Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 27 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Pirates

The Making of Juan Guaidó: How The US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader

Dan Cohen & Max Blumenthal
Gray Zone
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 16:41 UTC
Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela's constitution.

But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world's largest oil reserves.

Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailed Guaidó as a "credible rival" to Maduro with a "refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward." The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded him for seeking "restoration of democracy" and the Wall Street Journal declared him "a new democratic leader." Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
juan guaido

Juan Guaido's transformation from terrorist to 'democratic leader of Venezuela'
      Read More...
Cowboy Hat

If Venezuelan Army stands with Maduro, does US have a Plan B?

Patrick J. Buchanan
buchanan.org
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:46 UTC
venezuela
"Pay the soldiers. The rest do not matter."

This was the deathbed counsel given to his sons by Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in A.D. 211.

Nicolas Maduro must today appreciate the emperor's insight.

For the political survival of this former bus driver and union boss hangs now upon whether Venezuela's armed forces choose to stand by him or to desert him and support National Assembly leader Juan Guaido.

Wednesday, Guaido declared Maduro's election last May to a second six-year term to be a sham, and had himself inaugurated as acting president.

Thursday, the defense minister and army chief General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, with his top brass, dismissed the 35-year-old Guaido as a U.S. puppet, and pledged allegiance to Maduro.

Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the U.N. Security Council: "Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. ... Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you're in league with Maduro and his mayhem."


Comment: Never go full neocon.


By Friday, however, the world had already taken sides.

Comment: Buchanan asks if anyone thought this through. Apparently not. Moon of Alabama summed it up succinctly in a single image, from South Park:
underpants gnomes
My impression is that Trump was scammed. It was long evident that he gives little attention to details and does not think things through. Most likely Bolton, Pompeo and Rubio presented him with a three step plan:

Phase 1. Support the self declared president Guaidó; Phase 2: ... (wishful thinking) ...; Phase 3: Take half of their oil!

Trump accepted the plan without asking how phase 2 might really play out. I doubt that he knew that it will likely lead to higher gas prices. Nor do I think that he knew that it will likely require a military escalation up to a major war that will take years to finish. He would have known that both will cost him dearly during the next election.


      Read More...
Che Guevara

'Hands off Venezuela': Maduro addresses Trump in English video


RT
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:57 UTC
maduro
© Reuters
Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro addressed Donald Trump in English to demand that Washington keep its "hands off" the country, after the US imposed sanctions on its state oil company in recognition of Juan Guaido as president.

"Donald Trump, do not get involved with Venezuela! Hands off Venezuela! Donald Trump, hands off Venezuela!" Maduro said, blaming Washington for the political conflict that is causing tremors in the country.

Maduro's words came shortly after US imposed sanctions on the country's state-owned oil company PDVSA in order to "help prevent the further diversion" of assets by the country's government. Venezuela's president called Washington's actions an attempt "to steal" the company, and promised to take countermeasures "to protect the interests of Venezuela."

On Saturday, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told local media that Maduro is ready to get in touch with President Trump. The country's authorities would "even meet with the devil to keep the peace in Venezuela," he stated.

Washington is backing the National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself to be Venezuela's interim president following violent clashes in Caracas. Maduro, who was re-elected in 2018, accuses the US of orchestrating a coup.

      Read More...
Eye 1

Google and ad industry accused of 'massive' abuse of intimate personal data

David Meyer
Fortune
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:47 UTC
privacy
Last September, a coalition of privacy activists and browser-makers targeted Google and the advertising technology industry with complaints about "a massive and ongoing data breach that affects virtually every user on the web" - the broadcasting of people's personal data to dozens of companies, without proper security.

Now, on International Privacy Day, they've released new evidence showing this data includes information about people's ethnicity, disabilities, sexual orientation and more. The data is so sensitive that it even allows advertisers to specifically target incest and abuse victims, or those with eating disorders.

How does this information get shared? The online ad industry often uses a technique called behavioral advertising, which basically means they track you around the web and build a profile based on what you look at. When you then visit a webpage that runs behavioral ads, there's often an automated auction with the winner getting to show you an ad that supposedly matches your profile.
      Read More...
Bullseye

Beijing calls charges against Huawei politically motivated, urges end to 'unreasonable crackdown' on Chinese firms

Thomas Maresca
USA TODAY
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:38 UTC
huawei
© AP Photo/Andy Wong, File
Beijing fired back on Tuesday over criminal charges against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, calling them politically motivated and urging the U.S. to stop "unreasonable bashing" of Chinese companies.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou on Monday, alleging that the company stole trade secrets, violated trade sanctions against Iran, committed wire fraud and obstructed justice.

"For some time, the U.S. has been using national power to tarnish and crack down on specific Chinese companies in an attempt to strangle their lawful and legitimate operations," said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang in a statement on Tuesday. "Behind such practices are deep political intentions and manipulations. We strongly urge the U.S. to stop its unreasonable bashing on Chinese companies including Huawei, and treat them objectively and fairly."

Geng called on the U.S. "to immediately withdraw its arrest warrant for Ms. Meng Wanzhou, refrain from making a formal extradition request, and stop going further down the wrong path."
      Read More...
Light Sabers

Chinese investments most at risk from US sanctions against Venezuela


RT
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:29 UTC
Employees of Orinoquia
© Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Employees of Orinoquia, a Chinese-Venezuelan mobile phone factory, inspect phones at the factory in Caracas
While crisis-torn Venezuela braces for the impact from the latest US economic sanctions, Venezuela's trading partners are also at great risk.

On Monday, the Trump administration announced sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned energy company Petroleos de Venezuela, better known as PDVSA. The fresh restrictions will freeze $7 billion in assets and cause more than $11 billion in lost export revenues throughout the next year.

One of the country's biggest trade partners and creditors, China, has already opposed foreign interference in Venezuela's affairs, saying the US will bear responsibility for sweeping sanctions it imposed.

China has provided $50 billion in loans to the Latin American country over the past decade. Through loans and outbound direct investments, Beijing has poured funding into Venezuela while many other countries backed off from doing business with the cash-strapped nation.
      Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

Western govts failed to learn the lesson of Iraq, which is why their Venezuela gambit will be another disaster

Patrick Cockburn
Independent
Sat, 26 Jan 2019 17:01 UTC
american military
© Getty
It is always pleasing for authors to find out that they have readers in far flung places. It was therefore surprising but gratifying to see a picture of a battered copy of a French translation of a book I wrote called The Jihadis Return abandoned by Isis fighters, along with suicide vests and homemade explosive devices, as they retreat from their last enclaves in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria.

The book was written in 2014 when Isis was at the height of its success after capturing Mosul, and was sweeping through western Iraq and eastern Syria. I described the Isis victories and tried to explain how the movement had apparently emerged from nowhere to shock the world by establishing the Islamic State, an entity which at its height ruled 8 million people and stretched from the the outskirts of Baghdad to the Mediterranean.

A picture of the book, Le Retour des Djihadistes, was tweeted by Quentin Sommerville, the intrepid BBC Middle East correspondent, who is travelling through the deserts of Deir ez-Zor and reporting what may be the last pitched battles fought by Isis. The book had presumably belonged a French-speaking Isis fighter: many Isis volunteers came from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, as well as from France itself, and may now be trapped in this corner of Syria.

But is this truly the last round for Isis? The Islamic State no longer controls territory, but will it live on as an ideology inspiring a core of fanatical believers who will seek to rise again? They know that the US wrongly declared that al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of Isis, was dead and buried in 2007-08. Isis hopes to repeat its previous resurrection by waiting for its many enemies to relax their pressure and to fall out among themselves.
      Read More...
Bandaid

Idiot ex-Pentagon official blocks journalists on Twitter for pointing out Ukrainian MP's neo-Nazi ties


RT
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 16:49 UTC
right sector
© Reuters / Gleb Garanich
Activists from Svoboda (Freedom) and the far-right radical group Right Sector take part in a rally in Kiev, Ukraine October 14, 2017.
A former Pentagon official and DC think tank hero has decided to block journalists on Twitter, rather than acknowledge the inconvenient fact that Ukraine's parliamentary speaker has a well-documented neo-Nazi past.

Michael Carpenter, an Atlantic Council senior fellow who served as a foreign policy advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, took a swing at journalist Max Blumenthal on Twitter - describing him as a "pro-Putin propagandist" and a "sleeze." Responding to an article that suggested some sort of nefarious Kremlin role in Blumenthal's opposition to US military intervention in Syria, Carpenter tweeted out: "This explains a lot. Blumenthal came up to me at a recent event in DC with a video camera in hand and kept asking me why I supported Ukraine's 'Nazi leadership' (while recording my responses). I dismissed him as a pro-Putin propagandist and walked away. What a sleeze."


Comment: U.S. politicians just can't help themselves. They have seemingly never met a Nazi, Jihadist, or other radical violent revolutionary they didn't like. And when called out on it, all they can do is refuse to continue the conversation. And yet they accuse their critics of being Putin and Assad "apologists".

      Read More...
Pistol

Daylight robbery! Washington gives opposition leader Guaido control over Venezuela's deposits in US bank


RT
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 15:02 UTC
venezuela money poster
© Reuters/Marco Bello
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has authorized Venezuelan opposition leader and self-declared interim president, Juan Guaido, to take control of US-held assets belonging to the country's government.

The certification, issued on Tuesday, applies to certain Venezuelan government and Central Bank property held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or any other US insured banks.

"This certification will help Venezuela's legitimate government safeguard those assets for the benefit of the Venezuelan people," State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

Comment: The noose is tightening around Venezuela in ever possible way. What will Russia and China do about it?

      Read More...
Russian Flag

Like the 'Gerasimov Doctrine' it spawned, it's time to retire the concept of 'Russia-watching'

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Mon, 28 Jan 2019 14:33 UTC
trump binoculars
© Reuters / Antonio Bronic
"I can see Russia from here! It's very... big."
If you're interested in Russia, you've surely encountered "Russia Watching." A concept with questionable utility, given far too much credibility on this beat.

As the title implies, "Russia Watchers" don't reside in Russia. Indeed, many have never have done so, at any stage, and some haven't even 'lowered' themselves to visit. Instead, like Peter Sellers' Chance the Gardener, they "like to watch" and are elevated beyond their station by credulous hacks, in a severe case of the blind leading the blind.

And, in a reasonable world, with assiduous and scrupulous media standards, you wouldn't know of their existence and they'd be left to exchange their conspiracy theories with other fantasist busybodies and amateur enthusiasts on Reddit or obscure blogs.

But we don't live on that sort of planet. Sadly, Western coverage of Russia is so dysfunctional that various chancers and charlatans flood the media space debating things like the 'Gerasimov Doctrine' and whether Vladimir Putin has Aspergers or Spine Cancer, or is about to invade the Baltics, or Belarus, or Poland. All on the same weekend. In addition to other topics which either don't exist or would require expertise, and access, these spoofers can't boast.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts