The inevitable war with Venezuela

Good news, the regime has released 24 more prisoners this morning - 800 to a 1000 more to go. One day more in which Godgiven Hair (he's pretty bald by the way) could not muster enough support to coup. Two more torture centers that were convinced to release.

Release of political prisoners inches forward as Venezuela frees another 24

 

From what I heard in Bolivia, wrestling power away from these types of regimes is a long and slow process that needs years. It's a power structure with multiple corrupt tentacles stretching throughout society allowing 20% to live well on government jobs, 20% in a rat race to join and the rest living in fear and poverty.

 

So glad that could never happen here!

 

That bodes well for America.

So, 2 decades to recover? Maybe 3 or 4?

 

Ask me how long its taken us to get rid of neo colonialism and white supremacy.

 

It's a gradual electoral process under fair elections. Once the ruling party has to play fair it starts to fragment. It takes at least three elections. However, that is Bolivia where the population is self-trained to instinctively coordinate against military intervention or election manipulation. For better or for worse, every single Bolivian at every level has a good understanding of how to organize and execute strikes. We also don't have any group that is good at leveraging true violence.

Venezuela went down a dark, dark pathway and I'm not sure how that will work. My opinion is that the US not having boots on the ground yet showing that they can strike if they need to is working well enough. No boots on the ground means no obvious target but violent actors still fear retaliation. The regime has already fractured and neither side has burst out in violence yet so it seems that the US pressure has worked. The big question is if the opposition comes out then will the regime coalesce to act against target? Not sure yet. What is for certain, there needs to be some level of impunity. If the regime feels that retaliation is certain then they will resist.

 

Trump may try to take credit for that, so not the good news it's being advertised as being

 

I'm approaching this from the viewpoint of not giving a damn about anything else except democracy in Venezuela. There are plenty of others who are voicing US centered and Western centered concerns.

 

Fair enough.
You live here, in Florida no less, but I understand.

 

My family ran from a coup when I was two. When I was eleven, I witnessed my whole country march against the military junta. I preemptively left Bolivia when I was 30 because I could foresee what was going to happen. I was told stories about the 1952 Revolution. I know these things intimately.

What's going on in the US is a slow degradation but it won't complete in the next ten years which is good enough for me.

 

Well, I'm hoping for faster than that. A prolonged descent won't be noticed by the people who need to notice to head it off.

Quick action is more visible, and if it speeds up enough, more of us will be able to see that we should have acted sooner and with less concern about the rules of decorum.

 

We were different after the Civil War than we were before. We were different after the Great Depression and WW II than we were before. That could happen again.

But we, collectively, have to make it happen. Not just observe and hope.

 

I get that we would never hold onto what we were. That’s dumb.

But what is dumber is the way we have acceded our prominence to the stupidest people in the stupidest way.

 

Well, it is in these kind of countries you need the DOGE concept, or a strict form of zero base budgetting.
Cut everything down and build what is proven necesary.

 

Parens added by me.

That validates the post with which you disagreed. So, not good news if Trump can take credit for it. He is not like the other presidents (except maybe Reagan and A Johnson), so what other presidents have done doesn't factor here. None of his actions should be treated the same way.

Deejay's situation is different from yours or mine.

I'm the opposite of them, 'Nutter, but I'm just like them. I have lived this long by understanding that I have no choice but to be.

 

It just depends. Easiest way to fix an economy that has been wrecked and become K shaped?

Well it involves taking money from the top and redistributing it to the middle and lower classes.

It's really simple. The hard part is getting the money to go from the top to the bottom. We know how it goes from the bottom to the top. You demonize minority groups, attack higher education, separate the working class's politics from economics and force them to focus on social issues. That's been American politics since the 1980s. The good news? If you fix it and slap a big band aid like the New Deal? It takes decades for that process to unravel.

The Bad News? Americans above the age of lets say 40-45 have been so propagandized to hate Socialism without even realizing it was what made America great in the First Place. You don't really have a Middle Class without it. Capitalism doesn't do that. Socialism does. Capitalism creates Robber Barons and Technocrats. FDR stole a ton from the Socialists Party's platform to form the New Deal. They just lied about where it was coming from so that the elites could continue to maintain control and the wealth didn't get distributed a little too well for their comfort. If you look into all the studies, generational wealth is the best indicator for the potential to join the ranks of the top 1 percent. Can it happen to someone from the middle class? Sure. But it isn't the type of meritocracy that it's claimed to be.

 

Interesting profile of Cabello in the Guardian. They interviewed former Chavista communications minister, Andrés Izarra who now lives in exile. In his opinion, Cabello is going to work extremely hard at playing very, very nice with Trump, which is unlikely to help the population.
When guys like that are forced to kiss up, they tend to kick down. Hard.

“Diosdado is a walking zombie. He’s been left with his pants down. He just was totally overrun. I mean, he is the security minister. And they took away the head of state under his nose. I mean, what the ********? He has no agency. He has no power.”
“He has a gun to his head. Either he does what the Rodríguezes do, or he’s going to be taken out. It’s very clear that the CIA is all over Venezuela right now [and] it won’t take much from them to take him out if needed.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/13/venezuelan-security-chief-diosdado-cabello-profile​

 

But France would never have kidnapped a foreign head of state in the first place, would it ? Wait: someone's whispering in my ear that they did it 30 years ago when an obscure president of the Comoros was ousted by the French military and held under house arrest for a while on the neighboring French island of Réunion.
At the time, nobody complained. I suppose things would be a little different today (or maybe not?).

 

A particular facet of the Bolivarian revolution regimes is their focus on corrupting the judicial system. At the start, they call for a new constitution where all sectors gather and create a new constitution but always, always there is a new mechanism for the president to get an additional term and mechanisms for controlling the judiciary. The remaining laws in the constitution won't matter and people will feel empowered.

The trick is in the judiciary. Once the judiciary is controlled (to be fair, this was extremely easy in Bolivia - we never had truly independent judges) then the illusion of socialism and democracy is firmly created. Non party members find their cases slowed to a crawl, they are preventively incarcerated, they are met with a hundred barriers to move forward. Party members have their cases solved immediately. It's all legal but it's not even close to impartial. That's the day by day stuff. The next trick is that whenever the Executive needs to do something really evil, the judiciary rules for them. Do you need to shut down Congress? Do you need to have an additional unconstitutional term? The Supreme Court is there to rule in your favor.

In Bolivia, the opposition was a lot trickier or luckier and found a constitutional loop hole. No one knows how but at some point someone proposed having "cabildos" - mass gatherings where the people can gather to demand justice - as a right in the constitution. That idea completely resonates with the Bolivian psyche and it was enshrined. Fifteen years later that was exactly what was used to break the Bolivian regime's power. That doesn't seem doable in Venezuela and the regime's power block seems too solid.

How do you fix the Judiciary? I'm not certain how we'll fix it in Bolivia but in Venezuela's case there should be careful thought put in to any new constitution.

 

For those keeping score at home Bradly has now been shown to have ordered two clear as day war crimes 1)firing on the shipwrecked and 2)perfidy

so that is two clear crimes for which he will either die and jail or need a pardon.

Good times.

 

Option 3) none of the above so long as Trump stays in power

Take a guess which option he will work for.

 

Assuming “he” refers to Bradly that was precisely my point.

 

Here's a complete scholarly analysis on how the PSUV gained the mechanisms to control the Judiciary.
The Death of the Autonomous Venezuelan Judiciary