“There has been a huge amount of groupthink on the part of critics of Trump’s smash-and-grab operation to capture and prosecute Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. The critics make the obvious point that the incursion violated Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law; that Trump’s reversion to 19th-century colonialism and spheres of influence is an invitation for Putin and Xi to do likewise in their spheres; and that America’s adventures in nation building, long disparaged by Trump himself, have seldom worked out well. There is also near-universal commentary to the effect that Trump has no clear plans for the morning after. … But reading slightly between the lines, it’s evident that there is the concept of a plan, to use Trump’s idiom.” (01/05/25)
“A revolutionary in both spirit and action, Jesus not only died challenging the police state of his day — the Roman Empire and its lesser governments — but left behind a blueprint for resisting tyranny that has guided countless reformers and freedom fighters ever since.” (01/04/26)
“The very best possible outcome of the attack is that the Venezuelan people rise up, overthrow the current regime, and replace it with something more to their liking — but probably not to the Washington, DC regime’s liking. Which they could have done at any time, without Trump’s help, had they chosen to. The more likely outcome is that US forces will install a puppet/quisling regime to rule Venezuela to Trump’s (and Big Oil’s) liking, then spend years bleeding American blood and treasure into the place before an ignominious departure (with or without formal surrender). What’s NOT likely is that Trump and his accomplices will be removed from office/power, charged under US law, or extradited for trial under international law. That’s a shame.” (01/03/26)
“So regime change is back? Having for years mocked the wasteful, lethal Clinton-Bush-Obama crusades against states they hated, now President Trump has carried out a regime decapitation of his own. Having installed as his director of national intelligence one of the most stinging critics of regime-change wars – Tulsi Gabbard – now Trump launches not quite a regime-change war but certainly a regime-change strike. Having said MAGA would end these ruinous excursions and prioritise the needs of the American working class, now Trump goes south and does what so many administrations before his did: topples a Latin American dictator.” (01/03/25)
“President Trump signaled the Monroe Doctrine’s return from the start of his second term. A volatile mix of geopolitical, hemispheric and local politics was in play. The world’s largest reserves of ‘Texas Tea’ turned the wandering Eye of Sauron in Washington on the birthplace of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Trump Administration intends to juice US and global economic growth by reducing energy costs, as we saw in the 1980s and 1990s when oil prices dropped. Fossil fuels are the Trump Administration’s preferred choice of dirty energy to fuel the AI boom, which the US intends to lead. Oil-laden tankers departing from Venezuela en route to China are not part of the program. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration treats the American public like turnip truck rubes.” (01/03/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“We’ve seen this movie before, and it usually ends with a ‘To Be Continued’ screen that no one actually wants to watch. This isn’t a victory for freedom; it’s a dangerous expansion of the ‘World Policeman’ doctrine that has consistently failed us for decades.” (01/04/26)
“Maduro is a brutal dictator who is getting what he deserves. But Trump’s actions are still illegal, because lacking proper congressional authorization. Whether they result in a beneficial regime change in Venezuela remains to be seen.” (01/03/26)
“Venezuelans today are waking up to an unrecognizable country. Like every dictatorship, Maduro’s had invested heavily in the myth of its own invincibility. And yet the regime is very much still in place, albeit in a weird, decapitated state. State TV is still running regime propaganda, Vice President (soon, one surmises, to shed the ‘vice’) Delcy Rodríguez is still fulminating on behalf of the Venezuelan government, the hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello is still giving fire-breathing speeches condemning American aggression, Maduro’s notoriously repressive attorney general, Tarek William Saab, is still out mining the night’s events for propaganda points. The entire ghastly apparatus of state repression that Hugo Chávez built and Nicolás Maduro perfected appears, for now, to be fully in control of the country. Maduro is gone. It’s tempting to think that, without him, the regime will implode. But Maduro’s was never the kind of personalist system that depends on a single leader.” (01/03/26)
“Talk is cheap — but Polymarket lets you put your money where your mouth is. Nearly four years after being shut down by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the online betting company that allows you to stake money on future events has become CFTC-compliant and relaunched for U.S. residents at the end of 2025. Not everybody is thrilled about Polymarket’s return. Commentators across the political spectrum have warned that betting, on sports or on anything, can cause financial and psychological harm, especially for those with a history of addiction. It’s prudent to abstain from speculating with money you can’t afford to lose, but Americans should still welcome Polymarket’s comeback.” (for publication 0/26)
“That Nicolás Maduro is a monster is patent, as was the illegitimacy of his government, which disdained respect for the consent of the governed. But the urgent argument begins, not ends, with those two facts. Heartbreak, a risk inherent in puppy love, today afflicts those who believed this president’s reiterated disparagements of U.S. involvement in regime changes, wars of choice and nation-building. The lovers will recover. … When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, ‘Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.’” (01/03/26)
