The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its hotly anticipated UFO report, which at nine pages in length with no new information is about as spectacular a letdown for UFO enthusiasts as you could possibly get. It does however contain multiple lines which will likely be useful for cold warrior policymakers going forward, just as we forecast earlier.

In summary:

• The ODNI says there do appear to be unidentified objects in US airspace behaving in ways the government can’t yet explain.
• No direct mention is made of the possibility that these objects could be extraterrestrial in origin.
• Direct mention is made of the possibility that UFOs could be highly advanced Russian or Chinese technology.
• UFOs “pose a hazard to safety of flight” and could be a national security threat.

Those last two points are the only ones which US policymakers of any significance are going to pay attention to.

“UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security,” the report says. “Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”

“UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary,” the report adds.

“Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity,” it also says.

UAP REPORT: RUBIO FULL STATEMENT: Rubio is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) https://t.co/MKoxgQJytp pic.twitter.com/oNx3jRpZDU

— Kellie Meyer (@KellieMeyerNews) June 25, 2021

While the authors of the report also say they “currently lack data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary,” the fact that Russia or China magically leapfrogging US technology by centuries seventy years ago has been validated as a possibility by the report is a gift to cold warriors eager to ramp up aggressions and inflame a high-budget arms race against those nations.

Among those cold warriors is Senator Marco Rubio, one of the handful of individuals behind this strange new UFO narrative’s entry into mainstream attention. Rubio released the following statement shortly before the report was published:

“For years, the men and women we trust to defend our country reported encounters with unidentified aircraft that had superior capabilities, and for years their concerns were often ignored and ridiculed. This report is an important first step in cataloging these incidents, but it is just a first step. The Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern.”

As I’ve been saying repeatedly, the odds of this new UFO narrative entering mainstream consciousness courtesy of the Pentagon, military/intelligence operatives, and corrupt warmongering politicians at the same moment the US begins implementing a new cold war against Russia and China is far too convenient for mere coincidence to be a likely explanation. We can expect to see the hawkish agendas of warmongers like Marco Rubio further advanced by this new UFO narrative going forward.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

To begin to appreciate this fight, it is useful to conduct a short survey of the 3 weeks of fanatical neocon maneuvers led by Bolton, Defense Secretary Esper, Sen. Marco Rubio, and VP Pence. These maneuvers were instigated by two “unforgivable sins” conducted by Trump when the latter: 1) stated his wish that Russia be re-introduced to the G7 on August 21 stating “I think it would be better to have Russia inside the tent than outside the tent”, and 2) his defense of President Xi Jinping as “a great leader” who must resolve the Hong Kong chaos without American interference. These initiatives had to come undone at all costs.

Rubio, Esper, Pence and Bolton Push For War

First, neocon war hawk Marco Rubio ranted at length in the Washington Post calling for the US government to intervene into the Hong Kong mess which itself has been stirred up by American intelligence outfits like the CIA-affiliated National Endowment for Democracy.

In his September 3 editorial, Rubio stated “the administration should make clear that the United States can respond flexibly and robustly in Hong Kong” and called for the Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act co-sponsored by Rubio, Ben Cartin (Democrat), James Risch (Republican), and Robert Menendez (Democrat). The act, if passed would force the US government to fully support the Hong Kong color revolutionaries while sanctioning all

Chinese officials who “have undermined the city’s autonomy”.

Just before Rubio’s belligerent words went public, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper had already exclaimed publically that America had to confront China directly in support of US allies in the Asia-Pacific over territorial issues and containment of China’s growth. Esper shocked many Asian and western statesmen alike when he stated that there is a “coming shift” from “low intensity conflict… to high intensity conflicts against competitors such as Russia and China”.

In this surreal relay race to Armageddon, Vice-President Mike Pence next took the baton during his September 2 speech in Warsaw, Poland alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda. It was here that Pence here took the opportunity to demonize Russia when he said “with its efforts to meddle in elections across Europe and around the world, now is the time for us to remain vigilant about the intentions and the actions taken by Russia.” Pence went further to state without any evidence that “Russian forces still illegally occupy large parts of Georgia and Ukraine.”

Pence was joined in Poland by ex-US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who ended his tour of four former Soviet nations begun a week earlier (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Poland). Beginning his tour on August 26 in Kiev, Bolton took the opportunity to attack Ukraine’s growing relationship with China which is on the verge of finalizing a deal to purchase the beleaguered Ukrainian aerospace giant Motor Sich. Ever since the Russian sanctions began, the Ukrainian company has lost over 40% of its markets with the Chinese providing the only chance for its salvation. Exhibiting his usual flare for hypocrisy, Bolton attacked China saying: “The Chinese are not afraid to use corruption – or to put it bluntly, bribes – to get the decisions they want”, calling for Ukraine to reject the deal.

The New Silk Road: A Nightmare for all Neocons

It is important to note that Ukraine signed an action plan to join the Chinese-led Silk Road Economic Belt and 21^st century maritime Silk Road already 18 months ago with recent plans to accelerate that cooperation. Ever since the BRI and Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union increasingly began merging into a unified program, western NATO-philes have realized that their years of hard work to de-rail a pro-Eurasian alliance in Ukraine could easily come undone.

Having made a mess of Ukraine, Bolton then headed to Belarus, and Moldova pushing an anti-Russian line, ending his trip in Poland where he solidified the location for the additional American 1000 troops to be added to the 4500 US troops already operating in the nation- many of whom operate America’s anti-Russian ABM system.

The ABM system which has been built up around Russia’s southern perimeter and which Poland plays a key role, is part of a larger agenda identified by the Russian government as “Full Spectrum Dominance” and seeks a unipolar nuclear first strike monopoly. Poland’s only hope to avoid being caught in the middle of a nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia is to break free of this program and accept China’s offers to join the BRI which experts have recently stated would make Poland “The Buckle of the Belt and Road”.

It was not lost on Bolton and Pence that Poland is also a key member of the 17+1 Central and Eastern European nations + China group which has deeply tied itself to the BRI while Belarus is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union- making their allegiance to the western technocracy more fragile than some would like to admit.

Breaking Free of the Self-Destructive Psychology of Empire

When objectively assessing the psychological state of the western oligarchy at this particular moment in history, it must be concluded that certain forces operating on behalf of the City of London and Wall Street would go to any length– not excluding nuclear war- in defense of their failing system. There is thus no solution to this dark chapter of the human experience unless:

The bankruptcy of the financial system now sitting atop a $800 trillion derivatives bubble is fully acknowledged such that a serious discussion centered on bankruptcy re-organization can finally occur.

That the neocons and other deep state operatives be flushed from power- following Bolton into the trash bin of history.

That the need for a new system premised upon cooperation and long term development is adopted post-haste. This new system would have to contain certain non-negotiable features such as nationally-guided capital controls to prevent speculative fluctuations of currencies and other vital resources, the separation of investment banking from normal commercial banking functions as was done under the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (repealed in 1999 in the USA), and long term credit generation for major infrastructure projects.

The BRI as the Foundation for a New System

Russia, China and India are increasingly becoming the foundation for a new multipolar world order founded upon the respect for sovereign nations and improvement of conditions of life of the people driven by Putin’s Far East/Arctic vision and China’s New Silk Road which are winning over dozens of nations to a new paradigm of political economy.

For all of his problems, Donald Trump has maintained a generally consistent (albeit flawed) intention to re-build American industry and infrastructure after decades of post-industrial decay and combat the Deep State which has worked on overtime to overthrow his presidency. On top of this, he has seriously worked to keep the nation out of foreign entanglements while avoiding any new wars (a first for any president in over 50 years). Most importantly, he has attempted repeatedly to create positive relations with Russia and China.

Whether the neo cons infesting the US administration successfully subvert this potential for a new paradigm which would be unstoppable under a Russia-China-India-USA alliance, or not remains an open question, but Trump’s firing of Bolton will hopefully represent a new purge of war mongering sociopaths while opening the door to a new foreign policy doctrine.

Where do all these ludicrous little armchair heroes come from? Are they all Marco Rubio’s clones? Does the CIA clone them at Langley?

In Paris, pretentious President Emmanuel Macron splashes out millions of euros to surround himself with a splendor more worthy of Louis XIV than a democratically elected 21^st century leader. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands continue to rock the nation in Yellow Vest protests at the harsh austerity regulations he continues to impose on the French people.

In London, Secretary of Defense Gavin Williamson insults leading figures from France and Germany to Russia and China while the United Kingdom disintegrates around him.

Juan Guiado continues to farcically claim he is President of Venezuela despite the political groups he claims to represent receiving only one fifth of votes in the most recent elections.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has had to take a break from lecturing the rest of the world on the supposedly democratic values they should follow because of an embarrassing and sordid political influence scandal that has led to two angry resignations from his Cabinet.

And in the United States, Senator Rubio, poster child of the Boy Toys exposed his true colors with an ugly, even obscene threat to legitimately-elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro threatening him with murder by the anal insertion of a broken bottle if he did not step down and make way for Guiado.

There is an astonishing element of similarity to all these figures. They are all in their forties, except for Guiado – the true child among them at only 35. They could all pass as teenagers. They all project an attempted air of wholesomeness and earnest idealism which their records reveal as utterly fraudulent.

None of the Boy Toys has any record of distinction in international affairs or in promoting constructive progress in their own nations. Yet every one of them is eager to foster civil strife around the world, or to impose policies that would tear their own countries apart (Macron, Williamson and Guiado).

Every one of them seeks to present an unconvincing image of firm, dynamic and courageous leadership yet all of them pathetically rely on the armed forces of the United States or the willingness of the US government to intervene shamelessly in their own domestic affairs to uphold their positions and policies.

It is sometimes difficult to forget that Rubio is only two years out of his freshman term in the US Senate. He already seems to have been with us forever.

Williamson in the UK, Macron in France and now Guiado outside Venezuela were all plucked from nowhere, all on the basis of nothing more profound than their willingness to swallow the same internationalist, liberal, free trade party line they were all required to.

All the Boy Toys most resemble, in the wonderful words Alice Roosevelt Longworth used to dismiss 1948 US presidential candidate Tom Dewey, the little toy man on top of a giant wedding cake.

It is this image even more than the earnest, fake sincerity all of them seek to project like the most unscrupulous second-hand auto salesman that reveals the inner emptiness of all these ludicrous-named “leaders.”

They represent the last days of the liberal consensus of the West three quarters of a century after its great moment of triumph in 1945: A victory that in reality was won through the lives, blood and sacrifice of millions of Soviet soldiers.

Is there any significance to the rapid simultaneous rise to eminence and fame of the Boy Toys across the Western world? I believe there is.

A quarter of a millennium ago, Edward Gibbon, the great historian of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” noted that when ruling establishments had lost every remaining vestige of decency and confidence in public scrutiny, they turned to appointing nonentities as public figureheads, as the only figures weak enough not to threaten them with any hint of independence.

Rubio and his legion of not-quite-convincing Boy Toy contemporaries fit this requirement perfectly. They are the natural successors to Romulus Augustulanus, the ludicrous last legal emperor of Rome (for less than a year) in 475-6 AD. As Gibbon said, “Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind.”

Photo: Flickr

The latest orgy of American gloating was triggered by the massive power outages to have hit Venezuela. No sooner had the South American country been blacked out from its power grid collapsing, senior US officials were crowing with perverse relish.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio – who has become a point man for the Trump administration in its regime-change campaign in Venezuela – was a little too celebratory. Within minutes of the nationwide power outage last Thursday, Rubio was having verbal orgasms about the “long-term economic damage”… “in the blink of an eye”. But it was his disclosure concerning the precise damage in the power grid that has led the Venezuelan government to accuse the US of carrying out a sabotage.

Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez noted how Rubio, in his tweeted comments “three minutes” after the power outage, mentioned failure of “back-up generators” in Venezuela’s main hydroelectric plant, known as the Guri Dam, located in Bolivar State. The dam supplies some 80 per cent of the Venezuelan population of 31 million with its electricity consumption.

Rodriguez mockingly ascribed “mystic skills” to Rubio because the Florida Republican senator appeared to know the precise nature of the power failure even before the Venezuelan authorities had determined it.

The Venezuelan government has since claimed that the failure in the electric grid was caused by a cyber attack on the computer system controlling the Guri Dam turbines. Caracas said it will present proof of its claims to the United Nations.

Apart from Rubio’s apparent insider information, there are several other indicators that Venezuela’s latest turmoil from power blackout was indeed caused by US sabotage, and specifically a cyber attack.

The South American country has experienced recurring power cuts over recent years due to economic problems and Washington’s sanctions. But the latest outage was widespread – at least 70 per cent of the country – and sustained for more than four days, rather than being rectified within hours. That scale of disruption suggests an unprecedented event, way beyond intermittent problems of maintenance.

The duration of the blackout in the capital Caracas and other major cities also indicates that the nature of the problem was difficult to reverse, which would be consistent with a cyber attack on the power grid. “It was a kill-shot,” says American political analyst Randy Martin.

Furthermore, US officials like President Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton as well as “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams have been warning that Washington is seeking new ways to pile pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to stand down.

Abrams was caught out last week in a prank phone call made by two Russian entertainers posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer in which Abrams openly advocated crushing the Venezuelan banking system in order to topple the government in Caracas. The American envoy, who was convicted over the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s for sponsoring terrorism to sabotage Nicaragua, appeared to balk at using overt US military power against Venezuela. That suggests Washington was persuaded on the efficacy of cyber warfare to inflict social chaos and incite popular anger against the Maduro government.

The immediate reaction by Washington officials and the US-backed political opposition in Venezuela was to blame the Maduro government for the power disorder. The failure was flagged up as a sign of “incompetence” and “mismanagement” of the oil-rich country by the socialist administration. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has declared himself the rightful president with Washington’s blessing, conveyed the logic of blackmail when he declared, “the lights will come back on when usurper Maduro is gone”.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also weighed in with repulsive gloating within hours of Venezuela’s power crisis. Pompeo tweeted: “No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.”

The delight openly displayed by Washington officials in regard to aggression against Venezuela has broken new ground in terms of the brazenness of US imperialism.

Only a few weeks ago, Bolton announced that the objective for seeking regime change in Venezuela against the elected President Nicolas Maduro was for US corporations to seize the South American state’s vast oil wealth – reckoned to be the largest known reserves on the planet, far exceeding those of Saudi Arabia.

Such is Washington’s unbridled lust for Venezuela’s natural resources that its imperialist advocates are falling over themselves with naked lies and crimes.

When a US Trojan Horse aid convoy was blocked from entering into Venezuela from Colombia last month, American politicians and media immediately blamed the Maduro government for sabotaging the effort. An aid truck was set alight on a border crossing on February 23. US Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Rubio, as well as CNN, condemned the Venezuelan authorities for “callous” destruction of vital aid delivery to its long-suffering people. It turns out, as even the New York Times has now admitted three weeks later, that the aid truck was torched by US-backed opposition supporters on the Colombian side of the border.

The obscenity of American imperialism is that it has inflicted huge social misery in Venezuela from years of sanctions and illegal confiscation (theft) of billions of dollars in assets belonging to the nation. Then it has the audacity to mount a charade seeming to deliver humanitarian aid.

The latest twist to this sadistic game played by Washington is turning the lights off across the entire nation, in homes, hospitals, airports and schools, among other essential services, and attempting to lay the blame on the Venezuelan government.

We may, however, be thankful for Washington’s overweening arrogance and criminality. Because, as Marco Rubio’s rash remarks concerning the latest power outage show, the American gangsterism towards Venezuela is being exposed for the naked aggression that it is.

US-based political analyst Randy Martin, in comments for this column, says that what Washington is doing to Venezuela is tantamount to the “rape of democracy”. “American imperialism has no longer any shame,” he said. “It used to rape countries under the cover a seedy alleyway of false excuses and hollow claims of righteousness. Now it has its trousers around its ankles and trying to rape Venezuela right on the global Main Street.”

We should make a great deal of it.

First, even by the anything-goes public obscenities and sheer, unlimited crassness of late 20^th and 21^th century American political culture, Rubio’s public threat is unprecedented.

Nazis behaved this way. Torturers and gangsters when they seize power on the small or enormous scale sometimes behave this way. Often, even they do not. The public excesses and brutalities of Al Capone, Dutch Schultz and Albert Anastasia from the 1920s to the 1950s were so great that even the other National Crime Syndicate bosses across America eventually washed their hands of them.

It is now clear that characters such as Lucky Luciano, the great mastermind of prostitution and heroin smuggling into America from the 1920s through the 1950s and Frank Costello, the so-called “Prime Minister of the Underworld” had more taste and restraint than the entire current membership of the United States Senate.

Luciano and Costello frowned on such behavior in public and actively restrained it, often by making lethal and permanent examples of perpetrators. Yet not a single current US senator has come out and condemned Rubio for making such a disgusting boastful public exhibition before the whole world.

Second, Rubio has revealed himself to be an ugly little bully. But he cannot be excluded by any means as a future national leader.

Rubio, who is intensely ambitious, ran for the presidency in 2016. He was vainly promoted by the mainstream American media or MSM as a credible candidate. Republican voters to their credit – even in his home state of Florida – did not buy it. Despite abundant funding, his campaign got nowhere. But it is by no means inconceivable that he could end up in the White House yet. At the very least, he could be a future vice presidential candidate. Just because he has revealed himself as contemptible before the entire world does not mean we should not take him seriously.

Thirdly, Rubio is not just an ugly little bully: He is also a tongue-tied coward. This is usually the case with bullies. Truly strong and formidable leaders often talk softly and soberly like Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan in the United States and Vladimir Putin in Russia. Motor mouth bullies like Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany before World War I and Italy’s Benito Mussolini in World War II invariably panic and fall apart when their blusters and bluff catch up with them.

We have already had a foreshadowing of this with Rubio. In the fall of 2015, in an early debate among Republican presidential candidates broadcast nationally, he was called out and reduced to incoherent blubbering and panic. Eventual Republican candidate Donald Trump did not have to do this. It was then governor of New Jersey Chris Christie who reduced Rubio to incoherence.

It is easy to make fun of Rubio, but the damage he is doing to the reputation of his own country around the world and to the crucial cause of world peace cannot be exaggerated.

In his vile Tweet, Rubio was seeking to establish a standing precedent not just of bullying but of threatening murder as a basic staple of US foreign policy.

Rubio probably did not even realize what he was doing, he has always been a cheap and superficial opportunist, eager to seize on the latest clichés and hysteria of the day to boost his visibility and win cheap popularity. Still, he seized on the murder of Gaddafi more than seven years ago and tried to use it to establish a precedent with which to threaten President Maduro today.

If Rubio were ever to end up as president or vice president of the United States, as secretary of state or US ambassador to the United Nations, all other world leaders would have real reason to fear US policy had escalated into regime change by assassination as a general principle.

If that were to happen, what had been routine policy disagreements between major nations on most issues would automatically become threats to existential survival. The danger of global war would escalate uncontrollably.

Far from joining forces to confront major global criminal and terrorist organizations, even the leading thermonuclear powers would be lining up to make alliances with such entities against their neighbors.

In fact, the United States was the great global pioneer in this too, when the OSS and then the CIA during and after World War II forged their enduring practical alliance with the Sicilian Mafia and the Neapolitan Camorra against revolutionary communism.

Rubio, it can be confidently concluded is entirely ignorant of all such concerns. Nothing matters for him but the applause of the moment and that he should be associated with a great foreign policy success: the toppling of the government of Venezuela. Any consideration of decency or restraint, let alone world peace is utterly alien to him.

The great German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who died more than 60 years ago in 1956, would have understood Rubio all too well. As Brecht asked, “Why be a man when you can be a success?”

Influential US Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio has tweeted a blatant death threat and incitement of violence against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. As of this writing the post has 13 thousand shares and counting.

The tweet consists of a “before” and “after” photo of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who in 2011 was mutilated to death in the streets following a US-led NATO intervention in Libya which was launched on false humanitarian pretexts. The first photo depicts Gaddafi alive and confident with a smile on his face, the second depicts him covered in blood following his capture by a militia group minutes before his death.

Senator Rubio has been Capitol Hill’s single most virulent advocate of US interventionism in Venezuela, and has been tweeting about it constantly. Since Washington’s bogus “humanitarian aid” delivery sparked violence on the borders of Colombia and Brazil, as it was intended to, Rubio has cranked his interventionist cheerleading up to eleven. The fact that Maduro would not allow a government that is openly staging a coup in Venezuela to hand a large unchecked delivery over to opposition factions within that very nation has been used to sell a narrative that Venezuela’s Evil Dictator is deliberately cutting off aid to a needy populace, which was of course planned. This narrative has been helped along by highly suspicious photo-friendly fires, and has been injected into mainstream consciousness with hysterical urgency by the likes of Rubio, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and the entire Trump administration. And it is completely false.

Firstly, Maduro is not refusing humanitarian aid for his people. Only an idiot would believe that the latest Official Bad Guy (who coincidentally happens to be sitting on top of the largest oil reserves on earth) is intentionally starving and depriving his people, and anyone who makes such claims should have to explain how they make that work in their minds. What’s the idea behind that, exactly? Is he starving them all and cutting them off from medical supplies because he hates them? Is he trying to kill everyone in Venezuela so that he can have the entire country to himself? Does he have some strange sexual fetish for the slow starvation of an entire citizenry? How specifically does this work?

In reality, Maduro has been accepting aid from everywhere except from the government that is openly staging a coup in his country in gross violation of its national sovereignty. Just last week Caracas accepted 933 tons of food and medical supplies from China, Cuba, India and Turkey, and Russia has shipped in 300 tons of aid on its own.

Secondly, the paltry $20 million in food, medical and hygiene supplies sent via USAID pales in comparison to the $30 million per day the new US oil embargo will be costing Venezuelans this year. If the US wanted to help the Venezuelan people, the best thing it could do is end its crushing economic warfare upon them, which experts say has made economic recovery all but impossible. Believing the CIA/CNN narrative that US sanctions only impact a nation’s leadership is dumber than believing that US bombs only kill bad guys; former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas has said that US-led sanctions are killing Venezuelans and could be tried under international law as crimes against humanity. The best way for the US to help Venezuelans would be to cease all interventionism and end its economic warfare upon them.

Thirdly, there’s not actually anything stopping the US from giving the aid shipment it claims it wants to deliver to Russia, China, Turkey or India, for example, and having them deliver it. It could do the same with the UN or the Red Cross. There are many ways in which the US government which claims to care so much about the Venezuelan people could get its “humanitarian aid” to them which does not include highly provocative deliveries via military craft and aggressive stand-offs at Venezuelan border towns. The fact that Washington refuses to take those routes is an admission that the goal was always provocation and never humanitarianism.

Marco Rubio does not give a shit about the Venezuelan people. Like all Capitol Hill war whores, he only cares about advancing the hegemony of the US-centralized empire. Rubio endorsed the overthrow of both Gaddafi and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011; now half a million are dead in Syria as a result of the empire’s failed regime change intervention there, and the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya created a humanitarian catastrophe where people are openly sold as slaves.

“I was just in Venezuela where I heard many people voice fears that the US wants to turn their country into another Libya,” journalist Aaron Maté reported in response to Rubio’s tweet. “I’d say their concerns are well-founded.”

This is the face of the US regime change intervention in Venezuela, everyone. Donald Trump, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and a war pig senator who calls for the torturous lynching of the leader of a sovereign nation. Whenever someone supports any part of this coup agenda, this is the side that they are standing on. This is the flag that they are flying.

Everyone knows on some level that the US government has a consistent and indisputable track record of lying about the leaders of nations in geopolitically crucial strategic locations when they refuse to bow to the demands of US interests. No matter how many Venezuelans you tell me you’ve talked to, how evil you tell me Maduro is, how awesome you tell me Trump is, or how bad you tell me socialism is, this will still be true. And you know that it is true. Stop compartmentalizing away from facts you know to be true and turn and face the reality of what’s going on here.

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The Logan Act states: “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Trump and his reactionary bloc are upset about Kerry’s meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the chief Iranian diplomatic negotiator who hammered out the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement between the United States, Iran, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany. Mr. Trump pulled out of the agreement in May 2018. In an effort to keep Iran in the agreement, Kerry met with Zarif on four occasions, including at international conferences in Norway, New York, and Munich.

Trump tweeted about Kerry’s meetings: “John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people . . . He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!"

In a letter to the Justice Department requesting a criminal investigation of Kerry, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio write, “Last week former Secretary Kerry publicly admitted that he has met with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif 'probably three or four times' including in the United States, since leaving office. The Department of Justice should therefore make a determination on whether or not former Secretary of State John F. Kerry's recent actions related to the [Iran Deal] potentially violate the Logan Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act."

Rubio should be careful about what he wishes for. There is more than ample evidence that Rubio, a Cuban-American, and a clique of right-wing Cuban-American activists, expatriate Latin American oligarchs and tax-evaders who maintain residences in south Florida, and diplomats of reactionary Latin American regimes violate the Logan Act and FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act) on a daily basis.

The type of political machine backing Rubio in Miami-Dade is a carbon copy of the old right-wing Latin American oligarchies of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and Joaquin Balaguer in the Dominican Republic. Add to the Cuban mafiosi in south Florida that backs Rubio, lucrative financial support from billionaires like Miami's Norm Braman, Wall Street vulture hedge fund magnate Paul Singer, and the Koch Brothers, and the reason for Rubio’s support for reactionary regimes and political movements throughout Latin America becomes apparent. Not only does Rubio violate the Logan Act and FARA, but also the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

The right-wing Cuban machine that backs Rubio consists of his political "godmother," Rebecca Sosa, Miami-Dade Commissioner, and Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo, Jr.

Bovo's father, Esteban Bovo, Sr. was a member of the Central Intelligence Agency-supported Brigade 2506, which saw combat during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Viviana Bovo, Bovo's wife, is Rubio’s Senior Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the US Senate. Rubio is the chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

Rubio regularly engages in anti-Venezuelan government activities in the exclusive Venezuelan expatriate community of Weston in Miami-Dade. There are so many wealthy Venezuelan opponents of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the community is now called “Westonzuela.” Included among the more prominent Venezuelan opposition figures calling Westonzuela their home are a former congressman, a former Supreme Court justice, and a former energy minister. Luigi Boria, the mayor of Doral, where Trump owns the Trump National Doral Golf Club, is an expat Venezuelan. There are so many Venezuelans living in Doral, it has the nickname “Doralzuela.” The Cuban right-wingers associated with Rubio have formed an alliance with the anti-Maduro Venezuelan expat community in south Florida, along with other anti-progressive forces from Nicaragua and El Salvador, including former leaders of the Nicaraguan “contras” and El Salvadoran death squads.

Rubio lobbied hard to get his man into the Trump White House to oversee Western Hemisphere affairs in the National Security Council. He is Juan Cruz, a Puerto Rican-American, who is the former CIA station chief in Bogota and the agency’s former director of the Western Hemisphere branch.

The first trip abroad for Colombian President Ivan Duque, a reactionary puppet of Colombia’s narco-lords and right-wing former President Alvaro Uribe, was to visit Rubio in the United States. Rubio is relying on Duque to create a safe haven for anti-Maduro Venezuelan and Colombian guerrillas, backed by the CIA, to operate in order to carry out cross-border attacks inside Venezuela.

Rubio has also established close ties to Honduras’s military-backed President, Juan Orlando Hernández, re-elected in a fraudulent election. Rubio has sought Hernandez’s agreement to reactivate several old Nicaraguan “contra” bases inside Honduras to battle against the democratically-elected government of President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rubio successfully sought and received Hernandez’s backing for US insurgency operations against the Maduro government in Venezuela.

Rubio is running a virtual right-wing parallel foreign policy on Latin America from his Senate office in Washington. Rubio, by establishing himself as the US “caudillo” exercising control over Western Hemispheric relations, has the State Department, under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, doing his bidding. After El Salvador established diplomatic relations with China, following that nation’s severance of ties with Taiwan, Rubio promoted legislation to cut off all US economic aid to El Salvador, which he claimed was ruled by a “leftist government.” Rubio accused the Dominican Republic of being “bribed” by China when it switched ties from Taiwan to China. Rubio also expressed dismay with Panama when it dropped Taiwan in favor of China. However, because Rubio’s right-wing Cuban, Colombian, and Venezuelan backers and allies have substantial interests in the Dominican Republic and Panama, including offshore bank accounts, Rubio did not threaten to punish them in the same way he did El Salvador. Rubio tweeted: “The US response to Panama & Dominican Republic switching from Taiwan to China is NOT the way we will react if El Salvador does the same. If they do this I will have no choice but to immediately begin work to end their funding & remove them from Alliance For Prosperity plan.”

It is not John Kerry who is running his own foreign policy, but Rubio, whose caudillismo grifting is nothing new to the expat gangsters and oligarchs who have taken up residency in south Florida and who maintain Rubio in office.

Photo: Flickr

Simply put, America’s “deep state” has not gone anywhere. It is thriving under a U.S. president who revels in opaqueness and unaccountability.

NED has pulled out all the stops to overthrow the socialist governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua. These efforts recently received a boost after Colombia elected right-wing narcoterrorist-affiliated Ivan Duque as president. Duque recently met with Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who has become the new de facto leader of the Republican Party’s branch of NED, the International Republican Institute (IRI), following Senator John McCain being sidelined with brain cancer.

Rubio has called on Trump to subject new sanctions on the Nicaraguan Government, in addition to U.S. visa bans already imposed by Washington on Nicaraguan government officials, including members of their families. Rubio is tied closely to members of the Nicaraguan opposition, including several wealthy Nicaraguan businessmen who maintain expensive homes in south Florida and who contribute handsomely to Rubio’s political campaign coffers.

The other Republican Senator who has taken up the anti-Sandinista cause is Texas’s Ted Cruz. In June 2018, Cruz and Rubio hosted a group of Nicaraguan right-wing “civil society” activists in Washington, DC. “Civil society” is a notorious code phrase employed by Soros political meddlers around the world. The Nicaraguans’ trip to Washington had been financed by the bank accounts of NED, flush with anti-Nicaragua cash provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a notorious cipher for the Central Intelligence Agency.

One of the largest recipients of anti-Sandinista USAID assistance in Nicaragua is the Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP). Its Managua operations and structure resemble the typical CIA front employed in Latin America’s dark past by Langley to disrupt political systems and economies.

Calling out the Trump administration’s embrace of neo-conservative-style regime change in Nicaragua, the European Committee of Solidarity with the Popular Sandinista Revolution stated, that the Trump administration’s actions are “a new attempt from the right-wing and U.S. imperialism against a sovereign and independent free nation and against it’s democratically elected president, Daniel Ortega.” The European groups singled out “neo-liberal” forces, which include Soros’s regime change entities, in working hand-in-glove with the Trump administration in “attacking frontally” the Ortega Executive and the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Trump and his alt-right surrogates rail against the influence of Soros on the international stage. Yet, Trump, a con-man and simpleton without peers among the crop of current world leaders, simply projects on to others for what he, himself, is guilty. Complementing Trump’s actions to topple the Daniel Ortega government in Nicaragua, is the Soros-funded Global Witness. The London- and Washington-based group has initiated a civil strife campaign among the Miskito indigenous people of the Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region. NED and Global Witness provocateurs are trying to convince the Miskitos, targets of similar manipulation by the CIA during the Contra-led civil war of the 1980s, that the Ortega government opposes indigenous rights, when the exact opposite is true.

Soros and Trump administration are coordinating their efforts to fund anti-government Nicaraguan groups in the public sector, labor unions, student groups, religious organizations, and media. The same scenario is being enacted by Soros and Trump in Venezuela, where the political opposition, flush with money from NED and Soros-funded groups, have all but paralyzed Venezuela’s political system and economy.

Trump, who has lied about his opposition to George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, appears prepared to conduct his own invasion of Venezuela. According to a July 4, 2018 Associated Press report out of Bogota, Colombia, in August 2017, Trump, in an Oval Office discussion with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser Lt. General H. R. McMaster about increasing sanctions on Venezuela, asked the two advisers why the United States just couldn’t invade Venezuela and overthrow its president, Nicolas Maduro. Trump told both officials, who warned against an invasion, that it worked for Ronald Reagan in Grenada in 1983 and George H. W. Bush in Panama in 1989.

Trump continued to harbor a desire to invade Venezuela, pressing the issue with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos at a dinner held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly plenary session in September 2017. Also cajoled by Trump at the dinner were presidents Michel Temer of Brazil, Juan Carlos Varela of Panama, and Peru Pedro Kuczynski of Peru. All four Latin American presidents refused to join Trump in an invasion of Venezuela and they warned him that the United States would face unprecedented blowback across the Western Hemisphere from such an action. Argentine president Mauricio Macri, a real estate partner of Trump in a building project in Buenos Aires, joined his right-wing Latin American colleagues in warning Trump against military action against Venezuela.

Nicolas Maduro, Jr., the son of Venezuela’s president, using language only in insane bully like Trump could understand, told the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly, “If Venezuela were attacked, the rifles will arrive in New York, Mr. Trump . . . We will take the White House.”

Latin America has witnessed a rightward turn in the last few years, with right-wing governments taking power in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. The July 1, 2018 election of left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) as president of Mexico reversed the trend in one of Latin America’s most powerful countries. An all-but-inevitable confrontation between AMLO and Trump will provide breathing room for Nicaragua, Venezuela, and two other joint Trump-Soros targets, Bolivia and Cuba. AMLO, unlike his hapless two predecessors, is no shrinking violet when it comes to dealing with the “gringos” of the North. A face off is certainly inevitable over Trump’s splitting apart the families of asylum-seekers from Central America and Colombia.

On the other hand, Trump has an ally in Colombia’s Duque, a right-winger with strong links to that nation’s paramilitary narco-terrorists, individuals who are willing to launch military forays into Venezuela for the right price.

Trump’s supporters in the alt-right community are fond of claiming that Trump is battling against some nebulous and amorphous American “deep state” that seeks to change foreign governments at the flip of a switch. Now, these same alt-right forces are openly calling for “regime change” in Iran. Their heroes include former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, both of whom recently addressed a meeting of the anti-Iranian cult-like terrorist organization, Mohajedin-e-Khalq (MEK), at their annual confab in Paris. Another MEK supporter, Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, is leading Trump’s efforts to bring about regime changes in countries around the world, including Iran.

On December 7, 2016, president-elect Trump delivered a speech in North Carolina that laid out his foreign policy. He declared: “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.” Trump’s words, along with his other rhetoric, were and remain as hollow as his personal integrity and ethics. But they are music to the ears of the military-intelligence-industrial “deep state” that Trump claims he abhors.