Guest: Ben Norton. We talk about the latest developments in Bolivia, life in Nicaragua, the new Cold War with Russia and China and we wrapped up with a discussion about big picture geopolitics.
Guest: Jeb Sprague. We discuss how regime change projects seem to be on overdrive right now, the key role played by the Organization of American States (OAS) in regime change operations in Latin American and Caribbean states (former colonial states). Recently in the Commonwealth of Dominica (an island country in the West Indies), there was a successful resistance to regime change. In Bolivia, there was strong resistance as well, but the coup plotters succeeded. Jeb’s research and reporting on the role of Bolivia’s top police and military brass in planning and executing the coup shows that it was a long term project with training at the School of the Americas.
Guest: Ben Norton. We discuss the coup in Bolivia where the recently reelected president, Evo Morales, was forced to step down by the military leaders and later flee to Mexico. An extreme right-wing opposition and fascist paramilitary then moved in to take control. Ben explains some of the groups and individuals involved in the coup and the support and involvement of other Latin American countries and the United States.
Guest: Hunter DeRensis. Hunter describes the US foreign policy establishment, or “The “Blob”, as a “self-anointed mandarin class or, if you prefer, deep state, that has largely operated unmolested until the advent of Trump now appears to believe that it can foil, or even subvert, the policies of a president it deems unfit for office, a development that should worry Democrats and Republicans alike.” We talk about William Taylor, an old Cold warrior member of “The Blob” and discuss how they are driving the impeachment effort. We also talk about the anonymous op-ed published in the NYT last year and a new book by the same anonymous author, titled “The Warning” published this month. Lastly, I ask Hunter to speculate on who that anonymous author might be and he gives us his theory and the reasoning behind it.
Guest: Elijah Magnier. We discuss the uprising and protests across Iraq that turned violent this week, with over a hundred deaths and thousands of injuries.
Guest: Patrick Lawrence. We discuss President Trump’s relationship with his chosen cabinet hawks, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and what Lawrence sees as a foreign policy coup by the Bolton-Pompeo axis.
Guest: Joe Emersberger. We talk about the latest failed coup in Venezuela, the sanctions causing tens of thousands of deaths, and the level of political support or resistance to intervention in the US and Europe. We also discuss Canada’s foreign policy and involvement in the American and British empires. Lastly we assess the risk of a larger war with Russia and China as they oppose American aggression and sanctions in various parts of the world.
Columnist and analyst Ted Snider joins us to talk about patterns in US foreign policy and history as it relates to American coup attempts in Venezuela. We discuss the well established history of American backed coups in Venezuela and how democratic nationalist leaders like Maduro are not tolerated because they’re too difficult to subjugate.
Ted provides some detail about Juan Guaidó and his extreme opposition party and the role that resources and oil play in these regime change operations. We also explain our objections to the way that many people frame their opposition to the coup in that they ultimately help the advance the regime change narrative by structuring their argument as follows: “Maduro is a bad dictator but coups are bad too”.
Dan Kovalik joins us today to talk about the situation in Venezuela. US officials and almost all media outlets have made claims about the illegitimacy of the Venezuelan presidential election last May, using that claim to recognize a little known opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the new interim president, replacing President Nicolás Maduro. Dan begs to differ with that characterization, having witnessed that election process, up close, while he was on the ground in Venezuela as an election monitor. He shares that experience with us today and many other insights on the country, the region, and the media coverage and politics of it here in the United States.