In Managua, Ben Norton interviews Nicaragua’s representative to the UN’s International Court of Justice, Carlos Argüello Gómez, who speaks about his country’s case against the US over its terrorist Contra war, the 2018 coup attempt, and why sanctions are an illegal form of warfare on civilians.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/22/us-war-sanctions-nicaragua-icj-carlos-arguello/

The company that spied on Assange in Ecuador's embassy 24/7 for the CIA is run by a former Spanish military officer who was allegedly contracted by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest donors.


https://t.co/xVJsMRQa6B

The company that spied on Assange 24/7 for the CIA is called Undercover Global.

Its owner, a former Spanish military officer, was in Alexandria, Virginia, 10 kms from Washington, DC, in 2017, right next to the US federal court that is investigating Assange.

Was he collaborating with the court that is trying to extradite and imprison Assange?
https://t.co/xVJsMRQa6B

Ben Norton travelled to Jinotepe, Nicaragua to report the shocking story of how the US embassy and OAS successfully lobbied for the release of violent criminals who led a coup attempt in 2018. Some of these so-called “political prisoners” have stabbed their pregnant girlfriends to death, raped, and murdered.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/28/us-oas-nicaragua-political-prisoners-murder/

How Joe Biden’s privatization plans helped doom Latin America and fuel the migration crisis

Colombians and Hondurans told us about the extreme damage the Democratic primary front-runner's plans did to their societies.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/28/biden-privatization-plan-colombia-honduras-migration/

EXCLUSIVE: In letters obtained by The Grayzone, OPCW whistleblowers confront official attacks on their credibility and challenge the organization's cover-up of the Douma, Syria deception.

https://t.co/lAHVKdJXoh

While posing as a grassroots human rights organization, the World Uyghur Congress is a US-funded and directed separatist network that has forged alliances with far-right ethno-nationalist groups.

The goal spelled out by its founders is clear: the destabilization of China and regime change in Beijing.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/world-uyghur-congress-us-far-right-regime-change-network-fall-china/

A fourth OPCW whistleblower has emerged to defend the two veteran inspectors who challenged a cover-up of the chemical weapons probe in Douma, Syria. The new whistleblower lamented that other staffers have been “frightened into silence.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/12/opcw-whistleblower-mistreatment-douma-investigators/

Promising to “smash” Venezuela’s government during a “maximum pressure March,” Trump has imposed crushing sanctions that force Venezuela to spend three times as much as non-sanctioned countries on coronavirus testing kits.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/17/us-sanctions-venezuelas-health-sector-coronavirus/

OAS head Luis Almagro’s new term promises more corruption, cronyism and coup-plotting.

Read the shocking history of the most incompetent, unethical and imperial-minded Secretary General in the history of the Organization of American States:

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/23/oas-luis-almagros-corruption-cronyism-coup-plotting/

Responsibility for pandemic preparation was privatized under the Obama and Trump administrations. It’s time to face down the national security state that wasted trillions on imperial wars and abandoned Americans to fight coronavirus alone.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-privatization-pandemic-national-security/

Human Rights Watch, the leading so-called rights organization in the US, has actively lobbied for Washington to impose suffocating sanctions on leftist governments in Latin America. The group has even praised the Trump administration for ramping up its regime-change measures.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/08/billionaire-human-rights-watch-sanctions-nicaragua-venezuela/

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is waging an information warfare campaign to undermine the elected Sandinista government, spreading fake news on coronavirus, while the state takes a balanced approach with close attention to the working class and poor.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/13/regime-change-coronavirus-nicaragua/

The new coronavirus stimulus bill includes $250 million for the State Department to implement “economic, security, and stabilization” activities.

Max Blumenthal looks at how these State Dept/USAID operations triggered a polio outbreak in Pakistan and Syria.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-stimulus-state-usaid-polio-syria/

Current and former staff members of the OPCW have denounced the organization’s IIT report alleging Syrian government sarin use at Ltamenah, criticizing its reliance on rumor, hearsay, “scientifically flawed” claims and the influence of unqualified, secret “experts” aligned with the Western-backed opposition.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/28/opcw-insiders-ltamenah-chemical-weapons-report/

The leaked contract between US coup puppet Juan Guaidó and the Silvercorp USA mercenary firm closely resembles the bounty the DEA placed on the head of actual President Nicolás Maduro and members of his inner circle this March.

The deal also tacitly authorizes the elimination of working-class Venezuelans in proposed death squad activities.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/10/guaido-mercenary-contract-venezuelas-maduro-us-bounty-death-squad/

Crowdstrike, the firm behind the Russian email hacking allegation at the core of Russiagate, makes a bombshell admission: “We did not have concrete evidence.”

In newly released Congressional testimony, Crowdstrike president Shawn Henry said that “we did not have concrete evidence” that alleged Russian hackers actually took the emails from DNC servers. “There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry said.

Aaron Maté breaks down Henry’s testimony and why it adds new doubt about the core allegation at the heart of Russiagate.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/11/bombshell-crowdstrike-admits-no-evidence-russia-stole-emails-from-dnc-server/

The #RaniaAndAnyaShow is live on YouTube right now, discussing the attempted mercenary invasion of Venezuela, conspiracies about China and Covid-19, and the aftermath of the US-backed military coup against Bolivia's democratically elected government, with journalist Wyatt Reed, who was on the ground in Bolivia reporting on the violent repression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLUFVknskjM

This exclusive report by Max Blumenthal is huge:

It shows how the CIA spied on Julian Assange 24/7 when he was in Ecuador's embassy in London, by using the security firm UC Global, run by former Spanish special forces officer David Morales.

Morales was charged by a Spanish High Court in October 2019 with violating the privacy of Assange and abusing the publisher’s attorney-client privileges, as well as money laundering and bribery. The documents revealed in court, which were primarily backups from company computers, exposed the disturbing reality of his activities on “the dark side.”

Obtained by media outlets including The Grayzone, the UC Global files detail an elaborate and apparently illegal US surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, US journalists, and an American member of Congress who had been allegedly dispatched to the Ecuadorian embassy by President Donald Trump. Even the Ecuadorian diplomats whom UC Global was hired to protect were targeted by the spy ring.

The ongoing investigation detailed black operations ranging from snooping on the Wikileaks founder’s private conversations to fishing a diaper from an embassy trash can in order to determine if the feces inside it belonged to his son.

According to witness statements obtained by The Grayzone, weeks after Morales proposed breaking into the office of Assange’s lead counsel, the office was burglarized. The witnesses also detailed a proposal to kidnap or poison Assange. A police raid at the home of Morales netted two handguns with their serial numbers filed off, along with stacks of cash.

One source close to the investigation told The Grayzone that an Ecuadorian official was robbed at gunpoint while carrying private information pertaining to a plan to secure diplomatic immunity for Assange.

Throughout the black operations campaign, US intelligence appears to have worked through billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, a company that had previously served as an alleged front for a CIA blackmail operation several years earlier. The operations formally began once Adelson’s hand-picked presidential candidate, Donald Trump, entered the White House in January 2017.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/14/american-sheldon-adelsons-us-spy-julian-assange/

The Intercept published a Russiagate story that landed Reality Winner in prison, burning its third source. That article was co-authored by Richard Esposito, an embedded police reporter who is now the NYPD's top spokesperson.

We investigate the shocking scandal here:

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/20/the-intercept-reality-winner-richard-esposito-nypd/

There is a shocking update in this massive corruption scandal: A US judge just approved moving forward with the liquidation of Venezuela's most valuable foreign asset, Citgo, which is worth billions of dollars.

Venezuela's real, elected government used this publicly owned company to fund social programs for the Venezuelan people. But the Trump administration illegally stole Citgo in order to fund the coup gang of Juan Guaidó.

Now a US judge is going to sell Citgo off to oil corporations, and then use that money to pay a Canadian mining company. Other US oil corporations will take some of the money as well.

This is textbook vulture capitalism. These corporate vultures are going to work together to pick apart their prey -- and the Venezuelan people are the ones who suffer greatly because of it.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/03/the-citgo-conspiracy-opposition-figures-accuse-guaido-officials-of-scam-to-liquidate-venezuelas-most-prized-international-asset/