Venezuelan President Maduro’s UN Address
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
Maduro surprisingly represented the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in New York during its 73rd General Assembly session - risking his security by coming to a nation bent on toppling its government, wanting him eliminated.
Washington has been waging political and economic war on Venezuela since early in Hugo Chavez’s tenure, greatly intensified under Maduro - wanting the nation transformed into another US vassal state, along with gaining control over its vast oil reserves, the world’s largest.
When Foreign Minister Maduro attended the UN General Assembly in 2006, he was illegally detained and strip-searched at JFK airport before allowed to board his flight home.
At the time, he explained officials demanded he surrender his ticket and boarding pass, claiming his name was on a so-called “red list.”
After explaining his diplomatic status as Venezuela’s foreign minister, abusive treatment worsened, he said.
Back home, he told reporters that airport security personnel threatened to handcuff and beat him physically if he resisted. Illegally detained for 90 minutes, he was denied outside contact and legal help.
Shameful US-led Western insults have persisted against him throughout his tenure, including by major media.
Addressing the UN General Assembly last month, Maduro said he came to tell the truth, “the voice of (his) homeland that, throughout history, has refused to surrender to injustice, to the empires of the past – slaver and colonialist – and the empires of today – equally slaver and neocolonialist,” adding:
“I bring the voice of a heroic people that arose from the heroic resistance of the aborigines, from the indigenous peoples that for centuries resisted the domination by colonial empires.”
“I bring the voice of the people having the honor of being the great Liberator Simon Bolivar’s home, the most important leader of a generation of liberators of the Americas, who accomplished, 200 years ago, the heroic feat of founding a continent, a region, a dream: The independent republics of this world region.”
He slammed the US for harassing and attacking Venezuela politically and economically. On the previous day, Trump railed against Bolivarian governance, Maduro saying:
America’s Monroe doctrine established its “interventionist role (as) judge, party and police of the world.”
“(T)he president of the most powerful imperial nation, the United States of North America, was in this same place, supporting James Monroe’s doctrine, who, at that time, said ‘America for Americans,’ meaning that the rest of America had to belong to them as the backyard for the interests of Washington elite groups…”
Modern-day Venezuela reflects Simon Bolivar’s vision. He defeated the Spanish, liberated half of South America, and advocated using national wealth fairly and equitably.
He strove to overcome what he called the imperial curse “to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”
“Today, Venezuela is a victim of a permanent aggression in the economic, political, diplomatic and media fields by those who govern the United States of North America and support the Monroe Doctrine to justify the ideological, political and diplomatic aggression against our beloved homeland,” said Maduro.
“Why is Venezuela…attacked?” Bolivarian social democracy “built an autonomous project of democratic revolution, social vindication, and construction of a self and new model of society, which is based on the historical roots of our nation, on the identity of our country and on the own culture of our Latin-American region.”
Bolivarianism faces “permanent (US) aggression,” political, economic, sanctions and trade war, wanting its economy crushed, its people immiserated.
Last August, Vladimir Putin called an attempt on Maduro’s life in Caracas an “unacceptable act of terror,” denouncing interventionist actions against the country and its leadership.
US hostility toward Bolivarian Venezuela reflects the struggle of sovereign nations against imperial aims to dominate them.
Despite Washington’s rage for regime change, Maduro said he’s willing to meet with Trump “to discuss…any topic(s) he is willing to address with honesty and humility” - knowing US leadership under either party doesn’t embrace these values.
The US doesn’t negotiate. It demands all other nations bend to its will, governments refusing targeted for regime change.
On Wednesday, Trump said he’s willing to meet with Maduro. Earlier DLT summits with Putin and Kim Jong-un accomplished nothing.
US hostility toward all sovereign independent nations is longstanding, preemptive wars and color revolutions its favored strategies to replace their governments with pro-Western puppet rule.
Because of its world’s largest oil reserves and other mineral riches, Venezuela remains a prime US target.
Maduro and Trump meeting won’t change a thing, the disturbing reality of how Washington operates globally.
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