It Could Happen Here - How the US attacks on Venezuela Impact Trinidad and Tobago with Andrew

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Andrew is joined by James to discuss recent US attacks on Venezuelan boats, and how the Prime Minister of Trinidad’s full throated support puts the small Caribbean nation at risk.  Sources: https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/pm-us-military-should-kill-them-all-violently-6.2.2390747.79d6204d7c  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jel4gyezo See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists

to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us, father and daughter, for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years,

until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone.

These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built a ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town? You must excise it.

Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from aaron mankey this is havoctown a new fiction podcast sets in the bridgewater audio universe starring jule state and ray wise listen to havoc town on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts causal media goody goody and welcome to it could happen here i'm andrew siege andrew zum on YouTube and I'm here with James Stout for those of you wondering what my last name is. Hello, hello. And for those who couldn't tell by my accent or maybe don't recognize it, I'm from Trinand Tobago, born and based. And you may or may not have seen Trinidad's name being called up in J.D. Vans and Marco Rubio's mouths lately, particularly with the moves of the U.S. has been making in the Caribbean Sea as of late. So to provide a little context on the

inciting incident of this episode, the current Prime Minister of Toronto, Tobago, Kamala Pesar, possessor, expressed very passionate support for the U.S.'s recent move on an alleged Venezuela-based drug vessel.

I say alleged because no proof has been provided that it was a drug vessel, why anything of that nature, that the United States struck. The Prime Minister said, and I quote, that she has no sympathy for traffickers, and that the U.S. should pill them all violently.

Jesus Christ. For those, I mean, most people not know much about Trinadian politics. I don't expect them to. Our current Prime Minister, she won this year, actually. And she kind of carried on that trend of incumbents losing their elections that took place, you know, post-COVID lockdown 2020 era. Yeah. So the previous Prime Minister was Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rauer,

he was Prime Minister for like 10 years. He became Prime Minister after she lost her last stint as Prime Minister because she's kind of a mess in a couple different ways. I mean, both parties are pretty corrupt, but they're corrupt and incompetent in some very critical ways. Corrupt and racist and a couple of other issues. That trend continues with her new candidacy. You know, she's not only feeling the country in some crucial ways.

she cancelled our independency celebrations. She fired, like, thousands of workers from a local agency that's responsible for landscaping around the country, basically, you know, cutting grass and clearing trains, that sort of thing, fired, like, thousands of them, right? So now the entire country's overgrown, and all those people have, like, right before their children have to go to school, you know, they had no income to support them. So there's like a lot of cruelty, a lot of corruption, a lot of income. a lot of incompetence.

And in this particular case, diplomatic, carelessness, recklessness, because she goes and she says this, despite the fact that not only the U.S. violator law, international law, but also we are small.

You may not be able to see Trinidad on a lot of maps because we are small. You know, we may be one of the more populated Caribbean countries, but we are still small. Venezuela is our closest neighbor. And she has been, exceedingly irresponsible in the ways that she's approached Venezuela because in the previous administration actually had an agreement with Venezuela regarding the extraction of their

fossil fuels in the waters that are between Trindad and Venezuela. We had to get permission from the United States to get into that agreement with Venezuela because Venezuela is currently under sanction. And for the longest time, Trindat has had to work. this sort of tightrope of playing nice with both the U.S. and Venezuela. She's basically coming guns blazing to make statements that appear to be openly aggressive towards Venezuela, towards Venezuelan sovereignty, and so on. Now, her reasoning is that Trinidad has been ravaged by a lot of violence and addiction that has been caused by these drug cartels coming from South America, including

Venezuela. This is a very real issue, the illegal gun and drug and human trafficking that takes place between South America and Trinidad, we are transship one point for that sort of activity and that kind of thing brings violence. The issue is that while she may be able to say things like, may God bless and protect the members of the U.S. military, the U.S. and the U.S. military are in part responsible for the violence that is ravaged Latin America, but is also not even particularly interested, regardless of what their words may say, they're not particularly interested in dealing with the drug issue. At the end of the day, it really comes down to regime change and a desire to control Venezuela's resources. But let me take it back for a moment and

provide a longer history of what's going on, right? The United States became independent in 1776. The North Carolina became a colony of the UK in 1797. Not long after, after that, because prior to being under the UK, Trinidad was under the Spanish, and while being under the Spanish, was settled by French settlers. So it was like Spanish laws, French settlers, and then later on, UK governance. And so the war of 1812, which is, you know, the war took place between the US and the UK, led to some African Americans siding with the UK in exchange for emancipation. And in exchange for their services in that war, that group of people, which became known as the Americans, were resettled in South Trinidad. And I'm actually

descendant from some of them, allegedly. So there is this history of exchange taken place between U.S. and Trinidad. You know, during World War II, America had military bases established in Trinidad. We had Waller Field, which was commissioned in 1941. And the Chagramas Naval Base, which was fully operational in 1943, and that provided strategic naval and air facilities in the Caribbean. Thanks to the destroyers for bases agreement with the British, the British got destroyers and the US got bases in the British colonies. Now, thankfully, the base was scaled back and eventually decommissioned

and returned to Tranadega was controlled by 1963, but that took a lot of protest and march in. to accomplish. It was the whole thing of trying to get Yankee out of Trinidad. Yankee did provide some benefits to Trinidad in terms of establishing infrastructure

for highways and that sort of thing. But there was also a not so positive social impact of the American presence. One Calypsonian, known as Dmiti Sparou, sang in a song called Gene and Dina that's basically

the American presence funded a lot of households due to prostitution. And the song was basically about how Jane and Diana had to go and find other work now that the Americans were leaving. So after the failure of the West Indies

Federation and the independence of countries like Jamaica and Trinand Tobago from the UK, the location of the former military base, Shagramus, also ended up becoming the temporary location of the capital of

the short-lived West Indies Federation. After the West Indies Federation broke apart, Shagramus became the place where the Treaty of Shagramus was signed between the newly independent countries of Trantabago and Jamaica and so forth, which established Caracom, the Caribbean Community and Common Market in 1973. Caracom will come up later. Caracom is kind of like if the EU was like entirely toothless and didn't really do much of anything.

It's like a nice idea of trying to get a bit of regional collaboration and inspiration and trade and movement. But it's still more expensive to go between islands than it is to go from an island to the US. So Caracom hasn't exactly succeeded in facilitating island movement thus far. But Caracom will come up later on, right? I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos.

Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution. that doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in.

To bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie.

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling.

I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her, I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County. A show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book, book. Night feels. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed.

Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more and beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the Deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back, everyone! He's going to next! And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

As a warning. Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Aberstown. Strang Tobago Guides Independence in 1962, we became a republic in 1976 and we were under the prime ministership of Dr. Eric Williams from 1962 to 1981. Now, Dr. Eric Williams was our first prime minister, and so he's respected in that regard. He also wrote capitalism and slavery, which was a really impactful piece of literature

on the, you know, role of capitalism in the abolition of slavery, or rather the economic motivations for the abolition of slavery, as opposed to the claimed moral virtue of the British Empire in abolishing slavery when it did. Right. Right. So he did some good academic work,

and, you know, he was instrumental in the establishment of Trinand Tobago was an independent country, but he also suppressed the black power movement that took place a little while after we became independent because of his failures, he also banned the Trindadian-born American immigrant commentary, otherwise known as Stokely Carmichael, which is like a world-renowned socialist and pan-Afghanist.

Yeah. Right? So through the 70s, we had an oil boom, and we became really, really industrialized. We had another boom in 2000s. And unlike other Caribbean countries, we didn't have to be dependent on tourism. And so we ended up going in a different developmental direction.

The thing about the oil booms is that really had more. to do with certain happenings in the Middle East, that really anything that we did, you know, the oil boom just kind of fell on our laps in that way. Right. 1983, there was an invasion of Grenada by the United States after Maurice Bishop's coup, and the organization of Eastern Caribbean states,

Dominica, Barbados, and Jamaica called for the U.S. to come and assist in dealing with this Marxist-Lennist getting power in Grenada, while Trans-Abego, the UK and Canada, criticized the invasion. It was a violation of international law, according to the UN General Assembly, but as usual, the law doesn't really apply to the U.S.

So nothing really came out of that. Otherwise, the relation between the U.S. and Trinand-Tabego has been, you know, we have a lot of trade. You know, we have a large diaspora in the U.S. There's a lot of travel between the countries. most of our tourism comes from the U.S. We have a lot of American-based oil and gas companies established in Trinidad, and our whole consumerist culture is basically a copy in many ways of what the U.S. does.

When they sneeze, we catch a cold as the same goes. Yeah. I know I'm established in a lot of context, but it's to give an idea of how we are, where we are right now, right? So next door to Trinidad, we have Venezuela, and we really had this sort of diplomatic relationship going on with Maduro and the USA at the same time under the former Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, who was of the same party as our first Prime Minister, Dr. Eric Williams, right? With the issues taking place in Venezuela right now, there's been a large influx of migrants from Venezuela living in Trinandibago right now. Well, mainly Trindat. Yeah. Right? I have a lot of Venezuelans now live in in Trindat.

Some of them legally, some of them illegally. Prior to that recent wave, and by recent, I'm talking like 2016, 2017, prior to that wave, we had Venezuelans in Trinidad and we had Trinidad and we had Trinidad and we had Trinidad and followed in the Koko plantations in Trinidad. So we've always been a very mixed up. group right right and this idea of strict border control between the countries is a very recent politically motivated situation now with everything going on in latin america thanks to u.s intervention and the u.s is constantly failing war on drugs we have a lot of violence passing between our territories you know guns drugs human trafficking as i mentioned yeah and then venezuel now is, I mean, their hands are not clean.

I'm not saying any country's hands are cleaning this. I'm not trying to paint a good guy, a bad guy, the economy. Yeah. You know, Venezuela is still holding strong to this claim that they have from since before their independence, that

like more than half of Guyana actually belongs to them. Guyana, by the way, is an English-speaking, Caribbean culture, uh, country border in Venezuela, Suriname and Brazil.

So Guyana recently explored and discovered a bunch of offshore reserves. Yeah. Which, you know, they are really excited to capitalize upon and, you know, they have a lot of deals and agreements taking place where that is concerned. All of a sudden Venezuela is like, you know, that piece of land that we've long been saying is ours. Yeah, that really is ours. And they started, you know, they're putting out maps claiming that most of Guyana is actually Venezuela. and all these different things.

So it's a very, it's a very threatening situation because Venezuela is a military power in its own right. Yeah. Right. Guyana, Trindad, we don't have much military prowess.

So in a sense, I understand why both Trinidad and Guyana are cozy and up with the U.S. right now, but at the same time, this recent administration's cozy and up has not been the most tactful, you know, because we do have a diplomatic approach

that has worked well for us for a very long time. Now, the argument could be made that maybe that diplomatic response, that diplomatic balance cannot be maintained forever. Our neutrality cannot persist as things are heating up in the region. But we had an opportunity to respond carefully, to respond in a measured fashion to the U.S.'s recent move with bombing the alleged drug vote, and we did not do that.

Yeah, that's a pretty squandered chance. To just, like, say, you know, we should respect international law here. And, you know, like, the easiest thing to say would be, like, there's a set of procedures for doing this. We could follow them. Yeah. It's not hard to say that. That deal we had with Venezuela, that was a deal that we were able to negotiate under Biden.

That was a deal that when Trump came into power, he just took back. He was like, nah, you all can't do that anymore. So with Trump going in this, either you're with us or against us kind of direction, that calls for extra, you know, care and, you know, you're kind of dealing with a bomb that you're trying to work around, right? Yeah. But in the same year that Trump got elected, Kamala Posada, possessor, our current prime minister, got elected. You know, she's known for being reckless. She's known for being a bit of a drunkard. she's passionately pro-Trump she was a COVID conspiracist in the vein of one of her famous quotes is sunlight will kill COVID she's passionately pro-US passionately anti-Maduro passionately racist and very much anti-caracom okay right now there's a bit of a history there because Trinidad and Guyana are two Caribbean countries with very large East India

populations, as in Indians from India. Yeah. When the West Indies Federation was getting at start, both Guyana and Trindad's Indian populations had the concern that, considering the rest of the Caribbean, as black majority, that they would not be adequately represented in a West Indies Federation. And so that sort of opposition to that level of regional unity seems to have persisted within some circles of an East Indian or Indo-Cribian politics. Okay, interesting.

Not all, right, but some seem to have an opposition to too much Caracom involvement because they feel that their voices are we drowned out by black people. And I mean, there's a lot of anti-blackness in that community, but that is not the subject of this particular episode. So that sort of opposition to the Western East Federation seems to have carried over into opposition towards Caracom. And when there was a low turnout among P&M supporters, which is the party of Dr. Rowley and Dr. Williams,

as well as some third party momentum taking place, Kamla ended up coming into power, right? And when she came into power, she's making these moves, making these statements, and disregarding Caracom and disregarding Caracom's opinion, disregarding Caracom involvement in Trinidad. moves and decisions. As a small country,

Caracom is supposed to be our way of beefing up our voice on the international stage. And she's basically saying, bun that, you know, we will do our own thing. Right?

Yeah. Oh, I forgot to mention another thing about Kamala, just for a bit of context. Cambridge Analytica came into Trinidad and basically ran an experiment using our elections.

to test out some new strategies they ended up taken into the U.S., right? They practiced their electoral manipulation in Trinidad, which is how Kamala won in the first time she was elected back in 2010, 2015. It was through collaboration with Cambridge Analytica. So again, yet another connection between the U.S. and Trinidad for better and for ways. Yeah. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos.

Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that, It doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in.

To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your. podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve,

this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff, that you all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match

and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people

in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. there's no loyalty that's all gone in the 1980s modeling wasn't just a dream it was a battlefield book book book like deals let's get models in let's get them out and the models themselves

they carried scars that never fully healed till this day honestly if i see a measuring tape i freak out the model wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatus, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep. birth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back everyone! He's going to next! And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning.

from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from aaron mankey this is havoctown a new fiction podcast sets in the bridgewater audio universe starring jule state and ray wise listen to havoctown on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the devil walks in aberstown 2nd of September, the U.S. bombed a pirogue and claimed to kill 11 people and claimed that it was a drug boat, despite the fact that they haven't provided any proof that the footage was extremely grainy. And even if they did have proof that it was a drug boat, summary execution on the high seas is not exactly in line with international law. Right. Right. If these are quote-unquote violent drug traffickers who are killing people and doing all these ridiculous things. you're supposed to bring them in, you're supposed to interrogate them, you're supposed to go through a certain procedure, right? Yeah. All the smoke and mirrors about drugs and fighting drugs and all these different things.

It really is that smoke and mirrors because if it was about that, they would be trying to get information to target the heart of the operation. What the US is doing right now is flexing. Right, yeah. It's flexing their muscles in the region to show what it is willing to do.

It's trying to poke, and prod Venezuela to respond in kind so that it has the excuse it needs or the further excuse to intervene. There was another strike, another boat bombing on the 15th of September, and there was another strike on the 19th of September against another boat.

And it's a very, very worrying place to be and time to be alive. Right. I would say. You know, we have, Guyana as a player, you know, they're still working with U.S. oil companies, they collaborate with U.S. They have this territorial anxiety with regards to Venezuela, and they are part of Karakom. Guyana's part of Karakom trying to, you know, work it out through that channel and through

other channels. Venezuela, in response to Kamala's energy, has basically put out steep ones talking about, hey, this Kamala lady kind of crazy or show about that, because if any U.S. missile comes out of Trinidad, we are responding to Trinidad. Right. And Trinidad is like not the same as the US, right? Like that it's not like a mutually assured destruction. Exactly. So she is, you know, speaking very recklessly. And in the meantime, the Venezuela's in response, you know, if any sort of U.S. incursion is launched out of Trinidad, which she invited, by the way, she said, hey,

the U.S. could be whatever they want. And here, if they want, we are standing ready, we, right? where she got this wee from, right? But she's saying, oh, yeah, they could come and they could, you know, launch stuff from here. And Venezuela's like, you're not talking kind of crazy right now. You should care about your citizens because we know your citizens don't like what you're doing. So why are you doing this kind of thing? Yeah. And it's bigger than just Venezuela, the U.S. and Trinidad, because Venezuela is also aligned with Russia, right?

It's, I believe Russia's only ally in the Western Hemisphere. Right. And while the drug issue and the crime issue is a significant concern, most of the drugs are coming from Colombia in the first place, which the US is not currently targeting. Right. And at the end of the day, as I mentioned earlier, it seems to be coming down to regime change and resources and the control of Venezuela's resources. You know, we are now in a situation where our fishermen are having to stay home out of fear. Oh, jeez. That their fishing boats could be struck out of the water. Yeah, yeah. You know, we are in a situation where Kamala's fan base is just as Trumpian and cultish as the marker base, seemingly, seems to be perfectly fine with what's going on. Although, in some ways, I think that that might even be astroturfed or inflated artificially

because there was recently an expose that determined a lot of the pro-turfed, UNC, which is Kamala's party, the pro-UNC, pro-Kamler buzz that occurs on social media, it's bot-driven. Like you go onto these profiles and they're bots. Just, you know, fake names, fake profile pictures, AI

posts. Oh, geez. Yeah, yeah. It's just entirely fabricated. This is also at a time when the US is building a massive embassy in our country, when Kamler seemingly opening the floodgates to military collaboration,

with the U.S., where we are dealing with our own economic woes and crime rules and so on. And, you know, we also have the largest Chinese embassy in the region. We have a lot of collab with China. We recently made moves to recognize Palestine with a Palestinian diplomat now reside in the country. It feels like we are putting ourselves in a very risky position. and whether or not we could have done more or less to get out of this position, you know, considering the U.S. has its backyard policy with regard to the rest of the Americas, with regard to the fact that Trump has created this Department of War,

that the U.S. seems to be flailing around as a dying empire does, the fact that the Caribbean has been called out so frequently with violence in an effort to manufacture consent for what seems to become next. With the fact that there was a field intervention to overthrow Maduro in the past, known as Operation Gideon, right back in 2020. All this has me a bit stressed. I mean, there was a particularly insane attempt to overthrow Maduro in 2020, right? The Silver Core thing. Yeah, yeah.

They had this American security firm and some Venezuelan dissidents just they tried to infiltrate Venezuela by sea. and basically as soon as they landed, they got arrested. Yeah, yeah. I think some of them got detained by Venezuelan fishermen who realized they only had BB guns. It sucks that, like, having spent time in Venezuela and with Venezuelan people a lot, you know, for years now, it's Venezuelan people who are going to pay the price for all of this, right?

Like, it's not, and potentially people in Trinidad and Tobago as well. Like, they very clearly do know. not want Maduro to be running their country, right? Like, we saw that in the election, and we saw that in the protests after election. They have every reason to want to leave their country and go somewhere safe, but that's not possible for many of them. Yeah. I mean, like I said, there's a lot of Venezuelans in Trinidad right now.

Yeah. So any moves that Venezuela's making, they're obviously going to make with consideration to the fact they have their own people in Trinat as well. Yeah, exactly. And, like, they're being demonized, even though they've done everything they can to to separate themselves from Maduro and like they are being yeah there's unfortunately a lot of xenophobia and turned out yeah it's really sad like and we see it here too right at this this allegation that they're all gang members which is like if we think that gang violence is bad in

Venezuela and in parts of Venezuela it is bad then surely it would make sense to people who don't want any part in that might leave and go somewhere else yeah and rather than supporting them We're just killing, like, the lowest tier people, right? Like, even if we entertain the idea that the boat could have been carrying drugs, and we put aside the fact that that hasn't been proven, or the boats, plural. The people driving the boats and other people are, like, making the calls here. But yeah, they're the people being killed. Exactly, exactly.

It's the same principle with all these drug buses and gang bus to take place in Dronad. You know, they go and they roll in and they arrest these small fries, but the big boss is calling the shots unharmed. Yeah. You know, the multinational criminal empires that are moving the people, moving the drugs, moving the guns in the region, they're untouched. Yeah. And like even the Maduro's two nephews, like they were released after they were detained for trying to run drugs via Haiti, right? Like you say, the people making the real decisions are largely insulated from all this. It's working people in Venezuela who, like, they don't have other opportunities, right?

Like, I have heard the most disheartening stories, especially from Venezuelan fishermen, right? Like, their economy is so bad that they are not able to put fuel in their boats. It wouldn't be economical to put fuel in their fishing boats. even if they caught a full load of fish they wouldn't be able no one has any money to buy the fish at a high price so they can't pay for the fuel

and this is a country which sits on a massive oil reserve but yet people can't afford to put fuel in their fishing boats like you know these people are victims of a system that has left them with very few opportunities

and the way we're responding is by killing them and by destabilizing a whole part of the world that no one asked for this there you know apart from apparently your prime minister yeah so i mean this was a very rambly episode more rambly than my usual but i just wanted to get the word out on what's going on in my corner of the globe to let the americans in the audience know to you know please do what you can to stand to speak out

against this american intervention yeah to educate yourself and what's going on uh for the trinnees who may be in the audience, you know, probably hunker down and have a crisis bag or emergency bag set up if worse comes to worse. And everyone else really just get the knowledge and do what you can in your area to disrupt this machine. Yeah. Yeah. That's it for me. All power. It's all the people. Peace. podcast from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart 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.

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