i don't. know. if. the u.s. secretary of state suspends a key nuclear arms control treaty with russia. non-compliance from moscow a 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 a first reactions from e.u. leaders suggest growing opposition to jeopardizing the deal with mornings that

could take the world back to a battlefield between superpowers. pulis material would do well to test the resolve of the united states i think u.s. vice president warns find his way as leader nicolas maduro to quit not to provoke washington as all options are on the table. to over one hundred cases are open to. the full news program is ahead for you next hour coming up no cross-talk takes up how far the u.s. might go to advance in venezuela. taking you through the top headlines in just about what alice time.

hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle washington's force regime change strategy targeting venezuela continues unabated and we think is going to play and first sanction the country in ways they punish the poor second back a so-called interim president in caracas third deny 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 says dot com an independent on the ground news outlets are generally cross-like 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 sentence of my introduction is was is the use of force next please reflect on that. i really hope not i mean anyone that has even a cursory knowledge of a military coup means in latin america especially one promoted by the us knows that it will end up with hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of people that. human rights atrocities that will be in colombia which only two years ago formally signed a peace agreement between the fog and the colombian government 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.

his role has been in terms of military coups and that's in america and i think if we if we were i think most of the leaders in europe and elsewhere in a lot of the commentary in the media would be much more which are much more critical when it comes to reporting the regime change agenda that the u.s. government is 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 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 in el salvador and human rights violations in abuses but i think the other thing is what we saw with bolton which is

psychological ops that is that the threat the threat of the intervention the threat of a military presence and not just from the u.s. but from. who has been very bellicose on indicating that he was to see regime change in venezuela i mean beyond duquesne colombia the worst case scenario is 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 of the vietnam war the gulf of tonkin and the case of the dominican republic the deaths of supposedly 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 fat. 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 they're egging this on how unified is the military and backing the legitimate government not this government that is trying to come to power with the backing of washington and its allies go ahead. well as with any email address 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 at it generals but also from each on the armed forces and from the

middle ranking officials and also action from the base and 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 that the venison and i'm forces famous for having a spirit 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 trillion economy scream and so when we talk about the crisis and one of the other which is very real. it's incredible the the relative absence of the 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 bit as well and oil assets in the u.s. also in the u.k. we've had the bank of england effectively say they 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 escalation of a longstanding policy of regime change where making the economy scream is a fundamental pillar. can guy 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 has that changed since he took that he like napoleon he put in the crown on his own head here has that changed what is his position baeza be the people in public opinion well he said the very beginning when white those who are himself in it was really a cool way down the right as well in many ways bottled up well out of a very small party that only has a handful of delegates in the national assembly it was catapulting above all other

parties and white though declaring himself president in what some ways was also usurping that position within the right they are they're not all that 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 is 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. i mean 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 and 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's 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 in with the same policy. and in general there are elements of the opposition which often right thing 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 venice we know

which is abscess 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 will have to try and win a to support this and these are the sort of managements 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 a poet. to me the majority 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 had suggested could happen it's really 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 taking place which is not reports them which contributes to people's misunderstanding of 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 r.c. .

speaking to steal a country's oil you know just touch on this for 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 it for fossil and take control scottish oil i mean i'm all. over the stand. over what has. i know that i'm a. rather you know i'll figure out what. i'm going. to. keep and. i have.

told. you so you have to pay i think i'm going to tell you this is. the model for the after the gulf war for this to have to jim and then i hope it is our freedom and. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing venezuela. ok let me go back to miguel in 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 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. have have had the empowerment of new sectors of the population who are in the past have been excluded from the democratic process remember what brings to the power is the fact that you have a calcified political system a pact a democracy essentially between two political parties the christian democrats and the social democrats who excluded progressives sectors what excluded people from the bottles and from the hills and got access 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 obvious is in many ways the opening up of that space and that creates a 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 and they weren't used to hearing voices from below voices from the sides and i think what we've had a minister is that dramatic opening no 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 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 put their hands on 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 there were to be elections meaning a lot of these opposition. 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 that they can't seem to make the system more for themselves go ahead paul in venezuela. well one way though i'm going to start by pointing out something which western media has really even looked in all of its coverage of the situation in venezuela or i know

a man who says that the electoral system fraudulent doesn't work the president actions were and there is no 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 to last may with the same electoral authority the same international observers he was declared free in fairly he took a vote and went 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 elected on a national scale i think what i can say is that they will certainly get that big chunk of the event where they will process 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 would be difficult for them to win the presidential election in venezuela even if they were unified and of course venezuelans of emigrated opt out right to it but they have to register a 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 to go and leopoldo lopez and others to seek. yeah ultra right measures extralegal measure this week you know we see and manifested today in i think maybe an illegal unconstitutional coup d'etat oh in london i mean you know looking at the last presidential election voter turnout which were actually quite low and one of the reasons for that is that the opposition parties boycotted it so if. and i mean clearly one that's my point that's my point that when i won there were two there were two

opposition kind of the one the mother or the rest boycotted it and the funny stat is that you know venezuela is demonize its democracy is vilified and so a country like chile is put forward as a kind of near liberal democratic. in the chili and the last chilean election the turnout rate was pretty much the same as in the last one as well in the election when there was a boy caught by a large section of the opposition so it 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 reprogram 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 of these kind

of stats when talking about venezuela and i think you know paul when thousands of children died in colombia a couple of years ago the media didn't have week long programs discussing that and this isn't 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 it was kind of. yeah again go ahead. go how go to tell tourist and then we go go ahead paul. yes very quickly i want to throw it to your attention of the view is that the mom eating this who second this president donald trump the man who claims that venice waiters 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 clear at

three and a donald trump was alleged to have less votes and his competitor took the 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 it all if i could say to all three of you i mean the rank hypocrisy of alleging russian meddling in the every 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 election last year because precise 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 made a story that's called a wall took a punishment vote and not only was by the leader of the recipient of that i charge 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 model 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 maybe 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. 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 on 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 proved to lies by the u.s. government and the one that looks into this guy's record shows he's involvement with criminality in what happened with the with and the cut i with the contras in the salvador his role in the you know iraq he's these this is a signal to say that we will want regime change and we are prepared to be very brutal about bring in it and it reminds me of you know the quote by madeline albright about the price worth paying of half a million iraqi 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 has been trying to get for for twenty nearly twenty years now ok miguel getting worse will suffer the most. 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 of bolton abrams and the crew of their central america and he got out. iraq they want to remake america and we've seen this clearly was both a speech about the troika tyranny which the venezuela's first but then we'll come to that out well and then we'll come to you so that they want to be able to clearly a stout 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. what politicians do. put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. some want to listen. to going to press this is like them before three of them will be good. i'm interested always in the water. you know where you know you're. going over.

those whom you know most of both a billion euros a year was notable depending. on what you. please them please their ways but i did my best to you guys in the wide. east then you see. these get. in there you know you. join. every thursday on the alex song i'm sure i'll be speaking to us of the world of politics or business i'm sure both of those i'll see you.

this is the kaiser report there's gold silver bitcoin it's important to understand you need your individual economic sovereignty we have quite a few headlines to show that not only is the empire disintegrating but all those nation states which it rules over are kind of wobbly to be an understatement first headline from zero hedges to tweak gold.