Noah Colwin

And, you know, obviously totally rational.

It was like the it was.

the actual account of the battle makes it clear how it happened but it is a very special and important historical um understanding of the of the significance of the angle and struggle and the cuban role in it in uh why apartheid fell yeah um and how it really it was a it suggested the south african apartheid regime was uh just overmatched in in so much what was doing in southern africa now to your more recent and the specific part about the 80s and sort of how rand contra comes in

I think it's helpful.

And reading your coverage of this really affirms this for me.

The heart of Iran-Contra and the specific Iran-Contra deal was this convoluted arrangement by which, as you say, the Americans were supplying arms to the Iranians.

And using Israel as an intermediary and then using the funds generated from that deal to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

And that is where the name Iran-Contra comes from.

But Iran-Contra as –

As kind of like a signifier for this period of time also kind of works, because I would argue that the late 70s and in goal is one example of this into the early 80s.

It represents, you know, we think of it as sort of the moment, you know, these these birth pangs of neoliberalism.

In America, it's represented by this horrible economic calamity that's affected both by existing inflation issues and then with the Volcker shock.

And then abroad, though, when Reagan comes into power, both at home and abroad, there are all these different kinds of policy changes and shifts among the attitudes of the American people that allow for both a kind of rearmament,

which was not really possible in the 1970s and a certain kind of appetite for, you know, foreign intervention.

And that also coincides with, you know, all sorts of different deregulation and expansion of rule by finance throughout different sectors of the American economy that also enables, you know,

profit to take place from these uh you know sorts of uh sorted deals and this and these secret wars that pop up in all sorts of parts uh primarily in the third world um over the course of the 1980s angola being one of them afghanistan being another

Central America being another.

We could go on.

And the savings and loan banks crisis is one example of where you can look to see how these kind of converge, where you see savings and loans banks, which were deregulated dramatically and eventually have to get bailed out by the government.

as a sector at the end of the decade, spies, drug runners, white-collar criminals immediately take advantage of the deregulation and are able to use them.