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Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Accuses Bush Administration
of Blackmailing Other Countries Over Contested UN Seat
Legendary Historian, Attorney & Peace Activist Staughton
Lynd on War Resisters, the Peace Movement and the 1993 Lucasville
Prison Uprising
Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Accuses Bush Administration
of Blackmailing Other Countries Over Contested UN Seat
Francisco Arias Cardenas, Venezuela’s Ambassador to
the United Nations condemns the White House’s dirty
tricks as Venezuela vies against Guatemala for open UN Security
Council seat. [includes rush
transcript]
On Thursday the Bush administration urged Venezuela to give
up its campaign to win a seat on the United Nations Security
Council. Over the past four days, the UN General Assembly
has conducted 30 rounds of votes to decide whether Venezuela
or Guatemala should represent Latin America on the Security
Council. Guatemala has won every round of voting but has failed
to secure the needed two-thirds majority.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he would use the
seat to be "the voice of the South” and to challenge
American hegemony. Prior to the voting President Chavez accused
the White House of waging a dirty war against its candidacy.
- Hugo Chavez: "I have said that it's not going to
be easy, because at the same time the empire (the United
States) is moving all of its pieces and pressuring and trying
to blackmail half the world to try to impede us from becoming
a non-permanent member of the Security Council.”
On Thursday, John Bolton – the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations – urged Venezuela to drop out of the
race.
- John Bolton: "I think the will of the General Assembly
is quite clear. Guatemala has been up by about 30 votes
consistently; they're very close to a two-thirds majority,
and the honorable thing would be for the candidate who has
now lost 28 out of 29 votes to withdrawal. But, if Venezuela
insists on putting everybody through all this, vote, after
vote, after vote, we'll be here and we'll continue to support
Guatemala."
Voting is expected to resume on Wednesday but Guatemala called
for a longer extension. This is Guatemala’s Foreign
Minister Gert Rosenthal.
- Gert Rosenthal: "We would like there to be a longer
recess so that we could talk among ourselves and between
ourselves to see if we can find a way out. We are not happy
with tying up the work of the General Assembly, but for
the time being, since we are in the lead, we have no intention
of stepping down."
Francisco Arias Cardenas, Venezuela’s Ambassador to
the U.N. -- he joins me now in the studio. Luisa Golindano
will help us with translation... Welcome to Democracy Now.
- Francisco Arias Cardenas, Venezuelan ambassador to the
United Nations.
Legendary Historian, Attorney & Peace Activist
Staughton Lynd on War Resisters, the Peace Movement and the
1993 Lucasville Prison Uprising
For the past fifty years Staughton Lynd has dedicated his
life to activism and social change as a historian, lawyer,
labor activist and Quaker pacifist. He has been called a saint
of the modern American Left. He joins us today in Democracy
Now’s firehouse studio. [includes rush
transcript]
In the early 1960s he taught history at Spellman College
in Georgia alongside Howard Zinn. One of his star students
was Alice Walker.
He helped direct the Mississippi Freedom Schools.
In April 1965 he spoke at the first march on Washington against
the Vietnam War and became an early leader of the anti-war
movement. Later that year he traveled to Hanoi with Tom Hayden
on a fact-finding mission in defiance of U.S. law. At the
time he was a professor at Yale University, but he was denied
tenure because of the trip.
In the 1970s Lynd went to law school and then spent years
focusing on labor and prison issues. In 2004 he wrote the
definitive history of the 1993 Ohio prison uprising at Lucasville
– the country’s bloodiest prison riot since Attica.
Last year he sued the Pentagon over its stop-loss program
that has been used to involuntarily extend the terms of enlistment
for soldiers in Iraq.
On Thursday night, here in New York, Lynd gave the first
Annual Dave Dellinger Lecture on Nonviolence sponsored by
the War Resisters League. The speech was titled "Resistance
to War in a Volunteer Army.”
- Staughton Lynd, longtime historian, attorney, labor activist
and pacifist.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
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