Welcome to Caribbean Rhythms, episode 205. The world wakes up to Drumpf, or rather Trumpgar, his viking side doing a nighttime Scorsese-style rescue raid. He rescued the president of Venezuela, Maduro, from Cuban hostage situation. He upheld international law. Maduro is being held captive, you see, by Cuban so-called bodyguards. And Papa Trump just come in there with brave Delta Force operators with live, muscular bodies, extract him in a clean sweep operation. I can tell you the country I'm currently in, and in my day-to-day life, I try to speak to all kinds of people, right? This is the joke about the Thomas Friedman pretense. He speaks to the cab driver. He starts all his stupid books this way. But I try to speak to many other low people, maybe not hippie, homeless,

but drug dealer, pimps, prostitutes, male and female. I can tell you they were all in wonder this next day at Trump's daring raid. It changed. When you have 21-year-old mulatto rent boy talk about America's incredible military power with an aged Galician restaurant manager, and I witnessed this, that this is what they must have been. And I mean, that's it. Trump has once again entered history, the most brilliant world leader in decades. And this raises curiosity about Venezuela, its history, the Chavez and Maduro regime. I'll try to talk on this episode, history of that. And at the end, maybe I'll do a short clip on Israel, Palestine, if time allows, or maybe next time. Actually, I have only addressed that matter in passing on Caribbean rhythms.

And I wanted maybe to write and talk it on longer for once to explain to you why it's It's a losing matter, either side you take, if you're on the right. Just this whole October 7, 2023, that broke people's brains on both sides. And there is no upside, I think, in taking in that fight position. And the way it's been forced as central discourse on the right, in my view, totally artificial done by bad actors, spurious arguments, arguments I'll address later or another time. But for now, you will note that much of the left and the fake far right is interpreting this Venezuela business purely in terms of Zionism versus anti-Zionism, merely because one of Chavez's relationships was with Iran and before that also with Hezbollah to some extent.

But on previous iterations of this same thing, for example during the coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia some time ago, this was some years ago when the Israel issue was not so hot as after October 7. And I also thought that the Evo Morales thing was very good, I cheered it on. Or in Argentina, also before Mille, when the Kirchnerist or Neo-Peronist candidate won their Chavez's or Maduro's friend won in 2019 in Argentina. And then also before that, when during Hillary Clinton was in State Department, Clinton, And I think the President Honduras was overthrown also by the military there put on the plane carried out the country. Later the Supreme Court of Honduras said that the military was in its rights to do that. They were in fact upholding the Constitution.

But on these occasions, I mean to say I remember the same interests, the same people in particular, the left, the far left, the so-called chapotards, if you know what it is, or dirtbag left. They also mega-chimped out during those events, and when I supported the coup against Evo Morales they called me CIA, they called me running dog for the IMF, the International Whatever Banks and IMF, and many such things. And now that whole rhetoric after October 7 has focused instead on Zionism and Israel. But it's the same people and the same impulses, it's just they see a more productive angle now focusing on Zionism or Zog as a proxy for what they mean instead of CIA neoliberalism or influence, IMF, but it's the same Chomsky style.

For my part, I've always been very plain about why I oppose these particular types of dictatorships in Latin America. And by the way, these people, when they talk about imperialist running dogs and interventionism in South America, note that when it comes to something like Burma and Wiratu in Burma, the mad monk, he's not mad at all, the Buddhist monk, they are never against interventionism there. They call for interventionism. They don't care about interventionism. They want to support the international left and they perceive these gentlemen like Maduro, Chavez, Morales, et cetera as their friends. But when it happened in Bolivia, morale is getting ousted. In that case, to give just one example, I support the white minorities there centered

in the city of Santa Cruz, that's the richest city in Bolivia, they are heavily Croatian actually in that case. And in the other Latin American countries, from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, and elsewhere, it's been the same, it's been a low-key race war in fact. In the case of Guatemala, actually a very overt race war. It goes, it varies from country to country. Sometimes it's overt, sometimes it's not. But the leader of Mexico, Claudia Scheinbaum, also understands herself this way. So it's a very odd case where certainly the far left, you would expect them to side with these people. But you have also supposedly, I don't think it's genuine at all, I call them the face FAG far-right, the DNC proxy far-right, the fake far-right in the United States, allying

with a Jewish leftist president of Mexico because she is aligned with these Chavez type people you see. But it's a low-key race war all over Latin America and it varies by country to where in Guatemala, you know, the white Criollo elites are very self-consciously so and European or if they think of themselves that way, and then the resistance movement is very self-consciously an indigenous one, same as it was in the southern Mexico in Chiapas, versus other cases like Argentina or, let's say, even Peru or Brazil, where it's still racial but it doesn't overtly take that form because of identity formation in those countries. But the white elites of South America are under attack from aspiring dictators or tyrants

mobilizing mostly brown or indigenous people or mix, you know, against them under banner now this or that ideology. Usually it's a mix of Marxism and Christian social gospel. It's called liberation theology thing, you know, which, which oddly enough Tucker for some reason is in love with that now. Maybe I talk about that more in a moment. As imperfect as the South American white elites are, they're very imperfect, they're however the sole reason that whole expanse of land is not at the level of Africa or slum parts of Asia. They're the only reason you can find relatively stable European feeling, American feeling enclaves, in some cases cities in that whole region. And if you listen to my show, you know, I'm longtime critic of America's Cold War strategy.

They support the so-called non-communist left, I think is highly misguided, very much misunderstood. You know, Diệm in Vietnam, I don't want to really to get this now. That's for another time. But Diệm was a labor leader and so forth. And they did the same thing. They kind of supported, you know, what Obama's mother was like a kind of socialist vaguely anti-communist left, but in fact which always ended up working with the Soviet Union in the end anyway. And they made these same mistakes in South America as well. I think I discussed how JFK tried to intervene against similar – when the military wanted to step in in Peru and stop the progress of the left there also, and Kennedy sided against them. All of this aside, on other occasions, America did help the cause of white civilization in

Latin America, even if unintentionally, by aligning with the only kinds of leaders who could stop the rising tide of third world colored revolution, which was spearheaded by the Soviets and Chinese and actually, the East Germans were very active on that too. So for example, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, and then many other examples all over Latin America, who were representatives of the white middle and upper classes, as the military often was in these kind of middle class professional reformist group. And really, as also, however, in the in many cases, the middle classes were quite small. It was in other cases, for better or worse, these dictators were representatives of the white or they're called Criollo oligarchy, you know, and two notable examples of exception to this

were Costa Rica and Argentina and coincidentally these are only the only places still now in that whole expanse south of America's border where you can drink the tap water although I would not recommend it actually they make it drinkable because they pump flu full of chlorine and who who knows what else, it tastes like metallic sulfur engine runoff, yes, you will not get bacterial disease from that. But in these places, the reason for that, the reason Costa Rica and Argentina are exceptions is because relatively larger numbers of white colonists arrived from Spain and other parts of Europe. In Costa Rica it was mostly Spanish middle and lower middle class peasants looking for a better life in new worlds, so it didn't have this character of just a few white oligarchs

owning the huge plantations, tiny or non-existent middle-class, professional class, and then a huge expanse of indigenous serfs, really. Costa Rica was an exception to that. They largely were enough that they replaced the locals in that territory, which is unusual for Latin America. I say largely, it's still not as much as United States or Canada, which were much more sparsely populated to begin with, right? The Spanish had a tougher task because everything south of the United States border had been quite strictly settled, except again, you know, Argentina, right, which, you know, proves, you know. But as for the rest, what I'm telling you, in Latin America, it was mostly large landholders and their dependents, a smaller professional class in the cities, and they were not totally Spanish.

Many times, other Europeans came. They were called, still, peninsulares, referring to the Iberian peninsula, oh, you're coming from the Iberian peninsula, but also largely the European peninsula. And this configuration is unfortunate because the dominant culture also was that of the Spanish Hidalgo, the medieval nobleman, which I respect that much more than anything else as a life of honor in keeping with medieval nobility. Right? Onra y proveccio no caben en un saco, favorite quotation, a favorite logo. Honor and profit don't fit in the same bag, and a very hostile attitude toward manual labor also and toward commerce. The proper activity of a gentleman is leisure, owning land, and preparing for war. But although you see the problem, they often end up forgetting that last part.

And if leisure is not oriented toward preparation for war, you're no longer a nobility or aristocracy, You're just an oligarchy and then you're right for the pickings by your much more numerous underlings, right? You you're no longer the sparshy hoplite homoioi Keeping down the helots they outnumber you so they will quickly overrun you and then they often have hungry energetic Intelligent leaders of whom often can be one of your own to going rogue So nevertheless you have to take things as they are I have to take you have this is what's available in South America, unfortunately, but Aside from this, there's nothing but slums, and so I've always opposed these populist dictators in South America, really tyrants, because I've had acquaintances, not really

friends, but acquaintances among South American upper classes, that charming and refined people, and I've always seen that without them clearly, faulty as they are, that whole region goes to the slums. And what happened in Venezuela since the 1980s with the rise of the Chavez thing, which I'll I'll tell you later on this episode. Perfect example, it can always get worse that someone rising up to counter legitimate injustices ends up making things far worse than they were. In both the case of Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro, and also Evo Morales in Bolivia, these tyrants, and yes, tyrants, not dictators, they've always understood themselves in explicitly racialized terms and their struggle as racial struggle against the white and European men.

Evo Morales had rituals where he symbolically turned his back on the Spanish flag, spoke of a process of necessary decolonization, de-Hispanicization, de-Europeanization. They tried, I think, to change the calendar, and for those of the Catholic intellectual traditionalists, including on the left if you care about this, they wanted to bring back worship of their indigenous deities, which in this case I object to because it's It's purely political role-playing. It's understood entirely on a contrived, racialist, anti-white grounds. So I will give you examples. This Associated Press, this is from when Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, dressed in a bright red tunic, worn only by the most important pre-Inca priests, promised to do away with

vestiges of his country's colonial past Saturday in a spiritual ceremony at an ancient temple on the eve of his inauguration, to roars from the crowd of tens of thousands, Morales, the first Indian to be elected as Bolivia's president and a fierce critic of the United States, called his landslide election a victory for indigenous populations around the world, saying it was evidence that poor countries can rise up to challenge richer ones. So not just for himself, but for the indigenous movement around the world. Now this has a particular meaning for the international left, it doesn't mean what you think it does. The word indigenous, as has become clear again this week on Twitter, these debates keep popping

up, but the left doesn't mean by indigenous somebody who was in that country provably by genetic studies from the beginning. That's not what the word means for them. consultant earlier episode of mine where I discuss this some I forget the number a few episodes back and now here is Hugo Chavez speaking September 21 2005 courtesy of Al Jazeera racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism hate against me has a lot to do with racism because of my big mouth and curly hair and I'm so proud to have this mouth and this hair because it is is African. Chavez was praised – I'm reading you from news articles now, a few examples – Chavez was praised for passing anti-discrimination laws and adding the Afro-descendant category

to the census. In other words, importing explicitly black supremacist racialized understandings from the United States. And if, by the way, that is imported to South America, it's over for any vestige of civilization in that entire continent, the only way they are able to continue is with the fiction that they are all mixed and that, you know, there is no such thing as pure African or pure Indian or this, you know, anyway, I keep reading for you. This is from an article, Race and Populism on the Left, Political Rhetoric in Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, August whatever. In this narrative, Chavez cast his opponents as the white conquistadores in direct opposition to the indigenous, read it genuine, blah, blah, you get the idea.

from a Spanish newspaper. I forget which one. Chavez contra Cristobal Colon. Chavez against Christopher Columbus. El Presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, calificó de genocidas y invasores a los conquistadores español. You know, I'll translate for you. The president of Venezuela called genocider and invader the Spanish conquistadores during his inaugural discourse in Caracas, know so this very much is the flavor of this regime that and both of them in Evo Morales and Chavez Bolivia and Venezuela the Bolivarian revolutionary regimes the new ones so called which maybe Tucker and so on are not telling you about but now the case of Venezuela I'm telling you is is different from Brazil or Argentina or even Mexico those countries have much larger white

minorities. Venezuela is a special case. I'd say the white minority in Venezuela is only maybe 15-20% of the population, and it presents special problems. And I'll come back from a music break, but before I leave you, I remind you of this peculiarity. Both the pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist people want to center the discussion of all this on Jews and Zionism, In part to attempt to define the opposition on this fulcrum and thereby discredit it. And so I remember articles from the early 2000s, which focused or the mid 2000s, whatever 2006, seven, I don't remember around then you can find they focused on Chavez as supposed anti-semitism. And I found this at the time, especially outrageous. It was a variety of the current particularist obsession of American Jews on their plight

only as opposed to the problem of anti-white racism more generally, right? So when you're on campuses, now these kind of, I'm sorry to say, insane Trump anti-Semitism rules, right? But it isn't only Jewish students who get singled out, it's also white students who get singled out because of their race and really there should be, those laws should be expanded if you want to do that, you know, you should protect people against anti-white racism in universities also. But it's the same type of thing that I remember very well from the early 2000s, let's say 2000-2010, constant articles. Chavez anti-Semite and this. No, Chavez was never especially anti-Semitic as such. In fact, many of the early proponents

of Chavismo were Jews. One that comes to mind is the communist Petkov, you know, technically a Michelin, but I think his mom was Jewish. So that's by Jewish law, Jewish, whatever. But there were a few others, Petkov, he did later turn against Chavez for the same reasons others on the Venezuelan left did, by the way, including Chavez's longtime companion in his secret society, I'll talk about that later. But it had nothing to do with supposed anti-Semitism. There were many Jews living in Venezuela. They voted with their feet during the 2000s and after by remaining there. Because you know, if you're like an engineer in Venezuela, you get to live upper class life relative to if you were engineered in the United States or Spain. You get to have servants, you get to have nannies and so on.

People don't realize how much that contributes to quality of life. They didn't leave to go to Israel or France or America or Spain. They stayed. Chavez was antisemitic, so-called, only incidentally in that he was against the whole of the white minority in Venezuela, understanding again himself as champion of the brown, or the word is the Pardo masses, you know, he didn't distinguish between Jews or German or Italian Venezuelans or even most funny, Palestinian and Lebanese Venezuelans who live there in significant numbers. I knew some of them. They had prominent positions in business and the oil industry. And you know, those from that region, Lebanese Armenians also, and he targeted them all alike. So to call anti-Semitic specifically, it's as perverse as if, you know, an Italian was

claiming that Chavez is an italophobe or a Lebanese focusing exclusively on their ethnic also. So anyway, I'll come back to discuss both the history of Venezuela and of the Chavismo moment. But in closing of this first segment, I'd like to remind audience that this particular mix of neo-Marxism, social conservative seeming, it's not really social conservative, but they use that rhetoric. Christian Marxist liberation theology with Marxism and anti-white mobilization is exactly the enemy in my opinion and it's going to be far more enduring opponent in the coming decades than say the pure DNC kind of libtarded flavor, Kamala variety. In fact, large swathes of the new American so-called nationalist right may end up actually not being American nationalist at all

but like they say neo-american nationalist basically Aztlan or brown supremacism thinly disguised as anti-liberal nationalism but its meaning would be exactly what I just said right now and it's especially absurd to see self-described if you're not online you do not see them okay but you there were some on Twitter you know self-described white national socialists you know and and I'm sure they're completely, you know, Aryan, and I'm not being ironic if they want to think of themselves this way. But, praise the Chavez regime as a national socialist regime, when it's exactly the mortal opponent of white civilization, you know, like a black national socialist for that matter isn't necessarily your friend if you're a white national socialist. But, you know, self-described as such,

They understand themselves as the mortal opponents of white or European civilization. And Contra Tucker, who wants to emphasize Chavez's supposed anti-LGBT stance, there are in fact trans battalions in Venezuela. Not only did Chavez also coming soon after power, he took very BLM anti-police measures to allow increase of crime, kidnappings in that country. He also supported, in the United States, develop funding and operational ties, not just ideological, with Antifa and BLM and racial agitation in America, too. So I suppose this is why Obama heartily embraced Chavez and shook his arm doing the gang-style dork handshake with him in, I think, 2009. And this is well after Chavez had enacted his most tyrannical measures, by the way,

as you'll see, against the will of the Venezuelan people, including much of the Venezuelan left. He was already starting to cause massive refugee problem. First thing Obongo did coming to power was You know gang, you know, like like black cell librarian dork. I'm cool You know, I'm a cool nigga and I'm going to go with this Castro like guy, you know, anyway, I will be right back It's in his blood, you see, but his successful raid on Karakas, and please stop the Koppo. Oh, he only succeed because he paid the generals off. That's part of war if he did, so what? Why did not Putin pay the generals in Ukraine? You know, Putin got huge reputation for fast, effective campaigns in Crimea, Georgia, Syria against ISIS.

That was huge boost to Russia and Putin own image just punching way above his weight People used to claim Russia is just a gas station with nukes and has only GDP of Italy. Okay? Well, let's see Maloney do things like that. But the Ukraine war was obviously intelligence failure He thought he'd be welcomed and he was not now. It's a mess. So I don't know maybe he could pay off Ukrainians he could have paid them to hand over Zelensky or whatever maybe not but regardless I don't know that it was just payment of Venezuelan, you know, military to Trump pay them off. Russian and Chinese air defense systems may have been destroyed. Some people sent photos. I don't know if they're real. I don't know yet. It's hard to confirm. You see conflicting.

But basically, these would not have been manned by Revolutionary Committee, you know, deep fryer dummies. Let's put it that way. who look like they handled a deep fryer in a Boricua or El Salvadorans are our friends now, but Pupusa restaurant or whatever. These usually have foreign specialists manning them so they would not get paid off. So let's see, probably America has an interest in going against professionally manned Russian and Chinese air defense systems somewhere and where it cannot be plausibly blamed on like a, you know, Latino janitor showing up for work late or, you know, siempre manana pendejo or, you know, or getting paid off, right. So the Arab Israeli wars were basically weapons platform testing grounds by proxy during the Cold War. But even there, I say

it's unclear if let's say overwhelming Israeli success, especially in the air was due to superior American technology over Soviet, or just Arabic competence in handling that Soviet equipment because, you know, experts say the MiG, you know, the Russian plane is not much worse than the F-15 or F-16. But if you look at the relative performance as late as 1982 war, you know, Israeli pilots trounced the Syrians in that. So you know, maybe find better proxy wars to test these things and anyway, but to get back to it, Trump Viking success rate is now called the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, also called now the Don Rowe doctrine. And for those of you among my audience who are not Americans and don't know what this is, it's basically early American doctrine that

foreign powers should not interfere, not allowed to intervene in the Americas. I think Monroe made an exception saying if you are a European power and you already have holdings within the Americas, that's one thing. But if they declare independence and they are independent, You can't come in and try to take them back or extend your colonies or so on. And the thing is that we'll see if history deems this so-called Trump corollary a thing. But about 120 years ago, during Theodore Rex, Teddy Roosevelt did make a TR corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And it was exactly during the Venezuelan crisis, I think, of 1902. And if there's a president Trump would love to emulate, I think in many ways it would be TR. But so far, record very uneven.

The reforms that Teddy Roosevelt made to America in the early 1900s were very sweeping. And Trump so far has been hampered, I'd say, less by his lack of expertise and competent cadres and so on. More I think because how ossified and un-reformable modern states in general have become. TR, Teddy Roosevelt made major reforms to everything from the military to diplomatic cores and such, and maybe more on that in a moment, but as for the Venezuela crisis of the time, well, let's go back even further. How is Venezuela born? Simon Bolivar is a Criollo, Criollo, whatever you want to, I don't know how you pronounce this. In Argentina, it'd be Criosho, you know, with two Ls. It's just a name for a man of, let's say, pure Spanish blood as opposed to mixed with

indigenous or black, but let's say pure Spanish European blood born in the colonies. It's generally considered slightly lower in status to a Spaniard born in Spain, unless he came from, let's say, the top rung of native-born Spanish society, which Simon Bolivar did. He came from a very rich, eminent family, and he was orphaned young, traveled to Europe. He ended up leading the South American independence movement revolutions. He was a general military revolutionary and he was inspired by the same enlightenment ideologies of the early 1800s. And I think on the trip to Europe he conceived of this, the liberation of the Spanish colonies from Spain, he would lead them. And he was significantly enough born in Caracas, currently capital of Venezuela.

But even at the time, as part of the vice-royalty of New Granada of the Spanish Empire, this This was a part of the Spanish Empire in the 1700s, covered basically whole north of South America plus Panama and some islands. So present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, et cetera, those territories. And Venezuela, this region, what became the little Venice, that's literally what it means I think on account of its canals and watery ways and so on, it was always a relatively well-off region, even before the eventual discovery of oil. And Bolivar and, well, all of these regions took advantage of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Spain troubled during that time, you know, very famously Spain resisted, Napoleon started,

that's where guerrilla war name come from, they attack vicious attacks on, I don't know why they did that. They should have accepted Napoleon enlightenment, but anyway, Spain resisted. They were not able to pay attention to their empire. So these regions declared independence and these wars of independence in Latin America started around 1810 and it was back and forth for a while and then Spain reconquered these regions in 1816 after the fall of Napoleon. It forced Bolívar into exile in Jamaica where he learned reggae and such. People say that was later but I believe he had dreadlocks, he had dreads, became Rasta. Sean Paul, look up Sean Paul, not Jean Paul, but Sean Paul, look at Rege Star's background is quite interesting. Rege Star, I mean look at his face, it's not a typical Jamaican.

Anyway, so then the Bolivar returns and basically you have to give it to him in a brilliant military campaign, crosses the Andes and this is basically Venezuela born, I'm being anachronistic, but Caracas born revolutionary ends up becoming great general of maybe greatest general Latin has ever had, conquered that whole region from Spain, liberated that region of South America, is the father of Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, I think also Ecuador and Peru, in a sense Panama too, but more on that in a moment, Panama was part of Colombia basically. So as for these new republics of who apparently Bolivar himself became skeptical, not skeptical of their independence, but their system of government, Schopenhauer as usual has a quite

witty phrase. Schopenhauer is hardly a political thinker. He was just not interested in that so much. He had open contempt for politics, political things, for history. And insofar as he was into politics, he was a Hobbesian authoritarian liberal, very much against the revolutions of 1848 and so on. But he believed in strong monarch beyond the Constitution in some sense, who would guarantee, however, basically a liberal order. So in the classical liberal sense. He's deeply skeptical of republics as being not only unstable, but just he thinks they promote mediocrity. In his opinion, the intellect, the science and the arts, as well as just having excellent ministers, government officials, all depends on having a strong

monarch while republics breed mediocrity. I don't know that I agree. I mean, you know, mankind's highest peaks, I think, were Greek, ancient Greek, archaic Greek republics, aristocratic republics, Italian aristocratic republics, but whatever, that's a big argument. It's not through Schopenhauer's political thoughts that he had such big effects on later artists and thinkers. That's more his ideas about art, nature, and metaphysics inspired, well, you know them, I don't need to Wagner, Tolstoy, et cetera, including Hitler, by the way. But I don't think, I don't think Hitler was very moved by Schopenhauer's political thoughts. Schopenhauer was very anti-nationalist, by the way. But anyway, here's the Schopenhauer passage, it's a classic in right-wing European anti-Americanism.

It's not really related to the topic of this episode, but I might as well read it to you. I like Schopenhauer always so entertaining. I'm reading now. On the other hand, we see in the United States of America the attempt to manage entirely without any such arbitrary foundation, meaning the arbitrary foundation of the monarchy outside of law and abstract rights. the United States to manage entirely without any such arbitrary foundation, and thus to let abstract right rule pure and unalloyed. But the result is not attractive, for in spite of all the material prosperity in the country, we find there as the prevailing attitude sordid utilitarianism with ignorance as its inevitable companion which has paved the way to stupid Anglican bigotry, shallow conceit and coarse

brutality in combination with a silly veneration of women. And in that country even worse things are the order of the day, such as revolting Negro slavery coupled with the utmost cruelty to the slaves, the most iniquitous suppression of the free blacks, lynch law, assassination frequent and often unpunished, duels of unprecedented brutality, sometimes open ridicule of all rights and laws, repudiation of public deaths, shocking political defrauding of a neighboring state followed by predatory incursions into its rich territory. Such raids had then to be covered up by the highest authorities with lies that were known as such and laughed at by everyone in the country. Then there is the ever-growing o'clock-racy, and finally we have the pernicious influence

which the above-mentioned denial of integrity in high places is bound to exercise on private morality. And so this specimen of a pure constitution of right on the other side of the planet says very little in favor of republics, but even less do those imitations of it to be found in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru. A special and paradoxical disadvantage of republics is that in them it is bound to be more difficult for men of superior intellect to gain high positions and thus reach direct political influence than it is in monarchies. For always, everywhere and in all circumstances all those with narrow, feeble and vulgar minds are at once in league or instinctively united against men of superior intellect and regard them as their natural foe.

They are firmly held together by their common fear of such men. Anyway, he goes on, it's a nice passage, do you like? It's interesting, I mean, even, it sounds sometimes like leftist attack treatment of slaves maybe, but I think that's a common European thing, even strangely enough you may think someone like Goebbels would, it's mostly the lack of order some would say that is being criticized there, but I don't know, I think it's more than that. But look, it's just one throwaway phrase on the South American republics, but you hardly need, they were widely recognized even in the United States as ramshackles, okay? And in these South American ramshackle banana, not yet banana republics, that came later, but things like that. The European powers continued to meddle,

and the Morrow Doctrine again was meant to counter that, but the Morrow Doctrine had what ambiguity in it, a flaw, you could say, it's that it was mostly non-interventionist with regard to these new republics themselves, or pretended to be, and in any case, ambiguous. So what continued to happen is these places were badly governed, they went into debt, and often to European private interests, and then these interests called on their governments to enforce debt collection. I find it very funny when Second City Bureaucrat refers to Jack Ryan, World Den's collector derisively. You know, this is a weird show on Amazon Prime Jack Ryan with Jim from the office as a handsome CIA guy beating the bad guys all over the world And I think season two or three, I think it's very funny

He's in Venezuela overthrowing the dictator there But instead of a far-left type like Chavez the tyrant is depicted very much as a right-wing populist Trump type all you know, he's obviously standing for Trump Anyway, look, I want more frequent breaks for you to enjoy musics. I'll be right back. Enjoy this this happy Klezmer musics. Yes, welcome back. Debt collection is a big deal in foreign policy during this time in colonial or ex-colonial world. So what happened in Venezuela around, let's say, 1900 to 1903, a dictator, strangely enough named Castro basically refused to pay his debts to Germany and England or other to private interests there and referred to various new legal theories preceding so-called legal theories

preceding out of Latino America thinkers claiming that debts were secondary to the legality of national sovereignty, which by the way, none of the countries of that time, including the United States, they didn't recognize this kind of argument at all. In other words, if you behaved badly, everyone recognized the right of another power to basically invade you and collect. But this dictator Castro insisted, no, we're going to use, you know, Myspace angle's legal reasoning. And if you're a German or English bank or individual, and we owe you money, you have to go through Venezuelan courts to dispute that. So, you know, England and Germany came with big ships with guns to collect and they started bombing. they bombed Puerto Cabello, which, you know, as apparently port in that region

that a very young Joseph Conrad had once known, which he took some inspiration from that and from the episode that I'm about to tell you to write his masterwork, Nostromo. More on that in a moment. But basically, Cipriano Castro, the Venezuelan dictator, worried about German and English conquest, They seemed very serious, so he asked for American arbitration. And actually both England and Germany agreed because they frankly just wanted their citizens to get their money back, and deep intervention in that region would have been very costly and untenable. They didn't want to rule Venezuela, and did not want to upset the United States. Actually the Monroe Doctrine had been around for a while, but it was really going into

force around this, you know, when the United States became outwardly very confident of itself toward the end of the 19th century. Some years prior to this, England and America in 1895 had had a dispute over the border between Venezuela and Guyana, an English colony, which ended up with basically both America and England, they got what they wanted. And Venezuela was kind of, you know, reduced to an afterthought in that agreement. And because of that dispute, the Monroe Doctrine was now formally recognized by England, and it achieved the status of so-called Holy Writ within the United States just around this time. And between 1895 and the Second Venezuelan Crisis also happened the Spanish-American

War of 1898, where the United States basically ended the Spanish Empire, the New World, captured Cuba and so on. So anyway, America under T.R. intervenes under Theodore Rex, intervenes in this Venezuelan crisis. Basically, T.R. claims that he gave the Germans an ultimatum to get out because they were German niggers acting like ham-handed brutes, you know, that stereotype was, you know. So both England and Germany agreed to this American mediation and that became the Theodore Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which I will read for you now. It was actually formally introduced by Roosevelt's close companion, Elihu Root. He's the father of the modern military and diplomatic corps and so much else. And he, on the anniversary of America's conquest of Cuba in

1904, I read for you from a certain book that Al Seidl. The Venezuelan episode persuaded administration officials to take steps to head off future European interventions. Britain and Germany encouraged the United States to take the lead in policing its hemisphere. In May 1904, ironically, or perhaps appropriately, at a dinner celebrating the anniversary of Cuba's independence, Root delivered a statement that would become the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count on our hearty friendliness, pledged, but brutal wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society may finally require intervention by some civilized society and

in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore its duty." And what this meant, this is from a book called Years of Peril and Ambition, American Foreign Policy from its beginnings to, I don't know, 1920 or something. It's a very good book, but what this meant basically was far more interventionist than Monroe imagined with America basically taking semi-colonial role in these new so-called republics in South America. To give you an illustration, America did exactly this the next year in the Dominican Republic. It consisted basically they move in and specifically you take over the customs houses with local consent mostly saying, we're going to save you from mismanagement. And all these wild imbalances of these newly independent countries, some were quite wealthy

natural resources or production of sugar or other such, but because of export economy and misgovernment and corruption basically always get huge debts to Europe, they were unable to pay off, and that invited European intervention. So to preempt that, that's what this was, the American TR colliery. We will give you expertise, we'll semi-occupy you, but you'll keep your sovereignty, but we'll help you pay Europe back without them coming in with cannons. So we'll semi-occupy you by America takes over Dominican customs houses, and then ensures that a certain percentage per year of stuff you sell, sugar or whatever, a certain percentage of those profits go to European creditors so they don't get mad.

And another percentage goes actually to domestic development, and you know what the government's actually supposed to do rather than your officials stealing it. And this was enforced by the American Navy and diplomatic corps and such. It was a model United States reproduced elsewhere, even in Africa, I think in Liberia at one point with some success, especially in Latin America, though of course it led to domestic resentment, sporadic, there was sporadic chimp outs, locals, you know, got drunk on sugar cane, rotgut and attacked customs houses at times and such. But let's say it was a kind of do-gooding intermediate form of colonialism. And this is the Theodore Rex Colliery to Monroe. And it's interesting that it was inaugurated specifically due to a Venezuela crisis. And then Theodore

Roosevelt proceeded to separate Panama from Colombia as part of building the Panama Canal. And this is an interesting related tale of reforms. So much began during the reign of Theodore Roosevelt, including the general outlines of what is wrongly called the Deep State now. But in 1903, Panama separated from Colombia. had endured many revolutions, disturbances to hold on to that strip of land. It realized its importance. It was, you know, at the joining of North and South America and we're going to control this land jutting out into North America. And what happened basically, it was, this is the Republican program in the United States. It was quite expansionist. They had ideas like annexation of Hawaii, possible union with Canada, number of other ambitious

expansion projects, and then one of them was to build this canal across the Americas somewhere. Now, at first the site was Nicaragua, they thought. It had certain engineering geological advantages that would have been actually easier to build a canal there. But it got switched to Panama, and it's funny how it's kind of a story of political intrigue and partly corruption. Basically the French had previously tried and failed to build a canal in Panama, and And the French investor wanted, with his diplomatic friends and so on, to get rid of that land that he could not develop anymore, get something back on his initial investment. So a very heavy campaign of lobbying against Nicaragua started in the American Congress,

including apparently they were giving congressmen stamps and photos of active volcanoes in Nicaragua, warning them that as you sail by, the volcano with lava will burn you down, you know, if build it there, as well as perhaps many bribes and who knows what else. So eventually there was an agreement that United States would purchase this French investment, build the canal in Panama. But Colombia owned that and objected to the terms, refused any treaty, demanded presumably a higher payoff and whatnot. So Theodore Roosevelt decided to, you know, no I'm not going to pay, I don't want to negotiate with you. a revolution in Panama together with these European friends and the help of the American Navy and that's how the new country of Panama was born and gave America much better terms

for the canal, including I think perpetual ownership of the 10 miles around it and so on. So Elihu Root, Roosevelt's very important friend said once, Roosevelt was trying to defend himself because it was so blatant what had gone on, you know, ripping this country Colombia apart so you can get a better deal on the canal. There was a lot of domestic opposition to this too in the United States. So I think even congressional investigations. But so Roosevelt is giving a speech excusing himself and Ruth says at the end, oh, you did a fine job defending yourself against the accusation of seduction by demonstrating your culpability for rape. So basically Colombia got raped. You got raped. The Sancocho rape,

cholo rape. The construction project masquerading as a country named Panama is born, complete with a ridiculous flag. At first it was so much like the American flag it had to be scrapped. And then America builds the Panama Canal, which I think was inaugurated in 1914 and It was a source of great national pride, one of the new wonders of the world and so on. But it's interesting that Joseph Conrad, one of my favorite novelists, as very young as a merchant marine, had visited Venezuela, I think as part of the French merchant marine. He must have been 18 or 19 or 20 in, I think, this was 1876 or 86, something like that. I think he didn't spend a long time there. He got a glimpse of Venezuela, but it's such a beautiful country, apparently, the landscape,

the somber majesty of that jungle and the hills, the mountain, the tepuis, these characteristic mountains look up the tepuis. I think it made a permanent impression on him at that age and later on he returned to this early travel in his mind to write what I consider one of best novels, some people say the best novel of all time, Nostromo. It's the definitive statement on Latin America. I think it's still unsurpassed, including compared to anything its native-born writers have written. It is a memorable line in this book referring to the indolence of the nobility and the ignorance of the people, leading always to the same predictable results. And you see these results enacted in that whole continent like clockwork every few years.

You know, the champion of the poor and the indigenous, the landed classes on the other hand, the corrupt officials, the small European professional and progressive classes, the enterprising military men. It's always the same cast of characters and it always leads every few years to the same results, coups, countercoupes, sessions and the like. Kind of the Evo Morales thing that happened a few years ago is just typical. You get populist dictator for the poor indigenous brown people and the white middle class doesn't like it and supports a military coup and it just keeps going on like that. And in Nostromo, he fictionalizes the story of Venezuela, but really of Panama's breaking apart from Colombia. But when I say fictionalize, it's very fictional.

Like imagine a dream where you dream of a modest location from your childhood and it becomes transfigured like a coruscant space science fiction city of titanic purple pillars and the like. That kind of transfiguration. It's not fantasy because his fiction, I think, is truer to real life than if you were to read a history book. He achieves what the consummate poet does, sees deeper into nature than any historian. But it's in some ways an interesting, beautified story, yes, of the secession of a productive part of a country from a corrupt and aggressive center. Basically also, again, what the Croatian minority was just trying to do in its secession attempt from Bolivia in recent years, you know, no, we're not going to let these cholos, you

know, financially rape us and take the product of our work and commercial activity. So we want our own country, you know, and then countless examples of that since 1900s of that or of coups. So yes, while he was inspired in the political configurations by this Panama break for Colombia, and maybe also the second Venezuelan crisis with Theodore Rex, but the landscapes, the romance of the place described the fictional country in that book Costa Guana in Nostromo it's all due to Joseph Conrad's useful experience as a sailor in this little Venice Venezuela so anyway I'll be right back to talk about Chavez regime and its rise since the early 1980s I'll be right back please no look there's a gun to my head now they I'm sorry about this they've sent the Argentinian secret services.

I'll be right back. I suspect the reasons that American activity during the Cold War in Latin America was sometimes to the benefit of the United States and of civilization, unlike American activity in Cold War during, I mean, in Africa and Asia, was often very self-defeating as in Vietnam because the CIA had, from its beginning as the OSS, a very leftist flavor. And so they say we will support the anti-communist left as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, except that it did so in places even where there was no native left of any kind. So it ended up creating far-left movements in many places around the world. I would argue in Vietnam, South Vietnam it did, and also in places like Mozambique and Angola and elsewhere.

But regardless of this in South America, I think there was a prior strain from Theodore Roosevelt times of this kind of semi-colonial paternalist rule and ongoing, let's say, path dependent relationships with South American elites. So I think maybe despite itself, the United States ended up helping the right guys in South America to fight communism and so on and also again thereby protect whatever vestiges of culture and civilization exist in that continent. But I should also say that the reforms when you read this book, I mentioned years of peril and ambition, the reforms that Theodore Roosevelt and his friend Elihu Root made in the early 1900s read very much like globalism and internationalism, you know, including, let's say, ignoring

the will of the people who certainly did not want foreign entanglements, but kind of tricking them into foreign entanglements and developing this complex of the northeast or eastboard establishment of Washington, New York banks, the media, and so forth. developed very self-consciously under TR and Elihu Root who also reformed the American military to make it into this professional military force, they reformed the diplomatic core in the same way, formed all kinds of alliances with NGOs basically that were rising around that time and including ethnic lobbies and so on. And I'm wondering though if the problem people complain about now when they say post-war liberal international order and so on, if it's not simply a problem of its management,

in other words, would you still object to it if, let's say, self-confidently white nationalist men like, there's no other way to describe, I mean, TR would, these anti-racist people cannot fudge it, like him and before him Grover Cleveland and Taft and others, they spoke very openly of the white Anglo-Saxon and so on. If people like that were running the international system, would you still be against it? I don't know. I think if they had continued to run it, let's say, well after 1950 and 60 and into our time, maybe that would be a good thing. I don't know. But look, to go back to Venezuela, Venezuela resource trap. What happened was, yes, these were like all the banana republic ramshackle, the basket case banana republic thing all over Latin America, but in Venezuela specifically there

was the discovery of oil eventually. So it became little Saudi Arabia. But unlike Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, it lacked stability and it's interesting to think what do those countries have, what do they have that provides them stability where other resource dependent nations frequently fall into cycles of boom bust and violence and so on. resource trap by political or social social science types where when you have the majority the vast majority of a country's economy that revenues from one easily exportable resource like oil or diamonds or whatever in Venezuela's case by 1980 it was something like 70% of its revenue was from oil and whoever controlled the oil consortiums controlled the country basically so for a while this was great for the Venezuelans. Venezuela in the 1970s was

Apparently, the country was far the highest standard of living in South America. Its neighbors used to say the Venezuelans fell from trees directly into a Cadillac or something like that. The oil boom was so good for them, it was a stereotype like the Venezuelans in Miami would go on a shopping spree. Apparently, even people with humble jobs like taxi driver janitor due to the exchange rate, the strength of their currency, they could go to Miami, load on all kinds of things, stopping and take flight back the same day. But unlike Dubai and such, and we'll see how that turns out for Gulf states in long term, but they did not use that money really to invest in anything substantial. Yes, literacy rates rose and so on.

And actually the birth rate fell because, you know, women got richer and so on. But the country went to garbage basically very fast by the early 1980s. deep trouble economically, quality of life cratering dramatically in the early 1980s, crime drastically up everywhere. And everyone apparently knew someone who had been robbed or manhandled or whatever. That's very common in many parts of Latin America. But so it must be conceded that the environment out of which Chavez emerged did call for a savior. The situation was bad and it only worsened during the 1980s and 90s. So yes, it's the economy, they're doing very bad. And in this case, it was highly racialized, you know, of course, the top of the country was mostly, you know, white as they usually are.

So it is very stark, the whites were doing well, and the beige and the brown had been doing quite well, but now we're doing very bad. And you know, it's the relative difference. It's the fall from prosperity that hurts people much more than if they had never known it. So Chavez was a military officer at this time. In 1982, he founded Secret Pact with three other officers. I want to emphasize this moment above all. It's a crucial moment for him and for Venezuela. Big things for bad and good start from small groups like this, small personal pacts just like this. And these men founded the new Bolivarian revolutionary movement called NBR 200. It's called the Bolivarian revolutionary movement. as a secret military society in 1982, the city of Maracay, there's a major military

center in Venezuela, just an agreement between four friends and that's really all it takes. Never listen to anyone who says, oh it's historical forces and it really is small group activity like this. And in 1992 these ended up attempting a coup and it was put down. Two of them including Chavez were caught they went to jail one I think had died before sometime in the late 1980s and some other disturbances and the fourth of them Remained secret and he was crucial for Chavez in Venezuela future. I will show in a moment quite cinematic character called Raul, but well a Daoist, you know a weeb for oriental religion and culture and so on who burned incense that you know that type of thing

but anyway in the wake of the 1992 coup attempt which was military uprising against the oligarchy that ran Venezuela and against the increasingly desperate economic conditions of the people in order to prevent further bloodshed because the main Let's say executors in the capital had been captured and they reached an agreement with Chavez Chavez. He was captured, yes, in Caracas. It was decided that Chavez would get some clemency if he gave a televised, televised address asking the other military plotters around the country to put down their guns because the revolution was not going to succeed or frustrated their central objectives. And he gave a speech saying our objectives could not go further at this time. He said those words on air. So the coup of 1992 was stopped

by the oligarchy, but Chavez became instant mega celebrity because he said that, champion of the people by that one speech on TV, that one phrase, his signature fatigues and the red beret were on during this. I'm sure you can find, why don't I find on YouTube and I'll, I'll post. So you'll say I'm glorifying him, but no, but you must understand how it It happened, you know, and a man who takes over his country, even by whatever means is to me, still an interesting man to look at, you know, so Venezuela continued to deteriorate. And by 1998, in the election, which Chavez first came to power, it was absolute just ramshackle. So oddly enough, I remember this coincided with Russia's lows also. I know many Russians in Argentina who emigrated there during 1998, I was surprised, you know,

I was not paying attention to what happened in 1998, just Russia and Venezuela, maybe other places too in the world, just absolute disaster. So you know, it's odd, Chavez rise, contemporaneous almost exactly with Putin, and I'm not throwing shade or implying anything or whatever, but I do wonder if Putin feels a kinship with him just based on that, and really he should not, because the two of them couldn't be more different in their effects. Actually I do think Putin is a classic dictator, not a tyrant. He greatly improved the condition of Russia as a whole during his reign. By contrast, I'll get to that in a moment, I'll get in a moment to the disaster that happened in Venezuela, but it did not proceed, let's say, as the oil power Russia proceeded.

Chavez won that election anyway in 1998 with 56% of the vote. But Venezuela at the time is one of its lowest of low moments, barely half of the population bothered to vote in that election. from quite high participation historically. I think 80 percent had voted a decade earlier. So it's not like he came in like a huge acclaim. What he did have though and what persisted throughout his reign and of Maduro, what matters much more for staying in power than let's say broad popular support, was a cadre of dedicated loyalists. He definitely had that, including very old communists, but whatever. So very soon Chavez started to make moves, revolutionary moves, to change the constitution, sweeping reforms, and no doubt that country needed it.

But here's the thing, and here's the big difference with Putin, like, Chávez did basically nothing to fix what the people had hoped for, to improve Venezuela's standard of living or anything. He only wanted to increase and secure his own power. In fact, the economy drastically contracted in his first few years in office, and that's during a time when oil, I think, doubled or tripled. So they should have been doing very well again, but for the first time in history during a period of rising oil prices, Venezuela economy drastic contracted instead. So he started to do all kinds of extreme kooky things. As I'm talking to you, they attacked my throat. I apologize for interrupt interruptions. But he started, Chalet started to do instead of improving economy, he started to cook things

like police stand down orders, basically. Does that sound familiar? defending, passing ordinances that the police could only ever arrest somebody caught in flagrante, in the act, you know, basically made it impossible, for example, to prosecute kidnapping specifically, even when there were witnesses. And the reason the kidnappings thing is important is very frequent, as you may know, all over Latin America. Kidnappings for ransom and such, in this case, the preferred methods of the FARC, this is the far leftist Marxist rebels from Colombia, which were active in Venezuela, and he had apparently established contact with them, some journalists claim, in the 1990s during his travels. And now they could kidnap with impunity in Venezuela, and many other such measures that

upset the people who initially supported him, including especially the process of Cubanization, so-called. He loved Cuba, praised Castro, said he was taking Venezuela to the Cuban paradise, you You know, if you want to drive a car from 1970, well, you drink, I guess it's not cachaca. They call it rum, but it's the same thing. It's this rum substitute. I don't think it's purely made out of sugar cane. Anyway, Venezuela became flooded by Cuban intelligence, military attaches, also doctors, yes, but finally also just Cuban textbooks with new covers put on. And that was a big deal. That especially upset, you know, don't underestimate in a modern democracy, don't ever underestimate the middle aged soccer mom, you know, or whatever the equivalent was in Venezuela that really

upset whatever was left of middle class, lower middle class moms who saw their kids come home from school. Now, basically, they were turning into Cuban Marxist indoctrination centers. So very quickly, they turned against Chavez and by 2000 2002, massive protests, getting bigger every protest against principally deteriorating economic condition, Cubanization process especially, and also then just crime spiraling out of control. So remember, this is not a case like Bukele, where he ended crime or made things better or Putin that led to all around improvement in quality of life, life, not life extension, life expectancy, yeah, life extension, drop of crime, anything like that. Saitoum Chávez's own crodies and maybe a limited set of the population at large, like

let's say the poorest of the poor, the designated poor and brown in the favelas, in whose interest he continued to rule exclusively, and even of those only who were loyal to him in return. Everyone else in Venezuela suffered, and in objective terms, every metric of life in Venezuela declined. So again, compare that not just to Bukele, but I remember my friend William Oden, who who was vehemently anti-Russian, part of the old Department of Defense, NATO expansionist. But he nevertheless remarked that when he went to Moscow, and this was 2005 through 2007 I think he was going there at times, only a few years after Putin came to power and he remarked you could see amazing things in Moscow that you don't see elsewhere.

So Moscow has really developed as an Asian city might, it's booming and probably still is right now. Venezuela, no, it's not like that. It's a complete ramshackle, got worse under Chavez. Refugees started pouring out of that place very early and accelerating always through the Chavez regime. It got terrible for everyone. You know, Chavez political allies, maybe again, the lowest of the socioeconomic register, the people actually in the shanty Yes, maybe they did get bought off. Latino-American strongmen benefits are like this. You get a fridge, maybe you get shipped off to Cuba to be treated by a Cuban doctor. So it's like that. Democracy manifests, ladies and gentlemen, you get washing machine on voting day.

So anyway, the protests against Chavez kept getting bigger and bigger and included not only the conservative right or the proxies of the white oligarchy, but many of the people including brown, beige people who had hoped he'd come as a savior to reform things, much of the left as well. So things came to a head in 2002. On April 11th of that year, a massive protest of millions came upon the presidential palace in Caracas, demanded resignation. This is a very ugly episode in history of Venezuela, and it ended in an abortive coup. Chavez was going to have the military shoot into the population. The military refused and then moved basically low-key to depose him. And prior to this, the Chavista loyalist gunman shot into the protesters, murdering some quite large number, dozens I believe.

There is video of this by the way. So Chavez was basically forced to step down and was out of power for 72 hours. So I will not recount the details of these days, but they were exciting days. Textbook example of what a failed coup looks like, and I think much can be learned from the coup leader's mistakes. I think a very interesting book one of you could write, an addendum, can be to Lutvak's famous book, Coup d'etat. These would be examples of failed coup, more recent ones than he deals with, and I think he wrote that book quite young. And you can use this one and the anti-Erdogan coup in Turkey and maybe even the Prigozhin attempt on Putler and a few others since the early 2000s failed coups and you study the mistakes and you learn from them.

So honestly for many of you who are barking for Trump to cross the Rubicon, I can almost guarantee that Trump would have a failure on these if he does try to do that. I don't know that many on our side are cut out for that. Almost none. It's amazing to me. The same people criticizing Trump for not crossing the Rubicon are often the ones now wringing their hands over the shooting of this Antifa leftist bitch by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. She was trying to run him over with a car and so many people who claim to be on the right are jumping at ICE and Trump over that or they were fretting about Trump's lack of civility against Rob Reiner, or was it Rob Reiner, or whatever Jewish Hollywood leftist who had Trump derangement syndrome died a few weeks ago, Trump made a joke, and it's

the same people are mad about that and claim that they want to see Trump cross the Rubicon, right? So, right, Tucker is really mad that Greenwald's Antifa friends are complaining about the Zayu bully Trump, but all of you are going to ask Trump to cross the Rubicon and to do what? So do you realize what will happen, for example, and I want him to do this, but I want him to have a plan. So you overrule a leftist judge, you ignore that ruling. Do you know what will happen next? Maybe nothing or maybe the bureaucracy or a good portion of it revolves against him. They say we are upholding the constitution and he's not a legal ruler and the left decides to bring things to a head and a game of chicken and they are organized, they have considerable

assets spread out among government at large. And what does the right have? There's Matt Walsh slamming his cane, pretending to be a tough guy. He's a wife guy, okay? He's going to make a podcast. Please stop this. I'm not against these things, but people forget you need a plan. For example, Bolsonaro did try to cross the Rubicon. The Brazilian military just said no. And that was that. So in this case, I won't get into too many of the details of the Venezuela attempt to depose Chavez in 2002, but they tried to cross the Rubicon. But there was failure all around because they were very disorganized, had a lack of aims, whereas the Chavez supporters were determined, organized, well placed, so he returned to power.

The main problem was the opposition head who stepped in to rule Chavez, to rule in Chavez the civilian leader Carmona right Pedro Carmona okay was his name an oligarch who if you look at him he looks like any gentleman you see walking the nice streets of Madrid I doubt there's any touch of native or black in him but maybe he has a touch you know like the the old American families sometimes claim they have a touch of Indian to you know what of the land and this but but he was a real stupid bastard okay coincidentally Carmona now is also the name of the Chilean head of the Chilean Communist Party, but whatever, Chileans are far more mastized. I'm sorry, I keep going off the blueberry path. I have special sensitivity to question of mixes of this kind.

I find them monstrously fascinating to observe. I wish, on one hand, for a bio-quarantine of all races and peoples, not necessarily because I believe the races as they currently exist are essentially pure or given holy things. they're not, but simply because we don't yet understand the consequences of, you know, let's say, globalized mixing. To me, it's like banning GMOs, you know, you don't just don't know yet, it's better to be safe than to do things on a mass scale. But even if, let's say, and who will do this, right, but even if a bio-quarantine, you know, biogeographic quarantine of races was established, I would still let's say in that utopian dictatorial world, I'd like to have my own islands where I could breed various monstrous hybrids and observe the results

You know, it made me want to introduce them in subversive way. I don't know So look anyway, this guy Pedro Carmona is a typical indolent retard South American Criollo oligarch I don't mean that as a blanket I mean, they're my friends some are very impressive people more so than let's say their equivalents in the United States or Europe But they also have as the downside this kind of characteristic poodle retard like this You know which they themselves will admit but he proceeds to do all kinds of yeah He knows what time it is. He exercises power So he proceeds to dissolve the assembly and the Supreme Court and many other things he crossed that Rubicon So, you know the main military had the guy in Caracas I think the last score Velasquez or something says, you know, you know

Sorry, another tangent. If you look at Brazil, Argentina, the other South American countries, you often see big variety of European names. I mean, I'm just taking tangent because I'm thinking of the general's name, Velasco, right? You know, when you whenever you hear about historical event dispute, a war, a coup, whatever, you look at their names, and most of course are Spanish, but then significant number of Italians, and often like among the Spanish, I mean, Spain is itself a union of ethnicities, heavy Catalan or Basque names, especially in Argentina, other parts of German names very frequently in Brazil and elsewhere, but other parts of Latin America too, by the way, very often you have Irish names, you have some Slavic, some Jewish and so on.

But in this case, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, when I read about these events in Venezuela, aside from one O'Brien that sticks in my mind, every name I seen is either typically Spanish and like very few Italian outliers. So I wonder if there's a sociological angle to this in places like Venezuela or Guatemala where the oligarchy appears, you know, with only maybe occasionally Lebanese and Jewish or less so German exceptions, but oligarchy in these places appears to be almost entirely Spanish. So anyway, look, the Carmona idiot, civilian ruler, I will cross the Rubicon. He dissolves, basically wants to dissolve Venezuela's constitution or what remains of it. So the military is like, no, we didn't sign up for that. And this guy Carmona is retarded and has no authority to take this

power for himself. He obviously wants to be a dictator too. That's not what this is about. So then, and here is the crucial fact. This is, while all this is going on in Caracas, the capital, Raul Baduel, the fourth and secret, unknown member of the original secret society, Chavez founded in 1982, right? No one knew who the fourth was, it was like, it's like a novel, cinematic mystery story. Three of them were, one died, two were caught, no one knew who the fourth, but the fourth was this Baduel, this oddball, military guy, orientalist weeb, not like us, like a Japan Nihon weeb. In this case, it was a China weeb, devout Taoist, incense burner, you know, like Rudolph Hess with magnets, you know, closely read the Chinese Sun Tzu type classics on wars, like to quote them. And he was also

a firm believer in non-violence, but by now he had become head of Venezuela's paratrooper battalion, which was the most elite military unit in the country. So he was, because of that prestige, the de facto military head of the city of Maracay, which was this huge military center outside of the capital, right? So you see, ladies and gentlemen, this what secret society means Chavez regime survived because of this, but well managed to rally the military here to discredit and marginalize the military head in Caracas, when was wavering here that first supported the coup was now indecisive. And basically through this, he ended up delivering the day for Chavez. To me, that's the most interesting part of this

But, you know, following that, when Chávez came back to power, he was wildly boosted, right? This is what often happens during failed coup attempts, because you learn who's your friend and enemy, and he just proceeded to purge all enemies from all parts of government. You know how it goes, people even suspected that he had engineered the coup, but I think it's very unlikely. I think there's video or testimony of him during those 72 hours, hours and he probably really believed he was going to get shot or this, and in many ways it looks like the Americans, although of course blamed for that coup, and it looks like they too were kind of caught by surprise with their pants down, factions have their own interests.

But Chavez had, following this, a special paranoia about the Caracas Metropolitan Police. He had always distrusted them, but he believed they took part in the coup. So he really, you know, replaced the police only with party loyalists. Crime just went skyrocketed after that in Venezuela. It was already bad, but got much worse. And then others he simply eliminated, even though they were loyalists, but just because typical tyrant paranoia, he did not want any possible competing power nodes. So since then, the condition there just steadily gotten much worse, if that's possible. Argentina flooded with Venezuelans. It's just, you know, Rapi, what do you call this, Uber Eats, the equivalent in Argentina is only Venezuelans. North Brazil was flooded in recent years, had enormous border troubles.

And they flood Spain and Europe as well. But Spain, you know, you can't blame them. The people basically, if you're not a Chavez loyalist, or maybe the lowest of slum dwellers where any piddling government benefit presents some improvement for you, you're reduced basically to eating roadkill, so everybody who can leaves. And the government has since then ruled with such partiality. It's become such a form of minority rule that the entire Venezuelan left. These are hardly people I consider friends. They had turned against Chavez by the late 2000s. So despite constant, essentially, police state harassment campaigns, there were still protests and opposition was now however mostly leftist students.

And I remember he tried in 2007, 2008, I forget, there was a referendum basically making himself president for life. I was taken aback to see that even that referendum failed. I mean, imagine the honky tonk made up elections there, and the margins that must have voted against him in those conditions for him to lose that election. But you know, it's a unique position, what total control over a valuable export resource, the oil, where you can continue to pay off the muscle, not just the military, but party loyalist paramilitaries. And then with foreign help, chiefly Cuban, but some say also Iranian and Russian, but I think it's Cubans, you know, you can basically run the country even while 80% or more of the population is against the regime.

And many are starving and experience apocalyptic conditions. And you know, they desperately had become refugees. By illustration to show you there is no automatic. Oh, it gets worse. So then there's revolution and salvation, you know, and It obviously continued after Chavez after he died who I guess he was charismatic I don't know. I cannot stand that particular face of his but to each their own tastes vary, right? But Maduro who followed him I find charming not at all. Just extremely unpleasant screamer, you know molding hysterical bus driver, you know, the kind who used to crush the hands of my friend, the chess lady in Boston, they used to crush her hands when she was schizophrenic. I don't know if I can trust her testimony, but basically I think you could put a goat

as the head of this extraction tyranny and Venezuela government regime could still impound. So we'll see what happens. Trump has stepped in. He's become, for now, the Tyrant Killer, the Hebrides Viking Liberator. So let's see what happens next. But listen, I was going to talk also Israel, but I will not because I want to keep shorter and more frequent episodes this time. I might talk that next or better yet, you keep lookout on my sub stack. I'll have article about that in a couple of days. But I return to you in a week with show of leisure and Caribbean serenity. And until then, and next time and soon, BAP out.