The Colonels Corner Corporate Coup (Venezuela) Part 5

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Transcript

0:00 Well, I don't know where Bridget or SR is. So I'm going to go ahead and get started so that we can get started on time. Let me go live over here on Rumble so we can get this party started. I just want to apologize to everyone for missing the four o'clock. I had a minor panic. I had lost my phone.

0:33 And just for you guys to know that I'm perfectly human like everybody else. And I have an Apple phone where normally you can just do the find my, find me, whatever feature on there. But where I left it, it had a very low battery. So it died and there was no find me feature. So we were scrambling around at the last minute trying to find my phone.

1:02 I found it while my husband found it technically outside. And anyway, this is much better because I'm not like frazzled and running around like a chicken with my head cut off. So we're on chapter three of the corporate coup talking about Venezuela. We finished up the chapter last episode on Alex Schwab, who I just saw.

1:34 Hosted a couple of different times and you guys may have seen ghost comment on it as well. Ghost of Beast Patrick Henry. If you guys don't follow him, please do. Such a smart guy. Anyway, this one is the sexy tricks of the information war. And it starts off with a Mexican-American news anchor.

2:02 Jorge Ramos, which I'm sure you guys have heard of. He's the face of Univision, a TV personality in Spanish language media. And Univision is a multinational corporation that consistently ranks in the top most watched Spanish language channel in the United States.

2:31 Within days of Washington's recognition of Guaido being Guido, however you pronounce his name, Guaido, as the president of Venezuela, as if he won the election, President Nicolas Maduro attempted to reach Univision's vast audience by welcoming Ramos to Caracas.

3:02 Around the time that, oh, there she is. Let me bring Bridget in. Okay. Around the time of Ramos's February 2019 visit with Maduro, Washington announced its intent to force a convoy of humanitarian aid into Venezuela and began assembling a military presence.

3:34 on the border with Colombia to accompany the aid package. Venezuelans officials and many citizens viewed the shipment, which was scheduled for February 23rd, as an attempted invasion of their country. They noted that because neither the UN nor the International Red Cross was managing the operation, that the aid would ultimately

4:04 be rammed across the Venezuelan border by U.S. military. Fears the cargo contained more than just charity were underscored by the fact that Elliot Abrams, Mr. Iran-Contra convict, who had previously weaponized humanitarian aid, you know, like into places like Nicaragua, had been covertly shipping arms with aid.

4:39 And he was actively involved in this entire effort. So they had every right to believe that this was more than just about aid. In anticipation of the U.S. move, Venezuelan's government set up a blockade consisting of oil tankers and shipping containers along the bridge, basically their only way in.

5:10 Though the bridge had never been open for public traffic anyway, the resulting visual aided Washington's narrative that Maduro was attempting to starve his own people. Again, the analogy, because we're living through that right now with the rhetoric from the left, that Trump's starving the people in America, even though they all voted no to continue.

5:41 snap benefits. They portrayed Maduro as indifferent to their suffering. The stunt's success was entirely reliant on the press's willingness to accept that version of events without question, and Washington found no greater collaborator than Univision. Like many in corporate U.S. media, Ramos made his name

6:17 in television via a relentless drive to place himself at the center of every story. His most notable exhibition came in 2015 when he courted the attention of the establishment liberals by confronting then-candidate Trump at a press conference in Iowa. Trump opened the event by calling on a different reporter.

6:44 Ramos immediately leapt from his seat and began barking out questions on immigration policy. Trump told him to sit down. You weren't called on. Go back to Univision, Trump said. When Ramos refused to yield the floor, Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, escorted the spotlight hungry reporter out of the room. Though Ramos was eventually allowed to return and ask questions.

7:14 His grandstanding and subsequent ejection transformed him into a hero of the anti-Trump resistance. The corporate media outlets played his exchange repeatedly, heralding Ramos as a crusader on immigrant issues. The truth is that no reporter, no matter how prominent, is entitled to ask questions at a press conference.

7:58 The reality did not stop Ramos' colleagues from inundating him with praise and admiration. The Canadian government broadcaster, CBC,

8:14 produced a 13-minute profile of Univision's host. Why Jorge Ramos took on Trump was the name of it. During the report, Ramos admitted that his crew had conspired to stage the confrontation with Trump before they even boarded the plane to Iowa. Television does not happen. Television is produced, he said. It's created.

8:45 The confession offered a window into his bizarre view of his function as a journalist. Most reporters operate with an awareness that their duty is not to produce news, it's to report it. Ramos' theatrical style was on full display when he traveled to Venezuela's palace for a sit-down interview with Maduro.

9:12 Long before any footage of the exchange was published, reports emerged that local authorities had detained him. The news anchor eventually surfaced on social media to claim the Venezuelan police had indeed sequestered his team, held them for two hours, confiscated their equipment, and seized their cell phones. In a video posted from the Caracas hotel, Ramos explained the incident occurred after he whipped out an iPad.

9:42 and offered to show Maduro footage of hungry Venezuelan children scrounging for food. He just couldn't stand it. He didn't want to continue the interview, Ramos said. Less than 24 hours later, Ramos and his crew left Venezuela. As corporate media and international freedom of the press organizations called to denounce Venezuelan's government for its handling of Ramos.

10:13 Caracas released limited information about it. The communication minister, Jorge Rodriguez, the government's de facto spokesperson, promptly denounced the episode as a montage choreographed by the State Department. In a February 25th tweet, Rodriguez noted that hundreds of journalists have passed through the palace and received decent treatment.

10:44 lend ourselves to cheap shows, he said. Maduro sat down for hostile interviews with Western networks, including the BBC, ABC, and Euronews, within days of Ramos's trip to Venezuela. Though each of those interviews were subsequently produced, Ramos expressed doubt that his conversation with Maduro would ever see the light of day. At this point, we don't have a cell phone or an interview.

11:12 I think we'll never have the interview, he said. They don't want the world to see what we did. But the world would eventually see what they did. Just over three months following his trip to Caracas, Univision announced that it would air the interview between its lead anchor and Venezuela's president. According to the network, it secured a copy of the disappeared tape.

11:40 thanks to news sources inside of Venezuela, who got a hold of the video and supposedly smuggled it out of the country. Univision's account sounded more like a play or a TV script than any plausible explanation about the tape's sudden appearance. But no one bothered to question him. Instead, outlets from the Associated Press to the Daily Mail printed virtually

12:12 commercials advertising it, pumping up the broadcast that would feature Ramos providing context to what transpired before and during the exchange. The quote unquote censored interview aired at 7 p.m. on a Sunday on June 2nd. It opened with a shot of President Maduro and Ramos seated face to face in gold chairs in a garden.

12:41 There was a water fountain in the back, and Ramos opened the interview with an insult. Quote, you know you are not the legitimate president, so what should I call you? Unquote. Maduro briefly referenced a pocket-sized edition of their constitution before answering, quote, I only have one name, Nicolas Maduro.

13:10 I am a worker, a simple man. I am popular. I was voted and reelected into office. So it is up to you what you call me. But I have welcomed you here to the palace. The Univision host continued his antagonistic tone and proceeded to direct one loaded question after another, loudly speaking over the president's words and cutting him off at every attempt. I am a journalist.

13:42 Ramos insisted. Maduro says, you're not a journalist, Jorge. You know this. He branded him a right-wing opponent to the revolution. Venezuelan's president went on to explain that he agreed to sit down with him, knowing the interview would be contentious because he wanted to speak to as many Venezuelans that lived in the United States.

14:10 Maduro hardly was allowed to speak or even finish a thought. The interview was constantly interrupted with relentless decorations, including your revolution has failed terribly. At one point, Ramos tried to hand Maduro a list of 400 Venezuelan political prisoners. Many of them were the violent people involved in the coup attempt.

14:40 Maduro responded to him, take your trash, Jorge. You will swallow your provocation with Coca-Cola, he added, equating Ramos's performance with a corporate US formula. Jorge continued, people are eating from the trash. I saw it. Maduro says, I saw it in New York. I saw it in Miami. After subjecting himself to just over 15 minutes worth of his

15:16 sensationalist antic, Maduro ended the conversation. This interview doesn't make any sense for me or for you. Ramos announced his wish to show the president a video of a man picking through the trash in Caracas. Maduro said, I think it's best that we end this. He thanked Ramos for his time and walked off.

15:43 Video of the exchange contradicted Ramos's claim that Maduro had canceled their discussion after being presented with a video of hungry children. Instead, it captured the president of Venezuela growing increasingly agitated with the interviewer's constant interruptions and disrespectful behavior until he simply gave up the conversation. By the time the interview aired, however, Ramos

16:09 had already fulfilled his duty to create news, a new controversy. Washington-hyped campaign for its February 23rd invasion of Venezuela under the guise of humanitarian aid missions transcended Univision's studio. Leading the festival of interventionists was CNN's correspondent Nick Valencia.

16:38 who filed a February 17th dispatch from the airport tarmac in Colombia, as U.S. military aircraft described as aid planes taxied behind him. From his post mere miles from the border, Valencia reported that planes containing goods such as rice and beans and other household products that could not be found in Venezuela, an assertion

17:06 debunked by everyone who had ever bothered to visit the country. Ana and her colleagues watched Valencia's report from Caracas' from an apartment in Caracas. She was there at the time. By then, we had looked at several local grocery stores and confirmed for ourselves that the products he listed were readily available for purchase.

17:37 It seemed the images of empty supermarket shelves turned out at the height of Venezuela's supply shortages were being used and they were not current. Instead, the question for Venezuela, for Venezuelans that we met, was not whether they could find food, but whether they could afford it. At the time, the buying power of average Venezuelans were hampered by hyperinflation because of the economic.

18:08 Venezuela's high inflation rate was a deliberate product of the embargoes. Their vast wealth was allowed to function. They were not allowed to function as the petro-state that they were. This meant the country largely failed to develop domestic production capabilities in the past because, as I had said earlier,

18:40 During the time that the West had basically occupied Venezuela because of their oil, people like Nelson Rockefeller had bought up all the grocery chains and many other aspects of the country. So when the Americans were expelled, there was a lot of manufacturing that was not indigenous to the country because they were importing it. And you can't build that overnight, as we're finding out here.

19:14 Throughout that period, the US and European happily enabled Caracas's import dependence in exchange for dominating the oil fields. As Venezuela reasserted its sovereign authority over its land, the vital foreign supplies died because of the boycotts. By 2015, US sanctions had dramatically limited Venezuela's import capacity.

19:42 spurred a national scarcity crisis and plunged the country into the most dramatic economic contraction in Latin America's history. As products became unavailable, a black market for basic goods cropped up beyond the government's reach, driving up inflation. Throughout the import crunch, foreign media broadcast images of Venezuelans

20:10 bear supermarket shelves and portrayed it as an indictment of the failure of their system, never mentioning anything about the sanctions and the lack of supply and their inability to trade. They also failed to mention Venezuela's private sector, not its government, controlled the majority of the domestic common market throughout the crisis, with non-state

20:46 entities accounting for an average of 61% of GDP between the years 2009 and 2018. Media reports also overlooked the fact that Venezuela's inflation rate was not a mere side effect of U.S. sanctions, but their intended result. As Agathe Demarius, a global forecasting director of The Economist intelligence unit, confessed,

21:17 during a February 2003 interview with the Carnegie Endowment for Democracy think tank, sanctions that tend to work best are the ones that impose hardship on the population. We want the population of the targeted countries to tell their government that they want them to change. He went on to say, so one tool to do that

21:45 is to fuel inflation in a targeted country by essentially making access, for instance, to resources much more difficult. He went on, we need to recognize that this is a policy dilemma. On one hand, we don't want people in sanctioned countries to suffer bull crap. But on the other hand,

22:11 That's the most effective way for the U.S. to gain concessions. His blatant admission that U.S. sanctions were explicitly designed to drive supply shortages and fuel inflation was the case in Venezuela. By the end of 2018, the opposition controlled the National Assembly, claimed the prices for basic foods in the country were doubling every 19 days.

22:41 In a dictatorship, how do you have opposition controlling the Congress? I don't think that's allowed in an actual dictatorship. But it was a fact in Venezuela. It kept Venezuela on a roller coaster with a stranglehold on their local economy, even when products began to resume being placed on the shelf. Even if Venezuela's supermarkets were well stocked, the price...

23:14 was outrageous. By the end of February 2019, Venezuela's economy had fallen so far that the daily exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the local boulevard was not set by any state or genuine market force, but by Twitter. Each morning, a U.S.-based news site called Dollar Today sent out a tweet dictating the boulevards.

23:45 Exchange rate. Whether we were cashing out at a restaurant, paying for groceries, or picking up snacks from a street, vendors calculated our check based on that tweet. They would quite literally take out their phones, show us the tweet, and tabulate our bill. Caracas made several attempts to block Dollar Today's reach inside of Venezuela. To Noah Bell.

24:14 and even filed a case in U.S. courts formally objecting to it. And again, how is that possible in a dictatorship that you can't control your media? Dollar Today's stunning ability to drive up Venezuela's inflation rate from beyond the country's borders eventually led to Wall Street Journal branding it an enemy Maduro fears most.

24:45 According to the Journal, a Venezuelan immigrant named Gustavo Diaz ran the enterprise while moonlighting as a Home Depot employee in Alabama. Also adding a mysterious labor to the case, Venezuela's unusual bout with inflation was tied directly to this immigrant in the United States.

25:17 According to economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, U.S. sanctions not only contributed to Venezuela's soaring inflation rate, but also prevented Maduro's government from redressing the crisis. They noted that in the seven hyperinflationary periods recorded in Latin America since World War II, government successfully remedied the situation through simple policy fixes.

25:44 Thanks to the government intervention, the median length of these hyperinflation periods had lasted about four months. Venezuela, on the other hand, was bogged down by hyperinflation for four years, 12 times longer than the regional median time. According to the two economists, this phenomenon was a result of the U.S. sanctions that cut Venezuela off from international financial markets.

26:14 an act that impeded Caracas' ability to implement policies historically deployed to counter hyperinflation, which is typically driven by populations' unwillingness to hold the local currency. They pointed to an example in Bolivia, which in 1985 was able to cut its hyperinflation within 10 days by pegging the currency to the U.S. dollar.

26:43 Because they maintained a fixed dollar exchange rate, Bolivians gained confidence in their domestic currency and hyperinflation moderated. In modern Venezuela, however, U.S. restrictions blocked the government from accessing dollars. Such considerations of history and economics were of little importance to the international press, particularly as they greased the wills.

27:12 of Washington's February 23rd Venezuela's aid invasion. According to regime change media mill, Maduro's rejection of the U.S. military's presence on his border was rooted because he was a despot regime guy. Humanitarian aid arrives. This was a headline. Venezuelan aid arrives for Venezuela, but Maduro blocks it. Another headline.

27:41 Maduro rejects humanitarian aid. Another headline. Maduro's government rejects humanitarian aid, announces shipment of food to Colombia. Indeed, Venezuela's government did enroll its initiative to deliver 20,000 boxes of food to an impoverished Colombian border town located nearby. A clear effort to highlight Washington's hyper.

28:11 critical lack of concern for those suffering under the pro-U.S. government in Bogota, Colombia. To the charge that he was ignoring the plight of his population by refusing U.S. aid, however, Maduro replied, if Washington truly cared about ordinary Venezuelans, all they had to do was lift the sanctions. We can feed our own people without them.

28:40 While the U.S. government and its corporate media proxies demonized Maduro, Caracas summoned the popular power to flaunt their rejection of Washington's regime change scheme. Throughout February 2019, Venezuela's government invited several working class supporters that had voted for Maduro. February 23rd approached.

29:13 The thousands of Venezuelans poured into Caracas' city center to sign an open letter to the U.S. public that explicitly denounced foreign intervention in their country. They are here because we elected a president, not Guaido, said one woman. They renounced the Guaido coup. Anya walked up to an endless line of people wanting to sign the letter and ask what their message was to us.

29:51 Their response often was to tell Trump, don't come here with the U.S. military. One said, I am here supporting my country. I'm not going to let any of the trash come here. Our country is sovereign. Many of the people feared that Washington would soon escalate military aggression against their country. Not like it's happened there before.

30:26 They did not want intervention. They did not want war. Had anyone paid or coerced them to participate in the action, she asked. Every one of them said no. We're here of our own free will for the legacy of our country and Hugo Chavez. We are here so that they lift the blockade. Let us live calmly and happily because we are a people of peace.

30:59 We have our own riches. Let us use them. The fact that so many Venezuelans blamed U.S. policy and not their own government for the hardship that was demonstrated illustrated to Aña that the sanctions were unlikely to foment a Maduro ouster. If anything, they were making them more determined to survive. What struck Aña most about the congregation

31:30 that she encountered in Caracas was the fact that it did not exist in foreign media. The faces of Venezuelans did not appear on CNN or BBC. No one even talked about it. Not the New York Times, not Reuters, no one. One shop owner said, tell the news that we don't need anything. What we want is for the US to lift the blockade.

32:01 It has put on us here in Venezuela. They visited a market, ran by clap, which is kind of like their snaps program. Days after CNN, Nick Valenza flew into the region aboard a U.S. military plane and filed his news report from the Colombian border. It resembled a typical farmer's market that you would see in the United States. She watched dozens of shoppers.

32:32 walk around, inspect the food and government subsidized items, including bread, fresh fruit, vegetables, blah, blah, blah. For Abrams, Bolton and Mnuchin and other in Washington, this clap market not only diminished the desired impact of their economic blockade, but undermined the narrative that Venezuelans were in desperate need of water.

33:02 Western intervention. It beyond confirmed to Aña that a broad swath of the Venezuelan public rejected Washington's push to overthrow their government and force humanitarian aid upon them. Virtually no international reporters at the pro-government event we attended, including the clap market and letter signing event, ever mentioned any of it.

33:36 Caracas was often crawling with Western correspondents. It just so happened that aside from a notable few, such as AP's Joshua Goodman, most foreign reporters happened to function as stenographers for U.S. officials and not reporters. Anya attended a Maduro press conference at the palace on December 2020.

34:06 a Caracas-based reporter for Reuters, approached us to offer up some awkward chit-chat. A self-described D.C. native, he appeared to have walked straight out of central casting. In between drinking his coffee, he boasted that Venezuelan officials habitually complained about his refusal to cover U.S. sanctions targeting their country.

34:42 When I asked how he could overlook such a significant part of the story to Venezuela's economic crisis, he became indignant. Quote, it's hard to know where the impact of sanctions end and where the corruption begins, he said. That correspondent, like most, had no interest in investigating the impact of the U.S. sanctions on the economy, instead focusing his adversarial energy.

35:14 on the fact that it was not a government that looked like the United States. I think in many cases it looks more like the United States than we would be willing to admit. By rendering the economic war non-existent, he found his voice and paycheck in the Washington's information war. Another Latin American reporter

35:41 With a resume spanning the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal articulated the mercenary-like mentality of Western correspondents covering Venezuela with inhibition in a stunning frank interview with a media critic, Alan McLeod. Over the years, the reporter had churned out a steady stream of dispatches.

36:09 painting Venezuela as an impoverished hellscape overrun by gangs and ruled by an incompetent tyrant. Yet according to the reporter's own words, his reports were not an honest reflection of life in Venezuela, but the preferred narrative of his corporate paymasters. Every journalist has an audience he caters to, he said.

36:41 He was working for Bloomberg at the time. In my case, it's the financial economy. To him, the lives of ordinary Venezuelans were simply bait he deployed to hook readers into learning about a socialist failure on behalf of Bloomberg's backers. A couple of times from my experience, you try, this is a quote, a couple of times from my experience,

37:12 You try to use, I wouldn't call them cheap tricks, but yeah, kind of sexy tricks, he said. According to him, he employed one of those sexy tricks to generate a sensational Bloomberg headline that claimed a pack of condoms in Venezuela cost $755. In the ninth paragraph of his report, he conceded,

37:43 that condoms on Venezuela's black market were $25, roughly the same price in the United States. Even so, he tabulated the astonishing $755 figure by digging up a listing for condoms on an online auction site and calculating the price at the Twitter exchange rate.

38:15 What's more, he blamed the inflated price on Venezuela's scarcity crisis. He claimed the phenomenon was purely a result of a collapsed global oil prices and a dearth of U.S. dollars in the country. His version of events not only ignored Washington's hand in the oil crash, but papered over the role of U.S. sanctions played by propelling Venezuela's

38:44 and blocking their access to dollars. He has adopted a more holistic approach to his work since leaving Bloomberg, but now he worked at the New York Times, publishing a landmark report dismantling conventional narratives surrounding an OAS-enabled coup carried out against Bolivia's elected government in October 2019. Quote,

39:14 You are a mercenary in a sense, unquote, the reporter told McLeod, describing the job of mainstream reporters. You're there to provide information to a particular client that they find important and it's not good or bad. It's just the way it is. So here you have a mainstream media reporter calling himself a mercenary.

39:43 working on behalf of corporate America. Though his interview with Maduro did not air for several months, Ramos' hyperbolic tale of repression and near captivity in the palace set the tone for international media in Venezuela as they braced for Washington's quote-unquote aid delivery. The vicious dictator in Caracas

40:12 was not only ungrateful for Elliott Abrams' charity, but had deported a foreign journalist for the crime of asking a tough question. When Anya decided her trip was over on February 26th and her partner were leaving Caracas Airport, they noticed Ramos lounging in the front row of first class. Upon their arrival in Miami,

40:47 A swarm of reporters greeted the Univision host and his crew as Ramos chronicled his meeting in Caracas for his corporate colleagues. Her partner forced his attention. Did Ramos also plan to confront U.S. officials about their sanctions and policies or threats of military invasion in Venezuela, he asked. Would Ramos challenge Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American senator from Florida?

41:17 over his call for the U.S. military to murder Maduro in the streets of Caracas. Ramos's reply, What I can tell you is that many people here in the United States are supporting what we're doing. Marco Rubio, Vice President Pence, and many others were supporting what we're doing over there. What precisely Univision's lead broadcaster meant?

41:51 by those words, remain open for interpretation. And that's the end of that chapter. So we're going to go ahead and stop there because the next chapter is when we get into what happened as a result of the recognition of Guido and what his background is. His background is going to floor you. Well, it won't. Not my audience.

42:23 It's the typical background. But I do want to give you just one little tease for the next one. I'm going to read this paragraph. Part of one of the NGOs called Canvas was involved and hired by USAID. And according to a leaked message from Stratfor.

43:04 Canvas top allies in the country to foment a revolution was Freedom House, which we just spent the last four weeks on Apple Warrior Show exposing their activity in many foreign countries fomenting revolution. But do you know who else was on the list? None other than the Albert Einstein Institute.

43:34 All U.S. funded, all to overthrow the Venezuelan government. So that's crazy. And we're going to find out a lot more about it because, of course, Makedo, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, is one of Guaido's protégés, as you're going to see. They had a split later on, but they were both created by USAID. So, Ron, go ahead.

44:08 I just wanted to say that I found it, I mean, there's so much to unpack with this, but I found it very interesting when you mentioned the thing about how they manufactured the event at the Iowa 2015 stop. And I just was kind of playing around a little bit. As you're talking, I'm trying to read.

44:36 Play with my computer here. And I punched that in and it's, do you know what? It seems to me, it found multiple events where Trump has done this almost on purpose because he does this to increase the ratings of these news agencies so that more people will tune in. I don't know what the purpose of that is.

45:03 I don't think he manufactured what Ramos did. Now, does he know they're going to do that and show their ass? Yes. I mean, that's kind of part of that game theory. Whenever Trump puts himself out there, which is why he does it, it allows American people to see what assholes they are. Okay. I just found that interesting.

45:32 It almost feels like, as you're reading some of this stuff, it almost feels like there's contradictions everywhere. But things that it's difficult, I don't know. I missed one part of the chapter and I didn't get to read it yet. So anyway, but this is a fascinating book. It is a fascinating book because it gives you a literal behind the scenes from the other.

46:00 perspective and the one thing that I want everybody in our audience to understand is there's all we know our media lies and we sit in America and we know they're lying about stuff in America but every stinking time they say something about something that happens overseas it's like we have instant amnesia

46:28 And believe whatever the next headline is. And this, what I found most striking about this book is because these people went and stayed months on end in Venezuela and watched this whole thing periodically. I mean, I think they went back there like four times. And watched over a series of years. And watched this unfold.

46:53 Now, do I think these people are probably a little biased on the other end of it? Yeah, they write all the time, like I do, the critique of the CIA and regime change. But I want you guys to look at both sides of an issue. We just lived through this. We know what our government has said, and they're still saying it, quite frankly.

47:19 about what's going on in Venezuela. And I want you to understand that there is an alternative viewpoint out there because it takes us month by month from the 2015 timeframe forward on what is going on firsthand in that country. We have talked during the last three years from

47:47 Probably like a 10,000 foot look at repeated coups. I think we've covered probably about 70 of the 90 that was done. But we have done it from kind of presented to us from a distance. It wasn't from somebody who had spent time in that country. Most of these writers are.

48:17 compiling foreign press information to document the stuff that we have been reading, like the overthrow of Allende, the coup in Brazil and Guatemala and all of those. And this one does it from a different angle. And that's the reason why I felt compelled. And it's current. These are the people that, some of which are still in the administration, part two.

48:46 And that's why I thought it was so important. And I still, I'm dumbfounded on how Abram, Elliott Abrams even managed to get, I mean, I know that Bolton hired him. And Bolton, of course, was involved in Iran-Contra as well. So, but I honestly believe that those people were put in the administration so they could monitor them in part one.

49:15 Because there's literally no explanation other than that on how you would hire an ex-convict. Yes, he was pardoned. I know that. But he was pardoned by the guy running it, George H.W. Bush. So I just wanted to say that. Well, could it be because they're...

49:37 He puts them there to show their ass like he did with Burks and Fauci, like put them up front? I think it's because they're mapping their networks, honestly. They want to know, because again, if you're going to dismantle this, it is not as simple as cutting the head off. You have to literally flesh out all the tentacles if you're going to honestly get rid of it. And that's what I think we're watching. I would agree with that.

50:05 But, you know, not that I'm going to draw back to Q, but there's the Q video plan to save the world. One thing that always stuck with me is how when the exact network of all the phones and the computers and everything, when they say, oh, yeah, we became trackable. And then it says, well, yeah, but so did they. And so, but.

50:31 I think to your point, what they're doing is if they're not within the administration, they can still track them. But if they're within the administration, then their tracking becomes public or admissible for treasonous purposes if they're doing it within the Trump administration. Correct. Yeah, it's a whole different thing. Yeah, and you don't have to go get a subpoena.

50:59 To get their records because you have it on government computers, government cell phones. And I know firsthand because I had to use that in order to fire somebody that worked for me. I had access to everything they did on their government phone. I didn't have to have a subpoena. I didn't have to have anything because I own the government computers because I bought them.

51:27 It kind of reminds me of when Tulsi Gabbard had to fire all those people to the NSA that were, like, talking all that basically pedophilic crap. Yeah. On the NSA computers. I was dumbfounded at that. And I'm not trying to get off into the weeds. But, I mean, just trying to really what I was doing was trying to talk it out, and I kind of answered my own question as I was talking it. So thank you for helping me. Sure.

51:56 Bridget, did you have anything you wanted to add? You know, it's funny because I remember a lot of this stuff when it was happening. And you're right. You know, there are always two sides to every story. Listening to what's on the inside adds perspective, much needed perspective that, you know, again, I think you had said something about always reading two sides of the story.

52:25 including opposing viewpoint so that you can come to a logical, because the truth is somewhere in the middle. And you remember when we were doing Doug Valentine's book, I mean, you don't get any farther from a Trump fan than him, but if you don't read his book, you're not going to get the entire story. He glosses over like one of the most notable things.

52:55 for him is in his chronology of corruption, he jumps from George H.W. Bush Sr. to George H.W. Bush Jr. with no mention of Clinton at all. And that's fine. We can go somewhere else and get information on Clinton. But because he dogs them from one side,

53:20 Then you can look at people who dog them from the other side. And as you point out, the truth is somewhere in the middle. And the most important part of this exercise over the last three years is for you guys to make up your own opinion. It still dumbfounds me when people on X ask me to interpret something for them. That's kind of, I feel like...

53:49 I failed. You shouldn't need me to interpret something to you. I'm giving you the information for you to discern for yourself. You make up your own opinion. You make up what you believe is facts based on the information that we're providing. And I'm not saying, you know, like on a military thing, if you ask my opinion, that's not what I'm talking about. I know a lot of you don't have military experience.

54:18 But I am talking about when someone says something, especially when it's material that we've covered. I want y'all's opinion on it because then I feel like I can grade myself based on your ability to discern the information that's out there based on three years worth of information that we've been providing. And I get a thrill.

54:47 out of you guys taking something that I've never seen and say, this is what I think this is saying. Because even if I don't agree with it, I love the fact that you guys are using the information that you've been provided to ferret out different pieces of it. So take that for whatever it's worth. I just wanted to...

55:14 point out here, I did a little search here and I say, some of the funders of Univision, Ford Foundation, United Nations Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates, McDonald's, MasterCard, Verizon. Yeah, all of the corporate entities that want back into Venezuela. Yeah. Yeah. Renee, go ahead. Hey, Colonel. Hey, good evening, everybody.

55:43 Yeah, this chapter had lots of thoughts of...

55:48 How many times they go in and sanction, well, I guess I should say problem, reaction, solution of going into countries and starving people and controlling the food supply. Hello, snap, what do we have going on right now that piques everybody's emotions and people start begging for help. Oh, do something, do something, please. And then the propaganda bullshit machine is just.

56:14 hitting one out of the park after another. That's what this chapter came to mind with what's going on now, what's been going on throughout history of starving populations and everything. And what's amazing to me is they're using the exact same tactics inside America. And that's the piece that I hope everybody understands. Absolutely. And then I'll just, one more thing.

56:44 You were talking about, instead of asking your opinion or whatever, I kind of have a theory, and I'm going to share it with everybody as of today. I feel this. I know we've seen Flynn and others, well, people, you know, stating strongly 100% Maduro is not the legitimate president. Well, what we've learned through Operation Gladio, and if...

57:12 these Dominion, Smartmatic, whatever machines have been rolling around the world for over 20 years, then not only is Maduro maybe not 100% the president, nor are other countries, etc. So maybe when we hear that from Flynn or whoever,

57:33 Maybe there is some twisted roundabout truth about that, you know, of presidents we've had, et cetera. Yeah, here's the interesting thing about Smartmatic specifically. Smartmatic was not ever invented in Venezuela, ever. It was invented by Venezuelan immigrants in Miami. So it's interesting that because they were Venezuelan immigrants.

58:05 In Miami, it has gotten labeled as something that was developed in Venezuela. It absolutely was not. The company was registered in Florida. So, Ron, go ahead. I was doing a little bit of a search. I was asking why Venezuela wouldn't necessarily be in BRICS. And it said that.

58:36 It's got here that Brazil actually vetoed its application to join BRICS. I don't know what the heck that's all about, but I'm trying to see here. Was there one major stumbling block? Brazil vetoed or blocked Venezuela's application according to multiple reports.

59:04 Brazil's objection was rooted in trust, election legitimacy, and regional bilateral issues. But when was it done? I'm looking. I was looking for that. It looks like it's October 25th of 24. So a year ago. Yeah. But I wanted to echo. Forgive me. I don't remember the girl's name that just spoke. Renee. Thank you, Renee. I apologize. No disrespect. No problem.

59:35 I wanted to say, you know, they're talking about, I loved it when Maduro responded, well, yeah, I've seen people eat trash in New York and Miami. I was like, that was a brilliant comeback. And, you know, I vividly recall a news story where, like, I think 60 Minutes had gone down there, and they were walking around with a guy, and he was, like, trying, he said, oh, yeah, I'm looking for a dog or a cat or anything that I can, you know, because we're hungry. And I thought, you know, now.

1:00:04 Listening to this and knowing what I know now is like, that's just absolute theater. Yeah. Yeah. I also just want to give you guys a heads up. I found another blockbuster book that I just finished, and it will be our next book.

1:00:28 I'm trying to figure out how to do it, though, because there's a lot of details in here that we don't need for the overall purpose of the mission. But the name of the book is The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush. And one of the funny parts of it, literally reading through this book, again,

1:00:54 Three years into this, my mind's not blown very much, but it definitely was. Because all of my nemesis of every book we've ever read is captured in this book. To include Brigade 2506, Felix Rodriguez, William Polly even makes an appearance in the book. So, Paul Helliwell.

1:01:23 It's fascinating. It talks about Nugent Hand. It talks about BCCI. And it's all surrounding. And if I told you all of that, you'd think, oh, that's just another book about, you know, all of the stuff that we've talked about. It's actually a book about the failure of the savings and loans in the 80s. And all of those people are involved. Does it mention Ken? I think it mentions Ken Lay in there, doesn't it? I mean. Oh, yes. Yeah.

1:01:53 Oh, yeah. So anyway, it's a fascinating book. But it's written by a reporter that covered all of this savings and loan stuff. And there's a lot of detail in there that I don't think necessarily would be covered because it literally numbs your brain with all of the connections. I almost need a whiteboard.

1:02:23 Or the wall in my studio where I could put stickies and yarn out on a wall. And so you can visualize all of the connections because it's crazy. So I'm still trying to game that out on what's the best way to present the information. Because, again, it's crazy. But I'll figure it out. We've got to.

1:02:52 We got a week or two with this book, so somehow I've got to figure it out. Wasn't Jeb Bush, wasn't he like the head of the bank that was down in Caracas? That's where he met his wife. That's how he knows Spanish. He's running a bank down there. This doesn't go into that. He was on the board of a few of the savings and loans that failed.

1:03:18 But I thought that actually there was a bank that was in Houston. They had a branch in Houston, and there was another one. And this is from a book that you did a while back where I'm pretty sure, or maybe I'm misremembering, but he talked about how Jeb literally lived in Caracas for like three or four years. And that was how he knew Spanish and was laundering all the oil money slash drug money. Yeah.

1:03:49 I don't know about that part. Okay. Okay. Anybody else got anything? I think you need a digital murder board. I'm just saying. Well, I have a program to do that, but it would take me probably if I work 12 hours a day a month to put all of this in it. We need to figure out how to program AI to do it for you. I guess.

1:04:21 Get on that, Bridget. I'm on it. Yeah, because that's not my forte. I know there's a lot of really smart people out there. If anybody wants to help and knows how to help. What do you want to do? A digital murder board. Showing the connective tissue between...

1:04:52 But basically like an Arkansas, but much more sophisticated. Yeah, but I want AI to do it. Right. Using all these books. Wouldn't that be awesome? Call me later, Bridget. Okay. And I don't want all of the books initially. I want that book. Okay. That should make it easier. Yeah. Theoretically.

1:05:28 Yeah. Yeah. OK, one more time. What was the name of the book? It's called The Mafia, CIA and George Bush. Thank you. Sure. Bridget's already making the next little icon for us. I'm already running the I've already got it and I'm running the report on the deaths and killings and disappearances referenced in the book right now. So it says.

1:06:03 that he met his wife in mexico i was thinking she was from mexico which makes more sense um given their dealings with um merax and several other oil companies that they were doing shenanigans because merax is the one that partnered with bush senior to create all of those mobile

1:06:31 platforms that the CIA used to train terrorists and launch attacks into Cuba. So they spent a little bit of time in Mexico. Just a little bit. I found something cool I'm going to send you that may help. All right. Okay, everyone. That's it. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Thank you, Colonel. Good night. Night.

1:07:02 Goodnight. Night.

Entities here

Venezuela30 Nicolás Maduro25 Jorge Ramos25 Univision12 Donald Trump8 United States5 Elliot Abrams5 2019 Venezuelan crisis4 Nick Valencia4 Miami4 Juan Guaidó4 Bloomberg4 Colombia4 CLAP3 George H.W. Bush3 Bolivia3 Brazil3 Dollar Today3 2015 Iowa press conference confrontation3 The New York Times3 The Wall Street Journal2 Florida2 BRICS2 The Mafia, CIA and George Bush2 Marco Rubio2 Reuters2 John Bolton2 Smartmatic2 Associated Press2 USAID2 Jeb Bush2 Daily Mail1 Verizon1 Keith Schiller1 Jorge Rodriguez1 Euronews1 Agathe Demarius1 The Economist Intelligence Unit1 Gustavo Diaz1 Mark Weisbrot1

Claims made here

Jorge Ramos member_of Univision documented ▶ 2:02

“Jorge Ramos, which I'm sure you guys have heard of. He's the face of Univision, a TV personality in Spanish language media. And Univision is a multinational corporation that consistently ranks in the …”

Elliot Abrams supplied_arms_to Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 4:39

“And he was actively involved in this entire effort. So they had every right to believe that this was more than just about aid. In anticipation of the U.S. move, Venezuelan's government set up a blocka…”

Jorge Ramos carried_out_attack Donald Trump documented ▶ 6:44

“Ramos immediately leapt from his seat and began barking out questions on immigration policy. Trump told him to sit down. You weren't called on. Go back to Univision, Trump said. When Ramos refused to …”

Keith Schiller removed_from_power Jorge Ramos documented ▶ 6:44

Jorge Ramos spied_on Nicolás Maduro documented ▶ 8:14

“produced a 13-minute profile of Univision's host. Why Jorge Ramos took on Trump was the name of it. During the report, Ramos admitted that his crew had conspired to stage the confrontation with Trump …”

Venezuela carried_out_attack Jorge Ramos host_asserted ▶ 9:12

“Long before any footage of the exchange was published, reports emerged that local authorities had detained him. The news anchor eventually surfaced on social media to claim the Venezuelan police had i…”

Jorge Rodriguez exposed Jorge Ramos documented ▶ 10:13

“Caracas released limited information about it. The communication minister, Jorge Rodriguez, the government's de facto spokesperson, promptly denounced the episode as a montage choreographed by the Sta…”

Nelson Rockefeller secretly_owned Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 18:40

“During the time that the West had basically occupied Venezuela because of their oil, people like Nelson Rockefeller had bought up all the grocery chains and many other aspects of the country. So when …”

Agathe Demarius member_of The Economist Intelligence Unit documented ▶ 20:46

“entities accounting for an average of 61% of GDP between the years 2009 and 2018. Media reports also overlooked the fact that Venezuela's inflation rate was not a mere side effect of U.S. sanctions, b…”

Gustavo Diaz headed Dollar Today documented ▶ 24:45

“According to the Journal, a Venezuelan immigrant named Gustavo Diaz ran the enterprise while moonlighting as a Home Depot employee in Alabama. Also adding a mysterious labor to the case, Venezuela's u…”

Jeffrey Sachs exposed Venezuela book_quoted ▶ 25:17

“According to economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, U.S. sanctions not only contributed to Venezuela's soaring inflation rate, but also prevented Maduro's government from redressing the crisis. T…”

Mark Weisbrot exposed Venezuela book_quoted ▶ 25:17

Joshua Goodman member_of Associated Press host_asserted ▶ 33:36

“Caracas was often crawling with Western correspondents. It just so happened that aside from a notable few, such as AP's Joshua Goodman, most foreign reporters happened to function as stenographers for…”

Elliot Abrams targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 40:12

“was not only ungrateful for Elliott Abrams' charity, but had deported a foreign journalist for the crime of asking a tough question. When Anya decided her trip was over on February 26th and her partne…”

Marco Rubio ordered_assassination_of Nicolás Maduro host_asserted ▶ 40:47

“A swarm of reporters greeted the Univision host and his crew as Ramos chronicled his meeting in Caracas for his corporate colleagues. Her partner forced his attention. Did Ramos also plan to confront …”

Mike Pence targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 41:17

“over his call for the U.S. military to murder Maduro in the streets of Caracas. Ramos's reply, What I can tell you is that many people here in the United States are supporting what we're doing. Marco …”

USAID funded Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies host_asserted ▶ 42:23

“It's the typical background. But I do want to give you just one little tease for the next one. I'm going to read this paragraph. Part of one of the NGOs called Canvas was involved and hired by USAID. …”

USAID funded Albert Einstein Institute host_asserted ▶ 43:34

“All U.S. funded, all to overthrow the Venezuelan government. So that's crazy. And we're going to find out a lot more about it because, of course, Makedo, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, is one of…”

Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 43:34

Albert Einstein Institute targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 43:34

USAID funded Freedom House host_asserted ▶ 43:34

Freedom House targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 43:34

John Bolton hired Elliot Abrams host_asserted ▶ 48:46

“And that's why I thought it was so important. And I still, I'm dumbfounded on how Abram, Elliott Abrams even managed to get, I mean, I know that Bolton hired him. And Bolton, of course, was involved i…”

John Bolton member_of Iran-Contra affair host_asserted ▶ 48:46

Elliot Abrams pardoned George H.W. Bush host_asserted ▶ 49:15

“Because there's literally no explanation other than that on how you would hire an ex-convict. Yes, he was pardoned. I know that. But he was pardoned by the guy running it, George H.W. Bush. So I just …”

Brazil targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 58:36

“It's got here that Brazil actually vetoed its application to join BRICS. I don't know what the heck that's all about, but I'm trying to see here. Was there one major stumbling block? Brazil vetoed or …”

Jeb Bush laundered_money_for Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 1:03:18

“But I thought that actually there was a bank that was in Houston. They had a branch in Houston, and there was another one. And this is from a book that you did a while back where I'm pretty sure, or m…”