🇨🇴✔️🇺🇸 — 🇻🇪 The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, officially acknowledges that the United States bombed an ELN factory in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and contradicts Nicolás Maduro, who denies that this happened:
“It turns out that many boats attacked with missiles, as is happening in the seizures we carry out in Colombia or, with our help, outside Colombia, were not carrying cocaine but cannabis.
A paradoxical problem: in the U.S., in many places it is legal. And the Colombian Congress should not have allowed its illegality; it was lost by one vote. That vote has taken the lives of many humble boatmen, and not of a single U.S. consumer or consumer anywhere in the world. Trump is completely wrong. Cocaine to Europe is moving by submarine and container. Cannabis is what is being illegitimately attacked.
The ELN in Catatumbo, and the 33rd Front, must decide whether they are going to compete for cocaine or for Peace. Only about 5% of the cocaine produced in Colombia passes through there.
We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo; we fear that they mix coca paste there to make cocaine and take advantage of the location on Lake Maracaibo.
It is simply the ELN. The ELN is allowing, through its racketeering and its mental dogma, the invasion of Venezuela.
The Colombian army must immediately take a ‘Gringo edge’ in Catatumbo and replace crops. Today, due to the expansion of coca leaf cultivation in Latin America, faced with a demand that is growing only too much in Europe, the price of cocaine has collapsed. There are huge warehouses in Africa storing dozens of tons of cocaine, and the price of coca leaf in Colombia has collapsed; cannabis and illicit gold are now more profitable than cocaine.
It is time for substitution; the state must take advantage of it.
They have made Trump believe that I am a front man for Maduro, hence his recent references to me. I thought U.S. intelligence was more professional, or that, if it is, the president of the U.S. does not listen to it and surrounds himself with greedy far-right figures who are not seeking the truth.
A few days after the New Year, I will recount the particularities of my relationship with Chávez’s progressive movement and my frustrations about what remained of his government after his death.
I do not know whether Maduro has illegitimately taken wealth from Venezuela; in our country there is no evidence of drug trafficking on his part. The generals we proved were negotiating cocaine were in sedition with the support of the Colombian government, seeking a coup in Caracas.
But by now professional investigators in the U.S. should have verified that neither I nor my close relatives have assets outside the country or in Colombia, other than my home, for which I am still in debt.
Even The New York Times has already published a journalistic article saying that they have found no evidence against me to keep me on the OFAC list.
What a mess by the U.S. government. My last phone conversation with Maduro was about how to jointly strike the ELN on the border. I am a free man and always will be, and I do not care about greed.”
Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) on 𝕏 🖇
📢 🇬🇧 🥫 Britain has urged households to stock enough water, non-perishable food and medicine to be self-sufficient for three days, launching a new “Be Ready” preparedness campaign.
Government guidance recommends about three liters of drinking water per person per day, food that needs no refrigeration or cooking, essential medications, a first-aid kit, a torch, a battery or wind-up radio, a charged power bank and cash.
Officials cited severe storms, wildfires, cyberattacks and supply chain disruptions as the main risks, with Defence Secretary Wes Streeting pointing to “increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks” and scenarios such as supermarket payment systems going down.
Germany has long gone further, recommending households keep emergency supplies for 10 days, including about two liters of liquid per person per day.
📝 ReadyGuidance: "Worth noting the US version of this advice, at Ready.gov, is one gallon of water per person per day, about 3.8 liters, because ...
🇮🇹 Italy Experiences Food and Fuel Shortages After Truckers on Strike Block Roads. 90% of gas stations in Campania are out of fuel
Truckers protesting high gas prices have prevented deliveries to parts of southern Italy, leading to empty shelves and dry pumps.
On Wednesday night in Naples, Italy, a 72-year-old retiree walked into a supermarket to buy himself a snack and found it nearly bare.
It was out of milk, yogurt and eggs. Its shelves of pasta, oils and canned tomatoes were almost empty. The vast produce section was empty save for red onions, chestnuts, two melons and a case of ornamental gourds.
“It’s worse than I expected,” said Giuseppe Crisci, the retiree, who walked out with a bag of biscuits. “And what I expected was exceptional.”
Experiences like Mr. Crisci’s played out repeatedly this week across Naples, a sprawling port city in Italy’s south where residents faced widespread shortages at their gas pumps and grocery stores.
It is the fallout from a week of...
🇺🇸🗳⚡️- RN's Midterm Forecast With A Week And A Half To Go 3/3:
Why we think this election will be the first real nail in the coffin for Trumpism.
It has been said so many times it's become a meme, “the walls are closing in” “No way he wiggles out of this jam!” etc. This time it's not a joke, the armor that Trump has had around him for a decade is clearly slipping off.
Trump’s approval by his own 2024 voters continues to rapidly decline, damaged by the nonstop rampant corruption and the Iran War.
Trump approval within the GOP, despite remaining strong on paper, is actually at its lowest since 2015 before he won the 2016 primary. The Iran War in particular has nuked his bedrock fanatical support within the GOP base when looking at not only surveys but also via multiple anecdotes on AM radio talk shows who get callers every day saying they feel betrayed by the war, and that the corruption is becoming unignorable.
GOP activists at the local level are also reporting to their ...