As the World Tilts
The brilliant U.S. action in Venezuela is causing major shifts in this hemisphere. Indeed, all the world seems atilt now from the Mideast to Europe, and as we near the mid-term elections, the Democrats seem to have lost it with all but the mentally handicapped.
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The New World
Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Bolivia seem to have discarded the leftist, anti-American nonsense that has so hampered South America and kept it from achieving the promise of its abundant natural resources. With the capture of Maduro and restructuring of Venezuela, like dominoes cascading, much more of Latin America appears to follow.
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Colombia
Colombia’s president has reached out to Trump seeking aid and cooperation.
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The Trump/Petro talk lasted 42 minutes in which the Colombian president agreed to:
1) Implement bombings against FARC and ELN dissidents.
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2) Start fumigation with glyphosate on illicit crops.
3) Lift the suspension on extraditions of drug lords.
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4) Guarantee free, transparent, and secure elections for the opposition.
5) Collaborate in the restoration of Venezuela.
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6) Strengthen security on the Colombia-Venezuela border to combat groups like the ELN when they attempt to cross the border fleeing the new order imposed by the United States.
7) Stop persecuting the opposition.
8) Peacefully and quietly abandon the Casa de Nariño on August 6, 2026. Petro has already begun fulfilling these 8 points, which is why he will soon have a meeting with Delcy Rodríguez.
Bolivia
Bolivia’s new president, Rodrigo Paz, whose country has limited resources to do this, has sought and received cooperation from the U.S. to identify coca farms, clandestine air strips, and drug labs to end narco terrorism.
Cuba
The U.S. has moved north of Cuba two amphibious assault ships capable of deploying infantry, aircraft, and military equipment. With the loss of support from Iran, which is in the midst of a revolution, and Russia and China, which have both been forced to turn tail from Caracas, the Cuban tyrants are not only broke but defenseless. Their oil reserves are so meager that they won’t last a week, and it’s hard to imagine their military so foolhardy as to challenge the ferocious military that wiped out dozens of their best who were guarding Maduro when the special forces simply vaporized them in minutes.
Mexico
Clearly fearful of the powerful and brutal cartels that control much of Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum has been pushing back against Trump’s offers to enter Mexican space to wipe them out. Still, we seem to be inching toward concessions from Mexico to eradicate the cartels.
Mexico Secretly Flew 55 Cartel Bosses to U.S. in military operation
Mexico just pulled off 2 cloak-and-dagger operations this year, secretly transferring 55 of its most dangerous cartel leaders to U.S. custody.
The prisoners had no idea where they were going. Some thought their bribes had paid off and they were being freed.
Instead, they landed in America facing life in maximum-security prisons.
"Welcome to America!" the DEA's interim chief told them as they disembarked.
These aren't street-level dealers. They're the top echelons of the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, and Zetas cartels.
Rafael Caro Quintero, charged with killing DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985, is among them.
The Nicaraguan dictators just announced they will release their political prisoners.
The Old World
As the Americas become more dynamic, sclerotic Western Europe becomes less 
democratic, more economically depressed, and trapped in ridiculous, civilization-killing ideologies like climate change, open borders, and censoring free speech in the new technological age.
Spain
Evidence obtained in the raid on Maduro’s offices is likely to implicate a number of political figures (here and abroad) in Venezuelan bribery schemes. The first suspect seems to be Spain’s former prime minister José Zapatero:
The United States itself has quietly signaled that Zapatero is unwelcome on its soil. Washington’s security establishment has little interest in granting access to a man who has become little more than a spokesman for Nicolás Maduro and his criminal clique. Zapatero has acted not as a mediator, but as a public relations agent for Caracas, repeatedly minimizing the regime’s crimes, excusing fraudulent elections, and blocking genuine international pressure.
In fact, it is no coincidence that after his premiership ended, Zapatero’s fortune swelled. Curiously, his newfound wealth has been linked to ventures in Venezuela -- including a mining concession in the Orinoco basin, where he struck minerals under the regime’s protection. Enrichment through blood minerals in a collapsed state looks less like statesmanship and more like cartel economics.
Even worse, Zapatero’s duplicity extends to his rhetoric against Israel. He never misses a chance to accuse Israel of “excessive force,” while maintaining a calculated silence about the rockets, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and Iranian weapon pipelines that fuel Hamas and Hezbollah. He pretends to be a man of peace while defending the very tyrannies and terror groups that preach Israel’s destruction. In Madrid, he wraps his anti-Israel posture in flowery talk about “international law”; in Caracas, he wraps it in handshakes with a narco-dictatorship. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
Can his successor, Pedro Sanchez, already enmeshed in numerous corruption scandals, be far behind? Sanchez may not be the only Western European head who has lost the confidence of voters. Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Macron are barely skimming the bottom in voter sentiment.
The European Union has overshot itself with poor fiscal, environmental, immigration, and censorship policies, and right now roads in Spain, Greece, Belgium, Poland, France, and Germany are blocked by farmers protesting the EU’s agricultural policy which, among other things, demands the slaughter of cattle and the ending of farmers’ livelihoods in favor of importation of less costly agricultural products from South America. Increasingly, the general populations of these countries are supporting the farmers’ actions and demanding the arrest of EU president Ursula Von der Leyen. As the Americas grow stronger and Europe weaker, it’s a wonder the EU still exists.
Iran
As if the arrest of Maduro and the capitulation of the Venezuelan state apparatus lit a fuse in the Middle East, Iran’s long-lasting theological tyranny is in its death throes. Khamenei, if not politically or corporally dead already, may soon be. And Putin, who placed bad bets on Iran and Venezuela and overreached Russia’s military and financial capacities in Ukraine, may not be far behind.
The dynamic duo of President Trump and Elon Musk may have marked the end of the Iranian dictatorship. Iran tried its usual strategy of blacking out the country, controlling all communication, and isolating its opponents. Musk engaged Starlink over the country, and routers were smuggled in, so while limited by government obstruction, videos of the ground activities and internal and external communications were not utterly blocked. Hour after hour on X, we could see uploaded videos of what was going on, and very soon, I expect Iran’s people will be the winners.
Translated from French I have been an opponent of the mullahs' regime since I was 20 years old. I have almost all of my family in Iran (except for my mom and my brother, here). I no longer know how many demonstrations I have organized. I was the first person to shout "Death to Khamenei" in front of the Iranian embassy. I no longer know how many sanctions I drafted against the Islamic Republic for EP. So yes, I have known every demonstration and every uprising of the Iranian people for a long time. This time, it's different. We are receiving messages from inside the country. This time, there is no choice left; we must finish it. The people are calling for the return of @PahlaviReza, burning religious symbols and destroying public buildings. They are many, and fear has vanished. This time, they are in the streets to end it. There is true national solidarity. And I can tell you that without Elon Musk's platform, it would have been impossible to follow exactly what is happening in Iran. If @elonmusk had not opened Starlink, the regime would have continued massacring the population as in 2019 (6,000 dead in three days) in silence! So yes, the platform and the person that the leftists and the Greens wanted to boycott are today the only way to know the truth and to hear a courageous population! #Iran
When Iran falls, the wretched, bloody Islamist period in history will reach its endpoint at last.
The Beginning of the End of Islamism (Political Islam) We are FINALLY. FINALLY. witnessing what is likely to be a "once in a Millenium" historical shift, turn, in global Islam's balance of power. Nothing is certain but ‘hope rings eternal’. The over 1000 year, inhuman, Islamist strangulation of critical thinking, of reform, of modernization, and of counter-Islamism is finally on notice in Iran! The courage, heroism of the Iranian people we are witnessing is indescribable. If political Islam’s power structure and establishment is destroyed in Iran it will lay the groundwork for the entire Middle East region if not eventually the entire @OIC_OCI, and the other petro-Islamist regimes run by 11th century medieval theocrats, kleptocrats, and autocrats to fall by the sheer weight of the regional popular defeat of the ideas of #Islamism. Make. No. Mistake. For all of us @claritycoaliton @aifdemocracy @TheMuslimReform living and working in this pro-Liberty and counter-Islamism space against the Islamist establishment for our entire lives, …this is vindication!! So many of us have been beyond blessed to live in the belly of freedom in blessed nations like the United States of America. As I've said publicly during previous prequels ('09, '17, '19..) to today’s Iranian sonic boom in the #IranianRevolution, what is happening now as we enter 2026 in Iran is a once in a Millenium shift in the direction of history for the world. Never forget what the “Women, Life, Freedom” movements, and so many previous movements in Iran did to get. their. nation. to. this. day. One fourth of the planet’s population is Muslim and their Islamist radicals number in the hundreds of millions (20-30% or more of 1.8B Muslims) and their petro-enablers of the #RedGreenAxis have been fueling that, destroying the hope of freedom for all. So now, to have the world's largest and most entrenched Islamist theocracy fall from a popular upraising will do more to change the course of history FOR Freedom. FOR Liberty. and FOR human rights, and God willing towards the long overdue DEATH of #Islamism (Political Islam) than any single event in OVER 1000 years for Muslim majority nations and their beleaguered vulnerable minorities. Western nations founded in freedom were born with America's defeat of theocracy. Muslim majority nations are not immune from this possibility!! A Muslim majority nation with a populist uprising, revolution, rebellion against the evil which has been the Iranian Islamic Republic of 1979 and its Islamist Mullocracy will change the course of history for the current control and power structure for Islam and of Muslim populations and their vulnerable minorities around the world. The #RedGreenAxis will never recover. The "Petro-Islamist Establishment" for too long has been on offense and is finally now on deep defense. God bless the United States of America, and God bless all people on earth who seek freedom and liberty for all across the planet! [quote]
As for the Democrats, strangely, on Friday, a number of prominent Democrats, including New York governor Kathy Hochul, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Chuck Schume,r denounced Hamas. Why now? Some of these just endorsed New York’s friend of Hamas mayor. Your guess is as good as any. But it just might reflect that they’ve lost everything else and are trying to backpedal from their far-left base. Their last fingerhold before dropping into the dregs of history was “affordability” but as soon as Trump said he was going to cap credit card interest, mortgage rates dropped 6%; inflation is down to 2.7%, the gross domestic product is at 4.3%; gas prices are down; tax rate cuts and refunds are on the horizon and the administration is drafting an executive order that would allow people to dip into their retirement accounts and college savings accounts to make home down payments. With nothing else remaining in their quiver, the Dems are trying to pretend to be normal.
It’s been a remarkable and wonderful week.