Podcasts about bolivarian

A president is kidnapped, the government remains, and we're told it isn't regime change. We pull back the curtain on what our guest calls “regime changeover,” a strategy that uses spectacle and lawfare to force leverage without admitting occupation. From sanctions that harden national unity to a reworked indictment against Nicolás Maduro that quietly retreats from early cartel claims, we dissect how narratives are built, sold, and then reshaped when facts don't fit the script. We get specific about why Venezuela resists the usual playbook. The Bolivarian civil-military structure blunts elite-driven coups, and a hybrid economy makes redistribution politics both urgent and volatile. When sanctions stall, pressure shifts to the shadows: covert action, destabilization, and the threat of a managed civil war. But force carries a heavy price. Without the will to occupy, Washington risks isolating itself across Latin America and the Global South while strengthening alternative alliances. That's where heavy crude and strategic minerals enter the story—these aren't just commodities; they're logistical lifelines for militaries and power systems in a world edging toward multipolar confrontation. The regional map matters. Cutting fuel flows to Cuba raises the stakes, inviting Russian or Iranian lifelines and reviving Cold War optics—tankers instead of missiles. Meanwhile, the financial track turns sanctions into profit centers, enabling distressed-asset deals and court-enabled seizures that move wealth under the veneer of legality. At home, executive overreach and headline diplomacy make lasting agreements harder, not easier. Durable deals rely on predictability and trust; tweets and tariffs deliver neither. We close with a clear takeaway: if the policy toolkit is limited to pressure and spectacle, the outcome is shrinking leverage, hardened resistance, and a region looking elsewhere for partners. If this perspective challenges how you've seen Venezuela, Cuba, and U.S. foreign policy, share the episode, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss future deep dives. Your feedback shapes what we dig into next.

Original Air Date: 2/8/2019   Amid the ongoing fallout of a contested presidential election, we take a look back, briefly, at the last 100 years of Venezuelan history to understand how they went from oil riches and inequality to revolution and social progress only to run afoul of American imperialism. Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Full Show Notes Check out our new show, SOLVED! on YouTube! In honor of our 20th birthday, we're giving new Members 20% OFF FOR THE LIFETIME OF YOUR MEMBERSHIP...this includes Gift Memberships! (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Attempted Coup in Venezuela with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay - @TheRealNews - Air Date 1-26-19 Sharmini Peries hosts a wide-ranging conversation about the US-backed attempted coup in Venezuela Ch. 2: How Did Venezuela Go From So Rich To So Poor - The Inquiry - Air Date 5-10-17 Venezuela was split between the rich and poor. Politicians lead the way to oil reliance. Ch. 3: Venezuela in Crisis- Defending the Bolivarian Revolution - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 7-29-17 Topics Include: Hugo Chavez, the Constituent Assembly, the opposition, the Venezuelan Communes, the concept of dual power, Jacobin Magazine and the Bolivarian Revolution Ch. 4: Is Donald Trump waging a coup in Venezuela? - Majority Report (@MajorityFM) - Air Date 1-25-19 You need to be paying attention to what's happening in Venezuela. Eva Golinger joins Michael Brooks and the Majority Report crew to discuss this. Ch. 5: Maduro's Corruption Pushed Venezuela Further Into Economic DISASTER - @RingOfFireRadio - Air Date 2-2-19 Ivan Briscoe, Latin America and Caribbean program director for Crisis Group, joins Ring of Fire's Sam Seder, to talk about Maduro's corruption and Venezuela's economic disaster. Ch. 6: Jorge Martin on what's next for Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution? - @ThisIsHellRadio - Air Date 5-25-18 Writer Jorge Martin examines the two futures of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. Jorge wrote the article "Maduro Wins Presidential Election, Despite Imperialist Meddling – What Next?" Ch. 7: The Yankee Plot to Overthrow Nicolás Maduro and Steal Venezuela's Oil - The Intercept - Air Date 2-2-19 This push for regime change in Venezuela did not appear in a vacuum. The CIA has been plotting with so-called rebels in Venezuela from the early days of the Trump administration. Ch. 8: As U.S. Moves to Oust Maduro, Is Invading Venezuela Next? Allan Nairn on Trump's Attempted Coup - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 1-30-19 Investigative journalist Allan Nairn explains many aspects of the US attempts at a coup in Venezuela Ch. 9: Many Countries at UN Oppose Trump Interference in Venezuela - @TheRealNews - Air Date 1-29-19 Larry Wilkerson joins Paul Jay discuss why countries that claim to support the UN and international law are supportive of US imperialistic escapades Ch. 10. Bonus Edition #137 Propaganda by poem and whole lot more about Venezuela Jay shares a ton of additional content on Venezuela and muses on the developing pattern of the Trump administration using poem-based propaganda   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow BotL: Bluesky | Mastodon | Threads | X Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

[NOTE: This is the first portion of the latest episode of The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective podcast.  Lots of great content has already been released on both audio and video feeds and more to come, so please make sure you subscribe to both!]  Hosted by AISC co-founder Nina Farnia, this episode features two distinguished guests and friends of AISC, Venezuela's former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Ron and University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi. We initially filmed a 2025 anti-imperialist roundup on December 30, 2025, but just a few days later the US invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flires. We brought our guests back after the abduction to discuss the invasion, the abduction, and the future of the Bolivarian Revolution in the face of US imperialism. Both episodes are included here. Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel  Follow AISC  X (@penandmachete)  Instagram (@penandmachete) Visit our website to join the newsletter and find our blog, The Pen is My Machete. Donations to the producer of this show, Sina Rahmani, are welcome at www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe [CB] is panicking, Trump is now reversing their entire system, The D’s have no choice but to fold and go along with Trump’s no tax on tips etc, they resisted but the people complained, this will not work out well for them. Trump is now lowering the fuel prices by unleashing Venezuela’s oil, this will be used to go against the [DS]. Trump is in the process of dismantling the [DS], Venezuela has been released from the [DS] grasp. Maduro was arrested and brought to the US to stand trial. Maduro will most likely assist with the overthrow of the US government in 2020. The flow of money, training of terrorist happened in Venezuela, it is all coming to an end, soon the other countries will fall and the people will take them back. The world is being returned to the people. Economy (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Kathy Hochul Caves On ‘No Tax On Tips’ Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill made a straightforward promise: more money in workers' pockets. The plan eliminated the federal tax on tips and overtime pay for linemen and factory workers, and created a new deduction for seniors relying on Social Security. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it “the most pro-worker, pro-family legislation in a generation.”   several blue-state governors were refusing to reciprocate by eliminating state taxes on tips, including Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.), and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused them of “deliberately blocking their own residents” from the bill's benefits at the state level. Bessent made clear that states that refused to comply with the law should expect consequences. “Treasury stands ready to work with any state committed to delivering on that promise, but we will not stand idly by as this obstructionism drags down the national recovery,” he said. “This is about fairness. This is about opportunity. And this is about putting America first, starting with the families and workers who make our economy the envy of the world.” Kathy Hochul has now caved. On New Year's Day, she announced that New York will finally move to exempt service workers' tips from state income taxes on up to $25,000 in tipped income.   “Starting today, tax rates for the vast majority of lower and middle-class New Yorkers will be cut, families with children will see a sweeping increase in the child tax credit, and minimum wage workers across the state will see their wages go up. I'm kicking the new year off with a proposal of no state income tax on tips, continuing my efforts to make New York more affordable for hard working New Yorkers.” The change comes only after months of outrage from restaurant owners and service workers who accused Albany of putting politics ahead of paychecks. Service industry workers noticed and called it a slap in the face to people barely scraping by in such an expensive state.   Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2007496574889537687?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2007500910277325260?s=20 https://twitter.com/TKL_Adam/status/2007468568619696559?s=20  damaged last night. On top of this, President Trump says the US will be “very much involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry going forward and China is “going to get oil.” In 2010, Venezuela was producing over 3 million barrels of oil per day, now down to ~900,000. If the US truly takes control of Venezuela’s oil industry, MUCH more supply is coming to market. Oil and gas prices would head much lower. Geopolitical https://twitter.com/KatieMiller/status/2007541679293944266?s=20 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1274910217508196352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1274910217508196352%7Ctwgr%5E7e79690e7ff94a98319d1a5f7cef15f68e12ceb9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fjoe-bidens-old-tweet-claiming-trump-admires-thugs%2F https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/2007652410077086175?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2007652410077086175%7Ctwgr%5Ee26360c03ca670b2e4da2b86849c02fab10ca741%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fjust-kamala-harris-gets-lit-up-x-after%2F Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces on January 3, 1990, after seeking refuge for 10 days in the Vatican’s embassy (Papal Nunciature) in Panama City.  This event marked the end of Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama that began on December 20, 1989, under President George H.W. Bush, aimed at deposing Noriega and bringing him to face U.S. charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering.  To pressure Noriega into surrendering, U.S. psychological operations teams blasted loud rock music—including tracks like Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and Van Halen’s “Panama”—at the embassy nonstop, contributing to his decision to give up.   He was immediately flown to Miami, where he stood trial, was convicted in 1992, and initially sentenced to 40 years in prison (later reduced).  After serving time in the U.S., Noriega was extradited to France in 2010 for money laundering charges, and finally to Panama in 2011 to face additional sentences for murder, corruption, and human rights abuses during his rule.   He died in Panama in 2017 while under house arrest for medical reasons.   The invasion itself involved around 25,000 U.S. troops, resulting in 23 American deaths, hundreds wounded, and estimates of 200–4,000 Panamanian civilian casualties, drawing international criticism despite achieving its primary objective. https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/2007796748631314839?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2007549887098040495?s=20  https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2007518675641983427?s=20   advance. Trump Admin's Top Secret Maduro Military Operation Plans Reportedly Leaked To Legacy Media Outlets Despite an unidentified party leaking plans of the Trump administration's top secret military operation targeting Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela to both The New York Times and the Washington Post, neither publication decided to expose it, Semafor reported Saturday night. Two anonymous sources, described as familiar with the communication between the administration and media outlets, told Semafor that both outlets declined to break the news on the operation before it happened out of concern for U.S. troops involved. The military incursion, carried out early Saturday, resulted in the capture and ouster of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, whom a grand jury later indicted on four charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy. The identity of the leaker or leakers was not made public as of Sunday morning. Source: dailycaller.com https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2007811723013603611?s=20 Russia, China Demand That US Immediately Release Maduro From Custody Within mere hours after President Trump announced the Saturday capture by US forces of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife after a brief shock bombing campaign and special forces operation in Caracas, Russia has demanded from Washington his immediate release. “We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, and described that the crisis should be resolved through diplomatic means. “Russia will continue to support the course pursued by its Bolivarian leadership to defend the country’s national interests and sovereignty,” the Foreign Ministry said, while also calling for restraint and cautioning against further escalation. China has joined Moscow’s calls for the immediate release of Maduro from US custody: China has called on the United States to immediately releaaljazeera.com/…/china-urges-us-to-stop-toppling-venezuelan-government-release-madurose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after Washington carried out massive military strikes on the capital, Caracas, as well as other regions, and abducted the leader. Beijing on Sunday insisted the safety of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores be a priority, and called on the US to “stop toppling the government of Venezuela,” calling the attack a “clear violation of international law“. https://twitter.com/alaynatreene/status/2007491168389525809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2007491168389525809%7Ctwgr%5E1cec862879fed0a0919d0a99238a33d07975d1bb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Frussia-china-demand-us-immediately-release-venezuelas-maduro Source: zerohedge.com China has embedded operational control into critical mineral extraction that feeds weapons manufacturing  Iran has established drone production facilities within strike range of the continental United States. Russia has deployed military advisers and integrated air defense systems in the Caribbean. Venezuela represents the only location where all three adversaries operate simultaneously https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2007644800779169936?s=20   legitimate, outstanding US drug charges from 2020, the real reason for the military operations early this morning is that neutralizing Maduro’s Venezuela had become a strategic imperative for the USA. Under Maduro, Venezuela had become the Latin American crossroads for all of the USA’s principal enemies. Maduro was nurturing relationships with Russia, Hezbollah and Iran. Worst of all, Venezuela was eagerly becoming a part of Red China’s Belt & Road initiative. As America’s enemies were lining up Venezuela as their base of operations in the Western Hemisphere to cause mischief and destruction for the USA, Maduro was at the same time making Venezuela a crossroads, safe haven and enabler for all manner of narcoterrorist operations, ranging from Colombia’s FARC to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. On top of all that, Venezuela had become a key player in the illegal alien invasion of the USA, shipping its very worst to the USA in a deliberate and comprehensive destabilizing operation that might have worked had Donald Trump not won in 2024. Next in importance: oil. The global and regional ambitions of both China and Russia are in large part dependent on the politics of petroleum, and the USA just deprived both of the cudgel afforded by friendly Venezuelan oil. Trump opponents say “It’s about oil” as if that was a bad thing. Yeah, it’s about oil. Finally, all of this was in keeping with the most essential and fundamental foreign policy mandate of the USA almost since the nation’s inception: the Monroe Doctrine. Operations like what Maduro was running simply cannot be allowed in the Western Hemisphere. Trump was right for falling back on this most basic of doctrines that protects the USA’s sovereignty. So was Maduro seized because of some five year-old drug charges? Yes. Legally–yes. However, like so many strategic issues in the world today, an action needed to be backed by the fine points of law, and it was. But the reality is that the Maduro takedown was a Monroe Doctrine-driven necessity that has greatly enhanced the power and national security of the USA. Congratulations, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and the rest of the Trump national security team: you boldly took the steps necessary to defend the USA. Well done. https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/2007597322549469370?s=20  Uh… but what about America 1st!!!!” Dominating our hemisphere is America 1st.  READ: Maduro Indictment Unsealed  https://twitter.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007468832567222274?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2007468832567222274%7Ctwgr%5Ea380e4654af6dbcd0ced13d78085deb2a2a57e8d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fread-maduro-indictment-unsealed%2F Read the indictment here. The grand jury indicted Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores and four others on four counts: Narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. “Nicolas Maduro Moros, the defendant, now sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” the indictment read. “That drug trafficking has enriched and entrenched Venezuela's political and military elite, including Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace Diosado Cabello Rondon, the defendant, and former Minister of the Interior and Justice Ramon Rodriguez Chachin, the defendant,” the charging document read. The White House absolutely savaged Maduro on Saturday. Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/2007459071985676697?s=20 https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2007412199132934453?s=20   with it. Go America! https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/2007404924393697601?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2007510867307626848?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2007503643453559225?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2007737447631945888?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2007759220851327278?s=20 War/Peace https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2007814479892111690?s=20  Years after he left office, a reflective Barack Obama admitted that he and his administration made a “mistake” in not forcefully supporting an Iranian civilian uprising in 2009 that could have ousted that country's ruing mullahs. Faced with a fresh protest movement 16-plus years later led by street vendors, President Donald Trump has taken the opposite tact in a robust embrace of everyday Iranians that caught the attention of Tehran. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote in a 3 a.m. post Friday on his TruthSocial platform. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”  The president was not more specific about his intentions, but Iranian dissidents and non-official Trump advisers cheered the statement and said it set the stage for tougher sanctions or other actions by the administration. Interesting Timing – Zelenskyy Planning to Remove Head of the Security Service of Ukraine This is very interesting timing considering the recent denial by Zelenskyy that Ukraine had anything to do with the attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence. According to Politico, Zelenskyy is removing Vasyl Malyuk as head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the state's top counterintelligence agency. Malyuk previously worked with British intelligence on operation “Spiderweb” where Ukrainian drones hit Russia's strategic bombers on several protected airfields (USA not informed). Source: theconservativetreehouse.com [DS] Agenda  President Trump's Plan FBI Thwarts ISIS-Inspired New Year’s Eve Terror Plot In North Carolina The FBI said it foiled an ISIS-inspired New Year's Eve terror attack in North Carolina. Suspect Christian Sturdivant, 18, was arrested on Dec. 31 and charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Russ Ferguson said at a Jan. 2 press conference. Sturdivant appeared in court on Jan. 2. A U.S. citizen, Sturdivant had allegedly planned the attack for about a year, according to Ferguson. A hand-written document titled “The New Year's Eve Attack 2026” was found in Sturdivant's bedroom trash can and included a section labeled, “martyrdom Op,” court papers claim.  Sturdivant read ISIS material online, visited the terrorist group's websites, and made TikTok videos, Ferguson said. Source: zerohedge.com Former CBS Reporter Catherine Herridge Reveals How Executives Delayed Her Reporting On Hunter Biden Laptop Former CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge said Thursday CBS News executives postponed airing her reports on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. https://twitter.com/C__Herridge/status/2006795554471186519?s=20   always do the story when it’s ready to go. You should not be dictated by the political cycle.” At that time, CBS News was under different management, and did not respond to our questions seeking comment.   Source: dailycaller.com  https://twitter.com/bread_n_caviar/status/2007473725331960305?s=20 how much Jeb Bush is connected to drug trafficking. Here's my Substack article on that subject: https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/2007377888858062869?s=20 https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2007528129988862028?s=20 is undoing the damage the CIA has been used to do over the last 78 years around the world. The Deep State network is being dismantled. Trump did the same thing with Iran. Who enabled and paid Iran to make nukes? Obama via the Iran Deal. Neutralizing Iran's nuclear capabilities was Trump cleaning up another Deep State mess created by past administrations. Trump knows where all the Deep State assets and proxies are, and he is uprooting them. It's actually happening. Trump is obliterating the Deep State! Maduro a Cartel/Deep State puppet for a while  Wants out  Negotiates exit with Trump  U.S. military extracts him  Trump rugs the Deep State’s regime change op with his own regime change op https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2007682086271103487?s=20   Maduro played a large role in the destabilization efforts, sending drugs and murderous gangs into our country. Is it considered one crime syndicate?   https://twitter.com/TheQNewsPatriot/status/2007662811296731504?s=20 https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2007516103950414317?s=20   nations and regions that past US administrations have destabilized and destroyed. If there is no instability, the Deep State cannot operate. Therefore, Trump is going to neutralize those causing the instability, ie, the cartels. Trump is essentially undoing the decades of damage caused by the Deep State, and creating a new world the way it should be.  https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2007547290035302659?s=20   MIL in their cities? Now do you see why they have been panicking about the Insurrection Act? The Dems are Deep State puppets just like Maduro. They fear that what just happened to Maduro, is going to happen to them. THEY FEAR THE RECKONING! (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUUo0vmNzmI Wilfredo Hernandez of the Venezuelan Embassy in the UK denounces the escalation of the US towards War. Trump has placed a bounty of 50 million dollars on the head of President Nicholas Maduro - democratically elected President of Venezuela, as if her was some cheap gangster in a Hollywood movie. Trump has classed President Comrade Nicholas Maduro and the Venezuelan Bolivarian government of the PSUV to be "Narco-trafficers" and a "Narco-state" - in defiance of all evidence and logic. The US imperialists have attacked and murdered 80 Venezuelans, sailing small vessels within Venezuelan sovereign waters, on the flimsy pretext that they were 'drug traffickers' - without providing a shred of evidence. Venezuela according to global governance bodies does not produce or transport cocaine or other drugs. It is a global anti-narcotic haven of peace and tranquility, thanks to its socialist and popular government since the Bolivarian revolution began. Yet USA has assembled an armada off the coast of Venezuela. It is clear that Trump and the US, here as elsewhere, seek domination and not democracy. They want to get their hands on Venezuela's huge oil, gold and other mineral resources, and once again have free reign to exploit the labour power of her people. But the Venezuelan people - unbowed in the face of this military provocation, which comes on top of decade of escalating sanctions and an all-out economic war that has totally failed to destabilise and subvert their sovereign will - remain unbowed and have mobilised both the regular army and the people to defend their nation. There has been an unprecedented response among the masses of the Venezuelan people, who have enrolled in the people's militia in their tens and hundreds of thousands. Viva Venezuela! Viva Chavez! Viva Maduro! Long live the Great Socialist October Revolution! Communa o Nada! Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity! www.thecommunists.org www.lalkar.org www.redyouth.org Telegram: t.me/thecommunists Twitter: twitter.com/cpgbml Soundcloud: @proletarianradio Rumble: rumble.com/c/theCommunists Odysee: odysee.com/@proletariantv:2 Facebook: www.facebook.com/cpgbml Online Shop: https://shop.thecommunists.org/ Education Program: Each one teach one! www.londonworker.org/education-programme/ Join the struggle www.thecommunists.org/join/ Donate: www.thecommunists.org/donate/

Our panel assess reports that US action against the Bolivarian republic might be imminent after all, possibly against targets believed or alleged to be associated with Venezuela’s drugs cartels.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host José Luis Granados Ceja is joined by fellow VA staff writer Cira Pascual-Marquina as they delve into the escalating US aggressions against Venezuela. This episode explores the recent military actions, including strikes on Venezuelan vessels, and the broader implications for the Bolivarian process. José and Cira provide in-depth analysis on the international response, the role of media narratives, and the resilience of the Venezuelan people.

https://thecommunists.org/2025/07/01/news/communist-party-venezuela-pcv-new-stage Anti-imperialist and loyal to the Bolivarian process, the PCV keeps marching forward. The recent history of the Communist Party of Venezuela furnishes further proof that the class struggle must be waged relentlessly on every front, both inside and outside the party. It highlights the necessity of keeping leaders accountable and members engaged with every development of a party's organisational and political life. And it underscores the need for constant vigilance against opportunist ideas and careerist motivations with which our enemies constantly try to infiltrate the organisations of the working class. Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity! www.thecommunists.org www.lalkar.org www.redyouth.org Telegram: t.me/thecommunists Twitter: twitter.com/cpgbml Soundcloud: @proletarianradio Rumble: rumble.com/c/theCommunists Odysee: odysee.com/@proletariantv:2 Facebook: www.facebook.com/cpgbml Online Shop: https://shop.thecommunists.org/ Education Program: Each one teach one! www.londonworker.org/education-programme/ Join the struggle www.thecommunists.org/join/ Donate: www.thecommunists.org/donate/

Narendra Modi. In Shanghai. In the back of a car. With Vladimir Putin. Positively glowing. The tweets the Indians sent out at the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation were the equivalent of a taken for granted girlfriend openly flirting with the jocks at the big keg party. The key question: is this obvious piece of signalling going to be stronger than the thick skulls of the lugs in Washington? Meanwhile, in Venezuela, US destroyers are patrolling the coastline. Ostensibly to stop cartel shipments. Are they about to make a Noriega of Maduro? Finally, in Britain, the bond yield has hit a thirty year high. At the same time, France can't pass a budget, and has 114% debt to GDP. What's going to happen when two of Europe's big three economies both try to squeeze through the door of the IMF at the same time? All this and more in an hour of super soaraway subscriber special. That's right – it's that time of the month. Time to put down five Dollars, Pounds, Euros to get to eavesdrop with your fellow subscribers in the secret Multipolarity green room. Go to patreon.com/multipolarity. Slap down your cash. And get backstage, where the real action is.

On January 10, President Maduro will be inaugurated and begin his third term in office. This follows a turbulent July election, which a US-backed opposition attempted to disrupt through violence, cyber attacks and allegations of fraud. Venezuelans mobilized successfully to thwart that effort but the United States continues to intervene through mercenaries, growing regional militarization and claims that the US-backed candidate, currently living in asylum in Spain, is the recognized president of Venezuela. Clearing the FOG speaks with Leonardo Flores of the Venezuela Solidarity Network about Venezuelans' preparations to protect their country and their gains made under the Bolivarian revolution. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Justine and Maira debrief the 2nd. Encounter for a World Social Alternative: From Bolívar to Chávez. At the time of recording, they had just wrapped up the two-day event and had yet to witness the Venezuelan presidential elections later that week. Their initial reactions to the two-day panel series lay out the context of the Venezuelan elections, why the country is in the crosshairs of neoliberal cooperate media, and how the Venezuelan people have risen to protect the Bolivarian revolution. The first gathering of the World Social Alternative happened in April of 2024 in Caracas where they produced the document mentioned:  https://www.albatcp.org/en/acta/world-social-alternative/ You can watch the live streams with English interpretation by ALBA-TCP on Youtube:  Day 1- https://www.youtube.com/live/ojyREEBxMg4?si=Fnj-JwDT_MmylzH5 Day 2 - https://www.youtube.com/live/DKJKyrPGpvE?si=3dn8KPI1CSGIGm2q Justine on the panel Alternative for Peoples' Rights and Reparations: https://youtu.be/4LPqDxATd_A?si=BxpEfnSyY_SbdiAx Watch the video edition on The Red Nation Podcast YouTube channel The Red Nation Podcast is sustained by comrades and supporters like you. Power our work here: www.patreon.com/redmediapr

Original Air Date: 2/8/2019 Amid the ongoing fallout of a contested presidential election, we take a look back, briefly, at the last 100 years of Venezuelan history to understand how they went from oil riches and inequality to revolution and social progress only to run afoul of American imperialism Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991 or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Join our Discord community! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Attempted Coup in Venezuela with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay - @TheRealNews - Air Date 1-26-19 Ch. 2: How Did Venezuela Go From So Rich To So Poor - The Inquiry - Air Date 5-10-17 Ch. 3: Venezuela in Crisis- Defending the Bolivarian Revolution - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 7-29-17 Ch. 4: Is Donald Trump waging a coup in Venezuela? - Majority Report (@MajorityFM) - Air Date 1-25-19 Ch. 5: Maduro's Corruption Pushed Venezuela Further Into Economic DISASTER - @RingOfFireRadio - Air Date 2-2-19 Ch. 6: Jorge Martin on what's next for Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution? - @ThisIsHellRadio - Air Date 5-25-18 Ch. 7: The Yankee Plot to Overthrow Nicolás Maduro and Steal Venezuela's Oil - The Intercept - Air Date 2-2-19 Ch. 8: As U.S. Moves to Oust Maduro, Is Invading Venezuela Next? Allan Nairn on Trump's Attempted Coup - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 1-30-19 Ch. 9: Many Countries at UN Oppose Trump Interference in Venezuela - @TheRealNews - Air Date 1-29-19 Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com

Within hours of polls closing in Venezuela, the US began to circulate claims that incumbent President Maduro had stolen the election. There was just one problem—these claims emanated from outside the country before election results were even announced. The absence of evidence didn't stop corporate media outlets from running with the story. The accounts of more than 800 international election observers on the ground, however, paint a very different picture. While there is certainly political division within Venezuela, opposition to Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution does not constitute an overwhelming majority. To understand why, it's crucial to examine the sides of the story left out in the corporate media narrative: the impact of US sanctions, the multiple US-backed coup attempts in Venezuela in the past 20 years, and the political and economic factors driving both support for and opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution.In this exclusive interview, The Real News speaks with three election monitors and journalists who were present on the ground in Venezuela during the election and its aftermath: Manolo de los Santos, Executive Director of The People's Forum; Zoe Alexandra, Editor of People's Dispatch; and journalist Andreína Chavez, a staff writer for Venezuelanalysis. Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterLike us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterDonate to support this podcast

In this gripping episode of "Connecting the Dots," Dr. Wilmer Leon and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Jeter expose the Democratic Party's desperate reliance on voters of color to save them from political collapse.   Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube! Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   FULL TRANSCRIPT: Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:00): I have two questions. The first question, has the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the black hands that feed it? Here's the second question. Has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby taken advantage of Jon Jeter (00:00:25): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:32): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which a lot of these events occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. Black Agenda report has a piece entitled How the Democratic Party Committed Suicide by Biting the Black Hands That Feed It On today's episode. The issues before us are, as I stated at the top, has the party in fact committed suicide and has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby to advantage of for insight into this? (00:01:35): And for answers to these questions, let's turn to my guest. He's a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. He's the co-author of a Day Late and a Dollar Short, dark Days and Bright Nights in Obama's post-Racial America. His work can be found at Patreon as well as Black Republic Media. He's the author of this piece. He is John Jeter brother John Jeter. Welcome back. The pleasure is all mine, brother. Thank you for having me. You opened your piece as follows, the Democratic Party dug its own grave decades ago when it began trying to siphon voters from the Republican party or the GOP by appealing to conservatives and ignoring the needs of its strong base of African-American people. If political parties were prominent people, you'd have stumbled upon this obituary. Today, the Democratic Party, one half of America's longstanding ruling duopoly, and the author of political movements as disparate as Jim Crow and the New Deal died Wednesday, July 24. It was 196 sources said the cause was suicide following along illness. John, that's incredibly, incredibly creative. I've gone through the coroner's report. I can't make heads nor tails when it comes to the cause of Speaker 3 (00:02:58): Death. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:02:59): So what was the cause of death on July 24th? Speaker 3 (00:03:03): It sort of slit death by a thousand cuts, but slitting your throat a thousand times slowly over the years. Man, I really, that piece really meant something to me. I am, as I think you would say, you are a man of a certain age and I remember very clearly Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 88 campaigns for President. I remember the energy and the excitement. I remember, even though I was just in my teens and early twenties, I remember that it was electric, those campaigns. And then I remember Bill Clinton running for president and I voted for Bill Clinton. But I remember thinking, I remember holding my nose while I voted because I remember Bill Clinton lecturing Jesse Jackson about Sister Soldier lecturing black people going to black church, lecturing black people about how we have failed Martin Luther King. And I didn't quite understand it other than I thought, well, bill Clinton is like most white people I know, racists most, not all the most. (00:04:13): And I just wrote it off as that when I was a young journalist at the Detroit Free Press. Later, I got to Washington the same time as Bill Clinton In 1993, January of 1993, I got to the Washington Post, and it sort of dawned on me over the years, particularly as I heard democratic presidents and democratic candidates for President repeat these same tropes scolding black people. I remember, and I was in a very different place at this point, but I remember Barack Obama talking down the black people in a way that just really offended me, scolding black fathers for their failure to raise their kids when a study at that time had been produced, which showed that black men who are separated from their families are actually better parents, actually spend more quality time with their kids than any other ethnic group. Barack Obama telling a black church, I believe it was in South Carolina, that a good plan for economic development would be to stop throwing Popeye's chicken wrappers out of your car window, right? (00:05:23): Just the infantilization of the black voting block, black electorate. And it struck me that this is by design. They're talking to white people. And then this is only in the last few years where I read David Roder, the labor economist, labor, labor historian, I'm sorry, who wrote about the Reagan Democrats in Michigan, who we elected the blue collar white workers who we elected Ronald Reagan, president who crossed over to elect Ronald Reagan president. And how his polling showed that their main motivation was race or racism, I should say. They did not like black people. They defined black people as pulling down the party. And they divided Democrats as people who catered to blacks who were lazy welfare, all the tropes that were popularized by, built by Ronald Reagan. And it struck me that the Democrats in 92, the astrophysicists, I believe they talk about solar systems that are so distant, you can't see the sun, but you can tell by the movement of the planets that there is indeed a solar system by the movement of the stars and the planets that there is indeed a sun there, that it is indeed a solar system. (00:06:43): No one really wrote it down really. Although the poster Stanley Stanley, I can't remember his name now, but the post of the Greenberg for the Democrats, he came close, but we can see by their actions that the Democrats in 1992 especially were wrestling with how to win the White House after they had been exiled by 12 years of Republican rule. And they decided they chose between Jesse Jackson's campaign, which was trying to reunite that New Deal coalition, tenuous as it was, but it was still a new deal, coalition of black and white workers, and then Ronald Reagan's approach, which was to basically return to the old Southern Democrats, George Wallace, basically, and refusing to be out in worded right, keeping up this racist animosity and resentment. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:07:40): I think that was Strom Thurman who originally made that quote, I will never be. Right. Speaker 3 (00:07:45): Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. George Wallace took it to another level, and I think that that has been the Democrat's problem ever since. And you would think a child could have told them, this is not going to work well for you to antagonize purposefully your base, but this is the moment we're in where you see the Democrats, it's almost like a circus, a dog and pony show where Democrats spend four years openly denouncing or renouncing their black base and then in the election year trying to make up for it, trying to gin up the black vote. It is almost like this awkward dance that they're doing. And now we're seeing the culmination, because this has been going on pretty much for the last 30 years. I think Obama was the Navy or the Zenith, depending on how you want to look at it. But I think that it's really run its course. I think it's possible Kamala Harris can win this election, but even if that is the case after four years in office, the Democrats are a spent force. They can't continue this dance. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:08:52): So to those who would say, well, wait a minute, John, how can you say that the party is biting the hand that feeds it when you've had a President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, and they are set as we assume that when they come out of their convention in a couple of weeks, that Kamala Harris will be the nominee for 2024. So how do you answer those folks who say, well, they're not taking us for granted. Let's assume that she wins in November. They've had two African American presidents. We could talk about African Jamaican, but we'll just put Kamala in the box over 20 year span, Speaker 3 (00:09:48): And they've completely ignored, completely frustrated black demands, right? You think about Kamala Harris. Well, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:09:57): Barack Obama told us we didn't make any demands, which is why we didn't get anything. When he was asked that question. His answer was, you didn't demand anything. Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:10:06): And I would have to say, he's actually got to give the devil this dude. He was right on that one. Hey, look, the 2008, what they did, what the Democrats did in pushing Barack Obama passed Hillary Clinton was a stroke of genius. It really was. They had the perfect candidate to whip up to generate this black excitement, excitement in the black community, which at that same time, they were ripping off through these subprime mortgages, right, which were disproportionately aimed at blacks, black homeowners. And what they did by pushing Obama to the fore, the Democrats, I'm talking about bringing blacks, gin up the black vote, getting blacks excited about someone who at that point, Barack just didn't have much of a record for serving the black community. But he went on in his eight years in office to openly excoriate sc disappoint the black community. And in fact, I think you could argue that in terms of black people, I'm 59, I'll be 60 years old in January. (00:11:12): I would argue that Barack Obama has been the worst president in my lifetime for blacks. What I mean by that is the opportunity that he had in 2008 during the Great Recession, the opportunity that he had to actually begin to redistribute, and I'm not talking about socialism or communism. I'm talking about just redistributing wealth, just shaving off a portion of that onerous debt that many of us had accrued through these illegal, that's not my term, that's the FBI term illegal loans, fraudulent loans that the lenders made, and he could have shaved off proportion of that debt revived consumer buying power as we speak. We're talking, we're in the midst of the Wall Street, has seen a week really of decline. And the reasons, because Barack Obama set this in motion by not responding to the asset bubble in 2008, that asset bubble popped. (00:12:14): Usually how you deal with an asset bubble is you shave off a portion of the debt and you put people in jail to disincentivize a fraud, but you shave off a portion of the debt because that will revive buying power. Barack Obama didn't do that. He actually threw more money at the lenders. And so right now we don't have body power and who's leading that? African American. So I say that to say, to answer your question, that the blacks who have been candidates for high office, particularly for the White House, have been put there because they will participate. They will join in on this dance of scolding black people for the benefit of the white vote, and then doing this dance, this sort of vaudevillian kind of act where they, every four years talk about what they've done for the black community, what they're going to do for the black community, how much they love black people. (00:13:11): And I think it's run its course. I feel that it's run its course. And let me just end with this. And I really do believe that the legacy of Barack Obama, we've always had class tension within the black community. Now I think we're going to see the eruption of a real civil war, a real class war within the black community where the black elected officials are very much like conservatives and very much like white liberals. I think we're getting to a point now where we're going to see that the fault lines are very sharply drawn and the black elected officials, black celebrities, van Jones and Jay-Z and Bakari Sellers, that all these people are going to be seen as class enemies to the working class black community and the people who are its allies. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:13:57): A couple of things. One, you mentioned the asset bubble and former President Obama giving the money back, basically bailing out the banks and not bailing out the homeowners. And I remember because to your point, that would've been the move. Don't give the money to the banks, deal with the loans, and that way you would've enabled people to stay in their homes. You would've been able to maintain the integrity of a number of neighborhoods, even down to the level of public schools and public school budgets because they get their money from property taxes by maintaining the value of property. There are a whole lot of things, a whole lot of benefits that would've come from that action. Instead of giving the money to the banksters, give the money to the homeowners. And I remember a press conference where former President Obama was asked why he did it the way he did it. And his answer was, and I remember this very clearly, his answer was, I didn't expect the banks to do this. People were asking him, why hasn't the money that you've given to the banks been loaned out? Why hasn't that money been distributed to the communities in need? And he said, I didn't expect the banks to do that. I said, well, man, that's what banks do, Speaker 3 (00:15:23): And maybe you shouldn't have run for president if you don't have that kind of understanding of finance. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:27): Well, but that's the same guy that told the Banksters, I'm the one standing between you and the people with the pitch for us. Speaker 3 (00:15:32): Right? Right. And I believe it was in that same interview, I believe it was where he said that the reason he didn't bail out the homeowners who had been defrauded of their homes to these subprime mortgages, he said he didn't want to invite moral hazard. Well, moral hazard is exactly what he invited. But on behalf of the banks, not on behalf Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:52): Of, oh, see, I thought he said Merrill haggard not moral hazard. My bad. I thought he didn't like country and western music. I'm glad. I'm glad you straighten that out for me. And the other thing you mentioned about former President Obama, and what I assume we're going to see from Vice President Harris is they have, I call it menstrual diplomacy. They are being used to sell imperialism and neoliberalism. And because it's coming from them, because Kamala Harris was selling us invading Haiti along with Linda Thomas Greenfield and so many, but because it was black people selling it, then there must not be anything wrong with it. We must be able to go ahead and accept it because of who it is that's selling it to us. I want to read another paragraph from your piece wherein you write, you write, it's important, however, to view Biden as a vital organ to a larger body politic that finally flatlined after failing to address a chronic illness, akin say to a diabetic eating Big Max every day for the past 30 years, Biden does not in fact owe his failed reelection bid to senility, though his cognitive decline is apparent. (00:17:24): But to his party's strategic decision three decades ago, to compete with Ronald Reagan's, GOP for racist, white suburban voters, white suburban voters, by openly repudiating the Democrats electoral base of African-Americans. And that gets to what you just opened with. But I also think it's important for people to understand that by taking us for granted and by allowing ourselves to be taken for granted, the Democrats know we're not going anywhere. And so that enables them to speak to a lot of issues while actually appealing to that white middle class male voter because they don't want to appear to be a party that's too black. They don't want to appear to be a party that's catering to black people. John Che. Speaker 3 (00:18:23): No, that's exactly right. I think I ride with black people. I rock with black people. I will to the day I die, particularly the black working class. My father was a UAW member. And as much as the unions are fraught with racism, I still claim the working class. That's the class I was born into in the class I will die in. Although if I hit the lottery, I guess I'll be a Cadillac Communist at that point. Maybe. In Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:18:50): Fact, really quickly, really simply, the CIO was we got the AFL CIO because the A FL was racist and okay, Speaker 3 (00:19:03): Yeah, that's exactly right. And then the CIO turned racist. But that's another story. But no, this is really a choice that the Democrats made, which just shows how unimagined they were. If they had followed Jesse Jackson's model pulling more and more people, which by the way was what RFK planned to do before he was assassinated, was to pull more and more people into the tech, younger people, it's very conceivable they would've never have lost an election over the last 30 years. Right? It's very conceivable. We have 110, a hundred million voters at least every year who are eligible to vote, who don't vote. Pulling those people in more of those people in by giving them something to vote for would be a winning strategy, a sustainable strategy. The Democrats just relied on their own. They just reverted to reform, right? Racist Democrats like Bill Clinton, like Ben Pitchfork, Tillman, that's who they're, and they can't sort of snap out of that. (00:20:10): And so now they're stuck. They're stuck with this dance. It's very awkward dance, performative blackness. That's what Barack Obama is. That's what Kamala Harris, they perform, but they're not radical black political actors because if they were, and we have to bear some of the responsibility for this failure. We black people who have historically been the most sophisticated voters in the United States since they ran Barack Obama, we have for some reason forgotten that we have agency in this that if just sit and wait four years to go cast a ballot for whoever they put up for us to vote, that we might well be buried under a ton of ash, like some lost city of Pompeii or whatever. Because our parents and our grandparents knew much like they did in Chicago with Harold Washington, they faced the same dilemma. The Democrats just basically crapping on them and then asked them for their vote. (00:21:17): And they decided in 1982 that, oh, well, we'll just get our own candidate to run. And they got Harold Washington. They drove each other to the polls, they registered voters. They raised money even though they didn't have much. They raised money and they got him by the finish line right now, it won't look the same way now probably. But the point is that they used their imagination. They didn't just sit there and say, oh, well, this is who we got to vote for. They did something about, they demonstrated their own agency. We need to get back to that. But lemme just say this too, on that point, I do feel though that this isn't a way, a culmination of what Malcolm said when he said, I think there will be another civil war in this country, but it won't be black versus white. There'd be the haves versus the havenots. (00:22:01): And I believe we are getting closer to that. You see now these campus protests that emerged over the spring, which were led by the vanguard of which was Jewish people and Arab people and black people, I think that's going to be the coming revolution where we see what's happening in Gaza, rightfully so, has become the moral center of the universe. But that cause Gaza, which of course does not speak well with Kamala Harris, that cause I believe is going to intersect. We already see it intersecting with other causes. Cop city in Atlanta, right, the Jim Crow justice system. We see it intersecting with these other causes. That's how revolutions are born. So I say all that to say that I think that the Democrats are going to be on the wrong side of history. I think this deal, they struck this Carthage Genian peace deal that black Democrats have struck with the party. I think that it has run its courts and the people no longer have any use for it. I don't know if Trump or Ka Harris is going to be the next president, but I know that the American people are going to lose either way. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:23:12): And I think evidence to what it is that you've just articulated in terms of this confluence of interest between Jewish Americans, between Arab Americans and African Americans, we're seeing now how Republicans are taking control at the electoral board level, the local electoral board level. They are now denying elections. They are now failing to certify elections. And this is something that people need to pay very, very close attention to because they are gaining control of the apparatus itself. And when they get control of the apparatus itself, then that's going to make our challenges even that much more difficult in terms of challenges, in terms of electoral politics, is going to make our challenges even harder to be successful at when you have members of election boards that fail to certify elections, not because they find wrongdoing in the process, but simply because the candidate that they backed. Look at Donald Trump gave this speech. He was in Atlanta today, I think it was Sunday or Monday, and he's pointing to people in the crowd that are at his campaign rally who are members of the county Boards of Election, and he's applauding them and lauding them for how loyal they are to his efforts. Speaker 3 (00:24:48): Oh, wow. I did not realize that. And that's very dangerous because these elections, these presidential elections tend to be battles of attrition who can do more to turn to vote, which means that they're very slim margins. So I mean, if Donald Trump has a little bit of leverage with the elections board in Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia, you might as well hand the presidency over to him now. So this is something else. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:17): Well, and that's why he is saying, Christians, after this election, you won't need to vote. I mean, he is saying to people, oh, I've got this. I don't even need your vote. I've got this. And after this election, you won't need to vote. And that goes back to, and I think this went over the heads of a lot of folks. His key advisor, the guy that's in jail now went to jail. Speaker 3 (00:25:50): Oh, baton. Baton. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:51): Steve Baton said, our objective is the deconstruction of the administrative state. Steve Bannon was very, very clear about Trump's objective is to deconstruct the administrative state. And I don't think many people paid attention to that. And that is what we see with the January 6th attack on the Capitol with they're getting their talons into local boards of election with this whole project 2025, which isn't new. It's all wine in new bottles. But all of those things are culminating with the Donald Trump. Speaker 3 (00:26:44): Yeah, no, it's really a historic time. We don't know how it's going to turn out. But I mean, if you look at the situation on the ground and Nazi Germany, say in 1934, it'd be very similar to what we're seeing now with this demagogue clearly rising up. And then you see all the other parties in Germany, although we only have one here in the United States, you see all the other parties sort of seeding that ground to this demagogue and the people who support him. And that's shaping up here. And the Democrat, again, it could be an opportunity for the Democrats to actually say, okay, we're going to step in and we're going to restore democracy, but they don't really care about democracy. How do we know the same people who are complaining about January 6th? And the Trump supporters who wanted to overturn the election just announced that the winner of the election in Venezuela is the guy who came in second passed the post, right? (00:27:38): And then the silliness. Well, we believe that the election was stolen. The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter has called the elections in Venezuela, the freest and fairest he has ever observed. Correct. National lawyers, gu, when they're now, and they said, no, this election is fine, but we're going to say that this guy who's a conservative in a country that is 13% black, and probably half of them are of mixed race, we're going to say this white conservative went in there and over and basically beat the socialist party, the Olaine revolution that has been in power since 1998. And not just beat 'em, but beat 'em by 34 percentage points, I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:22): Believe. Now, I was calling this out months ago, and folks, you need to really understand this, and there are numerous, if you go to Oroco Tribune or you go to venezuelan analysis.com, you'll find plenty of articles on this. So the United States started backing the Russian, the Venezuelan conservative candidate, marina Machado Speaker 3 (00:28:50): Machado, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:52): And then she was convicted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court and found to have been basically an unregistered foreign agent. She was operating, I think, on behalf of Peru, I think it was Peru, against the interest of Venezuela. So they said, you are, because you have been operating as this agent for another country against Venezuelan interests, you can't run in the election. So the United States started backing her, knowing she couldn't run, and then they found the Gonzalez, the guy that replaced her, but he's basically her mouthpiece. And I was saying all along the United States is backing her, knowing she can't win, and then backing Gonzalez, knowing he can't win, so that when they lose, they will claim the election was fraud. And that's exactly, now here's the problem. So the United States goes in to Venezuela and they try to ment civil unrest the same way that Victoria Newland went into Madan Square. (00:30:12): That's right. And overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine leading us to where we are now in Ukraine. The difference between, or one of the differences between Ukraine and Venezuela, or a couple differences. One, the people are armed. There is a armed popular militia that when the bell rings, or as George Clinton would say, when the horn blow, you better be ready to go. They come in the street packing. In fact, we know this, when we had what we call the Bay of Piglets, about a year and a half ago, some American mercenaries tried to float their way into Venezuela, and they were stopped by a group of Venezuelan fishermen that arrested these guys damn near killed them, but exposed them for trying to come into the country to overthrow the government. So you've got a very strong citizen, heavily armed citizen militia in Venezuela. And here's the other thing. It's not about Maduro. No, it's about the Bolivarian revolution. Speaker 3 (00:31:28): That's right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:28): These folks are Speaker 3 (00:31:32): Right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:33): Ugo Chavez is the man. So they see Maduro not as Maduro. They see Maduro as an agent of the revolution. Speaker 3 (00:31:46): That's right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:47): I'll make one more statement about this because you know more about this than I do. I'm going to make this point. This is hyperbole, but I want to say they would say, Nicholas Maduro be damned. It's about the revolution. It's not about him as an individual. And so long as he stays true to the revolution, they will stay true to him. When they see him deviate, he's done. Speaker 3 (00:32:17): I could not agree with you more. I have not stepped foot in Venezuela in 20 years, although I talked to people who are still on the ground there every once in a while. I'm going to tell you something, man, I have never seen, and I've lived in South Africa, I've been through most of Africa, through half of South America. I've never seen France. Nan talked about the need for revolutions make to create the new man, the new woman, a different consciousness. I'm not sure I ever knew what that meant until I went to Venezuela. They really have a different consciousness. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I think a lot of that was Hugo Chavez. I mean, it really does come down, man. He was as brilliant. I've met Mandela, who I think highly of. I met Mugabi. I never met a man who's more charismatic, more powerful, more visionary than he was. (00:33:09): Robert, I met later in life. I don't know what he was like earlier. Same with Mandela. But Chavez was visionary, and I so have to say that so much of this revolution is doing his understanding. When the United States organized a coup in 2002, the people, they weren't as well armed. They didn't have the malicious then, although some of them had armed the people because the government, the news media, which was controlled by the wealthy, the oligarchs in Venezuela, they told the people that Hugo Chavez is on the beach and she would kicking it with Fidel Castro. The people had these hammer radios. They got on the ham radio and said, nah, that ain't what happened. He would never abandon us like that. I think he's a mirror for us. Let's go get 'em mostly with pots and pan. And you can look at, there's a documentary, I can't remember the name of the documentary. (00:33:58): It's black women who were in the front pots and pans, and look, you're going to give him back. Right? And they did. Right. It took a couple days. It took a little while, right? About two days, right. Cause like I said, they mostly just had pots and pan. But thank God back. Now, look, I think that the vote, which was the closest, it's been, I think in 28 and 20, 26 years now, the vote just a little bit beyond 50% from Mad Gerald. I think it was 53. I want to say it was like 53, 46 or something like that. Yeah, I saw 51 to 44, but something like that. But anyway, it's a diminished margin. I mean, they have had inflation. These sanctions have taken an effect. And I know the people I talked to on the ground, I lived in Ecuador for a year or so a few years ago, and you saw more and more people coming to Ecuador who were disillusioned with the BOLO volume revolution. (00:34:52): And these are people who would've been supportive, people who were of color, mestizos, no blacks, but mestizos. Anyway, so I do think that it's lost a little bit of its luster. But this is what I know, they did not put up a right wing candidate was talking about taking Venezuela back to what it was in 1989 before what they call, I think they called the characters Z. When the president basically told the Venezuela one day we're not going to convert to neoliberalism and ratchet up the bus prices and all that. And the next day they went to work and the bus prices had doubled. And so there was this ride, and that's what produced hug job is. So what I'm saying is that there's a of the Venezuelan voter, the average Venezuelan, I wish we had it here in the United States because they understand as Fred, I know you're going to get sick of me quoting Fred Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:35:47): Hampton. Right? I'll never get sick of you quoting Fred Hampton. Speaker 3 (00:35:50): But it's like the Venezuelans understand. I wish we understood it. I wish you peace if you willing to fight for it. The Venezuelans, they live by that, right? And so, I don't know. I can't tell you, the United States is very powerful, even though we're a diminished force, I can't tell you they'll always be able to hold off the United States, but they're going to have to fight them for Venezuela. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:36:10): So we started this with your piece, how the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the hands that feed it. And the way that we got to this discussion about Venezuela was a discussion about democracy and how Joe Biden tells us democracy is on the ballot. And Kamala Harris, the democracy is on the ballot. And Donald Trump democracy, we ought to protect democracy while we're going around the world, overthrowing democracies. That's why we're fighting in Vene in Ukraine because the United States overthrew the democratically elected government. We're trying to have regime change in Russia while the Russians, you can talk about their form of government, all you want to, it is democratic by their definition. And he was democratically elected. We can talk about Syria, we can talk about what they're trying to do in China as it relates to Taiwan. We can talk about what's going on in Gaza. We keep talking about we're defending democracy in Israel, democracy for who Speaker 3 (00:37:19): Democracy. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:37:19): You even have, there are even Jews in Israel that aren't a part of the Democratic. So that's how we, so, okay. I just wanted to kind of bring us all back to this vice President, Kamala Harris, and still use the word presumptive, because even though she got the vote she needed through the Zoom process, they're going to have a convention which I will attend as a journalist not carrying anybody's banner. Speaker 3 (00:37:56): You sure you don't have that vote blue? No banner who? Banner at home you going to take Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:38:03): No. So, okay, so now she has announced her running mate, and Tim Walsh has debuted as her VP pick in Philly. And my question to you relative to this, is the story that Harris selected Waltz to be her running mate, or is the story that she did not select Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, as the team gets ready to kick off its five state tour, which of those, and they both could be the story, but because we kept hearing that she was going to, A lot of people thought Shapiro was going to be the pick and the fact that they were kicking off in Philly, and now they're not awkward, but which one is the story? Speaker 3 (00:39:18): Yeah, that's a great question. I have to say, if I had to bet money, if I had to bet the farm, I would say that the Democrats are going to lose this election. But I do think Waltz is probably the best choice that she could have made. Shapiro would've been catastrophic, I think just because whether exactly, whether they want to admit it or not, Zionism is on the ballot, right? Right. We know Kamala has said she's a Zionist, right? We know she's had meetings with APAC in which she has asked for it not to be recorded. She is a Zionist. She supports Israel's right to defend itself when it has no such, right? No more so than the Nazis did in Germany. Anyway. So waltz, I think really Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:02): Minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I need to say. So folks can clearly understand that you are stating that Israel does not have the right to defend itself. That statement is based upon international law, Speaker 3 (00:40:21): Law, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:21): Law. Yes. You're not making this up, right. Kamala Harris coming out and saying, Israel has the right to defend itself as a prosecutor. She should know better because that's wrong. It is just, you might as well say the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. The world is not flat, even though when you stand out on the horizon, it looks that way. It ain't necessarily so, and the sun does not revolve around the earth. Speaker 3 (00:40:56): And the rest of the world knows this. Right? The Palestinians are an occupied people. You have the right to, that's why Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:02): They're called oppress occupied Speaker 3 (00:41:05): Territory's not right. International law. It's not international law. We'll Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:08): Continue, but I just want to be very, very clear on that point. Speaker 3 (00:41:12): Yeah. I just think it's so interesting though. I mean, it seems to me that their choice of, am I pronouncing his name right? Waltz? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:20): Waltz. Waltz. Waltz. No, WALZ. Speaker 3 (00:41:24): Wall. Okay. Waltz. Okay. I think it's a concession to the anti-Zionist protests that I still think are going to be a very big factor in this convention. Chicago is home to the biggest, the largest Palestinian population in the country. And Lord knows how many black people are going to come out and support because they're protesting their mayor there who did a mini, he's a Obama Mini me ran, left, and is governing, right? So it does seem like it's like the best choice. It gives them a shot. He softens their edges, Kamala's edges, the Biden Harris administration's edges in terms of Zionism. But it softens his edges. It doesn't eliminate, from what I understand, he still supports Israel, right? Absolutely. And I don't know. Look, one thing we have to be honest about now is that the media is very much complicit in this game that the Democrats are running, and that's what it is. (00:42:26): The media is very complicit in this. And so are they going to really ask the Harris ticket, Kamala Harris' ticket to tough questions? I don't know. But you'd have to assume that somewhere between now and November that they're going to be confronted in a very public fashion with this question though. Well, what are you going to do about Israel? And that's why I see them losing this race, if nothing else. And I know that foreign policy does not often decide a presidential election, but I think given the state of the first live stream genocide in history, which Daily is bringing these unbearable images into our homes, that combined with their failure to do anything for their black base, especially black men, I have a hard time seeing a path to victory for the Democratic party. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:43:19): Well, staying in that region. Another thing that folks, you got to stay tuned because these dynamics are changing minute by minute, Hassan Nala, the head of Hezbollah, came out and said, look, we are going to respond. Lemme take a step back. Secretary of State was telling us, Monday, 24 hours, 24 hours, and we expect that Iran is going to respond with man you Speaker 3 (00:43:57): Like he knows. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:44:00): So Cassandra Sharla comes out and says, well, we're going to respond, and now we don't care what the outcome is. He came out Monday in a very clear speech and said, we are going to respond. We're going in hard, and we don't care what you do. Anah in Yemen saying, please send missiles our way, because every missile you send towards us is a missile you can send in the Palestine. Now, this is the poorest country in the world, the poorest country in the world. They have shut down. I'm talking about Yemen. Yemen, they have shut down the Red Sea. You can't get nothing in or out of the Red Sea. There's a port in Israel called the Port of OT has gone bankrupt because Ansara Allah has been sending missiles into the port of ot, like 13, 1400 miles away. And they're saying, we welcome the fight. Look, that's some smoke you don't want, Speaker 3 (00:45:36): Right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:45:37): Because if we were in South central la, this would be the bloods and the Crips saying, I'm about that life. Speaker 3 (00:45:45): Right? Right. The ties and Hezbollah and Hezbollah, you know that about that life. They handed a behind whooping to Israel in 2006, which Israel's never forgotten, right? No. And the ties, I mean, man mean you talk about solidarity. I mean, they, they're what anybody who says they're a revolutionary aspires to be a revolutionary needs to look at. They have a picture. We can take the picture. Well, no, maybe don't take the picture Martin Luther King down, maybe put the Houthis right next to it everywhere kitchen. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:19): And see, they're not new to this game. Speaker 3 (00:46:23): No. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:24): When Anah, I believe means a helper of God, Speaker 3 (00:46:30): Know that, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:31): And I believe that comes from the time of the prophet. May peace be upon him. They traced their lineage that far back when he came through that region, they were assisting him. Speaker 3 (00:46:46): Oh, I did not know that. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:48): So when that's your psyche, when that's your North star look, when Mike Tyson tells you to stop kicking the back of his seat on an airplane, you might want to stop kicking his backseat back of his seat on airplane. Speaker 3 (00:47:02): You might consider doing what he says. Yeah. I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:05): Dunno if you remember that story. Yeah, Speaker 3 (00:47:06): I do. I do. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:07): When they had to carry that guy off of the plane Speaker 3 (00:47:10): And he got off lucky Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:13): Because he was able, he survived the assault. Speaker 3 (00:47:15): And I Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:16): Don't mean assault in illegal term ass whooping. So anyway, anyway, all of this, I bring this up again, folks. I'm trying to connect these dots. We get into September and October, vice President Harris may be asking questions about the regional war that is ongoing, because that's where we're headed. That's what Israel wants. They are trying to bait the United States into a conflict in the region. And now you've got the supreme leader in Iran saying to Hezbollah, go ahead on, do what you got to do. He's not saying, pump your brakes. Partner saying, do what you got to do. And he's saying, do what you got to do, because we about to do what we got to do. Speaker 3 (00:48:17): We about to put in that work too. And I don't mean to be glib about it, man, this is a horrible thing that's happening. But you've got to look at it. Americans really need to look at it in context. Context. Wait minute. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:27): Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don't send your money yet, because there's a bamboo steamer that comes with this deal. Turkey Toa, Speaker 3 (00:48:34): Right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:36): Erwan is saying we in it too. He says, if we have to go in now, he can be a funny dude. Speaker 3 (00:48:43): Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:45): He is at least saying, oh, if we got to go in, we're going in. Speaker 3 (00:48:51): Yeah. This is a perfect storm. I mean, this is the worst perfect storm I've ever seen in my lifetime. You've got this on the one side you've got, and you really think about it, this revolutionary consciousness that has been strengthened and amplified by Israel's decision to commit genocide in front of cameras. And then when we say, yo man, that's the genocide. They say, what's your point? Right? This is the end of Israel. Your Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:49:22): Problem is, Speaker 3 (00:49:23): Yeah, exactly. As we know it, Israel, Israel will never go back to what it was on October 6th of last year. It just won't. Right? It's not going to happen. And the United States, I don't think it's going to go back to what it was on October 6th of last year, either what it's going to be, I don't know. But this is, we're really seeing the end of it, and you can see it in a couple things. One is the congealing of this resistance movement in the Middle East against the white settler colonialism of Israel and the United States and the West. You see it with the bricks whose GDP cumulatively has surpassed the United States. Russia, I believe, has said at reported, they're arming the Houthis. Right? They're arming the Houthis. I've read the, but I dunno if it's true or not, right? And then you've got the peace day resistance, a recession. (00:50:12): Oh, I didn't even think about that. Right? You've got, in the Sahel region in Africa, you've got this resistance is forming, and you've got all of Africa starting to sort of assert itself and say, wait a minute, why do we need these people who speak French, who speak English in here, telling us what to do? They claim to be the boss. Why do they take our resources out? Pay us nothing, take our resources out. You've got that congealing, and then you've got the peace state resistance. You've got that also in South America, although it's in bits and starts, the pink tides kind of a ebb and of flow. But then you've got the peace state resistance, which is what some economists and financial people believe is, at the very least, a very brave and very deep recession. And some people are saying, could be the greatest depression, the greatest depression that the world has ever seen. And there are numbers. I mean, United States has never been 35 trillion in debt. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:07): That Speaker 3 (00:51:07): Never Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:08): Happened against a $25 trillion GDP. Speaker 3 (00:51:11): I mean, come on, man. So we've got a lot of issues said Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:16): That, try to get a mortgage with that bank balance, Speaker 3 (00:51:19): Man. I was looking at the loans for, and then we've got credit card debt up the kazoo, and the average interest rate, I believe is 25% of these credit card rates. And we're dealing with all these, no, that's the problem. We're not dealing with these problems. We don't address, we don't face these problems. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:34): So all of that, I wrote a piece, you're with her, but is she with you? Yeah. And the piece is contrary to what many people want to say. It's not anti Kamala. It's pro us. Yes. The question in the piece is, what are you as an African-American community demanding from her? And we have just articulated a number of very important issues that are and will impact how much you pay for a pack of chicken wings, a gallon of milk, and a loaf of bread Speaker 3 (00:52:18): Question. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:19): So it's great that she's an AKA. It's great that she went to Howard. It's great that she can do what she do, but what does she stand for? What if you go to her website right now, zero policy, zero, not nary policy reference, Speaker 3 (00:52:47): But she has Megan, the stallion, twerking for Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:49): Her. Oh, well, then that gets my Speaker 3 (00:52:51): Vote. I'm just saying, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:53): Hey, I, amen. Speaker 3 (00:52:55): You know what, Earl? You know what Earl but said about black voters, right? Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:59): Go ahead. Speaker 3 (00:53:01): I dunno if I can repeat it here, but all we want is a warm toilet seat. A tight, tight, what was it? And a pair of shoe apparently to say, Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:53:17): So here's folks, here's the question. Politics. We are so caught up in the politics of personality and the politics of phenotype. We are trying to defend, oh, Donald Trump said she isn't black. Who cares when a pack of chicken wings is $21 a pack, when organic, a gallon of organic milk is $12 a gallon. That matters to me. I drink organic milk. Why are we so caught up in that? When your tax dollars are funding genocide, when your tax dollars are paying the salaries and the retirement of Ukrainians, and you don't have a retirement plan, your pension plan went out the window 25 years ago. That's right. We're paying Ukrainian pensions and healthcare. And healthcare and education budgets are numeric representations of priority. Speaker 3 (00:54:36): That's right. That's right. A moral document, as King said. That's Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:54:40): Right. And we keep being told, we don't have the money. We don't have the money, but F sixteens just landed in Ukraine, which I'll say in the next 10 days will probably be blown into rubble. But we're sending F sixteens. So Lockheed Martin is happy. John Jeter, am I hating black women because I'm questioning policy issues related. Oh, we have to give her a chance. What did Barack Obama say when members of the Black Press said, you didn't really do anything for the black community, said you did not demand anything. Speaker 3 (00:55:34): Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:36): Frederick Douglas says, power yields nothing without demand. It never has. And it never will. That's Speaker 3 (00:55:43): Right. That's right. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:44): But when I asked the question, well, what are you demanding? Oh, no, Wilmer. See, you have to give her a chance. Oh, here's the other. I'll make, explain. Now I'm going to turn it over to you. So you've got folks like Simone Sanders that say, well, she's been vice president for four years. Kamala has earned it. And then you say, but wait a minute. So while she was vice president, what'd she do? Oh, well, you have to understand that vice presidents, those jobs, their job description is really very vague, and you can't really expect, well, no. See, you can't have it both ways, Speaker 3 (00:56:23): Right? That's right. You Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:56:24): Can't tell me she earned it by being vice president. And then when I ask you, well, what did she do? You can't tell me. Well, she didn't do anything because vice presidents don't do anything. John Jeter. Speaker 3 (00:56:35): Yeah. We really need to raise our level of play. All Americans do, but particularly African Americans, because we have historically been the vanguard of this revolution, of the revolution in the United States, a progressive working class revolution. We need to raise our level of play. We need to deepen our understanding of politics. We need to do exactly as you say, we need to develop a list of demands, make them and stick to them. I'll try to say this very succinctly. I'm coming out with a new book in September next month, class War in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? I began the book talking about a political movement in the 1870s in the reconstruction period in Virginia where blacks were the majority of a political party called the read adjusters. Poor whites, mostly farmers and blacks in Virginia, who decided to team up and to the elites of both parties, Republicans and Democrats were trying to take their tax money and pay the bonds, the money that was loaned to Virginia by the wealthy, the aristocrats, the Confederates, the people who really were responsible for the war, the Civil War. (00:57:55): And they said they wanted to pay exorbitant interest rates 6%, which would be actually pretty low these days. This coalition said, no, we won't do it. So this group, the Readjusts, they lowered interest rates, they Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:58:07): Readjusted the loans. Speaker 3 (00:58:09): They spent this money on schools and things like that. They started feeling themselves, and the white party leader said, well, the blacks were saying, well, we want also, we want enter the whipping post. We want this and we want that. And the whites in that party, the adjusters didn't hear 'em. They didn't feel 'em, right? So they didn't do it. So the brother said, because it's just black men who voted at that time, although we know that their black women supported them in this. But black men said, okay, cool. So the next election, the readjust lost everything. And they realized, to their credit, they said, oh, they were serious. And so when they returned to power, they did everything the brother said, they eliminate the whipping votes. In the book, there's a point where they talk about the Patronist jobs. They handed out to blacks because black were 60% of this party. There's a postmaster who said, I think it was 1881. He said, my office is so full of blacks, or might have said colors at that time. My office is so full of colors. It looks like Africa in here, right? This is 1881. So I said, that's the same in Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:18): Virginia. Speaker 3 (00:59:18): In Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, right? 1881, people read this and they said, I was lying. I did not make it up. It is a true fact, as we say, right? We need to return to that mindset, that understanding. We need the people in Venezuela like the Houthis, like the Lebanese, the Hezbollah, Lebanon. We need to return to that level of understanding and raise our revolutionary metabolism. Look, man, as Fred Hampton said last time, I'll quote Fred Hampton today, if you say you want to do something revolutionary, but you say, I'm too young to die, you don't realize you are already dead. It's a lot of dead men walking in this country right Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:59): Now. John Jeter, my brother, thank you for joining me today. Speaker 3 (01:00:05): My pleasure, man. Always a pleasure. Dr. Wilmer Leon (01:00:08): Folks. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Go to that Patreon account. Help us out, please. This isn't cheap. We need you to make this work. Leave a review and share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Jon Jeter (01:00:58): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.  

The ruling class must establish its hegemony in order to assure its survival, and cultural production is critical to this process, dominance over our cultural lives is indispensable for capitalism to reproduce itself.As Gramsci wrote: “To achieve a revolutionary perspective, the worker must first be freed of the ideological fetters imposed on him by the cultural organizations of the ruling class.”On today's episode we're talking about culture as a site of political struggle. To address this topic we will speak with Luigino Bracci Roa, a communications activist, expert in digital communications and a rank-and-file worker in Venezuela's Ministry of Culture. Host José Luis Granados Ceja is also joined by VA's Andreína Chávez to talk about music as a space for constructive criticism within the Bolivarian process and the role of cultural expressions such as the gaita Zuliana as a reflection of the central place that voices of the people should occupy. Music: Embandolaos - Los Caimanes NegrosBetulio Medina - La Grey Zuliana

Beloved Dragonfly Dreamers and Astral Ospreys, I love and appreciate you all! Let's all come together and appreciate each other. Nature loves diversity. Nature seeks diversity. Nature creates diversity. And nature nurtures diversity. If push comes to lava, Nature MAKES diversity. So why not enjoy the ride.  This episode I'm pleased to feature my treasured Venezuelan correspondent: the dynamic, grounded and insightful Ricardo Vaz. Ricardo is a busy bee making the world a better place. He jet sets around the world shining light on economic sanctions, the root causes of migration, and a miraculous reality engine known in Venezuela as the Bolivarian process. Let the isms sit in the back seat for a change and allow your mind to drive. Check out the scenery ~ it's gorgeous. To my beloved Libertarian brothers and sisters: Venezuelans don't pay a lot of taxes. The filthy rich corporations get taxed. Which is only fair.  Free Palestine. Free Israel. Free us all. We Are Not Numbers: https://wearenotnumbers.org/ It's Divine Damn Time. 3 6 9 Support Ricardo, learn about Venezuela, and enjoy beautiful bilingual art, at Venezuelanalysis.com and Utopix.cc.Check out this illuminating text as well: A War Without Bombs: The Social, Political and Economic Impact of Sanctions Against Venezuela aims to provide readers with the tools to understand (and collectively revert) the devastating impact of the blockade on the people of Venezuela. Download link here: https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/a-war-without-bombs/Your loyal hermanito, little raven TRACKLIST FOR THIS EPISODEStar Wars - The Imperial March (Fair Use Edit: Slowed & Verbed)Dykotomi - Corvid CrunkElectronic Intifada Podcast feat. Ahmed Alnaouq - Journalist who lost more than 20 members of his family, including 14 children, when Israel bombed his house in Gaza. His family were seeking refuge; they were not militants. Sleep Central - Mexican Lofi Beats to Chill & Study ToPalmasur Lofi Mexicana - Beats Tranqui/EstudiarLos Ángeles De Charly - Un Sueño (Fair Use Edit: Slowed)Cumbias Para El Mundo TV - Una Cumbia Muy Buena y Muy SabrosoKaren y Los Remedios - Presagio (Fair Use Edit: Slowed)IIIPalestineIII - أغاني فلسطينية قديمة رائعة | Palestine SonSupport the showIf you dig the pod, check out the adjacent video & livestream show Barbarian Yak Fest w/ Dr. Sylvie & Deus ex Machinist on Rokfin: https://rokfin.com/BarbarianYakFestFind me on IG: barbarian_noetics Become a Beloved Patron: patreon.com/noetics (unlock bonus content plus win a Dream Interpretation)Direct Donate on PayPal @barbarian.noetics@proton.me or Cash App@ $BarbarianRavenOne time donation: buymeacoffee.com/noetics.Spread the word and tell a friend. Remember to set the BNP on Auto Download after you subscribe. I appreciate you all.Let's Activate the human spirit! FAIR USE DISCLAIMER:Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 allows for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research."The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Venezuela is known to have the world's biggest reserves of crude oil - but more than 90% of its citizens live in poverty. Millions of people have fled the country since 2015, in what the United Nations has described as the second biggest displacement disaster in the world. The policies of the Hugo Chavez government live on in the Bolivarian regime and leadership of Nicholas Maduro - but can the communists be ousted? One Decision speaks with former United States Ambassador to Caracas Patrick Duddy and exiled opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez to consider what is at stake and whether the opposition can chart a route forward before elections in 2024. And former President Juan Guaidó sits down exclusively with One Decision's Brett Bruen for his first interview in Washington as an exile to talk about the details of his family's flight from Venezuela and why he felt it was no longer safe to stay. International Intrigue is a

In conjunction with the American Museum of Tort Law, we conduct another live Zoom recording where Ralph welcomes legendary trial lawyer Shanin Spector to discuss the constitutional right of wrongfully injured people to have their day in court and the corporate forces that are trying to limit this most basic of American principles. Then, Ralph and Mr. Spector take questions from our live audience.Shanin Specter is a founding partner of Kline & Specter, one of the leading catastrophic injury firms in the United States. Beyond winning substantial monetary compensation for his clients, many of Shanin's cases have prompted beneficial societal changes. He has also taught law for many years and this academic year is teaching tort and trial courses at UC Law SF, Drexel Kline and Stanford Law Schools.Last week, I found myself in Washington DC at the Federalist Society debating the resolution that America should abolish the right of trial by jury, which is being advocated by an otherwise distinguished professor at George Washington University School of Law, Professor [Renée Lettow] Lerner… You don't have to scratch the surface of her argument very much to see that it is based upon the statistics of the American Tort Reform Association and the like. It's essentially a Trojan horse for the Fortune 500.Shanin SpecterWhy don't you describe this assault on the tort system by lobbyists who don't want to argue their case in court— that's too open, too full of cross-examination, too fair in terms of the procedures. They want to lobby lawmakers in states all over the country so the lawmakers, in effect, enact laws that tie the hands of juries and judges— the only people who actually see, hear, and evaluate the cases in the courtroom.Ralph NaderIn Case You Haven't Heard1. The FTC has issued a statement regarding the proposed merger between CalPortland & Martin Marietta. Chair Lina Khan tweeted that this deal “would've resulted in a single firm owning half of all cement plants serving Southern California, enabling the firm to hike prices.” Following an FTC investigation, the firms have abandoned the deal.2. AP reports that Colorado has become the first state to pass “Right to Repair” legislation, which “compels manufacturers to provide the necessary manuals, tools, parts and software,” to “ensure farmers can fix their own tractors and combines.” This idea has drawn support from left and right factions including at the national level. In a similar move regarding home repairs, Senator John Fetterman is pushing to expand Pennsylvania's "Whole Home Repair" program – which “helps Pennsylvanians with needed repairs and eliminate[s] blight” – to the nation.3. Former U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has been ejected from Colombia after attempting to “gatecrash” a summit on the future of the Bolivarian republic, the Guardian reports. Guaidó has fallen out of favor among Venezuelan dissidents and, while some western nations still recognize him on paper as Venezuela's president – despite never winning such an election – many have quietly reengaged with the Maduro government to negotiate for oil. The Guardian added that Mr. Guaidó has now relocated to Miami.4. Slate reports that automakers are finally beginning to backpedal on digital displays in cars. David Zipper writes “The touch screen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility. Many drivers want buttons, not screens, and they've given carmakers an earful about it. Auto executives have long brushed aside safety concerns about their complex displays—and all signs suggest they would have happily kept doing so. But their customers are revolting, which has forced them to pay attention.” Zipper goes on to pin the blame for the proliferation of these expensive and unpopular displays on one culprit: Elon Musk's Tesla.5. From the Tampa Bay Times: State legislators in Florida are leading a crusade to shred local tenants rights laws, which set standards regarding rent increases, applications and evictions. The recently-passed HB 1417 and its companion SB 1586 would strip away these protections. Rep. Tiffany Esposito, of Fort Myers, who sponsored the House bill, is quoted saying “This bill protects tenants, this bill protects property owners and this bill protects capitalism.” Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville responded “This bill is designed to help corporate landlords at the expense of tenants, many of which are already struggling to stay in their homes.”6. Ben & Jerry's announced that it has reached an agreement with workers at its flagship store in Burlington, Vermont on rules to ensure a fair union election, after workers announced last week that they are seeking to unionize, per the New York Times. “The agreement is likely to pave the way for the store to become the only unionized Ben & Jerry's location in the United States. All of the nearly 40 workers eligible to join a union at the store have indicated their support for doing so.”7. The Hill reports that a War Powers Resolution to pull U.S. troops out of Somalia, introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, has been defeated. The resolution garnered the support of 47 Republicans and 56 Democrats but failed by a margin of 103-321.8.  Keeping an eye on out of control cops, the LA Times reports that during a "reverse-buy" sting operation, undercover deputies with the Riverside sheriff sold 60 pounds of meth to a narcotics trafficker. According to the author Noah Goldberg, the dealer then got in a car and fled, resulting in 60 additional pounds of meth being introduced into the community. And in West Virginia, WTRF reports that “42 women, including 10 minors, plan to file lawsuits against West Virginia State Police for [installing] hidden cameras in junior troopers locker rooms…[engaging in] rampant sexual misconduct,” and admitting to destroying evidence in criminal investigations.  9. From Common Dreams: Reps. AOC and Ro Khanna, along with Senator Ed Markey, have reintroduced the Green New Deal. Along with the resolution, which is unlikely to move in the current Congress, the sponsors released “a guide for cities, states, tribes, nonprofits, and individuals about how to help bring the Green New Deal to life."10. From the Economic Policy Institute: April 28th marked “Workers Memorial Day, the date the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) took effect in 1971. Signed in 1970, the OSH Act has made a tremendous difference, and, after more than 50 years, over 668,000 workers can say their lives have been saved by its passage… [yet] In 2022, 343 workers died each day on average from hazardous working conditions, and last year's fatality data show especially troubling trends: The rate of death on the job for Black workers rose to its highest number in more than a decade, and fatality rates for Latino workers have increased 13% in the past decade…grim as these…numbers are, the reality is likely far worse. Government Accountability Office…reports show that a majority of employers fail to report workplace injuries due to [OSHA]'s limited resources and procedures. Official statistics also do not include the untold numbers of worker deaths linked to preventable workplace coronavirus exposure. In fact, the pandemic revealed serious limitations of the OSH Act and its enforcement in an era of eroded worker power and vast economic inequality.” Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

For this discussion we welcome Manolo de los Santos to discuss the book Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez.  Manolo de los Santos is the co-executive director of the People's Forum and is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He co-edited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs Hybrid War and Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro. He is a co-coordinator of the People's Summit for Democracy. Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez is the first book length English translation of a collection of speeches from Hugo Chávez. Chávez left behind thousands of hours of speeches, and this book collects seven of them, presenting his theories, perspectives, and his visions of 21st century socialism. An almost encyclopedic blend of songs, stories, and dreams of the Venezuelan people, his words are a tool for young people seeking to understand the ideas of Chavismo and the Venezuelan process of building socialism in South America. This conversation is a combination of thinking with Chávez as a historian, as a student of socialist practice, a theorist, and as a revolutionary in his own right. We talk a bit along the way about the example of Cuba, Chávez's relationship to Fidel Castro, the influence of Mao Tse-Tung on his thinking, Chávez's thinking on urgency, socialism and the climate crisis, and on the critical importance of study to the revolutionary process. The book is available from 1804 Books and we highly recommend it. We want to thank Manolo and the folks at 1804 Books for this book and conversation. We also want to thank PM Press for donating 35 copies of the Mohawk Warrior Society for our incarcerated reading group (in partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop). Thanks to their donation and contributions from listeners last month we do have enough to cover that book and the postage to send it in this month. And if you like what we do bringing you conversations like this every week then please become a patron of the show. Our show is 100% funded by our patrons and you can become one for as little as $1 a month and find out about things like our Wretched of the Earth study group which is going to start later this month. Some of our other conversations on Venezuela and Chávez: "Venezuela The Present As Struggle" with Gilbert & Marquina "Chávez Has A Present In Venezuela" with Gilbert & Marquina Geo Maher On Revolutionary Solidarity with Venezuela "Commune or Nothing" with Chris Gilbert  

In our latest episode, we are excited to bring to all the Macheteymatistas out there an in-depth discussion on Venezuela with Venezuela Analysis' own José Luis Granados Ceja. Venezuela Analysis has long been the leader in English-language coverage of Venezuela and José Luis has been a big part of that, from writing a lot of their most recent international news reports to hosting the official Venezuela Analysis podcast. José Luis joins us in digesting the most recent developments from the ongoing negotiations between the Bolivarian government and the right-wing opposition. He helps us break down how the most recent impasse in negotiations can be traced back to the initial failure in the previous attempt at negotiations led by former Spanish President Zapatero and how this provides insight into what the overall strategy from the United States and their lackeys in the Venezuelan opposition may be. We continue our discussion with the current state of the unilateral coercive measures being imposed by the United States on Venezuela and how the Biden administration's approach to the Bolivarian nation compares to the approach of the Trump administration. We then conclude our discussion with an analysis regarding the recent improvement in relations between Colombia and Venezuela and what that could mean for the region moving forward. For more on these topics, be sure to check out the work of José Luis and his colleagues at venezuelanalysis.com. And lastly, if you support our mission in providing reliable English-language analysis on Latin American affairs consider showing your solidarity at Patreon.com/macheteymate where you'd also be gaining access to our Discord community, the After Dark Episodes, and Machete Minute, our triweekly news updates.

Colombia's first-ever left-wing leader Gustavo Petro took a historic trip to Venezuela, pledging regional unity following the anti-imperialist model of Simón Bolívar. Meeting with President Nicolás Maduro, Petro said it is “suicidal” to divide the countries, “because we are the same people,” in "historically one single Bolivarian nation, reunited." VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=u3lJW3Y6Pqo Read more here: https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/02/colombia-petro-visits-venezuela-unity-bolivar Petro's powerful UN speech: https://multipolarista.com/2022/09/24/war-drugs-un-colombia-gustavo-petro John Bolton admits planning US coup in Venezuela: https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/12/trump-john-bolton-coups-venezuela Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela: https://multipolarista.com/2022/05/19/trump-us-military-venezuela-mark-esper

Photo: #NewWorldReport: #Colombia: Petro and the Bolivarian Alliance.  Senadora Maria Fernanda Cabal. @MariaFdaCabal (on leave) Joseph Humire @JMHumire @SecureFreeSoc https://www.securefreesociety.org Ernesto Araujo, former FM Brazil https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/colombia-e2-80-99s-gustavo-petro-e2-80-98if-i-fail-darkness-will-come-and-ravage-everything-e2-80-99/ar-AAZ0b8K

Karen & Rob chat with newlywed Eventers Jean & Diego Farje.   Jean & her family own & operate Rocking Horse Stables & Diego has represented Peru in the Pan Am and Bolivarian games & is currently Boyd Martin's assistant trainer.   Learn more:https://rockinghorseeventing.com/ Please support our Sponsors:https://cowboymagic.com/https://manentailequine.com/https://exhibitorlabs.com/https://www.triplecrownfeed.com/https://www.fairfaxandfavor.com/https://www.turtleneck.biz/Save 10% off your Redingote purchase, use "MLE10" at checkout!https://landing.redingoteequestrian.com/mleCall Patricia Scott of the https://kathybarryagency.com/ at (484)319-8923Sign up for our mailing list!https://mailchi.mp/b232b86de7e5/majorleagueeventingllc?fbclid=IwAR2Wp0jijRKGwGU3TtPRN7wMo-UAWBwrUy2nYz3gQXXJRmSJVLIzswvtClECheckout the Major League Eventing store!https://www.majorleagueeventing.com/shop

Venezuela has a robust and accountable voting system yet the results of its elections are constantly declared illegitimate by the enemies of of the Bolivarian revolution at home and abroad. With the fake president Juan Guaido now totally discredited the West is having to deal with the political realities in Venezuela, including the recent electoral victories of the United Socialist Party.

We interview Professor Chris GIlbert, an author and professor in Venezuela, on the communes and Bolivarian process, socialist transitions, and more. Chris Gilbert is professor of political science at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. He is creator, together with Cira Pascual Marquina, of the Marxist educational television program Escuela de Cuadros and co-author of Venezuela The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review, 2020). His writing can be found in Monthly Review and Counterpunch. Links to Chris's works: https://monthlyreview.org/author/chrisgilbert/

Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss the Russian invasion predictions. US officials squabble over semantics as the "Russian invasion" hoax flops and Russian military units return to barracks. US officials argue that the claims of a Russian pullback around Ukraine are false.Martin Sieff, senior fellow at the American University in Moscow, joins us to discuss the Pentagon budget. The Biden administration is reportedly prepared to ask for up to $800 billion in their 2023 defense budget as US inflation runs wild and the fear of recession looms in the US empire. Also, we discuss the long-term effect of massive military spending by the US government.The Critical Hour Co-hosts Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon come together to discuss censorship. The Biden administration's proposals for domestic terrorism laws are examined. The newest iteration of the domestic terrorism legislation appears to create an environment in which anyone who holds thoughts that run contrary to the official government narrative may be defined as a terrorist.Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss Africa. France is withdrawing from Mali as the people of the African nation take to the streets in massive demonstrations and civil disobedience against French colonial rule. Also, the Burkina Faso coup leader was inaugurated as president.Laith Marouf, broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, joins us to discuss the Middle East. Israel has reportedly launched fresh attacks on Syria near Damascus. Also, we discuss the US policy of using the entire Middle East as a free-fire zone resulting in years of merciless civilian slaughter, and settlers destroying 50 Palestinian olive trees near Salfit.Dan Lazare, investigative journalist and author of "The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy," joins us to discuss the NATO crisis. The invasion hoax is dissipating, but the crisis along the Russian border has not been abated. Also, there is increased shelling along the contact line in Eastern Ukraine, and some fear a US-sponsored Ukrainian offensive is in the offingLeo Flores, Latin America coordinator for Code Pink, joins us to discuss the Global South. The US Empire is using the Venezuelan people as pawns as they maintain brutal sanctions that cause untold suffering in the Bolivarian republic. Also, the Cuban communist party supports Syria's fight against terrorism and imperialism.Prof. Linwood Tauheed, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, joins us to discuss the economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has stated that she is pleased with the direction of the economy, but is still quite concerned about rising inflation. Also, based on historic patterns, bond yields are showing signs of an impending recession.

For Episode 4 of New World Coming, James Counts Early is joined by historian, activist, and former diplomat, Jesus “Chucho” Garcia to discuss the complexities of the state, social and civil organizations, and the people working together to deepen the principles of the Bolivarian Revolution. They also discuss the power relations of developing democracy, the struggle for reparations in Latin America, and his career work of studying African history. Jesus “Chucho” Garcia is the founder of Fundación AfroAmérica Y Diáspora Africana and former Venezuelan Ambassador to Angola.To learn more about James and Chucho's discussion, check out our Political Education platform at https://politicaleducation.peoplesforum.org/new-world-coming-ep-4 to see resources, texts, and a glossary of terms for each episode!New World Coming is an interview series program produced by The People's Forum. Our host for this program is James Counts Early, longtime thinker and collaborator of Afro-descendent movements and Black liberation struggles in the Americas. We will be interviewing scholars, activists, and leaders of the African diaspora on lessons from the history of anti-racist organizing.

Christian and Rudy join Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina, authors of Venezuela, The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Bolivarian  revolution. We cover the history of the revolution from its origins as a  reaction against the neoliberal adjustments in the late 80s, through  the electoral victory up to the declaration of the revolution as  socialist in 2006. We discuss Communes in both urban and rural settings,  and their role in the transition to socialism, the questions around Oil  and the Economy, the economic problems of the revolution, the shadows  of bureaucratization, the differences between the cities and the  countryside and possible way forwards for the revolution. Make sure to check Venezuela Analysis, and in particular their Youtube videos where they visit the Panal and Che Guevara communes.  

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is celebrating as, with almost all votes counted, they appear to have won 20 out of the country's 23 states in Sunday's regional “mega elections.” More than 70,000 candidates stood for one of 3,082 public positions, including local mayorships, councillors, regional legislators and state governors -- the vast majority of candidates affiliated with opposition parties.The landslide victory was watched over by international observers from 55 countries, including a delegation from the European Union, who praised the organizational capacity of the National Electoral Council, effectively endorsing the proceedings.This will no doubt anger many in Washington. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described the vote as a “grossly skewed” contest controlled by a dictatorship that carries out, “arbitrary arrests and harassment of political and civil society actors, criminalization of opposition parties' activities, bans on candidates across the political spectrum, manipulation of voter registration rolls, persistent media censorship, and other authoritarian tactics.”If this is indeed the case -- that the Maduro administration is autocratic and repressive --  why did so many people still come out to support and vote for Maduro and the PSUV? Joining Lowkey to discuss this is Diego Sequera, a columnist for investigative journalism outlet Mision Verdad. One of the sharpest and most cogent thinkers on radical politics, Sequera is also a member of the Samuel Robinson Institute, a think tank based in Caracas.While President Nicolás Maduro has undoubtedly presided over a period of serious economic dislocation, it is important to remember it was not always this way. The socialist movement first came to power in 1999 under Hugo Chavez who, in just a few short years, radically transformed the country.Under Chavez, school enrollment went from 45% to 90% nationwide. The number of people in primary education rose from only 500,000 in 1998 to 2.8 million by the time of his death in 2013 -- a 460% rise. Sequera described this as “the biggest literacy campaign in history.” “In a very few years, illiteracy, which was pretty high here, was eradicated completely… Here you had people 80 years old finishing their high school and then starting university,” he told Lowkey. This would have been unthinkable before the Bolivarian revolution.Thus, there remains a great deal of good will towards the PSUV. Sunday's result underscores the notion that the Venezuelan people blame the U.S. sanctions for their suffering, rather than purely pointing the finger at the government. MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/MintPressNews)

On November 21, Venezuela will hold its 27th election since Chávez came to power, critically this will be the first time since 2015 that Chavismo will face most of the opposition in an electoral contest after the self-styled Group of Four parties finally abandoned their boycott strategy.The third episode of the Venezuelanalysis podcast looks at the upcoming “mega elections” in Venezuela where over 70,000 candidates will vie for 3,082 positions. Apart from deciding regional authorities such as governors and mayors, the election will determine the fate of political gridlock in Venezuela.Host José Luis Granados Ceja talks to fellow VA member Paul Dobson about the issues in this election and the state of Chávez's model of a participatory democracy. We also hear from Venezuelan writer and theorist Reinaldo Iturriza, author of the book “El Chavismo Salvaje” and former Minister of the Communes and of Culture. Iturriza talks to VA about the potential for a reawakening of the Bolivarian grassroots and the return of the radical, US-backed wing of the opposition into the democratic process.Music:Embandolaos - Los Caimanes NegrosUh Ah, Chávez No Se Va

Photo:  The nephews of President Nicolás Maduro, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, after their arrest by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration on 10 November 2015. All the bad actors in one extradition.  @MaryAnastasiaOG  @WSJOpinion lth https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-funds-violent-latin-american-politics-venezuela-maduro-11635104102 Crime in Venezuela is widespread, with violent crimes such as murder and kidnapping increasing annually. In 2014, the United Nations attributed crime to the poor political and economic environment in the country—which, at the time, had the second highest murder rate in the world.  Rates of crime rapidly began to increase during the presidency of Hugo Chávez due to the institutional instability of his Bolivarian government, underfunding of police resources, and severe inequality.  Chávez's government sought a cultural hegemony by promoting class conflict and social fragmentation, which in turn encouraged "criminal gangs to kill, kidnap, rob and extort".[6] Upon Chávez's death in 2013, Venezuela was ranked the most insecure nation in the world by Gallup

Dr. Linwood Tauheed, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, joins us to discuss domestic politics. Congress is running out of time as the President works to get his economic agenda through Congress before he leaves for Europe at the end of the week. Also, progressives battle to keep a few social spending programs in the bill as they seem to be almost completely stripped from the legislation. Tunde Osazua, on the Africa Team of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and coordinator of BAP's "U.S. Out of Africa" Network, joins us to discuss Africa. International security observers again suspect the US empire as Sudan becomes the latest African nation to face a military coup. The prime minister has been arrested by the military and taken to an unknown location, as radio and TV stations in the capitol fall into the hands of the coup plotters.Steve Poikonen, national organizer for Action4Assange, joins us to discuss Julian Assange. Consortium News is reporting that "Ian Duncan Burnett, the most powerful judge in England and Wales, will join Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde on the bench next week for the two-day U.S. appeal in the extradition case of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange." The Assange case has completely disintegrated and some are holding out hope that he may reverse the trend of unfair and unreasonable findings by the court. Leo Flores, Latin America coordinator for Code Pink, joins us to discuss Venezuela. The Venezuelan government was working in a reasonable and professional manner in talks with the opposition when the talks were sabotaged by the Biden administration. The Biden team kidnapped Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab and illegally brought him to Miami. The appearance is that the administration has no intentions of holding honest negotiations with the Bolivarian republic. Laith Marouf, broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, joins us to discuss the Middle East. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remains one of the most influential politicians in Iraq. Al-Sadr's political followers have secured 70 seats in the latest election, and observers wonder if he can garner enough support to form a ruling coalition. Also, the US seems to be hitting roadblocks in their attempt to secure permission from Pakistan for the use of their airspace to continue their assault on Afghanistan. Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss President Putin's Valdai speech. President Putin infuriated the Davos crowd when he made pointed statements about the moral and economic decline in the West. Putin argued that the current model of neoliberal globalist capitalism serves only the rich and is creating destabilizing wealth inequality. Jonathan Kuttab, human rights lawyer, joins us to discuss Israel. Israel has effectively outlawed six Palestinian human rights organizations Friday by designating them as terrorist organizations. Many observers expect harsh police and/or military crackdowns on these groups as a result of this move.KJ Noh, peace activist, writer and teacher, joins us to discuss the US's relationship with the UN. The leaders of Russia and China have both recently made comments about the UN and the need for it to remain a stable body for international stability. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the US's recent moves to change the security council will destroy the credibility of the body and reduce it to a discussion platform.

The scholar and foreign policy analyst Moises Naim is from Venezuela, where his new novel 2 Spies in Caracas is set.  The book paints a frightening portrait of the late Bolivarian revolutionary Hugo Chavez and the corrupt, inept state he created.  We'll talk about Chavez' legacy and American attempts to combat it. Current President Nicolas Maduro came from behind Chavez' shadow and seems a dim replication in every way, except when it comes to clinging to power, at which he has so far excelled. 

Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss US sanctions and China. China is dealing a significant blow to the sanctions policy of the US empire. A major blow to the sanctions against Venezuela seems to be in the offing as China seems poised to revive the oil industry of the Bolivarian republic.

Greg Palast, investigative reporter, joins us to discuss the California recall election and the Democrats' new election bill. California Governor Gavin Newsom easily defeated Republican challenger Larry Elder in a recall election. Also, will the Democrats bypass the filibuster to enact their signature legislation? Dan Lazare, investigative journalist and author of "America's Undeclared War," joins us to discuss the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been completed and the last obstacle is to obtain the proper certifications. The Russophobic leaders in the Baltic States are working to thwart the operation. In response to the issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently stated "I was once again convinced that they are trying to adapt the entire policy of the European Union to the views, tastes, and manners of this Russophobic minority,"Scott Ritter, former UN weapon inspector in Iraq, joins us to discuss General Milley and former President Trump. A new book states that General Mark Milley was concerned over the possibility of President Trump attacking China and took significant steps to frustrate the possibility of that outcome. Was this a valiant act of heroism or an illegal coup? Did Milley also use this opportunity to stop the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as Trump had ordered?Kathy Kelly, American peace activist, joins us to discuss Pentagon spending. According to recent reports, upwards of 14 trillion dollars was spent by the Pentagon since 9/11. At least half of that sum was sucked up by contractors, with corporate giants such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon gobbling up the lion's share.Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss US sanctions and China. China is dealing a significant blow to the sanctions policy of the US empire. A major blow to the sanctions against Venezuela seems to be in the offing as China seems poised to revive the oil industry of the Bolivarian republic.Ajamu Baraka, former VP candidate for the Green Party, joins us to discuss the recent earthquake in Haiti and the issue of the international response bringing neoliberal economic pain to the people of the island nation. Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi, professor of medicine at George Washington University Hospital and founding director at Rodham Institute at GWU, joins us to discuss vaccine hesitancy. Dr. El-Bayoumi discusses some of the reasons for vaccine hesitancy and whether these obstacles can be overcome. Also, the team discusses what the surveys show as the main reasons for people refusing the vaccine.Dr. Linwood Tauheed, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, joins us to discuss North Korea. North and South Korea have both fired missiles into the sea recently, as the two Peninsula nations may be falling back into a downward spiral of relations.

Dan Lazare, investigative journalist, and Ted Rall, Political Cartoonist and Syndicated Columnist join us to discuss New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned from office amidst a notorious sexual harassment scandal. Cuomo said that the investigation is politically motivated and "New York tough means New York loving, and I love New York, and I love you. I would never want to be unhelpful in any way."K. J. Noh, peace activist, writer, and teacher, joins us to discuss the US military as a vector for the transmission of Covid. K.J. co-authored a scholarly article in which he examines the US military as a vector for transmittable diseases from a historical and current perspective. K.J. argues that "the underreporting of this disease vector notwithstanding, as our analysis will show there is well documented evidence for the military as a pathogen transmitter spanning over a century."Mark Sleboda, Moscow based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss Belarus. The US empire's recent moves to support regime change in Belarus have produced the opposite reaction from the former Soviet satellite nation as the nation's president announces plans to further integrate with Russia. Dr. Yolandra Hancock, board certified pediatrician and obesity medicine specialist, joins us to discuss the current major news stories regarding the ongoing covid crisis. Medical experts are working to understand why covid infections have hit the highest numbers since last February, before vaccines were widely available. Also, a seemingly partisan battle over school mask mandates is heating up, as children are set to return to school in most states. Laith Marouf, broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon joins us to discuss the attack on an Israel linked vessel named "Mercer Street." US leadership is sending contradicting signals as Secretary of State Tony Blinken blames Iran for the attack, as the Pentagon dispatches soldiers to Yemen allegedly to search for the persons responsible. Meanwhile, Iran denies any involvement and Israel pushes for a disastrous war against the Islamic Republic. Frederick B. Mills, professor of philosophy at Bowie State University and deputy director of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, joins us to discuss the Monroe doctrine. Professor Mills argues that the prosecution of the Monroe doctrine that the US has levied against the Bolivarian republic, Latin America and the Carribean is simply an external form of the same Jim Crow/Apartheid policies it has continually perpetrated against Black Americans. Steve Poikonen, national organizer for Action4Assange, joins us to discuss an odd situation in Buffalo. Now that the citizens of Buffalo have selected an avowed democratic socialist as the new mayor, the Democratic party establishment is exploring ways to circumvent that choice. The latest extra Democratic maneuver proposed by the city council involves dissolving the powers of the mayor into a new position called a "city manager."Leo Flores, Latin America coordinator for Code Pink, joins us to discuss Venezuela. The draconian US sanctions against the Bolivarian republic have drained an estimated $57.1 billion dollars in asset losses from the people of Venezuela. Also, regime change proponents are now pushing for "free and fair" elections in November, despite the reality that the Venezuela elections have been dubbed some of the most fair elections on Earth by international election observers.

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has outraged many of her supporters by waffling on a military invasion of Haiti and echoing neocon talking points on Cuba. KJ Noh, writer and peace activist, joins us to discuss China. The EU, NATO and US are unsurprisingly blaming China for a cyber attack on Microsoft exchange servers. Oddly, the consortium of imperial powers argues that the attack was carried out by criminal forces but still manages to blame their self-declared state nemesis. Also, Russia and China share the position that the world should not be ruled by a unipolar hyperpower.Investigative Reporter Max Blumenthal joins us to discuss AOC's take on Haiti and Cuba. US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has outraged many of her supporters by waffling on a military invasion of Haiti and echoing neocon talking points on Cuba. Asked about a potential US invasion of Haiti, the young congresswoman stumbled through a statement opposing it but added qualifiers that it'd be bad “right now” and “without any sort of plan.”Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss Luke Harding's latest Russia Gate article. In another stunning display of intelligence agency public relations work, Russia gate propagandist Luke Harding penned a self-serving article in which he claims that Western intelligence agencies have come upon an insider Kremlin document that supports nearly every debunked Russia Gate theory that he has pushed for the last five years.Ted Rall, political cartoonist and syndicated columnist, joins us to discuss the Pegasus Spyware scandal. The Washington Post is reporting that Israeli Pegasus spyware has been found on the cell phones of numerous activists and journalists worldwide. The notorious spyware can infect a phone without a click and can even target encrypted messages because it gets the information either before or after it has been sent and decoded.Nino Pagliccia, activist and writer, joins us to discuss Venezuela. In his latest article in the Orinoco Tribune, Nino argues that "By all accounts, the Bolivarian revolution is resisting one of the most ferocious attacks from the US empire and its ideologically aligned European and Canadian allies." He goes on to posit that the US is committing political suicide by opposing a multi-polar world.Kathy Kelly, American Peace activist joins us to discuss Afghanistan. Kathy has an excellent article at antiwar.com in which she reviews the horrific damage that has been inflicted on the people of Afghanistan. In detail, she recounts story after story of death and destruction and finally comes to a conclusion that few reasonable souls can oppose.Martin Sieff, senior fellow at the American University in Moscow, joins us to discuss Ukraine. Their controversial Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, facing claims of corruption and far-right links, resigned after seven years in the position. Also, a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker has hailed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision not to support a proposal by Ukraine's President to discuss the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, TX, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss a new documentary about the late David Kelly. The mysterious death of UK Iraq war whistleblower David Kelly raised suspicion around the world as the circumstances did not match the claim of suicide. Although he was alleged to have cut his wrists, the amount of blood at the scene was inconsistent with death from exsanguination. A new documentary calls the British government to account.

Exposing mainstream media coverage of life in Venezuela and showing what life is truly like in the Latin American country. Today's guest is Yhamir Chabur, a Colombian activist based in New York City. Yhamir recently traveled to Venezuela to participate in the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples of the World. The Congress was held on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo, in which Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar defeated Spanish royalist forces. It eventually led to the independence of Venezuela. The Battle of Carabobo continues to inspire the country's Bolivarian Revolution. Unmasking Imperialism exposes imperialist propaganda in mainstream media. Hosted by Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez.

Photo: Monolithic portal. (Puerta del Sol. Tihuanacu, first excavations) 1903-1904 .CBS Eye on the World with John BatchelorCBS Audio Network@Batchelorshow#NewWorldReport: The Bolivarian Wind.  Senadora Maria Fernanda Cabal. @MariaFdaCabal Joseph Humire @JMHumire @SecureFreeSochttps://www.securefreesociety.org

This is part two one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. The book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela.  Cira Pascual Marquina is Political Science professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas and a writer and editor for Venezuelanalysis.com. Chris Gilbert teaches Marxist political economy at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. His articles have appeared in Rebelión, LaHaine, Monthly Review, and CounterPunch. Gilbert and Pascual Marquina are creators of the Marxist educational program Escuela de Cuadros, broadcast on Venezuelan public television. In part two of our discussion here, we ask Pasqual Marquina and Gilbert why Chavez continues to be such an important figure for the left in Venezuela years after his death. We also talk about tendencies within the left that can tend to denounce or renounce state power. The editors discuss critiques within the book related to clientelism, and their thoughts on role of the party and of direct democracy - and the voices of the people - in a revolutionary process. Please support Venezuelanalysis.com as the best English language source of information coming out of Venezuela. And of course if you appreciate the work we do bringing you interviews like this, please remember to support us on patreon if you are able.  

This is part one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. This book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, Campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela.  The book offers a view of both the impacts of US imperialism and sanctions in Venezuela, but also the voices of the Venezuelan people on the pathway out of the existing crisis and toward socialism.  In this first part of our conversation, Cira and Chris talk about the subjects they interview in their book. We also discuss internationalism, US sanctions, some tendencies within the Bolivarian revolution, and some of the challenges that face rentier economies like Venezuela’s. Gilbert and Pascual Marquina also share insights on the communes and the struggles of campesinos and why the represent the most revolutionary possibilities for the present and future of the Bolivarian process. A couple quick plugs, please support Venezuelanalysis.com as the best English language source of information coming out of Venezuela. And of course if you appreciate the work we do bringing you interviews like this, please remember to support us on patreon if you are able.

Ben Norton speaks with Venezuelan journalist Diego Sequera about the far-right government in Colombia, its close links to drug cartels and death squads, Latin America's anti-imperialist Bolivarian movement, the brutally violent repression of the Colombian left, and the false positives scandal, in which the Colombian military massacred over 6400 innocent people and falsely claimed they were socialist guerrillas. This is part 2 of our lengthy livestream with Diego: youtube.com/watch?v=WlRl0ZVUrHE Diego's website Misión Verdad: misionverdad.com Follow Diego on Twitter: twitter.com/QueraElse

Anya Parampil, Max Blumenthal, and Brandon Madsen join Kevin to discuss the Biden Administration’s continued recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela, the history of the Bolivarian revolution, and a bit of a debate about how socialists should view it and the government headed by Maduro and the PSUV.

In this double episode Raul Barbano and Michelle Munjanattu report back about Venezuela's December 6th, 2020 National Assembly elections as they served as election observers, and speak about the Bolivarian revolution, the impact of sanctions on Venezuela and the economic and political crisis facing the country, the Lima Group's role in capitalist accumulation in the region, U.S. and Canadian imperialism and ways social movements are mobilizing against the crisis. This episode also offers rich reflections and examples of how to build a communal and socialist society and offer lessons from the global south on how to resist capitalism and emphasizes the importance of political education and solidarity in struggle, and shares liberatory visions for another world.

When we last heard from Clif Ross, Venezuela's socialist dictatorship seemed to be on the brink of collapse. Months later, Nicolás Maduro has managed to cling to power throughout the blackouts and riots that have darkened a country with so much natural wealth and potential for prosperity.Clif, a poet, film director, and former Bolivarian revolutionary, lost many of his former “comrades” when he conclusively rejected socialist ideology once it became impossible for him to ignore its failure in Venezuela. His memoir, Home from the Dark Side of Utopia: A Journey through American Revolutions, documents this conversion and was the subject of Bob's discussion with him back in January. However, that conversation left little time to dig into the current situation in Venezuela, which is deteriorating more and more each day.Since January, Clif published a lengthy mea culpa of sorts in Quillette, documenting how he “had drifted — at first gradually, but then definitively — into the camp of my former ‘enemies,' persuaded by their narrative and by the evidence before my own eyes.”The article was publicized by Jordan Peterson and others whose praise further eroded whatever remaining sympathies the hard-left may have had for Clif. Despite the adulation from conservatives and libertarians, Clif remains an independent thinker who won't be pigeonholed into any ideological camp.Neither left nor right, Clif's worldview is rooted in more nuanced theological and philosophical ideas. He subscribes to Thomas Sowell's view, laid out in The Vision of the Anointed, which pits the unconstrained, or utopian worldview against the constrained, or tragic worldview. The latter assumes that people behave in their self interest, and that governments should not be too ambitious in trying to change human nature.Clif returns to the show this Sunday with producer and guest host Charlie Deist to pick up where he left off, discussing the similarities between Bolivarian socialism and other versions of “Apocalyptic Utopian Messianic Millenarianism (AUMM)” seen throughout history.When the tragedy in Venezuela is viewed through the lens of mankind's religious yearnings, Hugo Chavez emerges as a kind of false messiah — one anointed by himself and his followers to usher in heaven on Earth (paging Dr. Muravchik). When the ailing Chavez failed to bring about the promised socialist utopia, he hand-picked Nicolas Maduro as his replacement in an alternative form of apostolic succession. The remaining true believers are scrambling to resuscitate the failing revolution, accusing the opposition leader John Guiado of being a puppet of U.S. imperialists, and calling the popular protests an illegimate coup.Charlie and Clif discuss the “synoptic delusion” of socialist dictators, which leads them to believe they can steer markets and society through centralized control.

Just days ago, the European Union joined the U.S. and dozens of other countries in recognizing Juan Guiadó as the new interim President of Venezuela. While the ousting of Hugo Chavez's strongman successor Nicolas Maduro is not a done deal, those who follow Venezuelan politics closely predict the imminent demise of the brutal socialist regime. Will this be the tipping point for one of the most repressive governments in the Western hemisphere? We may know soon.The horrors of life in Venezuela are well-documented, and have been presented on this show in the past by guests like Fergus Hodgson (aka “the Stateless Man”), who shared his first-hand experience of South American dysfunction. This Sunday, we will hear from someone who has been positioned even closer to the center of Venezuelan politics, first as a supporter, then as an arch-critic.Clifton Ross is a Berkeley-based writer, film journalist and poet who describes his conversion from Bolivarian co-revolutionary to skeptic and eventual enemy of socialism in his memoir, Home from the Dark Side of Utopia. He had been reporting on Latin American revolutionary and social movements since 1982, when he produced the 2016 documentary titled “In the Shadow of the Revolution.”This project earned him the disdain of his former comrades—including many arm-chair revolutionaries from the U.S., who never witnessed the devastation of the Chavista regime firsthand. For decades, he was a true believer in the Bolivarian project, and at one time was even put up in the Caracas Hilton by the government during the Second World Poetry Festival of Venezuela. Despite completely rejecting socialism now, Ross remains in solidarity with many of the social movements that have taken root in opposition to Chavez/Maduro.The latest opposition coalition includes elements from center-right to left. Guiadó, the rightly elected president of the National Assembly (akin to America's Congress) has gained support of the international community by leading the charge to restore fair elections, representative democracy, and all of the civic institutions that make dictators shudder. Unlike in the past, when such regime change was spearheaded by U.S. intelligence agencies, this time it seems like a natural result of Maduro's unpopularity combined with the incompetence of his patrons in the military, state-owned industry, and media. (Contrary to what you may have heard, the opposition is succeeding in spite of not because ofsupport from President Trump's support.)A Conversion of SortsRoss's views shifted most dramatically in 2013, after seeing how enforcing socialism in Venezuela required the use of totalitarian tactics. In a recent interview, he was quoted saying:“I no longer think socialism has anything of value to offer the world, even if I think it was a useful movement in the twentieth century to raise important issues of solidarity, social justice, class conflict and so on. But the very fact that it required a totalitarian state to destroy a market economy and centralize all power so as to guarantee the establishment and continuation of its utopian project entailed the elimination of real solidarity and real social justice. How can you have solidarity when you're afraid the worker standing next to you might be undercover police who could arrest you for saying the wrong thing?”His memoir makes the same point, nothing that all political ideologies are rooted in a mythological idea of the Revolution (capital R) along with some messianic ideal of perfection. In socialism this is embodied by the Workers. In the neoliberal ideology it is the Self-Regulating Market. True revolutions, he says, are a restoration or conservation of original principles—not the creation of Utopia. Many of Ross's ideas will be familiar to classical liberals, but he also embraces less talked about “first principles,” such as those promoted by the indigenous social movements of South America. Native peoples are especially concerned with the extractive practices of Venezuela's oil industry, which could end up endangering the planet in the name of loftier ideals of “progress” and “the people.” Filling the void left by the old Leninist vanguard in Venezuela will require a democratic patchwork of smaller social movements. These can only be sustained, Ross argues, by liberal democracy with checks and balances on power.Clif joined Bob for the full hour to explain how he came to see the truth about himself and the “Revolution,” in all its complex shades of light. They dissect Clif's journey from his conservative Christian upbringing on Air Force Bases, through liberation theology in Berkeley and the Zapatistas in Mexico, to his career as a skeptical independent writer/filmmaker. Lastly, they discuss what fundamentalist religions share in common with radical socialism, and how in the long run left-wing and right authoritarianism converge on a vision of Apocalyptic Utopian Messianic Millenarianism (AUMM).

The 200th edition of Dissident Island Radio is ready for your ears! Featuring: – London Campaign Against Arms Trade giving a round up of the Stop The Arms Fair actions (00:01:20 – 00:11:40) – our friends from The Final Straw Radio chatting to Yellowhammer Alternative, an Alabama-based autonomous mutual aid group, about their relief work around Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Jose (00:18:00 – 00:29:30) – LDMG‘s Andy live from Liverpool supporting and reporting on the anti-fascists trial (00:30:00 – 00:37:50) – A member of El Libertario, Venezuela's biggest Anarchist news source, on the latest phase of Bolivarian dictatorship and the possibilities for spreading anarchist modes of organisation (00:41:30 – 01:07:00) …and DJ Dirt Bird plays us out with some hard and heavy drum n bass! (01:13:00 – 02:12:40)

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on iTunes. We can't do this show without your support!!! On this episode, Roqayah and Kumars talk to George Ciccariello-Maher. George is a writer, radical political theorist, and currently Associate Professor of Politics at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has taught radical theory and politics at Drexel, U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. His first book, a history of revolutionary movements in Venezuela entitled We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution, was published in 2013, and he has more books on the way. We discuss the rise of Chavez in Venezuela, and recent setbacks for the Bolivarian revolution following his death. We examine the reasons for these setbacks, and discuss what other leftist movements can learn from Venezuela. We also discuss other countries in the region including Honduras, and the role of western entities like the US government and the IMF in fighting against leftist gains made in these countries. Follow George on twitter at @ciccmaher to learn more.

Outlawing Natural Health, The Fracking Bubble, The Life and Death of Hugo Chavez Imagine a middle-aged couple starting a simple business. They provide herbs or vitamins or some other innocuous product to the public. Let's suppose they also promote the health benefits of taking this product. Under current laws, the couple could find themselves the target of a sting operation in which an armed RCMP SWAT team might swoop down on their residence, bust their door down, stick guns in the occupants' faces and force them to sit on a couch for eleven hours while the agents search for contraband. According to constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati, not only could this happen, it has happened! In Canada! The offensive legislation in question relates to an Act that governs so-called Natural Health Products. Dietary supplements, vitamins, herbs, foods and any other such natural item have proven to be far less dangerous than most over the counter prescription medications. These are now being targeted by Health Canada as a potential health hazard. Galati is mounting a legal challenge against Health Canada. He tells the Global Research News Hour why the legislation on the books is insidious and unconstitutional and needs to be changed. The Fracking Bubble According to Deborah Rodgers of Energy Policy Forum, the current boom in shale oil and gas is not only unsustainable and environmentally contentious, it is built on unreliable estimates and projections. In this interview she explains the critical difference between reserve estimates and resource estimates, and why Wall Street is deriving profits from what appears to be a bubble akin to the Sub Prime Mortgage bubble which burst in 2008. The Death of Chavez Millions around the world are mourning the death of Bolivarian leader Hugo Chavez who died of cancer on Tuesday March 5 at the age of 58. Chavez defied US imperial aims including a coup attempt in 2002. He has since been a thorn in the side of both the Bush and the Obama administrations. As the Venezuelan people grieve and admirers around the world pay homage, the Global Research News Hour brings in frequent guest and Chavez admirer Stephen Lendman to examine Chavez's impact on international geo-politics. We also discuss the possibility that the Venezuelan President may have been the victim of a US assassination attempt!

Holding out Hope still?  President McHope just bent over for the Religinazis, and while thus positioned, gave a reach around to the Bankers on foreclosures while deepthroating the Super Pacs.   Still think that Electoral Politics mean a damned thing? The time to Occupy is now more than ever.  It is far past time to remove the sham of Freedom and have a People's Revolution - perhaps a Jeffersonian Revolution ala a Bolivarian one. Then we have poor misguided Chris Hedges wringing his hands so hard he broke his Rosary over a broken window while applauding Greek Riots.  Puhhhlleeeez.   Plenty to rant about tonight, my friends.  I'm ready to roll!