Andrew Sage

And for the Prime Minister to deviate from that solidarity in such a blatant way, it's really quite sad.

But it shouldn't come as a surprise because there have been efforts by the US to divide CARICOM in the past.

During his first term, Trump had pulled some CARICOM countries into the Lima Group, which was a US-promoted coalition of right-wing governments that was pushing for regime change in Venezuela.

And he's now doing the same thing with trying to get some CARICOM governments to facilitate his actions toward Venezuela.

They approached Grenada recently to try and get Grenada's assistance in basing a satellite there on the island.

And it's really ironic that they would approach Grenada, which is also quite close to Venezuela, because Grenada was famously one of the countries that the United States invaded in October of 1983.

Yeah, I think, I know I say this a lot, but if you've listened to the song Washington Bullets by The Clash and then you go to the border, you can kind of join up all the people from all the countries mentioned there and the outcome of US policy and what that does to migration over time.

We should talk about the Venezuelan opposition a bit.

I guess, Michael, would you give... I've done a pretty in-depth discussion of Venezuela, a place where I have spent a decent amount of time.

I wanted to see that revolution myself when I was 19 and I was studying political science.

I wanted to see what this pink tide was about.

And I have reported a lot on Venezuelan migrants, people who are new to the show.

I guess the series I did from the Darien camp would be where I would point you for my discussion of Venezuela and Venezuelan people.

I still speak to people in Venezuela almost every day.

But I think people could do, Michael, with like a high level overview of the Venezuelan opposition.

I guess we can talk about the Nobel Prize as well, which despite what Donald Trump is saying was not awarded to him this year.

Yeah, so the big news is that Maria Corina Machado, who is the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, as we know today, was awarded the Nobel Prize, which was a bit of a surprise.

And from a very U.S.-centric analysis, one idea that has been floated is that the Nobel Committee didn't want to award

Trump the prize, but thought that maybe awarding it to an ally of Trump would be a way to mollify Trump, also possibly to encourage him to take a more peaceful approach at a time that the US is threatening armed intervention in some way in Venezuela, whether that is a counter-narcotics operation or more likely a regime change operation of some kind, even though it's very unclear how they would get to regime change from blowing up boats or even blowing up people.

Maybe we should pause and talk about regime change, actually, because it's such a problematic idea, right?