Knowing what I know about my own Administration’s attempt to unseat Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, I was not surprised when the effort was recently renewed by the Trump Administration, particularly when such arch-defenders of Latin American rights as Elliott Abrams, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott – not to mention John Bolton – began to appear on the White House payroll.
Knowing as well that Trump did not give a farthing for what happened in Venezuela but was concentrated on what he is always focused on, domestic politics, I knew these underlings would be allowed to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war in Venezuela so long as doing it secured Florida’s electoral votes for Trump in 2020.
What I did not know – but looking back to 2002, should have – is how utterly incompetent the CIA would be in pulling off the “soft coup d’etat” that its leaders promised Trump. The events of the past 48 hours have demonstrated that incompetence markedly, as well as the real motivations of Trump’s lackeys on Venezuela, from the shrimp-lusting-after-Cuba Marco Rubio to the bombastic former governor of Florida Rick Scott, to the pardoned criminal Abrams, to the supine and totally incompetent Juan Guaido and his backer, Leopoldo Lopez in Caracas. What a crew the GOP can muster!
And they just might have let slip the dogs of war.
And they let them slip into a potentially first-class disaster – just like Somalia in 1992, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2012, Afghanistan today and yesterday, and on and on.
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‘And we cannot help but notice that some of free speech’s greatest enemies are now posing as its defenders, all of a sudden.’
Tucker Carlson delivered a stunning monologue Wednesday, slamming CNN for posing as a champion of free speech, after the network spent months trying to have competitors silenced and banned.
Carlson addressed CNN’s lawsuit against the Trump administration for revoking Jim Acosta’s White House access.
“In the past couple of days, you’ve heard a lot of pumping and puffing about free speech and freedom of the press, and how those freedoms are currently imperiled by the White House, and to be clear, we are for free speech. Unfettered, absolute free speech.” Carlson urged.
“And we cannot help but notice that some of free speech’s greatest enemies are now posing as its defenders, all of a sudden.” he added.
And that’s when the smackdown commenced, with Tucker providing examples of CNN’s total hypocrisy when it comes to free speech.
“Take CNN, for example. It was a CNN that almost single-handedly led the campaign to have broadcaster Alex Jones banished from the Internet, on the grounds that they didn’t like what Jones had to say,” Tucker continued.
“Ultimately, CNN succeeded in doing that. The network convinced every major tech platform to ban Jones and his outlet, Infowars. You don’t have to like Alex Jones to see that as a terrifying loss for free speech, because it was exactly that. But CNN was not done trying to silence its critics.” Carlson further explained.
CNN is “claiming to defend free speech only when it is their free speech.” Tucker declared, noting that CNN also didn’t devote any airtime to even report on the US government forcing RT to register as a foreign agent under threat of imprisonment.
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This week saw renewed effort by US politicians and media to ramp up the information war against Russia. The impetus came from the US-based social media network, Facebook, declaring that it had identified “coordinated political influence campaigns”.
Never mind that the internet giant admitted that it did not know the actual identify of the organizers, that did not stop US news media and senior Washington politicians jumping to conclusions that Russia was guilty (again) of interfering in US politics.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher was quoted as saying: “At this point in our investigation, we do not have enough technical evidence to state definitively who is behind it.”
Somehow this baseless information was miraculously turned into “evidence” pointing to Russian “malign activity”.
Mark Warner, a member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, reacted to the non-issue with the following categorical words: “Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation.”
It’s rather astounding that a senior US lawmaker who is running the “intelligence community” can make such a preposterous assertion based on no facts.
Even the Trump White House, which is caught up in a web of contradictions, was impelled to jump to wrong conclusions. A spokesperson said President Donald Trump “will not tolerate foreign interference in our electoral process from any nation state or other malicious actors.”
It is a clear sign of how collectively paranoid the US political and media establishment have become whenever they make such wild extrapolations based on infantile innuendo and fatuous reasoning.
In the following editorial comment in a New York Times report it was stated: “Like the 2016 Russian interference campaign, the recently detected campaign sought to amplify divisive social issues, including through organizing real-world events.”
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In the previous episode of the currency wars, a few years ago, the Euro-Dollar exchange rate was in the spotlight. This has now completely disappeared to the background and whilst the countries of the Eurozone must be pretty happy with the weak currency (which boosts the export and increases the demand for domestically produced goods), the United States are less than happy as it weakens the position of the country on the export market.
You might have missed it when the mass media were falling over themselves to crucify president Trump, but we had the impression currency wars, and protecting the position of the United States on the world market were pretty high on his ‘to do list’ after decades of huge trade deficits. As you can see on the next image, there clearly is a huge discrepancy in the trade numbers between China and the United States. A substantial trade deficit, which has been nipped in the bud by China using their hard dollars to purchase US Treasuries.
Source: Danske Bank
Whereas the president was definitely pointing fingers at China during his election campaign, he seems to have been softer after a recent call with the Chinese president.
Does this mean the USA and China are now best buddies again? Probably not. It’s far more likely the president has realized he won’t be able to get much done when he gets in a direct confrontation with China. His staff has now launched a ‘test balloon’ and widened the scope of the currency manipulation investigation. Instead of singling out China, the White House will now be using a more general approach, and has even singled out Germany.
Source: Danske Bank
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