Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/19/26 Patrick Pillow on Washington’s Preferred Method of Regime Change

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

Scott interviews Patrick Pillow about Anatomy of a Regime Change, the series he’s writing on the so-called Color Revolutions. While Iraq and Afghanistan get the most attention, the majority of Washi...ngton-backed regime change attempts since the end of the Cold War have taken the form of these CIA-organized political revolutions. Scott and Pillow walk through the specifics of several examples and discuss the importance of this often overlooked aspect of American foreign policy. Discussed on the show: Libertarian Overwatch The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections, and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union by Mark A. MacKinnon Patrick Pillow runs Libertarian Overwatch on Substack. Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:06 Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country. It's the babies I make it. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host. Scott Porton. All right, y'all. Introducing Patrick Pillow, aka Libertarian Overwatch over on the substack. Here is his site.
Starting point is 00:00:50 And anatomy of a regime change. The latest here, I think it's the latest one, yeah, is regime change, Kyrgyzstan 2005. But check this out. Here's the list. Here's my point. Look at this list, guys. He's done these great pieces on all of the color-coded revolutions of the Bill Clinton and W. Bush years.
Starting point is 00:01:14 And I don't know if he'll get as far as the Maidan, but I guess he must probably do that. Of course, he tried to overthrow Belarus again in 2020, don't forget. But here, so check out. 1997, Montenegro, 98, Armenia, 99, Slovakia, 2000, Serbia, 2001, Philippines, 2002, Madagascar and Venezuela, 2003, Georgia, part one and two, 2004, you, Ukraine 1 and 2, 2005, Lebanon, and now here he's got Kyrgyzstan. And what fun to read, what great work you've done here. And why don't we start with, tell us what is it got you interested in this subject and maybe decide to go back and review each of these color-coded regime changes in this way.
Starting point is 00:01:58 Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think one of the biggest things that got me into it is this book over here. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. I was reading this book here. I know that guy that wrote that. And so, yeah, there are certain topics that I get really interested in. And when I was reading Provoked,
Starting point is 00:02:16 I was really honing in on the Rose Revolution, really looking at the Orange Revolution, and especially like how in depth they went. And it seemed like for each revolution, there seemed to be like a lot of characters involved, a lot of themes involved. And it seemed that it was almost like one big story, which at this point,
Starting point is 00:02:32 especially as I do more and more research as we go along, It just seems like the lessons that were learned in Serbia 2000 are still being applied in Belarus in 2006. And from there, it's just been really interesting to find all the quotes from different sources, from international ones, from domestic ones. What was the Times saying? What was the Washington Post saying?
Starting point is 00:02:52 You know, what were they saying in the German papers or the Ukrainian weekly and things like that? So it's taken a lot to get it all together into like one cohesive story, but it's been a really interesting project so far. And yes, I hope to bring it all the way up to modern day by the end of this project. That's great.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Well, yeah, I mean, all these essays have just been fantastic. I'm learning a bunch from. I kind of hate stuff like this because then I'm kicking myself going, oh, I don't even have a thing about that. Especially when it's something that I remember reading that. I don't remember why I decided that I could do without that fact when now I look at it and like, oh, that should definitely be in there. Anyway, in other words,
Starting point is 00:03:33 You're doing a great job on this stuff. And to me, it's endlessly fascinating. You know, of course, you know, we covered all this stuff in real time at anti-war.com, and I'm real lucky I was working for just Ramando, x-ray eyes on all this stuff at that time. But, of course, the big Dool-ins was a Rock War II, took all the attention away. And you might even say these were legitimate in comparison.
Starting point is 00:03:59 But mostly the point being that they were overshadowed by a Rock War II. And only people who really cared about this stuff were zooming all the way in on what happened in the Rose Revolution and things like that. So, but all of it, of course, is so crucial. So I wanted to drop one more footnote here. Before we go on, I know you mentioned a lot about Mark McKinnon and his great book, The New Cold War.
Starting point is 00:04:24 And now that's Mack Kinnan, not Mick Kinan because Nick Kenan is a Republican strategist guy from DC. And Mack Kenan, is from the Toronto Daily Globe and Mail up there in Kananda, Stan. And so different guys. And he did such great work in that book covering these things. And so I know that you gave him a lot of credit. And so I figured I never did interview him
Starting point is 00:04:52 because I was just in too much of a hurry when I was writing provoked. I was only really doing like one interview a week of Kyle Anzalone about Gaza or whatever and trying to keep my nose of grindstone. but I should have interviewed him. I'm sure there's really a lot there. But anyway, so I guess let me ask you this, Patrick. Like, how would you characterize the thing overall? What is a color-coded revolution
Starting point is 00:05:15 or maybe what are the color-coded revolutions? And what's the point? Yeah, I would say, it's funny, going back to Justin, mentioning his older articles on anti-war, I was actually looking at his going all the way to the start, going to like the year 2000. And when the first, I would consider the first big one to be Serbia in 2000
Starting point is 00:05:37 with the bulldozer revolution. And it's really funny kind of comparing it where in 2000, Justin is talking a lot about how someone else was saying, oh, this is all NED, this is CIA, and Justin goes away a second. And then to look at his next article
Starting point is 00:05:51 where he's talking about some of it in 2006, and it was, I believe, called the color revolutionist turn to black. And just what you mentioned, right in between there, there's this big event called Iraq War II, which would definitely lead you to have a much different perception on some of these revolutions and things like that.
Starting point is 00:06:05 He got in a lot of trouble with, you know, because he was so good on the Kosovo War, of course, but he got in a lot of trouble with the anti-war party when it came to the Bulldozer Revolution because he actually supported Kostunitsa, I believe is the guy who was the NED's chosen compromise candidate, but Justin was just so fed up with Milosevic at that point. He was saying this is overall what would be better for the country,
Starting point is 00:06:30 to have this more free market leaning guy in, and then a lot of people are really pissed because they were like, no, Justin, this is the American sock puppet and whatever. So I'm not sure if he ever admitted that he made a bad call on that one or not. But he certainly always tried to make up for in 03 and 2004 and 05, that's for sure.
Starting point is 00:06:54 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think the biggest thing with these is I like to try to take it on where I'm kind of trying to prove a case, essentially, where I don't want to over-emphasize any one particular area. I just kind of like to look at from a whole collection of sources. In fact, right now I've been working on the Belarus one, and we're getting a lot of different information. And still trying to put that timeline.
Starting point is 00:07:14 Wait, Belarus one, there are three. Or Belarus in 2006, I should say. Oh, my, Belarus. Yes, yes. Okay, there you go. We're looking at that one at the jeans revolution and things like that. And I will say one of the biggest things that I've come to discover as well is just how crucial the internet has played in a lot of these revolutions.
Starting point is 00:07:35 So especially with Kyrgyzstan, part two will be coming for Kyrgyzstan next Wednesday, but you're actually able to find on Internet archive the youth groups and figure out the time, what are they saying? You know, what are the movements that they're going to be doing next? You know, what's our next plan? And especially in Belarus with the Jeans Revolution, they're really talking it on. In fact, it goes all the way back to 2001. And you can even see their logo change.
Starting point is 00:07:59 as it goes on. Initially, their logo with the bison, same color scheme as Otpur in Serbia, and then right around September of 2005, right before the Jeans Revolution happens, you can see it changed to the bison and the jeans logo and things like that. So I think it's been really interesting
Starting point is 00:08:15 using sources like that. In fact, today I found one that was called the March Diaries, and it's someone who was on the ground at the time and ended up getting arrested during the Jeans Revolution and being able to kind of talk about how the protests, as they started on Sunday, It was a whole big crowd, but then as it went on, especially with the cold and how some of it was cracking down and things like that. By later in the week, it was hardly anyone there.
Starting point is 00:08:39 And in fact, Nick Adams has a really great article on anti-war.com about it. I think he was on there on Wednesday when the revolution started on Sunday. So as the week went on, just seeing it go down and down, things like that. But then another really important source is just going to the NED website, going to the Open Society's Foundation website. when I was looking at Georgia, their television was Rustavi 2. And on the Open Society's Foundation website, they even say in their year in review,
Starting point is 00:09:08 yes, open societies and USAID played a very crucial part in Rustavi 2, which was then responsible for the exit polls, which led to a lot of the revolution in Georgia and things like that. So it's really been interesting just taking all the different sources and things like that. And in fact, for the Belarus one that we were just looking at, you saw the OSCE
Starting point is 00:09:29 and then you also have the CIS, the different kind of ones that are compiling the election information and it's just so drastic. On one side you're hearing they're free and they're fair and then on the other side, nope, there is all this fraud and things like that. So trying to make sense of it all too,
Starting point is 00:09:44 you know, trying to take my biases aside and figure out like, hey, what's the real story here? And when I'm working on them, I try to make sure that I can answer it myself where I'm able to say, have I sufficiently answered it to myself? Like if I were reading this, would I be like, hey, what's the answer here?
Starting point is 00:10:01 So I really, I don't complete it until I'm like, okay, I think I've answered what I need to know for each one of these, you know? Yeah. Hey guys, Scott here for Moondos Artisan Coffees. It's the Scott Horton Show-flavored coffee, breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee,
Starting point is 00:10:21 and it'll forge you on there to Moondos Artisan coffees. Get it. They hate Starbucks because they represent the war party, of course. And so they're Moondos and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton Show Coffee is the number one bestselling coffee at Moondos Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Well, I feel like you're picking up some of my slack where I might have delved into
Starting point is 00:10:46 some of these things a little bit deeper. But, yeah, I was right up about 1,400 pages at that. so I had to quit somewhere. But, you know, one thing that I remember really kind of being maybe even overwhelmed by was like the number of journal articles about this and all the fancy pants journals from all kinds of academics across Europe and the United States. I mean, there's the Journal of Democracy, which is, I guess, the NED directly or one of their front groups.
Starting point is 00:11:18 But then there are just so many journal articles. And once you pay your dues to get the J-Store membership, and a couple of those others that I went ahead and got when I was researching for provoked. And it's just endless how many, you know, like I had this, whatever amount of space to fill any more in here about what happened here. But there's so much where, you know, it's like, here's what we did. Here's what we learned. Here's how we can do better next time. In the most, like, overt way, like, that would just be an internal memo at regime change headquarters,
Starting point is 00:11:56 which they're perfectly happy to put in a journal and tell you. I think I have a sort of anecdote in the book about that Coupe McFall where he has one article where he says, it was totally these groups that did it. Then he has another article. And he says, but that didn't have anything to do with us. That's totally organic. And he has another article where it's like all these groups are backed by us.
Starting point is 00:12:24 And then in the third article, he's like, okay, we back these groups to do the thing. Yeah, come on, man. Who do you think you're fooling with this stuff? There's something very close to that. Anyway, it's in the book. But anyway, I should ask you a question. So, you know, one of the, one thing is,
Starting point is 00:12:44 and I do feel bad about this, but it was a matter of time and space constraint, was in my introduction to the color revolutions in there, I say, yeah, so they got away with doing this in Albania and in Slovakia and then, I forgot which one, maybe not Albania, Slovakia and one or two others. Before I really get, the first one I really cover is the bulldozer revolution. I guess I kind of mention there was one in Croatia where they were in the middle of overthrowing
Starting point is 00:13:09 Tudgeman, who was Bill Clinton's buddy, who was now stabbing in the back and overthrowing, but then he died anyway. So it kind of made no difference there. There was that kind of thing. And so can you take us, oh, I think Montenegro was one of the first ones. And this is where I asked Dan McAdam. I was like, man, I really need to go back and get, I actually did find, if I remember right,
Starting point is 00:13:29 if people go to Scottwarden.org slash provoked slash notes, that's where I have the links to the footnotes there. And so you can follow along from the footnotes in the book and find the hot links to the things. And he was able to, he and some others, I was able to find quite a bit of information about some of those earlier ones that I try to just throw in the full. notes, even though I didn't have time to get too deep into them myself.
Starting point is 00:13:57 But can you tell us a little bit about some of your insights into some of the earlier color revolutions there? In other words, before W. Bush got that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, those ones, I would say the 97, 98, 99 ones, those are where I was kind of getting my feet in the water, as it were. So I think the biggest one, Armenia is the one that's always kind of stuck out to me, where at the end, it seemed like they were actually able to make friends with each other.
Starting point is 00:14:24 you know, the two opposing parties. And then, as in a lot of these, violence kind of interrupted it all. But in that one, it was one of the most blatant examples of some of that, some of the fraud. I think in one district it was like, 600% of the people voted this way. And so I'm like, okay, all right. But the one thing I will say is, yeah, reaching out to people has been really helpful to figure out some more about this. And in fact, I have been talking to Kit Clarenberg, and he has been awesome on it. He's been able to give me great information about Montenegro and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:14:53 And he's been a really big supporter of a lot of my stuff, which has been really awesome. Because he, yeah, he's fantastic on this stuff. And he also has a lot of those documents there. I'm like, I don't know where you find this stuff, you know, and is able to really give some really good insight into that. So with Montenegro, I would say he is definitely, definitely got the ball on that one.
Starting point is 00:15:13 But yeah, I would say Serbia is the biggest one where we're looking. I think the biggest ones that come to my mind is right around, you know, Serbia is right around the end of. of Clinton. And it's so funny looking at the Washington Post where there is kind of what you talked about earlier where he's like, CIA didn't do this, but if they did, I mean, I wouldn't have a problem with it, you know.
Starting point is 00:15:35 So, and I think the total that they said there was between like USAID and the NDI and all of them. It ended up being $41 million that was spent towards this election. And I'm pretty sure I do have a source of two in there affirming that, yes, CIA did help guide this whole thing too. it wasn't just that NEDD doing it. Yes, yes. Yeah, and it's just, that's definitely,
Starting point is 00:15:59 I would say that's the biggest one where when I've put it all together and I'm even planning on in the future, kind of ranking them from the 2000s to 2010, where does foreign influence seem to have the most influence of these elections? I would say Serbia is the big one. I mean, it's kind of like the start of it all, as it were.
Starting point is 00:16:14 It's when you start seeing Mr. Helvey, when you start seeing Gene Sharp, when you start seeing the bringing down a dictator. And in fact, I'm going to see if I can, find this real quick, so I did have this on my laptop here. But there's this documentary. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's called USA, the Conquest of the East, and it's this French documentary. And in it, I did have to use Google Translays.
Starting point is 00:16:34 I'm watching it, because I don't speak French. But I'm watching it, and they are in the IRA offices. And it is one of the- Now, that's the International Republican Institute, tied at the hip with the NED and the Soros groups there. Go ahead. Yes, and with John McCain as well, being the chair on IR. And in this documentary, they are in there with a leader from Belarus, and there is a t-shirt on the wall.
Starting point is 00:17:00 And you know how when an artist comes to a – they're doing like a tour, for example, right? Like, oh, I was in Kansas this time. I was in New York this day. They have this shirt that's in the IRA offices, and the tour dates are Georgia, 2003, Ukraine, 2004, Russia, TBD, TBD, and I was just watching that. and just stunned. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. It was crazy. And I'm not saying that John McCain went in there
Starting point is 00:17:28 and printed out the shirt and put it there. But I am saying that, you know, someone who was working for the IRA did put that up and said, hey, and the guy from Belarus is just commenting on it. Like, yep, there we go. This is what the T-shirt says over there. So, yeah, that documentary has been really, really fascinating to look at.
Starting point is 00:17:43 Yeah, I've never seen that. Yeah, I'll send you away. I've seen the Martin Sheen one, which is pretty crazy itself, you know, bringing down a dictator you mentioned that. Yes, and in fact, in the French documentary, that's where I saw in Kyrgyzstan, they're all sitting around a laptop and they're watching the bringing down a dictator. And they're all commenting on it and things like that. So, yeah, this documentary is, it's really fascinating stuff. They also have some people from different NGOs in Kyrgyzstan talking and things like that.
Starting point is 00:18:11 Yeah, very, very fascinating. And it's going to be kind of the spoiler, but it's going to be the end of my part two of like the transition from Kyrgyzstan into Belarus for the next week. Yeah. Yeah, Kyrgyzstan was one where. where if I remember it right, I used to have this wrong that it was just like five days apart and whatever. And then I triple checked
Starting point is 00:18:30 and I was wrong about that. But same damn difference anyway, where the Wall Street Journal says, yeah, we're fixing to overthrow Kyrgyzstan. And here's how we're going to do it. And we're paying this guy and this guy and they're running the printing press and we're picking up the bills for all these groups.
Starting point is 00:18:46 And whatever. Yeah. And then like, yeah. Yeah, then they have, I forget where the five days come from. Maybe it's five days later the coup happens. And then a couple weeks after that, the New York Times runs a piece. This is here's how we did it. This is the Wall Street Journal going, here's how we're about to do it.
Starting point is 00:19:03 And the New York Times going, here's how we did it. And there you go. And in fact, I think it was the journal, I forget which one. I think it was Kyrgyzstan, where the journal headline was, Putin not too pleased about Koo in Kyrgyzstan or whatever, you know, or like American-backed, color, coup there. Oh, no, that was Georgia, I guess. Anyway, whatever. They're sitting there,
Starting point is 00:19:25 oh, no, it's a popular uprising and a popular revolution. The Wall Street Journal's like, nah, we did it. I like the quote from Ukraine in 2004. I think I saw it somewhere where, you know, they're going on to their third round of voting. And Putin's like, what are you going to do? It's 25 more times? Or, you know, what is this going to look like at the end of this thing, you know? So, but yeah, that's, Ukraine in 2004 is a really, really interesting one,
Starting point is 00:19:50 especially considering Yanukovych is so involved in 2014 as well. But just, you know, looking at, and it's funny because I do remember you said it was kind of like a carnival. And some guy that you're talking to was like, no, it's not a carnival. What are you talking about? I go into the Ukrainian weekly and I see a political carnival. So exactly, as you mentioned. And yeah, I mean, they have these massive concerts. There's even a compilation disc where they have of all the people who were performing on stage at that time and things like that.
Starting point is 00:20:17 And of course, that's like we're really starting to see like the, tent city and things like that, which continues on. They're also, they tried it in Belarus, but it just did not seem like all the gears are working together. The youth groups could not bring it together in the way that Porra did in 2004 or Camero in 2003. They didn't really have those figures and things like that that were able to kind of make another revolution.
Starting point is 00:20:39 But yeah, that's been really interesting. All right, guys. Well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use Amazon.com all the time, because what are you going to do? They got Prime. They bring this stuff right to door and all that. So that's fine, but what you do is make sure it stop by Scott Horton.org and click the Amazon link in the right hand margin there.
Starting point is 00:20:57 Get yourself a bug assault shotgun, salt shotgun for destroying flies, trespassing on your property. And then also whatever you get from Amazon and the Scott Horton show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale, which is very nice. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm trying to remember that. And I may have just been kind of rereading for copy mistakes or whatever. And finally occurred to me that this footnote from Voice of America where the reporter describes Soros bringing in trucks full of roses for the Rose Revolution and all this money and everything, that that that must be Tucker Carlson's father.
Starting point is 00:21:42 There it is. Richard Carlson is the one, which obviously, He was some kind of CIA guy. But in that case, he's the one ratting on the rest of his friends for what they're doing and putting the whole story in Voice of America. And it doesn't seem like he's bragging. It really does seem like he's exposing them. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:22:03 Like, oh, get this guy. So George Soros brought all the damn roses and that kind of thing. So when I met Tucker, that was one of the first things I told him. That is a footnote in my book. Talking about the overthrow, the government. of Georgia in 2003. And then like, so we hit it off pretty easy after that. But, yeah, I guess I don't, I'm curious as to like what was behind that because, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:29 obviously the guy was a wheeler dealer. He just decided maybe there's like a faction fight in there between the more Democrat leaning types and others or something. I don't know. Yeah, was that the, was it with the FD or was it maybe hosted on the FD's website, but from Voice of America? Oh, I don't think it was from the FDD. I guess I'd have to go back and look.
Starting point is 00:22:57 I think it was just reporting for Voice of America. Okay. You know, geez, well, I guess I could find that, couldn't I? As long as I'm here. So, okay, tell me, here's one that I wish I knew more about the Philippines in 2001. You talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think with that one, this is...
Starting point is 00:23:21 Oh, wait, what the hell was I about to Google? I just forgot. About Richard Croson. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, no, the Philippines in 2001 was a really interesting one where it's one of those ones where it kind of comes full circle in the end
Starting point is 00:23:35 where you may have thought that it was bad at the start, but essentially at the end, same kind of thing still happens. So you have Joseph Estrada, who is the president at the time. And essentially there's like a lot of corruption. If you're looking at the stock market, it's like the companies that his buddy owns is going way off the charts while the regular stock market is like staying at an even level or even going down a little bit. So they have a vote. And they voted 11 to 10 to keep those records to the side and to not expose them.
Starting point is 00:24:05 And so essentially this one, they did have a popular revolution in 1986. And so they use yellow as like the symbol and things like that. And so it's kind of a continuing of it. It's the EDSA-2 movement. And so eventually he gets overthrown. And like many of these, it goes down to where, like, the military is defecting as well as a lot of the media is not on the side anymore. And so eventually they put in someone named Royo.
Starting point is 00:24:33 And they even, I want to say it was the generals, I believe, that were talking to her. And she was the vice president at the time. And they told her, you have no choice. this is kind of what's going to be happening. And then it was just a full cycle, though. By the time Arroyo a few years later, same kind of things, same kind of corruption. They even had a Time magazine article
Starting point is 00:24:55 about the Philippines election, I believe it was in 2004. And in fact, I think she even ended up in a mental hospital for a little bit as well too. But that one is one where, I think that one is absolutely, like, domestic uprising and things like that. Mostly when it comes for like foreign influence and things like that,
Starting point is 00:25:14 it's mostly the usual U.S. tricks as it was, you know, hey, we're not going to give you that much money for military this year unless, you know. But it did seem like a very genuine domestic uprising and things like that. But yeah, that's a really interesting one that I've been able to uncover and talk about a little bit. Some of the years, I would say 2001 and then also 2002 with Madagascar, some of those ones is a little bit harder to find the information about, where, as we've talked about with Georgia and Ukraine, it's just so, easy to find some of these sources.
Starting point is 00:25:43 But those ones, you've had to kind of go out your box a little bit to find some of those ones. And where 2001 was very peaceful at the Philippines, 2002, it was almost like an apocalyptic kind of Mad Max style where there are these different factions and things like that and like very, very violent uprisings and things like that between a guy who was a former yogurt salesman. So those ones have been very interesting to kind of research. And it's almost nice to have the ones where there's much.
Starting point is 00:26:11 not as much about it. It becomes a little bit of a challenge to find those resources and things like that. So especially once I get past Belarus and things like that, when I start getting into later outside of the Green Revolution and Iran, of course. But, you know, there's some of those years where it's like, ooh, I'm going to have to stretch it a little bit, but I'm going to try to figure out the case as best I can. You know, I'm like a detective over here trying to figure out what happened. Yeah, you know, in the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, I remember being surprised that they were able to turn out that many people. And then, of course, has Bala turned out twice as many a couple days later. And that was the end of that.
Starting point is 00:26:43 But they were able to organize a lot of different factions to come together there. And then, you know, the Green Revolution in Iran doesn't get as much attention because it was Obama years. So it gets kind of separated out from the Bush ones. But there was a post by Kenneth Timmerman at Newsmax talking about how, yeah, the National Endowment for Democracy has been backing all these groups. who are supporting Musa V in this thing.
Starting point is 00:27:16 So that wasn't, you know, like, well, again, just like with mostly, it's not a full regime change. It's just president change or prime minister change, reject the results of the election and demand that your guy win kind of a thing. But which, of course, that one failed. And that might have been a clue for this war, right? Remember when the liberals of Tehran
Starting point is 00:27:36 tried to help that one guy win that one time? And then the people of the country made it. known that they were all religious conservatives and wouldn't stand for it. Yeah. You know, which by the way, it's funny. That Richard Carlson footnote is at the Washington Examiner, which means it's a reprint. It's got to be a reprint from the weekly standard.
Starting point is 00:27:59 But then I'm wondering if that weekly standard piece is a reprint, because I remembered it being a voice of America piece. But I guess I could just have that wrong. But, you know, by the way, if anybody ever wants to go persecute somebody from, the weekly standard that you hate and you can't find their stuff because the website's gone. The entire archive is there at the Washington Examiner. They have reprinted all of the weekly standard. I believe all of the weekly standard is there.
Starting point is 00:28:26 Certainly some of the most incriminating stuff is so anyway, I have archive. .ph.jumping over the paywall for me. Here we go. Richard Carlson, Georgia on his mind. This is his being George Soros here. and then you know what it does not say it does not say who he wrote this for originally maybe he did just write it for the weekly standard
Starting point is 00:28:57 well let me see is control f roses here what does he have the thing I think of my research I do remember at the bottom it was yeah this is the article where he talks about he bust in the roses to do the thing trucked in from out of the country and all of that so this is the same article I could have swore was in the voice of him
Starting point is 00:29:20 America. Well, that's funny. The fact that it's in the weekly standard, I guess, is an extra little punchline there. Anyway, let's go back to your great work instead of this. You got so many good ones on this list. Oh, you do have a Lebanon one. I'm sorry, I have not read this one yet.
Starting point is 00:29:41 So, yeah, take us back through this. This was all the aftermath of the assassination of Rapa Carreri, right? So tell us Yeah, so, I mean, this one, this is another one started off by like, obviously, a case of violence and things like that. And this one actually, one of the primary kind of sources I've been using for a lot of the information is, like, court testimony and things like that, both for his assassination and also kind of the lead up to it. So they were talking about these different meetings that were happening right before the assassination actually ended up happening. They ended up meeting, I believe, three times at, like a hotel.
Starting point is 00:30:15 And so he would kind of send his envoys or people around him to go and talk to him. And you could see that he was starting to shift towards the opposition as right around the time that he ended up getting killed on a car bomb. And it was three separate meetings. And by the second or third one, they were sending like more influential guys in his circle. Like, hey, yeah, I'm going to be joining the opposition here pretty soon. And there's one kind of throwaway line in the court document. That thought was really, really interesting.
Starting point is 00:30:42 And I hope to dig more into this at some point. but they even mention, hey, I heard from British intelligence, like, we need to be careful. And this is the day before the bombing happened, which I found to be super, super interesting. And then I started to dive into kind of like, who did it as well, too, because at this time we don't have like a definitive case of who did it.
Starting point is 00:31:05 At the time, there was this guy whose name was, I believe, Abu Adas, who they said had filmed something like Al Jazeera and things like that. And it turns out in this, court document that I was looking at, they were talking about, and this was very recent, this might been 2022, 2023, but they were talking about how all the things that they accused him of, it was things like, oh, he drove to the bombing site. Well, he didn't have a driver's license and things like that. Or he had all this stuff on his laptop, and they said that could have very easily been planted and things like that. So they did end up arresting a few, and they,
Starting point is 00:31:41 I want to say, there were four that got arrested. and one who actually ended up being charged with. Other people kind of got sent away and things like that. So that was really interesting diving into that, too, because at the time, this Abu Adas story was kind of everywhere. It was apparently on Al Jazeera and things like that, and I tried for hours to find this video of the Al Jazeera piece, but I was unable to find that,
Starting point is 00:32:05 and it looks like it's just gone into the ether at this point. But yeah, it's been a very interesting story and kind of like what you talked about. I mean, these were massive, massive crowds. in Lebanon. And the crazy part about it is kind of when I get to the aftermath is I say like, hey, this is still kind of happen. You know, none of this really got resolved.
Starting point is 00:32:26 You know, a lot of what they were fighting for is we're still seeing the consequences and things that are happening in Lebanon right now, you know. And kind of in that case, too, we were seeing how important independent media and things were a lot of journalists were being assassinated. Some of them were also killing car bombs just like Hariri. So that's been one where it was just the scale of it was very impressive. Like you said, considering everything that was going around at the time. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:54 Well, the Israelis and the war party here were quick to blame Hezbollah and Assad for it. But I know Justin Romando wrote about this. I'm pretty sure Gareth Porter as well as show there was much more likely bin Ladenites who did it. And there was a dispute over, you know, the method of the bombing, whether it was a truck or whether it was a bomb hidden under the road. or this or that. I forget it's been 20 years. But that's pretty good for 20 years.
Starting point is 00:33:19 But yeah, man, I'm sorry. I'm out of time. I've got to run because I got a show to do in a minute. I've got to eat them. I'm going to die. So we're going to have to cut this short, but that's good because that's just giving them just enough to know that they got to go
Starting point is 00:33:35 and subscribe to Libertarian Overwatch on Substack, Libertarianoverwatch. Substack.com and catch up. up and read up on all of the color-coded revolutions there. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Patrick. Appreciate it. Of course. Thank you so much, Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy
Starting point is 00:33:55 of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fools Air and Enough All Ready, and my latest Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia. and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scott Horton.org, and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked
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