YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicolás Maduro Moros

lines on the record

168

first

2007-09-24

most recent

2020-09-24

sittings or episodes

6

sources

un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “Next year, delegations from throughout the world will be welcome at the historic Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Caracas.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

2. “It is not through the threat of the use of force, or the use of force, or internal competition to overthrow Governments such as the one that I lead, that we will have stable peace. No, it is respect for international law that will lead to stable peace and full security. Lastly, I wish to thank the General Assembly for its support. Next year, 2015, Venezuela, with members’ support, will assume leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement for the next three years. We humbly aspire to play a genuine role in mobilizing and revitalizing the entire process of United Nations reform. The process must include the elaboration of an agenda of world priorities in which we will all have a voice and a vote, and no one can impose their will on the others.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

3. “A more dangerous world has emerged from the demented work of those who lead and make decisions in the Organization. We humbly lend our voice and our proposal to the table, and we do so with genuine love. That is how we show our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America will continue to show our solidarity with them. Venezuela, as Members know, has opened a modest air-bridge to provide logistical support, food, blankets and medicines in support of the people of Palestine who recently suffered a brutal attack. We want peace, total peace. Our Organization needs to be overhauled so that everyone can enjoy total peace.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

4. “After so much death and bombing of the brotherly Arab people of Iraq, we have to invite the sovereign Governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and indeed the entire region to come up with a comprehensive political, military, cultural and communication strategy that can be supported by the Security Council. Anything else is crazy. Let us consider what happened in Libya, as noted by the President of Chad. It only fomented hatred and an anti-Al-Qadhafi front. What is happening in Libya? It has become a territory for trafficking in arms and explosives by terrorist groups fighting for scraps of territory. We have seen the end of the beautiful history of the people of our brother country of Libya. It is a crazy race towards more violence and terrorism.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

5. “We believe that instead of the continual, demented bombing, must strike a great alliance of peace against terrorism, respecting the sovereignty of countries and sovereign Governments throughout that region. I would ask the delegation of the United States take note of this message and convey it to President Obama. Only an alliance that respects the sovereignty of those nations, along with the cooperation of their Governments, peoples and armed forces, will overthrow the Islamic State and the terrorist forces advancing like monster against the West. There is no other way to overthrow them — certainly not with bombs that kill mostly the innocent. They never kill the armed forces; they always kill the innocent.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

6. “Should our pain be greater depending on the colour or origin of the skin of a person or the origin of that person? The loss of human lives should pain us all, and we therefore condemn the terrorist attack perpetrated by NATO and its allies to change the regime in Syria. I am here to say, with force of truth, on behalf of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America and my Government, that if the Government of Syria had been overthrown by those imperial attacks, today in that entire region of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan we would see the power of those terrorists take root. As painful as it may be, we have to say that President Bashar Al-Assad and the democratic and constitutional Government of Syria has always combated terrorism and has suffered thousands of deaths.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

7. “We should not just make speeches and vague offers; we must restore sanity to the Organization if we are to strengthen it, and place at the forefront of our agenda the real common problems facing us. Today in the Security Council, they adopted a series of decisions in a bid to combat terrorism. Let us be clear: we must combat terrorism. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America has been condemning terrorism for more than a year and a half. We are deeply pained by the murder of Western journalists and the dastardly acts of these terrorists, but a year and a half ago when boys and girls were captured by these terrorist and other groups in Syria, we were not that pained at that time. They were beheading women in mosques. The pain should be the same.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

8. “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is going to be giving $5 million to the fund to support Africa and the needy people of the world. Let us be clear. We should be discussing the scientific reports here and taking decisions based on those reports. We should be focused on another important issue affecting the survival of humankind on this Earth — climate change. A poem of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, which was read out yesterday, says that after they can no longer poison the rivers, after they have poisoned our lakes, once there is not even one fish left to eat, then the powerful of the world will have to eat each other. They want to create extraneous formulas when all they need to do is to make an extraordinary effort and recognize climate change as a climatic emergency.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

9. “They could not prevail against Hugo Chávez and they cannot prevail against us. We are still on the path towards revolution, democracy, independence and dignity, with our own voice speaking to the world. There are major problems that we now have to address at this point. As members well know, one such problem — perhaps the greatest threat of all — is the virus that causes Ebola haemorrhagic fever. If this world and our United Nations system had been somewhat more humane, we would have focused on lending our support to tackling this real threat instead of sending drones, missiles and bombs to destroy the people of Gaza or to bomb the people of Iraq and Syria. The President of Chad announced that his country had decided to donate $2 million to the Ebola fund.”

   2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

10. “I am sure Members will know that we have the largest oil reserves on the planet in the beautiful Orinoco basin, and we have the largest oil fields there. For the first time in 90 years, we recovered full control over our own petroleum resources as the anchor for our economic and social development. Venezuela has had to suffer ongoing harassment and persecution at the hands of the imperial forces and the allies of the United States empire, who have sought again and again to undermine our democracy. One such attempt was the attempted coup against Hugo Chávez. Following his death on 5 March 2013, those forces resumed their activities to undermine our country. I thank the Governments of the world for their solidarity with Venezuela, which has been struggling and resisting.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

11. “Through great effort, the Bolivarian Venezuela led by our Commander Hugo Chávez, was fortunately able achieve practically all the MDGs. We have an enrolment rate of more than 90 per cent in almost all schools, and we offer free, quality education from basic schools through to universities. We have lowered the unemployment rate from 20 per cent five years ago to 5.5 per cent at the end of last year. We have changed the curves. We had vulnerable employment to the tune of 60 per cent; now, 60 per cent of those jobs are protected by social security, and are remunerated at a fair, regulated rate. I could spend hours here talking of the progress we have made towards the MDGs. We have been able to salvage our oil wealth.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

12. “His only sin was to fight for independence and to defend the beautiful flag and star of the dignity of our sister country of Puerto Rico. These are the causes of this historic moment. Venezuela is in the midst of a people’s democratic revolution that began with an unimpeachable constitutional event. For the first time in the history of our country, the Constitution of the Republic was debated by the people and approved by a referendum with the participation of the sovereign vote of the people of Venezuela in 1999. Since then, we have been developing and carrying out a process of political and social liberation. We are trying to overcome poverty. In 2015, we will have the post-2015 development agenda and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be over.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

13. “President Jacob Zuma of South Africa spoke of the great Madiba, Nelson Mandela, who was forgotten for many years, despite the fact that many now claim him as a representative of their causes. That is fine. Nelson Mandela represents the human capacity of resilience and resistance enjoyed by people as they seek to achieve the objectives of justice and peace. That is why I raise the name of a man who almost 35 years ago was imprisoned and has been subjected to torture — a man with a family, a man from Latin America and the Caribbean, a man like us. We are talking about the Puerto Rican Oscar López Rivera, the longest-held political prisoner who remains in a United States prison to this day. We demand his immediate release.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

14. “We confirm the full solidarity of the people of Venezuela with the people of Argentina, and indeed the solidarity of the CELAC countries. Let us move towards this historic decision. We received 124 votes in favour last week. As we did at the CELAC summit in Havana, Venezuela also calls on the United Nations to support as closely and warmly as it can and enforce the decisions calling on the United States of America to enforce and execute a decolonization plan for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was invited to join CELAC because it is Caribbean and it is ours. We raise our voice to make it heard in this Hall to call for the release of a man whose name many here will hear for the first time.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

15. “I wish here to recognize as a great step forward the decision taken by the General Assembly two weeks ago in support of the Argentine Republic and President Cristina Fernández in her struggle against the financial plundering of the vulture funds. We want to support her in every way we can to ensure that the General Assembly, in accordance with the proposal of the Group of 77 and China and in as timely and efficient a manner as possible, drafts a high-quality document mandating the defence of the nations represented by the Organization, especially the poor countries of the developing world, against vulture funds that seek to plunder our economies and impose detrimental economic, institutional and political systems.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

16. “The President of Estonia spoke earlier about the anachronisms of the Cold War and the systems of economic persecution used to impose political regimes and subjugate peoples. We are here on behalf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to confirm our support for the 50-year struggle of the people and Government of Cuba against the criminal blockade. I ask President Obama: When will you seize the opportunity to go down in history by putting an end once and for all to the criminal economic and trade embargo and persecution of our brother country of Cuba? We also see new causes arise in the current struggles facing our region. We have taken them on in unison.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

17. “Based on this experience, we are seeing new structures arise towards the establishment of a road map for overhauling the United Nations system. Let the call for reform of the Organization not fall through the cracks here in this Hall. We must find the way. We must try to come up with a common road map for humankding because we need it if we are to tackle the major issues before us. For 22 years, the United Nations has customarily voted with record insistence for a cause that is not just a cause of the Americas but one espoused by the peoples and Governments of this world. I speak of the rejection of the economic embargo against our brother Republic of Cuba — an anachronistic vestige of the Cold War.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

18. “We recently held a very interesting and important meeting for the remainder of the decade between the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who represent the hope for development through new mechanisms — and UNASUR in Brasilia, and we decided to share our experiences. The BRICS Bank and the Banco del Sur would be a new financial architecture for the world that must emerge from this new regionalism. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was established on 3 December 2011 in Caracas, and is already growing strong. We have held summits in Santiago de Chile and Havana and will hold another in San José in January. All of Latin America is coming together optimistically in this new regionalism.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

19. “I would also mention Petrocaribe and its 18 brotherly member States. I hope I may be forgiven if I seem immodest, but PetroCaribe is a model that best shows how we can have a new world of peace, justice, solidarity, cooperation and complementarity among nations. To the powerful of the world, those who wield all the capital and all the economic power, I say that we can have another world. We are starting to build it in the Americas. Also emerging is the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), representing a new southern regionalism that was founded on 16 April 2007 with the participation of new leaders in Latin America and our Commander Hugo Chávez. It is a most interesting and important bloc that is now starting to forge ties with the rest of the emerging world.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

20. “In the 1970s and 1980s, we saw the emergence of the Organization of African Unity, an extraordinary system to organize the brotherly African continent to address the issues of development and life. Our mother Africa was one of the most suffering regions the world. Now as we embark on the twenty-first century, Latin America is taking its place. We have seen new organizations arise in Latin America. On 14 December, we will commemorate in Havana, Cuba, a heroic island and great homeland, the tenth anniversary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. We have assumed an important role in building a new social and economic order in defence of such major causes as climate change. In existence for 10 years now, that youthful organization, partnership or alliance is now looking forward to the rest of the twenty-first century.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

21. “We must democratize it and give it a leading role to ensure that the great debates that take place here can always successfully address the major issues facing the world. That is why we believe that we must build a new United Nations in a bid for a new multipolar world of peace where there no empire can impose its will on a unipolar world. This is urgent for the entire world. Above and beyond what officials of the various Governments represented in this Hall may believe, we already have another world where we all wish to speak, think and decide our own fate and to achieve peace for our peoples. A new regionalism has come to the fore. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, we saw the birth of the European Union as an experiment in the new regionalism that is admired and emulated by many throughout the world.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

22. “The United Nations has to deal today with a multicentric, multipolar world of numerous actors, with emerging countries and regions that have their own thoughts, aspirations and desire to be respected in this world. The United Nations has to adapt and submit to the broader sovereignty of the peoples of this world, who are crying out for their voices to be heard, heeded and respected. We have heard speeches today at the start of this sixty-ninth session. We also believe in strengthening the role of the Secretary-General. As we have said so many times we must have a Secretary-General who represents all of us and who has the political and institutional clout to find solutions to the world’s conflicts. We must reconfigure the system and functions of the General Assembly.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

23. “Given the human importance of this institution, we insist on the need for an in-depth transformation, as Commander Hugo Chávez said on many occasions right here in this Hall. In his famous statements in defence of the causes of humankind, he stressed the need for a far-reaching democratic overhaul of the United Nations system. As President Jacob Zuma of our sister country South Africa said, we must democratize and overhaul the Security Council. The role of the regions today is different from what it was in 1945. This is another world. The United Nations was born to deal with post-war reconstruction and the issues that had given rise to conflicts.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

24. “The United Nations is an historic human experiment that has become a landmark because never before has humankind had a forum to meet to address issues of peace, affecting life and death, and to negotiate solutions to conflicts. After 7,000 years of civilization as we know it — a review of which reveals a history of empires and the ongoing battle to distribute the wealth and territory of the world — only with the establishment of this system in 1945 did we begin to get a glimpse of future light at the end of a long tunnel of battles, wars and global conflicts. We call for the renewed relevance of the United Nations, above and beyond any criticism that may be levelled against it.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

25. “This morning, I strongly reminded Presidents Dilma Rousseff, Cristina Fernández, Evo Morales Ayma and other Presidents of the Americas of the need to reorient, readjust and tweak the entire United Nations system. This system has been in place for 70 years since the end of the so- called Second World War, which took place in Europe and other parts of the world between 1939 and 1945. The United Nations Charter is one of the most beautiful poems that we could ever read. It has well and truly become an instrument that has been set aside, overlooked and consistently flouted in terms of its fundamental objectives are concerned.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

26. “At the outset, as this is the first time that I am attending in my capacity as the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I wish to thank the General Assembly, all its representative Governments and the various bodies of the United Nations system for the heartfelt tribute that was paid simultaneously at United Nations Headquarters in New York, in Geneva and other places in the world to an extraordinary human being, Commander Hugo Chávez, who always carried the banners of peace, equality and respect for our peoples. That is the first thing I wish to convey from my heart on behalf of the people of Venezuela and to recall and invoke his spirit of tackling imperialism and injustice. We have had debates for several decades now on the need to reform the Organization, and various Presidents that have presided over the Assembly.”

    2014-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 69 (2014)

27. “And what kind of peace would it be, if we were to leave the world as it is? Today more than ever, the worst crime against peace would be to leave the world as it is; if we were to do so, the present and the future would be characterized by unending war. Bringing about peace, on the other hand, requires a radical rejection of everything that prevents humankind from being human.””

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

28. ““The people of Venezuela have placed their hopes in a broad alliance of regional assemblies of the South, such as the Union of South American Nations, the Caribbean Community, the Central American Integration System, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Economic Cooperation Organization, among other regional organizations, and specifically in interregional coordinating bodies of emerging Powers such as 11-51681 6 the BRICS group — consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — which must become a focus of attention in coordination with the peoples of the South. “I would like to conclude by recalling the great Venezuelan singer Ali Primera, whose poetic voice sent a message of life and revolution to our people. In one of his songs, he asks: what is man’s struggle to achieve peace?”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

29. “Furthermore, the 33 countries that comprise Latin America and the Caribbean are currently preparing to take the historic step of establishing a single great regional entity that unites us all, without exception, through which we will be able to design policies that will ensure our well-being, our independence and our sovereignty, based on equality, solidarity, and reciprocity. “Caracas, the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is proud to be able to host, on 2 and 3 December of this year, the summit of heads of State and Government that will definitely establish the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

30. “The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America is growing into an experimental vanguard of progressive and anti-imperialist Governments, seeking ways to break with the prevailing international order and strengthening the people’s capacity to confront the de facto Powers. However, that does not prevent its members from contributing decisively and enthusiastically to the consolidation of the Union of South American Nations, a political bloc that federates 12 sovereign States of South America into what the liberator Simón Bolívar called ‘a Nation of Republics’.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

31. ““This broad, generous, respectful and inclusive call is addressed to all the peoples of the world, but most especially to the emerging Powers of the South, which must courageously rise to the role they are being asked to play. “From Latin America and the Caribbean, a powerful dynamic of regional alliances has emerged that seeks to create a democratic space that will be respectful of differences and eager to emphasize solidarity and complementarity in order to maximize that which unites us and resolve politically whatever divides us. “This new regionalism allows for diversity and respects everyone’s rhythms.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

32. ““A crucial and decisive first step towards restructuring the United Nations would be to eliminate the category of permanent member along with the right to veto in the Security Council. Likewise, the decision-making power of the General Assembly must be democratically maximized. A comprehensive review of the Charter of the United Nations is also urgently required, with the aim of drafting a new Charter. “The future of a peaceful, multipolar world depends on the determination of the majority of the world’s people to defend ourselves from the new colonialism and to achieve a balance in the universe that will be capable of neutralizing imperialism and its arrogance.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

33. “What is the scope of its operation when its members violate international law? “Paraphrasing the liberator Simón Bolívar, who was referring specifically, in 1818, to the then newborn Yankee imperialism, we have had enough of laws being applied by the weak and abuses being committed by the strong. The peoples of the South cannot be the ones to respect international law, while the North violates, destroys and plunders us. “If we do not commit ourselves once and for all to restructuring the United Nations, this Organization will definitively lose its last shred of credibility. Its crisis of legitimacy is accelerating toward a final implosion. In fact, that is what happened to its immediate predecessor: the League of Nations.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

34. “The political will of the most powerful has prevailed. Of course, the United Nations, as it continues to function, docilely serves their interests. If its Secretary-General, along with the President of the International Criminal Court, takes part in an act of war, as is the case with Libya, then nothing can 5 11-51681 be expected from the current structure of this Organization, and there is no longer time for reform. The United Nations does not accept any reform whatsoever. The illness within it is fatal. “It is unbearable that there is a Security Council that turns its back, whenever it wants to, on the clamour of a majority of nations, deliberately refusing to acknowledge the will of the General Assembly. If the Security Council is a kind of club with privileged members, what can the General Assembly do?”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

35. ““In Venezuela, we believe that the time has come to demand that the United States not only immediately and unconditionally end the criminal blockade it has imposed against the Cuban people, but that it also release the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters held hostage in the prisons of the empire solely for seeking to prevent illegal actions that terrorist groups are preparing against Cuba, under the protection of the Government of the United States. “We wish to reiterate that it is impossible to ignore the crisis in the United Nations. In 2005, before this very General Assembly, we declared that the model of the United Nations was obsolete. Back then, we also said that it needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, and that the process could not be postponed. “Since then, nothing has been done.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

36. “By 2010, a total of 19 separate votes in the General Assembly articulated the universal demand that the United States cease its economic and trade blockade against Cuba. “Since all arguments of international good sense have been exhausted, we have no choice but to believe that such aggravated cruelty against the Cuban Revolution is the result of imperial arrogance in the face of the dignity and courage shown by the defiant Cuban people in their sovereign decision to determine their own fate and fight for their happiness.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

37. “They are based on the Malthusian postulate that there are simply too many people in the world and that they have to be eliminated by generating more hunger, destruction and uncertainty, thereby creating more financial profits. “In this regard, it is frankly regrettable that the opening address of the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly did not include an immediate appeal to solve the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, even as it asserted that the time had come to act on Syria. What criminal cynicism! “We also call for an end to the shameful criminal blockade against our sister republic of Cuba, imposed by the United States empire for more than 50 years with gruesome cruelty against the heroic people of José Martí.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

38. “That situation is most acute in Somalia. “We must also ask ourselves how much money is being spent on sophisticated weapons to destroy Libya. Here is the answer of United States Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says, ‘This new war will cost us $500 million during its first week alone. Obviously, we do not have financing resources for that and we will end up cutting off other important domestic programs’ funding’. According to Mr. Kucinich himself, the amount spent in northern Africa during the first three weeks to massacre the Libyan people could have been used to help the entire Horn of Africa, saving dozens of thousands of lives. “The reasons behind the criminal military engagement in Libya are not humanitarian at all.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

39. ““Now let us turn to the Horn of Africa, where we will witness a heartbreaking example of the United Nations’ historic failure. Most serious news agencies report that 20,000 to 29,000 children under the age of five have died in the last three months. “The journalist Frida Modak, in her article ‘To Die In Somalia’ reveals the miserliness that afflicts the major international organizations, first among them the United Nations, a level of poverty worse than that ravaging the vast region of the Horn of Africa. “In order to confront this situation, we need $1.4 billion, not to solve the problem but to address the emergency that Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia are going through. According to all information received, the next two months will be decisive if we are to prevent the death of more than 12 million people.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

40. “Such are the current asymmetries that exist on the international scene, and such are the abuses done to independent nations. “It is not for us to pass judgement on Syria’s domestic situation, first, because of the inherent complexity of any national reality, and secondly, because only the Syrian people can solve their problems and decide their fate by the right to self-determination of all peoples, an inalienable right in every sense. But that does not prevent us from believing that it is 100 times better to bet on the success of the broad national 11-51681 4 dialogue for which President Basher Al-Assad has called than to impose sanctions and howl like hyenas for military intervention. We fully support the efforts of President Al-Assad to preserve the stability and unity of his country, which is being besieged by the West.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

41. “With all its strength and with the moral authority granted it by the will of the majority of the world’s peoples, Venezuela hereby affirms its unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people and its unlimited support for the Palestinian national cause, including, of course, the immediate admission of Palestine to the United Nations as a full Member State. “And the same imperialist formula is being repeated in the case of Syria. Had not some of the Security Council’s permanent members stood firm, it would all have ended with the Council authorizing NATO to fire its missiles and send its bombers against Syria. It is intolerable that the Powers of this world wish to arrogate to themselves the right to order legitimate, sovereign rulers to resign on the spot. Having succeeded in Libya, they wish to proceed in the same way against Syria.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

42. “By the way, the residence of Venezuela’s Ambassador in Tripoli was invaded and looted while the United Nations stayed mute, guarding a shameful silence. “We demand the immediate cessation of the bombing on Libyan territory. We will also continue demanding that international law be respected in the case of this sister nation. We will not remain silent in the face of evil intentions to destroy the foundations that endow it with sense and reason. We therefore put this question to the Assembly: Why is the Libyan seat in the United Nations granted to the so called National Transitional Council while Palestine’s admission is blocked by ignoring not only its legitimate aspiration, but also the will of the majority of the General Assembly?”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

43. ““It is a joke to say that the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Libya, when NATO itself brought in thousands of heavy weapons in support of a violent insurrection against that country’s legitimate Government. The embargo, of course, was there only to prevent the Libyan Government from defending its sovereignty, exposing yet again the functioning of the cruel international system, under which the law applies only to the weak. “What is the real reason for this military intervention? To recolonize Libya so as to take over its wealth. We have no doubt about that. Everything else is subordinate to that goal. No one colonizes innocently, as the great poet of Martinique, Aimé Césaire, rightly said in his extraordinary essay on colonialism.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

44. “This premeditated campaign of lies was used to justify hasty and irresponsible decisions by the Security Council, paving the way for NATO’s policy of military regime change in Libya. It is worth asking: what became of the no-fly zone established by Security Council resolution 1973 (2011)? How could the more than 20,000 NATO missions flown against Libya, many of them aimed at bombing the Libyan people, not represent the denial of the no-fly zone? Once the Libyan Air Force was completely annihilated, the continued ‘humanitarian’ bombing showed that the West, through NATO, is imposing its interests on North Africa, turning Libya into a colonial protectorate.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

45. ““Let us take note and remember: Venezuela, along with the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, actively advocated for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the Libyan conflict, as did the African Union. Eventually, however, the logic of war decreed by the Security Council and made a reality by NATO, the armed wing of the Yankee empire, was imposed, the logic of war whose vanguard is the transnational media. “Let us remember that the case of Libya was brought before the Security Council on the basis of intense propaganda on the part of the media, which lied in saying that the Libyan Air Force was bombing innocent civilians, not to mention the grotesque media setting of Tripoli’s Green Square.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

46. “Then let us mobilize all the power of the human spirit; it is time. We must unleash a great political counter-offensive to prevent the powers of darkness finding justification for going to war, so they can unleash the generalized global war with which they hope to save the West’s capital. Venezuela calls for the establishment of a grand alliance against war and for peace, with the supreme goal of avoiding war at all costs. The warmongers and, especially, the military- financial leadership that sponsors and leads them must be defeated politically. Let us build the balanced universe envisioned by the liberator Simón Bolivar, the balance that, as he said, 3 11-51681 cannot be found in war; the balance born out of peace.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

47. “The world is marching inexorably towards devastating ecocide; the terrifying consequences of global warming proclaim it, but the ideology of the environmental equivalents of Cortés and Pizarro, the early Spanish colonizers who destroyed part of the American continent — as the influential French thinker Edgar Morin has said — drives them to continue their depredations and destruction. The energy and food crises worsen, while capitalism still breaches every boundary with impunity. “As we face this bleak prospect, our way is lighted by the great American scientist and two- time Nobel prize winner, Linus Pauling, who said: ‘I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs — there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism. I believe in the power of the human spirit’.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

48. “At this moment we have a profoundly serious threat to global peace: the unleashing of a new cycle of colonial wars, starting with Libya, with the cynical goal of breathing new life into the global capitalist system, whose current structural crisis has still in no way curbed its destructive, consumerist voraciousness. The case of Libya should alert us to the desire to practice a new imperial version of colonialism: military interventionism endorsed by the anti-democratic bodies of the United Nations and justified by prefabricated lies. “Humankind is on the brink of an unimaginable catastrophe.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

49. “What is more, the goal is to reconfigure the world so that it sustains Yankee military hegemony. Humankind is facing a genuine threat of permanent war. As the case of Libya shows, the empire is ready, in any scenario, to create the political conditions for going to war. In the imperial worldview, Clausewitz’s famous axiom is being reversed: politics is the continuation of war by other means. “What is behind this new Armageddon? It is the absolute power of the military-financial leadership, destroying the world in its accumulation of more profits, a military-financial leadership that is in fact subordinate to a group of States. It should be borne in mind that war is financial capital’s way of life: war that ruins most people and makes a few unimaginably rich.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)

50. “How can we can we use international law to counter its senseless ambition to militarily dominate the world in order to ensure access to the energy sources it needs to sustain its predatory consumerist model? Why does the United Nations do nothing to stop Washington? “If we answer all of these questions with absolute sincerity, we would understand that the empire has crowned itself judge of the world, without anyone bestowing that responsibility on it and even though, therefore, the imperialist war is a threat to us all. “Washington knows that a multipolar world is already an irreversible reality. Its strategy consists of halting the sustained rise of groups of emerging countries at any price, by promoting its major interests with its partners and followers in order to direct multi-polarity along the path that the empire wants.”

    2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)