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A bunch of commandos, operating from speedboats launched from a "mother ship" disguised as a fishing vessel, land on a heavily populated resort coast in Venezuela to initiate a coup designed to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro. Expecting to be greeted by defectors from the Venezuelan military recruited by 52 operatives who had earlier infiltrated the country from neighboring Colombia, the commandos were instead met by armed Venezuelan security forces, who, in the ensuing firefight reportedly killed six of the would-be invaders and captured two others.In a bizarre interview following Sunday's failed amphibious landing, Jordan Goudreau, the head of an American security-services company, Silvercorps USA, accompanied by Captain Javier Nieto Quintero, a defector from the Venezuelan military who had sided with opposition leader Juan Guaido in an failed coup in April 2019, provided details about what he termed Operation Gideon. He said the operation was conducted on behalf of Guaido and that dozens of his men were on the ground inside Venezuela, while others were adrift in a boat off the coast of Venezuela, waiting for a resupply of fuel.
"The Israeli Defense Ministry's research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting edge ways to kill people and blow things up, with stealth tanks and super drones among its more lethal recent projects."The flippant tone is jaw-dropping. Israel's army has been credibly accused of war crimes, particularly in Gaza, including charges from its own soldiers who belong to the courageous Breaking the Silence movement.
Teimuraz Sharashenidze, Georgia's envoy to Ukraine, was told to pack and return until further notice, Davit Zalkaliani, the country's Foreign Minister, told the media this Friday.See also:
The chief diplomat said that "further steps are needed to consult with the ambassador" because, as he put it, "certain problems" had emerged in the relationship between Kiev and Tbilisi.
The demarche, considered a sign of extreme displeasure in diplomatic practice, came after Georgia's former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, was appointed head of Ukraine's National Reform Council.
Giving a top government job to "a person convicted and wanted by the Georgian judiciary" raises questions, Foreign Minister Zalkaliani stated.
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped the US-educated Saakashvili would "give an impetus" to effect much-needed change, but back at home, law enforcement agencies accuse him of large-scale embezzlement, abuse of power, and corruption.
He fled the country after his term ended in 2013, and the new leadership has, since then, pushed for criminal charges against the fugitive politician.
However, Georgia's diplomatic demarche won't be escalated any further, its foreign minister revealed, saying that severing ties between the two "friendly" post-Soviet nations isn't on the table.
Saakashvili reinvented himself on Ukrainian soil following the 2014, West-inspired Euromaidan coup in Kiev. But his political fortunes in Ukraine have seen ups and downs, from being made (surprisingly) governor of the Odessa region by then-President Petro Poroshenko to becoming a stateless person and a deportee to neighboring Poland.
In Georgia, he remains a highly divisive figure since he seized power on the back of the 2004 revolt in Tbilisi. Supporters hail him for battling corruption and making governance more transparent, but opponents accuse the ex-president of silencing dissent and persecuting rivals.
Saakashvili's foreign adventures earned him a reputation of being a volatile, impulsive leader. He gained notoriety for briefly deploying Georgian troops to Iraq in the mid-2000s, and giving a green light to the 2008 invasion of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia which triggered a six-day armed conflict, in which Russia responded to Georgia's attacks on its peacekeepers and local civilians.
Germany's Constitutional Court said that the ECB had overstepped its mandate with massive bond purchases. EU's top court retorted that it alone has the power to rule whether EU bodies breach the bloc's rules. Court of Justice of the European Union's statement:
"In general... In order to ensure that EU law is applied uniformly, the Court of Justice alone... has jurisdiction to rule that an act of an EU institution is contrary to EU law. Divergences between courts of the member states as to the validity of such acts would indeed be liable to place in jeopardy the unity of the EU legal order and to detract from legal certainty."
Comment: Has the Trump administration 'gone silent' to ignore and demean Maduro's accusations? Is it not responding because it is distancing from the 'quasi-independent' actions of a private company? Has Guido been the impetus behind the foiled attempt all along? Maduro may choose all three and chances are he would be right, right, right.
Tweets mentioned in the article: See also: