Alirio Zambrano said early Thursday that the executives of Houston-based Citgo were abruptly taken from their homes last night by the SEBIN intelligence police. Zambrano, the brother of two of the six detained men, said their current whereabouts are unknown.
Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his second in command made no bones about the reason for the latest roundup of the U.S. execs:
Maduro condemned Trump’s embrace of Guaidó while socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, who is widely seen as the second most powerful person in Venezuela’s government, vowed to retaliate for the meeting.
“Every time they do something, we’re going to turn harder to the left and see who squeals,” Cabello said Wednesday night in his weekly TV program.
The point is not whether one supports Maduro or believes he is a corrupt leftist -- it's that Donald Trump doesn't know his as* from his elbow when it comes to diplomacy and interactions with foreign governments. Every time he opens his mouth someone, somewhere, pays a penalty.
Second point I referenced: Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's so-called "peace plan" for the Middle East which, of course, was DOA the instant the Palestinians heard about it.
Yesterday, in an uptick in violence since Trump announced the plans (along with Kushner's demeaning remarks to Palestinians), which left 3 Palestinians dead and 16 Israelis wounded,
[Palestinians] linked the violence to President Donald Trump's Middle East peace initiative, which heavily favors Israel on all the most contentious issues of the conflict and would allow it to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.
“Those who introduce plans for annexation and apartheid and the legalization of occupation and settlements are the ones who bear full responsibility for deepening the cycle of violence and extremism,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said in a statement.
Even ISIS' official media arm reacted to Kushner and Trump's "peace" proposal with new threats. In an audio message released last week, ISIS media spokesman Abū Hamza al-Qurashī said (no link so as not to spread propoganda):
Thus O soldiers of the Khilafah everywhere, and in particular those of you in the beloved Sinai and the blessed Sham, before you are the Jewish settlements and markets, turn them into testing grounds for your weapons, your chemical missiles, and so on. And to the Muslims in Palestine and all other lands, be the spearhead in the fight against the Jews. Thwart their plots such as “The Deal of the Century”.
The ISIS spokesman also had some choice words for Donald Trump, who he referred to as the "dog" and "idiot of Rome:
And we say to the dog of Rome, Trump: the two dogs who ruled America before you, Bush and Obama, also claimed and declared they had defeated the Islamic State a number of previous times. Or do you have no shame? You all have been declaring and claiming for 15 years the elimination of the muwahhidin. Your war with the Islamic State was restricted in Iraq, but today, by the grace of Alit has extended to the east and west of the globe, to Iraq, Sham, Yemen, Sinai, Libya, Somalia, Khurasan, Pakistan, India, the Caucuses, West and Central Africa, Tunis, and Algeria. Indeed, you were plotting, and Allah plans; and Allah is the best of planners. ....
An Inspector General's report last week found the killing of ISIS leader al-Baghadi had little effect on ISIS's operations (at pp. 17, 40):
ISIS quickly named a successor following the Oct. 27 death of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. ISIS remained a cohesive organization with a command and control structure capable of low-level attacks. In Iraq, ISIS exploited the mountainous and desert terrain in northern and western provinces to continue
operations.
