Transcription
I want to talk more about the opposition in Venezuela and what you think people outside Venezuela can do to aid the opposition. I want to talk about the ordinary life of the typical Venezuelan. Now I want to talk about where that trillion dollars went and maybe we can do that while talking about your claim for example that the Maduro government has basically also become a narco dictatorship.
Now, you know, you made a variety of extremely serious allegations, the misuse of a trillion dollars certainly being one of them, but then you also said, well, the Maduro government is in bed with the with the narco cartels. And see, I don't think people in North America exactly understand what that means or exactly how nefarious those cartels are and what a danger they pose well to the stability of the entire Western Hemisphere. But then you also added to that the fact that Maduro is in cahoots with well Cuba, Iran, Russia, and then Hezbollah. And so this is a lot for people to digest because it sounds like a stew generated by a conspiracy theorist in a sense, right? Because there's almost nothing that is bad that you're not accusing the Maduro government of participating in. And so the easiest thing for a listener to do is to just say no to all that. So we should walk through those issues one by one.
I guess the thing I'm most curious about to begin with, let's do it in this order. What the hell happened to a trillion dollars? Like that's an awful lot of money. Where where do you think most of that especially given that you have a 70% collapse in GDP and an 80% reduction in oil production? It's like and then everybody in Venezuela is poor and yet a trillion dollars came pouring in. So what's your sense of who that money went to and like what sort of people did that money go to and what are they doing with that money?
So part of the money funded some very existentialist social programs at some point during the Chavez administration. Uh but a large part of it went to fund uh revolutionary groups and political parties all over Latin America. You have to remember that the Castro vision uh which is the important uh figure I think here the Castro vision was to spread the revolution all over Latin America and in his uh worldview what he was doing believe it or not is um Chris Christ's work on uh on earth like he was bringing paradise to earth he said that literally many times so Castro had been educated by the Jesuits in Cuba and he believed that capitalism and you know uh liberal democracy, individualism were the sources of corruption. Uh that Christ was the first communist revolutionary. And this is by the way something very similar to what Pope Francis said at some point when he argued that it was the communist who thought like the Christians. He said that literally Pope Francis who is suggested himself. So and and Kasu was promising uh to create this but this had to be ex an expansionist pro project. So when Chavez came to power and he had all of these resources uh in her in his pockets um plenty of them went to Cuba of course to sustain the island but then he started supporting different um regimes or movements and terrorist organizations all over Latin America. At some point I had this convers conversation with former president Alber who is also a good friend. At some point he told me I was the only non-leftist non-socialist uh president in most of South America. And it's true. Uh and all of these regimes even the the Kirkner dynasty in dynasty in Argentina corrupt Kirkner dynasty got some uh you know loans special loans from the Venezuelan government when they needed money. So, and they stole a lot of money. I mean, they have the Chavistas and their families have billions of dollars uh in in on bank accounts uh in in Europe uh in the US in different parts and um and so uh it's amazing you saw Ferraris in in Karacas while people were starving. You have all almost 8 million people have left Venezuela because you don't find things to eat. 8 million is a quarter of the population who have left left the country because of the uh desperate situation and you have over 80% poverty rate and um and so a large part of the money as I said went to fund all of these uh movements but also within Venezuela they started creating a parallel army the circulus waranos chavez very early on understood probably because Castro advised him to do so that he needed a parallel troops in order to contain any threat that could come from the within the army and he was right. In 2002 uh the army staged a coup against Chavez and Chavez was uh taken into custody. he was uh imprisoned. But then some generals uh you know uh regretted the decision of um getting rid of him and they reinstalled Chavez and then he of course used the the muscle of the intelligence services of Cuba to to purge the military as much as he could but he was never entirely sure that there would not be traitors within the army. So he created the circulus bolaranos which are armed and these are the guys by the way that you see nowadays in the videos in the videos attacking um Venezuelans from the opposition who are just protesting on the streets and they are shooting at them. They are taking them in and torturing them. Any most of the people doing the dirty job are these um circulus varianos um which is the Volivarian circles you know uh and so [clears throat] that's uh a lot of money that went there also and you know you can squander wealth with no end I mean it's it's uh if you are if you're supporting other countries and and you you want to install regimes all over Latin America that are favorable to favorable to you I mean a trillion dollars is not even a lot of uh you know but the the worst part and I finished the point with this is that we saw people all over the west uh in the 2000s when it was already clear that Chavez was a dictator that he was completely undermining the uh separation of powers. He was imprisoning uh the opposition and he was violating human rights and so on. We saw very famous people like Joseph Stiglitz for instance going to Venezuela and praising Chavez for what he was doing and he did the same by the way with Kirkners with uh Fidel Castro uh he has been a longtime supporter of the Castro dictatorship and he now writes books called the road to freedom and and and pretend pretends to be the savior of of the west or or the killer or the undertaker of neon liberalism or something like that. But you could read the New York Times, you could read different BBC, you could see different news uh um media outlets or or or even on television. They were sympathetic to Chavez when he started doing this and it was already clear where they was going. So uh I I I share the frustration of the Venezuelan friends in the resistance because the west has not uh shown uh you know one standard for everyone when it when it's the leftist they they they support them or they turn a blind eye to what they do.
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Okay. So, let's talk about let's move from that. So you accounted for a fair bit of the spending. A lot of it has disappeared into the pockets of corrupt politicians. You see exactly the same thing for example with the Palestinian leadership. All of those people end up with billions of dollars in their accounts. And so that's appalling beyond comprehension. They sacrifice their own people and they often live elsewhere. And so the socialist redistribution of wealth ends up meaning that everyone's much more poor than they used to be except the small minority of people who have power instead of the evil capitalists and they have untold wealth at their fingertips. And then you also said the money was distributed around South America and Central America to destabilize and to promote revolution and and maybe elsewhere in the world as well. Okay. So, so and that you can spend an awful lot of money doing that and cause an awful lot of trouble. And you also pointed out that that's been aided and emedded by the what would you call them useful idiots of the Western media. And so we'll we'll get back to that. Let's turn to the another element of the corruption and that's the you describe Maduro as as a narco the Maduro regime as a narco dictatorship. So talk to everyone if you would a little bit about the role of the cartels in Central and South America because that's not something that's well understood in North America at all.
Well, by the way, uh people who who think I'm making these things up, they can Google it. It's all online. This is uh you can see in very serious uh media. You can read articles about this. Uh so the United States, they know about this, about the Iran connection, about the you know the drug cartels uh and so on and so forth. But uh you know now in in in Latin America because this is including Mexico we have uh a problem that more and more the cartels are taking over politics and you don't need to do the revolution and actually this is really interesting. Chavez used to be a proponent of what he called 21st century socialism. That is what he used to talk about. we are doing 21st century socialism. So what did that mean? After the fall the fall of the Berlin wall uh they came all together in in in Brazil you know the S Paulo forum with Lula and so on and and they said okay we are going to use democracy we are going to use democracy in order to uh create the socialist system. We are not going to fight a revolutionary war necessarily but we are going to use it in order to come to power and then once we are there we establish our our system and we never leave if if we can if we can avoid to leave we are going to stay. Okay. So uh the cartels have been playing an important role in this because uh at some point Chavez needed them and he offered refuge to the Colombian cartels from the uh attacks that the Ora administration were was uh you know um engaging in and they would come into Venezuelan territory and Chavis would protect them and and and the Colombian army couldn't go into Venezuelan territory because that would have meant a probably war with the Venezuelan army. So they started with that and the cartels um also started channeling money to the regime and at some point the regime itself especially with Yao Caveo um who who is a very high up in the um Maduro administration became a cartel boss. Now you have regions in in Venezuela, but also in Mexico. In Mexico, for instance, 30% of the Mexican territory is controlled by the cartels. 30%. Um, in Venezuela, you have complete regions, complete states that are being run by the cartels. Okay? And and now we have a a country like Chile that used to be a safe country, like the most advanced country. the cartels are taking over uh complete regions of the country uh with their guns and so on. Now these cartels have again connections with Hezbollah. They work they work with them and um and Hezbollah is creating now in in Bolivia which is also a far-left administration and which is a big producer of of coke Bolivia they are creating or establishing uh facilities to produce drones uh that are for for military purposes but also we have to remember that Bolivia and Venezuela I know this for a fact in Venezuela but I think it's also true for Bolivia they have uranium which is important for the Iranians uh for the nuclear program that Iran wants to develop. So the cartels have become a source of funding. They have become the government in the case of uh Venezuela and they don't want to lose their um uh business model and that's why I think they are not going to uh accept a transition to democracy in Venezuela. They are destabilizing the whole of Latin America because they're a business. They are expanding everywhere they can in order to make more profits. And a country like Chile, for instance, which used to be like, you know, free from this problem now has become the third largest exporter of cocaine to Europe because we are integrated uh with the rest of the world. We have many free trade uh agreements and so you have ships here that go everywhere and we have no basically no control on the border with Peru and Bolivia and so they bring all this cocaine through the northern border and then they exported via the Chilean ports to the United States to Europe and everywhere. And and so uh this is corrupting everything in in Latin America. And I've heard and I think this is this is uh in the media also that the trendawa which is um you know one of these cartels and organized crime um groups are also operating in New York and other cities in the United States. Of course, why not? I mean, if it's easy to get into United States it's it's it's a huge market. Why not? So this is the problem. We are we are becoming a narco region or a region controlled by the narcos and politicians are working for the narcos and the problem with this is that Iran, Russia and China, they don't care about this. They just used these cartels or the connections with the cartels for their own uh purposes. And that's why you see the first countries recognizing Maduro's fraud saying that he was democratically elected were China, Russia, and Iran. These three countries.
Mhm. Mhm.
This is not a coincidence.
Okay. So, Okay. So, let's speak to something more practical and psychological for a moment or so many people who are watching and listening will be wondering at least in some corner of their imagination why the hell they should care. You know, there's lots of things that are besetting the typical American voter at the moment. The situation in the United States is far from stable. I would say the same thing about Canada. There are many um catastrophes and looming catastrophes to be concerned about. And what happens typically is that anything to do with South and Central America takes a pretty what it takes a backseat to say the least. So I mean when we met in Chile, you were obviously interested in pursuing this conversation as I was. And what would you say to people who are listening in the United States and Canada, let's say, and elsewhere in the world about why they should care about what's happening with regards to China and Iran and Russia in South America and the cartels? I mean, South America's always been a relatively unstable place from the perspective of the northern west. And in some ways, this is par for the par for the course. I mean, the the Cold War has been being played out in a manner similar to this for as long as I can possibly remember. I mean, what what is it that you want to bring to the attention of the typical person in Canada and the US with regards to what's happening down south and why should they care?
Well, you know, the the thing is that the United States used to care a lot about Latin America. A lot during the Cold War. They intervened every country in order to prevent them from becoming communists and Soviet line countries because the KGB back then had the theory that the Cold War would be won uh in the in the third world basically. and and Henry Kissinger for instance when Salvador Aende in Chile was elected in 1970 he was the first Marxist Marxist president ever democratically elected in history and Henry Kissinger said and I I'm I'm quoting him literally the agenda election is the greatest threat that has um occurred in the Western Hemisphere in a long time because he understood that you know this could have a domino effect other countries would follow not only in Latin America but also in Europe. But now you have the following problem. Um the United States after September 11th take the country completely forgot about Latin America. We don't exist anymore. Okay, for them in terms of foreign policy and I'm not really exaggerating. Uh uh if if if September 11 would not happen have have happened, I think the history of Latin America would be completely different right now. Um, so they forgot about us and now they have Russia and they have China and they have other problems that are they look more important than Latin America. But the thing is that the main migration force in the United States are Latinos. And if the continent continues to dist destabilize uh because of narco cartels, because of people like Madur and so on, you will have you will have millions more people coming into the United States. Millions and and and and among them you will have the Iranian Hezbollah people and and so on and so forth. So from that point of view it is really important for national security. Uh and then when they are in the United States Latinos tend to favor the Democratic party. Twothirds of Latinos they vote for Democrat for the Democratic party. I think this is changing a little bit but not enough. Um so if if you have uh a change a substantial change in the demographics in the United States and we know this is happening uh this will have a political impact that is really really sub will be very substantial. Why do Latinos vote for the Democratic party? Because when we immigrate to the United States we bring our belief systems with us. It's not like because we're in the US suddenly we love Thomas Jefferson. That's not how it works. uh they favor the welfare state and and government handouts and I'm not saying everyone they are most of them are very hardworking people and so on and and I mean we cannot complain and and and most people hate Maduro for instance the Venezuelan who have escaped uh but the point is that if I was an American I would be worried that the um cultural landscape in my country would be changing so much because of this migration force that is coming into the United States that at some point it will be politically unmanageable for someone who wants to keep your country the way it was in terms of you know the ideas the institution limited government and so on. Uh so so which is when they speak about the purple states people moving from from California to Texas for instance and and they they tell them don't don't vote for what you left for. No. So, so but it's the same with Latinos going into the United States. it's the largest minority and it is really important to to have a stable region so you don't have this influxes of of of of people coming into your country first but then also because it poses as I said a risk for national security and and on top of that uh geopolitically Latin America is extremely important in this second world war because supply chains are delobalizing now uh you know you have this trade war going on with China and you need countries where you have you can produce your stuff. Uh you need raw materials. China is buying everything in Latin America. They're buying ports in in Peru. They are buying mines in Chile. They are buying everything you can in Panama everywhere. They are they're buying up natural resources and Americans are looking the other way. So I think this is not uh this is the backyard. There is a reason why you had the Monroe doctrine at some point in 1832 when they said okay we are not intervening in in Latin America but we will not accept any foreign power also going to Latin America and intervening there and you know having this this region as a as their sphere of influence but the Monroe doctrine seems not to exist anymore. But this is a new development for most of its history. The United States has really cared about Latin America because they understood how important it was for them, for their national security and for their national interest.
Well, I think we made the great mistake in the West of assuming that because the Soviet Union collapsed, the victory over the ideology that it made manifest was not only complete but in some ways self-evident. Right? Victory had been attained. the end of history, let's say. And it turns out that the the spirit of envious of the envious radicals was in no real way diminished by the cataclysmic catastrophe of the Soviet Union. In fact, to some degree, quite the opposite. Because when I was younger and the Soviet Union was still in full operation, you could point to the Soviet Union as an object lesson in the dangers of an anti-free market ideology. But now the Soviet Union has disappeared. And so it's much more difficult to to point to something that's happening right now. Well, you could point to Venezuela. You can point to North Korea, but they're they're economies that didn't have the scale or the presence obviously of the Soviet Union. And so all of this has gone back underground that the the attractiveness of the communist revolutionary ideas hasn't seemed to diminish at all. So now your point is, okay, so let's summarize this. Well, it's probably not a good idea to distribute a trillion dollars to radical leftist utopian criminal dictatorships all over South America and the world. That seems like a bad idea if you're trying to maintain a certain degree of stability even in your own c country. That manifests itself in all manner of economic collapse that drives migration northward. We've seen tremendous pressure on the American border and by all appearances, especially if Camela Harris wins. Um, however, that might play itself out. That's only going to get worse. And so there the the idea that the US and Canada by implication can separate themselves from the geopolitical occurrences in South America is a that's a fool's delusion. And that's especially the case if it's Venezuela with all that oil money, let's say, and oil that the rest of the world needs is in bed. Not only with the narco cartels who are brutal criminals beyond the comprehension of any normal person to imagine but also simultaneously in bed with Iran which is one seriously bad actor Russia which is basically at war with the West and China which is the biggest threat to freedom that the world has ever seen since the Soviet Union and so that's all playing itself out in South America and driving migration northward.
Exactly. And and I would add uh in the end, Jordan, if if China, Iran, and and Russia, your main enemies as the Western world, really care about Latin America, you should too, you know, because they are they are here. They are they are involved in these countries. They are investing tons of money. At least the Chinese, Russia is sending effectives. Even the Vagner group has been seen in Venezuela. um they they know that they need strongholds close to the United States and they want to destabilize the region because they also know that this destabilizes the United States and so uh I mean it is so obvious but uh I don't know I even in the conservative movement in in the US this is not understood. I think someone like Marco Rubio understands this very well. Uh or or maybe Ted Cruz, but I think the traditional Republican politicians are they don't understand this. They they don't see how how a big of a of a threat we can become if China and Russia and Iran they take over these countries. And by the way, we have uh some of the largest reserves in natural gas in the world. uh copper, uh lithium, um silver, gold, whatever, oil, all these things you have here. And manufacturing capacity in Latin America is also very strong. So, and you will need that at some point. And we are relatively young population still in Latin America as compared to Europe or even the United States or Canada are growing old very rapidly. So, for all of these reasons, I think it's not a smart move to to just ignore what's going on in your backyard. It's never a good idea. [music]