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Bad Guys

Venezuela arrests rogue officers after suppressing military revolt in Caracas

maduro revolt soldiers
© Reuters/Carolos Garcia RawlinsVenezuelan National Guards fire tear gas during clashes with demonstrators during a protest close to one of their outposts in Caracas, Venezuela January 21, 2019.
Venezuela's government said on Monday it had suppressed a military revolt after a group of officers stole weapons and kidnapped several officials, as a video posted online showed a sergeant demanding the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuelan National Guards fire tear gas during clashes with demonstrators during a protest close to one of their outposts in Caracas, Venezuela January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Some two dozen officers attacked a National Guard outpost in the Caracas neighborhood of Cotiza, a kilometer (0.6 mile) from the presidential Miraflores palace, where they met "firm resistance," the government said. Witnesses reported hearing gunshots at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT).

Comment: Maduro is spot on.

ZeroHedge expands:
It appears the White House is ready to stoke the flames of anti-Maduro unrest following Monday's dramatic failed military revolt launched by 27 low-ranking officers and their subsequent arrests in the Cotiza neighborhood of Caracas, which sparked overnight protests and sporadic clashes with police after opposition leader Juan Guaido made a broad appeal to the military in a speech, urging them to demand Maduro step down. Guaido and other opposition leaders in the National Assembly have declared Wednesday a nation-wide protest day seeking to topple the regime - itself a historic date commemorating the end of Venezuela's military dictatorship in 1958.

VP Pence's words were issued in a video posted to social media wherein he asserted, "Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to to power." The video begins with Pence greeting in Spanish "Hola, I'm Mike Pence" but ending with a somewhat grimmer tone: "Vayan con Dios!" or "Go with God."

Pence also praised Guaido, head of the opposition held National Assembly who previously called himself Venezuela's "legitimate" power, as the "courageous" leader of "the last vestige of democracy in your country," referencing the legislative body. This week the government-stacked Supreme Court declared it would throw out recent measures by the National Assembly that declared Maduro's presidency illegitimate.

Pence said in the video he was delivering the message on behalf of Trump and the American people. Referencing the planned Wednesday protests, the vice president said:
As you make your voices heard tomorrow, on behalf of the American people, we say to all the good people of Venezuela, 'Estamos con ustedes,' we are with you.
The country remains on edge Tuesday as following the mutiny and subsequent successful government crackdown, which further involved the rebellious unit briefly kidnapping several officials stealing weaponry at a police outpost a mere kilometers from the presidential palace, pockets of anti-Maduro protests were sparked in the capital city demanding the release of the detained soldiers, whose actions the government condemned as "treasonous" and "motivated by the dark interests of the extreme right," according to a statement announced on state TV. Maduro's right-hand man, Diosdado Cabello, also boasted on Twitter while speaking of the rebels: "They were neutralized, surrendered and captured in record time."


Pence's video remarks calling Maduro a "dictator" and essentially calling for a coup comes after months of both the Trump administration and US Congressional leaders becoming increasingly unrestrained in publicly calling for outright regime change. After Monday's coup attempt Florida Senator Marco Rubio went so far as to encourage more such military defections.

Meanwhile Venezuelan Foreign Minister Arreaza just days ago told Democracy Now that "Nothing that the opposition does is without the permission or authorization of the State Department... They say, 'We have to make consultations with the embassy. We have to make consultations with the Dept of State.'"
Maduro strikes back at U.S. meddling in Venezuela's internal affairs.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered a revision of diplomatic relations with the US after the White House has openly urged the opposition to unite and overthrow the "dictator with no legitimate claim to power."

Ahead of the mass street protests against Maduro on Wednesday, called by the opposition-led National Assembly, US Vice President Mike Pence released a video message reaffirming unwavering support for a regime change in Venezuela. Denouncing Maduro as "a dictator with no legitimate claim to power" who has "never won the presidency in a free and fair election," Pence declared that time has come for the Venezuelan people to take the matters into their own hands, in a speech peppered with Spanish phrases.


"The United States supports the courageous decision by Juan Guaidó, the president of National Assembly, to assert that body's constitutional powers, declare Maduro a usurper and call for the establishment of a transitional government," Pence said.

Slamming the speech as shameless US meddling in his country's internal affairs, Maduro in response promised his supporters to announce specific measures against Washington in the coming hours.

"Enough of aggressions and conspiracies, enough is enough!" said Maduro, rejecting the "imperialist interventionism" and open calls for coup d'état that he called unprecedented in the 200-year history of US-Venezuela relations.

"Mr. Pence doesn't have a job. Now he wants to come and run Venezuela, handing out instructions on what should happen" at the anti-government protests on Wednesday, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez noted, accusing the White House of openly "promoting instability and violence" in the Latin American country.

"Nobody in Latin America believes seriously that the US government is interested in democracy and freedom...because they have supported all the dictatorships that we had suffered in Latin America for decades," Atilio Borón, professor of political science in the University of Buenos Aires, told RT.
They are creating a humanitarian crisis and then they want to appear as the ones who can solve all the problems.
"This is a desperate move, because they cannot defeat Maduro at the ballot box and they are promoting a sort of public insurrection which may backfire," Boron added. "If they want to help, the first thing they should do is stop blocking the foreign relations with Venezuela and other countries which are ready to sell their goods to Venezuela."

"It is so ironic that the US political establishment has been crying wolf over Russia and president Trump being in cahoots with the Russians, but when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to US imperialism and intervention - especially Latin America - there is consensus amongst the corporate elite in our political establishment, under the guise of spreading democracy and freedom," noted Andrew King, PhD candidate in public policy at the University of Massachusetts.
Recognizing Guaidó as a legitimate president and saying that the democratically elected president Maduro has the illegitimate power, that would be akin to a foreign nation saying that [the US] president is illegitimate and they will recognize the Senate or the House leader as the president.
Maduro was inaugurated for a second six-year term earlier this month, prompting Guaidó to declare his presidency illegitimate. While calling on the country to mobilize, and urging the military to defect, the opposition leader has also been seeking international support to topple Maduro.

Venezuela has already descended into violence ahead of the mass opposition-led protest due to take place on Wednesday, marking the 61st anniversary of the military uprising that toppled the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

Maduro and his government believe that the crisis and discontent in Venezuela have been deliberately fueled by foreign powers. The president has repeatedly accused the US of collaborating with Venezuelan neighbors and the opposition to oust him from power. US economic pressure and the decline of oil prices in recent years have contributed to the severe social and economic crisis in Venezuela. Hit by hyperinflation and a shortage of basic necessities, millions of people have been forced to leave the country in search of a better life elsewhere in Latin America



Bullseye

Syria asks if retaliating to Israeli attack with strike on Tel Aviv airport will get UN's attention

jet runway
© Sputnik / Sputnik
The Permanent Representative of the Syrian Mission to the United Nations has said that Damascus might respond to an Israeli airstrike on Damascus Airport with a symmetric strike on Tel Aviv Airport.

Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari said that it was time that the United Nations Security Council took action to stop constant Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, adding that Damascus might exercise its right to self-defence and respond to the Israeli attack on Damascus Airport with a symmetric strike on Tel Aviv Airport.

"Isn't it is the right time for this council to take the necessary measures to stop the repeated Israeli aggression against the territories of my country or should we attract the attention of the war makers in this council be exercising our legitimate right for self-defence and respond to the Israeli aggression against the Damascus International Airport by launching an aggression against Tel Aviv Airport?" Jaafari said speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

Comment: Fair is fair, but sadly the maniacs in Israel and the US would probably like that. Although Syria, if they're working alongside Russia in this, and it's likely they are, they know better than to do so. Besides, no need to interrupt Israel and the US who are busy enough sowing the seeds of their own destruction:


Attention

Facebook says it believes in free speech except what they practice is censorship

facebook police
It's a new year, but Americans are fighting a battle as old as the nation itself. It's the battle to preserve our free speech and for the first time we're losing - badly.

The new front lines of this fight are on social media - Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram and others.

2.5 billion people use at least one of Facebook's apps, making it probably the most important social media platform. Unfortunately, its employees, from the CEO on down, don't really believe in free speech. They believe in and actively practice censorship on a scale almost unimaginable a few years ago.

Facebook's embattled founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg seem determined to make the situation worse. After declaring to Congress their commitment to neutrality, they made end-of-year pronouncements that both promised more censorship, and appeased the far left by vowing to involve them with "new products, features and policies."

Facebook is now openly antagonistic toward the right. Posts aren't just blocked by humans who decide what they do or don't like; they are blocked by computer programs designed by humans to ensure liberal sensibilities are not offended. The New York Times says the company is monitoring "billions of posts per day in over 100 languages." That makes what Facebook is doing almost impossible to track, until it's too late.

Comment: What Facebook along with the other tech giants claim to be supporting do not reflect their actions in anyway. And if anything, we can expect to see more overt and covert censorship under the guise of 'protecting people from harmful and discriminating content'. See also:


X

Covering their tracks? Integrity Initiative wipes website pending probe into 'theft' of disturbing leaked data

Integrity Initiative
© Integrity Initiative
The British state-funded Integrity Initiative, exposed last year for conducting Europe-wide political influence campaigns in leaked files, has removed all of its website content "pending an investigation" into the data "theft."

A group claiming association with the loose hacktivist collective Anonymous has been dumping private Integrity Initiative documents online in various batches since November. The leaks revealed that the Scotland-based, government-funded organization, which bills itself as a non-partisan disinformation-busting charity, was actually using "clusters" of journalists, politicians, and academics to carry out secret anti-Russia campaigns, interfere in domestic politics across Europe and smear anyone who questioned its narratives.


In a surprise move on Monday, the Integrity Initiative abruptly announced on Twitter that it had "temporarily removed" all content from its site "pending an investigation into the theft of data" from the Institute of Statecraft, the II's London-based parent operation.

Comment: See also:


Attention

2 dead as Russian supersonic bomber crashes in country's northwest

Tu-22M3
A photograph of a Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bomber taken at the Alabino training ground near Moscow in April 2018.
A Tupolev Tu-22M3 supersonic strike bomber has crashed in Russia's northwestern region of Murmansk.

The accident occurred at 1:40 p.m. (5:40 a.m. ET) as the long-range bomber was attempting to land, according to Russian state news agency TASS, citing law enforcement officials.

The warplane had four crew members onboard: the commander, co-pilot, navigator and operator.

Two crew members have died and two have survived, according to law enforcement officials, TASS reported.

It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to crash.

Comment: It's worth noting that experts have recorded a spike in air craft fatalities through 2018, could this crash be related?

See also:


Bizarro Earth

'The world's gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate change', says young rising cult leader

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks during the Women's Unity Rally at Foley Square on Jan. 19, 2019 in New York City.
The youngest woman ever elected to Congress again made headlines and sparked conservative criticism when she said Monday that she and other young Americans fear "the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change."

interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates at the MLK Now event in New York City celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr." data-reactid="17">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made the remark during an interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates at the MLK Now event in New York City celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Ocasio-Cortez called the fight to mitigate the effects of climate change her generation's "World War II."

Comment: The comedy writes itself, folks!


Attention

Best of the Web: Modern Phoenix Program: Inside the CIA's Afghan terror unit

Khost
© Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesThe outskirts of Khost city.
Razo Khan woke up suddenly to the sight of assault rifles pointed at his face, and demands that he get out of bed and onto the floor.

Within minutes, the armed raiders had separated the men from the women and children. Then the shooting started.

As Mr. Khan was driven away for questioning, he watched his home go up in flames. Within were the bodies of two of his brothers and of his sister-in-law Khanzari, who was shot three times in the head. Villagers who rushed to the home found the burned body of her 3-year-old daughter, Marina, in a corner of a torched bedroom.

The men who raided the family's home that March night, in the district of Nader Shah Kot, were members of an Afghan strike force trained and overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency in a parallel mission to the United States military's, but with looser rules of engagement.

Ostensibly, the force was searching for militants. But Mr. Khan and his family had done nothing to put themselves in the cross hairs of the C.I.A.-sponsored strike force, according to investigators.

It was clear that the raiding force had "committed an atrocity," said Jan-mir Zazai, a member of the Khost provincial council who was part of the government investigating team. "Everyone we spoke to said they would swear on the innocence of the victims."

Comment: The CIA has been running a modern-day Phoenix Program in Afghanistan for going on 2 decades. It's no wonder the Taliban is winning. See Doug Valentine's The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World for the details.


Rocket

Lebanon needs air defense system to repel repeated violations of sovereignty by rogue state Israel

syrian air defense
Israeli jets carried out several waves of attacks, launching a total of 45 missiles first in daylight on Sunday and then again for 55 minutes after midnight. The Israeli attack on multiple Syrian targets coincided with the one day Arab Economic and Social Development Summit which began on Sunday in Beirut. Israel is known for its hidden and double messages - it was no coincidence that its violation of the Lebanese airspace and bombing of Syria came during the Arab Summit. The weakness of the Lebanese political system, hostage to Arab and international moods and threats, prevents the country from having its own air defence system to protect and preserve its sovereignty: it also makes it harder for Israel to bomb Syria.

Sources on the ground claim that "Syria has responded by firing five precision missiles against several Israeli military targets but only one was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome. This may explain the first of its kind Israeli intensive attack against random multiple targets".

Even as the Arab envoys were having lunch in Beirut, Israel flew over Lebanon and bombarded targets around Damascus airport and in other parts of the country under the pretext of "aiming at Iranian targets in Syria". The Israeli message was clear, and the Arabs did not condemn or show even the slightest reaction to the aggression against Lebanon (the violation of its air space) nor to the bombing of Syria, an Arab country that is currently being prevented from returning to the Arab League and playing its fundamental role in the Middle East.

Biohazard

Skripal first responder revealed as Chief Army Nurse; dossier connection blamed on Russia

Alison McCourt military nurse skripals novichok
© QARANAC AssociationColonel McCourt at Downing Street 10
The case of poisoned double-agent Sergei Skripal just got weirder after it was revealed that the first responder to the scene was the Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army after her daughter spotted Skripal and his daughter collapsed on a bench at the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury on March 5 of last year.

According to Spire FM, 16-year-old Abigail McCourt spotted the poisoned Russians while "out celebrating her brother's birthday," and then quickly alerted her mother - Alison McCourt. The two McCourts gave first aid to the Skripals until paramedics arrived.

Colonel McCourt - who was decorated for her efforts to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, proposed her daughter as a candidate for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards.

"As a qualified nurse it was a fairly routine situation for me but my daughter was amazing. Her prompt actions, spotting them in difficulty, and the way she assisted me to put Yulia Skripal in the recovery position had a significant impact on the outcome of the two victims," said Alison of her daughter.

The coincidence - kept under wraps for nearly a year, is sure to give skeptics plenty of new ammunition to refute the official narrative that Russia attempted to kill Skripal 10 years after the voluntarily gave him up in a spy exchange with the UK.


Comment: See also:


Brick Wall

Fund the wall, with porn taxes - Arizona state lawmaker

border wall mexico trump
© Mandel Ngan/Getty ImagesTrump inspects a border wall prototype in San Diego on March 13, 2018.
An Arizona state lawmaker has proposed an unorthodox way to fund President Donald Trump's wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and end the partial government shutdown: tax porn.

House Bill 2444, introduced this week by Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, would-- among other things-- require electronic devices bought or sold in Arizona to include porn blockers.

Would-be porn viewers who want to bypass the block will have to submit a request to the person or company that distributed the electronic device, provide proof of their legal age, and fork over a $20 deactivation fee to the Arizona Commerce Authority. Deactivating the blocker without paying the fee will be considered a crime under the bill.

The deactivation fees will then go towards the newly-created John McCain Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Fund to finance multiple initiatives through grants, including funding Trump's proposed border wall that has the U.S. government at an impasse.