There's this endless debate about Russian interference in U.S. affairs. To one side of the aisle, Trump only got to the White House thanks to meddling of Putin's operatives, while the other is ever so quick to dismiss conflict of interests of too-close-to-Trump folk. Case in point: Trump's very own lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

The sheer amount of #fakenews circulating is staggering. A clueless, ignorant adolescent, being "person of the year" provides just the explanation needed to grasp the sort of intellectual rigour in editorial rooms across the world. Reuters, a news agency that has plagiarised without attribution stuff published here, came yesterday with a totally unsubstantiated piece (based on "two people with knowledge of PDVSA data"), suggesting PDVSA's crude output had jumped 20%. Any person with a subscription to maritime data services can see how crude offtake has increased recently.

Here's a working hypothesis: In the framework of Rudy Giuliani's recent visit and stay in Alejandro Betancourt's castle El Alamin, talk about Giuliani's lobbying AG William Barr, the Justice Department and other officials of the Trump administration to get Betancourt off the hook could have been a quid pro quo.

SEE UPDATE - Got a phone call today, from my insurance company. Someone had called them, saying I had been involved in an accident, and wanted to get my home address and contact details. Given the impact my anti corruption work is having in Venezuela these days, it would not be a stretch to conclude that this is chavismo at work, yet again, here in London, trying some kind of silencing antic against me.