I have a feeling this could turn out to be the most important rabbit hole yet, so pay attention to this thread. ๐
Most conspiracy theories claim some shadowy cabal is secretly pulling the strings. But here's the twist: this one insists the cabal doesn't exist at all.
For decades, prosecutors and journalists have pointed to the Cartel de los Soles, a Venezuelan military-political network accused of moving tons of cocaine with impunity. U.S. indictments call out generals, ministers, even Maduro himself.
Yet powerful leftist voices, from Alliance for Global Justice to COHA analysts to UN drug officials, swear itโs all fiction. They label the Suns cartel a โmyth,โ a โmedia creation,โ or just โnarco-mythology.โ Even the Wikipedia page brands it as merely โalleged.โ ๐คฏ
๐ Ex-UN drug czar Pino Arlacchi says itโs as fake as the Loch Ness Monster.
๐ฐ NGO allies echo โno evidence.โ
๐ป Wikipedia editors refuse to treat it as fact.
Why are so many powerful voices so insistent on denying the Cartel of the Suns exist?
I don't know. But I suspect there is a powerful financial incentive here.
Let's see if this makes the trolls as angry as they were about yesterday's boat thread.
๐ Scroll down for receipts
Alliance for Global Justice -- yes, the same one I wrote about yesteday as the lowest-hanging fruit to crack down on paid protesters -- is one of the biggest amplifiers of the "Cartel of the Suns does not exist" narratives.
Remember, Alliance for Global Justice is a powerful financial NGO openly backing sanctioned terrorist groups and pro-protest groups founded by Bill Ayers. As well as having a role in ANSWER Coalition, also behind many of the nastier anti-Israel protests in the USA.
AfGJ calls Cartel of the Suns as mythical as the "Loch Ness Monster."
But did you know that AfGJ served as Venezuela's election observers, sending a 17-person delegate there? (Credit @lamps_apple )
@lamps_apple This is unusual, because Maduro's regime cracked down on election observers. Only state pre-approved observers are allowed to attend. AfGJ was personally invited by the Venezuelan state. While they were there, they met with Alex Saab, Venezuela's Investment Head.
@lamps_apple Maduro himself received them along with other international groups and, yes, it does appear that the state government itself paid at least part of the arrangement.
AFGJ is not the only one who is conveniently denying that Cartel of the Suns exist.
Former UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) director, Pino Arlacchi, recently penned an article saying it doesn't exist. Even though he admits he's never visited Venezuela in an official capacity.
@lamps_apple Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group says it doesn't exist. ICG is a powerful globalist NGO with many ex-UN officials, and both George and Alex Soros on their boards.
@lamps_apple William Camacaro with Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a powerful NGO focused on Latin America relations, insists it doesn't exist.
@lamps_apple Politicians join in the cover-up. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also says that there's no evidence that Nicolas Maduro has ties to cartels. Her father was a Communist.
@lamps_apple You get the idea.
Powerful globalists and leftist groups all have colluded to deny the Cartel of the Suns exist -- and that it is a figment of Trump's imagination.
This is straight-up gaslighting. For one, Cliver Alcalรก, former Venezuela general, pled guilty to it.
Now, I must backtrack and explain *what* the Cartel of the Suns is. It's not a traditional cartel. The name "Suns" comes from the sun insignia used to designate military ranks. It's a shorthand for accusing the entire Venezuelan military-state apparatus, from Maduro down, is complicit in drug trafficking.
@lamps_apple The allegation is that Venezuelan military resources are used to help FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) transport drugs across Venezuela. If you look at a map, it's obvious why Venezuela is an attractive drug corridor for Coloumbia.
Maduro's own nephews were arrested in drug trafficking -- and found guilty of using the money to help the Maduro family. Despite what leftists allege, this is not a Trump-only accusation. The Biden administration was the one who announced the charges against Maduro in March 2020.
The Cartel de los Soles predates Hugo Chรกvezโs rise to power. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Venezuelan generals and National Guard officers were repeatedly implicated in drug-trafficking cases, with several facing indictments abroad.
In 2004, journalist Mauro Marcano, who had been investigating high-ranking military figures linked to narcotics smuggling, was assassinated on the day he was preparing to reveal names of those involved. His murder became a national scandal and cemented the term โCartel de los Solesโ in the public consciousness.
@lamps_apple The US Treasury Department has been sanctioning various Venezuelan generals. Former Venezuelan Supreme Court judge testified how he was pressurized by military to drop charges or release officers to drop charges for military members caught with drug shipments.
Walid Makled, a Venezuelan businessman and accused drug trafficker, claimed in interviews that he had 40 generals from the Venezuelan Armed Forces on his payroll. He explained that because the military controls all ports and airports, nothing could move through facilities like Puerto Cabello without their authorization.
@lamps_apple A laptop captured in 2011 showed explicit communications between Columbia's FARC and Venezuelan officials over cocaine shipments.
The Biden administration obtained communications suggesting that the Maduro family has used Tren de Aragua, the same gang whose boat was destroyed last week, as a crew of contract killers.
Meanwhile, the Maduros insist Tren de Aragua no longer exists, and groups like the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) echo and amplify that denial.
@lamps_apple So, why are there so many powerful interests denying Venezuela's drug complicity?
This is where it gets wild.
The short version is:
- Hezbollah is not just a Lebanese party, but a paramilitary and financial arm of Iranโs Revolutionary Guard.
- Hezbollah is embedded within FARC. Ayman Joumaa, Colombian druglord of Lebanese descent, worked with Mexicoโs Los Zetas cartel to move multi-ton loads of cocaine directly into the United States. Venezuelan government assisted with moving loads by air and sea.
What this adds up to is: Venezuela, allied with both Iran and Hezbollah, became a launchpad for Colombian cocaine toward West Africa, Europe, and the U.S.
The Iranian state itself is implicated in the drug trafficking, and the Obama administration suppressed protests to make progress on a nuclear deal.
And if that money is flowing into Iran ... then the money is likely flowing into Hamas and other groups as well.
Before I wrap up the thread, I need to mention the role of the CIA in this. Two CIA officers in Venezuela were implicated in smuggling many tons of cocaine in the 1990s and was responsible for flooding America with drugs. However, Venezuela has shut itself off from DEA for two decades. President Trump was accused of violating international law when he sent undercover DEA agents there in 2018.
@lamps_apple Maduro has consistently protrayed himself as a victim of CIA, even as he looks to expel CIA and DEA officials.
๐จ Cap-Off: The Price of Denial ๐จ
For nearly two decades, Venezuela's regime and its allies have perfected the art of denial: "There is no Cartel de los Soles... Tren de Aragua doesn't exist... Trump imagined it all." Each denial buys them more time. Each myth, echoed by globalist NGOs and sympathetic voices in the West, blunts scrutiny and contributes to the 100,000 annual overdose deaths in America.
It gave Iranโs Hezbollah network free rein to launder billions through Latin American cocaine corridors.
The full picture of why this happens is still in need of focusing ... but one thing is clear: it involves a lot of money, and a lot of powerful people.
@lamps_apple I was telling @wasatchdotco about this thread.
Me: โItโs so weird how so many people deny Venezuela works with cartels.โ
Him: โItโs so weird how so many people make so much money.โ
Yeahโฆ
โข โข โข
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force a refresh
๐งต THREAD: You've heard the phrase "OUR DEMOCRACY" a million times. But what exactly is "OUR DEMOCRACY"? ๐ค
When they say "democracy," they don't mean a republic. They don't mean consent of the governed. They don't mean your right to choose your own leaders.
They mean a system where "institutions" - NGOs, multilaterals, the permanent bureaucracy - advance a set of values they consider settled: equality, social justice, cosmopolitanism, global governance. These values aren't proposals to be voted on. They're treated as moral prerequisites that must be true *before* your vote counts.
Despite what they say, they aren't for checks and balances. Checks and balances limit what government can do to you. This limits what you can do to *them*. The brakes are on accountability, not power. The institutions that set the boundaries of acceptable policy have put themselves beyond the reach of the electorate, and they call that arrangement "democracy."
Trump has been an existential threat to this system since the moment he said "drain the swamp" ... because the swamp IS the system. When he threatened those institutions, he didn't threaten the republic. He threatened their immunity from it.
And they said so. On camera. At their own events. In their own words.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread.๐
Robert Kagan:
"I would say there is an argument for saying give me some smoke filled rooms... they weeded out the Donald Trumps of this world."
Backroom deals instead of primaries. Because primaries are how you got Trump... and the old gatekeepers would have stopped him.
Think Kagan's an outlier? Here's Brookings senior fellow William Galston at the National Endowment for Democracy's (NED) most prestigious annual lecture.
He explains that "liberal democracy" requires "some abridgement of majoritarianism."
Translation: democracy means limiting what the majority can do.
๐งต๐จ THREAD: How the Charlottesville rally and SPLC birthed an entire billion-dollar-plus "democracy" ecosystem ๐จ
11 federal counts. Wire fraud. Money laundering conspiracy. But here's what the SPLC headlines are missing:
โข The indictment describes a paid informant in the leadership chat that PLANNED Unite the Right
โข That informant "helped coordinate transportation" to the rally... at SPLC's direction
โข There is ONE publicly identified organizer whose documented role was transportation coordinator
โข His Discord posts about running over protesters were made 26 DAYS before Heather Heyer was killed by a car
โข The indictment says postings were made "under the supervision of the SPLC"
โข Charlottesville then became the founding event for a billion-dollar political machine
โข SPLC installed itself as that machine's definitional gatekeeper
I report. You draw your own conclusions.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread. ๐
It is NOT confirmed fact that Chesny, who appeared to be encouraging running over protesters, was SPLC's informant.
But the indictment (paragraph 11a) describes informant F-37, and it matches Chesny:
โข Member of the online leadership chat that planned Unite the Right
โข Attended Charlottesville (at SPLC's direction)
โข Made racist postings (under SPLC's supervision)
โข Helped coordinate transportation for attendees
Now here's why this matters beyond the fraud charges.
Charlottesville became the single most consequential founding event in modern American political infrastructure. Every one of these organizations says... in their own words.... that they exist or were transformed because of August 12, 2017.
๐งต THREAD: The true reason Pete Hegseth is being targeted is because he's standing between President Trump and a coup
@PeteHegseth named the institutions... CFR, Brookings, the general class... in 37 seconds in a video by @Liz_Wheeler . Within 72 hours of his nomination, a color revolution planning document cited him as an insider threat.
They didn't go after him because of drinking. They didn't go after him because of women. They went after him because every color revolution manual ever written says the same thing: you cannot topple a government unless the security forces defect. And a loyal Secretary of Defense is the one person who makes sure they don't.
I have the receipts. Their own documents. Their own training sessions. Their own words on camera.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread. ๐
@PeteHegseth @Liz_Wheeler This is not my theory. This is theirs.
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan โ the two most cited scholars in the color revolution field โ studied 323 regime change campaigns. Their finding:
Security force defections make campaigns FORTY-SIX TIMES more likely to succeed.
@PeteHegseth @Liz_Wheeler So what did co-author Maria Stephan do next?
She became Chief Organizer of the Horizons Project. And on July 16, 2025, she trained New Kings participants on video.
"Security forces refused to obey orders to repress protesters."
๐จ๐งต THREAD: Braver Angels says they're bipartisan and just bringing people together. Their own leadership coordinates with an anti-Trump political infrastructure network.๐จ
This thread is not about BA's members. Many are sincere, and I thank @wilksopinion and @JohnRWoodJr for communicating with me.
This is about the infrastructure steering them: IMIP.
On August 18, 2025, Harry Boyte, a former Democratic Socialists of America board member, YES, that DSA announced Maury Giles' new role as Braver Angels CEO on video and their shift in strategy from depolarization to civic action:
"David has put together a featured plenary at the National Conference on Citizenship... which will be a launch of a new stage for Braver Angels that some of us have been working on for a while."
IMIP is the Inter-Movement Impact Project. It coordinates BA's strategic direction. Its own May 2025 document quotes David Brooks approvingly:
"Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits."
Braver Angels' members are bipartisan. Their leadership is adjacent to anti-Trump infrastructure. This thread has all the receipts.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread.๐
@wilksopinion @JohnRWoodJr IMIP's own document from May 5, 2025 quotes David Brooks and calls for a nationwide civic uprising:
"Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him."
Then: "IMIP has been working to help answer [this] since late 2017."
@wilksopinion @JohnRWoodJr Walt Roberts runs IMIP. June 30, 2025:
"We've adopted Rachel Kleinfeld's strategy number four as our thing... a broad-based, multi-stranded, pro-democracy movement."
Flood the country with NGOs (including Braver Angels) is strategy #4. What are the other four strategies?
I appreciate you engaging, sincerely. You're one of the few people in this space who actually responded, and your tone was decent. So I want to return the courtesy... and this is my first multi-part Hello.
You wrote: "Is any organized effort that involves people working from across the aisle necessarily a conspiracy?"
No. It isn't. And I haven't called it one. I've called it what it is: a funded, coordinated, strategically managed field.
Let me start with you.
You are the National Ambassador of Braver Angels. Braver Angels pulled in $5,651,273 in 2024, up from $958,681 in 2019... mostly from major foundations.
But your public videos repeatedly frame it as a "grassroots" or "national citizens" movement.
These two things cannot both be true. A $5.6 million-per-year operation funded predominantly by major foundations is not a grassroots citizens movement. It is a professionally managed nonprofit. There is nothing wrong with that... unless you describe it as something it isn't.
(2/4)
Now, here's where it gets interesting. And here's where I think you may genuinely not know the full picture.
In the above video clip, you say:
"We are in this moment where the depolarization movement I think is beginning to coalesce. I mean, I think you and I are in a position to sort of feel it. Braver Angels, Millennial Action Project, all of the amazing organizations in New Pluralists, National Conversations Project."
You named New Pluralists by name. So let's talk about what New Pluralists actually is.
In 2017, Mark Gerzon, president of the Mediators Foundation, consultant to the United Nations Development Programme, distinguished fellow at the EastWest Institute, organized a private meeting of major political funders at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Pocantico Conference Center. Representatives of both the Koch and Soros networks were in the room. The project was co-launched by Stephen Heintz, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Out of that meeting came the New Pluralists.
Today, New Pluralists is a funder collaborative, not a standalone nonprofit. It is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Templeton, Hewlett, Einhorn, Fetzer, Klarman, Lubetzky, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are all partners. MacKenzie Scott gave $4 million. The stated goal is $100 million over a decade.
Braver Angels is listed as one of approximately 60 "Field Builders." So is Tim Shriver's Dignity Index. So is Horizons Project. So is David French.
The same foundations that fund the New Pluralists collaborative also fund Braver Angels directly. Templeton gave $1.26 million to Braver Angels. Hewlett gave at least $75,000 plus undisclosed seed funding. They are also governing partners of New Pluralists. The money goes to the funder collaborative AND to the organizations the collaborative funds. It is the same pipeline.
You described this as "a moment where the depolarization movement is beginning to coalesce." New Pluralist's strategic plan describes it as a $100 million coordinated investment in field infrastructure. Both descriptions are accurate. The difference is yours sounds organic. Theirs sounds like what it is.
(3/4)
You wrote: "I do know Tim Shriver. He and I did a Braver Angels podcast together."
Good. Then you know who runs the Dignity Index.
The Dignity Index is operated by Project Unite. Its theoretical framework was developed by Donna Hicks, a Harvard specialist in international conflict resolution. Its framework was designed for mediating foreign wars. Then it was applied to scoring American political speech on a 1-8 contempt-to-dignity scale. In Utah. And it was piloted at UVU, the same campus where Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
One of the official websites to come out of the Biden White House's "United We Stand" summit was dignity[.]us. That URL now points to the Dignity Index.
Braver Angels has a formal partnership with the Dignity Index. You announced it. The pledge: "connect all 124 Braver Angels alliances" with Dignity Index training.
You wrote in your thread: "The Dignity Index, as I understand it, is meant to be a tool for holding all politicians accountable."
With respect... "as I understand it" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The Dignity Index was built on a foreign conflict resolution framework, launched from a White House summit that identified populist movements as domestic threats, and piloted in the same Utah institutional ecosystem that was hosting MWEG conferences for three consecutive years at UVU. None of that requires a conspiracy. All of it is documented. Most of it is on their own websites.
๐งต๐จ THREAD: Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. Within TWO HOURS, leaders of 7 "bridge-building" organizations assembled on a conference call. Why so fast? Because UVU was THEIR campus. ๐จ
This is Maury Giles, incoming CEO of Braver Angels, admitting on camera at the National Conference on Citizenship:
"Within two hours of the assassination, a group of us, all Utahns, we gathered on a call. We'd become friends over the last 5 years through our work in the community. And we also happen to be leaders in seven different national organizations that work in civic renewal."
Two hours. Seven national organizations. But this wasn't a spontaneous reaction to a tragedy. This was a network protecting its home turf. Because UVU wasn't just the place where Kirk was shot. It was the institutional center of the entire bridge-building / Dignity Index apparatus... and had been for years.
And the kicker?
These seven national organizations don't hide their own intent: replicate color revolution tactics in the United States. And, yes, that includes MWEG - Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
I have the receipts... they all admitted this on camera.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread. ๐
MWEG on their own GROW video:
"UVU has sponsored for us for the past three years so that we can have it there on their campus."
UVU SPONSORED their annual conference for three consecutive years. UVU is not a neutral venue in this story. It's a partner.
A speaker on MWEG's own Civics Learning Week video from 2023 admits she got a faculty position at UVU partly BECAUSE she was involved with Braver Angels... the same organization whose incoming CEO organized the two-hour call after Kirk was killed.