tv Going Underground RT June 3, 2020 5:30am-6:01am EDT
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but stand 58 years on in the streets of the cities including of santa these new york and d.c. we talked to a protest organizer on the ground in minneapolis where police killed george floyd and up the revelations including of alleged bank of england left of gold from saturday's world exclusive interview with venezuela's foreign minister we hear from someone who liked washington loved it and brussels wants to depose jackie stop president become a doro overseeing the largest known oil reserves in the world all this more coming up in the show but 1st as corona virus continues to ravage the poorest communities in both the u.s. and the u.k. many are continuing to defy lockdown to protest against what they see as the existential threat of institutional racism and police brutality after the murder of george floyd at the hands of police last week in minneapolis their protest has been met by a brutal crackdown using tear gas and rubber bullets not to mention the arrest of journalists joining me now via skype from minneapolis is one of the protest
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organizers robin ones usually thank you so much robin for coming on so what have you witnessed in the past few days we've seen pictures from right across the united states of uprisings. yeah and just also is that how i. just the dynamic that's taken place on the ground there's no protest organizers a lot of these occupations then protest and rallies are really happening organically and that's. led by community and it's very grassroots so i'm just part of the organization that's been responsible so that means on the ground but i don't what prime it is that there are centralized leadership that's guiding what's happening on the ground because that's not the case last week. minneapolis president african-american male by the name of george small i went to his local neighborhood grocery store to purchase some items and as he was walking up the store police officers approached him and immediately threw him onto the ground and
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then proceeded to. place one part where our. presence of plays his knee on george's neck for about 10 minutes which george this higher time pleading for his life saying i can't breathe in calling for a mob saying you know i can't breathe i need you to let off my neck and mind you dozens of community residents were filming this as it happened so we watched by minute minute by minute as the life was stripped from george floor its body and next thing you know we have in our local media saying that george died as a result of a medical incident where you clearly see a police officer sobbing and murdering help well why do you think court appearance has been postponed this week and the minnesota attorney general keith ellison
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saying he doesn't want to rush to investigate the 3 of the police officers who stood silently by as joe in a part of a committed 3rd degree murder and 2nd degree manslaughter. i think it's. empathise just how incompetent our political leaders are in this moment how disconnected and dismissal they are or of of the uprisings that's being led by black and brown youth by black community almost diverse communities are coming through minneapolis in our working class communities and organizing in saying that no not yet you still have only arrest and charge and a 3rd degree murder charge and you ignore arresting the other 3 officers that's been involved and then you wait suppose pole. the the trial of the that he murder people are demanding that all 4 officers be charged and
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become a victim and there's evidence why do you need to do our draw now investigation that we know time and time again yields to. acquittals we should be prepping for a trial that yields a bit shit and incarceration of all 4 officers that involve well speaking about political leaders and of course this in the context of the usa apparently under all the martial law ironically joe biden seems to be making capital for his presidential campaign given that the democrat presidential candidate supported segregation and spearheaded mass incarceration of people of color. yeah joe biden presidential nominee joe biden has been entrenched with both political party as well as the big business class that basically reinforces the need for massive policing of black and brown communities as you are already highlighting biden has been part alone history of criminalizing black and brown
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folks that's been a core aspect of his political career has been finding a way so exploiting incarcerate in hard black and brown folks and yet he's here in this terrible dental moment moment saying black people trust me to be your president and to work on your behalf folks are right now politically desperate folks realize that. we might not be ever to survive another 4 years and when we say we like elect we black or brown folks and working class and poor folks might not be able to make it through another 4 years of a trout. administration that is the reality that african-americans are facing in their being let to make a choice between the lesser of 2 evils course buckeye's my as a began after police killing under the obama presidency obama proudly making documentaries for netflix you mentioned the big business cluster capitalist
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multi-nationals are you happy on the ground there in minneapolis being supported by multinationals like disney netflix and others who are tweeting their support for the george floyd protest as. that's contradictory i think i can even localize that for our context right now target which is a multibillion dollar corporation that was founded in 20 cities has also tweeted in support of the uprising that's happening on the ground and yet. they were also one of the corporations that has been repeatedly charged with committing waged against us hourly workers which are typically black and brown folks so the question is that these corporations if you're really support of a black and brown lives why don't you pay them livable wages why don't you provide no job security why don't you allow them to unionize instead of costly busting their efforts to join unions so that they can be able to not negotiate for better
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pay if you really care about those lies why are you so keen on protecting systems that allow them to be what it's a be harm it specially this target corporation here they had a partnership in contract with many apples police department is well aware they brought police officers in to figure out to try out new surveillance techniques where they would try to you know capture black and brown shoplifters they don't pay property taxes you ok workers what they deserve do that 1st that there was talk about supporting the movement well those corporations deny racism we're talking the working class and all these multinationals designed any illegality when it comes to that tax practices just on the ground that amnesty international the ngo is urging the britain should immediately freeze its export of rubber bullets and tear gas to the united states which apparently amnesty says is british law what is the use
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of rubber bullets and tear gas that you witnessed during these protests all of those weapons have been used on local and peaceful protests there so yes the working class or socialist. personal and as the selfless act activists we what encourage more countries to eliminate excess of these weapons which are local military military forces and police force that are used on peaceful oh protester if people of color use their constitutional right to carry weapons like those a white protest is complimented by president trump for demonstrating for hakka joining coronavirus which is killed more than a $100000.00 in your country what do you think would happen to them if we are already had. ice higher war effort structure right now where you have a militarized police force galvanizing around our city for an eye on protesters
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right now just off the fact that there are black. if these folks have no weapons could you imagine what would happen if folks were really armed i don't know if you know about the case where. historically our state has launched deadly attacks through book form the bombing on black and brown communities when they led massive civil unrest i can anticipate that that will not be something that will be off the table for our state leaders to say we are going to do even more excessive force just the subdue the uprising against the unjust system so yes every community should have every right to defend themselves and we have to meet the defense committees but yes you can imagine that there would be a all out war that the state will watch against black and brown peaceful protesters if they decided to massively armed themselves but that is not the point we're at we
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are really have that happening when folks just having their bodies no weapons we have folks being shot at we're rubber bullets yes we're just sitting on the sidelines or caring for injured protesters we have a civil war right now in minneapolis between the state our police force and the working class and black and brown community something that i want to clarify in terms of playing the murder george floyd what i mean lee happened was there was a protest car by several several rights organizations. to have folks meet up at the site of the murder and that protest well to about $20000.00 folks probably the largest anti police brutality march definitely in minnesota maybe in the cut in the u.s. and after the protests started there folks were moved to go to the 3rd precinct polling station where the murderers worked at and over the span of several
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days you had massive protests there were basically directing their anger their. fireball anger and frustration at the physical. building itself the police station build it folks turned over cards they damaged windows all of those were rocks not that we pulled out nods or nothing and that was led by a black and brown black and route you know civil rights group came and said let's do this no one was able to manage our pacify the uprising that was starts a bore down on the ground and that of initially rippled out throughout the city that didn't result in damages to corporate businesses to banks these are all corporate forces that costly and explore our communities on a day to day basis. involved buyers being that it was clear that this was something different we couldn't just have go back to the usual of you know so my
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kilt less of a process and then less trust our civic leaders or our manage your class activists to lobby the political class or not be have about moderate and bare minimum reforms so that has really been sustaining the pressures on our political and business class to really reposition themselves that they may we need to divest from the police state so over we have had a sustained uprising that has brought in so many folks from all across the cities and all across the country working class black or brown folks who are trying to figure out how to really. dismantle our state's cash mit partnership with the police force we're really challenging a core aspect of racial capitalism at this moment and it's beautiful to bear witness to that hopefully in this moment we're creating our turn it up to our policing work rayna our target to. a system of racial ice capitalism that we know
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in light of color is. no and it's particularly no mate we know that the system cannot sustain us or be able to meet our basic because to focus on for me the interests of the business and as long as you have a system that but holden's of the business we're in the black or brown both were always will be after all and we're always want to be treated as expendable so it was like great to have that rubber ones i thank you. for the break as iranian ships to liberate to venezuela was meant as well as foreign minister right when he claimed on this program that washington makes you no longer be able to call the shots in the western hemisphere as the e.u. u.s. and u.k. seek to topple president nicolas maduro we speak to one of his long time critics economist and cisco rodriguez only some more coming up about who is going on the ground.
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welcome back on sundays going underground world exclusive interview with venezuelan foreign minister what harry outside made multiple allegations of getting u.s. sanctions are directly linked to the plight of millions of venezuelans leaving the country he also claimed the bank of england was responsible for the fact of theft of funds needed by the venezuelan people to pay for supplies in a time of coronavirus u.k. pm boris johnson called developing a post-coup unit in the british foreign office and actually invited one guy to downing street they're recognized as president of venezuela by the e.u. u.k. and usa arianna said has no democratic authority joining me now via skype from new york is a former advisor to venezuelan presidential candidate only falcone who ran against
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president maduro in 2018 he's also the founder and director of oil for venezuela francisco thanks so much for coming on so as i say area told us on saturday u.s. sanctions of cripple the economy forcing some to leave the country do you do you agree with that i think sanctions have definitely have a negative effect on defense or economy that's undeniable not to attribute the primary responsibility of what's happening to their soil or. to economic sanctions i think it's going a bit overboard other realities that this country has been seriously mismanaged for more than 20 years this country underwent a huge oil boom the largest possible terms of trade shock experienced by any country in the region was experienced by this fellow between 19992013 it's. under all of it it had absolutely no savings left to us so now the countries actually seeking help either from economies like iran's were which have also been sanctioned but which have been able to manage through the
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a they grease of the oil market much better than it had been so that this isn't going to play on those who support the bolivarian revolution say that it was the greatest literacy program in world history this is what your talking about a squandering i'm going to ask you because i think i wrote and i wrote an article that was published in a peer reviewed journal showing that the claims of the literacy program were vastly exaggerated and that if that the increase in literacy it was no different after you conference trends than the increase that was happening in the preach up experience and also made the allegation that the un figure of 4 and a half 1000000 fleeing venezuela was wrong he said it was far less than that you know along with the un figure yes naturally i think that somewhere underestimated in fact my figures point to numbers which already close to 6000000 persons and the reality is that those numbers are for large part drawn on household surveys taken in neighboring countries and if anything these might actually underestimate the
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amount of and so on migration because there's irregular migration is inadequate be countered by those surveys about to return to the issue of sanctions i must say i mean i well the definitely the moderates how is governments did a lot of harm to the economy sanctions are also harming the economy significantly and in fact some of my in purple work shows that sanctions are associated with a decline of oil production equivalent to and to raise prices more than $10000000000.00 a foregone more revenue that this is a lot of money for a country like that it's all that and it's and these sanctions have been tightened this year so i do agree that sanctions are contributing to better sauce decline and i do agree that sanctions are fueling the exodus. our i would dispute any assertion but they are the primary costs so i've got to ask you about the so-called bay of piglets coup attempt by an apparent florida based mercenary firm what was your
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reaction and what do you make of mike pompei oh u.s. secretary of state saying the usa had no direct involvement in the coup in may well i have learned over time to treat the type of statements very carefully and to read between the lines so if secretary pompei oh tell that need to use the word direct then i think that that strongly suggests that there were some indirect and the involvement given that day is that the contract for that operation was signed by 2 or 31 by those top advisers and they've admitted before their signatures they are the equivalent of cabinet level position assad that are held by these 2 persons or that were held in the by the administration then it seems hard for me to believe that the u.s. was not informed us this in the dark but not know about this not only that but the contract that should be untied all of these mercenaries to take actions which are clearly on constitutional and by a lead international law such as the use of land mines such as effectively
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imprisoning bets on citizens even gave them a take a return on the assets that they would recover so from every single stone want to think that their contract this objectionable and i hope that at some moment in the vents on the national assembly is able to carry out a full investigation asked was demanded by one of the opposition parties be that it was the shia a full investigation to understand who exactly the way the administration was involved in it and what was the level of commitment made to these mercenaries but i definitely are completely condemn that action by allowed to journey on why do completely denies he has anything to do with the coup attempts at it as a new relationship nor responsibility for illegal. actions the you suggested that of course one way though is recognized by boris johnson as the leader of venice whaler do you recognize him as the leader of venezuela or like the european union doesn't and washington does well i mean i'm not
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a government so you know governments do have to go through this the system while of who of who to recognize on i believe we're in a constitutional crisis and it's not clear at this moment how do we how we should function of the constitution i believe that the constitution is not working i do not recognize nicolas maduro i believe it was who legitimately elected as you mention i had bison report corn in this electoral campaign we accused campaign of stealing votes to win that election we took that case before the supreme court and we do not recognize my daughter's election but there are problems also of not so much with the interpretation that one going to assume that that moment which he has some parts of the presidency but with the fact that on the article of the constitution that he invoked is an article that's valid for only 30 days so i believe that any authorization that he might have to become a president has actually by now or at least there we simple interpretation that
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claims that that authorization has expired and this is problematic so i think that we're we're in the midst of to huge institutional and governance crisis in venice ones need a solution we're trapped between 2 parts these parts are tearing the country apart are the country side are going to do it worst humanitarian crisis in latin american economic history it's facing the kind emic in the weakest state available possible any longer than 30 days of elapsed and part of the johnson recognizes and the british government recognizes one grade 0 as the leader i should say or harriet's of the foreign minister said on coronavirus figures venezuela has done better than most countries in the western hemisphere want. it's true isn't it when you're speaking to me from. more than 100000 dead in the usa not a no no no i mean i agree that vessel has done a lot better in terms of incident and so much of that is due to policies or not
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well the kinds i do think that largely policies of the men who are ministration to control the current of iris at the start had been the appropriate ones but there are some problems that this country has and it certainly goes beyond the capacities of a bit of destruction this country has no money because all of its assets have been frozen because it sanction a can't export also because oil prices have collapsed and also because it was mismanaged to 20 years that's why i tried to go to the i.m.f. and the i.m.f. told them we can't lend you any money we can't lend money to my who don't we can't let money to quite do it because we don't recognize either of the 2 so what happens to be small and so the next ones are going to top it because there is this political crisis and these 2 sides can't agree and nobody in the world can agree as to which of them is the legitimate government then there is not are left to die and they don't have the resources to handle coronavirus that is the real problem that is the real tragedy going to 70 in venice all that and the international community has to wake up to that it's something that it was entitle to this i.m.f.
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member but i could talk about i.d.p. i could not and let's even if we don't talk about those what we're talking about the bank of think that there's $1000000000.00 trapped there which venice all of it which when i saw it can't use the needed theft by the bank of england i mean i think that the bank of st learned should determine which is the vents on government that it recognizes and let that government. have access to the resources if it recognizes why don't give them to work with recognizable were given to him to morrow but i am not going to qualify it in any way particularly not using that language but i definitely think it's not right for the bank i think them to say we have $1000000000.00 and we're not giving them to anyone even though tens of thousands persons are. likely to die this year because that's all it doesn't have money to pay for the food medicines and basic inputs static needs to deal with this pandemic i think it's unconscionable well under belize bank of england mandated by
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the british government says they can't give us a comment because it's a private customer matter but you have said that the duros presidency is illegitimate that's not what its allies as opposed to the i.m.f. arguably say just finally and briefly there's been a coup attempt in may there the sanctions you've just been talking about which threaten famine you say people are talking about iraq style oil for food program because of the lack of equipment do you not think we should understand venezuela in the context of u.s. involvement in historic coups in chile guatemala cuba nicaragua solvent or brazil ecuador but livia panama you don't think any of that is relevant to what is happening against the majority government in caracas oh of course i mean the us are definitely hans along this sort of intervention in the region now all of the cases that you cited i mean there are many different reasons for for all of them there are many different administrations that you trumpet mr ations very different for
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example from the obama administration on this issue so the reality is that that what yes i mean this does have similarities i do think it's correct that the u.s. our government and particularly the trumpet ministration house try to our number one our overthrow the regime and that's i think basically something that even david you would admit but not for journalists that in fact but but number 2 it was our star but not the any attempts by dennis whelan's to reach a peaceful solution so when there were talks called by norway be held in barbados in august of last year there was progress in a potential agreement between mother and great though. the u.s. imposed sanctions and it was all actions with an advance on government and that effect we took care of the talks back in 2018 the election in which henry thought corn ran as the only opposition candidate we did because we thought it was simply
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absurd to boycott an election against a president that 80 percent of venice well as they support us in the middle of hyper inflation what did the us do the us at least a long beard and even threatened venice on opposition leaders so that they would boycott the election under the promise that if they were able to legitimize but it was for reelection then it would be driven from power to strategy it's not just on democratic it's not just unconscionable it is true but this is where his standard model can't work it's going to songs that come out and vote at that 80 percent of its onset come out and vote in the 2018 alexina's i mean with that we would have defeated minuto we would have forced my daughter out of power the military would have had no option but to support 80 percent of venice well and other reality is that the u.s. led the vents on opposition into
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a close now only it led to better opposition into a strategy that was completely unproductive in effect then it reaffirmed or us power and now this wellness are left to pay for the mistakes of secretary cohen teo and of president trump francisco rodriguez thank you of course the minority government and his supporters say that the election was monitored by independent advisors who said what is the president of venezuela that the future will be back on saturday but they have a late great counterpunch found out i was on the coven 54 years to the day civil rights activist james meredith was shot by a white flight but in mississippi one day after he began the march again pierre against the u.s. racism until then what you have to join me on the ground the following up on you tube twitter facebook instagram in fact. rage and destruction fear and despair as the united states found itself in such
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a state of turmoil growing income inequality systemic racism or politics take your pick what is the difference between a protest and a riot is it accurate to say the us has become. according to several sources police in the united states from 2 to 4 people every day. my. head and. one of my being arrested for. their little. stab. us against. a long. term side 25 years as. i have to shoot someone holding you know.
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there is a corruption inside of this at least one of the. 8th consecutive months of protests against police brutality in the united states in minneapolis where george floyd was killed the states to investigate police over the past decade. coming up on the program the risks of reporting the riots more than a 100 violations against press freedom and 3 days say he's a media watchdog a russian news agency correspondent tells us about being fired. for and yelled at and they start shooting at her.
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