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Scott talks to Kevin Zeese, who is still occupying the Venezuelan embassy in Washington D.C. as part of a group protesting the Trump administration's attempt to oust President Maduro, of which the first step is to hand embassies over to supporters of Juan Guiadó. Zeese reminds us that Maduro's election was verified free and fair by more than 150 election observers, and that even if it weren't, it's not the place of the united states to decide who should rightfully rule which foreign countries.

Kevin Zeese is a lawyer, activist, and journalist who has written for independent media outlets such as Truthout, AlterNet, Truthdig and Counterpunch, as well as the The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He is the host of Clearing the Fog and the author of multiple books on drug policy. Find him on Twitter @KBZeese.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

On FPF #344, I discuss how Trump is expanding the President's powers.  The US joined the Yemen War without Congressional approval under Obama. Trump's veto of the Yemen War Powers bill proves Congress has no ability to check the war powers of the president. The Pentagon is adding 300 more troops to the southern border. The troops continue to break American military tradition by expanding their roles and putting the troops in more contact with suspected illegal immigrants. The DoJ's persecution of Julian Assange is an attack on journalism and truth. The attack makes it easier for the government to control the media narrative and decide what information is allowed to reach the public. 

Links

Moon of Alabama - Failed Coup

FPF - Grey Zone guest Will Porter

FPF - Turkey

FPF - Wikileaks guest Will Porter

On FPF #343, I discuss Juan Guaido's latest failed coup attempt against Maduro. Guaido posted videos with a few Venezuelan soldiers, and they took control of a small area outside of an airbase. Thousands of protesters joined Guaido. Maduro called for Venezuelans to take to the streets to show their support him and massive crowds turned out to protect the presidential palace. The coup was broken up with some violence from the government. 

Links

Moon of Alabama - Random Guy's coup attempt 

US sanctions on Iran are leading to war

Proposed sanctions may push Iran out of the Nuke Deal

US sanctions are isolating the US

Daniel Lazare discusses the hacking of the DNC email server, which is in the news yet again because of the recent indictment against Julian Assange. Lazare points out why many of the allegations against Assange don't make any sense, among which is the claim that he worked with supposed Russian agent Guccifer 2.0 to obtain and leak the stolen emails—but this claim is supported by an announcement from Wikileaks that happened before the alleged contact with Guccifer. The full report is full of many other similar contradictions.

Discussed on the show:

"The ‘Guccifer 2.0’ Gaps in Mueller’s Full Report" (Consortium News)

Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the constitution is Paralyzing Democracy and a regular contributor at Consortium News. Find all of his work at his website and follow him on Twitter @dhlazare.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

Grant Smith comes back on the show to explain the polling around American support for Palestine. Last month Gallup quietly revealed that support for Palestine among Americans is now higher than support for Israel. In the past these polls, which always claimed Americans favored Israel, have been used to justify Israel's privileged status in American foreign policy—so it's no wonder powerful forces want to keep results like this quiet.

Discussed on the show:

"Gallup Quietly Admits 'Israeli vs. Palestinian' Sympathy Polls Are Misleading" (Antiwar.com)

"TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » Global Language Dictionary – The Israel Project 2009" (transcend.org)

"Lock and Load" (Brookings)

Grant F. Smith is the author of a number of books including Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America and Divert!. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

Kevin Zeese joins the show from the Venezuelan embassy in Washington D.C., where he and other activists are trying to ensure that the Trump administration doesn't turn the embassy over to their puppet government. Since the actual coup attempt in Venezuela failed due to military loyalty to Maduro, explains Zeese, the U.S. has been trying to replace a network of embassies with the people they want in power. Zeese says that much of what we hear about Venenzeula in the mainstream media is false; they are still fairly prosperous, Maduro won in a fair election and still enjoys popular support, and the country attracts many more immigrants than it has emigrants. American special interests, he says, are just using the political unrest there as an excuse to try to get their hands on the country's immense natural resource wealth.

Discussed on the show:

"Ukraine: Why "OU" Lost By A Landslide" (PopularResistance.Org)

"Fallacies And Inaccuracies About Venezuelan Migration" (PopularResistance.Org)

"Cable: 06KIEV1706_a" (Wikileaks)

"Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived" (TheHill)

"Nuland-Pyatt leaked phone conversation" (YouTube)

Kevin Zeese is a lawyer, activist, and journalist who has written for independent media outlets such as Truthout, AlterNet, Truthdig and Counterpunch, as well as the The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He is the host of Clearing the Fog and the author of multiple books on drug policy. Find him on Twitter @KBZeese.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

On FPF #342, I discuss DNC Chair Tom Perez statement, 'we are at war' with Russia. I explain how this hysterical thinking is reflective of the current DNC political leadership. The Democrats are at fault for losing the 2016 election. However, they continue to try to blame Russia for the loss. The hysteria is doing damage to the critical US/Russian relationship. I update Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and Pentagon corruption. 

Links

Tom Perez: We are at war with Russia

SHS - Peter Van Buren

FPF - Grey Zone guest Will Porter

DoJ - Assange Espionage Act

I value my privacy. It is nearly always on my mind as I interact online, but also as I live in the so-called real world. In the evening, I pull the shades down. I just don't like having people watch me, whether I am reading a book, enjoying a television show, or walking the baby down to sleep. Privacy is essential, in my book.

Unfortunately, there are many out there who make business out of invading my privacy. As I browse the web, sites are dropping cookies which are read across domains, mapping out my every move. Other sites, under the guise of analytics or social media integrations, do the same but in different ways. I didn't ask for these. I didn't agree to these. Yet, despite that many companies do their best to know more about my habits online than I even know.

People are rightly upset at this. Worldwide, it seems, people are coming out to say that they are tired of it. If they are going to be tracked, they want to know. If their private posts and details are going to be shared, they want to know. If they're going to leave a site, they want to be able to delete their account and all of their data. The question then becomes, what should we do about it?

Unfortunately, many people are turning to government violence to solve these problems for them. Last year, California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (or CCPA) which purportedly gave the people of California new privacy rights. According to Californians for Consumer Privacy, these include:

The right to know all data collected by a business on you, twice a year, free of charge.

The right to say no to the sale of your information.

The right to sue companies who collected your data, where that data was then stolen or disclosed because of carelessness or negligence on their part.

The right to delete data you have posted.

The right not to be discriminated against if you tell a company not to sell your personal information.

The right to be informed of what categories of data will be collected about you prior to its collection or at the point of collection, and to be informed of any changes to this collection.

The right to opt-in before sale of children's information (under the age of 16).

The right to know the categories of third parties with whom your data is shared

The right to know the categories of sources of information from whom your data was acquired.

The right to know the business or commercial purpose of collecting your information.

That is quite a list! The European Union has their own list, similar to that. As a software developer who develops applications for both desktops and for the web, this kind of legislation affects me directly. When I see this list, I have to wonder who this legislation really hurts and who it really helps. First, let's ask now, who does it hurt? I'm sure that it is onerous for Google and Facebook to comply with these rules, but are the rules going to put them out of business? Definitely not. These businesses are HUGE with enormous legal teams and everything else that they need to write up the necessary paperwork and check all their practices and such to make sure that they are compliant with the regulations.

Who these regulations really hurt are folks like me, small, self-funded shops who are trying to get off the ground. I don't have a legal team. I don't have the time to study up on regulations. I spend my days working so that I can make enough money to keep my family fed. I don't have the time or resources to figure out how to comply if I needed to. Some startups can afford to comply with these, but they are the ones who receive gobs of venture capital from east and west coast elites. If I made a site which picked up steam, I could potentially reach the threshold of Californian users necessary that these regulations would kick in,

Phil Giraldi makes the case that the Russiagate investigation was not simply a good faith effort to ensure then-candidate Trump was not an agent of the Russian government, but a legitimate plot to ruin his chances at the presidency by insiders connected to the Clinton campaign who hoped to benefit from her victory. The hatred of Trump is so strong that many democrats still believe him to be guilty despite the Mueller report's conclusion to the contrary, not to mention policies from Trump that have actually been very anti-Russian.

Discussed on the show:

"The Conspiracy Against Trump" (The Unz Review)

"2/22/19 Chas W. Freeman on the Threat of Nuclear War with China" (The Libertarian Institute)

Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He is the executive director for the Council for the National Interest and writes regularly for The American Conservative Magazine and Antiwar.com.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

Frida Berrigan was five years old at the time of the Three Mile Island disaster, which marks her first memory of a life centered around anti-nuclear activism, as both of her parents, renowned Catholic nuclear activists Liz McAllister and Phil Berrigan, spent most of her childhood in and out of prison for their acts of civil disobedience. Berrigan joins the show to share her story.

Discussed on the show:

"Nuclear weapons ruined my life, and I wouldn't have it any other way" (Waging Nonviolence)

Plowshares movement

The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

The Nuns, The Priests, and The Bombs

"The Day After" (IMDb)

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Kings Bay Plowshares

Frida Berrigan is a columnist for Waging Nonviolence and the author of It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood. Find her work at Waging Nonviolence.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.