ALAN MACLEOD—After winning re-election in 2018, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was recently sworn in for a second term. However, Trump has taken the extraordinary step of declaring the elections void, condemning the “illegitimate Maduro regime.” He also arranged to have National Assembly head Juan Guaidó—someone who has never even run for president, whom even the New York Times(1/22/19) describes as “virtually unheard-of”—name himself the country’s new leader. This has spurred the Venezuelan right wing onto the streets to try to force Maduro out of office, leading to the deaths of 14 people in the first two nights of clashes between large pro- and anti-government demonstrations. Last year, the Trump administration preemptively declared as fraudulent the elections they had previously been demanding, instructing the opposition (whom the US has been funding for two decades) to boycott the process.
CORPORATE TELEVISION
-
-
VENEZUELA UNDER ATTACK • UNITED NATIONS LIKELY TO BE IGNORED. A takeover by Washington’s designated shills, with assistance from the Venezuelan Fifth Columnists, and prominent Latin American traitor regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, while Chile and Ecuador play fiddle. The Venezuelan coup is a test of liberals’ pretensions to human rights and the rule of law, not to mention their professed hatred for Trump. Washigton’s move also a test of the European Union’s own claims to respect for the rule of international law.
-
Elite Closing Down Truth Tellers – Paul Craig Roberts
8 minutes readDr. Roberts says big tech companies are too big to function fairly. Dr. Roberts explains, “They should be broken up, or they should be nationalized or actually they should be arrested. . . . They are part of a plot. They are engaged in high treason against the government of the United States. If I was the Attorney General, I would have all of them arrested and put in solitary confinement awaiting trial. That’s where they belong. That’s where Google belongs along with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and NPR. They are all involved in a plot to overthrow the President. So, they would all be arrested and put in jail. . . . Why aren’t they? Well, Trump just doesn’t have the power. They are stronger than he is. . . . There is not an ounce of integrity in the media.”
-
Under massive pressure, Trump backpedals on Russia “meddling”
11 minutes readANDRE DAMON—The Watergate scandal, the Church Commission of the 1970s and the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, not to mention the intelligence agencies’ role in fabricating the “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction ahead of the invasion of Iraq, their criminal mass domestic surveillance and their role in drone murder, made clear that these are criminal organizations, willing to use any means to expand their own power at the expense of democracy.
-
BILL VAN AUKEN—The entire rescue effort has been characterized by an outpouring of human solidarity and concern for the fate of the young people trapped beneath the earth, together with international collaboration and the deployment of immense resources to achieve the aim of bringing them out alive.