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okay three I
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welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gatri
following the death of Hugo Chavez his
close friend and Ally Nicholas Maduro
won both the subsequent presidential
election and the regional elections held
late last year since then it's all gone
wrong a newly energized and well funded
us back operation is clearly underway on
the streets of the country real economic
and social problems are being
exacerbated and exaggerated and Street
power is being deployed to delegitimize
the government for someone my age it's
all eerily Familiar of the days of the
original 9/11 this first 911 happened in
1973 in Chile when the elected president
Salvador aende was overthrown in a CIA
backed operation following ende's murder
the wholesale Slaughter of his
supporters and a mass Exodus out of the
country of any democr rats who could get
out the fascist dictatorship of General
Pino then Ruled The Roost for the next
quarter of a century Chile today is
ruled by a communist Christian Democrat
Coalition the first supporting the
government of Venezuela the letter
supporting the protesters on the streets
but mercosur an economic and political
agreement of the South Americas is clear
about the situation and condemns the
clear efforts to destabilize the
democratic government of Venezuela
joining us to make sense of the streets
of Caracas is Francisco Domingo of the
Venezuelan solidarity campaign Francisco
looking at the news there's a real
parallel between what's happening uh in
the Ukraine and Kiev and what's
happening in Venezuela it looks to me as
a veteran of these matters like a pretty
well planned and orchestrated push to
regime change in both countries is that
how it looks to you uh not only looks
that way but actually it's been the by
the people who are actually organizing
this uh leopo Lopez the main person
behind this leading it and Maria K
Machado an MP of the opposition and
Antonio Desma who is the elected mayor
of kakas have said that declar that they
want they decided to launch a campaign
called la sala which in Spanish means
The Ting and um with the proclaim the
cleare aim to actually remove Maduro
from office before he ends his mandate
in 2019
seem they cannot win the votee because
they lost as you said correctly in the
introduction they lost the presidential
election in April 2013 by 1.5% which was
close but it was still a win but they
lost massively the Municipal elections
on the 8th of December by 12% difference
it was an unlight and as a result of
that they came to the conclusion that
this was not acceptable I think that
what exacerbated this was the fact that
Maduro uh um you know with the best of
intentions in the world in order to uh
for the good of the country offer them a
dialogue and several sections of the
position did responds very positively I
think these is designed not only to toor
appeal those possible collaboration and
conversation and dialogue but also
perhaps push it enough um hard enough to
overthrow the government I think that's
what it is they must have taken a green
light I expect from Washington for this
is there any evidence of the United
States involvement in this there is
long-term short-term evidence Obama's
just taken a very hard line saying that
he's very concerned about the violence
in Venezuela and demanding that Maduro
actually goes for a real dialogue I
don't know what he means by that but you
know maduro's offer this the real
dialogue section opposition have
responded positively and it's only a
very small minority of people the the
person who actually lead the uh the uh
opposition this effort now is called
Leopold Lopez he is the leader of
political party called volunt Popular
the popular will which in the last uh
Municipal elections got only 6% of the
vote so there are a significant minority
within that majority and I don't think
without the support of the United States
they would have gone for it and the
long-term evidence is this um since 2002
and there is hard evidence about this is
is public information more or less the
United States through the national D for
democracy the international Republican
Institute the national Democratic
Institute has given the opposition in
Venezuela uh $120 million which if were
one were to translate it into British
ter that would be $1.2
billion of money to actually over to
overthrow destabilize the government of
Britain I I understand that Lopez has
given himself in for arrest what's
what's what's what's about that um well
he made very I can of put it match
statements through Twitter that he was
going to go for confrontation and so on
everybody was extremely worried he
called on demonstration he got some
supporters about 5,000 which is small in
terms of Venezuelan but it was
supporters in his district and rather
than going for a confrontation he not
give himself in um Maduro later on and
Di cave you know the two key people in
the government the president of the
National Assembly they they said that
you know they were extremely worried
about he being a assassinated by the
right wing in order to cause this
complication this trouble which will
justify God knows what else and um so he
gave himself him man the National Guard
was surrounding the house all the time
the house where he was supposed to be in
hiding protecting him when he came out
they followed him and protected him all
the way until he gave himself in and his
wife Lopez's wife has gone on television
and he actually uh gave an interview to
CNN where he confirmed this so thanks to
the government of Venezuela you know a
repetition of what happened in 2002
where God knows who shoot fires CH kill
people um in order to cause the maximum
Havoc well and yet the pavlovian
reaction of some predictable uh sources
is now being uh played out Amnesty
International have this week called uh
for an action across the whole world for
people to protest to to president Maduro
about the raid on the opposition
headquarters as you explain it's a tiny
fragment of an opposition which is by
definition in any case a minority of the
population 6% extremely radical amnesty
has called on people to protest against
maduro's arrest of this man uh Lopez how
steady in the water is the ship of State
in Venezuela
when you have the support of the United
States nothing can be very certain and
where the full power of the Empire to
use more precise words to be deployed
fully against Venezuela God knows what
will happen that there complication is
they cannot obtain significant support
within inside the country to destabilize
the government enough in order to cause
trouble the difficulties is that the
government faces serious economic
complications and this has got to do
with inheriting a very difficult economy
which depends too heavily on oil it's
got is not Diversified at all and
because um they're the victim of their
own success because the government has
given has done so much redistribution of
income since 1999 up to now the 60%
poorest part of the country actually has
seen their income increase by more than
500% and because there is no economic
diversity the result is that people have
lots of money in their pockets and they
haven't got things to buy the result the
government has to import things so the
the currency becomes very weak and as a
result of this there is an official
exchange rate which is 6.30 Biv is and
there is an Black Market one which is 10
times that the result is you know all
sort of complications and people are
using this deliberately there is
economic sabotage against the government
deliberately by sections of the
rightwing business like they did to
agenda there is overpricing that is
holding and in terms of overpricing um
they discovered the government when they
went for
uh inspecting businesses and shops and
so on big businesses um the overpricing
went to 100% 200% 1,000% 2,000% there
was one case of 12,000 per. so the
moment Maduro began to do this I mean
immediately the population supported him
and he said to the opposition he said
right I want you to discuss this matter
with me because it's not acceptable and
many business actually have collaborated
with the government not Maduro just now
literally two days ago one day ago
signed a very good deal with Samsung or
Samsung you know the electronic Giant
and out of which Venezuela is going to
get significant amount of technology and
computers and so on and madula just
offered because of this agreement with
Samsung um a tablet to every single
University in the country free of charge
so that give you an idea of the
potential but also the danger the uh
comparison I drew in the introduction
you and I uh both remember it well uh
this kind of Street power feeding on
economic and social dissatisfaction with
the support of the US led to the murder
of President ayendi and uh tens of
thousands of others the Exile of
hundreds of thousands if not millions of
others at the time the ultra left used
to demand of president ayendi that he
armed the people I opposed this demand
at the time thinking that it would would
be a provocation that might provoke a
coup and of course the coup happened
anyway what steps is President maduru
taking to defend the gains of the
Revolution um I mean your reference to
Chile touches my heart because I'm
Chilean myself I'm a for an exile so I
know very well what was done and the
power that can be deployed in the
streets by fascist facts is really
really powerful and can cause Havoc um
my understanding is that the government
is using all the legal and
constitutional mechanisms which are
totally sufficient as far as they're
concerned in order to defend the
Revolution and despite the pressure on
the Armed Forces despite provocations
infiltration attempts to bribe some of
God knows what and the unity of the Arm
Forces behind the bolivarian
Constitution is totally solid Melendez
the commander-in-chief of the Armed
Forces is a woman
two days ago she made a statement say
the Armed Forces will the Bolan armed
forces in Venezuela will not accept any
government that doesn't come out from
the Democratic will of the people so
that's totally clear there's been not
one single General officer of any kind
at any level that actually has expressed
any um dissent dissatisfaction dis
Disobedience or anything which means
that the solidity of the arm Force
behalf the project which you know Chavez
managed to GV I and crystallized is
still entire so it seems to me in that
sense is totally sufficient the
complication is that the masses want to
participate defending the revolution
organizing peace marches and the thugs
are being organized to set upon them and
killing some of them I just happened in
Valencia you know
yesterday well it's a very dangerous
moment uh not just for Venezuela but for
all of Latin America because of course
if such a thing were to happen in
Venezuela a a repetition of the Chilean
events of 1973 then none of the
democratic governments in Latin America
would be safe so we'll have to keep our
watching brief on that Francisco Domingo
of the Venezuelan solidarity campaign
thank you very much for joining us
coming up after the break his original
name was little but the shadow that he
cast has proved long it's the
anniversary of the assassination of
Malcolm X
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welcome back to Sputnik 49 years ago on
stage in a ballroom in Harlem Malcolm X
was gunned down and killed by three
black assassins from the Rival Nation of
Islam Malcolm was just 39 years old he
had been a criminal who discovered a
rather exotic offshoot of Islam then
turned to mainstream Islam and had just
begun to reach out to other poor
American communities and to those white
students being radicalized by the war in
Vietnam he his actual name was Malcolm
little but he had the potential to be
truly great and in death he has become
so today we're looking at the great
Malcolm X with one of Britain's foremost
black writers the author and Pana
africanist Ona nuia Ona thanks very much
for joining us 49 years ago almost
exactly uh Malcolm X was gunned down in
rather mysterious circumstances people
went to prison indeed uh the last of the
Assassins was only released in 2010
whilst it's obvious to me as a white
person that Malcolm could have been a
Mandela figure could have emerged as a
Mandela figure a truly uh world class
political
operator it is somehow not very safe to
declare yourself an admirer of Malcolm X
whilst Martin Luther King for example
it's kind of uh obligatory to pay your
ects to him why do you think that is
what was that about Malcolm that made
him edgy I mean the first thing is that
Malcolm is one of the most maligned and
misunderstood individuals of the 20th
century and now we moving to the 21st
century we are aware that there is a
vacancy in terms of such individuals
with such honesty character and
fortitude and to understand Malcolm we
must contextualize him because we cannot
understand him out of context no man is
can be misunderstood without context Mal
's father was a member of the unia the
universal negro Improvement Association
this was the Marcus Garvey organization
it was the largest organization of
Africans um in the diaspora within the
history of the 20th or the 21st century
it's never spoken about as such right
now ear little was um uh first of all a
composite organizer and um a well voiced
member of that organization and was
killed probably by the clan or other
members of other organizations whilst in
the pursuit of the gains of that organ
ganization and whilst they had
conservative
ideas its appeal to the mass of
African-Americans was far more than most
Marxist or socialist organizations have
been then or since so Malcolm grew up as
effectively a garite his mother also was
a garite yeah and when um uh growing up
as a garite um he lost his way he became
very confused disenfranchised with
himself in a way dislocated from himself
and took to a life of crime as many
young people did and then received an
epiphany um whilst in prison and then
joined a Nation of Islam now Malcolm was
already being trained and moved into
that organization through family
connections ell Collins had already
raised money for Elijah Muhammad many
decades before wi L had already um
established a relationship his brothers
Regin and filber had already were moving
towards that movement and then Malcolm
was adopted really as a favored son and
became National spokesperson for the
organization and really pushed what was
essentially a conservative organization
into the mainstream of American polit
politics and he did this very carefully
and clearly by observing what was
happening in politics and integrating
and offering an alternative perspective
at that point in the 60s the Civil
Rights Movement represented the only
voice and in many ways though we think
of the Civil Rights Movement as rather a
conservative Affair in 1955 it was not
such the Civil Rights Movement was
considered to be quite radical as it
moved forward into the middle part of
the 195 towards the 1960s the young
became disenfranchised by it and
immediately a Nation of Islam could see
offering an alternative to that
particular form of conservativism so
Malcolm and Elijah devised a strategy
and their strategy was to represent
themselves as the radicals to represent
themselves as the inverted Comm violent
alternative now that violent alternative
wasn't marked out by any reality Nation
of Islam was not engaged in any violent
activities against the American
government um the nation of Isam was not
involved in any violent killings or
terrorist activities against the
American government it was a rhetoric
that was offered so that that would be
an a if you like a different alternative
to what was happening in the Civil
Rights Movement it was strategy it was
methodology it was gamesmanship if you
like however with Malcolm the label
stuck when in fact it would be nothing
more than strategy because we paint the
Nation of Islam or Malcolm as the
violent and a civil rights movement as
in was the nonviolent but in fact it's
not quite as simple as that as I'm sure
you may be aware Robert F Williams for
example in the deacons of defense was a
military organization working within the
civil rights movement of trained um ex
Vietnam veterans Korean veterans who
were well prepared and willing to
conduct violent activities in defense
and protection of civil rights workers
the deacons of Defense worked from the
beginning from the 50s along with the
Mont government Improvement Association
Along with the southern Christian
leadership conference along with core
along with Snick and within core and
within Snick they had their own military
groups that were working for the defense
of Freedom Riders none of this is going
to be promoted of course because the
Civil Rights M promoted itself as a
nonviolent organization the Nation of
Islam on the other hand was a very
conservative nonviolent organization in
terms of how it operated with the
government Etc but that wasn't an image
that going to be represented either so
what I'm trying to say is that on the
one hand we got malcol as the violent
demog and on the other we've got Martin
Luther King as the nonviolent innocent
saint but in fact in neither case is
such idea based on any kind of reality
so this perception that we have of both
individuals is actually quite wrong but
in our often polarized perspective we're
looking for a God and then we're looking
for a devil and unfortunately Malcolm
falls into the devil but it's a false uh
d That's the uh the the point once upon
a time I I asked Fidel Castro who had
been telling me this remarkable story of
how Malcolm had guarded him in the
Theresa Hotel
Harlem when theban revolutionary
leadership had been thrown out of their
hotel Inon Avenue I asked him he told me
some wonderful stories which we don't
have time to go into about Malcolm and
so actually it was triggered by the
sight of Bill Clinton out jogging in a
Malcolm X baseball capat indeed it's 92
or 93 or something like that Fidel
stopped dead the CNN was on in the
corner he stopped dead and saw when he
saw the American president with the mark
EX cap and he made the point that he
never thought that the day would ever
come when a US president so I finally I
asked him so what did you think of
Malcolm and Fidel Castro one of the
world's most edgy dangerous men said
Malcolm was a very great man yes but he
was a little dangerous yes uh but he
meant it as a compliment of course if
Malcolm had
lived and of course this is
speculation how different would the
situation of black people and the
relationship ship between black people
and others in the United States have
been well M the important thing is in
the between the 1955 to about 1974 a
whole generation of young people both
black and white were removed from the
American scene um we could start with
Edgar Myers Martin Luther King um
Malcolm X the Black Panthers um huy P
Newton um Bobby he goes on and on the
list of individuals that remov Fred
Hampton George Jackson a whole um a
whole rafter of individuals um working
um on all levels to removed this
generation of people um would have made
not only America but the whole world a
very very very very different place so
we have to look at this thing not only
as an individual thing but a question of
social engineering there was a fear that
this generation of young people some as
young as 16 or 17 highly politicized
highly intelligent and highly articulate
were very dangerous so to remove this
whole generation of people which Malcolm
X was a part very young 39 when he died
yes in his 20s when he's active this
this this whole gener of people was very
dangerous because they would then
represent if you like the mainstream of
ideological thought and there's always
the um the concern that that sort of
politics being in the mainstream On The
Fringe on the edge of society is
acceptable to a certain extent because
then you can always demonize them but if
you have these individuals as the
mainstream of political thought and that
political thought that mainstream
political thought is radicalized and
revolutionized then that becomes very
dangerous to the whole way in which
Western Society operates or people may
feel that way in which Western Society
operates so that's why Malcolm had to be
removed it was when he was
internationalizing the situation and
internationalizing so well that he was
Gunn down um and people say oh it was a
nation no no he says we must take his
word for it that this is beyond the
nation in his own words and he's no fool
he's no idiot he says it's beyond the
nation yes why he was being removed when
he was meeting quami and Kuma and
secretary in Africa and then his whistle
top tour around North Africa and then
Ben B EXA he was internationalizing and
he was crossing class and Crossing
ethnic uh boundaries inside the United
States and it was his ability to be able
to show relationships between these
different struggles that made him
particularly dangerous at a time when
America was presenting itself as a
democratic voice and face of the world
he was able to show no actually in your
back door you're doing this to 20 odd
million people that you've denied rights
to for the last two or 3 hundred years
this was very very frightening and very
dangerous to a country purporting itself
as the representation of the Divine and
perfect upon the face of the Earth are
you saying that the Civil Right Movement
at the time was unable to see that well
I think but even when we say that we
must be careful because Paul Robson even
in the 50s understood the power of the
United Nations and even he was
petitioning and this is really the
Forerunner of the Civil Rights Movement
so what I'm saying is that Malcolm by
the time he left the nation by 62 or 63
he was already thinking how he can work
with the Civil Rights Movement I think
he saw himself as being separate but as
being part of a more concerted effort
and that made him dangerous when he was
opposed to it from a strategic
perspective or political perspective
that therefore he could be marginalized
but when he was willing to work with
whomever he was willing to work with in
order to get the job done that made him
very dangerous because then it wasn't
ideology that was governing his thought
process but strategy and Method and
that's different well we lost Malcolm
but we got Barack Obama on thank you
very much indeed for joining us on the
Sputnik now it's your turn through
social media to tell us what you're
thinking not much time uh gri so give me
your best couple I found this picture on
on Twitter which portrays Leopoldo Lopez
the opposition leader as an economist
Professor medal winning athlete and even
descendant of Simon bolar versus
Nicholas Maduro the president as just a
bus driver which is so despicable to
which Clive Griffin responds Jesus was a
carpenter Prophet Muhammad was a shepher
shepherd and a merchant follow
inspirational leaders not career
politicians it's very good actually I
knew Nicholas Maduro when he was a bus
driver and it's one of the greatest
qualifications that he has that he was
an industrial worker who's now become
the president of the Republic how great
could Malcolm X have become to which
paully walnut's response he could have
rivaled Mandela in being a symbol
he was killed because of his Rising
appeal globally if you think about it he
was 39 when he died he might have lived
and been politically active for another
40 years oh at least like yeah maybe 50
years and he would have developed his
Fame and worldwide reach would have
developed everything could have been
different it might have been him in the
white house instead of instead of OB
Obama indeed well that's all we've got
time for which unfortunately means
that's the end of the show you know how
to reach us on Twitter at _ Sputnik and
on Facebook you can find us on Sputnik
on Russia today goodbye from me G and
from me George Galloway it's been
marvelous
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