I think the 'reverse discrimination' line is not a good look, for sure

A military capture of Russian-flagged vessels at sea won't seem like small stuff to most of the world, and the idea that a US sanctions regime can be seen as legitimate by the rest of us when the Trump administration is burning down the international order is also a hard sell right now

Hard to reconcile the flagrant illegality of US policy towards Venezuela this past week with the idea of a 'legal' sanctions regime - and I suspect that that regime will end up being highly selective rather than consistently enforced, in terms of Venezuela/Iran vs Ukraine

Ha ha! I mean Mike Lupica and George Will were *kinda* your colleagues, right?

I often think about this Guardian piece from 2011 insisting that we shouldn't equate the Daily Mail of the 1930s - "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" and all that - with the Daily Mail of today. And I'm afraid I think today's paper is at least as bad, and maybe worse

Alas disaster for Venezuela and the region rather than the crooks and punks of the Trump administration, I fear

Pro tip: If you're following the BBC's coverage of the Maduro abduction, it's worth googling the guests to see if they are Venezuelan defence industry entrepreneurs

Lemon pig has asked me to clarify that that's a 'Roman salute' in the second photo, bizarrely this materialised in late January/early Feb and has remained ever since

Above my pay grade, that piece of intel!