ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS

When you consider Obama’s record after four years in office–a multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, the continuing “war on terror,” more civil liberties shredded, the Employee Free Choice Act abandoned, deportations on the rise, a deepening assault on public schools–the answer has to be no. The list of broken promises and betrayed hopes goes on and on, outweighing anything that could be described as progress.

PEPE ESCOBAR—What’s actually happening right now in the Persian Gulf is way more entertaining. As I confirmed with energy traders in Doha late last month, demand for oil right now is higher than in 2018. And in consequence Iran continues to sell most of its oil.

BILL VAN AUKEN—”Bergoglio (the new Pope Francis) was ideologically predisposed to backing the mass political killings unleashed by the junta. In the early 1970s, he was associated with the right-wing Peronist Guardia de Hierro (Iron Guard), whose cadre—together with elements of the Peronist trade union bureaucracy—were employed in the death squads known as the Triple A (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance), which carried out a campaign of extermination against left-wing opponents of the military before the junta even took power…”

Philip Mudd, a former CIA agent and counterterrorism analyst on the network’s payroll, made the first false accusation during a Wednesday morning appearance on “New Day.” (The abject and sleazy cowards quickly withdrew the video, no longer available on YouTube.)“I think there’s an effort to protect WikiLeaks from a pedophile who lives in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London,” Mudd said, referring to the WikiLeaks founder.  WikiLeaks quickly fired back via social media, threatening a lawsuit against CNN.

GREG MAYBURY—Insofar as the situation in Venezuela goes, placing to one side the reality that hell has no fury like an empire scorned, it is perhaps instructive to consider other reasons as to why Uncle Sam has such a ‘hard on’ for the country and its current, ‘recalcitrant’ leader Nicholas Maduro. Firstly, a little backstory. As most folks know, every regime change cum military operation comes with its own unique identifier, a brand if one likes, to use marketing terminology. It’s uncertain if the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex™ — which knows a thing or three about marketing to be sure, possibly much more than they do about actually winning wars — has contrived a specific nomenclature for any possible offensive operation in Venezuela.