Intercepted by RT America correspondent Dan Cohen while leaving a conference in DC, US envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams did not seem in the mood to discuss his criminal convictions or Iran-Contra weapons shipments.

Cohen confronted Abrams, recently appointed point man for the US effort to oust the elected government in Caracas, as he exited a conference on the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela hosted by the Organization for American States (OAS) in Washington, DC. The former Reagan official, who played a key role in securing US support for death squads in Central America during the 1980s, was not in the mood to chat about his past exploits, however.

"What do you say to people who are skeptical about you because of your history of using humanitarian aid to send weapons to contras in Central America? Do you have any comment about that?" Cohen asked Abrams as he walked out the conference with a female colleague.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has interviewed White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, she told CNN on Friday.

"The President urged me, like he has everyone in the administration, to fully cooperate with the special counsel. I was happy to voluntarily sit down with them," Sanders said in response to a question from CNN.

The interview is one of the final known interviews by Mueller's team. It was conducted late last year, around the same time as the special counsel interviewed then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, well after a number of other senior officials, including former White House communications director Hope Hicks and former press secretary Sean Spicer, were brought in for questioning.

The White House did not immediately agree to grant the special counsel an interview with Sanders, according to one of the sources. Similarly, as CNN reported in December, White House lawyers initially objected to Mueller's request to interview Kelly, who ultimately responded to a narrow set of questions from special counsel investigators.

Venezuela, Russia and a number of other countries have established a working group at the United Nations to oppose foreign meddling in the Latin American country's affairs, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza announced on Thursday.

"Today, we are announcing that an important group of members of the United Nations states, concerned over the need to maintain the respect for the principles of the founding charter (the Charter of the United Nations) that governs the behavior of the International Community, have decided to organize ourselves to coordinate actions to defend the charter and the rights of all the member-states".

Arreaza explained that the working group would defend the critical principles of the UN treaty, including self-determination, respect for the sovereign equality of UN member-states, settling international disputes through peaceful means, avoiding threats to use force against any state, respect for the territorial integrity and independence as well as non-intervention in domestic affairs.

In the next several days, the working group will take a series of actions to raise awareness around the situation in Venezuela. In the meantime, the members of the group call on all UN member-states to join the effort to defend the principles of international law.

Russia, Syria, Cuba, China, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Bolivia, Namibia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Myanmar are among the 14 countries joining the group. The total number of the countries supporting Venezuela's initiative will approach 50, according to Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour.

You may have seen "Students Love Green New Deal... Until Hearing What's In It" by now, but if not you probably get the gist just from the title. Yes, it's one of those "man on the street" interview videos where random college students are asked whether they support new progressive superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ("AOC" to those in the cool crowd) and her much-ballyhooed "Green New Deal." And, as you also might be able to guess, the video highlights those eager young idealists who profess their love for the plan . . . until they discover what it actually says.

For those who might have missed it, the Green New Deal made headlines for all the wrong reasons earlier this month when some of its critics picked up on a few of the crazier aspects of the plan. Like the fact that the deal promises economic security to all those who are unable to work (standard fare in the modern nanny state era) and also to all those who are unwilling to work.

Unwilling to work? Really?

Scrambling to do damage control, AOC's team immediately took down the offending post from her website, then claimed that the screenshots of the controversial language came from "doctored" documents that were being placed online by those evil right wingers . . . until it was revealed that archives of the page had been created showing that AOC had indeed posted it to her website. So then they tried to explain away the page by saying that it had only been for internal campaign use (without explaining why that should put anyone's mind at ease).

But try as they might, AOC and her green minions can't dismiss criticisms of their cherished "Green New Deal" as mere knee-jerk opposition from those science-denying, hate-filled Repugs. A score of self-styled leftists, Democrats, progressives and other erstwhile allies in the fight against life-giving carbon dioxide have similarly opined on the ridiculous nature of this plan, from Naomi Wolf to Howard Schultz to Queen Pelosi herself, who provides the money quote: "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it right?"

Spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova mocked on Friday US National Security Adviser John Bolton's tweet that threatened those who "destroy democracy" in Venezuela with "consequences", implying it was the United States itself that jeopardized Venezuelan democratic institutions.

"Media: 'Bolton threatens those who will "undermine democratic institutions in Venezuela" with "consequences"' [Is he referring] to his notepad and pen?" Zakharova wrote on her official Facebook page.

Earlier in the day, Bolton said on Twitter that those who "conspire" with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to "destroy" democracy in the country would continue "to face consequences." In late January, Bolton was photographed during a press briefing holding a notepad that read "5,000 troops to Colombia", prompting widespread speculation that Washington was planning to use its military to deal with the ongoing political crisis in Venezuela.

On Friday, Donald Trump Jr. took a moment out of his day to shred Economics Guru™ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her ridiculous claim that New York could somehow invest the $3 billion Amazon would have gotten as a tax break for building in Long Island City, located in Ocasio-Cortez's 14th District of New York.

Trump Jr. tweeted, "Will someone please explain to me how it is possible for NYC to SPEND a $3 Billion tax break on anything? This is insanity."

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told AP on Thursday that his foreign minister has held secret talks in New York with the US special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, and predicted he would remain in power despite a global campaign to unseat him.

The meetings came at the request of the United States according to two Venezuelan officials who were not authorized to discuss the meetings publicly.

The first meeting, held on Jan. 26, was described as hostile - with the US envoy threatening to deploy troops in Venezuela, while chastising the Maduro regime for being in league with Cuba, Russia and Hezbollah. The second meeting, held on Monday, was "less tense," even though it came just four days after Abrams warned that the "time for dialogue with Maduro had long passed." Abrams insisted in the second meeting that severe US sanctions would result in Maduro's ouster even if the Venezuelan military was on his side.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said on Thursday that Nord Stream 2 cannot be cancelled as fundamental decisions regarding it have already been taken.

"Nord Stream 2 is not the project that I support with all my heart... But fundamental decisions were made earlier. You can't just turn the project back. In addition, we have quite legitimate economic interests in energy supply... [It should be] realistic to say that the construction of the gas pipeline cannot be prevented, as there are contracts and permits", Kramp-Karrenbauer told the magazine Internationale Politik.

She added that even during the Cold War, economic relations with Russia were maintained, and they were stable.

According to the politician, there is a contradiction in the interests of Germany, Ukraine, other Eastern European countries, and the United States toward the Nord Stream 2 issue.

Pro-Israel lobbyists funneled more than $22 million into the 2018 US election cycle, making the lobby far more active and influential than those aligned with other foreign nations, public records show.

Controversy was sparked last week after freshman Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted that pro-Israel money affected the decisions of members of Congress. Omar faced swift backlash and condemnation even from her own party, as her colleagues rushed to label her comments as "outrageous," "disgraceful" and even"anti-Semitic."

In the aftermath, the Guardian examined figures available from the Center for Responsive Politics - a D.C.-based organization which tracks money in politics - and found that the Israel lobby is indeed "highly active and spends heavily" to influence lawmakers.

Last month at Davos, George Soros turned around completely on China, echoing the Trump administration (of all things) in warning the world against the rise of China versus his previous stance.

The main reason for this shift in Soros' attitude on China stems from his fear that the European Union will not achieve its goals of becoming the next great world power and subjugate the Chinese, but rather dissolve like the Soviet Union on which it is based.

He finally aired those fears in another of his infamous op-eds over at Project Syndicate (link through RT here). In sum, they are simply that Europeans must chuck off that which makes them individuals for the sake of Mother Europe.

The European Union is the highest ideal and, as such, should be that for all decent Europeans. This is the highest form of collectivist thinking.

And it's time to circle the wagons against the ravening hordes of people who don't like getting slowly bled to death, their culture eradicated, their neighborhoods destroyed and their dignity as people shot in the face with tear gas.