What Just Happened In Venezuela -- And Why?

While the relationship between the United States and Venezuela has been tense in recent decades, things massively escalated earlier this year. The U.S. unilaterally invaded Venezuela, abducting sitting President Nicolás Maduro, along with his spouse, to face drug and terrorism charges. Yet the American public is increasingly skeptical about the official reasoning here. Could this really be about drugs? Oil? Something else? Join Ben and Matt to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Our colleague Nol is on an adventure, but will be
returning shortly.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
They call me Bed, and you can too. We're joined
as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan.
Most importantly, you argue you are here. That makes this
the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, Friends
and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists, travelers and hometown kids alike,

(00:55):
we could admit the world is in kind of a
dicey play right, kind of a dicey place.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
The as we're recording this, The Oscars occurred last night
and Conan O'Brien got up there on the stage and
was being jokey and joking around, and then at one moment,
just before the monologue finished, he said, now let me
be real for a second, and he just pointed out
how insane everything feels and how nice it is to
celebrate storytelling and dreaming at the Oscars, which just warmed

(01:26):
my heart a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Conan. Yeah, we're big fans of Conan. Keep it up. Actually,
I recently ranked you as the number one Conan, so
sorry to Conan the Barbarian.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh that's a tough sell for me. Okay, tough one.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's a tough one, but you earned it, O'Brien, and
we'd love to hang out with you in the future.
The thing is so much keeps happening. It is honestly
difficult now for the average person to keep track of
every new allegation or conspiracy that pops up nowadays, not
to mention the old conspiracies that turn out to have

(02:05):
more truth to them than initially thought. Cough cough, Havana syndrome.
Cough cough, Jack O'Brien, I was right, cough, cough, cough.
So I had a cough there. I had a cough
at a cough, had a little bit. I'll flap. But
we love Daily Zeit guys, We love you all for
tuning in. In tonight's episode, we are looking at a

(02:28):
story that Matt, Dylan, Nolan and I spent a lot
of time thinking about. It's a story much of mainstream
media seems to have forgotten even though it occurred just
a few months ago. It reached a culmination point just
a few months ago. Our question is this, and you

(02:48):
know what, beat me here, I'll say it. Plain what
the fuck is going on in Venezuela, money Baby, We'll
be right back. Here are the facts, all right, Matt.
I think it's mission imperative, mission critical for us to

(03:12):
note for anybody who is not aware, the nation of
Venezuela located at the top of South America and the
United States, they're historically not friends.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's weird. It hasn't always been this way with Venezuela
in the United States, but some things, you know, have
have gone down, specifically a guy named Hugo Chavas that
we're going to talk about a little bit. And then
you know, Maduro was like his number two, and you
could see why maybe there was a target on his head.
But it has to do with who your friends are.

(03:47):
A lot of times as a country, who are you
really tight with, and that might dictate how the US treats.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
You, Like Tupac said the legendary statesman Tupac sh for
if you ride with them, then screw you too. It's
a lot of guilt by association, right or skepticism by association.
Part of the part of the modern tension between Venezuela

(04:16):
and the United States is due to the geography of
those two countries. Because Uncle Sam, in practice we talked
about this earlier, considers all of Latin America its own backyard.
So you can be sovereign, but not that sovereign. You
can be free, but not that free.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yes, And all you gotta do is take a look
at US history and CIA intervention in Latin and South
America just to see how much the United States sees
the entirety of the America's as its own little money
making playground.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah. And I love the point you're bringing up there
about alliances, because Venezuela is in oil rich country. Will
give you some stats in a little bit, But as
a country with tremendous resources, it established ties with other
crews that the United States does not care for in

(05:15):
the modern age, those being in particular Cuba, Russia, and China.
A little bit of a rod, but it's a you know,
it's a long way.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, let's put one stat out there, because it really
does encompass I think everything we're talking about today. According
to most places on the Internet and the CIA World
fact Book. Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves,
like the world's.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Largest that is true, the world's largest proven oil reserves.
And as we'll get to it, the badger in the
bag is that oil reserves are not created equally. So
they've got a lot of stuff, but they don't have
the primost stuff, you know what I mean. They've got
like one hundred pounds of off brand cereal, but sometimes

(06:06):
people just want a box of fruit loops or what's
that one you're on raisin brand?

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah? No, two scoops, baby, Sorry, Well.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
It's the differences that make for a good friendship.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
So pointing out that fact is that that just on
paper and the knowledge that there is a lot of
oil in that country can shape the way other countries
view Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Absolutely. Yeah, because the alliance with some of these more
communist forces they would be called those alliances don't occur
just because people like hanging out with each other. Geopolitics
is not vibes. Geopolitics is resource extraction and control. So

(06:57):
the Strains, I love that you mentioned one of our
favorite talk show host the Strains on the relationship between
Venezuela and the United States really accelerate when a guy
named Ugo Chavez becomes president of Venezuela in nineteen ninety nine.
And when he becomes president, this guy is doing everything

(07:21):
he can to identify with his crew because listen, country
alliances are no different from gang alliances, folks, if you
want to be honest about it. Hugo Chavez is known
for rocking his workers like basically his car hearts and
rocking them in a bright red color, saying, hey, screw

(07:44):
the US, rage against the machine is right. I don't
know if he ever cited them, but that kind of stance,
and he reigned until his death in twenty thirteen, despite
multiple coup attempts. His time as a ruler could be
an episode of stuff they don't want you to know
all its own. It's filled with conspiracies and believe it

(08:07):
or not, a very weird talk show that we loved
back in the day, because again, like our show was
around in twenty thirteen, when Ugo Chavez was still in power,
and when he somehow, despite being the president of a country,
when he somehow managed to make an hour's long talk

(08:29):
show called Allo Presidente and.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
It was what I can do.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
We used to skip lunch and watch Allo Presidente. Guys.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
It was kind of fun, I gotta admit, just when
they were there, it felt like there were no stakes
for me as a viewer, you know, right in office
in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, it was. It was very fun for us because, okay,
to be clear, we were not watching it live, folks.
We were watching our favorite clips of it, and because
we are somewhat obsessive personalities, we would sometimes rewatch the
same clips and get all our poor coworkers to watch
it with us. It's an unscripted show where the president

(09:12):
of Venezuela purportedly takes random calls from his fellow his
fellow Venezuelan's and then instantly solves whatever problem they have
mm hmm and and just it's like a it's a
call in show. That's the craziest thing. For years, this

(09:34):
guy did a call.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
In show man.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
And he would be like, why why haven't they fixed it? Okay,
and he would yell at his producers go fix it
for that lady out there, and they would. It was nuts.
It was authoritarian af.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, if you get his attention, though, you could you
can make some stuff happen. You can only see so
much as an authoritarian ruler, right, E're up so high? Yeah,
it's well. One thing I do want to point out
about Chavez that you can find in our video series
if you want to look that up we talked about
is his moves with oil, specifically a thing that we

(10:11):
have called out by name. I think it's called Petro
Caribe is how you would say it. And it's basically
an agreement between Caribbean countries in South American countries and
Venezuela to trade oil in different than ways that are
normalized by US relations in trading dollars in stocks essentially

(10:31):
for oil.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Supplies, circumventing the petro dollar. Yeah, tut tut, tut, tut tut.
We're not saying Goadafi was a good guy, but he
messed with the money and that's part of what Chavez
was doing. So yeah, So Chavez maintains his rule until
twenty thirty he passes way and after Chavez comes Nicholas Maduro.

(10:55):
Nicholas Maduro is a former union leader and he ruled
Venezuela from twenty thirteen after the death of Chavez, up
until January third, twenty twenty six in practice. So technically,
as we record now Monday March sixteenth, twenty twenty six,
Maduro is still the president of Venezuela officially. Effectively, he

(11:20):
is not. His administration ended in practice on that day
because he and his wife in the early morning hours
local time, were captured by US forces. They were spirited
away to the United States to face drug trafficking and
narco terrorism charges. But he's still again, we cannot emphasize

(11:41):
this enough. He is still considered the dejore or official
president of Venezuela. That's even been confirmed by the current
acting president, Delsi Rodriquez.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
And let's not forget that Nicholas Maduro was vice president
under Hugo Chavez before Chaves. So it was a true
passing of the baton, like an immediate passing of the
baton to the next person in that instance. In this
next instance, it's a little more complicated when you get
to Rodriguez.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I bet it is.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah. And then let's also not forget who Koschovez said
publicly a whole bunch of times he believed he had
been given cancer. Oh yeah, the United States like some
kind of special operations thing.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Or perhaps some sort of special weaponry, right, and when
he was doing that, he did appear to sincerely believe
it based on what we can find. But he also
was harkening back to our CIA's notoriously ineffective efforts to
do all kinds of shenanigans to the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

(12:55):
So he's not pulling from whole cloth. There. Intelligence agencies
have done dirty things very much.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
So we know about the heart attack gun, and we
know that's really We know about the discombobulator now, so we.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Know that someone thinks there's a discombobulator.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, yes, yes, a couple of people talk to CBS
about having that weapon and then testing it.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Right right, shout out Havana syndrome. The situation now remains
incredibly tense, and we were talking about this with a
brother Dylan off air a little bit. The news in
the United States, the news cycle, the spotlight of the
thing has shifted away from a twenty four to seven
focus on developments, but there remains a ton of international

(13:47):
scrutiny and there are multiple storied institutions that are calling
for a stable, democratic transition of power in Venezuela, and
as we're recording now, maybe we'd love to start and
end with good news when we can. The United States
and Venezuela are opening channels of diplomatic dialogue, so they

(14:10):
are talking again. The embassy for Uncle Sam has reopened
in the capital of Venezuela and Caracas, but the public
in the United States in particular, is still trying to
figure out what's going on. The public is still divided
on why Uncle Sam invaded in the first place, The

(14:31):
international community is divided on how they got away with
kidnapping a sitting president, and most importantly, the world overall,
including big oil companies, is trying to figure out what
happens next.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Dude, someone's wrapped up in it.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Now.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Oh yeah, how if you've removed the proper nouns from it?
How strange is it that country A goes into country B,
extracts your president and first lady takes them away and
charges them with a bunch of stuff, and then comes
back in and says, hey, we're cool now, right, we're
going to reopen our embassy.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
I'd be like, you know why I had to do that, right,
you know, like you kind of made me like we're
cool though. We're cool though, democracy right, you get me,
you know what I mean. We're both in the Americas,
like we came up in the same frat they did.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
This is Shell and here's Chevron.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
My boy Chevy, my boy, big Shell. You remember him.
We were at some parties earlier. Anyway, That's that's the question.
What happens next? To answer this billion barrel question, we're
diving deep into the lead up of the incursion, a
brief timeline of that incursion, along with some remaining questions

(15:52):
about the operation and maybe some of the more out
there speculation about motives and goals. The best way to
put is this, right now, there seems to be a
lot of stuff the authorities don't want you to know
about Venezuela, or.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
At least don't want you to think about.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Here's where it gets crazy. Okay, we can start with
the capture of Maduro, but to understand that, actually, wait,
let's start a few years before matt. One of the
things we have to note, Dylan Weather, the things we
have to know is a lot of people who just
read the news about the incursion, they may not be

(16:41):
aware that Madudro was very much a divisive character way
before twenty twenty six. And this is far from the
first time Uncle Sam tried to molly wop him. Six
months after he was elected, This former union leader, this
one guy, this one resident is given the power to

(17:02):
rule by decree. Rule by decree is the tastiest superpower
you can have as an authoritarian, and it does not
exist in a legitimate democracy. Rule by decree means that
you can wake up one day and you can enact
a law on your own without legislative approval. You don't

(17:25):
have to check with anybody else in your parliament, your congress,
your political class, your judiciary. You can literally wake up
one day and say paperback novels are illegal, or you
can wake up one day and say nobody can wear.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Shoes, and everybody just has to go, oh, oh, okay,
well all right, and let us say that is not
the same thing as installing a whole bunch of siccophants
in all of the primary offices throughout a land and
then issuing a whole bunch of executive orders. It's not
the same thing.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's much more direct. Yeah, And that's a good point.
It's it's a lot less like the game mouse trap
there because the idea of installing sycophants and guess folk
ultimately can if it works out for you, it can
give you rule of decree in practice, but it's going

(18:21):
to be a lot more complicated with many more opportunities
for failure in the mechanism. So ideally, there's a message
to all our dictators in the crowd, all or would
be authoritarians. Ideally, what you want to do is get
a greed official rule by decree so that you can
wake up and make your decisions without any of that

(18:43):
pesky red tape or you know, feedback from the people.
You oversee.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah, I just have a weird dream, have a little
cup of chemical leche, and just let it writ.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Just let it right roll that ice. So this this
is something we see. We see rule by decree historically
happened in the aftermath of chaos, or historically occur when
the public is desperate for help. When people don't jibe
with what's going on in their immediate day to day,

(19:16):
then they will naturally logically start looking for alternatives. That's
why the United States got very close to having an
overthrow of democracy back back in the thirties. You know,
there was this real pill, a real drip, like not
a good person named Smentley Butler, a marine general who

(19:38):
probably stopped Prescott Bush and Co. From overthrowing the United
States and instituting a fascist government. And people in modern
day Venezuela are no different really from people who were
suffering through the interwar years in the United States. They're

(20:02):
desperate for help, you know. In so Maduro in the
death of Chaves, Chavez promised to bring a new life
to Venezuela, to revive the economy. I almost said revivify,
to revive the economy, to get food in people's pantries, right,

(20:24):
to give people jobs, to give kids better schooling. And
he struggled with that for a lot of his administration.
He also nationalized the oil, which is we'll get to it.
So Maduro promises a change with this. He is the
descendant of the school, or the inheritor of the school

(20:46):
of political thought called Chavismo, which is Ugo Chaves. In
a very humble way. His reign for several factors, Maduro's
coincided with the opposite of what he promised, was a
decline in overall socioeconomic status, even worse than the early
days of Chavez, there was a rise in all the

(21:08):
things you don't like to see rise inflation, crime, hunger, poverty.
A lot of analysts, most of whom are Western by
the way, began predicting the country was headed for a
Soviet style collapse, kind of similar to what we talked
about in our earlier episode on oligarchs. Mm hmm, So

(21:30):
the country's going to fall, the rich will get richer,
the poor will become poorer.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
It's a trend we've seen several times, at least within
my lifetime in the United States, and not you know,
just in Venezuela and not just in you know, these
countries that analysts often would look at and say, oh,
there's a despot there, that's why it's going bad. It
just makes me wonder sometimes when you see these larger
or the like the macro trends in global markets then

(22:00):
in regional markets, and down trends and things like the
nineteen thirties in the US when things are not great
for most people, you know what happens and then is
there anything that could spark some kind of internal revolution,
a civil war of some sort, or a coup. They're
they're the analys were definitely looking at Venezuela as that

(22:22):
possibly being a reality very soon.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
And it's important to note that at the same time,
the international order, the capitalist side of it, the Western order,
was also waging economic warfare on Venezuela. There's that a
way around it. The sanctions was sanctions. Sanctions are a
huge part of it. Check out our episode or whether

(22:46):
sanctions work. Check out also the phenomenal book Confessions of
an Economic hit Man. Yeah, the Medudal administration is saying
at this time, they're saying, hey, we are doing our best,
but things are going wrong that are not our fault.
Our domestic political opponents are teaming up with the spooky guys,

(23:11):
you know, the spooky guys from up north, and these
folks are not really freedom fighters. We're also getting hammered
by these international moves against us and restricting our ability
to participate in international trade in this era of time
is a lot like dropping bombs on us. It's just

(23:33):
slower in terms of its effect, but those effects will
ultimately be the same, And there's a lot of objective
truth to stuff like that. Economic warfare is very real.
It's one of the most dangerous forms of asymmetrical aggression
out there, right, I would compare it to drones.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
So yeah, yes, and just that point. Then, collapse is
a slow thing. Collapse generally doesn't happen in one big move,
right or one big action. You wake up in the morning,
you read the news, Oh, this nation collapsed. Now they're
no longer solvent as a country, and something must be done. No,

(24:16):
it takes a long long time, and you can see
it happening, like when you're in the midst of it.
Just a little point out to everybody right now.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I also wonder, I mean, some people can see it
in the midst of the fog, but I think a
lot of people see it in retrospect because as long
as the world feels normal for me, says the protagonist
of their own lives, then these other things are happening
outside of me. They don't become real until they affect

(24:49):
me directly. Right, don't lecture me about a rod. Tell
me why gas is four thirty five?

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, oh, absolutely right. What's in my immediate sphere? I
just think there are enough people, as we kind of
outlined in our Oligarchs episode, that are on the pulse
of financial stuff, looking at you know, deals that occur
across countries, looking at the kinds of movements that occur
where you've got maybe an NGO operating in an area

(25:18):
via economic hitman style, that kind of thing. I think
there are enough people who see the signals and they
take those actions, like we talked about changing currencies, making
other investments, buying state owned oil companies and things like that.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
I sure hope that a lot of us are paying
attention to the signs the historical presidents. Also look at
the look at the statements of the macro investors who
are not in the news. Ordinarily you're not going to
find them necessarily quoted in your See It ins or

(25:54):
your Fox news is or your Reuters or whatever. You're
going to find them quoted in an insurance trades and
they have some scary stuff to say because they're very
smart people. Also, we don't know what was up with
Peter Thiel's meeting in Rome recently. Just gonna throw that
one in there and keep it moving.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
So just take a look.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Just take a look when you get a chance. Folks,
you're already on the internet if you're tuning into our show,
all right. So we also see that despite the valid
allegations of the Meduro regime about Western forces purposely trying
to sink their boat. Medudo is not necessarily a good

(26:39):
guy by any means. There are rampant human rights violations
occurring during his administration, especially as it leads up to
the events of January third, twenty twenty six. Amnesty International,
which I have put in our keep it until it
which I put in our notes is Amnesty Internation, Amnesty

(26:59):
and National noted that there were eight thousand, two hundred
and ninety two extra judicial executions carried out just between
twenty fifteen and twenty seventeen. Extra judicial Matt, we know
what that means.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, it's like when you fire a missile at a
boat the military says has drug traffickers on it. There's
no process to prove whether or not there were drugs
on that boat and who those people were and how
culpable they were for the things that were supposedly illegal.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Murdering without a judicial process. Yeah. The true definition of
the state, and this comes from the old beings, but
the true single definition of what makes a government a
government or a state state is the monopoly on violence.

(27:57):
So if Dylan wakes up and has a bad mood right,
or SIPs the wrong Earl Gray and says, hey, we
got to execute somebody. We got to kill nol and
we hop too, and we put Noel Brown in an

(28:18):
electric chair and we kill him. Then we've murdered someone.
We should get in trouble. But if the state does it,
because it is the state, it is judicious and right
to do so. So that's the argument, right, The argument
of what makes a state credible is ultimately, aside from
all the pretty words and pretty ideologies, it's who gets

(28:41):
to decide when violence is right or called for the.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Maduro and you'll generally only get in trouble for that
kind of thing once you're out of power or your
party is out of power, loses control. Then there might
be some hearings and some judges getting involved.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
And we know that extra judicial then, is a term
only applied when the government violates its own self created,
self imposed rules about how violence can be administered. Right.
That's happening now in the United States in a smaller way,

(29:19):
but it can always happen because democracy is always in
danger of being eroded. True democracy is not exactly what
true capitalism dreams about. You know, when it goes to
sleep at night. So when we say extra judicial executions
by the Madudro administration, what we mean is that that

(29:42):
own administration, leveraging Maduro's right to rule by decree, violated
the democratic norms that they had set in stone previously. Also,
Amnesty International said, look at this. In one year alone,
twenty two percent of all the recorded homicides were not

(30:04):
committed by criminals. They were committed by Venezuela's own security forces.
They were targeting street gangs, right or they were targeting
what they would see as cartel operatives, and they arrested
thousands and thousands of people, and they were primarily yes,
you can guess, they were primarily targeting very poor neighborhoods.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
It's a weird thing for me personally to come to
terms with looking at the news and the actions that
the US has been taking, you know, since the fall
of last year, where you know, we are kind of
referencing these boats that are being bombed in the East
Pacific and the Caribbean Ocean, and there are arguments being

(30:47):
made by the current administration about, you know, why it's
good to make these killings happen, right, But then I
think if you think about it a little further and
you realize, oh, there's no way to prove any of
the things that are supposedly happening. These are just killings
of human beings and bombs being dropped on boats. And

(31:08):
it only gives you an achy feeling because it's not
the same thing. Right, guess what we're describing happening in
Venezuela with thousands of people being killed, But it is,
it's right along the same vein to me, at least
from my observation.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
I hear you, I often sound like the old Exorcist
in that was it that Bladdie novel The Exorcist. He
comes in and says, no, it's always the same demon.
It's always the same fiend. It can be dressed up
in different ways, right. Governments and power structures can be

(31:46):
can appear to be different, but when they're possessed by
the same evil, that evil remains the same. Like these
people in Venezuela, these people in these boats, they're never
going to get a day in court. They're never going
to get to say, hey, I actually wasn't transporting drugs.
You know what I mean? This is to me again,

(32:07):
without sounding without sounding too dogmatic or too I guess brainwashed.
In my own background, I am taught to identify evil
like that, and that that is evil stuff.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Well, I agree, it's hard for me to square it
with how does eighty two hundred extra judicial killings by
Venezuela match up with the number of human beings that
get killed by law enforcement officers in the United States
every year? Right, especially ones that aren't brandishing a weapon,
you know, and eminently threatening an officer. Amazing too much

(32:47):
to think about. It's hurting me a little bit.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
It's the right thing to think about, and it should
hurt all of us to think about it, because it's
a man in the mirror kind of moment. We know
that sanctions increase, sanctions ratchet up again in twenty nineteen,
and when this happens, Madudo abandons the old price and

(33:10):
currency controls imposed by the Chavez administration. And when those
price controls and currency controls are removed, it seems to
help write the ship a little bit. But it's not
enough to satisfy the West, because the West begins claiming
the government of Venezuela is juicing their economic numbers. They're

(33:34):
selling gold from illegal minds and they're selling narcotics despite
the fact that Venezuela is a transit country, not an
origin country. H oh oh, we got to do this.
Oh oh man, Okay, So that all the stuff that
we're still leading up to the second coupe, to the kidnapping, right,

(33:54):
the big kidnapping January third, twenty twenty six. What needs
to be reported more often in the mainstream news is
that this was not the first swing at bat. The
first US attempt to overthrow and capture Maduro in specific
was not January. It was almost six years earlier, and
it was a home man, this one. This one. It

(34:20):
was apparently not the US's plant. Per what the US says.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Are we saying they denied it or I would.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Use I would use the word disavowed. Personally, I would
say disavowed. Matt. Remember we were chatting off air about
a little thing called Silvercore USA.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Silvercore USA. That sounds like some kind of paramilitary contractor.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Oh my gosh, you were great at this man, because
it certainly is this. Back in twenty twenty a private
security firm head by guy named George Goodreau, attempted to
capture Maduro. He had a crew of sixty troops. They

(35:09):
were trained in Colombia. There were at least two former
members of US Special Forces. Venezuela said, look, Uncle Sam
and the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration were one hundred
percent responsible for this, and they got backing from those
bastards in Colombia. The government of Colombia. Columbia denied everything,

(35:34):
but then stuff started to shift. The leader of Silver
Corps said no. The literal president of Colombia came to
us with two of his boys, and we agreed that
they would pay US two hundred and thirteen million dollars
to do this operation. Unsuccessful. Eight of the attackers are killed,

(35:56):
thirteen or captured. Two of those thirteen prisoners, by the
way American nationals. The Trump administration denied any role in
what the BBC calls the Bungled incursion.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Did we talk about this back in twenty twenty?

Speaker 2 (36:12):
I think if we had our Strange News segment, I
may have spoken about it then, because I remember talking
with you guys about it.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, it sounds so familiar, but I don't know the
specifics here. This is fascinating.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Disavowed it, sure is. We had nothing to do with it.
We have no idea. What these people are doing Silvercore USA?
What are they a company? This interview is over. That's
what happened. So it's twenty twenty, and this was almost
a blip in US news reporters and media outlets for

(36:52):
some reason, quickly moved on to other stories. I'm just
saying it makes you think, especially with what happened next
to me. It makes you think.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
And just as a reminder, the US president in twenty
twenty at the time of this attempt was the current
president we have today right now.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yes, that is true. We should also mention that the
creator of silver Core, Gaudreau, is currently wanted by the FBI. Yep,
he has failed to appear at a court hearing related
to his participation in this program. This is uh yeah, yeah,

(37:38):
street name Operation Gideon.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Fair.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Eric Prince is fine. Eric Prince is fine. I know
that's going to be your next question is.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about Eric to make
sure he's okay.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, let's check where is job rule? Where is Eric Prince? Uh? So, okay.
The US has quote unquote nothing to do with that
first fail operation, but US courts indict Maduro on drug charges,
narco terrorism, and conspiracy to import cocaine. They had put

(38:13):
a bounty on Maduro's arrest, fifteen million US dollars. Just
bring the man to us. And then later right the
US administration changes. Now we've got the former Barack Obama
vice president, lifetime politician Joe Biden. So President Biden's administration
looks at the Maduro case and they say, you know what,

(38:37):
we're going to bump it up. We're going to juice
that number fifteen million dollars. We're going to make it
twenty five million dollars. If you can just buy hook
or by crook, bring us this Maduro guy.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Oh baby. Just as a reminder, there's some things in
the United States that no matter who has the reins,
will always remain the same.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, and that's why perhaps to your point there, the
next Trump administration, so Donald Trump gets re elected in
the US, this administration doubles that offer. We see that
the Trump administration said twenty five million dollars, let's make
it fifty million dollars if you can arrest Maduro. He
is one of the world's largest narco traffickers. He's working

(39:23):
with those cartels. You guys worried about fentanyl in your
cocaine or in a cocaine They said, to be diplomatic, Well,
this is the guy with fifty million dollars if you
get him. And that's I want to go back to
that point with just mad Because, for some reason, despite
the fact that Venezuela is more a transit country for

(39:45):
narcotics rather than an origin country, and despite the fact
that there are tons of other powerful folks in Latin
America who have much more influence on the drug trade,
Uncle Sam had it out for this guy in p
particular in a way that went across the usual political
divide the two parties. The two big political parties in

(40:07):
the United States are the Elephant and the ass and
they hate each other to our cartoonish like spy versus
spy degree. But again, for some reason, they both put
aside their differences and they agreed that Maduro must be gone.
Isn't that weird?

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, you know, it's also weird that, allegedly, during that
first attempt to get Maduro, Colombia is the country that
is supposedly in cahoots with the DEA during that first
attempt at capturing Maduro, Because isn't Columbia the world's largest

(40:46):
producer of cocaine.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
So this just in, folks, We know there's an arson
problem on our street, so we teamed up with the
most famous arsonist on the block to arrest his neighbor.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Makes sense, makes sense.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Makes sense. Yeah, we'll take questions at the end. This
is this is crazy too because in October of twenty
twenty five, right, so we're still a few months out
from the successful coup. Uh October of twenty twenty five,
Uncle Sam attempts to get to Maduro through a covert operation,

(41:29):
recruiting his personal pilot, a guy named General Bittner Viegas.
And this comes to us from the Associated Press. We
had a homeland set guy named Edwin Lopez who meets
Vegas non Caracus. Obviously, he meets him in the Dominican
Republic and he offers him a ton of money. We
still know how much, but he offers him a lot

(41:51):
of money and probably some like sweetheart extradition exfiltration stuff
if he will do them one solid when you're flying
the President of Venezuela take him to a place where
the US can arrest him and they talk for like
this started before October twenty fifth. Is when we found

(42:13):
out about it. But they talk for like more than
a year, for sixteen months, they're they're talking over encrypted
chat and eventually Viega says, I can't do this, I
can't portray my president. And that's when we learn about it.
When Viegas refuses to play ball, Maduro's opponents in Venezuela

(42:35):
publicize the agent's contact with Homeland Security in the US.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
What yah.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Veegas disappears for a bit, but then later he comes
back in public and he says, you know who I love,
Nicolas Maduro alive? Yeah, Well, because they had to get
the statement.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
Okay, I guess so yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Know what I mean, another swing, another miss, but Cyotosu
and curious or this is the background that I think
everybody should include when they're reporting on the second successful incursion. Right,
this did not come out of whole cloth. This is
something the US was trying to do for a while
for some reason. And maybe here we take a break, folks,

(43:18):
and when we get back, we'll introduce you to Operation
Absolute Resolve. Not my favorite name, isn't Resolve already? Absolute?
What is tevid resolved?

Speaker 3 (43:31):
It's a little generic too. I just you know, all right,
what is middlings whatever, Let's see what these ads have
to offer.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
We have returned. So after these swings and misses, Operation
Absolute Resolve begins at around two am local time in
Gracas on January third, twenty twenty six. For those of
us in the East coast of the US, this time

(44:02):
zone is going to be about an hour ahead, so
it occurs around one am US East Coast time. They
got to go ahead from the President Donald Trump at
the time around ten forty six or so. Imagine how
terrifying it must be if you're just average person living
in northern Caracas and you see these explosions. The US

(44:26):
reigns fire down on the infrastructure of northern Venezuela. They're
suppressing any possibility of local air defenses. We're talking the
dangerous cinematic drones. We're talking manned fighter jets. At the
same time, while they're doing this, operators are infiltrating using

(44:48):
some of our special helicopters and attacking the Medoudal compound
in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. So imagine a foreign
army rocking up to the White House or rocking up
tomor A Lago as they're bombing any air fields or
any artillery batteries in the area. That's end of the

(45:11):
world stuff, right.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, it would mean all at war if something like
that occurred, and it wouldn't stop until one of the
sides gets completely defeated. I think I don't see how
you could ever have this kind of action, especially just
the fact that you said special helicopters. I haven't seen

(45:34):
any kind of official writing about the stealth helicopters being
used in this raid. And have they talked about that
in this at all anywhere, because I'm assuming that's what
they did.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah. They I mean, when you want to get close
like that, you're probably going to have to use the helicopters, yeah,
or else you're going to have to have people in
place for a while. And they they spent months in
the intel, you know, just like just like Masaude with Iran.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Well, and let's talk about how they get how they
got so close and got such amazing intel there. The
United States was engaged in negotiations with Venezuela while this
is happening.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
They're talking, that's correct.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
They're they're pretending the US side at least, I have
probably both sides. But the US side, for sure is
pretending to use diplomatic relations as a way to resolve
the conflict here. And all the while planning this, they're
buying time.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeahm hm, that's what they were doing.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Primarily unfortunately, as a lot of our fellow listeners know, unfortunately,
the US government UH and Intel agencies are fractured in
a way that hasn't occurred for some time. So it's
quite possible that maybe State was negotiating in good faith,
but maybe they didn't have visibility on what was being planned.

(46:59):
That's just bad operational hierarchy there.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Yeah, I just at this point, I just don't believe
that could be the case. I don't believe it could be.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
The case at the top. No, at the top, I
mean maybe for maybe for an attache who's coming in
and you know, maybe they're big conspiracy is that they
secretly are in line for a plumb consulting gig with Chevron,
right if they can get the conversation to go right.

(47:31):
So everybody has their own conspiracies. Maybe they don't know
the larger conspiracy is to come in and snag that
ice called Madudo. I mean, look, people died in this, Okay,
we know that we know the numbers of security officers.
We don't know the number of civilians. So Venezuelan officials

(47:52):
initially stated twenty three security officers were killed during the attack.
The estimates leader grew to forty two. That's a lot
of dead people who are just doing their jobs. The
Cuban government later stated thirty two members of their military
and their intelligence agencies were murdered. We have seven reported

(48:12):
American injuries, but no reported American fatalities any one sided.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
And it all happened while most of the United States
was asleep.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
And then you wake up in the morning and there's
a big announcement and you go, what in the hell
just happened?

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, and Meduro and his spouse, as you said, the
first lady are captured. They're spirited away, they're kidnapped, basically,
and the Venezuelan government portrays it that way, and I
agree with them. They're kidnapped to the United States to
face those drug charges, which I think are a little
trumped up. And the public learns we're moving on. The

(48:52):
public learns the complexity of the operation. The next day,
and questions remain. You know, probably the most direct source
on This is going to be the press conference that
Joint Chiefs General Dan Kane delivered on the day after,
on January third, and he talks about how Uncle Sam

(49:15):
launched more than one hundred and fifty aircraft from twenty
different bases across the Western Hemisphere, cooperating for months with
intelligence agencies to do this intradiction and says integration doesn't
even begin to cover it. This was a group project,
but it was also a massive expense in terms of

(49:38):
manpower and financial cost. You know, if you want to, folks,
if you want to read a breakdown on the publicly
disclosed details online for free. I can't. I actually can't
believe I'm saying this. US Today did a great job
on this one. Yeah. Check out mappy US attacks in

(49:59):
Venezuela line of Nicholas Maduro's capture. They did, You guys
did a great job. Fair is fair?

Speaker 3 (50:05):
No? Wow?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
You can see maps of the strike zones. You can see,
I guess a lot of targeted ads. But you can
also see a list of the US aircraft that were used,
including the support helicopters.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
They didn't they didn't put the stealth helicopters in there.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah. Well, that would make them non stealthy, wouldn't it.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
For the UAP guys? Come on, they got.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
The they got unmanned aircraft in there. They've got one.
They've got one. But yeah, it's an umbrellatar. So there's
still a lot of stuff they're not going to tell
the public. I think they had to. I don't know
if you worked on that operation, let us know and
stay safe out there, I mean, do what would we
do if a foreign powered kidnapped our president? Like, folks,

(51:00):
if you are, no matter who you vote for, no
matter where you live, even if you don't like your
president or your ruler, even if you're let's say you're
British and you hate the monarchy because it's a ridiculous,
stupid idea. And by the way, you're correct and believing
that even if you didn't like the monarchy and someone
kidnapped the King of England, wouldn't you be kind of offended,

(51:25):
like a like a little bit right?

Speaker 3 (51:28):
What you can't do that?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
That's our guy? Do you? Oh you love the president
or the king and you're like.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
No, but no, are like how dare you?

Speaker 2 (51:40):
It's our house? You know what?

Speaker 3 (51:41):
I mean to slap you with the back of this glove.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
I propose a duel god. That feels so United Nations.
I wonder if they ever did that at the Security Council,
they probably gone down weird things. We should do a sketch,
we should get back into our sketch comedy. I really
enjoyed that. Let's do that. Yeah, I mean, okay, so
it is an affrontier country. It's like, even if you

(52:09):
are the kind of person who has a bunch of
different random beverages in your refrigerator and you hate one
of them, right, Like, let's say you hate kombucha and
someone breaks into your house and all they take is
the kombucha. You'd still be pissed. It's not that you

(52:29):
love kembucha, so they broke into your house.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah, I mean I was not going to drink that
for a while.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Right, Yeah. And so this is this is kind of
where we're at for a lot of people, for a
lot of the public of Venezuela. If you go to
the United Nations, our favorite big to dos of international institutions,
and you go to the legal beagles who study this stuff,
they all agree this kind of attack is only legal

(52:59):
if the US either had the green light from the
United Nations Security Council, a bunch of dudes who famously
don't get along, or if the US was provably acting
in self defense, and neither of those seems to be
the case. So here, Dylan, Matt, everybody, we've got to
riddle ourselves. Why would the US gamble so much? Why

(53:22):
would they risk so much in the pursuit of again,
one guy, just like one guy? Why this one guy?

Speaker 3 (53:32):
I'm going to go out on a crazy limb here,
let's do it. I'm gonna say, maybe it has something
to do not with Venezuela at all, maybe not even
to do with Chevron Orseshell, maybe it has something to
do with who Venezuela was selling oil to.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, let's trip to that one. This is okay, So
all right, why spend so much time and the risk
of American deaths right to get this one? The answers
from the administration shift at such a surprising rate. Originally
was touted as a winning move to stop the flow
of legal drugs, but the flow of oil resources quickly

(54:12):
took center focus. So going to this, here's an internet,
here's a facet of the international argument, and then we'll
jump back. So coupled with the attacks on Iran, the
US has severely complicated China's energy supply chain. China is
the world's largest importer of fossil fuels. It's depended on

(54:36):
resources from countries the US typically doesn't get friendo with
countries like Iran, Russia, Venezuela. So you're gonna hear you
probably already have heard, folks, some people claiming this is
a four D chess move to hamstring China's growth and economy.
While that is possible, I would say it's worth noting

(54:58):
this may be a knock on effect and not the
primary goal of the United States. I would go further
on this conspiratorial route that we're proposing and say there
is one nation that definitely profits from China becoming a
captive market, Russia. And that's especially interesting because the US

(55:20):
has temporarily reversed sanctions on Russian oil purportedly due to
price spikes and during the conflict against Iran. Pretty much
everybody except for Russia and the US believe easing these
sanctions will just bolster Russia's position in the ongoing war
in Ukraine. They'll give them a fresh influx of cash,

(55:42):
profits armaments and know how. One of the biggest things, however,
that a lot of people are missing, is the idea
of experience. In any military experience is one of those
things you can't buy. So dissipating in a conflict in
any way is going to give Chinese military minds a

(56:05):
phenomenal opportunity to learn the greatest of arts. And while
these military minds are learning the greatest of arts, their
economy will be fed by Russia. Russia's profiting from this
entire thing. So I think it's also I'll take one
more leap on the willow branch here. I think it's

(56:26):
also quite possible, not quite possible. It's worth considering that
perhaps our current administration in the US was influenced by
Russia in some of these decisions, because remember we when
this all started to go down on January third, twenty
twenty six. Even before then, we had privately agreed in

(56:48):
some of our offline conversations that Russia had to green
light these incursions against Venezuela. There's just no other logical way.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
I don't remember that Russia would have to say, okay, US,
you can do it.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Russia would have to have some kind of tacit go
ahead is part of what I think it's. I think
it's less like that being the most important part of
their phone calls and chats, but I think it's more
like something they mentioned as the meeting is wrapping up,
like oh, hey, we're gonna do those Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
That's you interesting. I just you know, it's so it's
so puzzling to me, and maybe it is like you're
almost talking about a five D move, like it it
looks like forty chest, but there's actually another layer and
a whole other timeline occurring that this complicated situation. If
you look deep into it, you feel like you can
see the true meaning behind the actions, but you're actually

(57:49):
just seeing something to the left of what the true
action is. That's very interesting to me. I do think
the China stuff, to me, feels just way more impactful initially.
And the reason why I feel like it's more about
that is because that wasn't talked about in the news

(58:10):
during a lot of the run up to this about
how it's actually going to affect China. It was all
about how these actions affect Venezuela, what the oil companies want,
all of the things that the Trump administration was talking
about the privatization of Venezuela's state run oil, you know,
making all these deals and then seeing the actions in Iran,
which also trades a lot of oil. Venezuela I think

(58:34):
shipped half of the oil they were producing to China,
and now Iran also shipped most of their oil to China.
Those two moves in particular, then to have Cuba being
talked about as the next play, which is another oil
exporting country to China, as well as a strategic positioning.

(58:55):
You know, just from a geography perspective, it does feel
like Cold war moves to me, if if the Cold
War isn't between the US and China or I guess rather,
what is Russia's role in your mind too, that kind
of Cold war situation the US and China have going
on right now, folks.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
To me, Russia is increasingly becoming a vassal state to
chat them Russian moads. Yeah, Russian needs to you know,
in the old days, now I want to tick off
any of our Russian friends in the crowd. But in
the old days we used to say Russia is a
developing country that happens to have nukes and a lot
of oil and maybe doesn't deserve a seat at the

(59:39):
Security Council despite their you know, despite their instrumental role
in winning World War Two. However, now because Russia remains
an energy giant, if not a very functional military, because
they are reliant similar to some Gulf countries on fossil

(01:00:00):
fuel exports, this is a big win for Russia. Russia
doesn't want to be sidelined in the international order and
feels that, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union,
that is increasingly the case. Now. They've still got a
pretty pretty good hold on the stands and they're definitely

(01:00:23):
frenemies with China. But China needs the energy and Russia
can get it to them. So that's part of the calculus.
And I do want to go back and point out
something just so you can paint the picture before you
get to China. Hear, despite the initial calculus or window

(01:00:44):
dressing to the US public being something about the flow
of illegal drugs, the US president at the time went
back and contradicted himself to the statements of various US
agencies pretty quickly. It has been indeed transparent about wanting

(01:01:04):
Venezuela's vast oil resources for a long time. We mentioned
they have the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
That's going to be about three hundred billion barrels as
of twenty twenty five. But again, not all oil is
the same. Venezuela does have bubbling crude, but it's called

(01:01:25):
heavy crude or sour crude, and that means you can't
use the generic, most easy refinement processes for it. You
have to specialized infrastructure. So getting the oil is fine,
that's great, good job, good hustle everybody. But getting that
resource to a consumable place requires expensive infrastructure, refineries, transit expertise.

(01:01:52):
That's where we get the boffins at Big Oil. Here's
another conspiracy for you, folks. We want to introduce you
to a former Chevy executive, Ali Boschiri. He once headed
up Chevron's oil production in Venezuela. And it turns out
we know now that he worked with the CIA to
figure out how to overthrow Baduro and what happens after

(01:02:16):
Maduro gets overthrown. He secretly advised the United States to
push for Delce Rodriguez as Venezuelan's interim president. Now that's
what Matt and I mean when I say this acting
president situation is a little complicated. Yeah, it's a little little.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
It is, And especially seeing that move occur simultaneously in
the moment where you're seeing footage of the American President
on a plane just casually remarking about how, oh no,
this is about oil. The American oil companies are going
to be They're so happy. And then you see meetings

(01:02:58):
like publicly shown meetings in the White House, where where
does Chevron Shell and all the big players VP, They're
all hanging out together. They appear to be divvying up
Venezuela's oil infrastructure very much so the bear of the
perils that we just mentioned.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Very much So, yes, yes, very much so. After the
success of the coup, our current president Donald Trump told reporters, quote,
I'm not going to do the voice where everybody you
can picture the voice. I'm not going to do it.
So hold on, We're going to be taking out a
tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground. Uh. And

(01:03:39):
then he goes on and say the money generated from
the oil business will go to one the people of Venezuela,
two American oil companies, and then three is the rest
of the quote. Quote to the United States of America
in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us
by that country end quote. So they're going to charge

(01:04:00):
them for the coup, They're going to charge them for nationalization,
and then they're gonna have a bunch of I don't know,
I don't know. Are they bowsy enough to do a
convenience fee like ticketmaster?

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Oh yeah, oh yeah per gallon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Here's our convenience fee, here's a here's our broker fee, right,
just like the current administration got from the TikTok deal.
Remember that. Do you see all the billions they got
from that one. We're in the wrong business man.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
We need here, we are, we need to get into oil.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Yeah, oil AI top blight countries. I don't know, Yeah,
we know that. Nationalization. As we mentioned, it's bedeviled Venezuela
and US relations since the dawn of the modern age.
It's very familiar story. Aaran is another great example of that,
iron with the British. Before Venezuela nationalized their oil industry

(01:04:58):
back in nineteen seventy six, American companies Exxon, Mobile, Golf Oil,
they were huge players there, but then the country denationalized
or reopened its industry in the nineteen nineties, but then
Hugo Chavez came in and nationalized it again in two
thousand and seven. So all your favorite big oil companies

(01:05:21):
in the US and specific are claiming they are owed
billions of dollars in compensation because all the stuff they built,
in their opinion, got stolen from them.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Yeah, because the country wanted to be in charge of
its own stuff. What a crime?

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
What a crime? Well there, yeah, yeah, and from there
you can see where we fall on this one, folks,
I think. But from their perspective, they built a bunch
of refineries, they built a bunch of extraction facilities, what
have you, and then they lost all of that because
the government said nope. Hours it makes me think it's

(01:06:00):
not really about drugs. I'm to say it really really
about drugs. I don't think it's really I think it's
about the main drug, oil, but not the I don't
think it's about the marching powder or the the fentony.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
There's there's only one bigger drug than oil. Ben It's
the one that have all the bends on them, and
and Abraham's and press.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Yes and we gotta We got a great letter recently
about our standing challenge, differentiate economy from money. I've got
to respond to that one. Did you see that one?
It's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Oh, we got so many great ones lately.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Yeah, we did. Uh, but we didn't get anything about
the discombobulator, which is one of our main questions. We
can't let the episode end without getting to this ido.
We were both so excited, what a weird word to
use for this, but so excited with the president said
we disabled Venezuelan equipment with a discombobulator.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Oh you know, it's a discombobulator.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Discabuppu like you have a home.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
But perhaps you like us. When that phrase came around
and then what the effects of the discombobulator were, all
of our ears perked up because it sounded an awful
lot like a directed energy weapon that, oh, I don't know,
maybe uses microwaves to disable people and electronics.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Yeah, going back to our our opening there about Havana syndrome,
we instantly clocked this and I think this, this story
about the discombobulator occurred before the sixty minutes publication of
their expos on Havana syndrome weapons. We're not clear whether

(01:07:56):
the current US president meant to talk about emp's electromagnetic
pulse devices or whether he meant something like a directed
energy weapon or whether he meant something else. But he
did say in an interview with The New York Post,
quote they never they being Venezuela. They never got their

(01:08:18):
rockets off. They had Chinese and Russian rockets, and they
never got one off. We came in, they pressed buttons
and nothing worked. They were all set for us. I
also end quote. I also liked the idea of saying
got your rockets off?

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Yeah. Oh, we really appreciate that phrasing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Nice very much, so nice one. Looking forward to your
Netflix special.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
My question is, if the discombobulator, as it were, was
so effective in this operation, is it being used in Iran?
And if so, is it just ineffective in a lot
of the ways it's being used or is there just
not a specific targeted invasion force that's occurred yet with
stealth helicopters and things like that, where maybe you would

(01:09:04):
deploy a discombobulator.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Right. That's a great question, is one I share as well,
because if something can be used to such tremendous advantage,
then why is it not being deployed elsewhere? And there
are a couple of gaming out, you know, follow up
questions we could have in that, But right now, from
what we can tell is whatever the current president of

(01:09:30):
the US goals a discombobulator has not been fully explained
to the rest of the world.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Yeah, yes, there were reports of soldiers on the ground,
both Cuban and Venezuelan who well, at least again we
get these reports, and it's very difficult to verify if
these quotations are truly coming from somebody who was hit
by a US weapon during the attack, but they were

(01:09:59):
report Howard things symptoms that sounded very familiar to Havana syndrome,
which is that whole thing. It just makes us very
intrigued surely know if that's what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
And what we mean by that, folks, is we have
seen allegations we have not seen. We have not seen
video statements or medical diagnoses by people that we could
prove were either there on the scene or by people
that we could prove our doctors who assessed the victims afterwards.

(01:10:34):
So we don't have that smoking gun discombobulation yet. But
we also know that when asked about this during this
conversation with New York posts. The current President of the
United States said I'm not allowed to talk about it
multiple times, and then kept talking about it multiple times.
He also made references to something we were talking about

(01:10:57):
a little bit earlier, ongoing US addiction and destruction of seacraft.
These reportedly occur for two reasons, one quote, detecting destroying
drug vessels. So we also know that the United States
has conducted over forty strikes against quote alleged drug trafficking
boats throughout the Caribbean since September of twenty twenty five.

(01:11:22):
And these are manned vessels. So more than one hundred
and forty human beings have died as a result of
these attacks too.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
And when there Because we know it's mostly in the
Caribbean area where these strikes have occurred, but they're also
occurring on the Pacific side, and it's always mentioned as
the Eastern Pacific, which I'm assuming is just somewhere near
the coast of California or Mexico, or maybe even down
towards Guatemala, Nicaragua. In all those spaces, I don't know
the exact locations where those strikes are occurring. It just

(01:11:54):
wouldn't make much sense for those smaller boats to be
any further out to the west. You know, if you're
looking at the huge Pacific Ocean and then the coastline
of the US.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
And looking at the size of those boats too.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
Man, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Yeah, we also knew for anybody who checked out our
earlier episode on Shadow Fleets, if you haven't check it
out now, I don't say this all the time. That
was a really good one, and I'm surprised how I'm
not happy with how prescient that was. But we know
that the United States has been seizing oil tankers linked

(01:12:29):
to Venezuelan oil exports since December of last year, maybe
a little bit before that. Man. Yeah, again, curtailing supplies
to other things. And it's interesting the China aspect and
needs to I agree, it needs to be reported more often.
Remains to be seen. What's happening. Oh oh, we do

(01:12:50):
have because one to end on good news, right, we
do have some things that this reminded us of. So
before we get to the good news, you'll see. Before
we get to the good news, folks, Matt, you were
telling me off air, this reminds you a little bit
of a in some way about a video game you
played back in earlier evenings.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Oh yeah, okay, so this is I do not remember
the film, a film called License to Kill. It was
about this guy named James Bond and there's a drug
lord that puts a hit out on the soon to
be bride of a CIA agent who happens to be

(01:13:33):
James Bond's best friend. And it's this convoluted bit of
a story there. But the bride ends up getting killed.
So then the I six meter James Bond goes on
a full on revenge film journey against a drug lord
and an entire cartel. I don't remember the movie. I

(01:13:54):
remember the video game, which is one of those old
floppy discs, and you played it on MS DOSS. What
I realized, I have visceral memories as a young boy
playing this game Licensed to Kill, where you are shooting
at Narco terrorists as James Bond with you know, with

(01:14:16):
a side arm. You're in a helicopter shooting and killing
drug traffickers. Then you're swimming with some scuba gear and
shooting and killing people in boats and collecting all the
kilos of cocaine. I just realized that I have view
I have seen drug trafficking and drug traffickers and drugs

(01:14:39):
and all of that stuff as the bad guys since
I was a very young child in elementary school, like
fifth grade is when I was playing that game, and
I just was just thinking about how much that has
been ingrained into my psyche, as specifically cocaine and drugs,
as being the bad guy. And it's okay to just

(01:15:02):
kill those those bad drug traffickers, especially if you're an six.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Agent, especially if you're a very bad I six agent.
For the record, the kind to day drink since has
your full name in public. Oh so, I think a
lot of us share that experience. It's not a unique thing.
The propaganda is real. Shout out to everybody who still
has their old g I Joe's, you know what I mean.
Shout out to anybody who's plate Hall of duty. You

(01:15:29):
can kind of see the way the tides of narrative
shift depending upon who gets used as the bad guys
or the terrorist. You know. I also want to put
something out there, Matt, that you just reminded me of. Folks,
if you're familiar with the game GoldenEye, do you enjoy
playing GoldenEye? They called me Ben, Come find me. I'll

(01:15:54):
eat you all right.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
What wait, I'm really gone.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
I'm really good at gold and eye.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
Oh my god, did you figure out how to do
it with the N sixty four controller?

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
All right, these this briefing is not for questions.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
Now, It's possible.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
You got to spend a lot of time, I think.
But yeah, we're obviously we're fans of games that are fun,
We're fans of games that don't kill people. But this
is an episode of the great game, right, the greatest
of games and one of the most dangerous ones. And
our quote unquote positive news here is that Chevron and

(01:16:36):
the rest of big oil may be coming back to
Venezuela in a big way. I'm sure we all saw this.
But just last week on March tenth, again, we're recording.
On March sixteenth, Reuters has verified Chevron and Shell are
closing in on some oil production deals that allow them
to participate in what the current US president calls a

(01:16:58):
one hundred billion dollar effort to rebuild Venezuela's oil industry
after decades of mismanagement and under investment. Will the actual
people of Venezuela receive any benefit from this? That remains
to be seen?

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
No answer, I'm joking.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
I'm gonna go with no.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Maybe it'll be great for everybody. Oh and they also
I love that idea of like rebuilding Venezuela's oil industry
after decades of mismanagement, under investment and bombs.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And also under investment is such a little
Weasley parkourish word, you know, Oh, under investment. Okay, okay, buddy,
cool story bro. You know, it's important for us to
end on this. Our thoughts are with the people, the
public of Venezuela, the people the public of a Rod

(01:17:55):
and the people the public of U grat of Russia
as well. You know. It's it's not the public that's
usually waging these wars, and our thoughts are with you.
I mean, I mean, it's important for us to say
Madodo not a good guy. The Ayatola, the former Iyatola
not that great a guy. They're not peaches as people,
if we could say, but these strikes do fly in

(01:18:17):
the face of established international laws. What's motivation? What's the endgame?
Is it oil? Is it new Cold war? Geopolitical control
of resources? What's the endgame? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
What if it's Jesus sure?

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
What if it's a case of das you know, it's
anybody's guests that for now seems to be the stuff
they don't want you to know. Thank you so much
for joining us this evening. Folks, we'd love to hear
your thoughts. Our thoughts are again with you. You're the
best part of the show. So hit us up on
the internet. You can find us anywhere with the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also give

(01:18:58):
us a call and you can find us on email.

Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
We have a phone number. It is one eight to
three three st d WYTK. Give it a call. Tell
us what happens next with all this stuff? What do
you think? What do you see in the future. We
don't think you can actually tell you know, see the
future and all that stuff, but we're very interested to
know what you think. Yeah, give yourself a cool nickname.

(01:19:20):
Leave a three minute message and we will see you
in the listener mail segments on our audio feed. If
you want to send us an email. We are the.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Entity's that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet o't afraid. Sometimes the void writes back
and is writing back to some people later this evening
New fact give us a random fact we got some
great bird facts recently. I'm very excited to respond to those,
and we'll give you a random fact in return. So
whitprobe who trade some stuff with us out here in

(01:19:51):
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:20:12):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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