From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of Iheartrading.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nola.
They called me Bed. We're joyed with our guest super producer returning, Max white Pants Williams. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Look, the world is full of increasingly bizarre stories. Now are there more than there were in the past? Or is it just easier to find them? That's a question for another evening. What we do know is it could be tough to keep track of everything. That's why many people
in the West. We're probably surprised to learn that the president of Venezuela came out on social media and in official press releases pretty recently and said that he might just you know, f around and invade the neighboring, much smaller nation of Guyana. Paul, have that rewind? What here are the facts? I don't know, like we all heard of Guiana or we've all heard of Venezuela. Maybe we start there because we haven't. I don't think a lot of people think about Guyana.
I just know French Guiana. Is that the same thing or is that a different gap, that's a different place. I only know it because of the French attached to it, because I'm such a you know, western minded fool.
This this was well known in some circles as British Guiana for a long time before it became independent. There's actually a ton to learn about Venezuela, Ben. I think I think most people don't know anything about Venezuela either.
I mean again, for me, it's mainly the name.
Yeah, you know, yeah, Venezuela, if we think back, was in the news quite a bit when Hugshaves was running it, and there was like tension between the US and Venezuela right largely around oil and how it is traded with what currency? Remember that everybody.
Right shout out confessions of an economic hit man exactly.
But I, you know, I just I was looking through the old CIA World fact Book again and just looking at how little I know actually about Venezuela.
You say, video out online yet not.
Yet I don't know.
Okay, Well, we've got a little little teaser for that very book coming out on the social media's keep an eye out.
But yeah, it's just it's something. It's something you can look at online. By the way, you don't need a physical book the World fact Book, check it out.
I would also fact check the CIA's claimed facts.
Oh definitely, yes.
Yeah, we've mentioned in the video that they are the opinions and facts about the world.
Well, if there's nothing that we've learned doing this show, and hopefully you out there listening to the show, is to always double check the quote unquote facts, triple check if you can.
I want to shout out to one of my favorite talk shows of all time, which was Ugo chav is alo Presidente, where, yeah, he had a talk show that would go however long he wanted it to go. Where in the midst of being sort of a despot. You could see clips on this on YouTube. I think he would. He would set up in kind of like somewhere between a radio thing and an Oprah Wimfrey thing, and he would just take what I can only imagine are very closely screened calls from the populace.
It's funny.
It reminds me of a thing that happens in the movie Casino, where eighth Rothstein played by Robert de Niro, sort of gets deposed because he do to legal struggles, he can't do his casino manager job, so that he's give him this talk show where he just takes potshots and like the governmental entities that are preventing him from doing the job he really wants to do.
Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
But the whole thing about the about Venezuela is that it has such a rot history in you know, coups and fights for power and which ended up in I think it was ninety nine when Hugo Chavez was elected president and then he lasted until he passed away in twenty thirteen of cancer from cancer that he alleged was you know, done to him by some powers in the West. And then you get Nicholas Maduro, who was his number two in command, and he has been in power since then.
Ever since and shows no signs of abdicating.
A good quick question, do we have any proof of giving someone cancer as an assassination tool?
Is that a thing that has to be possible? Will cancer again? Is such an umbrella?
It's a revolution carcinogens perhaps over time.
Well, I in my mind, it's more like in a radiated substance like a small amollium.
Yeah, shows exactly.
Need a tiny amount once it gets into your system and like attaches to your body and there she goes.
Yeah. The issue with that kind of attack on someone really is predictability, like you don't know, you know, novelty or navalny. For instance, when he got polodium poisoning, it didn't kill him. But yeah, so log answer short, we know people have probably attempted it, just because over the course of targeted killings, people have tried pretty much anything you could imagine.
Makes perfect sense of just that kind of claim by such a you know, unilateral despot like you mentioned, strikes me as the stuff of paranoia to a degree. But I do understand what you're saying that it's certainly as possible good to clarify.
Thank you.
Well, he had reason to be paranoid, I would say.
But yeah, also, people do just get cancer.
So how about we get a little bit of a rundown of some of the stats surrounding Venezuela first, and then we'll move on to the one that maybe people know even less about.
Yep. So Venezuela. The full name is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It's pretty big, especially it's the goliath to the David of Guiata. It's about nine hundred and sixteen issue square clicks population in twenty nine million, so smaller than the US for comparison. It is an opponent of many US regimes. That's one thing both sides of the
US political aisle agreed upon for many years. That's why most of this stuff you see about Venezuela and Western news is going to look at economic woes, inflation, shortages, speculation in oil, allegations of massive corruption. And Venezuela is a particular interest to the powers that be in Latin America and across the world because it has the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Isn't that crazy more than Saudi Arabia?
Sorry, KSA.
What's crazier too, is still is that we people don't seem to know that in.
General, Well, it isn't talked about in the same way as it is about the Middle East. Well, and it's really interesting because the United States very publicly entered the Middle East several times over the course of the last thirty forty years. It's like, it's weird in that we haven't entered Venezuela in the same way. There's been some actions, right, but never a war or anything like that.
Is our relationship a little cozier with South America in general?
Or is that over a gross generalization cozy the way like an abusive step fig has a cozy relationship with their kids.
Ah dear, there are a lot they live in the same house. There are a lot of beatings and a lot of opinions about what the kids can can or cannot do.
Last question maybe beyond the scope of today's episode, but I couldn't help but notice the Bolivarian part. Bolivia is of course also quite a large country in South America, but it's on the opposite border.
Yeah, it's it's not about Bolivia, no connection at all. It's it's really interesting and again it's just it's like world history that maybe we were taught at some point but probably has left most of our minds. Just about how when Colombia was officially formed, I think Ecuador and Venezuela there it was one state that was then broken.
Up at one point.
But yeah, Bolivarian revolution, there's a whole history to that as well.
Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan leader who led what are now some of those countries you named, matt and the guy's a legend in his time. He was instrumental in the escape from colonialism, the move toward independence for these countries.
It was Columbia. By the way, I misspoke. I named one of the countries wrong. But Colombia was the other country that was formed.
Ah, yes, it's no. I think you got like Peru, Panama, Bolivia, to Ecuador, Venezuela, Venezuela's made what well, yeah, it was the.
One that formed Venezuela to anyway, I got somewhere wrong.
You have to look it up because I don't know my stuff.
So well, it's independence from the Spanish Empire. That's our big takeaway. That's the shadow of colonialism looms large. It wasn't the US this time. It was a fight against these European powers and something similar happened with Guyana. Giada is right next door. Pull up a world map, play along at home. It's fascinating because if you look at a digital map, you'll see the mileage may vary, but anyway,
this place full name Cooperative Republic of Guiata. You hear about it way less often the west, and to be honest, there's not a ding on anyone. A lot of folks might have a tough time finding it on a world map. I mean it's confusing because like there are three countries named some variation of Guinea, and there's French Guiana, and then there's this Guiana which is spelled differently. Like it gets confusing. It's an understandable thing. Also, this is a
blink and you miss it country. If you're looking at the entirety of South America, it's eighty bitty thing. It's the third smallest country on that continent. I think the only smaller ones are Surinam, which is right next door, and Uruguay. And this place. Even though it's very very tiny, it's also one of the least densely populated countries on the planet. Very rural, high, high amount of wilderness, jungle biodiversity, and it's all packed into just like eighty three thousand
square miles two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. It's it's weird though, because like the digital map, if you guys pull it up, anybody playing along at home, if you pull it up now on your let's say you go to Google Maps or Google Earth. When you look at the map of Guiana, you'll see that it has a typical border demarcating the country, but then a little bit to the right of center, it has another thing that
looks like a borderline. It's as if you looked at a map of the US and the Mississippi was also somehow an international border.
Yeah it is.
It is the the river, right, the Escuba River. Okay, So that's gonna factor in heavily as we continue through the story, which again we can't stress enough. If you look at it, Ben isn't joking. It goes through and cuts this thing well in over half. So so most of the country of Guana is to the west of.
That line, and of Venezuela.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's just let's keep that in mind.
So, no matter what the news might imply, these two countries have a long history of not quite getting along. Guiata also is they. I think it was first Dutch, then the British were running stuff. And just like the Falklands, the British Empire still has its vestiges active. So when our boy Maduro comes out and says, hey, this is Venezuela. It's always been Venezuela. He's harkening back to earlier stuff. He didn't just like, what's that drug that makes people
that made people talk trash on Twitter? Ambient geez, Yeah.
Yeah, that's what it was.
Like, Well, it makes you, It makes you make weird sandwiches in the night and also apparently say things that you regret and have no recollection.
Of if you're a celebrity who had a bad day on Twitter.
Yeah, my mom used to take Ambient and we get home and we stayed with her briefly when my kid was born. We come home from being out and that she'd be up making like peanut butter and mustard sandwiches and talking absolute nonsense.
I'll try the I'll try a peanut butter mustard sandwich. Who knows, but but you're right like this this statement he's making. As wild as it may sound, it does refer back to a centuries long dispute. This border territory around the river. You mentioned, Matt the Escuba River, it's sixty two thousand square miles, and they said, look, that's Venezuela. It's always been Venezuela, why are you playing? They tried to gas light an entire country, actually two entire countries.
Well, and just listen to that number. Sixty two thousand square miles of area. All of Guyana is eighty three thousand square miles, right, So that's like, we'll take half your country plus oh you know what, how about a whole let's take another third.
It's like Canada say, we've looked at the map and based on our objective estimate, everything north of Tennessee in a straight line is actually Canada. Yeah, you have three months to move.
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a nuts thing to even state, right, even if it is going back to this, you know, the eighteen one hundreds, eighteen ninety nine or eighteen thirty, going way back, it's still crazy to come forward and just say, yo, most of your countries are is actually right?
The jewels, they also said, you know, because what's the deal with that? Why do a half measure? They also said,
And the water offshore is also ours. Has also been part of this, and that's because during the Latin American Wars of Independence, which you mentioned earlier, Venezuela pulled a game of thrones, little finger move and said chaos is a ladder, and they did claim about two thirds of Kiana's land, but they got caught and they couldn't do it because everybody else was like, come on, man, we're supposed to be the good guys in this narrative.
That's sort of a dick move, dude. But there's this whole other thing, and I don't know, ben, are we going to get into it. There's this whole thing where this whole process that we're talking about, and decades and decades centuries of dispute here is actually one of the primary things that sets the United States up as a
world power because of this. In the dispute, the US basically stepped up to the United Kingdom, to Great Britain and said, actually, no, the Monroe Doctrine is the way to go and this is the way the border should be. And they were like, man, we should fight a war with you. But they were also like, uh, actually, we can't really fight another war right now, so all right, you can have it.
Because their resources were expended across the globe, it's expensive to project force like that, which is also part of the story.
Right, but it's one of the reasons. The United States kind of as again as though it's an entity of itself, the powers within the United States, the leaders decided, oh, we can, actually we can have a say in some of these global things like disputes like this.
M yeah, and become more internationalists. And then also let us not forget millions upon millions of people are living in Latin America and they're going, hey, we're also in the room.
We live.
This is actually our room. Ye gays are fighting over why did these guys break into our house and start arguing about.
The you know, the ungshways off in here?
Whatly, so you're referring to, we're referring to something called the Arbitral Award of eighteen ninety nine. Sorry a messed up name. Guiana is still part of the British Empire. And they say they go back to this constantly, and they say, look, that's the agreement. Remember when these Europeans came in and did everything surveyed the land, surveyed the land, which was a big, big deal. Shout out to Ridiculous History episodes there. We saw immediately that Venezuela bucked at this.
They actually called it quote an Anglo Russian conspiracy, so they are the first to allege conspiracy, even though colonialism is a conspiracy. By nineteen sixty two, they said, okay, guys, enough time has passed. That decision was bs. We don't respect it because this has always been Venezuela. You know, aren't you fighting those European colonists with us? What happened to unity? Give us all your stuff?
Yeah?
Well, should we also bring up just the idea of resources. We mentioned that Venezuela has the largest oil It is the most oil rich country on the planet.
Right.
Then, Also that was found in Venezuela, and especially in this region that's in dispute is gold.
Ah, yes, yeah, the resource curse is true.
Right, And so they gave it sixty years and then they're like, hmm, there's gold over there.
You said, well we need to we need to look at this again.
Also, yes, similar to the Darien Gap. You know, when you have that much jungle coverage, it's very difficult to build infrastructure and it's very difficult to enforce laws. So there's a lot of smuggling operations, a lot of illegal mining operations, and those mining operations, the illegal ones have a lot of powerful entities who want them to continue the big They're not fighting over, you know, OSHA standards
or workers' rights. They're fighting over who gets that stuff pulled from the ground, shout out black Monday murders.
Exactly. Well, then a little spoiler here.
What happens if you, as a country that is not officially in control of that land, starts giving like citizenship to people who are living in on that land. All right, well, no, well they are actually our citizens living over.
There, right?
What this this thing gets so twisted?
Or you start giving concessions legal rights to mine to private entities, and you just it happens to be for a country that is not yours, the soil that is not part of your thing. So it's getting nasty. The idea is there for several decades at different times Venezuela was saying, well, why don't we just behave as though it is Venezuela, and then eventually we can not just gas like Yiana. But the world that.
Works long term?
Yeah, sure, if I keep showing up to that like squatters rights, they're doing squatters rights. If I keep showing up to this else long enough, someone will say it's mine.
Well, It's one of those rhetorical devices too, where if you repeat the lie long enough and with enough confidence, maybe it'll take people will start to believe it as the truth and not you know, fact check you like we recommended doing, but it seems like an awful risky move.
Yeah, so we said then in the sixties, so that was eighteen ninety nine all the way up to like or the early nineteen sixties, right, that that was a span of time when Venezuela just said, Okay, we'll just deal with these borders as they are. In nineteen sixty two they said, actually, we have a problem. Then in nineteen sixty six they took it to the United Nations, right or wait, well they took.
Into still bodies.
Yeah, they took it to international bodies. I know, the United Nations or the UN started stepping in early in the process to try and negotiate, to be almost a middle man for the negotiations. And you guys, it hasn't stopped since nineteen what sixty six.
Yes, since nineteen sixty six, when the UK of Venezuelan and Guyana sent representatives together to try to map out the borders. And the problem is in any negotiation. If you're not if you're negotiating good faith, there has to be some give and take. Turned out that wasn't the case, and so the Venezuelan government, under different iterations, had one constant, which was to to try to deep power Guyana internationally, like prevent them from being members of the of the
like the OAS or the United Nations. Try to keep them out of touching on any judiciary bodies internationally, like the ICJ International Court of Justice. It's a dumb name, but they tried to do good work. And this just went back and forth over and over until Venezuela said, ah, we might just invade. We had a little kind of rigged vote about it. They are essentially saying, if the courts and the world at large won't give us all the stuff we want, we are just going to take it.
That is a very, very what we call it diplomacy. It is a provocative statement. It is somewhat bellicose, and it carries a lot of possible consequence and costs. So they had to decide it was worth it. Why why did they make this wild ass decision or even bring it up. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets grazy gold, but not just gold oil, black gold, Texas, tea, et cetera. The gunk that to this day moves the modern world.
Ye, well, all the golds, all the golds.
All of the all the gold.
You can imagine, black gold makes me want to whoop and holler.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's you know, Beverly Hillbillies for anybody unfamiliar, has a neat, catchy little Hollywood Hillbilly theme which was an intro.
So it's only one of those ones that describes the plot of the show in the right.
That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, it's like the Nanny, It's like the Mister Belvedere stuffs. I enjoy those much more than the actual show.
Of course, to.
Those in the know, is often referred to as the New Guitar and Venezuela reactivated that claim to the territory after finding some eleven billion barrels of oil, recoverable oil and natural gas off of Guyana's coast. So the government then held a super controversial referendum on this issue in December and early December last year.
And that was after Guyana had gone to the Guiana knew this was coming. It's just it was originally called a referendum. Means that if they're enacted in good faith, the government is asking the people, hey, what do you guys think about this? Right, Like they're saying, hey, kids, who want pizza? Or do we want you know, we want to get lasagna or something. However, this is not a There's some serious problems, as you mentioned, with the referendum itself, and it goes super deep in the weeds
because people have been looking at this. Giada was trying to get international bodies not to allow this referendum to happen. Sorry, kind of tricky, right. It's like how South Korea has this law that says, if you are South Korea national, you can't gamble anywhere in the world.
Did you know that?
That's so crazy? I don't know how you enforced that.
I don't know, man, but I've been I keep thinking about how nuts this would be if it was just two neighbors right in a house, like one house next to the other house and one one You guys have always had problems with where the fence should be, you know, right, Yeah, But like all of a sudden, one of the neighbors discovers like incredible stuff in their backyard, like, oh my god, there's this cave system on there and there's resources inside it.
And the neighbors like, actually, we're gonna have a little vote, and I think that's actually mine.
So yeah, you come downstairs.
Ye, we are going to vote in our house about your terrihouse.
Yeah.
And it's it's crazy because when people who do election monitoring looked at this, they found they found the number Venezuela offered to the world, which was ninety five percent approval to take over this part of Guiana. They found that that just didn't hold up, and it looked like it looked like if it was ninety five percent of voters, it was less than ten percent of the population. So you have to you have to be careful with those statistics.
And well, and it's almost like having a vote on whether or not we should go to war basically, and so like, what does that have to do with anybody else besides your own country deciding it's going to go to war.
That's also doing the war vote at sea pack, you know, or at like at a aerospace defense industry meeting. And so I like, okay, you guys vote.
Though, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah.
We just needs she checked the temp of the old room here exactly all your weapons manufacturers.
Or I read something recently. I can't remember what it was, so it was a more conservative publication where they had this. They were like, this report shows that, as a matter of fact, workers are very excited about returning to the office. And I looked into it, and the study was conducted by an architectural firm that builds offices, So you gotta
look at that stuff. Anyway. Giata is already having a game changing moment with this oil because one of the important words there we don't want to miss is recoverable. You can get this stuff out and still make a profit off of it. So there are other places in the world where there's a ton of some sort of fossil fuel, but it's just right now too expensive to get it, and.
Or you have to use something like fracking exclusively to get to it, right, which is not as great as just being able to get that oil. Get at that oil, let's say, in more traditional ways.
Sure, yeah, Beverly hillbilly style. Yeah, put a spike in the ground and then build a little, a neat, little mini and build an oil Derek around it. But I was going to call it the mini Eiffel Tower. That doesn't work. Right now, Guyana is creating four hundred thousand something barrels per day of oil and gas, and they're going to make more than one million barrels per day very soon in twenty twenty seven. So this is huge for small country's economy and it's going to change people's
lives in a measurable way. The question is, you know, if we're all neighbors, if we survived colonialism, if we have a shared history of fighting for independence, well, Venezuela, are you being a hater? Like why why are you flipping the script? Don't you don't you literally have more oil than anybody in the world already. It's it's a weird question, like why is this? Why is this the fight? Part of it is because the US has made it very expensive and costly for the Venezuelan government to exist.
Production in oil has fallen significantly. There are all kinds of allegations of corruption. The infrastructure is bad. You know, people who can leave Venezuela, and I'm sure we have a lot of Venezuelan listeners today people who can leave Venezuela have been doing so on mass it's just very difficult to live there now.
Yeah, you know something I was thinking about this morning, you guys, I didn't know. Guyana is the only predominantly English speaking country in South America. Yeah, which for look, and it doesn't necessarily mean that there's major strategic interest by you know, the United States and the UK and other Western governments, but it feels as though maybe that's enough of a reason to really want to support the independence and continued growth of Guyana versus a country like Venezuela.
Just when I'm thinking, Sorry, this is kind of random thought here, but I'm just I'm imagining as all of this is heating up, like maybe maybe there is some kind of strategic interest that is simply based in the language of the people spoken in Guyana.
That's part of it. Yeah, there's that colonial well, there's that history, right, so they are part of the anglosphere I would advance. Also, maybe that is a facet of the larger thing, which is Guyana is a US friendly country.
Yeah.
If Guyana has access to that oil, then all of a sudden, it's much easy. It's easier to work with them than it is to say, work with some of our friends out east, or you know, these other things. And now, of course, obviously the US creates its own oil, its own fossil fuels. But it's you know, it's nice to have someone that you could have a cool conversation with, or whatever America sees is that instead of a instead of a thing that could almost always go sideways. So
I think that's maybe part of it. But also when we look at Venezuela's motivations, sure you already got all the oil in the world, don't you want a little more? I mean you could. They could definitely use the cash. It would definitely bolster the reputation of the Maduro government. I posit that is one of the big big things. I think that might be the actual thing, because he's coming down hard. He said, Guiana can't sell the rights
to explore or drill for oil here. He also did not say specifically which areas of Guiata should be under control. Everybody knows what he's talking about, but he doesn't want to like paint himself into a corner. Instead, he said, without telling you exactly, which areas I think are Venezuela. If you are working with Guiata in the oil trade. Right now, you have three months to leave gt FO and the clock is ticket.
Yeah.
And these are the big boys too. These are like the BPS, the exons, et cetera.
If an invasion were to occur, however, Guyana would not be in.
A very advantageous position. I believe the term he used ben in the research was thick.
Yeah.
Their army is just about five thousand strong, meaning that they would be very quickly overtaken unless a much larger power came to their aid.
Yeah.
And the thing that is in dispute right is offshore. So if you imagine the if you look at Gion on the map, just the northern border right is the ocean.
Right.
And as we know, naval naval powers are very strong in countries often that have large oil supplies. Doesn't mean that Venezuela's naval, you know, force.
Is the strongest.
The US is is like how I forget how many times stronger the US Navy is than any other country.
But it's insane.
The US Navy is crazy. It's the uh, it's the US Navy is the world's second largest air force, in addition to be the first is the USAF.
So, but they don't even really factor into here. It's just like Venezuela has a lot of coastline, has a lot of shipping, has a lot of reasons to have very strong forces on the water, and if they were to, you know, have a dispute and an actual hot war, they would be coming in so much, not even just the five thousand member army, but the ships and the weapons that would be that Guiana would be facing would be tremendous.
Yeah, and the army for Venezuela, I think as of like nineteen twenty, nineteen twenty twenty, it's like three hundred and forty three thousand versus five.
Thousand, little significant.
It's tough. It's tough. And again that's not a ding on the people in Guyana's arm services. That's just the math, and the math is scary. So, like you're saying, a larger power would have to step into help to prevent this from being an absolute, just one sided massacre, honestly, well.
Yeah, I mean, and there are only so many candidates for who that larger power might be.
Right exactly, because we can name some people who won't come in to help. China, Russia, properly. I don't know. Brazil is a very interesting question for this.
One because just as a reminder of the geography there, they are just south like all you know, Brazil has so many different states within it, but the entirety of Brazil is below Guyana and Venezuela.
And Lula wants to maintain peace in the region, right, so they would definitely have a stake in this. We haven't mentioned the president of Guyana yet. Irfan Ali Ali is going through. Ali knows all this obviously and is going through the correct theoretical. International channels went to the United Nations International Court of Justice, talked to the UN Security General and it's like, hey, Maduro is unhinged, guys, we need something to happen here. Here is my country, Guyana.
We're playing by the rules. We're doing everything we were told we should do. Help and so we can say at this point no invasion has occurred. However, it for quite some time it seemed very close. We'll have some good news at the end. But right now it's sort of like if there were a doomsday clock for this, the world would have been at two minutes to midnight.
And in late December, the United Kingdom dispatched a Royal Navy Patrol vessel to Guyana just to sort of swim around the waters like in simulation games, like in Civilization, you want to repel other forces, so you just start sort of putting your boats out, you know, putting your troops out in these different areas. Kind of like holding a parking space in a crowded mall. When people used to go to malls, but now the question with guns, but with very launch guns.
Kind of like going to a mall in Texas today. I love going to mall. I'm a mallwalker. I love a dead mall too, or a dying mall. That's sort of an interesting.
I'm okay with those because they're less crowd that's fair. Yeah, the North of Cabmall here indicator is a good example. Number one spot for Bollywood films.
I'm just gonna say this, The borrow game at dead Mall's is kind of weak, so I'm not really into it.
It's advantages, disadvantages, pros cons cost benefit. I say, with that in mind, let's pause for word from our sponsors and get to one of the big questions. Why now? All right? Why now? Might be saying well, because of the oil dummies. The oil discovery is new, but itself
it's not that new. Instead of a conspiracy to control more of the fossil fuel market, it feels like the conspiracy here is to shore up Maduro's government and get the people to support them, because there we're serious problems with that vote. A crooked vote is nothing new in Venezuela, nor in Latin America, in the world overall, for being honest. But Maduro took this one referendum as a mandate and
ran with it. And if you ask folks, like if you ask policy wonks, which I mean is a compliment, Like Anderson Sekira over at a political analysis firm based in Venezuela, you'll see them say stuff like the government's only options are to try to rile up national sentiments and escalate the situation because it helps them increase political repression and it helps them persecute anybody who is an opponent of Maduro. Sort of like and this might be
a hot take, but it's very true. Sort of like how in the wake of the attacks of September eleventh in the US, politicians who aligned with the current president had to field day saying like, you're an American if you disagree with me and my party about anything, right, you support terrorists, if you think school lunch should be affordable.
Yeah, well, and also remember what comes along with a hot conflict, like if they actually did go to war with Guiana, the money that would be spent on building a war machine even larger so that they could, you know, as the country itself could maintain security internally while fighting a war across the way, right, and all of these, all the contractors that get paid, all of the there's just so much money that gets generated or spent, let's say, during war, which we kind.
Of know this about money.
You do kind of have to borrow it from somebody, but you can also kind of just print it in some ways. So it's interesting, like the way you can you can make things better for a little bit. Often, as you're saying, there been when you go to war.
I mean, it's always a great way to get re elected, unfortunately in even even things that are problematic democracies or democracies and names only I know, I mean something different. But the idea here is that you make up an enemy of them, and you rally your people behind it. At that point. As crazy as it sounds, at that point,
it doesn't really matter if you win the conflict. It matters that you get the support to wage the conflict and then rationalize the outcome to an increasingly isolated public. That's how fascism works, right, and that's what's so brilliant about it. I also note, uh, I still I shouldn't do it, but I still read The Economist and they had an article that speaks to what your point was
about about borrowing money. They had a very tone deaf article that came out out pretty recently where they were like, what would world war iie mean for investors? That's not kidding, not the onion, that's what I mean. Yeah, I know, right, So okay, so that's the idea, Like, is this just a push for support, you know, something I can do a culture war and then a hot war all mixed up, right, to keep to keep people from coming out in the streets with torches and pitchforks and overthrowing you.
So yeah, Ben, Ben, It's also like the situation in Crimea in my mind. Yeah right, It's a dispute in somebody else's land that you felt like was once yours in some way right with the two disputing countries stallid.
In nineteen fifty four, Yeah.
Exactly, exactly, well then and then how crime was taken back over again, and so it's just to me, it feels like we're moving to another one of those I'm sorry, just went with that out there.
That's perfect. I think that's a perfect comparison, man, because you know, the Putin administration was encountering terrible, terrible problems, very similar problems, and now there's a there's a war in another country, and like, if you disagree, you're a very bad person. You're on Russian you know. Like if we said this, though, if Venezuela actually did invade, and this isn't just a cynical fascist attempt to support a
failing government, then several things would happen. If Yana has no on the ground four and support, Like your point, no Venezuela will win instantly. It will simply happen and the world will have to deal with it later. And if that happens, venezuel will pay a heavy price geopolitically. But what's the nature of that is that? Does that mean toothless condemnation? The UN writes an angry letter and says you can't come to the pizza party because they'll still sell the oil.
It's weird, though, because they're already kind of not invited to the pizza party, and they have been for a long time.
The sanctions, right, yeah.
So I mean, what wow? What really is the major price?
That's the thing. It might be a little bit more of a discount than we think. There are sanctions related to Venezuela, and a lot of sanctions are that get applied to different countries come from the US directly. But even in those cases, people other governments and companies they need fossil fuels still, so they're going to buy them. You can still make a buck off of it. We know that. I don't know. The more chaotic thing is what happens I Venezuela invades and then a third party intercedes.
That's very frightening. At first it sounds like, oh, the good guys, America's police, and that may to a degree be somewhat true, but it also means this could escalate into a proxy war. We don't know what Venezuela's allies would provide, but it'd be enough to make things ugly. There would be a blood price, and then the people who would fight in that that third party, which would probably be the United States, who were being honest, their
resources would be spread increasingly thin. You know, this would like if I were interested, if we were hanging out and we were waiting for a good time, it's be a good time to get a little closer to Taiwan, right, because the boats are somewhere else.
It's true, And we do we say that China is Venezuela's primary receiver of exported oil.
We do not, well, we should.
We should say that China receives around four hundred and thirty thousand barrels per day of oil from Venezuela, which does mean they were It does mean they would be the ones. China would be the one who would say, hey, hold on, hold on, maybe I've gotta do something here, right, And when we're talking about a proxy war that becomes larger with bigger players, that's what it could be could be.
Yeah. And then also if you are a certain Russian day dat not naming names hoping to get some distractions from say a failing war in hypothetically Ukraine, then chaos like this is fantastic because it dilutes your opponent's resources, It spreads them further across and further away from your particular conflict. It also shifts international attention and therefore political will away from opposing you.
So this is I.
Don't know, like we can play the game where this spins out further and further and further in each of these if thens is troubling, but how likely is it to occur?
I don't know.
Fascism just needs an external enemy, a thing for you fight against.
Oh my gosh, that's a really interesting thing that you mentioned.
I was listening to a podcast with Adam Conover the other day and he was just talking about the history of the Right and talking about how oftentimes, you know, historically the right has been a reaction to being disenfranchised of the wealthy, kind of having things taken away from them and then creating a situation where they have a perceived enemy, uh, and they want to kind of crib from the other side, the creative of the situation that took the things away from them in order to get
the things back, and in order to do that, they have to have a perceived enemy. And that's just a really you know, important touchstone in that kind of rhetoric and that kind of sort of political gas lighting and maneuvering.
Yeah, you just need the eternal war. And the problem is with people who are fans of fascist ideology and tactics is it's a lot like it's a lot like playing a dark lottery. It's it's writing or it's trying to ride a bull. Right, It's an unpredictable thing because the nature, the specific nature of the enemy will always shift once you kind of deplete the first one, and then eventually it's going to be your turn in the stone chair. So that's why, that's why fat is not sustainable.
Stone chair is the sacrifice for anyone.
Yeah, it just sounds cool.
I don't know, God, but luckily I don't know. It seems like they are seeking de escalation, so all this is hypothetical right now.
Yeah, it's weird to me that a dispute like this can be so long agoing, Like the dispute really hasn't stopped since eighteen ninety nine, and the International Court of Justice has officially had something in front of them since twenty eighteen that they've just been mulling over since twenty eighteen. Like, h guys, come on, we really got to decide what's happening here, and it just hasn't happened, which it is just it's to me, it's crazy. It could be a five year long court battle, right right.
Well.
Venezuela also considers ICG a kangaroo court.
Yeah, so you can do that.
When you're a country, you could just say I reject this court. Imagine geting a parking ticket and saying, like, you know, traffic Court of Atlanta, malarkey, everybody knows it. You guys are clowns.
I do.
I don't respect your entire international justice system. Sorry, right exactly.
Geez, you guys just reminded me that I have to show up for jury duty on Monday.
Nice tell if you don't want to do it. Whenever they ask you a question, talk about jury nullification. It's your one way ticket out.
I did. I tried last time, and they totally picked me.
I also said, I'm They said, I suppose anything that would prevent me from being objective. It was a case surrounding police or whatever, and I said, I'm actually the co host of a conspiracy podcast and we objectively do not trust the government.
And that wasn't enough. To get me struck.
Wow, asking you.
That question, I swear anyhow, we'll try it again this time.
But anyway, well, the thing is right now there is some good news we can end on. The leaders of Venezuela and Guiana had a recent long meeting what Corporate America will call an off site a summit, and resulted in a declaration that they both signed, or I shouldn't say declaration, a joint statement they will call it, where they said, look, we don't get along. Venezuela is like, we're totally right, and gian is like, that's a lie. We're totally right. However, we can agree that we're not
going to use force against each other. The question is how long that's going to hold. Instead, they said, you know what we're gonna do, because it worked so great over the past few centuries, we're gonna put together a little team, well team of bureaucrats, and they're going to figure it out peacefully. Sounds and surely the forty eighth millionth time is the charm, right, And then what they say in baseball.
Yeah, I think that's it.
That's a that's a quote for our pal Max. But also at the same time, like how off. Can you try us the statements of these various countries. Can trust the statements of Venezuela because true story, the Venezuelan government has already ordered new maps that include land from Guyana as part of Venezuela. Which parts you might ask, Oh, well, it's the ones with the oil, Oh yeah.
Yeah, and they're super into that whole region we talked about where that one river cuts through most of the country.
Yeah, somewhere between two thirds and three fourths. And look, obviously, when I feel like it's important for us to say this, whenever we talk about governmental actions, we are not talking about the people living in these countries. No, people living in these countries are chill. They want the same stuff anybody else in any other part of the world wants.
They also probably have serious issues with world governments, with their own government, and they are not the people who want a war overwhelmingly throughout history.
No, there's a great Can we shout out a couple of articles just for people who shout out, there's one in Al Jazeera I would just send everybody to. It's one of the more recent stories that was written about this. On January eleventh, written by Nozima Raghubir and it is titled Fears Simmer in Eskibo Region as Venezuela eyes the Disputed Territory.
It's just there's so.
Many written like this, and they have been really since I guess early December of last year. Right that that give a pretty good overview of what's happening on both sides.
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point too. And an American representative also visited they're seeking a bureaucratic solution at this point, and I know, bureaucratic. The word bureaucracy has some connotations for an effectiveness, and it's earned those connotations to a degree. But still that's better than a hot war. You know, Guyana is not a wealthy country. The people who live there for the most part are the people
who people of Venezuela. They're not the people who can afford to say, oh, fiddle d D there's a war. I guess I'll go summer in Monaco. You know, we have to exercise humanity with this stuff, and we can't put oil barrels over that. But as a society we do.
Really got gion over an oil barrel.
And on that note, thank you, as always so much for duty in Folks, listen, send on a goodwin. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. If you have first and experience visiting living in Guyana and Venezuela, if you have ties with these countries this region, let us know. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy to find online. I'm try.
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Hey, if you've got a moment, why not head to our YouTube channel and check out the videos we made on who Hugo Chavez back in.
Ten years ago? Maybe we made those videos?
Go check those out because there's really interesting information in there about again, maybe how the country was going, what the fears were at least at the top of the chain ten years ago.
Also, the US definitely did Dirton Venezuela just to be very clear. Oh yeah, did bad stuff.
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