WASHINGTON’S VASSALS

Terrorists are using strongholds in Colombia and Spain to prepare attacks against Venezuela, and the Spanish government is doing nothing to stop it, President Nicolas Maduro has alleged. “From Colombia, from the Casa de Narino [the official presidential residence] a permanent conspiracy exists to attack Venezuela, to carry out terrorist attacks…These and other attacks are planned from Spain, but the Spanish government plays deaf, mute and crazy”, Maduro said in a speech broadcast by national television. Accusing Madrid of protecting Leopoldo Lopez, a Venezuelan opposition figure and fugitive who is wanted in his home country for criminal association and public incitement to violence, Maduro suggested that “it would be very easy for Spanish intelligence to investigate all the complaints and evidence that the National Assembly has provided [against Lopez]. It would be simple because the technical and investigative capabilities of Spain’s police are very strong, but they don’t want to do this, and protect a terrorist”.

Having been a close aide to Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton at different times through the past decade and more, Blinken’s antipathy toward Putin and Russia will not come as a surprise. But life is real.

If the extraordinary op-ed written by former president Dmitry Medvedev last Saturday is any indication, the Kremlin estimates that Biden will have little stamina left to wage and sustain a Churchillian war with Putin after attending to the deep-rooted malaise in America’s body polity, which is also of a systemic character and can further aggravate the societal fragmentation in that country unless addressed single-mindedly.

PETER KOENIG—In some European countries, covid-unrest already clearly visible, i.e., Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Spain – and of course, in the very Germany. Civil and societal unrest is also boiling hot in France, currently one of the most repressive regimes in the western world.

VLADIMIR DANILOV—According to US magazine, The National Interest, “there has been a surge of alarming incidents between US and Russian military aircraft” over the past few months, and “most of the interceptions are taking place near Russia and thousands of miles away from the American homeland”. The article has also pointed out that “the undeniable reality is that the United States and its NATO allies are crowding Russia, not that Russia is crowding the United States”. In the meantime, the United States is seemingly continuing with its preparation for a global confrontation. On August 28, six US Air Force B-52Н Stratofortress strategic bombers, built to carry nuclear weapons, flew over all 30 NATO nations in Europe.

MAX BLUMENTHAL—This August, Kong Tsung-gan published a long-winded diatribe against China’s National Security Law in the Mekong Review, clamoring for harsh US sanctions on Beijing. While acknowledging in small print at the end of the essay that Kong was a pen name, Kern continued to insinuate that he was a Hong Kong native. “An indication of just how draconian the CCP edict is, is that I could be arrested, charged with ‘colluding with foreign forces’, and face up to life in prison just for calling for sanctions on CCP and HK officials,” he wrote. In reality, the author was not colluding with foreign forces. He was the foreign force.