Idle stream of consciousness:
Peter
That seems to be what's happening in Venezuela at the moment. There's only been one major media report of which I'm aware, over at Gateway Pundit, plus a passing mention on CNN, but it appears a coup d'etat is being attempted at present. Stony silence from the rest of the mainstream media as I write this on Monday evening; we'll see if there's more news tomorrow morning.
However, I'm not limited to the mainstream media. I have a certain amount of what's colloquially known as "back-channel" news coming through. No less than seven reports have reached me, from different parts of Venezuela, indicating some serious (and violent) disagreements between Maduro loyalists and thugs, and locals who were celebrating his overthrow. In several cases, gunplay ensued, with civilian victims reported. On the other hand, the armed factions (including the armed forces) aren't always on the same page. I've had at least three reports of armed groups fighting each other in an attempt to take over local power structures and/or deny them to other groups. Again, casualties are reported.
Nobody really knows how this will play out. Chavez, and then Maduro, armed as many young gangs as they could, totaling perhaps a million people if you believe some reports. These so-called "colectivos" were relied upon by the Maduro regime as enforcers of their political will, and many are criminals and murderers. It wouldn't surprise me if they - and/or some of their leaders - tried to seize greater power now that Maduro is out of the way. It'd be no more than self-defense on their part; if the Big Boss isn't there any more, they're going to want to protect themselves against any reaction against them by the people or by Maduro's replacement, whoever that ends up being.
This article gives a good perspective on the scale of the problems confronting Venezuela, and also the USA as it tries to control what happens there.
Venezuela, says Robert A Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and one of America’s leading academic experts on political violence, has “perfect terrain for insurgency and terrorism”, as well as multiple armed militias and criminal networks numbering in the tens of thousands.
“Venezuela hosts numerous armed groups, including colectivos, who are pro-government militias used for repression; Colombian guerrillas like the ELN [National Liberation Army] and remnants of FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]; major criminal networks like Tren de Aragua; and elements of the Venezuelan military operating semi-autonomously,” Pape tells The Telegraph.
“America will discover enormous apathy and significant opposition among the mass public. Ordinary people don’t like their resources going to benefit a foreign country. Trump’s gleeful promise to send in US oil companies to ‘operate’ Venezuela’s oil smacks of Western imperialism that is sure to trigger the worst images of the ‘ugly American’ that so many in the region know all too well,” he adds.
Let’s assume Rodríguez, whom Trump has also said is “willing to do whatever the US asks”, is a willing client.
What happens if she lacks the ability or the means to deliver the change America wants, or simply to hold the country together?
Venezuela is not going to be easy for anyone to fix.
Trump “is correct in saying this is a deeply corrupt regime, and it’s a deeply factionalised military and state structure engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, who would be hard pressed to part with their ill-gotten gains, prestige and positions, and literally put their necks on the line,” says Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The country is staring down the barrel of hyperinflation and a never-ending debt crisis. As Pape notes, the ELN controls patches of the border with Colombia, as well as gold and rare-earth mines in the southwestern provinces of Amazonas and Bolívar.
And Maduro and Hugo Chávez, his predecessor, bought loyalty by carving the state into fiefdoms from which their various clients could extract rents, impoverishing the nation while creating powerful rival power centres.
“Now the head is gone, as we see when you have dictators die, you end up getting a lot of rivals under the leader jostling for power. So don’t be surprised if somebody in the military shoots the vice-president. That’s part of the disintegration,” says Pape.
There's more at the link.
Frankly, I'm glad I don't have to worry about governing Venezuela in its present state. That job may be impossible!
Peter
I'm thoroughly enjoying the left-wing/progressive meltdown over President Trump's attack on Venezuela and arrest of that country's (illegitimate) President and his wife. By the time you read these words, they may be facing their first court hearing in New York City.
Here are some of the thoughts I've been having on the matter, in no particular order.
Interesting points all, and they're far from complete. From a geopolitical perspective, this affair is going to be making waves around the world for months, even years to come.
I've also been getting rather annoyed with the so-called "strategists" who are complaining that Trump is focusing far too much on regional affairs (Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, the war on drugs, etc.) than he is on world politics and tensions. Folks, there's a very, very old strategic dictum that's held up for not just centuries, but millennia:
If you try to be strong everywhere, you will be strong nowhere.
If you're trying to cover everything, you're spreading your resources and your forces too thin. They can be defeated in detail anywhere an enemy chooses, before you can concentrate your forces to face the attack. You have to choose what to defend as your first priority, and that means your base and the region in which you live. If you're strong there, other powers will have a hard time mustering enough resources and forces to attack you, and you can venture out from your strong base to give them a hard time. You might even build up enough forces to project power worldwide - but if you haven't got a strong base from which to operate, you're a paper tiger.
You also have to choose your points of concentration. Another strategic dictum is that if you want to force an engagement with the enemy, you have to either attack something they have no choice but to defend, or defend something they have no choice but to attack. Pick those points, and put enough resources at or near them that you can be sure of being able to prevail if it comes to a fight. Right now, the USA does not have enough forces to do that around the globe. We're having to encourage our allies and partners to pony up the money and resources to do that for their own vulnerable points.
While they're doing that, we're rebuilding, but we've got a long way still to go. It'll take years, not months - decades, in some cases. We've let our armed forces and our industrial base run down to such an alarming extent that we're spread too thinly to be effective all around the globe. Worse still, we've depleted our war reserve of weapons and ammunition to give them to Ukraine and other allies when they needed them. Given the tempo of modern war against a first-level opponent, I don't know that we could operate for more than thirty to sixty days without running out of fuel, ammunition and equipment; and we'd lose so many of our first-line forces that we wouldn't be able to replace them. Our shipyards and factories would be run off their feet trying to repair our weapons, let alone build new ones - and in an age of long-distance, highly accurate missile warfare, there's no guarantee those shipyards and factories would be around to do so.
The current world situation may cost us dearly. If China decides to invade Taiwan, I honestly don't think we have enough forces to stop them, or get there in time to make them pay a heavy price. China knows this, I'm sure, and knows how weak our industrial base is in terms of replenishing and expanding our military forces. It knows it's got the edge right now in terms of hardware, and in terms of raw numbers, it's ahead there too (although we don't know the quality of its personnel). I won't be at all surprised to see China trying to humiliate the USA with a quick strike that will gain victory against a US ally without our being able to help in any effective way. That would also give it a major psychological and propaganda victory to use at home to bolster the image and reputation of the Chinese Communist Party.
Give President Trump and his successor(s) (presuming they're good successors) a decade to turn things around, and that will change. Do we have a decade? I personally don't think so. I hope I'm wrong. However, the President's decisive action against Iran, and now against Venezuela, must give pause for thought to rival strategists and politicians, and may buy us time. One hopes they will continue to do so.
Peter
Gathered from around the Internet over the past week - and a bumper crop it's been! Click any image for a larger view.
Let's kick off 2026 with one of the most famous and most popular guitar concertos in the world. Mauro Giuliani's Guitar Concerto No. 1 in A major, Op. 30 has become a staple on the classical music tour. Here's my personal favorite recording of it, performed by Pepe Romero with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.
Musical mastery from all concerned.
Peter
This very interesting video shows what happened when 100 Ford dealers were asked to quote a best and final price for an identical model of pickup. The first year, relatively few responded. The second year (after Ford had taken notice and presumably talked to its dealers) a lot more responded - but the price variance in both years, from lowest to highest offer, was astonishingly high, well into five figures. Take a look.
I knew dealer margins varied, but I had no idea their pricing structures were so very different, nor did I realize how much the price goes up when dealer add-ons are included. The section on fees and regulatory charges was also eye-opening; I'd assumed that dealers would not dare meddle with statutory costs like that, but it looks like I was wrong.
I'm sure the facts and figures disclosed in the video will be encountered at any manufacturer's dealers, not just Ford's. Nevertheless, I hope Ford notices this video and does something about what it reveals - because business practices like these do it no favors at all in the eyes of the public.
I'm certainly going to follow the video's advice if I ever buy another vehicle from a dealer. Obviously, it applies more to new vehicles, but I'm willing to bet some of it carries over to the used market as well.
Peter
It seems Ukraine's secret services (whatever they call themselves) have scored one for the home team against their Russian equivalents.
As far as the Russians were concerned, they had got their man.
Denis Kapustin, one of the most prominent anti-Putin Russians fighting on behalf of Ukraine, was reported dead on Dec 27, assassinated by a drone on the southern front.
He had long been hunted by Moscow and the price on his head reflected this: Russian intelligence services had offered $500,000 (£370,000) to anyone who killed him.
Russia paid this out after news broke of the successful hit this week. But what Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services did not know was that they had handed the money directly to Ukraine.
. . .
Mr Kapustin re-emerged – alive and unscathed – in a video posted by Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR).
“Welcome back to life,” Gen Kyrylo Budanov, head of HUR, said with a wry smile. He congratulated Mr Kapustin and his team on a successful operation to deceive their Russian adversaries.
It turns out HUR, along with the RDK, had hatched a plan to fake Mr Kapustin’s death and claim the $500,000 bounty from Russia for themselves, to be used in Ukraine’s war effort.
There's more at the link.
I wonder how many drones Ukraine will buy with that money? Last I heard, I seem to recall that their locally-manufactured FPV drones were about $4,000 per copy. If so, $500,000 will buy 125 of them . . . enough to administer rather a lot of explosive headaches to Russian forces across the front line. I wonder what the soldiers on the receiving end will have to say about their intelligence service's donation to the enemy? If we could hear them, we might learn some interesting new Russian words . . .
Peter
