From the comments:
Next step for Bolton and Abrams may be to hit Guaido and blame it on Maduro…
Venezuela doesn’t have a ready source/supply of Naphtha to reduce the viscosity of these oils, so their options are severely constrained. This is where I suspect you’ll see Russia/China step in with a quick Naphtha project on Venezuelan soil… So the longer Maduro can keep a small hope of Guaidó succeeding and thus the US still hopeful the more time he has to get this stuff done.
From MoA:
It is a strategy of political self-castration. Instead of promoting policy issues that can attract voters, the Democrats draw attention to their anti-Trump campaign…
The use of the Zionist lobby AIPAC and false claims of ‘anti-semitism’ against them is especially outrageous…
Spurred by outrage over Ms. Omar’s latest comments suggesting that pro-Israel activists “push for allegiance to a foreign country,” they will put a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on the House floor…
Anti-semitism’, in the false sense of AIPAC and the Democratic leadership bound to it, is anything that is not 100% in support of the racist state of Israel and the Zionism ideology.
From Robert Bridge at RT:
The predominantly left-leaning US media has just entered its third consecutive year of open warfare against Donald Trump. This non-stop assault risks aggravating political passions to the point where ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ snowballs into something completely beyond our ability to control. Like full-blown Civil War.
Russia Sells Top-Notch S-400 Missiles to Qatar; Saudis Enraged
Since Saudi-led GCC states initiated a blockade against tiny but oil and gas rich Qatar staring in 2017, ties between Doha and Moscow have actually improved.
Satellite Images Suggest India Fabricated “Successful” Attack On Terror Camp
Since #India didn’t actually bomb the #JaishEMuhammed camp in #Kashmir, it stands to reason that JeM didn’t actually bomb the bus, killing 44 Indian policemen. More likely, it was a #FalseFlag ordered by #Modi, prior to the election.
From Ken Silverstein at TNR:
In February of 1992, then military officer Hugo Chávez led a coup attempt against Carlos Andrés Pérez. It failed but made him a popular hero, especially after he gave a speech on national television taking responsibility for his actions, a rarity in Venezuelan politics. He famously asked other military officers who supported the coup to return to their barracks because “lamentably” and “for the moment,” their aims had failed.
Chávez went to prison but was released two years later, wildly popular. In 1999, he was elected president—and would be reelected three times…
Fittingly, one of the main opposition points is George Washington Plaza, a rich neighborhood sandwiched between the barrios of El Paraiso and La Vega…
It may be expensive, but poor people can buy it—coffee, sugar, chicken, bread, a dazzling assortment of fruit, among other things—from street vendors and at street markets…’
Cigarettes are too expensive,” Viviana explained. “No one can afford to smoke anymore…
The view from her window included a luxury apartment building. Most of the units were sitting empty, she told me, because the owners had fled to Miami, Orlando, Madrid, Lisbon, and elsewhere abroad…
Both the Brazilian and Colombian governments have publicly declared they will not participate in an armed foray into Venezuela…
Diosdado Cabello keeps a close eye on the military, and everything else in Venezuela. Cabello is the most powerful person in Venezuela and the power behind Maduro’s throne. A military official, he and Chavez were close at least since the failed 1992 coup attempt against CAP. I was told by multiple sources that Chavez picked the hapless Maduro to be vice president only because he was wary of choosing the cagey, brilliant Cabello to be second-in-command…
Pentagon and intelligence officials oppose a U.S. invasion, recognizing that it would be folly.
How Assad Defied the Odds, Won in Syria and Pushed the U.S. Out
The Russian intervention came at a stage when the two sides were already completely exhausted.
The Russian intervention came at a stage when the two sides were already completely exhausted.
The Zionist Caucus’s Political Lynching of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar
This should be a wake-up call to every African-American who reflexively votes for the party that Malcolm X rightly described as foxes who smile at you only to eat you…
I cannot still my tongue and watch a young woman, a first generation immigrant from Somalia who represents the quintessential American story, being ripped apart by racists in order to drive her out of power and to intimidate anyone who dares to follow her lead in speaking truth to power…
The sad reality is that Engle is not the outlier, he is the norm in government that has been thoroughly hijacked by powerful interests…
Zionism is to Jews as the Klu Klux Klan is to Christians…
There are a LOT of Jews who are staunchly against Zionists.
From Chris Hedges at TruthDig:
IP3 executives Gen. Keith Alexander, Gen. Jack Keane, Bud McFarlane and Rear Adm. Michael Hewitt, as well as the chief executives of six other companies—Exelon, Toshiba America Energy Systems, Bechtel, Centrus Energy, GE Energy Infrastructure and Siemens USA—sent a letter to Salman three weeks before the Trump inauguration that presented a plan to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia. They called it “the Iron Bridge Program,” the report states, and characterized it as “a 21st Century Marshall Plan for the Middle East…
General Flynn wanted President Trump to raise the ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ with King Salman…
The white paper stated that the President should implement the Middle East Marshall Plan through an executive order.
https://twitter.com/telesurengli…/status/1100508461488590848
Liberal Zionists, themselves critical of Israel but having no actual commitment to Palestinians as people, reproduce the same underlying racism of their right-wing counterparts — with the same poisonous consequences — while maintaining the aura of concern for human rights…
The attacks on Omar, like the attacks on solidarity with Palestine in general, are motivated by a deeply entrenched racism that sees Arabs and Muslims as subhuman and pervades liberal Zionism…
Omar’s abuse happened in front of the future of the Democratic Party. It is much harder to disconnect your victim from reality when your numbers are sizeable; the rest of us see what Ilhan sees…
And liberal Zionist racism is that much more damning. Shedding the stench of right-wing chauvinism that has blackened Israel’s image in the eyes of people with basic empathy, these writers and political organizations have embraced the time-honored racism of the white moderate, long ago cited by Martin Luther King Jr. as the true stumbling block to advancement. Writing in the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King wrote,
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”
From MoA:
Venezuela currently experiences multiple total outages of its electricity network. It is quite possible or even likely that the U.S. is causing these incidents. But it is not certain…
‘How did Marco Rubio know that backup generators had failed? At that time, no one knew that,’ the Bolivarian government official asked.
How Much Longer Will The Middle-Class Politely Tolerate Its Own Destruction?
The middle class being a relatively new phenomenon, nobody can say what the consequences of the all-out war against it will be…
Take away middle class dreams and you may well be taking away the last thing that keeps them paying their taxes, observing the law, supporting the troops and police, in short, everything that from the vantage point of the ruling class, “keeps them in line…”
Victor Hugo said that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
From Andrew McCarthy at TNR:
Paul Manafort would never have been prosecuted if he had not joined Donald Trump’s campaign… Instead, he’ll be sentenced yet again next week. And this time, he’ll get slammed.
What’s Behind US-Backed Electricity Blackout in Venezuela
The automatized control system of the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant, which is popularly known as El Guri, was attacked. Inside this high-tech power plant, three of five backup generators were electronically sabotaged, Jorge Rodriguez, Sector Vice President of Communication, Tourism and Culture, revealed in a statement explained teh[sic] details of the reasons behind the attack…
The power plant automatized control system was “attacked cybernetically”, Rodriguez said and explained that the security protocols made machines stop as the power plant was under attack.
Maduro says 2 perpetrators of power grid ‘sabotage’ captured
After a failure at the Guri dam left much of the country in the dark on Thursday night, authorities worked round the clock to fix the problem, managing to restore nearly 70 percent of the electrical system before a cyberattack knocked it out again on Saturday afternoon, Maduro said, adding that one of the generators had been working perfectly and could only have been sabotaged by an infiltrator. The Guri hydroelectric plant produces 80 percent of Venezuela’s power.
Bad Republic 