Hello comrades, this is Back in the USSR. I am Siegfried, and, in contrast to last
week’s episode of the show, I don’t intend on doing a whole lot of talking
tonight, because, frankly, there are other people, who you’ll soon be hearing
from, who can speak about this matter a lot better than I can! I’ve talked
about Venezuela on this show before.
I’ve done whole episodes about the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chavez,
the amazing progressive gains that have been won in that country since
neo-liberalism was overthrown there in the late 90s, and of the American
Empire’s attempts to undermine those gains through violent coups, bloody
campaigns of street violence, sabotage, and now with sanctions, blockades and
threats of military invasion. In 2015
the Obama Administration declared the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to be a
“national security threat” and instituted sanctions. Since then the Trump Administration has taken
things a lot further: refusing to recognize the legitimate elected government
of Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduro, imposing an outright economic
embargo on the country with devastating implications for ordinary Venezuelans,
and threatening direct military intervention, using that infamous phrase so
beloved of American warhawks in the Pentagon and State Department, “all options
are on the table”. Even more troubling
for me, as a Canadian citizen, is that Justin Trudeau and the Canadian
government have been in absolute lockstep with Trump and his people in pushing
for regime change in Venezuela, to the point of inflicting real atrocities on
the people there. So to get into this
further, I want to play a clip from independent journalist Max Blumenthal of
the Grayzone Project, whose done some of the best reporting I’ve seen on the
current situation regarding Venezuela.
This is an interview he did with the Grayzone’s Aaron Mate earlier this
week.
(Max Blumenthal: US sanctions on Venezuela‘sociopathic’)
That was Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone Project. You’re listening to Back in the USSR. Fortunately there has been solidarity shown
toward Venezuela from various progressive forces in North America, for example,
you may have heard about how activists occupied the Venezuelan consulate in
Washington D.C. earlier this year to prevent it from falling into the hands of
Trump’s hand-picked Venezuelan representative Juan Guido and his cronies. But people have also been travelling to
Venezuela itself to show their solidarity with the people there in their struggle
against US imperialism. I want to play
this one interview that appeared recently on the Real News Network, it was with
Netfa Freeman of the Black Alliance for Peace, who also was part of the group
of activists defending the Venezuelan consulate in Washington and who recently
was in Venezuela as part of a solidarity delegation. The spirit of internationalism expressed by
this man is truly inspiring. Please stay
tuned.
(Netfa Freeman: The Black Working Class and Venezuela: fighting the same enemy)
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