Jeremy Corbyn has called for international solidarity with Latin American leftist movements after US action in Venezuela. Sweat running down a few brows in Havana…
Corbyn, alongside fellow MP Richard Burgon, spoke at tonight’s “emergency online rally” organised by Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The demands of which are “an immediate end to this illegal military action, the safe return of President Maduro, and respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty”…
The Your Party leader (for now until its elections) attacked Nobel Peace Prize-winning Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and blamed ‘global corporate interests’ for the arrest of Maduro:
“Trump said he’s going to make Venezuela safe for American global oil companies. The alleged leader of the Venezuelan opposition put out a video, a quite chilling video, saying that she was going to make the country ready for privatisation. I was thinking to myself on an even greater scale than Boris Yeltsin did in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we’re really up against here is global corporate interests working through politicians, working through politicians like Trump in order to use the military to create opportunities for themselves. We know which side we’re on. We know which side of history we’re on. We know which side of history are going to be found out for those people that supported this illegal act.”
Corbyn, speaking to those assembled on Zoom and 220 viewers on YouTube, also accused Starmer himself of breaking international law, which “requires that you recognise that, when a genocide takes place, you don’t fuel the fire of that genocide. His government has done exactly that by the provision of arms to Israel.”
Longtime Trotskyist writer/activist Tariq Ali, also present, said Trump argued gunrunning “weapons would have been used against the United States. Well all I can say – I wish they had been. But they weren’t. They captured him before there could be any armed fightback.” Indeed – quite some operation from Delta Force there…
Craig Beaumont, executive director of the Federation of Small Businesses:
“Business sentiment is now closer to dismay than confidence.”