mmadrig

🇻🇪 🇦🇺

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

Yesterday I ordered an obscure book and a 20 pound bag of dog food on Amazon. Today it was delivered to my house in rural upstate New York. Remind me again why Jeff Bezos doesn’t deserve to be a billionaire?

[Francisco Poleo @FranciscoPoleoR]

Do yourself a favor and listen to Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. It’s one of the most consequential speeches we’ve heard in a long time. If anyone still needed proof that Rubio can operate like a global statesman, that was it. This is the U.S. I want to see: firm, serious, and steady in what it signals to allies and adversaries.

Part of the speech, as summarized by @WalterVMG:

“While WWII was still fresh in the memory of Americans and Europeans, we found ourselves facing a new global catastrophe, one carrying a kind of destruction unlike anything before, more apocalyptic and final than anything humanity had ever known.

At the time of that first meeting, Soviet communism was expanding at full speed. Thousands of years of Western civilization were on the line. Victory was far from assured, but we were driven by a shared purpose.

What bound us together was not only what we were fighting against, but also what we were fighting for.

Together, Europe and America prevailed, and a continent was rebuilt. Our peoples prospered. In time, the Eastern and Western blocs reunified. A civilization was made whole again.

The infamous wall that had split this nation in two came down, and with it an evil empire, and East and West became one.

But the euphoria of that victory led us into a dangerous illusion: the idea that we had entered, as the familiar phrase goes, the ‘end of history,’ that from then on every nation would become a liberal democracy, that the bonds created by trade would replace the very idea of the nation, that the rules-based international order, a tired expression, would supplant national interest, and that we would live in a borderless world where we were all citizens of the world.

It was a reckless idea, one that ignored human nature and the lessons of more than 5,000 years of written history. And it has cost us dearly. Under that illusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of unrestricted free trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undermine ours, shut down our factories, deindustrialize large parts of our societies, offshore millions of working- and middle-class jobs, and hand control of critical supply chains to adversaries and rivals.”

(…)

“We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we have created, nor dismantle the global institutions of the old order that we built together. But they must be reformed. They must be rebuilt.

For example, the United Nations still has enormous potential to be a tool for good in the world.

But we cannot ignore that today, on the most urgent issues we face, it provides no answers and plays virtually no role.

It has not been able to resolve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed the captives held by barbarians and made a fragile truce possible.

It has not resolved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership, working alongside many of the countries represented here today, to bring both sides to the negotiating table in search of a peace that still remains elusive.

It has been powerless to stop the nuclear program of Tehran’s Shiite radicals. That took 14 precision bombs dropped by American B-2 bombers.

And it has not been able to confront the threat to our security posed by a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela. U.S. special forces had to step in to bring this fugitive to justice.

In an ideal world, all of these problems, and many others, would be resolved with diplomats and strong resolutions. But we do not live in an ideal world, and we cannot keep allowing those who openly and brazenly threaten our citizens and global stability to hide behind abstract notions of international law that they themselves regularly violate.

This is the path President Trump and the US have chosen.

This is the path we are asking you, here in Europe, to take with us. It is a path we have walked together before, and one we hope to walk together again.”

[John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn]

@CynicalPublius So many always want to boil operations like this down to one thing, usually something dumb if they don't like the President involved, but there are usually a lot of factors in play.

[Francisco Poleo @FranciscoPoleoR]

@GoldcoinOnX Al NYT.

[Germania Rodriguez Poleo @iamGermania]

Now they’re all experts on international law. Where was their expertise over the last +20 years as Chavez and Maduro massacred our people? Now they care about our natural resources. Where have they been as chavismo plunders the Orinoco to finance their terrorism against us?

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

I have been monitoring the Venezuela issue all day long, and there are so many questions yet to be answered (thanks to great Pentagon OPSEC), but the strategic reason for bringing down Maduro has become abundantly clear.

While we ostensibly captured Maduro based on legitimate, outstanding US drug charges from 2020, the real reason for the military operations early this morning is that neutralizing Maduro's Venezuela had become a strategic imperative for the USA.

Under Maduro, Venezuela had become the Latin American crossroads for all of the USA's principal enemies. Maduro was nurturing relationships with Russia, Hezbollah and Iran. Worst of all, Venezuela was eagerly becoming a part of Red China's Belt & Road initiative.

As America's enemies were lining up Venezuela as their base of operations in the Western Hemisphere to cause mischief and destruction for the USA, Maduro was at the same time making Venezuela a crossroads, safe haven and enabler for all manner of narcoterrorist operations, ranging from Colombia's FARC to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel.

On top of all that, Venezuela had become a key player in the illegal alien invasion of the USA, shipping its very worst to the USA in a deliberate and comprehensive destabilizing operation that might have worked had Donald Trump not won in 2024.

Next in importance: oil. The global and regional ambitions of both China and Russia are in large part dependent on the politics of petroleum, and the USA just deprived both of the cudgel afforded by friendly Venezuelan oil. Trump opponents say "It's about oil" as if that was a bad thing. Yeah, it's about oil.

Finally, all of this was in keeping with the most essential and fundamental foreign policy mandate of the USA almost since the nation's inception: the Monroe Doctrine. Operations like what Maduro was running simply cannot be allowed in the Western Hemisphere. Trump was right for falling back on this most basic of doctrines that protects the USA's sovereignty.

So was Maduro seized because of some five year-old drug charges? Yes. Legally--yes. However, like so many strategic issues in the world today, an action needed to be backed by the fine points of law, and it was. But the reality is that the Maduro takedown was a Monroe Doctrine-driven necessity that has greatly enhanced the power and national security of the USA.

Congratulations, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and the rest of the Trump national security team: you boldly took the steps necessary to defend the USA.

Well done.

[Luis. @luis1210]

Tapping the sign:

[mmadrig @mmadrig]

@clairlemon @JoinPersuasion Indeed, let’s hope for the best, while we celebrate a tyrants’ exit

[Kat A 🌸 @SaiKate108]

Tony Abbott flips the script on claims he is out of touch with mainstream opinion.

It’s the culture which is out of step with reality!

He rejects the climate crisis, the Covid hysteria, the trans agenda and the cultural self loathing.

‘I do think that there is an insanity to our current energy policy and to our current emissions obsession.

I do think there’s deep
folly in what is effectively out of control mass migration at the moment…

Why wouldn’t senior ministers be able to say without any embarrassment or hesitation that there are only two genders.’

Elite opinion makers may dismiss him but he is in step with the everyday Aussie now more than ever.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Bingo.

The problem is that massive transfers from productive members of society via taxation enable the vast staff of elite universities to enjoy the benefits of capitalism while living under the illusion of communism.

[mmadrig @mmadrig]

Great column.

Some decades ago The Economist (when it was worth reading) wrote the following about inequality:

"Inequality is not inherently wrong as long as three conditions are met: first, society as a whole is getting richer, second there is a safety net for the poor, and third everybody regardless of race, sex or creed, has an opportunity to climb up through the system.”

[Daniel Di Martino @DanielDiMartino]

This is the picture that the LYING and CORRUPT New York Times took of the Venezuelan Narco-Terrorist Delcy Rodriguez.

The title: "The Moderate"

Their description of her: Cosmopolitan, moderate, conservative.

These are all LIES.

BELOW READ WHO IS THE TRUE DELCY RODRIGUEZ ⬇️

[mmadrig @mmadrig]

@Gabriel_Barsch Boo Radley

[mmadrig @mmadrig]

@AskPerplexity Can you list countries by net tariff compared to the USA in order of higher to lower

[Luis Montero @arquimontero]

C A R A C A S

📍Bellas Artes / Parque Central

[Horacio Siciliano @hsiciliano]

Querida Caracas…

[Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez @RepCarlos]

A lot of people are asking me what’s happening in #Venezuela.

Here’s what to know.

🧵A THREAD (1/5)

[Chief Nerd @TheChiefNerd]

Two years ago @elonmusk told us his ‘nutty’ idea to ‘catch the largest and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it out of the air.’

Looks like it wasn’t so ‘nutty’ after all.

[Deviacho @deviachooo]

Los resultados existen, pero a ellos no les gustaron. ✏️

[AXEL KAISER @AXELKAISER]

Merece el premio Nobel de La Paz. Pero no es de izquierdas como Santos u Obama que no lo merecían, asique no se lo darán.