Guerrilla History - Drone Strikes, the CIA, & Nobel "Peace" Prizes - Alex Aviña + Michael Fox on the Imperialist War on Venezuela

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by two fan favorites of the show - Alexander Aviña and Michael Fox!  Here, we discuss the escalating imperialist war that is being waged on Venezuela.  With such a rapidly evolving situation, you will want to make sure that you listen to this to know the background! Also, be sure to check out the past episodes Alex and Michael have been on the show for.  Alex has appeared on:  Dogmatism and Reading History, Football! Palestine, Copa América, & the Euros, "Israel" and Its Role in Latin America, The Mexican Dirty War: A War to the Death, The World Cup: Sport, Politics, History, and Propaganda, Coups, Oil, and Oil Nationalization, Intelligence Briefing: The Beautiful Game, and Cold War Latin America (that's a LOT of hours of material for you!) Michael has also been on several episodes: Stories of Resistance + Brazil Update, American Imperialism's Shadow on Latin America, and The Rise of Fascism, Bolsonaro, & the Brazilian Elections Alexander Aviña is associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University and author of Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside. Alex's website is available at alexanderavina.com, and he can be followed on twitter @Alexander_Avina Michael Fox is a Brazil-based journalist, contributor to The World, former Editor of NACLA, and the host of the podcast series Under the Shadow and  Brazil on Fire, and now also Stories of Resistance. Michael can be followed on Twitter @mfox_us, you can support his project on his patreon and follow his band Monte Perdido. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a (free!) newsletter you can sign up for, and please note that Guerrilla History now is uploading on YouTube as well, so do us a favor, subscribe to the show and share some links from there so we can get helped out in the algorithms!!

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckmacky. Unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, who of course is Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Adnan and I have seemed to have our schedules completely opposite these days. Either I'm traveling and he's not or he's traveling and I'm not. Today he's traveling and I'm not, which is by I'm here listeners. But fortunately, we are joined by two outstanding and returning guests, ones that we get very good feedback from you from every time that they're on.

Before I introduce them and the topic of this episode, I'd like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-I-L-A history. And you can, I say you can keep up to date with what the show is doing, on social media, but with the internet blockages that are taking place in Russia, these days, I haven't been able to get on social media in months, but you can still follow the show on social media at Gorilla underscore pod on Twitter, Gorilla underscore History on Instagram, and the

email Substack newsletter is GorillaHistory.substack.com, and all of those have Gorilla spelled with two R's. And with no further ado, let me introduce our returning guests. Each of these people have been on the show numerous times. We have Professor Alexander Avina. Hello, Alex. How are you doing today? Hey, Henry. Thanks for the invitation. Everything is good in finally cooling down Arizona. Absolutely. Probably not as cool as it is at the 56th parallel where I am, but you know. I couldn't survive at that parallel. I've got a winter jacket, like literally sitting right next to me, just in case. No, that scares me. No. And we're also joined by Michael Fox. Michael, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks so much, Henry. Absolutely. So as I said,

listeners, Michael and Alex have both been on the show numerous times. If you look in the show notes, I'll have at least some of each of their previous episodes linked in the show notes, but I believe this is the first time that we've had both of you on for the same episode. So I'm very excited for this one. Now, we have two big topics that I guess we'll be talking about today. We were planning on one, but given recent news, we're adding a second one. We're first talking about the U.S. administration using drones to attack so-called drug boats, and then later we'll be talking about the so-called Nobel Peace Prize. And there is air quotes around everything here, listeners. So, you know, you'll see that in the episode title, but just be aware

there's air quotes around everything here. Now, Michael, I'm going to turn this over to you first, and we're going to start with the topic of, again, quote unquote, drug boats, because you recently wrote an article on this issue. For the listeners who are, let's say, blissfully unaware of what we're talking about, can you first tell them what we're talking about when we're saying these drug boats and the drone strikes on the drug boats? But then also talk about your analysis in the article, because we'll have that link in the show notes as well. And I'm going to encourage the listeners to read that after listening to this episode. Yeah, thanks, Henry. I mean, And so early September, the United States, Trump announced at the Oval Office to a group of

journalists that they had just attacked, drone attacked, a so-called air quotes drug boat in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela that was supposedly carrying lots of drugs, a ton of drugs. And so they had bombed it, killed 11 people on board. Since then, now we've had at least three other attacks of other drug boats, situations, the images, the videos of these drone strikes on these drug boats are kind of, you know, it's the same kind of grainy, black and white footage that you imagine of seeing or that you've seen all over the Middle East, you know, where the images up from above, the boat is sailing through the water, and then suddenly it just explodes. And Trump really celebrated this. He said,

look, we're going to be doing more of this. Sicker's at State, Marco Rubio said we're going to be doing more of this because these guys are just these guys are bringing in drugs and we have to stop the fentanyl we have to stop the cocaine from getting in the states the and there's just so many levels it's just so wrong it's just so so wrong the first thing i guess this is my analysis this is the reason why i wrote the piece for the nation and this is i think the most important point is the fact that this is the very first time that we have seen u.s unilateral strikes anywhere in Latin America since the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, which is in and of itself, it's kind of shocking when you think about it, because the United States has been involved

in coup d'attas. They've been involved in meddling and intervention, all these different countries, but it's always in cahoots with kind of the local military. It's cahoots with the local government, or not with the local governments, actually plotting against the local governments, but you've never seen a U.S. unilateral strike or U.S. unilateral invasion since 1989. This creates a terrible precedent. Obviously, it's not good what the United States has done over the last 35 years, but going into the territory of like a unilateral strike without, without any evidence, obviously, any evidence of, A, the drugs, any evidence of narco-traffing, these are most likely fishermen who are off the coast of Venezuela, and the United States is just bombing

them. And so this is a terrible, terrible precedent of what we're seeing. And Trump clearly says that, you know, this is going to increase and only grow. And there's a couple of really important points that cycle back to 1989 that are important to talk about right now. In the 1989 invasion, 26,000 U.S. troops were ordered to invade Panama. It was the first invasion that came after the Cold War, which is important to remember. So it happened. And it was, in fact, it was like last, than a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So it was George Bush, the first, who basically ordered this. As we understand, this was kind of the, he was feeling it in the polls and wanted to show up support, wanted to make himself look powerful and strong. And this was his

way of saying, no, the United States is going to continue to fight regardless if the Cold War is over and really kind of kind of put their foot out on that. And the other thing is this was the first time that we saw action from the United States government in this in a in a in a so-called war on drugs it was it was literally the end of the war the cold war and the beginning of the war on drugs and it happened within a month of each other it was a shocking right so these 26,000 troops they invaded Panama and and they attacked the main the panamaan defense forces unit but they also just bombed every place and just lit up an entire neighborhood that's called el churillo but they invaded all over the place.

20,000 homes were destroyed. Hundreds of people were killed and many buried in mass graves. And so it was this terrible moment that the, that Panamanians, until today, are still demanding justice and demanding accountability,

which I've covered in other podcasts that I've worked on in the past, like under the shadow. But it's a terrible precedent. And I, and this is why this is so important. It was shocking to me that no one was talking about the fact that this was the last, last time that the United States had unilaterally struck somebody was 35 years in Latin

America was 35 years ago. In fact, I had to speak to a lot of different analysts and people who know this world to confirm that that that was actually the case. And they all confirmed that, yeah, there was no other time between those moments. So it's a terrible moment going forward. And then what does this mean, you know, is also within this context as Trump is trying to use all these spaces as training grounds, whether that's, you know, the inner city or cities like Chicago or Washington, he's literally brings the troops together to say, we're going to, we're going to make new training ground areas. And in many ways, this is what many people think that we're seeing right now is we're going to start to attack these boats, but it's a slippery slope to then escalate into whatever Trump might want in Latin America. So it's a, it's an entire shift in what U.S. policy has been for Latin America over the last 35 years and in a really, really terrifying, dangerous and lethal moment. You mentioned that the U.S. administration after striking these boats and killing all on board would then go out and say, look how many lives we've saved. I know that I've seen administration officials, including Trump, say things such as, oh, killing the people on this drug boat, saved 10,000 lives in the United States.

I believe I saw another administration official, though I forget whom, say that there was 50,000 lives that were saved from killing the people. on a boat. And the numbers, of course, are not connected to anything in reality, because as you mentioned, Michael, there hasn't been any evidence that has been put forth on the identity of the individuals and whether or not there was drugs present on the boats in the first place, much less how much in terms of quantity there was on the boats. So how is one able to say, well, there's 10,000 versus 50,000 lives that we're saving by sinking this boat? and killing all on board, it is remarkable. But I'm really glad that you brought up this phrase, Michael,

which inevitably was going to come up, war on drugs. And that allows me to bring in Alex, because Alex, we've had you on for an episode on the war on drugs, which I'll have linked in the show notes for listeners to check out. But as Michael said, this is really a continuation of the war on drugs, but now it's being used for outright strikes and they're also setting up in a way and I've seen recent analysis done within the last couple of days

that they're increasing the amount of coverage of Maduro himself as being a member of narco-trafficking and the idea here is that it makes him then a legitimate target for unilateral strikes inside Venezuela. So I'm going to turn it over to you. you, Alex, for your analysis on this situation, given that you are an expert on the war on drugs. I think, as we've discussed before, right, we've said that the U.S. led war on drugs and that approach to dealing with the issue of drug trafficking has always been a vehicle to advance U.S.

imperial goals within Latin America and beyond, particularly after World War II, both listed and illicit drugs, right? Susanna Rice has a great book called We Sell Drugs, where she really tracks how, like, the U.S. war on drugs was also meant to elevate and protect the U.S. pharmaceutical industry at the same time that they were illegalizing all sorts of other narcotics and drugs that then allowed for a militarized drug intrudiction led by the U.S. in usually against regime, what they would identify as regimes that were antithetical to U.S. imperial designs. And back in 2020, I wrote a place for, for NACLA, where I talked about how the history of the U.S.

war and drugs is a history of inconvenient allies and convenient enemies. The idea being that it's usually actually the governments and regimes allied with the U.S. within Latin America that are the ones actually involved in narco trafficking. They're the ones that most closely resemble some sort of quote unquote narco state where it's enemies of U.S. imperial policy in Latin America, the convenient enemies, they're the ones charged with being involved in narco trafficking when in reality they're not. And in this case with Venezuela, it's so easy to disprove, as Michael was saying, right? Like, this claim that fentanyl is entering the United States from Venezuela is completely untrue.

Like, we know where fentanyl comes from. Like, we know the vast majority of fentanyl comes into the United States from Mexico and a much lesser quantity from Canada. We know that most of the cocaine that comes into the United States actually comes up the Eastern Pacific Corridor. And 70 to 80% of that cocaine actually goes through one of these inputs. convenient allies of the U.S. government, which happens to be this banana oligarch who's currently president in Ecuador by the name of Daniel Navajo, who is also waging. There's a lot of allegations that his own family business is involved in narco-trafficking while at the same time he's been ruling through different state of emergency decrees using the war on drugs domestically as a way to

kind of fortify and insulate his political power. We know we have evidence, right, overwhelming mean evidence from different sources that the argument offered by the Trump administration in terms of Venezuela being some sort of prime shipping point of illicit drugs in the United States is completely false. But like to quote Vice President J.D. Vans, like they don't give a shit. They don't give a shit. This is a post-reality, post-fact presidential administration that is able to wield fantastical arguments to justify the extrajudicial execution of and Colombian fishermen because according to the current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro,

the last boat that was taken out was he alleges with a Colombian boat. And also their arguments used for deploying National Guard and ice to different American cities saying that these cities are burning down. Some sort of mad max escape from New York scenario is currently raining in a place like Chicago and Portland. And then you see the people who live in these cities and they're like, wait, what are you guys talking about? It doesn't matter, right? The other allegation that the U.S. said the Trump administration has used. And here I think we need the single, like the really important role is someone like Marco Rubio is playing in waging this war against Venezuela, is that the current president

of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is the head of a shadowy drug traffical organization called El Cartel de Los Soles, the cartel of the Sons, which most likely does not exist. Like, this is probably a fictional drug cartel, at least in the way that it's being described by the U.S. government. The earliest reference we have to the Cartel de los Soles, the cartel of the Sun, goes back to the late 80s and early 90s, where you had a top, the top Venezuelan general ahead of, like, the

country's anti-narcotics unit, actually trafficking tons of cocaine into United States, working with the Medellin cartel, with the help of the CIA. So, the actual Cartel de Los Soles was some sort of CIA operation from the late 80s, early 90s that implicated like at least two

Venezuelan generals. And there's a lot of reporting, mainstream reporting about this in the mid to late or in the early to mid 1990s by very like mainstream even like 60 minutes as a produce an interesting report in like 1996 if I remember correctly but so again the idea that maduro is ahead of this fictitional drug cartel that then gets he then has a bounty attached to him right that's like 50 million dollars so obviously I think this bounty is designed to fomit perhaps some sort of internal dissension within the Venezuelan military or Venezuelan security apparatuses or forces to convince individuals that, hey, maybe we should get rid of Maduro.

And this would obviously, this type of internal regime change operation would make things easier for the Trump administration. And they're providing a lot of external pressure from the outside. I guess the last thing I'll say is this, I'll say two things really quickly. And then we can move on. The one thing is any time a U.S. president says that they're an isolationist, that's always bad news for Latin America. And it's really, it's really enraging to me to continue reading like IR theorist or even some mainstream U.S. historians who talk about U.S. isolationism during the first three decades of the 20th century as if it was a thing when we know that during that period, the U.S. invaded Latin America like 34 times, according to Greg Grandin. So when I've always had that thought in the back of my mind, when I hear Trump talk about his isolationism, I'm like, oh, shit, we know this is going to be terrible news for Latin America. And it has been, right? They're waging war against Latin America. It's just that Venezuela is.

is the front line recipient right now, and they probably will not stop there because they're trying to force the entire region into some sort of submission. There's economic concerns, right? Most of the region has China as a top trading partner, not the U.S., with the exception of Mexico. And the other thing I'll mention is this allows Trump to do

what similar actions allowed someone like Reagan to do in the 1980s. It allows them to connect foreign policy designs with domestic political constituencies and goals. And this is what we see kind of like the war on terror, the war on migrants and the war on drugs all converging in the Caribbean. And this is, I think, what's animating someone, especially like Marco Rubio, but also someone like Trump in waging war against Venezuela. Michael, feel free to hop in, but I'll just say briefly that when Alex is talking about this war on Latin America, it's very interesting. So I was just at a conference in Moscow last week. And one of the things that we were talking about is how there was this idea, which existed both in the social.

the end of the Soviet Union in early stages of the Russian Federation as well as within the West that it was kind of the end of ideological conflict and the beginning of an ability to have harmonious relations. But of course, one, geopolitical concerns were still a thing. You know, it wasn't the end of history. And even when there wasn't outright ideological conflict between states, if there was geopolitical interests that were at stake, you can be sure that there would still be conflict between those nations. They were not going to suddenly be brotherly people. In fact, Putin himself said that that was one of the things that he had believed in the early 90s and found out that he was very wrong about that. This is something that he said within the

last two weeks. But even beyond that, we see that this end of ideological conflict is also not an end of ideological conflict. We see that ideological conflict is happening perpetually. There is always the conflict between the United States and Cuba, of course, and Venezuela, of course. But then we also see things like Argentina recently, you know, who's Trump's big buddy. I mean, he has a couple, he has Buckele in El Salvador, but he also has Javier Mille. And what do we see? There was just a huge bailout in Argentina, this free market. radical free market

libertarian freak in Argentina who says that he's going to take a chainsaw to all sorts of regulations and they're going to be completely self-sufficient by utilizing the free market they just took now correct me if I'm wrong Alex

the number I saw was 20 billion 20 billion in terms of essentially the US bailing out the Argentinian economy and Trump's people have been very honest about it right I mean, this is the problem with libertarianism is that they eventually run out of money. I mean, that's like the, this is essentially what is, the extreme right wing in Argentina

fails to learn this lesson since the 80s and 1990s. But yeah, Scott Besson, I think, is a Treasury Secretary, and he's very, he's been doing the round saying, we're doing this because Argentina's our ally. But actually, the funny thing about the Argentina case is that Argentina, again, is like, its top trading partner is China. So you have this interesting dynamic happening where, the U.S. did an infusion of capital into the Argentine economy that will benefit mostly the Chinese economy because Malé gets elected to office saying that he's going to wage

economic war against China and cut off that relationship. And then when he got in there, he looked at the political economy in Argentina. He's like, wait, I actually can't do this. And he's had to like kind of bend the knee. But because they're doing all sorts of crazy libertarian policies, the Argentine currency is falling. It's crashing, just like the economy is. to a certain sector of the economy. And that's why the U.S. has to step in and help out one of their only allies, like outright powerful allies in the region. Alex, I want to add one last thing on that before I turn it over to Michael,

since you mentioned the relations between Argentina and China. The day after there was that $20 billion bailout, essentially, there was this news story which came out at the UN General Assembly, where Scott Besant, U.S. Treasury Secretary, was holding his phone up for a camera. Like, you know, he was reading it, but a camera took the picture of his screen over his shoulder. And it was from someone named BR,

which is assumed by most to be Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rawlins. And I'm going to just read the content of this message because it is hilarious. Just the heads up, I am getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate. We bailed out Argentina yet. yesterday, and in return, Argentina removed their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping

further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us. On a plane, but Scott, I can call you when I land. America first economic policy. They totally screwed American soy farmers with this. And they have been screwing American soy farmers since the tariffs against China, right, during Trump 1.0. But this is such, like, again, it's a It's the same thing with isolationism, right? These things don't exist, right? What exists is U.S. Empire and what exists is the dictates of the people, the psychopaths, who have run U.S. Empire past and present.

Yeah, absolutely. Michael, feel free to hop in. Yeah, I mean, I would just second everything that's been said. And in particular, this, just this question of, you know, the United States doesn't really care who's selling drugs and who's trafficking drugs. it's it's it's it's it's about creating a boogeyman you know it's about creating a boogeyman that then they can go after like the whole invasion of panama was to pick up uh manuel noriega who was used to be on the CIA payroll but when you switch size and said oh you know he's doing his own

thing now well now we're going to say he's a narco trafficker and a drug trafficker and we're pick him up and bring him to the states the same thing happened with ho won orlando arndez from from honduras who was like the u.s is guy in central america for years until until he fell out of favor. And the U.S. said, oh, now we're going to, you know, bring you up on charges and we're going to take you to the United States.

These were former allies. And in the case of, you know, obviously in the case of Maduro, it's just, it's all out building, you know, the banging the war drums in the hopes that they can, you know, gear up more and more support for, you know, continued U.S.

pushing on Venezuela and hopefully it doesn't go that far. Well, I think what's really dangerous about this moment more than ever before is that in recent years, I mean, having lived in Venezuela and having followed Venezuela and worked on Venezuela issues for the last 20 years, it's like each time you always heard, oh, the U.S., there was, oh, you know, coup plot, invasion, whatever, this is always in the back of your head, but then you look at history and you'd say, well, no, you know, because, you know, the last actual U.S. unilateral invasion was in 1989 and there will be coups. The U.S. is going to do all of its dirty stuff that it's always going to do. At this point, like, all the bets are off. We don't really know how far Trump is

going to push, you know? And that's really, I think, really, really scary for the region. It's really scary for where we are right now. And Venezuela is obviously taking this very seriously as well, because there has been a lot of movement inside Venezuela within the last couple of weeks in terms of mobilizing the people against an imminent, what seems to be an imminent intervention by the United States inside Venezuela itself. Can either one of you talk a little bit about what's going on inside Venezuela? Because there is a lot happening these days. And as I said, they are taking this situation extremely seriously because, I mean, it's also just blindingly obvious that the U.S. is trying to set up justification for either

drone striking the leadership of Venezuela or an outright invasion. It seems blindingly clear that that's what's being set up right now. And Venezuela is clearly also seeing the same things that we are seeing ourselves from outside of Venezuela. So what's going on inside Venezuela these days? Alex, do you want to take it? Should I go? Go ahead, Michael.

Okay, okay. All right. All right. So, I mean, what we've had, and this has been amazing, is seeing these images of these just huge lines of people signing up essentially for the reserves. Now, Venezuela already has huge reserves, like the Venezuelan militias going back for years, decades, right? But you've seen these images of just lines in these places just down the street, down the blocks.

Now, most of these, and this is what's fascinating, is this isn't being reported on almost at all in the mainstream media. You just don't hear about this. You hear what you always hear is that, oh, Maduro, everyone. hates him, it's a dictators, but this is the thing that, like, even U.S. leadership has never understood is the importance of the Bolivarian process, the Bolivarian revolution, how dedicated people are still to this, regardless of if they like Maduro or not. This is not a situation that, like, oh, suddenly everyone's going to rise up against Maduro, and then the United

States, the opposite is going to come in. Like, that's just not going to happen. It doesn't work like that. And this was really powerful. You know, I was in the Venezuela during the attempted late April 2019 coup where Wido tried to get military officials and soldiers to like rise up against Maduro and there was like, you know, a day or two of protests and the opposition was in the streets. And then what you saw the following day was this massive response, some of the largest marches that we had seen in Caracas in years, all in defense of Maduro saying, no, we're not going to. We're not. just going to let it hand over, you know, to the opposition in particularly because people

understand that if Maduro, it's either Maduro or the opposition. And it's completely polarized. And if someone like Maria Cori Machado, who we're going to talk about in a little bit, if someone like she comes in, it's going to be just a complete elimination of the gains that the revolution has seen over the last 20 years. And so all of that just isn't taken into account, obviously. But you have this huge kind of recruiting effort. Maduro himself has said they've got something like four and a half million people in the militias. Now, I think that might be a little bit ambitious. It might be a little over the top, but it's clear they have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. And in invasion of, and this is the other thing, an invasion of Venezuela would

not be an invasion of, I don't know, Granada. This is not something where the U.S., it's not like Panama where the Panamanian defense forces, there's like a couple thousand people in this like thing and the United's case can just roll in. An invasion of Venezuela would be a bloodbath that would wreak havoc that would last for years and embroil the rest of Latin America. And I mean, Trump has to know that. The military leaders have to know that, have to understand that this would be an absolute shit show and an extremely, extremely dangerous. And of course, that's why the United States hasn't tried to do this in the past, right? This is why it's so concerning right now that, like, they might even be thinking of moving

the direction. We have seen in the past is, of course, the United States sending in, like, commando forces. Like, I don't know if you remember. It was a couple of years ago with, like, the guys, like, they come in on a boat. And it was, like, a bunch of, like, Venezuel and fishermen who, like, you know, like, picked them off. You give them to much credit, Michael. They were, you give them too much credit by calling him commandos when they got defeated

by Venezuelan fishermen. The fishermen were like, we got the. these guys and they're like, oh, we've been trapped. They even make it to Venezuela and soil. It's so shocking, man. And there's, that's happened just time and time again. It's like this, this comedy of errors, right? That, like, and that's what U.S. like intervention has looked like when it has to do with Venezuela.

So anyway, it's, it's like, it always is like, is shocking to think of, like, what they might be trying to cook up, you know, and what this might look like in the future. I don't know, but definitely Venezuela is organizing, and that is the most important thing. I want to just add one additional question onto this for you, Michael, before we bring Alex back in as well, which is, you mentioned that this would not be a Granada or a Panama. Part of this is because of the geography of Venezuela, and part of it is because when we're talking about these kind of people's defense forces that are being mobilized throughout the country, these people's militias. They're very dispersed. So in order to do anything within Venezuela, I mean, it would be real guerrilla warfare that would be taking place throughout the country, which is why in the lead up to the previous question, I mentioned that, you know, the possibility of a U.S. drone strike

on the leadership of the country is a real one, because as you mentioned, Michael, and as I'm going to have you explain a little bit more, an actual invasion would be very, very difficult and very costly. Whereas, as we see in modern warfare, drones are cheap. Drones can be made fairly effective. And, you know, the United States just recently had these, not that it was a drone, it was stealth bombers, but they recently had the bombing of Iran's nuclear sites, where they were able to go in, drop bombs, have utter devastation, as the United States administration, and loves to say 25 times and cap locks on Twitter,

utter devastation and then get out before anybody even knows that they were in there. To me, this seems like a much more real possibility in the case of Venezuela. If we're talking about what the United States would be doing to get rid of Maduro, they're not going to be, at least initially, trying to send in, you know, battalions

or companies' worth of soldiers in to try to fight their way through the country. and, you know, depose the government in that way. I would see it being more as being a drone strike or a bombing campaign, something along those lines. But Michael, for people that are, you know, haven't been, haven't lived in Venezuela, let's say, can you talk a little bit about that geography and then what the nature of an actual invasion would be like given the dispersal of these militia groups around the country that have been mobilized as well as the geography of the country.

Yeah, I think the most important. I mean, obviously, in terms of geography, you have the plains. This is northern South America, right? And you have the Orinoccal River, which is huge running down into the Amazon. You have the mountains, even just, even just Caracas is an incredible spot because it's a high, high up. In fact, it's high up. And it was once sacked by pirates who had to, like, hike all the way up from the coast.

And then they, like, sacked it and had to hike all the way down. you can still follow the trails up through the avila mountains. But, like, this is not a place that you can just kind of show up, like, and, oh, we're going to invade. Like, it just doesn't, that, it just doesn't happen like that. But I think, I think that the important point to make here, and this is what, this is the thing that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the U.S. leaders just have, I feel have just completely always underestimated is the power of not just kind of militia organizing, but, is actual the political process and community development, participatory development, and what like the politicizing of like the communal councils and people like organizing in their own communities and actually going through a process of like community education that's

happened for the last 20 years, which hasn't happened in many other places. We didn't see this like in the so-called pink tide countries, right? You didn't see this in Ecuador. You clearly saw this in Cuba and to an extent maybe in Bolivia and more indigenous communities. But Venezuela was very much an outlier of the countries in those years that was all about organizing in your community, doing political education in that community, getting people talking. Chavez was huge about this on a weekly television program. And so people, like, it wasn't just about, oh, I'm getting. going to get some stuff, you know, kick me downs and handouts from the government. It's all

about like, no, we are, we have a stake in this. And people could feel it and people participate in that and they have for, for years. And this is part of the reason why people are so dedicated and so, you know, so gung-ho and are not going to hand over this government and are more than willing to pick up arms to defend it and going to do it, you know, regardless of what comes. So, yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And an invasion would, it is, I could envision, but again, this is all transaction extra. I have no idea what might be happening, what they might be trying to think and plan in Washington, how to take out Maduro. But they're obviously pushing in ways they have not pushed in the past with these drone strikes and really trying to threaten and trying to push as much as possible, clearly.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, Chavez famously said, Comuna or nada, right? Like he, before he died, his idea of what. the Bolivarian Revolution ideally would transform into is some form of, you know, what G. O.M.R. talks about as the, as the communal state, right? Whereas it's a grassroots participatory democracy where power is built from the bottom up, right? I think part of the, I like what Michael was saying about the U.S. government or U.S. leaders' inability to fundamentally understand that in a place like Venezuela, Venezuelans can both support the benefits and the structure of the Bolivarian revolution while also being extremely critical of Maduro.

But that doesn't necessarily translate into them supporting a bunch of like bank, you know, foreign bankrolled opposition leaders to come into their country and then overthrow not just Maduro, but overthrow the entire system, which is what these, the opposition has been saying for decades. And they've tried to do it. And they failed every single time. They've tried every, we can talk about this more when we get to to the, the most, current recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, but they've tried every single way

since the late 90s, early 2000s, to undermine this revolutionary process that was initiated in the late 90s with the election, the successful presidential election of Hugo Chavez. So like, Venezuelans can be extremely critical of their government, of their leaders, but that does not necessarily mean that

if you have U.S. Marines on the ground, that they're automatically going to go and like hug them, right? Like, no, because the ideological goal here, or question is the same one that has existed for more than 150 years in Latin America. It's, will the U.S. respect national sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American peoples?

That's it. So these people, Venezuelans can be highly critical of Nicolas Maduro, but they're going to defend their homes, their communities, in their country, right? The question is about national sovereignty and self-determination. And, you know, you read, like, CIA documents in the lead up to, like, the Bay of Pigs invasion

in Cuba in 1960, 1961. And they had this idea that as soon as these Cuban exiles and whatever CIA assets were with them working on the ground, as soon as they landed that like the Cubans were going to rush to them and be like, oh, thank you, you liberated us. Like, on what, anyway, we can spend hours talking about this. I think that I think Michael's right. And I think my friend Joe Ermesberger wrote a article recently that talked about the most likely scenario would be some sort of targeted strike. And obviously this is being, this is, and you meant alluded to this, Henry, this is informed by what we've witnessed in the last two years since Alaksa flood, right? Like, this is these, these settler colonial imperial entities are very good in generating mass destruction from above without necessarily translating that into actual physical geographical control on the ground.

So, and, and they have a total international impunity to go and assassinate elected leaders of other countries, right? like in Yemen, in Palestine, in Iran, in Lebanon, right? There's total impunity. So that I think is also informing, has informed Trump administration's official's decision to just obliterate these boats without offering any sort of evidence. And I think it would probably lead to some sort of, if we're thinking about like most feasible options, like I think it would lead to some sort of targeted strike against, I don't know, Maduro or different Venezuelan leaders.

But again, it's really weird because there's always been another option on the table, even in Trump 1.0. But the other option being some sort of diplomatic resolution of whatever beef that Trump is, perceives to exist from Venezuela. And in his circle, this is represented by someone named Richard Grinnell, who's kind of like the mover and shaker and negotiator. And he's very against these operations in the Caribbean because he thought, that he could negotiate something with Maduro, right, diplomatically. And Chevron had already restarted his operations in Venezuela. And apparently Grinnell lost out this debate internally to someone like, to someone like Marco Rubio, who because of who he is, because of where he comes from, because he's a product of this very particular unique,

revanchist, right-wing political culture that is South Florida, like they're still waging the Cold War, right? They're still mad about revolutionary processes that have existed for decades in Latin America. and they see this as a chance to kind of do a one big rollback. But again, the question is, let me just say this and then we'll transition. The targeted, if a targeted strike against Venezuela and political or military leaders occurs, that would be the culmination of a war that began in 2015. And I think we have to keep that in mind. It was Obama who designated Venezuela as a national security threat to the interests of the United States.

And like what Obama did in a variety of different ways, including migration enforcement, the border. Also in the case of Venezuela, he handed over this machinery of war and brutality and mass death over to Trump. And Trump really escalated the economic war against Venezuela, right? Jeff Stein at The Washington Post has done reporting, did a whole series for a very mainstream newspaper that talked about how the war, the economic war on Venezuela had produced like a U.S. level of the Great Depression times like eight. Like some insane economic a catastrophe that the U.S. has induced in Venezuela. Obviously, there's internal mismanagement that people have been calling out since the 2000s,

but it's an economic war led by the U.S. that has created an economic catastrophe in Venezuela that has led to a big chunk of its population leaving the country and going to other places. Like, I think we need to keep that in mind, right? They've been under an economic warfare, U.S.-led regime that is... And for some reason, and we can, I mean, I don't, this is another thing we could probably think about. Like, for some reason, that has been, uh, that continues in operation. And now Trump administration has decided to add like an overt military aspect to it.

No, I know that I, I'm bringing up Russia too frequently in conversations, but that's just because I, I live here for one, but two, in this case, it's, it's apropos. First, a funny story and then I'll get to the actual main point. Alex, you mentioned that there's still this revantious Cold War that's taking place in South Florida. Just yesterday, I was at the grocery store and bumped into this random Russian guy. I have no idea who he is. Never met the guy before. But he decided to ask me something and we started having a conversation in Russian. My Russian is horrible.

So I think he just was having fun speaking to somebody that spoke terrible Russian. But at some point he was talking about he knew something. who is studying in Miami and he looked me dead in the eyes and he said what do you think of Miami this is in Russian of course he says what do you think of Miami I said bad he says horrible and then just walks away now I have no doubts that this person was probably pretty conservative as most people around here are however even the Russians in a random small town in Tudderstan, understand the political culture of South Florida. So that's for you, Alex.

Just a fun story. But there is an actual relevant point about Russian that I want to bring up, which is that one week ago, Venezuela and Russia just signed a 10-year strategic partnership and cooperation agreement. Now, this is very interesting timing because this is in the midst of the escalation in tensions between the United States and Venezuela, you know, relations escalating really means something because they're never good. But there's a new phase, which we've been talking about throughout this conversation. And in the middle of that, we have Russia and Venezuela signing

this new cooperation agreement, which, by the way, it was signed on Putin's birthday intentionally. Maduro himself has said that it was to commemorate Putin's birthday, was that they were signing this cooperation agreement. But it's very interesting because we're starting to see new cooperation agreements, alliances, increased ties between the non-Western imperial core nations that are vying to make a multipolar world with the targets of Western imperialism. So just yesterday, it might have been this morning, but I believe it was yesterday, there was new statement, which came out from China and the DPRK, that they were going to be seeking even tighter strategic relations with one another, that they were taking a good brother,

good friend policy with one another. Last week, we have Venezuela and Russia. Russia is signing new deals with countries all of the time. Believe it or not, listeners, Russia is not isolated the way that the Western media wants you to think, well, I can tell you firsthand because I see a lot of these people. At the conference I was at last week, I saw a lot of, you know, fairly high up diplomats and dignitaries from African nations that were all meeting about infrastructure projects that they were carrying out

in cooperation with Russian companies and Russian investment. But in any case, I do think that it's interesting that in the middle of this situation that is escalating in Venezuela, we have Russia now stepping in at a time where also the United States at the same time, and this is the same time that the same time that United States has been threatening to send long-range tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, we now have Russia stepping in and signing agreements with Venezuela. I don't know if either of you have anything to say about that, but I do think it's quite interesting that we see Venezuela is now signing more cooperation agreements with large nations abroad as the situation is escalating.

And Alex, you can also feel free to respond about my conversation with this random guy who I don't know. I will say that I've had a lot of wonderful students who are from Miami and they all took my Latin American history classes when I was at Florida State. But as a political culture, I don't think you guys are off, right? And it's because, I mean, it's just that, it's, you know, people want to call it the capital of the capital of Latin America, but it's a, it's a particular capital of a particular political section of Latin America, right? Like communities that fled or lost certain historical processes and they all happen to go to Miami and they nourish and re-nourish, which is, I think, a really right-wing revengeist anti-communist culture that is also

anti-black, as we saw in the latest 2020 BLM movements. And I think that's also really important to keep in mind. In terms of the question about Russia, I mean, I think this is a longstanding relationship that Hugo Chavez started to establish after the coup attempt against him in 2002, recognizing that they were going to have to switch, or at least, not switch, but at the very least diversify where they were going to establish economic, political, and military relationships, right? And I think it's been a while now that they've been using and receiving and buying Russian military hardware, right? I mean, it's, particularly since the 2010s, that's who they've been engaged with in terms of military capacity and capabilities and weapons. And

also Iran as well, right? We had, I think it was last year when Iran sent a couple tankers of oil to help out in a particularly dire moment. So, yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think it's interesting to see this. Part of this realignment also, we, it's, it predates October 2023, but it's obviously been intensified after October 2023. And for someone like Maduro, who is existing in a Latin America that is not the pink tide Latin America of the 2000s and trying to, you know, establish diplomatic, military and political relationships with, with other sovereign nations that are willing. to provide some sort of assistance, particularly in the context of economic warfare that they've been suffering since the mid-2010s.

I mean, it's a pretty logical move. The one thing that, if we're speaking geopolitically, the one interesting new factor is Petro in Colombia, all right, for Hugo Chavez famously called Colombia the Israel of Latin America, and it's no longer the Israel of Latin America, right? So I think that's a really important component. And Petro himself has come out and said,

very bombastically, and I hope he's going to practice what he preaches. Like, if there was some sort of military intervention in Venezuela, that Colombia would back them up. And again, this is part of the lesson. The Latin Americans, many Latin Americans have drawn from a history of U.S. intervention in the region. Like, if the region remains an archipelago of idiot nations, as Eduardo Galliano called them,

then you're going to be picked apart by U.S. Empire. But if you manage to somehow unite and find common ground, despite political differences or internal contradictions, a united front has always managed to stave off the worst of U.S. Empire in the region. And I think that's one of the things that we see now. I mean, we still, we don't see a united front, but that's the option that the region faces. But going back to the Russian thing, I mean, I think militarily, they've had that relationship for a while now.

And in Venezuela military, I think, is mostly outfitted with Russian military gear. Yeah, that's true. And although I have seen that recently, they have also started to get some military equipment from China as well, which is another interesting, you know, relationship. And hopefully, hopefully if we believe in the defense of Venezuelan national sovereignty and self-determination, Iranian drones, right? Because they're like on the forefront in that type of technology as well. Yeah. But again, I, for me, it's still, it's still, it's horrific to even think about this as a possibility. Like, even if it's just a targeted strike, like,

the amount of like suffering and destabilization and violence that this will provoke. It's just horrific. Yeah. You mentioned drones. Sorry, Michael. I'll just say this very quickly. I had also seen around, I think it had just preceded the signing of this 10-year cooperation agreement, but that Russia was also going to be selling some drones to

Venezuela as well. So it's not only Iranian drones that could possibly be there. It could also be the battle tested Russian drones. Michael, feel free to step in. No, I was just going to say, like, the, you know, I feel like U.S. population is so desensitized to the images of bombings and drone strikes and violence and U.S. violence abroad, particularly in the Middle East, you know, over the last 20, 30 years. And now Palestine and everything, you know, it's just like, it's just so, and just constant, right?

that most people don't understand or get that thing that you were just mentioning, Alex, that this is not a reality that the U.S. has played on this field at this level in Latin America. It's just not. And the level of suffering that we see abroad is terrible and horrendous and should never happen. It shouldn't be happening in the Middle East

and it can't happen in Latin America. And I think, Alex, I really appreciate what you were mentioning about this question of kind of the need for unity in defense of sovereignty. And I think this is why so many of the pink tide, you know, countries talked about regional integration, like, you know, trying to build these different regional groups, whether it's unassur or Celac, whatever else. And this is also part of the reason why as soon as different governments came in in these different areas, like the first thing they did was to try and, you know, break them apart as much as they out. absolutely could, and why this, you know, continues to be a process that, you know, these countries are, are continuing to try and do in different ways, whatever that might be, like with the bricks and Brazil trying to bring in kind of the different left nations and say, well, you know, we have to kind of join more forces.

And I just wanted to put, like, even the, a little bit longer, the timeline in terms of, like, all of, like, the regional agreements with Venezuela, going back, even under child, Like back until the, you know, the early 2000s. I mean, that was a thing when I was living there in the mid-2000s. It was like every two weeks you had another country that was coming together to sit down and make new cooperation agreements or Chavez was going someplace else where he was coming back and they were doing these, you know, international meetings. Even just OPEC, you know, like Chavez essentially reinvigorated that to kind of get everybody on board. And so we saw that on just so many different levels. And, and what? and why that's continued to be so important, obviously, is still important today. But you mentioned all of these, these different tactics and these different agreements and these different relationships are being forged in terms of defending sovereignty. But there's also many different tactics that the imperialists also take, which brings us to the Nobel Peace Prize.

How is that for a segue, guys? so we have just recently within the last couple of days and we're recording this listeners on October 13th and my plan is to get it up this Friday so it'll just be a couple of days after we record this but we just had the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize and air quotes on that obviously and it went to a quote unquote democracy activist in Venezuela. An advocate for democracy. Well, we'll talk about her. But this is something that had been fostered for a while, you know. Last year, as a matter of fact, more than a year ago at this point, there was a letter which was drafted by the U.S. Congress, which was sent to the Norwegian

Nobel Committee, who is the organization that grants the Nobel Peace Prize, that was advocating for this character, which we'll be talking about in just the moment, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. And who was present on this signed letter? Well, amongst others, Marco Rubio, and Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio, currently Secretary of State at the time of Senator. And Mike Waltz, who was National Security Advisor, which Michael Rubio is also the National Security Advisor now. He replaced Mike Waltz in this kind of almost unprecedented for decades. dual role of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. But Mike Waltz also is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

And these two characters had signed on to this congressional letter advocating, Michael, you were the first one to bring her up in this conversation. So why don't I pitch it over to you? Who received the Nobel Peace Prize this year? Let me just say before I say her name. I cannot imagine like a more. Orwellian choice, like a more, like, what was it that Orwell said, like, you know, peace. Well, Trump. Trump might have been a more Orwellian. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. More productive, but.

That's right. She said that Trump deserved it. So, you know, like, you know, Orwell would be, for whatever we think of Orwell, would be spinning in his grave with the, you know, the variety of choice here. It's shocking. And it's also shocking at the response that we've seen from some people. who have said, oh, well, at least it wasn't Trump. So anyway, her name is Maria Corina Machado. And what can we say about her? I'm going to give you a little bit of, I'm going to go through a little bit of her bio here, right? So she's a former National Assembly representative.

That was in the teens, I believe. She was a leader of the opposition organization, Sumate, which of course led like the collection drive to try and get Chavez, recall back in the early 2000. But that organization also received funds from the National Endowment of Democracy from the United States. So it's U.S. funded organization. And this is just the beginning. Back in 2002, she actually signed the Carmona decree. So if you remember, Chavez was taken out in a fabricated media coup. And then Carmona, who was the head of Fed

Cameras, which is the Chamber of Commerce in Venezuela, he then out, you know, self-proclaims himself president and signs the decree essentially abolishing all of Venezuela's democratic institutions, including the National Assembly, the courts, and everything else. And she was one of the people who actually signed the decree, which just in among itself is just shocking and shows her democratic and peaceful cred. She, of course, dedicated the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump itself. She has actively called for U.S. intervention in Venezuela. When I was there in 2019, which was a violent, attempted coup against Maduro at the time, where Juan Wadoe, self-supposed, self-appointed, guy who tried to self-appoint himself parallel president to Venezuela,

he called on the military to rise up. And then they did this kind of macabre video imagery thing to make it seem as though people were rising up. And after this, she actually went out and told the guardian that, you know, well, it shows that we need more intense. tactics we need to like we need to be more you know essentially violent this is someone who has like has called for military intervention and this is why it's just it's like it it for those people who know her past it's such like it's it's so shocking it is the exact opposite of anything peaceful that you would imagine like she is actually wants people on the street she wants military intervention. She wants people to be harmed and hurt and their guns. Her focus is on

taking out Maduro and stopping the boulevardian process and it has been for forever, but it's not just that. She's someone who is like unconditionally lied over, I don't know how many years. We've like undermined elections for years after years called for recounts when it was so totally clear. And even like the Carter Center and international, you know, international organizations have said, oh, no, this clearly was a victory for Chavez back in the 2000. She's continuously and like gone back and said, no, no, no, that's not it. So it's like continually attempted to undermine Venezuelan democracy. And I would say, like, is one of like the people that when, when Alex talked about earlier who like how the opposition in Venezuela for 20 years has done everything they

could to coup and undermine, like, the actual democracy in the country, she has been at the forefront of much of that. And here she wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and it's just so shocking and demoralizing to, like, just see how powerful, like, the voices of empire and the interests of the United States and the interests of the powerful, just do not care about the sovereignty of nations and how this is not about peace. This is about using this as a tool to undermine sovereign nations as much as possible

and nations which of course are not aligned with the United States or the U.S. and other U.S. powerful agendas in the world. So, yeah, I just, it's like I get tongue-tied as do I think everybody does when they heard about this announcement. It's shocking. Yeah.

I'm sure that you have much to say on this, Alex, but I also just want to add in briefly to set you up for it, that this is not completely unprecedented. I mean, after all, Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama are both Nobel Peace Prize laureates. So she's in a very good tradition of war criminals and far right. I mean, Kissinger and Obama would not claim that they're far right, but I'm sorry, that's the American political climate. Alex, I'm sure you have a lot more that you want to say on this. We haven't even mentioned her open letter to Israel. So that's something else that has to come up. Yeah, I mean, and that's not all that surprising, given that in the last 10, 15 years, right,

that Zionism and Israel has become part of the imagery of the right in Latin America, from Bolsonaro to this individual, to others, right, to Malay, the guy that we spoke about. I mean, honestly, the so-called West is just in defense. And I was actively rooting for Trump or Netanyahu to win it. I mean, again, just expose the contradiction to expose how this particular way of viewing the, this imperialist, colonialist, colonialist way of viewing the world is so corrupt and so hypocritical that we just need to continue to tear down with the last vestiges of his legitimacy that people within the imperial core continue to hang on to. One way to think about this is to just read the statement that the Nobel Prize released about Maria Corina Machado. I mean, the way that in the last 20 years, far right, even fascistic political figures from Venezuela have been rebranded as like brave defenders of human rights and democracy in Venezuela is, I'm with Michael on this. Like, Leopoldo Lopez was another guy.

And Machado is part of that same tradition of far right of political figures who benefited from Venezuelan democracy. They won elections. They took office. And one of the, there's a really interesting video that's been circulating because of Machado's victory. I think this is after she was elected to the National Assembly in 2010. And she confronts Uwajabas and she's telling them that he's a thief, that to expropriate industry is to rob. And she's just castigating him, right? In this horrific authoritarian regime, she was directly able to challenge and insult and go at the president of Venezuela.

And Chavez's response is really great because he basically says, like, listen, the first thing you guys have to do is win a presidential primary. He's like, I can't debate you because we're out of a, what do you say? Like, we're not on the same ranking. And then he has this quote where it's like, an eagle no casas, mostas, right? Like an eagle doesn't hunt flies, which I love that quote. But let me listen, this is, okay, so everything. that Michael said is actually what this person did and represents in Venezuela. She also caught her like Lopoldo Lopez called for really violent street protests in 2014 that led

to horrific deaths and lynchings of supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution. This is, let me just quickly read like one paragraph to show this crazy indefensible West. Keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness. Maria Corina Machado has led the struggle for democracy in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism, Venezuela. Ms. Machado studied engineering and finance and had a short career in business. In 1992, she established the Atanea Foundation, which works to benefit street children in Caracas. Ten years later, she was one of the founders of Sumate, which promotes free and fair elections and has conducted training and election monitoring. In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly, winning a record number of votes. The regime

expelled her from office in 2014. It might have something to do with the fact she called for violence. She protests, whatever. Ms. Machado leads DeVent. Venezuela Opposition Party and in 2017 helped found the Soi Venezuela Alliance which unites pro-democracy forces

in the country across political dividing lines. Like, to talk about like a selective historical recounting of her career, right? She founded Sumate in 2002 and that's it.

They moved to her election in 2010. Nothing to do with her signing on to the Carmona decree during this coup, which Leopoldo Lopez also signed on to, if I'm not mistaken. Nothing that her calls for violent street fights.

And there's also something else. There's also a racial dynamic here, man. Like the way that her, the social and political sectors that she represented, the way that they constantly talked about Chavez in racialized ways, right? Like mocking his mixed racial heritage, mocking the fact that he was from the countryside, calling him a monkey. And that, there's, there's a particular racial disdain that's built into their political

project. And this is one of the reasons why they can't, they hadn't been able to win. right, because they are upper-class Venezuelans who thought that the country always belongs to them innately because they are somehow superior to the masses of racialized communities and individuals in Venezuela. So, I mean, we shouldn't be so. At this point, after what I witnessed last year in Syria with the rebranding of Al Jolani in the space of a week, like I think, you know, I think we should be a little bit more attuned to how these figures get rebranded and refashioned. and refashioned and then celebrated in the in the so-called western mainstream media

there's something out of whack right out of joint that that we should know better by now i think it might not have even been a week with aljilani correct me if i'm wrong but was there did as far as i remember the 10 million dollar bounty on his head was and that's not an exaggeration listen is he literally had a 10 million dollar bounty on his head up through as i recall after he had his meeting with David Petraeus like David Petraeus sat down with him said it's an honor to meet you I think they'd already gotten rid of it

had they already gotten rid of it it was around it had already gotten rid of it it was around and then they added tens of millions to the bounty on Maduro so they just you know look you get your hair trimmed you go to Turkey get a little hair treatment with a Western suit and you get to sit down and hang out with David Petraeus and reminisce and share war stories which is like

Come on, guys. You guys were never really on the opposite. David Petraeus literally told him that he was worried about him, that he wasn't getting enough sleep. He says, my friend, I'm worried that you're working hard, that you're not getting enough sleep. I mean, he was a head chopper. I mean, in the most literal sense, that $10 million bounty on his head wasn't because he was a, you know, national liberation figure in the global south against American imperialism. No, he was literally Al-Qaeda, you know, He was a head chopper. That was why he had a $10 million bounty on his head.

And David Petraeus, as you said, Alex, was reminiscing with war stories and was worried that he wasn't getting enough sleep at night. I mean, personally, I would have been losing sleep for other reasons if I had his history than working hard, but that's just me. Michael, feel free to hop in. Otherwise, I'm going to get really off track here. No, I would just, I agree 100%. everything that Alex has said and it's we we should we should already know this but but for me

it was still just such a shock like because I'm just like really really really you know it's um no it's uh I don't know I just I don't have words I don't have words so so on that then I want to get into our closing thoughts since we've had you know a pretty a pretty robust discussion about the current events that are going on in Venezuela. For our closing thoughts, in addition to anything else that you want to say about what has been said thus far, I think it's also important for us to talk about what Venezuela does represent, which also underscores why the United States is so keen on destroying it. So what does Venezuela represent?

That's a good question. I mean, I think, let's see, well, one way to think about it is, you know, when Gabriel Garcia-Marquez won his Nobel Literature Prize in 1982, he gave an amazing speech that I highly recommend everyone read. It's called The Solitude of Latin America. It's an amazing speech, but one of the really interesting points that he brings up in this speech is, brings up a question, and it's interesting, right, because the Nobel Prizes are awarded by Norfolk. way, right? So the question that he brings up is like, why have Western and Northern European countries been able to enjoy a modicum of social democracy and national sovereignty and self-termination without any sort of external intervention in foreign destabilization? But when Latin America has tried to do the same thing, we get U.S. invasions, we get coup d'etas, we get

CIA operations, we get desquads, we get the fortification of, you know, vicious landed elites working with the Catholic Church hierarchy and militaries trained at the school of the Americas. What explains that fundamental contradiction, right? And I think about that as a lot. And I think it's something we should think about right now in the context of Venezuela. For all its problems, for all its eternal contradictions, fundamentally, what Venezuela represents right now is national sovereignty and self-determination for the entire region. And what are the costs of not defending that. Haiti right now is an example of what happens when elites in that country give up national sovereignty and self-determination to the United States. And as a consequence,

the Haitian people are being oppressed, are being executed, are being bombed by Canadian drones because they actually are fighting for Haitian self-determination and national sovereignty. I mean, that's why we have this crazy mainstream media representation and framing in the West. It talks about gang problems. gangs that are actually receiving weapons and financing from Haitian elites living in the United States but you know we can talk about that another time

so what this represents like again it represents that goes back to that initial contradiction pointed out by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez like why can't Latin American countries enjoy national sovereignty and self-termination why are they not allowed to fuck up and then rectify those problems on their own according to their own vision

according to their own political movements according to their own internal processes of rectifying these issues. Why are they not allowed to do that? But, you know, Western European countries and Northern European countries. Like, Norway is rich because of oil. Why is their oil somehow cleaner or more acceptable than Venezuelan oil, which, you know, Venezuela has the world's largest proven deposits of oil? I think that's what it represents right now.

And this is what's really scary. And I think people have made this reading online, and I think they're right. Like, by giving the Nobel Peace Prize to someone, this Facha turned democracy advocate, Maria Corina Machado, is it essentially a green lighting and whatever sort of U.S. military intervention occurs in Venezuela. And again, I can't, I'm with Michael on this. Like, I can't stress the, how horrible this would be, particularly coming from an administration that has talked about doing this thing to Mexico, which, you know, five years ago, I would hear those claims and be like, oh, that's something. like just swamp dreams, fever dreams of like the right wing. But now that seems like a possibility. But they're trying to go at it with Venezuela first.

This takes us back to that isolationist period of 34 U.S. military interventions, right? The thing that the Americans tend to not understand again, to go back, I'll end here, go back to the where we began, is that this will then spark anti-imperialism, popular resistance in the region, and especially in Venezuela. Like, this is something that the U.S. refuses to learn historically, that when they do this type of over-intervention in the region, they provoke a popular backlash. And that's going to happen. But for me, it's still really scary to think about the consequences, you know, from what we've seen in Palestine and West Asia and Iran and Lebanon and Yemen, like thinking about that the Trump administration learned the lesson from those saying, oh, nothing happened. We granted impunity. We can do the same for Latin America. I mean, I think. The coordinates of struggle are really clear for us. Like, it's really clear who we should be supporting and who we should be resisting, right, in this situation. And I think that's Venezuela represents part of what we should be defending at this point,

regardless of what you think about its internal problems or politics. Like, we cannot stop decrying and calling out U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean and in Venezuela. Michael, I have the same question for you, but I don't want to forget. I had mentioned Maria Carino Machado's open letter to Israel, but we never actually. actually mentioned what the content of that was. I don't want to forget to mention. This is an open letter that she wrote a few years ago, in which she did the same thing that she asked the United States to do. She asked the United States to invade Venezuela and overthrow the government. She also asked Israel to do the same thing. She says, oh, dear and great Israel,

please come down and overthrow our government, signed future Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And she also, the last two years has written additional letters to Israel standing in solidarity with them in their troubling time against, you know, the rubble in Gaza that they had pummeled to the ground at that point. This is not just, you know, as we had from many Western politicians the day after October 7th, 2023, where they all came out in lockstep with these prescripted responses standing in solidarity with Israel. This is over the course of several years she had come out many additional times

saying that she was standing in solidarity with Israel in their troubling times. This is your newest Nobel Peace Prize winner, listeners. Michael, what does Venezuela represent to you and anything else that you want to add on this conversation as we get to the closing here? Chavez used to talk about or inventamos or eramos.

Like we're going to event, like we're going to invent or we're going to fail and we're just going to keep trying. But we're going to be developing new stuff. We're trying new ways of doing this. We're trying to build a new world. Of course, he talked about socialism of the 21st century, although whatever that means,

not real socialism. But regardless, like trying to do things differently and clearly break from the United States. And for the last 20 years, Venezuela has been kind of one of the main countries in the forefront of that in Latin America, of course, together with Cuba always. And that's why the United States has always kind of wanted to do whatever it could to remove, to end the Bolivarian process, to remove the leaders of the Bolivarian revolution.

And of course, there's oil. There's oil in those lands, which is huge, you know. And that's why the United States has always been interested in undoing. everything that's happening but it's it's it's always been but as well as and and and kind of like what Alex was talking about regardless of what you think about Maduro or what you think about the current government uh Venezuela has always been kind of a beacon of hope and of alternative and of participation and democratic processes you know across the region uh that people have looked toward and and that's part of the reason why the United States you know when you get out of

line in the United States over the last 200 years. I mean, when you get out of line in Latin America for the United States over the last 200 years, since the Monroe Doctrine was, was, you know, put into place, which basically said that Latin America was U.S. backyard to do whatever it want with it. Then the United States was there and U.S. military, Marines and powerful forces to try and put you back in line. And that's been the way the game has been played. Of course, In some cases, and sometimes like the beginning of the 20th century, that meant, you know, 34 military, U.S. military interventions to the region. In some cases, it's been more soft power.

And I think it's so important what Alex mentioned about the fact that the U.S. kind of war on Venezuela, exactly, goes back to 2015 and the financial and the economic sanctions. You know, when I was there in 2019, when it happened to be there during this attempted coup, I was there to look at the impact of the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, and it was devastating. It was devastating. And, of course, things would get even worse. Seeper came out, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, came out with a report in July of this year, where it said that U.S. sanctions had caused the death roughly per year of a half million people.

Now, that's not just Venezuela. I'm talking about all across the world, wherever you. U.S. sanctions are playing out. But this is not something that, oh, U.S. sanctions, and then, oh, that's just an excuse for, you know, mismanaged administrations. And no, this is, you know, like I met people that could not get medicine. And I'm not talking about some people, everybody, little kids who, you know, couldn't get the medicine they needed, elderly, like, there's so many levels, even just like the water system

to keep water going and like there's just so many levels of what the u.s. sanctions have met meant in venezuel in recent years and now what we're looking at you know this leveling up into uh the you know military uh threats on the country and what that could mean and whatnot so uh it's devastating i think it's important to to just to look back at for instance also though however like what Alex also said whenever whenever the US pushes, people respond and there's a pushback. And that has, there's always this huge response looking back for over the last 200 years. And in fact, we've seen that just in Brazil. With the US, oh, as soon as Trump imposes his 50% tariffs on all Brazilian goods, people turn into the streets.

And in fact, Lula's polls in Brazil had been kind of falling, you know, in the preceding months. And then suddenly as soon as Trump says, oh, 50% tariff is. So in Brazil for all of its bullshit. And then, you know, people turn out and then Lula's polls, you know, spike again. Because nobody, like, the bottom line is, like, you can't invade another country. You shouldn't be, like, let people live and let them, if the country's going to fail, we'll let it fail. But it shouldn't have to, like, fight, you know, foreign financial wars and fight with other

countries trying to, like, mess with their own democratic processes, which the United States has done for decades and for centuries. So this is what Venezuela represents. It's always been on the forefront of that. And this is why, of course, the United States is pushing particularly against Venezuela today. Yeah, I had seen that study that you cited, Michael, the SEPER study that showed that there was around half a million deaths. As I recall, it was half a million deaths due to, quote unquote, unilateral sanctions. But of course, who is the one that is utilizing the unilateral sanctions?

it's the United States. So, you know, it's a good thing that you were more blunt than the study typically was. I mean, they did point out that the United States was the perpetrator of the vast majority of these sanctions. But slightly burying the lead when you use the term unilateral sanctions instead of U.S. sanctions, which, you know, that's just reality. I did want to just mention that it's a shame that that study had not come out a few years earlier because we could have used it very extensively during our series. sanctions as war. So listeners, if you're a relatively new listener of guerrilla history, Adnan Brett, our former co-host and I put together a series Sanctions as War based off of the book of the same name. As I recall, there was around 15 or 20 episodes in that

mini series, both theoretical discussions as well as case studies of sanctions on individual countries. I think that listeners, if this conversation has been interesting for you in the discussion of sanctions and their impact is interesting for you. You should go back and check out some of those old episodes in the Sanctions' War series that we did. And you should also check out the book Sanctions' War, which is edited by our friends Manning Ness and Stuart Davis. Highly recommend the book and those episodes that we did. Guys, it's been a terrific conversation. I really appreciated you taking the time. I enjoyed kind of, it was cathartic because it is a rather troubling situation.

But it was cathartic to be able to vent about it with the two of you. Alex, can you tell the listeners perhaps what you're working on these days, if you've got anything that's coming down the pipeline, as well as where they can find you in your work? Thank you so much, Henry. It's always fun to convers with you to be on the show. And it was great to converse with you, Michael, in a different format. Yeah, you can find my stuff less so these days on Twitter for a variety of reasons.

but on my website that I need to update, I'm still working on my book that tries to talk about the war on drugs and state terrorism in Mexico in the 60s and 70s writing about bandits and other stuff at this point. So very academic stuff

while also trying to write some more public-facing work. But yeah, no, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much. And if you want to do a soundtrack for this episode, Henry, you could not do any better than Victor Jada

is the Derecho de Vivienne Paz the Victor Hades, the Chilean folk singer's song, The Right to Live in Peace, which would be one of my guiding lights, I think, when trying to understand at least. So when I teach Cold War Latin American history. But thanks again, man. Yeah, absolutely.

I'll get that worked in here somehow. Also, Alex, I hope you know that you're coming back on when your book is ready. And additionally, I know that I had previously mentioned to you that I wanted to do an episode in the African Revolutions and Decolonization series with you and an African scholar, kind of a comparative study. you're still up for that because I am still very keen on that conversation for sure and we

also need to do a World Cup episode before this certainly believe it happens but we'll see believe it or not we have an episode on uh football recorded and ready to go I have to just finish editing it it'll probably be the episode that comes out after this one uh for the listeners although it was recorded before this conversation and at the end of that conversation the guest said that he's a big fan of yours. And I suggested that we have a World Cup episode with him, you, Adnan, and I in advance of the World Cup. So we're very much on the same page with that one, Alex. Michael, we had you on the show relatively recently, but remind the listeners what you're working on these days. And if you have anything new that you want to

kind of tease for us and then tell the listeners where they can keep up to date with your work. yeah well i mean the first thing is uh stories of resistance that's my kind of weekly podcast which we talked about just a couple weeks ago it is now a finalist for a signal award for best history podcast which is very exciting uh and the results should be out this week so um i will let you know we're crossing our fingers um i'm working on the main other thing i'm working on right now is a podcast about free speech kind of important uh which will be out in january that's also with the real news and together with my co-host, Mark Steiner. So I'm really excited about that one

because we try and look into the hit, obviously the present of the shit show that's happening right now, but also look into the past what it means and also kind of, you know, critiquing what is like what is the U.S. analysis of free speech in comparison with other places around the world and how other countries like Brazil

are also kind of pushing back against the U.S. attacks and Twitter and Musk and all this. So, no, it's pretty exciting. People, I'm also not so much on Twitter anymore because social media is, you know, it is what it is. And so people can find my work at patreon.com forward slash M-F-O-X. So just on my Patreon page, the best finder. And I'm constantly updating that with kind of all my latest stuff

and kind of exclusive pictures and whatever else is happening. So that's it, patreon.com, M-F-O-X. Although I will say both of you are still on Twitter more than I am. I think it's been about three months since I've been able to get on it. I mean, I'm sure I could find ways of getting on, but at this point, it's such a struggle and, you know, I just don't care that much. I don't know if that microphone picked that up, but I don't care that much. So you can follow me on Twitter at Huck1995 if it gets easier to use Twitter again while in Russia. I might go back on there, but

you know, don't hold your breath. It is very difficult these days to use like half of the sites that people would commonly use on the internet. But you can follow my co-host who, as we mentioned at the top, is Professor Adnan Hussein and was not able to make this conversation, but he's on Twitter, much more active than any of us at Adnan-A-Husain. He has his own show these days as well, which is on

YouTube as well as podcast, the Adnan Hussein Show. And I'd like to remind you listeners that you can help support guerrilla history and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And as I mentioned, you can follow guerrilla history on social media as well, but same story as my personal page. Who knows if and when that'll get back up and running again. But you can find it on the social media sites. So with that being said then, listeners, and until next time, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.