Free Republic

Spanish special-operations police, their faces covered with balaclavas and their weapons visible, attempted to force their way past Bolivian police at the Mexican Embassy in La Paz on Dec. 27. The effort failed but it left behind troubling questions about whether rogue interests inside the Spanish government are working with Mexico on behalf of former Bolivian officials, some of whom face criminal charges. Spanish elite police had already escorted the Spanish Embassy’s chargé d’affaires and its consul to the Mexican Embassy earlier that morning. When two more cars, carrying masked members of the same counterterrorism unit, showed up later and...

President Trump’s practice of staking out extreme positions on trade as a negotiating tactic is a sign of his brilliance. Or so we’re told. But that theory took on water last week, when Mr. Trump had to backtrack on a promise to hit Mexico and Canada with a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum, without any concessions from either Mexico City or Ottawa. To understand the change of heart, take the list of products slated for a new Trump tariff on steel and total the value of those same products exported by U.S. producers. You will...

Eventually, the Venezuelan government had to launch an attack on Mary O’Grady, the hard-hitting columnist at the Wall Street Journal who has criticized the Chavez government from the minute it started peeling away at Venezuela’s democracy. Like no other writer, O’Grady has described in detail the path that led to the government’s consolidation of power. While O’Grady has criticized other foreign governments, including Ecuador’s and Cuba’s, no other government in the world has an office in Washington with the sole purpose of attacking and discrediting US news media. This has made Mary O’Grady a prime target for the Venezuela Information...

When you think of a government information office, do you think of much more than dusty information pamphlets and glossy tourist brochures full of pleasant platitudes, putting the best face forward on a particular nation? Such is perfectly natural for friendly, and even some not-so-friendly nations, because that's what government information offices normally do. But Venezuela's Marxist government has an entirely different idea. The innocuously named Venezuela Information Office in Washington, D.C. is an aggressive Cuba-style PsyOps and disinformation operation sponsored by the Venezuelan government. Its operatives not only seek to get the Venezuelan government's castroite message out to the...