Tea at Trianon: ¿What Is Really Going on in Venezuela?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

¿What Is Really Going on in Venezuela?

From Forbidden.News:

Last Sunday, the State Department announced that it intends to designate the Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), effective November 24, 2025. The announcement accuses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking members of his regime of leading of the Cartel de los Soles to corrupt the Venezuelan government and of being “responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere and of trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe, together with other designated FTOs including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel.”
There is a lot of conflicting information out there about this, arising from bribery, threats and opposing political agendas, so I’ve taken a stab, here at coming to a clear understanding of what’s really going on.
For example, French state media, France24 reports that Venezuela and Colombia insist there is “no such thing” as the Cartel de los Soles, noting that last March, “The latest US State Department report on global anti-drug operations made no mention of the ‘Cartel de los Soles’ or any connection between Maduro and narco trafficking.” (Read more.)