Picture this: "Nicolas Maduro didn't recognise yesterday's electoral results" is no longer part of the conversation. Imagine "With 87% of votes counted, Maria Corina Machado won a landslide in Venezuela." This is today the new reality, a reality that took the U.S. military might to be established. This morning, every last crime boss within Chavismo knows U.S. forces can come at any point, land anywhere in the country however guarded, snatch you in the dead of night, and ship you to America looking all dishevelled and frightened.

UPDATED - News from Caracas early this morning woke up a lot of people. The exiled Venezuelans among those people are finding difficult to believe that Maduro and partner in crime Cilia have been captured and flown out of the country. Delcy Rodriguez has said that the U.S. has violated international law with the action, adding that Venezuela will never be under anyone's tutelage… This is where everyone can see just how completely deranged chavistas truly are, considering what they’ve been doing since 1999.

Everyone involved with this site has been following Venezuelan politics for two to four decades, some even since the time Romulo Betancourt imposed his doctrine of non-alignment with dictatorships. Chavismo turned Venezuela into what Betancourt despised, but it did so in ways that nobody could foresee. It isn't about Hugo Chavez volunteering to become a pawn of Fidel Castro, surrendering Venezuela's sovereignty and matters of strategic and national security to the impoverished Cuban dictatorship.

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION published the following yesterday: