The inevitable war with Venezuela

Tax write-off

 

Yes, but you're assuming "the predictables" here give a shit about democracy.

They don't. It's what Tom Wolfe rather cruelly dubbed Radical Chic gone down a rabbit hole. It's about their need to feel superior to the benighted normies who lack their, ahem, "unique" insight

 

The Guardian has followed up on the Reuters report about Cabello having been in contact with Rubio about cooperating with Maduro's ouster as early as September. Acting president Delcey Rodriguez and her brother started offering their particular services in October.

According to their sources

"there was a fine distinction to the agreement by Delcy Rodríguez: while the Rodríguez family promised to assist the US once Maduro was gone, they did not agree to actively help the US to topple him. The sources insist this was not a coup engineered against Maduro by the Rodríguez siblings."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/22/delcy-rodriguez-capture-maduro-venezuela
​

I'm sure Judas had something similar to say in his defence.

Then again, anyone familiar with their backstory is unlikely to be unsurprised by these particular apples not falling far from the family tree.

 

Acting like this is about democracy instead of about how much of their oil Venezuelans get to control is just extremely naive.

Did you think it was about drugs too?

 

Venezuela frees opposition leader’s son-in-law as Trump backs interim rule

President elect Gonzalez' son-in-law was released. We are up to 143 (some say 145) prisoners released.

 

Majority of Latin Americans Endorsed Trump's Intervention ...

The above is a Times article of what I have been hearing in the Latin American community.

Per Argentinian sources Support for Trump's intervention in Latin America is much higher than Europe and as high or higher than US support. The country with the most angst about it is predictably Mexico but even then it's split.

 

What about the oil? You might say. It's a matter of priorities.

Here's the background:

US interventionism in South America has been virtually zero since the early 2000s for a combination of factors involving the USSR collapse and 9/11.

Cuba has fully focused on capturing governments throughout the region using a combination of coups, electoral hacking, social engineering and drug running. Why? The fall of the USSR meant they no longer had economic support.

Essentially, Cuban interventionism is much scarier than US interventionism. Venezuela is sucked dry. Argentina was on that road. Bolivia could see it in the horizon and the whole of Latin America could see it.

When Trump talks big about oil and doesn't really mention democracy, Latin Americans are currently taking it as a breath of fresh air and honesty. He's saying the obvious part out loud. Finally, he actually did it.

That may change in a decade but that's where we are now.

 

@deejay Have Brazilians expressed their opinions? I think part of the favorable opinion (in say Colombia and Peru) is the idea that Venezuelans who fled the country under Maduro will now return (en masse) to Venezuela. Most of them won't, imo, at least not with the Maduro apparatus still in place.

 

I have only one Brazilian friend and I haven't seen polls in Brazil about this so I don't know. They are different enough in their situation that I won't claim to make an expert opinion. I would guess that they generally fall along the same lines but it is a smaller topic for them.

Regarding the Venezuelan refugees. For sure, that's part of it but not the only part. There have been previous cases were we are flooded by refugees. Peru and Cuba were memorable for me. So, yeah, the refugees are often blamed for criminality. However, everybody remembers Venezuela as being the richest Latin American country in our childhood and now they are begging or stealing in our streets. The contrast is big and scary.

 

I wonder if the rapidity with which the US was able to capture Maduro is influencing public opinion of the kidnapping. As you mentioned, Latin Americans are uniquely aware of the situation in Venezuela and how bad Maduro was for the country and having him removed from power is being viewed positively because there were no impacts to the rest of Venezuelan society. There's now hope that with the removal of Maduro, Venezuela can return to it's pre-Chavez status?

I don't think that is going to be the case as the decapitation left the rest of the Chavist infrastructure in place. I fully expect the next election to be similar to the last election, in that the Chavists will put a thumb on the scale and, miraculously, come out as the winner of the election.

 

Oh yeah, you are both on the right track. Definitely, folks here in general know how Maduro and the chavistas have decimated that country and held on to power illegitimately, and are hopeful things get back to normal, i.e. Venezuelans can return home. However, they are also uncomfortable with the great "liberator" to the north and whatever his whims may mean for the region. So, let's separate being glad Maduro is gone with support for the Donroe doctrine.

 

This is very much why I'm dismayed at those who buy into Trump projecting himself as a "tough guy". It's all nothing but hot air, and what's worse is that no one has ever called his bluff on this.

I've never seen Machado as anything other than a rabble rouser since she first entered politics.

 

His current process follows pretty closely what he wrote in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal". There's 11 principles but I'll boil it down for you.

Make a huge demand but never be attached to any one outcome. Show the biggest stick you have. Making waves is always good. Never get into a situation where you aren't comfortable with the fallout if you lose. Hype up your situation because looking like you don't need anything is important. Finally, fight back hard if you are attacked and understand that you have to make good on some of your threats.

In practice this means he will never challenge the really, really tough or crazy guys. Anyone he targets will have some weakness. If you have some strength he will back down but you are forced to a negotiation table. If you don't have strength you will be slapped hard.

 

Like I said before,the domestic violence school of governance.

 

I saw a BBC docu about it and that suggested they didn't 'steal' anything. They used her work without attribution but they realised the significance of the photo she, (and her male PhD student), had taken. Also, as I understand it, she died several years before the award of the prize and they're not usually given posthumously.

AFAIK talking of them 'stealing' it is a huge exaggeration.

 

I think everyone knew that the yanks hadn't gone there and 'kidnapped' him without at least some people out there standing down, whether ot not they helped.

 

They got a hold of the photo in an odd way. Rosalind Franklin had a strained relationship with another female colleague at the university who gave Watson and Crick access to the photo where NONE of them had permission to do so, and they knew it.

So… I agree that Franklin wasn’t forgotten. But because Watson and Crick made their discovery using some shady tactics, her story was largely left out of the narrative fed to the plebes. Those in the field always knew. Crick was more gracious about it than Watson, who felt women were incapable of his “genius.”

 

The fact that Maduro is a complete bastard who has persecuted his people doesn't change the fact that Machado is a far-right figure. And I don't like far-right people; I despise them, and obviously their supporters as well. Among other things, Machado shares close (and regular) ties with Vox, the Spanish neo-Francoist fascist party, as well as the entire elite of the far-right sphere: Milei, Meloni, Kast, the Bolsonaro family, Orbán, Le Pen, etc., to name just a few.
The world is becoming fascist, you can agree with that, but I can't.
And for the rest of your diatribe, it's quite worthy of a Trump speech...

 

Vast majority will not.

Gringo with a Colombian spouse here. She says when Venezuela's economy was doing well they didn't exactly welcome Colombians with open arms.

 

Well, Watson was a bit of a twat all round, wasn't he.

I think what makes it all the more tragic is Franklin's death shortly afterwards. If she'd still been alive, she would have been able to argue the point and correct the record.

But the wiki mentions something in the BBC documentary I saw, based on an article in Nature a few years back...

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure
Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

...

In a full description of the structure in a paper submitted in August 1953 and published in 1954, Crick and Watson did attempt to set the record straight17. They acknowledged that, without Franklin’s data, “the formulation of our structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible”, and implicitly referred to the MRC report as a “preliminary report” in which Franklin and Wilkins had “independently suggested that the basic structure of the paracrystalline form is helical and contains two intertwined chains”. They also noted that the King’s researchers “suggest that the sugar-phosphate backbone forms the outside of the helix and that each chain repeats itself after one revolution in 34 Å”.

...

Three weeks after the three DNA papers were published in Nature, Bragg gave a lecture on the discovery at Guy’s Hospital Medical School in London, which was reported on the front page of the British News Chronicle daily newspaper. This drew the attention of Joan Bruce, a London journalist working for Time. Although Bruce’s article has never been published — or described by historians, until now — it is notable for its novel take on the discovery of the double helix.

Bruce portrayed the work as being done by “two teams”: one, consisting of Wilkins and Franklin, gathering experimental evidence using X-ray analysis; “the other” comprising Watson and Crick, working on theory. To a certain extent, wrote Bruce, the teams worked independently, although “they linked up, confirming each other’s work from time to time, or wrestling over a common problem”. For example, Watson and Crick had “started to work on the double helix theory as a result of Wilkins’ X-rays”. Conversely, she wrote, Franklin was “checking the Cavendish model against her own X-rays, not always confirming the Cavendish structural theory”18. It has not escaped our notice that both examples render Franklin in a position of strength, every bit a peer of Wilkins, Crick and Watson.​

I suspect that last part is closer to the truth.

Stories of discoveries being 'stolen' rather miss the point, although they are entertaining.

That's an interesting article, written in the same publication as the original paper by Watson and Crick, of course.

 

Purity tests are useless in a live or die situation. You use whoever will back you to get liberty.

Talking about purity tests and Spanish politics. Spain's left has deep and continuous ties with the Maduro regime. Around 2020, Delcy Rodriguez herself arrived in Spain with millions in spite of being on the sanctions list. Search for Delcygate to get more details. There multiple other similar cases. Given the regime's purchasing of favors in Spain, the Venezuelan opposition has allied it self with both Partido Popular and Vox. It's an obvious counter and there's no point in pinching your nose when things are so blatant.

 

Machado's ties to the international far right don't sit well with me, but what can you expect when the more moderate entities have pretty much ignored the opposition's plight? That's desperation for you.

 

I have to say that I find the rare moments of honesty from American medias rather refreshing. Collective punishment isn't the way to earn respect and admiration overseas. All this talk about "liberating" Cuba - well the Cubans might dislike their current situations but they are fully aware who's the main culprit, same goes for any population under unilateral illegal US sanctions

US sanctions against Venezuela "were designed to hurt the country’s economy," NY Times again admits:

"The campaign crushed the Venezuelan economy and led to a humanitarian crisis."

After years of misleading readers, US media increasingly being honest about role of US sanctions https://t.co/Kiy0ZNBIuK pic.twitter.com/IwyotRVnCg

— Erik Sperling (@ErikSperling) January 23, 2026