Maduro Is Gone. The Mafia State Remains.

Conversations with Coleman

The Free Press

Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thor Halvorssen is a Venezuelan-born human rights campaigner and the founder of the Human Rights Foundation. His life as an activist began after his mother was shot and wounded by pro-regime forces for trying to expose election fraud under Hugo Chávez, an event that turned his work from theory into something painfully concrete. In this episode we talk about how Venezuela’s dictatorship operated more like a cartel than a state, why the regime survived despite losing elections, and how oil, narcotics, and foreign alliances sustained one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the hemisphere. We also discuss why Venezuela is not another Iraq, how major Western media outlets repeatedly misread the regime, and what a realistic political transition might look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Vanta.
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0:29.7	Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman.
0:33.1	My guest today is Thor Halverson.
0:36.2	Thor is a Venezuelan-born human rights activist who founded and leads the Human Rights Foundation
0:41.7	and also founded the annual Oslo Freedom Forum.
0:45.9	Thor has a rather dramatic origin story as an activist, which involves his mother being
0:50.6	shot by pro-regime elements while attempting to deliver a letter to former president
0:55.7	Jimmy Carter. But I'll let him tell that whole story in his own words. In this episode,
1:01.3	we dissect the four different possible rationales for the current regime change operation in Venezuela,
1:07.7	drugs, oil, geopolitics, and humanitarianism. We talk about the differences between regime
1:15.0	change in Venezuela and our recent attempts at regime change in the Middle East. We talk about the
1:21.1	scope of the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela over the past two decades. We talk about why the
	...

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