It Could Happen Here - Caribbean Roundtable

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

James is joined by Andrew and Michael Paarlberg to discuss the Trump administration’s campaign of drone strikes against boats in the Caribbean and the regional response. Sources: https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/the-caribbeans-zone-of-peace-under-threat-a-conversation-with-david-abdulah/ https://newsday.co.tt/2025/10/20/trinidad-and-tobago-stands-firm-with-us-on-regional-security/  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now.

But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CoreZone Media. Hi, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen here. It's a very special Roundtable podcast today. where we're going to discuss the United States ongoing campaign of bombing small boats in the Caribbean. I'm joined by Michael Pahlberg, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and a fellow at the Center for National Policy. Hi, Michael. Thanks for

joining us. Hi, thanks for out of me. And Andrew is also here. Listeners of the show will be familiar with Andrew's work. He joins us very often. But in this instance, Andrew is talking as someone who is from Trinidad and Tobago, which, of course, is very much being impacted by this. Hey, Andrew. Hey, what's going on? Not much. Well, let's talk about what's going on. Because something quite substantial is going on.

What's going on is that the United States is carrying out a campaign of drone strikes against small vessels in the Caribbean. As far as we know, there have been seven strikes, at least 32 people have been killed. two people have been detained and then repatriated, and a number of vessels have been struck. The U.S., it's bringing its war on terrorism logic to the Western Hemisphere, right? It's claiming that it's fighting narco-terrorism, and it's claiming that these boats are, for the most part, carrying Venezuelan nationals coming out of Venezuela. We've heard from Colombia that one Colombian national has been killed. The two people who were detained were Ecuadorian and Colombian to Trinidadian or Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been killed as well. And this has sparked something of a, well, it was a war of words.

Now it seems to be a war of more than that like tariffs and sanctions and I believe Colombia has withdrawn their diplomats from D.C. as of today or yesterday. So it sparked significant political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere. I think we have a really good panel to talk about that. So to begin with, I guess we should start, Michael, can you explain? The accusation here, right, is that these people are members of Tren de Arawa or potentially some other cartels that the Trump administration likes to talk about. We've talked about it prevalent to those groups, but can you explain very briefly what they are and I suppose the function that they have in Venezuela

or what they're doing there versus what's been claimed that they're doing? Sure. I do research on organized crime in Latin America, and Doreen de Aragua is a real organized criminal group in Venezuela and now all over Latin America. It is a street gang that started out as a prison gang. It does not primarily engage in international drug trafficking, moving large quantities of drugs across national borders or across oceans. It is primarily engaged in human trafficking and extortion rackets, and it primarily follows the Venezuelan diaspora people who have left Venezuela.

And at this point, it's an incredible 20% of the population over the last 10 years of Maduro's presidency, so nearly 8 million people, wherever they go and they take advantage of them. They extort them for money. They will also take money to move them across borders, but they're not a cartel in the way that we traditionally think about cartels like the Sinaloa cartel or some of the Colombian cartels that are engaged in international cocaine trafficking. And so it's highly unlikely that if the Trump administration is striking boats that they claim to be vessels transporting cocaine or fentional, which is not made in Venezuela. It's primarily made in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China, and increasingly is actually made in the United States, even that it's a entirely synthetic drug.

That's possible. And Venezuela, of course, is not one of the countries where coca is grown and therefore cocaine comes from. If they are indeed striking drug boats, then they probably wouldn't be traded at Agua. And if they're striking boats with trained in Aragua, they would be most likely striking migrant smuggling vessels, in which case the death count would likely be much higher.

Yeah, yeah. So we should talk about the other Caribbean nations now, I guess. I want to talk about Trindon Tobago, but we should probably cover Colombia first, right? Because we've seen significant pushback from Petro, President of Columbia. And then we've recently seen the President of the United States accused Petro, who is, again, President of Columbia of being a drug trafficker himself, which is a fairly ludicrous claim on the face of it. But let's talk about Petro. Because he has some some background in opposition to organized crime and drug smuggling, actually, right? Like, he's been in this for a while. Can you explain a little bit of his career and then his recent stances? Yeah, so Petro is a mercurial figure in Colombian politics has been for a long time. He is known for starting his career as a gorilla with a minor anti-government guerrilla movement called the M-19 movement. Now, this is the movement, which I don't know, maybe The Western audiences are familiar with from the Netflix series Narcos for having participated, carried out the Palace of Justice siege at the Colombian Supreme Court, which was a major disaster in which the Colombian military went in guns blazing to rescue hostages, Supreme Court justices and other people just employed in the Palace of Justice. and most everyone died in a fire as a result.

Petro was not involved in that operation. As far as anyone knows, he was not involved in a violent confrontations. And this organization, unlike the FARC and the ELN, never really got on the cocaine money train and therefore didn't last as long as those other organizations did. They did demobilize. They did turn to peaceful politics. And Petro began his political career at the local level, came here at Bogota, and then

eventually reached the president of his. So he is someone with a long political career and does have a constituency, does have a base, and he is the first truly left-wing leader of Colombia, a country that has been famously, both ruled by the right and also very closely ally to the U.S. It's really the U.S. is top ally in Latin America, well, in South America, at least, specifically on security given Plan Colombia and a long history of the U.S. giving as much as $10 billion over time to beef up Columbia's counterinsurgency and counter narcotics fights on our behalf. Yeah, to accuse the president of being a drug crafter is fairly ludicrous.

Like, he's been, like, even in his time as a senator, right? He was, like, I think he was chairing some, some, like, investigations or committees that look to drug smuggling, if I remember correctly. Yeah, and so I would say Petro has been very critical of the war on drugs approach generally, but he does still inherit this longstanding deep relationship with the United States. And he's not exactly a full-on peacenik when it comes to his own internal security. He did come at office promising what he called total peace, possible about it, a platform that was meant to put an end to all armed insurtencies in the country

by making a deal with the remaining combatant groups, namely the ELN, the dissident of our guerrillas, those who did not agree to the peace deal signed by Santos in 2016, and what's in different terms called the Klan del Gorgpo or the AGC, the Gaetanist self-defense forces, but one of the largest national narco-paramilitary group that descends from the old AUC. And he has failed in that, and talks are broken off with those other armed groups. Colombia has kind of gone back to war against them. The ELN has engaged in some pretty horrific violence, including a suicide car bombing, the police barracks, and the dissident FARC as well, taking down a helicopter and a drone attack.

So there has been a return to fairly high-level, you know, armed insurgency in Colombia, even if it's nowhere near the level it was from the late 90s and early 2000s. Right. Yeah. and all of this is happening in the Caribbean, which is not a vast ocean, right? Like, it's not a massive area of space. And as Andrew and I were talking about before we recorded, this has impacted other Caribbean nations, nations which are not the target of the Trump administration's aggression, but nonetheless are being subjected to it.

Do you want to talk, Andrew, Trinidad and Tobago is in a particularly interesting, is the right word? it's not a great situation, right? Because Trinidadian people are being killed, at least two. And the government is apparently completely unconcerned with this. Yes. I suppose I should provide some context. So there have been seven strikes to date,

and the fifth strike resulted in the deaths of two fishermen from the village of Lasquevas in Toronto, being claimed among the victims. The government's Transpigo has not made a statement about it, and the families have not really been contacted or provided any sort of support. Now, for those who are listening who may not know where Trinandipgo is, it is an independent Twin Island Republic in the Caribbean, and it's actually geographically an extension of South America. There's a gulf that separates it, but it's about 11 kilometers away from Venezuela itself. and our elections that took place this year led to the removal of the incumbent party

and the return of the United National Congress, the political party, led by Kamala Prasad Bissasor, claiming the government in a sweep, a landslide, really. But despite that landslide, it wasn't really the result of popular support for the United National Congress. It was more so the lack of support for the previous party, People's National Movement, which lost, I believe, 200,000 or so of their usual voters just didn't

show up to vote for them this election. So the opposition party came into power. When the opposition party was in the opposition, they in many ways appeared to just oppose for opposing sake. They were in power previously from 2010 to 2015, but they were voted out due to among other things corruption. And since then, the party has further evolved into a sort of personality cult centered around Kamala Prasad, and her politics have also evolved in that time to align further and further toward the United States position. She's become something of a Trump stand. You know, she was kind of towing his line on a lot of issues. She supported Guido, Juan Guido, as the president of Venezuela and actually went so far while she was an opposition leader to call on the United

States to sanction Trinandabago after the vice president of Venezuela had made a visit to the country to meet with the then Prime Minister Keith Rowley. So she has made her pro-Washington stance clear for a very long time and as she's come into power she has diverted our alignment with our regional block, the Caribbean community Caracom, and their call for the Caribbean to remain a zone of peace and emphasized her continued endorsement for the U.S. military's deployment outside of Venezuela's territorial waters, but still very much belligerent in her approach to this issue. You know, we have gone from a state that was respected as a non-aligned entity that was able to approach various diplomatic partners

from the US to China to the EU to India to Venezuela as well and we've gone from that sort of diplomatic approach to a very clear pro-West stance that has really alienated us from the rest of the region and really placed us almost in the position of being a satellite state for US policy. You know, she's been inviting the U.S. military if they want to base the operations out of Trinidad.

She has opened our doors to that. She has called for the U.S. to kill them all violently, extraditionally, and stated that she is perfectly aligned with what the U.S. is doing in the region, despite its flagrant violations of international law. Yeah. As you said earlier, the them in this instance, in this instance, includes at least at least two of her own citizens. Yeah. And I will say that this sort of zone of peace designation for the Caribbean, it is something that I would, this is my personal opinion,

consider more of a hopeful ideal rather than a reality. You know, the trafficking that takes place in the region does visit a lot of violence upon people is, you know, by no means in reality a zone of peace. even before the U.S.'s actions in the region. However, though we may not fit that postcard perfect perception of, you know, tropical paradise, it is still necessary, I think, for us to stand in solidarity as a region to speak with one voice when it comes to these issues, especially as a continued existence depends on the observation of international law,

the respect for the UN Charter as small islands our safety is really in numbers and for the Prime Minister to deviate from that solidarity in such a blatant way it's it's really quite sad but it shouldn't come as a surprise because there have been efforts by the US to divide caracom in the past during his first term Trump had pulled some caracom countries into the Lima Group, which was a U.S. promoted coalition of right-being governments that was pushing for regime change in Venezuela. And he's now doing the same thing with trying to get some Karakom governments to facilitate his actions toward Venezuela. They approached Grenada recently to try and get Grenada's assistance in basing a satellite there on the island. And it's really

ironic that they would approach Grenada, which is also quite close to Venezuela, because Grenada was famously one of the countries that the United States invaded in October of 1983. Yeah, I think, I know, I say this a lot, but if you've listened to the song Washington Bullets by the clash and then you go to the border, you can kind of join up all the people from all the countries mentioned there and the outcome of US policy and what that does to migration over time. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com.

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creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial

crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We should talk about the Venezuelan opposition. I guess, Michael, would you give, I've done a pretty in-depth discussion of Venezuela, a place where I have spent a decent amount of time.

I wanted to see that revolution myself when I was like 19 and I was studying political science. I wanted to see what this like pink tide was about. And I have reported a lot on Venezuelan migrants. People who are new to the show, I guess the series I did from the Darien camp would be where I would point you for my discussion of Venezuela and Venezuelan people. I still speak to people of Venezuela almost every day. But I think people could do, Michael, with like a high-level overview of the Venezuelan opposition. I guess we can talk about the Nobel Prize as well, which despite what Donald Trump is saying, was not awarded to him this year. Yeah, so the big news is that Maria Corrina Machado, who is the leader of the Venezuela opposition, as we know today, was awarded the Nobel Prize, which was a bit of a prize.

And from a very U.S.-centric analysis, one idea that has been floated is that the Nobel Committee didn't want to award Trump the prize, but thought that maybe awarding it to an ally of Trump would be a way to molify Trump also possibly to encourage him to take a more peaceful approach at a time that the U.S. is threatening armed intervention in some way in Venezuela, whether that is a counter-narcotics operation or more likely a a regime change operation of some kind, even though it's very unclear how they would get to regime change from blowing up boats and blowing up people. Maybe we should pause and talk about regime change, actually, because it's such a problematic idea, right? We have attempted regime changes. My career for the last several years has been reporting on the United States failed attempts to facilitate regime change all over the world, right? Like, it's not something we're very good at. I don't think that the United States is going to invade. Maybe you think differently, but I think we probably agree that the United States is unlikely to do like an Iraq-style

invasion of Venezuela. Could you explain, like, why, I suppose, just for people who, you know, think that that's what's happening in the Caribbean at the moment with this concentration of forces? Well, it's unlikely to happen because I suppose it's a very large country, and it would take a lot more troops than what are currently deployed, which is approaching 10,000 now, but that's actually, that includes all sorts of logistical support. The actual fighting force, the marine expeditionary unit is actually much smaller. I lived in Panama as a kid, and I was not old enough to be there for the invasion, but I lived there some years after that. That's probably the closest analog to this, at least the way that the Trump administration is promoting this, which is to say a regime change

operation that is disguised as a counter-narcotics operation. Famously, Noriega was, it was not a war. It was an arrest of a foreign leader who was indeed involved in drug trafficking. And we knew that because he was literally a CIA asset whose drug trafficking was being protected as long as he was allied with the U.S. against Cuban-backed rebel groups in in Central America. But at some point later, he became too much of embarrassment for the U.S. was genuinely a brutal guy, pulled off the torture, murder of U.S. Bada for all sorts of nasty things. But the big difference is at that time, and when I lived there, the U.S. had multiple military bases in Panama.

Panama. Panama was the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, the Western Hemisphere headquarters of the Pentagon. We had 13,000 troops already there, ready to go. I think they doubled. that for the invasion, which was officially termed Operation Just Cause, originally called Operation Blue Spoon, but they had to cover with the sex year name. And of course, Panama's a tiny country, and Venezuela is 20 times larger than Panama. Yeah, it's fast. So it's very odd. It's obviously they have deployed many more troops in a much larger fleet than it's necessary for a counter-narcotics operation. Incidentally, it's the U.S. Coast Guard that carries out counter-narcotics interdictions and does it very effectively and, incidentally, does it with the cooperation of other countries

which coordinate intelligence or just simply surveillance of suspicious ships or boats or planes and tip off the U.S. Coast Guard. Even the Cuban government does that. In fact, it's the Coast Guard that is the U.S. agency that has the best relationships with Cuba. It's oftentimes diplomacy kind of starts with the Coast Guard's ties. with Cuba. But anyway, that aside, it doesn't make sense from a counter-narcotics standpoint because, look, if you actually wanted to break up a cartel, what do you do? I mean, if you are a prosecutor, investigator, right? You capture the smugglers, you seize the cargo, the contraband,

which is evidence, then you try to flip them up for immunity or whoever your real targets are. Maybe your target is Maduro or someone else in the regime. But you can't do that when you kill everyone on the boat. And I think the fact that in, I think, the latest boat strike, they didn't manage to kill everyone. And a couple of them got away. And then the U.S. rather than charge them with a crime, they just turn them back around. And you would think that if the U.S. is so certain that the people on those boats are drug trafficking terrorists that they want to kill them, then you'd think they would have enough evidence to charge them, to prosecute them, of them. Apparently not. So this is all to say, the idea that this is a counter-narcotics operation

doesn't hold up. Clearly, it is meant to be more of a regime-change operation. But again, I don't see how the one leads to the other. I believe that Trump thinks that if he just saber-rattles a little bit and possibly tries some decapitation strikes the way that the U.S. did on Soleimani and Iran, that somehow the regime is going to collapse. And that does not make any sense. Maduro has surrounded himself with security, a lot of it, including through Cuban advisors. He keeps his whereabouts very secret. Even if somehow they were to drone strike him, it's not as if the regime as a whole would fall because it is an extremely militarized regime that is upheld by the armed forces who are not going to break with him because they have a hand in every lucrative

business, both legal and illegal, in Venezuela, they're not going to be paid off or not be swayed by a bounty that is currently, what, something like $50 million? I mean, there are people around Maduro that have made upwards of a billion dollars in oil rents. So it's not like you can pay off people to betray him either. Yeah, and it's not, nor is it like a cult of personality situation, like certainly not now. Chavez had something of a sort of charismatic leadership role, but Maduro is not that. So let's talk about the opposition in Venezuela in so much as like, I guess if we go back to the election last year, right? Let's start with the election and explain to people what happened there and the subsequent sort of avenues that are now open or the avenues that that opposition is now exploring, if that's okay.

There was an election, quote unquote, that took place last year. it was brokered largely by the U.S., the U.S. under the Biden administration, was pushing for some kind of negotiations between the opposition, the Venezuelan government. They convinced enough people in the opposition to stand for elections under what was called the Barbados Agreement in 2023. And this was meant to be an exchange of partial lifting of the sectoral sanctions that have been in place on Venezuela for a long time, in which the Trump administration, the first Trump administration really tightened in exchange for the Maduro government agreeing to stand for elections. And those elections happened last year. It was pretty clear from free electoral surveys

and from exit polls and from the vote returns that were coming in at the time that the opposite to Canada was going to win by an enormous march, about a 35 point margin. The candidate was officially at Moodo Gonzalez, but he was candidates mostly because, because Murtigourini and Machado, the now Nobel Prize laureate, was barred from running. So she gave her blessing to Gonzalez to be basically her proxy, and people were more or less voting for both of them, so to speak. But both he and her are much more popular Maduro, who, by all accounts, is an extremely unpopular leader, especially in contrast to, as you said, Ucuchavas, who, for all his faults, was a genuinely charismatic leader. and, you know, he did stand for elections and win them, you know, pretty convincingly. Incidentally, the price of oil was about $100 a barrel when he was president, and he was able to spend a lot of social programs.

But that aside, Maduro is pretty unpopular at this point. He is pretty widely seen as both a tyrant and also quite incompetent at managing basic state services. So he was going to lose unless he stole the election, which he did. The C&E, the Venezuelan election board announced that he had won with just 51% of the vote, which is, I have to say, I give him credit for being subtle. I expected them to announce that he had won with like 99% of the vote. Yeah, and a sad margin. Yeah, yeah, no one believed it.

And I have to say, one of my critiques of the Biden administration is that I think the whole thing was rather naive. I think they calculated that somehow Maduro would let himself be voted out of office. Maduro is, what he talked about under a bounty, has a bounty on his head. Many people in the U.S. politicians, the U.S., Republicans in particular, have promised that they're going to send up to jail. So why would someone in that position, you know, give up power? I think, you know, he saw what happened to Gaddafi and he's, you know, he doesn't want to be jailed or killed. And at the same time, the stick part of the Carrion Stick mechanism was that they would simply go back to the sanctions that existed before, which was called a snapback. and these are sanctions that the Venezuelan government has weathered for for many, many years.

So it's not really that much of a disincentive. So anyway, everyone basically admits at this point that he stole the election, but what are you going to do about it? The opposition, for its part, has taken different approaches to how to confront him and is famously very divided. The Venezuelan opposition has never really been on the same page. They've never really had an uncontested leader. Maria Cornea Machado is about the closest they have had. But she herself really represents more one wing of the opposition, the more you might say hardline wing.

For a long time, there was a hardline wing personified by Lopez, and there was a more, I don't know if you call it, a soft line or liberal or just more willing to talk to the regime wing, led by Caprillas who ran against Maduro in the first election. And it's even within those factions, there are competing personalities. A lot of it really is more personal than ideological. But Marie Korni Machalo, she is on the right politically. She, you know, styles herself after Margaret Thatcher.

She is also, I will give her credit for this, a very good organizer. She has famously kind of gone into communities that have historically voted with the Chavista left and convinced many people to leave that coalition. And also to have a credit, you know, I would say. she is a very brave person. She has remained in the country at a time that many most opposition leaders, including Edmodo Gonzalez, have fled the country. And she's been in hiding. She knows that the regime would arrest, if not kill her, at its soonest opportunity, yet she still shows up unannounced at events, at rallies, and makes speeches. So she has achieved this kind of

mythic figure. And this is something that obviously is only going to grow with the Nobel Prize. So then the question is, what will this Nobel do? I think that one calculation is that it'll simply keep her alive. You know, it'll be much harder for the Maduro government to kill her if, you know, if they would be killing a Nobel laureate. So that may buy her a little bit more time. The Hunter and me, I was trying to try to best them on the first one to kill a Nobel laureate, I guess. Right, right, yeah. But, you know, will it bring peace? I'm not so sure, because Mary Gordon Machalo has also been very closely allied and supportive of the Trump administration. and her side of the opposition has been encouraging the military strikes backing sanctions,

even though the sanctions both have done nothing to dislodge Maduro and also contribute to a great deal of suffering for the Venezuelan people. And I have to say, look, I'm not Venezuelan. I have no right to give it to Venezuelan opposition advice. I would say that if they have tried multiple elections, you know, at least two of which have been stolen, if they have tried, you know, you might say more democratic means, and nothing has happened. I can understand why many people would think that a more radical approach is the only option left on the table. However, that approach hasn't done anything either. You know, sanctions have not to dislodge Majuro, blowing up boats of possible drug traffickers, maybe just fishermen, has not done anything.

I think that nothing appears likely to lead to regime change, but I can understand the desperation of people living under what is broadly acknowledged to be an extremely repressive regime. Yeah, and just the grinding poverty of everyday life in Venezuela is so, like I've heard so many stories from so many people of such a difficult existence there. I can understand people's desperation. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit.

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Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult?

And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with her ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did and now they've been confronting her in

really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin.

You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex in the City, or just the Internet's dad. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Daddy's looking good. Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me, actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms, and we talk about what they love. Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there, too, from feeling sexy in the morning. What keeps them going?

And you're maybe my biggest competition on social media. Like when a kid says bra to me. how they're navigating this high-speed roller coaster we call reality. In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and f***. Right. Hey, he's no train McDougall. This is like the comment section of my Instagram. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday.

And let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Andrew, you know I had spoken about like the gulf between the government of Trinidad and Tobago and the people of Trinidad and Tobago right now. And obviously the same is true in Venezuela, right? Like, it's not the opposition figures living in Spain who suffer when we have these sanctions, right? It's not opposition candidates who get blown up when they go fishing. It's regular working class Venezuelan people. So do you want to talk about, like, I'm not even sure what we can do in, in, in, in, you know,

by way of solidarity with either of these nations. But maybe you have some thoughts on that. I'm honestly at something of a loss myself. Speaking from a small island, I think the US's superpower status is almost akin to an altruish horror. It feels like it's unfathomable. How you could even go about approaching that at times. I'm trying to remind myself that people have fought and won.

You know, people have resisted and want. You know, currently, there isn't that much going on. There are murmurs. They are murmurs of fare, of disdain, of disagreement, of distrust. In terms of grassroots effort, there's a lot still to be done. The leader of the move on for social justice, which is a small, progressive political party in Toronto, Bego. It's a guy named David Abdullah. And he has been part of this assembly.

of Caribbean people who have been signing and is doing a declaration, reasserting our desire for peace, and that has been signed by various progressive organizations, social movements, and figures across the Caribbean. And there was also an effort last week Thursday, that's October 16th, to organize a region-wide day of action in defense of the Caribbean. And so the different actions were taking place all over. over in 15 countries, we had press conferences, we had state months, and we had pickets at certain U.S. embassies and public demonstrations.

It was kind of in the middle of the day on a Thursday, so there wasn't that big of a turnout from what I saw when I had gone, but it shows that there is, and from the, at least anecdotal experience, there is a desire to keep the U.S. out of the situation, you know, despite the issues with the Venezuelan government, despite the issues with our own governments, we don't want intervention, you know, and right now all we can really levy is our voices, you know, our words, and all we can really do, I think, besides protest, what is going on is prepare for the worst to ensure that we have, you know, sit in support systems in place in case, you know, push comes to shove. Yeah, that's pretty bleak.

Michael, do you have anything to add on how people can be in solidarity with the people of Venezuela currently? Well, I have been calling for people broadly throughout the world to have solidarity more with people than with states and certainly with

the Venezuelan people as opposed to the Venezuelan state. I wrote something for the Center for International Policy about this and listen, you know, it's not my place to police the left, so to speak, but you know, as someone, speaking personally, who comes from the labor movement, you know, comes from the Bernie Allied left, so to speak.

You know, I do think it's been a little bit uncomfortable to observe how certain elements of the global left have stood up for the Maduro regime or the very least been the criticism of it has been taboo. And I think a lot of that is a legacy of Chavez, Chavez having this strong personal charisma, but also that he was willing to confront the United States, the Bush administration. at a time of the Iraq war, you know, especially low point in the U.S.'s global reputation. Also, Venezuela's oil rents at the time, which we're financing a lot of not just social programs, Venezuela, but a lot of financial largesse to allied states and movements around the region.

So a lot of left parties kind of reflexively defended Maduro, even as his repression and mismanagement just ramped up. I will say that's stating, you know, we were seeing this within Latin America. First of all, there's kind of a generational divide, and some of the older generation of Latin American left, like Lula or like Petro, have not been overwhelmingly anti-Maduro, but have expressed skepticism about the electoral results. But then there's a younger generation, such as war at Chile and Arevolo and Guatemala, who have been openly very critical of Maduro and want to just not let him or his camp, so to speak, define. what it means to be on the left. And really, the only countries that have unquestionably backed him at this point are Bolivian, Cuba, but also outside of the region, Russia, Iran, China.

So I think that we should ask ourselves, like, who do we think is a more credible arbiter of progressive values? Is it origin Chile or is it Putin, you know? Even the Communist Party of Venezuela had no longer passed. Yeah, that's one of my favorite facts. He has had their militants killed, you know, allegedly as well. So it's just, it's not helpful to view the world in this campus lens. You know, I think that if people, whether they identify as on the left or, or whatever, want to show

solidarity, I think it should be with the Venezuelan people, which means listening to voices within civil society in Venezuela. There are a lot of NGOs, there are a lot of labor unions, there a lot of human rights advocates that are not opposition parties that are not running for office, they're not necessarily calling for regime change, made them very critical of sanctions, but they have tried to push for better changes, you know, quality of life, you know, reforms that might lead to less repression, open up more space for civil society, and, you know, those things are necessary when people are really living day by day, you know, and I think that If people on the left want to play the long game and understand care about their prospects for the future, they need to understand that the Maduro regime is the worst model for them to be associated with.

And this has already been taking place with campaigns, electoral campaigns around Latin America, where Canada's on the right run against the boogeyman of Chavismo of like of a Maduro model. And it makes sense. And a lot of people on the left are very skeptical of Maria Corny Machado. People like I have skepticism about some of her policy platforms of, you know, privatization and other neoliberal ideas. They also shouldn't be surprised if there's been a decade of people being told that this model of corruption, authoritarianism, state terror, criminal insecurity, that's what socialism is. Then people are going to believe that. And then they're going to, then they're vote against whatever that is. And this model has provoked, you know, the greatest refugee crisis, certainly in the region,

8 million people, they're all carrying with them stories about why they left, right? And so if there ever were to be democratic elections in Venezuela, it's pretty clear the country would turn to the right. And I don't think we should be surprised by that, you know. And I think we should also recognize that many of the things that Maludo embodies these strong man politics are things that are important. embodied by other strong men, not just on the left, too. You know, I would just point out that least according to his sum, Trump has privately expressed a lot of admiration for Maduro. I read John Bolton's book, and, you know, the former national security visor, you know, maybe he has a lot of reasons to lie. But, you know, he did say that Trump privately expressed a lot of

admiration for Maduro being, in his words, too smart and too tough to be overthrown, you know, was really happy to see him surrounded by what he called all these good-looking generals. He disparaged Juan Guaido, calling him the Beto O'Rourke of Venezuela, that means. You know, so I think that there is something we said about strong men, recognizing strong men, and a lot of these authoritarian lessons are not limited to one side of the ideological spectrum. Yeah, definitely. I find that tendency on the American left, on the sort of internet left, to be massively frustrating. Like as someone who went there to see the revolution, who like went there to, like, went there

to understand it and who spent masses of time with Venezuelan people in the daring gap at the border in Venezuela. I'm very fond of Venezuelan people. And I think, yeah, our solidarity should be with them, not with some strong man state. We saw this in Syria as well, right? Like, it is heartbreaking, genuinely heartbreaking, to explain to people how someone who identifies as a leftist is also denying that their children were gassed by chemical weapons in Syria, right? This campus gray zone tendency on the American left specifically is incredibly toxic. And anybody who seriously considers themselves to be a leftist is massively undermining any

credibility they have and they associate themselves with regimes which willingly murder their own people. I would like to see people stop doing that. perhaps both of you could finish up by suggesting U.S. coverage of this has not been great, right? Like it tends to focus on the United States very much and Venezuela kind of appears as a monolithic entity. Turning down Tobago rarely gets any coverage in the U.S. media.

I did see, I think, Reuters or AP had done a piece about how fishermen are reluctant to go out. I would like to see more of that kind of reporting. Perhaps both of you could suggest a couple of sources where people could read about this? Sure, at least on my end, I suggest looking into our local news. Now, it's not the best source

in terms of actual interrogation of the issues and the ways in which some of the narratives just kind of get repeated uncritically. But you do get at least the occasional interview, the occasional quote from a non-U.S. State Department source. I would also suggest on Instagram there are a couple pages that bring a more radical, progressive voice from the Caribbean. There's a page called Vintage Caribbean, and there's another page called Trinbago for Palestine,

and both of those have been doing a lot of coverage on this particular incident lately. So you can look to those as well if you want to get a sort of a grassroots take on the situation. Yeah, I don't really have any go-toed sources. on this. I would say that it's enough of an international incident that all the major news sources are covering it. So you can read really any news source in Latin America if you speak Spanish Portuguese and see how that recording is different. Also, incidentally, El Pais in Spain, you know, quote knows on the side, they do pretty good reporting. Yeah, they've been doing pretty good reporting. And there's lots of blogs as well and, you know, newsletters that you can check out.

I will say just made this, I'm biased because I focus a lot on crime. The site, Insight crime is pretty good in terms of looking into specific criminal groups like Rende Aragua and calling a question if, you know, if this really is a, you know, it's something that is controlled by the puppet master from Yara Flores, you know, like Mildur and some of these, some of these narratives that are justifying this. I would also just as a recommendation, I would say, you know, maybe we should be a little bit skeptical, too, about the timing and the purposes of these things. I did point out in a piece that I wrote for the Center for National Policy, then the first boat strike happened on the same day the House Judiciary Committee

was releasing a redacted a number of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. And I think that there are many reasons why this administration would like to use this confrontation as

a convenient distraction from other things that they would rather not be talking about. Yeah. Leak. I think it's probably a reasonable conclusion given where we're at. Where can people find both of you on if they want to follow you online on social media or find more of your writing. We'll start with you, Andrew.

Sure. Well, you can find me on my YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Andrew Asim. Or you could just quote my website for all my other links, Andrewsage.org. How about you, Michael? I do have a website. You can look up my name and that should come up. I haven't updated it recently. I probably should.

I'm also on Twitter X, Blue Sky, as my name, M-P-A-A-R-E-A-R-E. L-B-B-R-G. So you can work me up there. Great. Thank you very much with you. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website,

coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down.

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Lenovo, Lenovo. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. To find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime

and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed

roller coaster we call reality. Join me in my delightful guests every Thursday. and let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.