by the legitimate government of its export revenues is the use of force next. stocking venezuela i'm joined by my guest i will never read tea in london he's a documentary maker and founder of the dot net in claremont we have miguel pinker salis he is a professor of latin american history at pomona college and in venezuela we crossed to paul dobson he is a journalist for venezuela analysis dot com an independent on the ground news outlets are generally across the uk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate how lonely go to you first in london here the last cent tax please reflect on that. i really hope not i mean anyone that has even a cursory knowledge of what a military coup means in latin america especially one promoted by the u.s. knows that it will end up with hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of people dead

. and human rights atrocities that will deeply affect the society for many generations we only have to look at neighboring colombia which only two years ago formally signed a peace agreement between the fog and the colombian government and over those nearly sixty years a quarter of a million people died with millions of displaced and human rights atrocities and all this took place with the support of the u.s. government which was supporting the colombian government so i think it's very important to be aware of what the u.s. has a role has been terms of military coups in latin america and i think if we if we were i think there are lots of the leaders in europe and elsewhere and a lot of the commentary in the media would be much more much more critical when it comes to reporting the regime change agenda that the u.s. government is committing in venezuela. you know miguel in the reason i'm asking

about force because one has to wonder what role elliot abrams of iran contra fame and called by many a war criminal is now in charge of the trumpet ministrations policy regarding venezuela he doesn't strike me as a person that would hold back from using force and plus we had on top of that we had the legal pad gate with mr bolton with saying five thousand troops to colombia which of course he wanted the media to see miguel in claremont go ahead obviously i mean i think that elliot abrams is not only has a legacy in terms of the death squads and which is psychological ops that is the threat the threat of the intervention the threat of a military presence and not just from the u.s. but from those on the two who has been very bellicose on indicating that he was to see regime change in venezuela i mean who can colombia the worst case scenario as

some sort of border dispute erupts or is fabricated as we've seen in every build up to an intervention in the case of iraq weapons of mass destruction in the case thousands of citizens what i worry about is that what i worry about is that as they unleash a strategy that is essentially intended to create fissures in the military and look for ruptures and try to instigate one faction of the military to attack the other that becomes the bases of potential intervention the social fabric in venezuela has been torn it's very fragile sense of a social fabric so it's very dangerous to play with that scenario ok paul i mean how unified is the military here because of course we had c.n.n. trotting out. a defector or someone that would start working with this illegitimate self-proclaimed interim president here i mean even even the commentary and even in the mainstream media there egging this on how unified is the. backing the

legitimate government not this government that is trying to come to power with the better i think across the world to some extent to the black box very difficult to know exactly what is going on within the military and how it is worth pointing out that all of the public information which the military has admitted in the last week or say how is that yesterday they are entirely unified behind the constitutional president nicholas miller we've seen statements released not just from the high military command generals but also from each on the armed forces and from the middle ranking officials and also action from the base so because we could reinforce this last week the opposition activists who are supporting this coup d'etat. proposed amnesty law to the rank and file soldiers of the police officers on the outposts and on you you can see many of these soldiers and setting fire to this law in front of these activists which sends a very clear message to then i think and it's also worth pointing out of the benefit and i'm forces famous for having

a popular take spirit as something which was which will soon after the two thousand and two military rebellion which cause a coup de tat this is still very fresh in the minds of most of the soldiers and their very popular take a very ideology behind the bolivarian project ok poet let me go back to you in london to me one of the in the tool box of. john bolton is to use energy as a weapon meaning denying exports and whatever exports it through are frightening in the united states would go to this. individual power at the behest of washington how effective is could that possibly be and would it put the legitimate government in venezuela at its knees i mean it needs it relies upon these export revenues go ahead in london. well look the strategy that was used in chile to get rid of again the for example. in the seventy's remember richard nixon said that they had to make

the chilean economy scream and the the relative absence of a debate around the sanctions that have been in place and what this means. one report put the cost to the venezuelan economy at six billion since two thousand and seventeen and now with the with the new moves to essentially steal the the venezuelan oil assets in the u.s. also in the u.k. we've had the bank of england effectively say it won't be given the venezuelan government one point two billion pounds worth of gold that it has a these these are all intended to heighten the crisis and to make the economy scream in the hope that also promotes the social discontent that will lead to the regime change agenda so what we've seen now is simply an escalation a month escalate a mental pillar. can go don't pull this off i mean what kind of backing that is he have i mean before all this started before he swore him self in one in five minutes

wayland's even knew who he was and that changed since he took that he like napoleon he put in the crown on his own hand here has that change what is his position be to be the people in public opinion well he said no way is bottled up without a very small party that only has a handful of delegates and so president in with some ways was also usurping that position within the right they are they're not all there are all united they're all united in wanting to oust model but they're not united in terms of what comes next or who should be the leader of the country so in this sense i think you know it's playing a very precipitous game as well in terms of positioning himself in terms of trying to utilize but i think we need to look at long term i think what we're looking at is the potential of that making that economy scream means that that will eventually exacerbate conditions in the country that that will exacerbate when food is not available more is already scarcity there's already shortages there's already long lines so to exacerbate that. that's the strategy it seems and if you go and his

group begin to receive funding from abroad and can present an alternative pole that will further exacerbate the contradictions they're talking about bringing ships they're talking about rain end quote unquote humanitarian aid so again that's the context in which where you go is maneuvering and it's a very it's a very dangerous area as a very difficult area but what he seeks to do is to find cracks again within the lower ranks of the military whose families are also suffering whose families are not receiving the products and goods that they would like so again that's part of the contradiction you know paul revere would you reflect on that because i mean the opposition it's well known in venezuela that they actually support sanctions against venezuela the worse the better ok i mean how can how how can people like that be trusted or is it desperation that will trump at the end of the day go ahead paul i think it may get pointed out it is dangerous to talk about the opposition as a unified block we contract fed to them it with the same policy. and in general

there are elements of the opposition which often i think sanctions yes they're currently in washington they're in madrid they're in brussels calling on the international powers to in fact worsen the economic situation in venezuela which is absent not but they're also adamant within the opposition who put the sanctions who want to play by the rules who are democrats who are out in the community to political work to try and win a the supporters and these are the sort of elements we saw participating in last may presidential elections the problem is as media pointed out that these the events do not have the backing of the white house and as such and have been pushed to a second level behind that if you lead by one where you know. in london i mean the mature a government has. reached out force for dialogue and it's being repeatedly rejected and it seems to me that the european union and its recent actions are. are very

misguided instead of pushing for some kind of dialogue to avoid the kind of violence that you have suggested could happen it's real it's really misdirected from abroad it seems to me that they're also culpable in making the situation worse last thirty seconds before we go to the break go ahead powell in london absolutely the european union have filed a very important test and i think we now need to look at the more measured heads in the situation of people like them of governments of mexico the governments of europe why they have just called for an international conference on thursday the seventh of february in order to find the resolution and to restart peace talks within dialogue between both groups that had been taken place which is not reported on which contributes to people's misunderstanding of what's taking place today well certainly western media is doing its best to miss present what's going on in venezuela all right gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on venezuela's state with our city.

i mean i mean i didn't you know you. see it's one of those who. doesn't want to know most of the years and years it was not a. good month but really you. know i did my best college and i said i'd. choose these get. you know some new you. speak of a stale country's oil you know and just touch on this for

a momentarily i mean scotland does have a lot of oil and the whole thing is mightily confusing so the u.s. could consider invading britain right now during this breaks a turf awful and take control scottish oil i mean i'm all for that. you know world of big partisan lot and conspiracies it's time to wake up to be deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks. this is a stick up for the water bottle found in the stomach of the fish the brand is

spawns of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the id. oh is that let's tell consumers they're the bad ones they are the litter bugs are throwing us away industry should be blamed for all of this ways the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. seats to cook absolutely respond in a manner that seems lost their classes on my end i need to stay on your own that special projects funding he doesn't have and fall over on that i knew that that is the end of a footy team but for now the mountains of waste only grow higher. welcome back to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing venezuela.

ok let me go back to miguel and claremont i listen to mike pompei always a speech at the united nations security council and i i was just. aghast that he's pushing the democracy card as usual ok when it is anything but about democracy but from a venezuelan perspective we've talked about the misery that's going on in venezuela because of the economic situation here but would you say that within venezuela there is a democracy deficit from you know people on the ground looking up go ahead i think that there are multiple ways of interpreting that question i think that you have have had the empowerment of new sectors of the population who in the past have been excluded from the democratic process remember what brings us the power is the fact that you have a calcified political system a pact of democracy essentially between two political parties the christian democrats and the social democrats who excluded progressive sectors when it's good people from the latinos and from the hills have got us in from other other areas

and essentially govern the country. in a way that favored the middle and upper classes so what you have administrator with the right will of which i was the election of which obviously is in many ways the opening up of that space and that creates bifurcation that creates a clash because many in venice read it were not used to that they were used to their privileges they were used to their position as a country merging supposedly into the modern era that administrator is that dramatic opening know what has happened since the death of chavez yes there has been some actions on the part of the government that i would consider authoritarian yes there has been some actions on the part of the government that i would not support in many ways i think there has to be a greater opening a greater level of participation and the way to accomplish that is to negotiations this is not going to be resolved militarily long term fabric has to be reconstructed imatest and people need to understand that they can be participate in

this process you know i'm very well put you know paul it is there it is one of the objectives of these right wing parties is to go. back to the status quo before chavez meaning silencing these voices here and a side question. in his ilk are they are left to pull on a national scale like for example could big. collectively which they have not done in the past. back a presidential candidate if they were to be elections meaning a lot of these oppositions around the world they're very vocal but they're not electable ok so is it a return to the past and are they electable that's why they actually want outside intervention because democracy to they can't seem to make the system more for themselves go ahead paul in venezuela. well one way though i'm going to stop by pointing out something which western media has country even looked in all of its coverage of the situation in venezuela quandary no one who says an electoral system

fraudulent doesn't work the not presidential. and as such there isn't a democracy in the country not such he has to be president this man was elected by the venezuelan people as a deputy of the national assembly some years ago by the same electoral system which was used last may with the same automated voting machines which have used last may with the same electoral authority the same international observers and everything which makes up the electoral system in venezuela he was elected he was declared free and fairly he took a vote and when he won of course those are three in a fair election according to him but when he lost or when his people lost his party do. you know this is a contradiction and we show you the real hypocrisy of these sorts of people and whether the opposition will actually be electable in the national scale i think what i can say is that they will certainly get that big chunk of the event where

they are processed fifty percent or not i don't know and i think out a moment with the current demographics in venezuela we have a certain significant percentage of their voters who have emigrated outside of the country and not registered to vote and i think it will be difficult for them to be a presidential election and its weight even if they were a unified and of course venezuelan to have emigrated opt out right to it but they have to register and most of them have not registered to vote and this is a sort of frustration through the consistent losing of these sort of national elections and we're going to lead people like one way though in leopoldo lopez and others to seek. it right measures extra legal measures which you know we're seeing manifested today in effectively an illegal unconstitutional coup d'etat oh in london i mean you know looking at the last presidential election voter turnout were actually quite low and one of the reasons for that is that the opposition parties boycotted it so if we have the current president if he didn't win who did in that

election. no i mean clearly one that's my point that's my point that when i was there were two there were two opposition candidates the one the mother or the rest boycotted it and the funny stat is that you know venezuela forward as a kind of nearly a brawl democratic. in the chilean in the last chilean election the turnout rate was pretty much the same as that in the last one as well in the election when there was a boy called by a large section of the opposition so you speaks to the to the type of the this speaks to the disenchantment that people in countries like chile which are put forward and obviously we know that have been subject to u.s. military interventions which of brutalize their societies reprogrammed them from socialist orientated societies to very individual capitalist near liberal societies yet in these countries people don't turn up don't want to turn out to vote even

when there isn't any type of boycotting of elections yet people just kind of stats when talking about venezuela and i think you know paul mentioned the hypocrisy of children died in colombia a couple of years ago the media didn't have week long programs discussing that and this is in the government funded by the u.s. you know by the u.s. government as well but yet that death of kids in colombia don't make the news but the very real crisis in venezuela seems to be in everyone's face twenty four hours a day and so we have to really ask ourselves what are the agendas on corporate and western state funded media here you know again i'm kind of genetic yeah again go ahead. go ahead i'll go to paul tourist and then we go go ahead paul. yes very quickly i want to throw it to your attention of the view is found in my meeting this crew second this president donald trump the man who claims that the administrators it paid to ship that there is no democracy and so on and so on and so despite the fact that the new american international service looked david in it

he was in the clinton three and a donald trump was alleged to have left votes in his competitor so it's a good thing with with what more authority can he claim there is no democracy in venezuela when they lose a man in the united states is elected president well i mean if i can say oh if i could say to all three of you i mean the rank hypocrisy of alleging russian meddling in the two thousand and sixteen election and the kind of meddling that the united states overtly very proudly and the mainstream media trumps along with him ok i mean that kind of hypocrisy is just you know it's a stinks to high heaven miguel you want to jump in go ahead ok the question of the may twentieth elections last year because precisely because the opposition was going to boycott there was also a lot of number of individuals who have been part of the political process and venezuela who opted not to participate wanted to send a message to my google that they were not happy with these actions that they were not happy with these policies and ministry that's called a well took

a punishment vote not only was by the leader of the recipient of that child i said been the recipient of that as well and we're also hearing from the opposition that if they come to power they will not be elections in thirty days as the constitution indicates but they are going to wait a year until all the people outside of the country can register until they get. the electoral roll. makes sure that the outcome i would assume is something that they're more favor with the large question's going to be if they topple mughal how will they fight among themselves to put forth a candidate or are we going to see each one trying to preserve their power base oh no each one of them let me go back to each one of them and going back to london here they'll all go to washington and they'll figure it out in washington may. b. in langley somewhere that's what they will do. where is this going because it seems to me that with this abrams appointment there is a real commitment for regime change here and it's also given the fact that in

really the entire south america the continent of south america the absolute distaste of american military intervention this is a very nasty brew presented to us and like i've said i'm going to stay with this topic of my program here it's the poorest people of these countries that always suffer the most go ahead in london. absolutely i mean i think the us has shown that it has no interest in democracy in venezuela obviously not the reason why once regime change of venezuela i think the appointment of a abrams is extremely dangerous and completely meant to signal to the venezuelan society that they should expect to be pruett allies by the u.s. government and the one that looks into this guy's record shows he's he's involved with criminality in what happened with the with the and the cut i will with the contras in the salvador his role in the you know iraq he's these this is a secret brutal about bring in and it reminds me of you know the quote by madeline

albright about the price worth paying over half a million a record children i mean the u.s. basically is desperate for regime change and it is willing to sacrifice. tens if not hundreds of thousand people to achieve what something that it's been trying to get for for twenty nearly twenty years now ok miguel that he will suffer the most i'm going to give you the last word of forty seconds how it is well oiled play in all of this petroleum forty seconds go ahead oh it's always going in the background oil continue to be in the background i'm not convinced that in this particular moment given the blood of oil in the world markets that oil is the central concern i think it's ideological in many ways i think it's a return zero. bush iraq they want to remake america and we've seen this clearly with bolton speech about the troika of tyranny which the venezuelans first but that will come in and out well and then will come to you so that they want to be able to clearly establish their head gemini over the continent and they still to see this

as unfinished business unfortunately i'm a go i think you're absolutely right you know this is a this is like ideological possession it's the goal is a an ideology but the but in practice it has nothing to do with the well being of the people on the ground gentlemen that's all the time we have many thanks to my guests and london clermont and in venezuela and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at our d.c. next time and remember crosstalk. looks like the beginning of the french revolution where there were no egos any such a movement these people that you know they didn't know each other they never went on most of them never went to demonstrations after craftsmen middle class people

from a working class background that's why they are. u.s. veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. we're going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo from the circulated branches off that says we're got to act and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with them money others without knives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war then surely we can risk some discomfort or an easy miss for.

the slowness of the blue to them someone. who was before. much of those who heard the believe you'll never see him will. move. move. move show you this look beautiful. to look good. move most of his goals give you a good go. go go to school so look i do assume you want me to show you stories to go. to start ups to. get to meet until it was the middle of the most. they'd say look it is it's. just not a chance to just meet them mashed on. the street the president on please control need to.

be of interest because listening to snoop come up on your because those are the girls with you or your supporters to your sure station shouldn't be you should the door for the one who's doing business. i know you. are not a lot. of us are there with taking the patient.

from you to. the u.s. secretary of state suspends a keeney clear arms control treaty with russia while compose cites noncompliance from moscow claim that the kremlin denies. russia has jeopardized the united states security interests and we could no longer be restricted by the treaty while russia shamelessly violates of them.