January 3, 2026

And so it begins… with the attack on Caracas, Venezuela last night and the arrest and capture of President Maduro and his wife who are being transported back to the US to face charges of narcoterrorism. I should have started with And so it continues… as it’s just the latest chapter of a saga that’s been going on for quite some time, both in Venezuela and in terms of American foreign policy in general. I can say that the whole narcoterrorist angle is a bunch of hooey. Even the most cursory look at where illegal drugs that cause destruction on American streets originate shows that the vast majority enter the country from Mexico where they are synthesized in illegal Mexican labs from precursors manufactured and shipped from China. Breaking Bad, especially the Gus Fring plot line, is a more accurate description of the drug trade than the propaganda issuing from the executive branch in defence of the current action.

I know a few Venezuelans. None have lived in the country for some decades but I’ll be interested to get their perspectives in what’s happening there these days as there are still family ties and they are likely to have some information on what is acutally happening on the street. I am becoming more and more distrustful of national media who seem to be doing a complex limbo dance under the bamboo of Trump’s will. I am no expert in Latin American history and politics, but if I recall the last few decades correctly, things have gone south between the US and Venezuela starting in the lat 1990s when former president Hugo Chavez came to power and, amongst other things, nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry, much to the consternation of US oil companies who lost lucrative contracts. There was a coup in 2002 which attempted to remove him, but it failed. I don’t know that the US was directly involved in the coup but the US government was quick to recognize the interim president as the legitimate ruler, only having to back down when Chavez was rapidly restored to power. Chavez went on to continue to be a thorn in the side to the US and Europe due to his consistent opposition to the dominant neo-liberal economic policies favored by the West.

Chavez died in office of cancer in 2013 and was succeeded by his vice-president, Nicolas Maduro who, in 2015, pushed through a number of political changes which made his essentially a dictator ruling by fiat. Maduro’s heavy-handed tactics seem to have turned most of the population against him and he has held onto power through intimidation, coercion, and fraudulent elections. He’s hardly a good guy but he is a sitting head of state and invading a sovereign nation and kidnapping the head of state is against international law. There are ways and means to accomplish this within international law but they would require competent diplomats and an executive branch run by intelligent individuals, neither of which seem to be in much supply these days.

But international law has never held the US back from fiddling with other countries sovereignity when there’s something it wants. The Kingdom of Hawaii, overthrown over the interests of the sugar magnates in 1893 and the various interferences in Central America at the behest of the plantation owners, especially the banana growers come to mind. Then there’s the times when the US has either gone to war or helped engineer coups over political and economic ideologies that are anti-capitalist such as Vietnam and the Chilean coup of 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende. Our track record in recent years in regime change isn’t great. the human and economic disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria can all be placed at the doorstep of our foreign policy.

Is the current action a distraction against a failing domestic economy and the disturbing allegations of the Epstein files? Is this an attempt to unify the country on a war footing a la ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 2003 (for my younger readers – it wasn’t by a long shot)? Is it just a ploy for Trump and Hegseth to flex their alpha male muscles through beta male activities? I suppose we’ll all find out eventually.

On a completely different note, the flu is here and it’s bad. We have some years where flu activity is much higher than others depending on the circulating strains and this one is shaping up to be a bad one with near record hospitalizaitons happening in some locales and higher than usual death rates. Most of us aren’t in danger of dying should we happen to get it, just of being in for a rather miserable week. The antivax activity has driven down the number of adults receiving flu shots (currently about 45% of US adults have had one – it’s recommended for all adults unless there’s a contraindication). What this means is that it will be much easier for the virus to travel through the population. So, keep those hands washed, stay away from the obviously ill, remember your social distancing, and consider masking up in certain situations.

On the personal front, I’ve been rewatching Stranger Things over the last few weeks and am finally into the last season which recently dropped on Netflix. My takeaways so far. The Duffer brothers have an incrediblle eye for period detail. I’m roughly five years older than the teen characters (Nancy, Steve, Jonathan, Robin) so I have a young adult’s memory of the time and I have picked up very few flaws in their recreation of the world of forty years ago. The fact that the series was filmed over a roughly nine year period while only about four years elapse over the course of the story means that the kids are now much too old for the parts they are supposed to be playing – this is especially true of Will. The show suffers from some of the same issues as Game of Thrones. An enormous international fan base, invested in years of story telling and watching the young actors grow up before their eyes has led to feelings of ownership over the characters and storytelling and therefore disagreements with the artistic choices of the creators. I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but I’m willing to go on the journey to its end. I’ll try to finish it up tonight and tomorrow, my last day off before I’m back to the grind.

Be the anti-administration: get up, get dressed, go out, do good, avoid breaking international law.