AS IF THEY WEREN'T DOING THAT ALREADY: John Kerry Advised Russian Foreign Minister ‘Just Ignore Obama’.

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE:

When the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez came into power in 1998, he saw in his movement an answer to capitalism and a solution to Latin America's soaring inequalities. Chávez's aspirations were clearly global, and he even had the gumption to list "preserving life on the planet and saving the human species" as part of his 2012 election platform.

For a while, it seemed as if all of Latin America would catch the chavista wave. But though voters in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Nicaragua elected governments that shared Venezuela's ideology and outlook, the wave seemed to die down toward the end of the 2000s.

Now, it seems to be rising in the unlikeliest of places: Spain.

Read the rest for a good rundown on the extensive links between Venezuela and the new kids on the block in Spain. And then pray for us if they win. I'm not too concerned, though. I see this a bit like the Beppe Grillo phenomenon in Italy: a seemingly lifechanging phenomenon that fizzles as soon as they find themselves elected and people realize they're not as different to the others as they claimed while campaigning.

HMMMMM:

Five nuclear engineers were assassinated last week in a mysterious attack just north of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based NGO that monitors the crisis in Syria, one of the victims was gunned down when their car was ambushed was Iranian.

MUST BE A PANDEMIC: Virus that 'makes humans more stupid' discovered.

AND THE NYT explains it as if was the most normal thing:

The apartment checked off every box on the buyers’ wish list: airy, gracious, great views of the park. It was in a terrific building, one of the most prestigious on the Upper East Side. The couple moved in, unpacked and tried without success over the next few months to get settled.

In the end, they packed up and moved out, said their broker, Barbara Fox, the founder of the Fox Residential Group, because of a pervasive sense that they didn’t belong. It wasn’t that their neighbors were standoffish, ignored them in the elevator or didn’t invite them to their parties — though in fact the whole thing did come down to parties.

“Frankly,” Ms. Fox said, “they just felt the building had too many Republicans.”

To me it looks pretty intolerant and close-minded.

MASSACRE.

NO OFFENSE: The New Threats to Free Speech.