Far from the Madding

(maddening even) Crowd   

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But now from me hys madding mynd is starte, And woes the Widdowes daughter of the glenne.  E. Spenser, Shepheardes Calender  (1579)

(A consideration of 'Madding' as used by Spenser in 1579 and Thomas Hardy in his first book, "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874); Hardy himself; the influence of Nature on his work by ZHV; and some poems by me -  TTV)  

President Donald Trump never fails, as the President of one of the worlds most populous and powerful nations, to astound with his witless and unwise words. 'Madding' is a word with ancient origins as the above literary quote proves but time hasn't changed its meaning significantly with the passing years. It is not really in general usage today but it still means, 'becoming mad or acting in a madly or frenzied manner'. (Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this?) 

Mad men may be pitied, tolerated even restrained. It is incumbent on us all to empathise and try to understand, whenever the condition, in all its various guises, evidences itself - always mindful that it may afflict anyone, at any time, even the most sane. What you should never do however is afford the insane the power over others, let alone millions. 

That it would seem is what the population of the United States and its political system, has allowed to happen. They have put a seriously deranged, egotistical individual in charge of their country, with serious implications for all the others, affecting literally hundreds of millions of souls. 

Not that this is anything new. Professor Jeffrey Sachs has described America, over more than half a century, as being a "brutal imperialist bully", and Trump is only the latest of a plethora of 'emperors' that society and system has thrown up, all claiming to be 'peace-makers' but somehow causing carnage around the world that 'western allies' have been happy to wink at or actively support, the most recent and egregious example being Gaza. 

However, now Canadian and European sovereignty has been threatened, suddenly those same leaders have woken up to a threat coming from an unexpected quarter. It has found them floundering. Could a long-term member of NATO and the UN actually be threatening its allies with military intervention or even invasion? Amazingly the answer appears to be, "Yes"!

Canada and Denmark have it seems, drawn a line in the ice, when they refused to draw one in the sand of the Middle East and North Africa or the jungles of Central America. There is an old aphorism that may be appropriate: You should never tell a King what he has the power to do; only the things that he can't. A tyrant treats advice with contempt: sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn't. History provides many examples. But who is advising President Trump and is he amenable to it antway?

This is where the madding quote from Spencer's work, actually a homage to Queen Elizabeth I, adds a certain piquancy to the topic.  It is spoken by the shepherd Hobbinoll, who is lamenting that his close companion, Colin Clout (Spenser's avatar), in a frenzied, infatuated state of mind, has abandoned their friendship  for a new, unrequited love. described as "the Widowes daughter of the glenne". Hobbinoll mourns that Colin has stopped playing his pipe and singing songs, breaking their companionship for the sake of a "madding" or frenzied love for a stranger or foreigner. Who in the current turn of world events might fill those apocryphal rolls I wonder?

Who can forget the British Prime Minister's embarrasing and humiliating performance in the White House and his staunch support for American actions despite their illegitimacy? For whatever reason, personal or diplomatic,  Starmer signed up to immoral and illegal US/Trump policies and actions in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Mexico.

Starmer used the King and an 'unprecidented' invitation of a second State Visit to cosy up to Trump.  The King is now committed to a return trip to join in celebrations around 250 years of American 'independance' from the Crown, this at a time when an invasion of Greenland and Canada is somewhat more than a theoretical possibility!  Ironies of ironies. 

Now on two issues at least, Starmer appears to have grown some of those indispensible spherical things! Defiantly he has opposed the threats against Greenland and by implication Denmark and the EU, saying the political future of the island is for the Danes and Greenlanders alone. Now, following Trumps NATO remarks, he has pointedly described them as "insulting and frankly appalling". 

He has called on Trump to withdraw the slur and "apologise". To which, knowing the madding state of Trump's mind and behaviour, there is little likelihood of it happening.  What we may be witnessing is the end of the affair between the two - if ever there was one - with possible unforeseen wider implications. 'Cast not a Clout till May is out', may be an old example of the modern day 'precautionary principle'. Yet again Spenser's Shepheardes Calender springs to life and we are left wondering who the 'widdowes daughter of the glenne' might be in the current transactional, international scenario? (TTV)

Thomas Hardy

His birthplace at Higher Brockhampton, Dorset. (Now NT)

So now back to Hardy (What a diversion Spenser proved to be!) Most who read this piece will be familiar with Hardy's life and work but for those not, a few observations. As with any life, we cannot but help draw parallels and points of convergence with our own. 

He lived a long and creative life as one of the greatest British poets and writers of fiction. (So sadly no 'convergence' there!) He was born not far from Dorchester to skilled but working-class parents in 1840. His humble origins and lack of status later bothered him and may have frustrated to some extent his acceptance in society and acclaim. (He was nominated twenty-five times for the Nobel literary prize without success!) 

The Victorian stratified and fairly rigid class system undoubtedly influenced his attitude to it and the social issues of the day which condemned many to poverty and destitution - particularly abandoned women and the old - characters who appear in his novels. In his social influence he may be compared to Charles Kingsley and Charles Dickens. 

Kingsley older by twenty one years published The Water Babies' in 1863. Dickens twenty eight years older became a famous author around the time of Hardy's birth. Hardy's work can be distinguised from the former by virtue of its rural setting. Despite the differences, all were witnessing and documenting the profound changes taking place in both urban and rural settings and the emergence of a social conscience and attempts to mitigate the adverse consequences.

Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy's first published novel in 1874 when he was 34. It was to be the first of five, plus his collected 947 poems, one of which is shown below. Later authors and poets rated him highly, as has the general reading public. 

He died in Dorset eighty-seven years later in January 1928 a very wealthy man. He fell in love in Cornwall and married Emma Gifford the same year his first book was published (1874). Although they became estranged in later life, he was deeply affected by her death in 1912 and asked to be buried next to her, fulfilled only in part. Two years later he married his secretary Florence Dugdale who was 39 years his junior. 

In 1914 he supported Britain joining the First WW for honour's sake but one gets the impression he may have rued the day he did so. He was a follower of John Stuart Mill's views on freedom, critical of imperialism and a believer in education and internationalism as a bulwark against class division and war.

At school, Far from the Madding Crowd was as I remember it, a set book for 'O' Level GCE. I came to it as a boy brought up in a rural setting to whom even by the nineteen fifties and sixties the themes were still familiar. Horses were still in use, water was drawn from wells, sanitation was basic, candles still employed, telephones and cars scarce. 

It was still the tale end of the Agricultural Revolution, in many ways more chiming with Spenser's and Hardy's than today's. That is quite a startling realisation. Sometimes it takes a fallen tree or a medical incident or a foreign holiday to realise how much has changed and how much we now take for granted.

Hardy regretted the changes he witnessed and foretold by Cobbett fifty years before Madding, in the Rural economy and society despite its continuing vibrancy at the time. What would he think of it today? (TTV)

 Nature’s Questioning by Thomas Hardy

When I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock, and lonely tree,

All seem to gaze at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,

As though the master’s ways

Through the long teaching days

Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.

Upon them stirs in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all) –

‘We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,

But impotent to tend,

Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

Or come we of an Automaton

Unconscious of our pains? . . .

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

Or is it that some high Plan betides,

As yet not understood,

Of Evil stormed by Good,

We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?’

Thus things around. No answerer I. . . .

Meanwhile the winds, and rains,

And Earth’s old glooms and pains

Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

The Thomas Hardy Society Journal

HARDY'S USE OF NATURE IN HIS NOVELS

by ZOE VEATER

This essay was the First Prize winner in our 

Schools Essay Competition, 1999.

Thomas Hardy has long been renowned for his unique descriptive style

when recreating landscape. The natural world is not only seen to reflect

the characters' emotions, it becomes an integral part of them. It is a

changeable yet eternal force, simultaneously appearing both beautiful

and terrifying, mirroring the lives of those whom it influences. Hardy

also uses his work to show the banishment of the trusted farming

practices in the light of new technology, often to the detriment of the

natural world.

In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the heroine is introduced as an innocent

in her natural setting, "a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by

experience", though this is soon destroyed. Hardy deliberately makes

setting of the incident in the wood ambiguous. The thick fog and

impenetrable darkness blur boundaries and confuse Tess' s feelings. Her

true passionate nature surfaces, the non-judgemental natural world

appearing only as an uncritical bystander. The "webs of vapour" that

surround Tess suggest entrapment, an innocent insect caught in fate's

web, and aid the metamorphoses from a living woman to "nothing but

a pale nebulousness", a spirit of the landscape itself.

Christianity is depicted as foreign and accusatory rather than

forgiving, (the Bible's "staring vermilion words shone forth") showing

the same sympathy to the landscape as the new machines of the

agricultural revolution. Hardy seems to feel that the pagan religion of

nature worship was more apt than that which is presently dominant.

"One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky.

The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like

creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an

earth that was brimming with interest for him". Hardy remarks that

"women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor

nature retain in their souls far more of the pagan fantasy of their remote

forefathers than of the systematised religion taught their race at a later

date".

Tess's "pilgrimage" to Blackmoor Vale is one of new beginnings,

occurring in spring, a time of new life and growth. The air is

described as "clear, bracing, ethereal" and in comparison to the "heavy"

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atmosphere of her home. The natural world physically represents her

inner feelings, the brighter surroundings lifting the weight on her heart.

Hardy uses the vastness of nature to emphasise how small and

unimportant Tess actually is. She is, when standing in an expanse of

meadow, "a fly on a billiard table of indefinite length and of no more

consequence to the surroundings than that fly", emphasising how all

creations are equally lifted bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at the

earth's edge the coming day".

The stones echo the earlier forest even down to their "glistening gray-

green" appearance. The old respect for the temple is still evident in the

behaviour of the men who have come for her, when they "saw where

she lay, . . . they showed no objection" to letting her sleep. The tableau

created by their stillness mimics that of the stones and even surrounded

with people she remains at ease. Lying on the sacrificial altar she is

presented in the image of a goddess of nature and therefore it seems

fitting that it is the sun that wakes her. "A ray shone upon her

unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her", the

"gesture" seeming gentle and caring. The final image is of a single ray

illuminating an ill-fated child amongst the shadows cast by the humans

and ancient stones alike. This grandiose setting is the ideal resolution

for the pathetic heroine of such a tragic story and the temple finally has

its pagan sacrifice.

In the last chapter, Christianity reasserts itself, just as technology

replaces manual labour. "The sun's rays smiled on pitilessly", appearing

harsh and unyielding in stark contrast to its earlier depictions. The final

thought is that "Justice" was done and the President of the Immortals,

in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. This questioned

justice betrays Hardy's true feelings towards his heroine yet again,

reiterating the sentiment of natural law behind the novels alternative title:

"A Pure Woman".

The Woodlanders depicts a community whose livelihoods revolve

around the natural world and its products. The woodland is described

in the terms of a living being: "skirted trunks with spreading roots whose

mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves" and "on older

trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs". The area is

likened to the "depraved crowds of a city slum", with the same basic

qualities being found in each community.

The scene in which Hardy details Giles planting trees, with Marty

aiding him, creates a window into their lives. More is learnt about Giles,

for example he is said to have "a marvellous power of making trees

grow", finding "delight" in his occupation. "Winterbourne's fingers were

endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading the roots of each

little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate fibres

all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth". His talent

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for the work displays an instinctive knowledge and for a moment he

and the sapling become one entity. There is a "sympathy" between them

and the process becomes a symbiosis.

The trees are gifted with consciousness and their personification is

reinforced by "the soft musical breathing", which begins as soon as they

are introduced to the earth, not to cease "night or day till the grown

tree should be felled". This suggests a constant stability found in nature

and the transient quality of human life in comparison. John South' s

obsession with a particular elm is virtually that of a devoted and

worshipping disciple and it is revealed to be the force that is sustaining

him.

One of the most atmospheric scenes in the novel is that of Grace

observing Giles at the cider making in the courtyard of the "Earl of

Wessex". The apple mill and press create the illusion that the orchard

has been transported into the yard and everywhere one is confronted

with autumn's abundance. Language such as "grinding", "wringing" and

"gushed forth", suggests strength and vitality, reflected in the activity

of the characters in the courtyard. The picture is an extension of the

harvest, a meeting of nature and humanity.

Giles epitomises both nature and masculinity. It is suggested that the

fruit and its juice become an integral part of him, "fragments of apple-

rind had alighted upon the brim of his hat . . . while brown pips of the

same fruit were sticking among the down upon his fine round arms and

in his beard".

The smell of the apples so fills the air that it becomes

almost oppressive: "the blue stagnant air of autumn which hung over

everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell". It has the same heady

quality of abundance and warmth as the scene in Tess , yet in this image

the environment is much more controlled. When she arrives, Grace

cannot distinguish between the varieties of apple trees, but when looking

out of her window she recognises "specimens of mixed dates, including

the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbords,

ratherripes and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth".

When Grace and Giles next meet, he is described in both visual and

olfactory terms, "he looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother".

"Autumn's very brother" suggests a closeness, more obvious than that

previously implied. There are reflections of nature's creations in his

whole being; his face is "wheat-colour" and "his eyes are blue as corn-

flowers". Again his garments and skin are covered in the juice and pips

of apples, which seem to have pervaded everything he possesses.

"Everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return

each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have

been born and bred among the orchards".

Grace sees Giles as a gift to her from nature, a being "impersonating

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chivalrous and undiluted manliness . . . arisen out of the earth ready to

her hand" and thus seen as nature's own progeny. "Arisen out of the

earth" suggests the personification of nature as a divine being and later

Giles is thought of as "the fruit-god and wood-god in alternation".

Hardy's novels also often reflect the destructive power in nature.

"Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to

smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of

an adversary to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the

wound". These images conjure images of a physical fight, for they have

the same violence and intensity. The trees after the storm are "close

together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds

resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows".

The opening of The Return of the Native is dominated by Hardy's

image of Egdon Heath. It focuses entirely on the landscape, a "vast tract

of unenclosed wild" and humans are seen as nothing more than a

diversion from it. It is said that "the face of the heath by its mere

complexion added half-an-hour to eve" and night appears as a "near

relation" to it. Again, the natural surroundings are personified: "the

sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the

evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly

as the heavens precipitated it".

It is linked more to "winter darkness, tempests and mists" than summer

days and the use of the phrase "Egdon was aroused to reciprocity" conveys

the idea that it actually contributes to these storms. Though seen as a

face, it is inscrutable to mere humans, remaining unchanging through

generations. This serves to remind the reader of the transient quality of

human life, when compared to the constants found in the natural world.

It is suggested that the passing of time has little effect on the heath,

not because it exists outside time, but because it simply pays little

attention to it. Hardy states that both the Domesday Book and Leland

mention this area, "the scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of

the Carboniferous period". It seems to reject virtually all attempts to

cultivate it, Clym finds satisfaction in observing "that in some of the

attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a

year or two, had receded again in despair the ferns and furze tufts

stubbornly reasserting themselves".

Eustacia is from the first presented as an enigma. The image of her

standing at the summit of the barrow introduces only her silhouette and

she seems to be "the only obvious justification of their outline", it

"amounted only to unity". Unconsciously she is in harmony with her

surroundings, she understands the ways of the heath and is not frightened

by its horrors, "her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things

an utter absence of fear".

Eustacia fights a conscious battle with nature and thus she is forced

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to wage war on her subconscious being. She states she hates nature and

that "the heath is a cruel taskmaster" to her, whereas Clym, in contrast,

is seen as its "product", "permeated with its scenes, with its substance

and with its odours". He is able to adopt his new life as a furze cutter

so completely that "he appeared as a mere parasite of the heath . . .

having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath,

lichens and moss".

Hardy describes a plantation of trees after a storm and they

immediately seem as foreign interlopers on such a place as the heath.

As in The Woodlanders , these trees are anthropomorphised, though in

contrast they are growing in an environment that is totally unfamiliar

to them. The scene is depicted as especially violent; "the wet young

beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings and harsh

lacerations from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to

come". This image is reminiscent of the carnage usually reported in a

war zone, here the battle rages between the plantation and the elements.

The heath almost appears in league against the alien species; while "at

every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the branches, as

if pain were felt", "those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the

furze and heather in a light caress".

When Eustacia enters the night for the final time, its gloom is

described as "funeral"; "all nature seemed clothed in crape". Common

and naturally occurring objects of the heath are suddenly seen as

threatening, "oozing lumps of fleshy fungi ... lay scattered about the

heath like the rotting liver and lungs of some collossal animal". Even

the moon and stars have temporarily been vanquished, "closed up by

rain and cloud to the degree of extinction". The raindrops appear as

"glistening darts" in the candlelight, being in one instant both beautiful

and dangerous and "individual drops" sting like "arrows". The scene is

set perfectly to accommodate Eustacia' s death and Hardy writes "never

was harmony more perfect that that between the chaos of her mind and

the chaos of the world without".

Only very rarely is Eustacia mentioned in conjunction with light and

it is only in death that she becomes radiant. She becomes a copy of the

moon "who as she lay there still in death eclipsed all her living phases.

Pallor did not include all the quality of the complexion, which seemed

more than whiteness; it was almost light".

The final book reinstates light and the closing image of Clym standing

on the barrow is calmer, yet it lacks so many of the dramatic and

atmospheric qualities that make the earlier scene of Eustacia so emotive.

The environment moulded itself to reflect the passion and inner struggle

that Eustacia experienced and without her presence nature becomes "but

a fraction of a thing".

Simply by looking at three of Hardy's texts, it is possible to

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Bark and Scream by Tim Veater

(In fond memory of A F and J S)

The dog fox 'barks', the vixen 'screams'

Across the dark December night,

From far-off fields, the eirie sound of

'Four-legs' searching for a mate.

Not pain but plaintive sigh, as nature plays its game,

A yearning, searching, cry; primitive and slight.


The book she borrowed, lent,

Yielded up some long-forgotten images

A moment frozen twenty years before.

Three people laugh one Christmas

Long ago, but now the two, no more.

As foxes know too well, you cannot cheat the hunt.


Or memories of death's dark door.

Your fate is fixed by nature's cruel might

And love is but a faltering flicker

Of the candle, when the power is out.

For we can only scream like foxes in the night,

Bark like a Dog or like a Vixen call.

Wiltshire Street by Tim Veater

Because I can't write music, I have to settle for this verse,
My requiem in hollow words, quite unequal to the task.
The obeisance of the living to the selfless dead.


It's like an empty casket, in a shiny silent hearse,
Drawn by a four-plumed charger, gliding down a nightmare street,
Avenued by people transfixed by clack of horses feet.


So very few related - except by common blood,
Which in a far-off desert land ran premature
From youthful bodies hot and red, leaving its rusty stain.


Cut short by fate and metal - a careless indifference
To oh such vulnerable flesh, or feelings of parents for their children
Or lovers for their loves.


Here just petals strew the way, washed by the tears of pain,
Burning their own sweet furrow, down cheeks that lips have kissed.
Yet but another passing; yet by another name.


That has travelled on a journey, to where a man was slain.
A monument to timeless strife.
A battle of ideals and incompetence.


These are our boys but what of those?
For do they not feel the same?
Is their loss not just as great?


What festival can recompense? What ritual can restore?
The incendiary seeds of hate which buried,
Grow for evermore?


At Christmas when the lights flash red,
When children's faith is pure,
When beneath all joy and all thanksgiving,


The distant sound of hammering nails in wood is heard
And mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, weeping,
Here, there, and everywhere.

Strawberry (2011) by Tim Veater


Amidst the barrenness of winter

I picked a wild strawberry on Christmas day

It was pale from lack of light

A tiny fruit hiding under the leaves

But for sure it tasted strawberry.

Its pink body melted on my tongue

Its seed-dotted-exterior

Fused with its flesh in an orgasm of flavour

Out of time Out of place,

A flash-back to summer

And larger more gaudy fruit.

As I returned up the lane from my passion feast

A fox emerged from the undergrowth

Carrying a limp rabbit.

The camelia displayed its first pink bloom

And a flock of brown birds rose up in front of me

As one from woody and leafless hedge.

My mind drifting back to when

Together we lay, my fingers tip-

Toeing over skin in joyful anticipation

Reaffirming that even in the barrenness of winter

We may still pick a strawberry on Christmas day.

Peace (2006) by Tim Veater


Peace perfect peace

Swelling the songs of silence

When passing people reprise

The sensuous fleeting pockets

Of compassion

Singing the songs of passion

Slowly through the spaces

Time and motion leave behind.

People people falling

Into the void of forgetting

The tangled wreckage of life

Begging to leave

Singing the screams of expectation

The awfulness of being

Covering the eyes of children

Not wishing to see into the future.

Impervious to the bullets whistling

Through the silken fabric

Of tormented human flesh

Fathers and their brothers

Brothers and their sons

All fall down together - One.

Meanwhile to clanking mechanical sounds

And cheerful whistling.

Dead men drive off

A job well done.

The Secret Agent by Tim Veater



Vera Zassoulich, where are you now?

In some unmarked grave?

A faded Lilly in some forgotten ditch?

Where is your youthful passion?

Where the ardent cause?

Where the screams of torture

Filtering through prison bars?



Where in St. Petersburg marks the spot

Where the Chief of Police, Fyodor Fydodorovich

Was shot? Is it marked with a blue shield?

Your lover was a Nihilist apparently.

Your female friend was flogged.

Amazingly though tried, the jury acquitted.

Maybe they were robbed

Or just that mercy and justice applied

Their rescuing arms.



What vortex of emotion!

What passion of despair!

The candled nights' of argument!

The thrill of auburn hair!

The crushing weight of tyranny!

The white hot metal - hope!

The thrill of righteous indignation

The smell of carbine smoke

Combined to make this moment

A single piercing note.



How many gun reports have echoed since

From anarchists and dreamers?

Of nationalists and revolutionaries

Terrorists and dopes?

The teeming human masses

Continue every day

To come to terms with destiny

And dull routine

Battling the insistent urge

To break away.



How fortunate we, who in freedom recline

Not needing to get up, to work or dress

But in a decadent nonchalance recline?

Whilst others in mud and dirt and oil and sweat

Live out their brutal lives

In one way or another

Striving to prove they matter, yet.

Like desperate Vera Zassoulich

Who's feet once clattered shining gas-lit clay

Of that Imperial past before it blew away

Speaks to us all of struggle

For freedom, justice and relief

Willow Flower by Tim Veater

my eye imbibed a darting bee

buzzing round the willow tree

distracted in the quickening air

unable to decide quite what or where

on jagged course it moves about

miraculous intent and doubt

meanwhile the tree with sinuous staves

waves in the breeze its fluttering leaves

dressed lightly o'er in willow flowers

for bee and me this morning dowers

surprisingly resplendent in display

the reawakening hope of each May Day

fresh wash of lemon on lime the image finds

a citric splash of colour which reminds

of magic power to soothe the pain

as much of heart as brain

 America's Gun-boat Diplomacy (aka 'Piracy' and 'kidnapping')

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves, Britons never, never, never will be slaves". The song is still sung with gusto and much flag-waving at the British Proms, but now with an element of self-mockery. Britons, despite owning two hellishly expensive 'Air-craft Carriers', know the words are vacuous and they no longer 'rule the waves' - or virtually anything else. 

As to "Never, never shall be slaves", written by James Thompson to the music of Thomas Arne in 1740, the irony of owning and trading in the slavery of others, was clearly lost on them. Nor in the present age is the social, economic or political slavery, in which we find ourselves, fully appreciated. Leaving aside all the other iterations, literal slavery has apparently never ensnared more people than today.

The British Empire, that at its height, ruled perhaps a third of the world's land surface and profited hugely by it, was progressively dismantled from two ruinous European wars and subsequent Indian sub-continent secession from 1948 onwards. The failure of Suez adventure in 1956, a conspiracy by Britain, France and the nascent Israeli state, to check the independence of Egypt under President Nasser, was the final nail.

The British Empire, like all those that had preceded it, in China, in Babylon, in Assyria, in Egypt, in Rome, and innumerable others, recorded and unrecorded, has had its 'rise and fall'. We are reminded of Shelley's immortal lines, first published in 1818, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare."

If Empires, however great and powerful are transient, even more so Emperors, yet they seem immune to its lesson. The United States of America and its President Trump, have now assumed the role Britain once held, yet far more arrogantly and destructively it could be argued. It has taken on the mantle of unilateral arbiter of what is lawful or necessary. It has for the last century, spent a disproportion amount of its wealth on arms and military expenditure and has seldom not been engaged in war with someone, somewhere. 

It has dominated Europe and South America and extended its influence and bases world wide, but never before recent times has it so overtly threatened its ostensible allies and neighbours or undermined the post-1948 United Nations world order. 

How much this is down to the personal, highly egotistial, world view of President Trump, or of the state institutions is debateable, but what is now clear is that it regards 'National Sovereignty' as transactionable concept, dependent only on its own arbitary definition. The natural resources of other states are there to be abstracted and used at its whim. There can be no doubt that what makes one country the richer, makes the other country and its population the poorer.

In the case of Venezuela, Trump has adopted Palmerston's policy of 'gunboat diplomacy'. As usual, on the pretext of fighting drug crime. It has bombed boats and people on international waters and hijacked oil tankers and engaged in extrajudicial - aka 'murdered - at least 150 people, maybe more, given the intensity of the operation to capture President Maduro.

Google AI Mode currently has this:

• Operation Absolute Resolve (January 3, 2026): At least 40 people, including both military personnel and civilians, were killed during the large-scale U.S. military operation to capture Maduro. Strikes targeted Caracas and the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. Specific reported casualties include an 80-year-old woman, Rosa González, killed when a strike hit an apartment complex in Catia La Mar.
• Naval Strikes on Vessels (September – December 2025): Between 110 and 115 people were killed in more than 30 U.S. airstrikes targeting what the administration described as "drug-smuggling" boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The first of these strikes occurred on September 2, 2025, killing 11 people. 

But whatever the Trump rationale or excuses, it is clear the real reason for the incursion is one of control of the huge oil assets of that country, by replacing its government with one more amenable to the United States. It is essentially the imposition of a colonialist philosophy and practice, for blatant financial benefit. It is disinterested in the welfare of people, only in the accretion of power and money.

I am sure Palmerston would be proud of Trump and a country with largely British and European roots, but the political leadership of other countries - and Empires - may not be so sanguine. (TTV)

Deb’s Substack cross-posted a post from Garrett Update

Deb AmosJan 4 · Deb’s Substack

Shades of Noriega. Same date - different time frame. Laurie Garrett does a great job of considering all the angles.

If you break it, you own it

With no clear rationale or plan for what comes next, President Donald Trump removes Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and declares America will now run the country and extract its oil.

Laurie Garrett Jan 4

READ IN APP

Operation Absolute Resolve was triggered at 10:56 pm last night by direct order of President Donald Trump, according to General Dan Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was, Caine told reporters this morning at Mar-a-Lago, an “apprehension capture mission” targeting President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. At the 10:56 order some 150 aircraft departed 20 U.S. bases and naval positions, descending upon Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.

With no loss of American lives or equipment, the operation was hailed by President Trump as “one of the greatest” success stories in U.S. military history.

Maduro and Flores are now on board the U.S. Iwo Jima in the Caribbean, bound for New York City, where the Venezuelans will be imprisoned and tried.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred this morning in the Mar-a-Lago press conference to the operation as “extraction of indicted” personnel. The rationale for the military action, Rubio insisted, was sound, focused on bringing an indicted criminal to U.S. justice. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice in American courts on American soil.”

President Trump told reporters this morning that “America can exercise our will effectively anywhere, at any time.” He repeatedly referred to the Venezuelan action as a warning to leaders throughout the world that crossing U.S. interests will put them in conflict with “the greatest military force in the world.”

Foreign press, from India to Turkey, Nigeria to Brazil, immediately drew parallels between Operation Absolute Resolve and the 1989 capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, carried out by order of President George HW Bush. It is not intended to be a flattering analogy – rather, indication of Yankee over-reach in Latin America.

Noriega was indicted in 1988 in federal courts in Florida on charges of racketeering and drug smuggling, and on money laundering charges in France. Unlike last night’s operation in Caracas, the U.S. military invasion of Panama was a bloody conflict pitting 27,000 U.S. combatants against 16,000 Panamanian defense military, killing 23 Americans and a much-debated number of Panamanian soldiers and civilians – estimates still in 2026 range between 500 and 3,000 Panamanian dead. “Pineapple Face,” as Noriega was called by his opponents, took refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City, and his loyalists continued fighting for days until the Catholic See agreed to hand the military leader over to U.S. personnel. Noriega died of a brain tumor in 2017 in a Panama City hospital, after serving 27 years in prisons in the U.S., France and Panama.

Today, JFK International Airport issued an early Saturday morning security alert, warning passengers that all flights to and from the Caribbean to New York City were either cancelled, or will be delayed for many hours, due to dangerous military activities in the region. Maduro and Flores will be brought to New York City, to stand trial in the federal Southern District Court in Manhattan. As is now customary with high value prisoners awaiting trial, the Venezuelans are likely to be held in the Brooklyn Federal Court Building, located at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, which is considered the most secure, virtually bomb-proof structure in the United States. Designed under orders from President Bill Clinton following the deadly 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the Brooklyn structure was meant to be a prototype “bomb-proof” structure for all federal courthouses. Following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center construction of the building halted, the frailties of the WTC buildings and Pentagon damaged in 2001 were studied, and modifications were made. President George W. Bush ordered in 2002 that the structure have a roof capable of withstanding a one megaton bomb, anthrax or chemical weapons spread, and parking garage car-bombs. The building is three structures, one inside another, descending many stories below street level. Each building has its own ventilation system, stairs and elevators.

The Maduros may be initially detained in “The Tombs” – the colloquial name of the Manhattan Detention Complex of buildings located between Chinatown and the Financial District. Built in 1735 as Bridewell Prison, modernized in the nearly three centuries since, The Tombs were denounced in 1842 by Charles Dickens: “Such indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells, would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world!”

Even in the 1960s The Tombs ranked as one of the worst city jails in the USA. In 2001 Mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered The Tombs named after his Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik – a moniker removed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Kerik pled guilty to corruption charges in 2006. Most of the original buildings that comprised The Tombs were demolished in 2024 to make way for more modern, humane facilities – which have not yet been constructed.

Finally, the Maduros could end up in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. This grim, gray concrete facility is notorious for having neither heat in the winter, nor air-conditioning in summer. Located close to the New York Harbor waterfront, MDC-Brooklyn is frequently condemned as “inhumane” because summer temperatures inside cells exceed 100 degrees F, and winter can drop below freezing. In 2019 the prison under the first Trump Administration famously shut down all heat, leading to outcry from both prisoners and their families. On frequent bike rides along the outside of the prison that winter I witnessed hundreds of families and friends standing on the street, shouting greetings and calls for courage to their loved ones inside. Prisoners banged on their windows, demanding heat amid a Polar Vortex Arctic event that drove wind chills as low as -15 degrees F. Members of Congress and Senator Chuck Schumer were denied entry to inspect the facilities which, according to attorneys for the prisoners, offered life-threatening Arctic cold with temperatures as low as 10 degrees. If jailed in MDC-Brooklyn – which houses both male and female prisoners – the Maduros would shiver in temperatures that are today 20 degrees.

At around 4:30 pm a plane carrying the Maduros and a Delta Team landed at Stewart Air National Guard base, located in Newburgh, in Upstate New York, where Maduro and Flores underwent a series of legally required preliminary processing steps, such as customs and immigration intake, fingerprinting and identity confirmation. According to both The New York Times and CNN, the Trump Administration has selected MDC-Brooklyn as the couple’s accommodations for tonight.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN

Tension between the United States and Venezuela dates to 1999, when military officer Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias seized power, installing the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in power. Chavez formed a close alliance with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, providing Cuba with nearly-free petrochemicals and gasoline in exchange for Cuban doctors, dentists, schoolteachers and engineers. With the exception of a 47-hour-long coup effort in 2002, Chavez held power until his death due to cancer in 2013, and was elected four times, albeit in elections that saw opponents facing prison and death threats. He commanded tremendous loyalty from the rank-and-file of Venezuela’s military, and was immensely popular among the country’s poor, who bitterly resented the vast wealth gap and dire poverty created by the petrostate oligarchy.

Prior to Chavez’s seizure of power, more than half the population, most of them descended from African slaves, indigenous Amazonian people or mixed-race ancestry, lived in acute poverty, while a handful of powerful, European-descendant families controlled hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of wealth derived from the nation’s vast oil and gas reserves, and communications and media enterprises that spanned Latin America.

Though Chavez created social welfare programs that proved wildly popular with the masses, he also replaced the old, all-white elite with a more racially diverse new elite that Venezuelan journalist Juan Carlos Zapata labelled an “oligarchy” and bolibourgeoisie or bolichicos – people who became rich under the protection of Chávez and, after his death, Nicolas Maduro’s government through corruption and political favors. That new elite became all-powerful, garnering staggering wealth from the country’s fossil fuel income and backing an increasingly brutal Maduro regime.

Both the Obama and Biden Administrations tried to bring down the Maduro elite through sanctions on the country’s oil industry, but the net impact of petrostate corruption coupled with sanctions regimes imposed by nations all over the world was an economy that barely functions for average citizens. Even for the elite, the country’s dependence on a single source of wealth – oil – left it acutely vulnerable to global fluxes in petroleum prices. In 2014 oil sold internationally for $100/barrel and the Maduro elite enjoyed phenomenal wealth. But two years later oil fell to $30/barrel, and the government effectively went into bankruptcy, reducing the scope of all public programs including healthcare, education and agriculture. Between 2014 and 2021 the nation’s GDP plummeted 75% and its debt burden – chiefly owed to China and Russia – soared to over $150 billion. By 2018 inflation for basic goods, such as milk, eggs and clothing, skyrocketed an astonishing 130,000%, and even amid modest improvements in the economic picture due to European purchases of Venezuelan oil, in 2023 inflation held at 190%.

Following Maduro’s ascension to power in 2014 some 8 million people left the country, most fleeing to nearby Latin American nations (2.9 million to Colombia, for example, and 1.5 million to Peru), but about 300,000 making the harrowing journey through Central America and Mexico into the United States by 2020. In 2014 the population of Venezuela was 30.2 million; by 2024 it was 26 million, despite having one of the highest birth rates on the continent.

Meanwhile, inside the United States both political parties have opposed the legitimacy of the Maduro regime, but never evidenced consistent policies regarding opposition parties, immigrants, political asylum claims, or charges of drug smuggling by the country’s elite. All such claims have been used by the Trump Administration, including in today’s press conference, to justify actions against Venezuelan oil companies, boats targeted recently in the Caribbean, and today’s military action against Caracas.

OIL, OIL, OIL

In 1922 Royal Dutch Shell geologists struck oil near Lake Maracaibo in northwest Venezuela. Within two decades an “Oil Rush” unfolded with more than 100 companies – mostly, American and European – descending upon what has proven to be the largest petroleum reserve on the planet. The Maracaibo Basin Reserve spans an enormous region, from Venezuela’s central mountain range, under all of Lake Maracaibo, and into the Gulf of Venezuela including most of the nation’s territorial waters. Formed when a 9-mile-long asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico near Yucatan, the blast incinerating some 80% of all life forms on Earth 66 million years ago in the K-T Extinction, including all dinosaurs. The energy released by the asteroid collision is estimated to be the equivalent of 4.5 billion Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.

The heat, compression pressure and mass flora and fauna deaths produced a global carbon event, reducing complex lifeforms to their elemental components, and turning what is now the Maracaibo Basin into a gigantic subterranean lake of carbon in the forms of oil, tar and gas: fossil fuels. Today, Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin holds about 17% of Earth’s petroleum.

At peak production, using then-state-of-the-art extraction and refining equipment, Venezuela sold about 7% of world oil annually in the 1970s. Decades of corruption by successive oligarchies drained funds from the industry, decreasing its extraction capacity, and in 2025 less than 1% of global petroleum came from Venezuela.

In 2006 and 2007 Hugo Chavez issued a series of edicts that stripped private foreign companies of access and control of all petrochemical fields in Venezuela. Only corporations that were willing to yield 60% of revenues to Venezuela by giving the country’s companies majority stakeholder positions in local operations were allowed to remain. In 2009 even those companies were ejected from the country in a militarily enforced mass nationalization. The Obama Administration condemned the nationalizations, carried out, according to the President, by “ignoramus” Chavez, a “clown.” But the only actions taken by Obama were limited additional sanctions on Venezuelan oil and goods. Rhetorical wars of words bounced between Caracas and Washington for years.

The announced intent of these nationalization actions – which drew widespread praise from progressives and the Left worldwide – was to generate revenues that would benefit the Venezuelan poor, paying for social services, housing, food production and healthcare. While there may have been some benefits for the poor prior to Chavez’s cancer death, the Maduro era after 2014 ushered mass kleptomania among his elite.

TRUMP’S AGENDA

Donald Trump ran for office twice, drawing heavily for support from wealthy Venezuelan expatriates and their Cuban American sympathizers. Denouncing Venezuela as “communist” Trump the campaigner consistently promised voters with ties to Central and Latin America that he would bring down the regime.

Since taking office in January 2025 Trump’s rhetoric has shifted. He has made no mention of democracy in Venezuela, election fraud, assassinations and torture of Maduro opponents, or any other issue relevant to freedom for the country’s people. In hopes of ejecting most of the 300,000 Venezuelans that have immigrated to America, he has described them as criminals, drug dealers, even terrorists. ICE has targeted neighborhoods in Florida, New Jersey and New York that are rife with Venezuelans.

Trump has tried repeatedly to link the Maduro regime to America’s opioid crisis, even claiming that the Venezuelan leader has personally profited from fentanyl trade. There is no evidence for these claims, and in today’s press conference Trump switched from opioid rhetoric to insisting Maduro and his elite profit from cocaine. Regardless of what drug is alleged, Trump has insisted that stopping the “killing of Americans” through drug smuggling justifies bombing at least 30 boats in Caribbean waters over the last four months. On December 15^th the President issued an Executive Order designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. While the EO does not mention Venezuela, it has been cited by Republicans as reason for continued attacks on the country’s boats. Three days ago the CIA, under direct orders from Trump, attacked a Venezuelan dock, citing the EO and claims of drug smuggling as justification. In a press conference Trump bragged that drug smuggling by sea, into the U.S., “are down 94%,” offering no source for the figure or comparator (94% compared to what, when?).

In today’s unfolding events it has been the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that has been seen escorting and processing Maduro and Flores, underscoring claims that all White House-ordered activities are focused on drug smuggling.

But in the one-hour press conference from Mar-a-Lago today Trump said little about drugs, communism, and not a word about the liberties and freedoms of the Venezuelan people.

It was all about oil.

Reading from approved and crafted text, Trump said that American oil companies will enter Venezuela and spend billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s oil infrastructure, signaling a major push to revive production and rebuild the energy sector, “spending billions of dollars, reviving the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

Following seizure of 1.9 million barrels of Venezuelan oil from ships boarded by U.S. military personnel on December 10^th Trump was asked in a press conference what he will do with the oil. “We’re going to keep it,” he answered, grinning. On Christmas Eve Trump added, “Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it. Maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserves. We’re keeping the ships also.”

Today he said, “We’re going to run the country until such a time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure – the oil infrastructure – and start making money for the country.”

“A lot of money is coming out of the ground,” Trump continued. “We’re going to get reimbursed for all of that. We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend…We’ll rebuild Venezuelan oil industry with American talent, drive and skill. And the socialist regime stole it from us, through previous [U.S.] administrations, and stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. Very importantly, the embargo on Venezuelan oil remains in full effect, the American armada remains poised in position and the United States retains all military options until United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied.”

Bloomberg News is unequivocal – this entire attack and removal of the Maduros is about oil. The Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, according to new geology findings, contains one TRILLION barrels of oil – total worldwide consumption of oil to date is 1.5 trillion barrels. Chevron never left Venezuela, despite nationalization, and currently pumps a quarter of the country’s annual oil yield and is poised to fulfill Trump’s vow – “we are going to run the country.”

Trump today told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.” This echoes a statement Trump made to reporters on December 17, claiming Maduro’s government, “Took it [American oil rights] away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching. But they’re not going to do that again. We want it back. They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

In fact, long before Chavez came to power President Carlos Andres Perez in 1976 created a state petroleum company and ordered foreign oil companies to collaborate with it or leave. It followed Saudi Arabian creation of Aramco, Brazil’s Petrobras and similar programs in Mexico.

Many foreign critics have accused the Trump Administration of displaying a policy of “resource imperialism.” In an interview with The Guardian Patrick Bigger of the Transition Security Project tied Trump’s opposition to alternative energy development, denial of climate change, and hunger for oil: “The administration’s global energy policy is mostly about using the threat of violence or the withholding of aid to secure the inputs for the ‘most of the above’ energy strategy,” which excludes only solar and wind.

Bigger notes that Trump’s language today regarding Venezuela mirror those he made following U.S. military action in Syria in October 2019: “We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil, and we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future,” and Exxon Mobil could lead the effort to tap the resources.

Alice Hill of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that Trump’s target is “essentially resource nationalism”, for the USA. “He sees fossil fuel dominance as key to our national power and he doesn’t care about international norms or what climate science says. That’s very unfortunate given the clear need for rapid decarbonization. This is a short-term gamble that will cost everyone a great deal. For current and future generations who will have to deal with climate change, he’s making a catastrophic mistake.”

NOW WHAT?

Two names went unmentioned in President Trump’s prepared remarks today – one got dismissed as irrelevant in response to a reporter’s question. The names are Edmundo González and María Corina Machado. On July 28, 2024 Venezuela held national elections which Maduro claimed to have one with 51.95% of the vote. But scrutiny of 85% of written ballots revealed that González was elected President, on behalf of Vente Venezuela (VV), a liberal party run by Machado. Denied the right to run for the office by Maduro’s hand-picked Supreme Court, Machado asked González to run in her stead. Nearly every nation in the world refused to recognize Maduro’s victory (with China and Russia notable exceptions), and President Joe Biden welcomed “victor” González to the White House in August 2024.

With death threats and assassination attempts dogging Machado daily, the VV leader went underground, hiding inside the country, appearing publicly to drum up public support and disappearing before would be captors or assassins could find her. In 2024 Machado received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and in 2025 the Nobel Peace Prize.

Asked in today’s press conference about Machado’s legitimate claim to Venezuela’s presidency, Trump said and American team will run the country, because “who’s going to take over? There is nobody to take over.”

“We’re not just going to do this with Maduro and then leave, let it go to Hell. If we just left it has zero chance of ever coming back. We’ll run it properly, we’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in…and the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the people of Venezuela.”

A reporter asked, “Mr. President, why is running a country in South America about America First?”

“Well, I think it is because we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors...with stability…with energy. We have tremendous [oil] energy in that country, it’s very important that we protect that for ourselves. We need that for the world.“

“Are you aware of the location of Machado and have you been in contact with her,” a reporter asked.

“No, we haven’t. I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within – or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect of the people.”

“Is it possible the United States ends up administering the country for years,” a reporter queried.

“Well, it won’t cost us anything because that money coming out of the ground is very substantial. So, it’s not going to cost us anything. [He shrugs] Well, we want safety there. We don’t want to be surrounded by countries that are housing our enemies. We’re going to be rebuilding.”

In response, Maria Machado posted this letter on X:

María Corina Machado’s letter to Venezuelans

Venezuelans, The time for freedom has come!

Nicolás Maduro from today will face international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against Venezuelans and against citizens of many other nations. Given his refusal to accept a negotiated solution, the United States government has fulfilled its promise to enforce the law.

The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to prevail in our country. We are going to restore order, release the political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home.

We have fought for years, we have given it our all, and it has been worth it. What was meant to happen is happening.

This is the hour of the citizens. Those of us who risked everything for democracy on June 28th. Those of us who elected Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the legitimate President of Venezuela, who must immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces by all the officers and soldiers who comprise it.

Today we are ready to assert our mandate and take power. Let us remain vigilant, active, and organized until the democratic transition is complete. A transition that needs ALL of us.

To the Venezuelans who are currently in our country, be ready to put into action what we will be communicating to you very soon through our official channels.

To Venezuelans abroad, we need you to be mobilized, engaging the governments and citizens of the world and committing them from now on to the great operation of building the new Venezuela.

In these crucial hours, receive all my strength, my confidence, and my affection. We remain vigilant and in contact.

VENEZUELA WILL BE FREE! We go hand in hand with God, until the end.

Tonight, inside Venezuela the people are quiet, lining up in supermarkets to stockpile food, hunkering down in their homes and bracing for chaos. The Trump Administration seems more interested in trying to manipulate newly-sworn-in President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, than in working to reinforce democracy in the country by recognizing Machado. Rodríguez, loyal to Chavez and Maduro, today denounced the arrest of Maduro as a “kidnapping” with a “Zionist tint” motivated by Trump’s desire to make “Venezuela a colony” and exploit its resources.

In 2003, on the eve of U.S. invasion of Iraq and capture of the country’s President Saddam Hussein, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, predicted that U.S. forces would be greeted as “liberators” with “sweets and flowers” or “flowers on the end of rifles.” Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC’s Meet The Press that Iraqis would see the Americans as liberators. “Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans,’” said Cheney.

Some 4,492 U.S. military combatants died in the warfare the ensued in Iraq, along with 318 allied combatants. At least 32,000 U.S. military personnel suffered serious wounds in action. The Iraq Body Count Project estimates that between 186,901 and 210,296 Iraqi civilians died between 2003-11. A medical analysis adds 461,000 excess deaths among Iraqis due to collapse of healthcare systems, starvation, exploding landmines, and disease. Iraqi security forces lost nearly 18,000 lives.

https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human#:~:text=An%20estimated%20over%20940%2C000%20people,4.5%2D4.7%20million%20and%20counting

and

https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq-War

A search of Google Images could find no examples of Iraqis placing flowers in American rifles.

During a February 2016 Presidential debate in South Carolina Donald Trump had a tense exchange with his key Republican challenger, Jeb Bush, brother of the man who led the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said. “George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

As Rachel Maddow said this morning on MS NOW, “All of the purported explanations for what’s happened here don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. The president has never articulated a coherent rationale for having done this…That said, he’s done it, so in the immortal words of General Colin Powell, if you break it, you own it.”

(At 8:15 pm, outside my windows, Nicolas Maduro and his wife are flown by helicopter past the Statue of Liberty en route to the Metropolitan Detention Complex in Brooklyn. Photo by Garrett, via cell phone.)

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