Toward Freedom Board Member Jacqueline Luqman recently returned from a trip to Venezuela to take part in commemorations for the 20th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S. coup to oust then-President Hugo Chavez. Back in the United States, Jacqueline interviewed Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America as well as the president of the Simón Bolívar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples. They discussed on the Black Power Media YouTube channel the Venezuelan people’s victory over the 2002 coup as well as their continued fight against fascism, the historical struggle against imperialism, and how people outside Venezuela can be in solidarity with the revolutionary process.
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U.S. Sanctions on Russia Over Ukraine Also Target Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba

Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Multipolarista.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral U.S. sanctions, which are illegal according to international law.
Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, referred to these three Latin American nations as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny.”
Biden’s advisor González did an exclusive interview with Voz de América, the Spanish-language arm of the U.S. government’s propaganda outlet Voice of America, on February 25.
Voz de América published his comments in a report titled, “U.S. sanctions on Russia will impact Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, White House estimates.”
“The sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design,” González explained.
“So Venezuela is going to start feeling that pressure. Nicaragua is going to feel that pressure, along with Cuba,” he added.
Biden’s Latin America advisor noted that Washington has imposed sanctions on 13 top financial institutions in Russia, including some of the largest in the country. He proudly said that these coercive measures will, “by design,” harm other countries that do a lot of trade with the Eurasian power.
González also used his interview with the U.S.-funded Voz de América to reiterate Washington’s call for regime change against these three socialist governments in Latin America.
His comments were reported by the independent Bolivia-based news website, Kawsachun News.
Biden advisor: U.S. sanctions against Russia are 'designed' to impact Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/Zbqg3mgB2N
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) February 26, 2022
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba Stand with Russia Against U.S. and NATO
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have stood with Russia against NATO expansion and Western military encirclement.
President Nicolás Maduro said that Venezuela “laments the mockery and breaking of the Minsk agreements by NATO, promoted by the United States of America.”
Maduro stressed that Washington and NATO bear responsibility for the conflict, and “have generated strong threats against the Russian Federation.”
Venezuela rechaza el agravamiento de la crisis en Ucrania producto del quebrantamiento de los acuerdos de Minsk por parte de la OTAN. Llamamos a la búsqueda de soluciones pacíficas para dirimir las diferencias entre las partes. El diálogo y la no injerencia, son garantías de Paz. pic.twitter.com/Y7N1lwZfpi
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) February 24, 2022
Cuba blamed Washington for the crisis as well. Its Foreign Ministry stated, “The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.”
Denouncing Western governments for sending weapons to Ukraine, Cuba declared, “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.”
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.
1/5Statement by the Revolutionary Government:
📄https://t.co/3iBcPD9j8x pic.twitter.com/MRgwRCWSMV— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) February 27, 2022
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega condemned Washington for sponsoring a 2014 coup in Ukraine, and joined Russia in recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, traveled to Nicaragua to meet with top officials from the Sandinista government, and thanked them for their support against NATO expansion and U.S. threats.
🇳🇮🇷🇺 #Nicaragua recibió a una delegación de alto nivel de #Rusia, encabezada por el Presidente de la Duma Estatal de la Cámara Baja, Vyacheslav Volodín. La visita tiene por objetivo fortalecer la cooperación y la solidaridad bilateral. pic.twitter.com/BMY1AjnviF
— JP+ (@jpmasespanol) February 24, 2022
Ben Norton is editor of Multipolarista.

38 Years After a Triple Assassination, Grenada’s Short-Lived Revolution Still Inspires

Editor’s Note: The writer recently visited Grenada and the following is his analysis.
Today marks the 38th anniversary of 7,300 U.S. troops—accompanied by U.S.-trained Caribbean Community (CARICOM) soldiers calling themselves, “The Caribbean Peace Force”—invading the tiny island of Grenada. What lessons can we learn from the 4-and-a-half-year revolution launched in the land of Julio Fedon, Jacqueline Creft, Maurice Bishop and the 112,000 people of Grenada? In a hemisphere on fire, with class struggle and anti-imperialism on full display from the streets of Medellín to Mexico City, where does Grenada line up in the global class struggle in the 21st century?

The “Revo”
On March 13, 1979, the leaders of Grenada’s New Jewel Movement overthrew the hated and feared neocolonial puppet, Prime Minister Eric Gairy, setting in motion a memorable revolutionary experiment in Caribbean history. Those who lived through the 1979-83 Grenadian Revolution were forever transformed.
Grenadian and University of West Indies Professor of Political Science Wendy Grenade charts some of the gains made during the short period:
“Raising levels of social consciousness; building a national ethos that encouraged a sense of community; organising [sic] agrarian reform to benefit small farmers and farm workers; promoting literacy and adult education; fostering child and youth development; enacting legislation to promote gender justice; constructing low income housing and launching house repair programmes; improving physical infrastructure and in particular the construction of an international airport; providing an environment that encouraged popular democracy through Parish and Zonal Councils etc.”

Slogans and billboards emblazoned the country’s landscape:
- “Never Too Old to Learn”
- “Education Is Production, Too”
- “Every Worker a Learner”
- “Women Committed to Economic Construction”
Angela Davis captured what “the revo” meant to the Black nation within the United States in saying, “The experiences that I’ve had here in Grenada have confirmed in a very powerful way where we are headed, what the future of the entire planet ought to look like—this beautiful, powerful militant revolution.”
The Children who Fought to Save #MauriceBishop 🇬🇩 Glen “Pharaoh” Samuel was one of them who barely escaped the 1983 massacre.
#CIA hard at work in #Grenada pic.twitter.com/BoMpSnWQU6 — Danny Shaw (@dannyshawcuny) August 24, 2021
Glen “Pharoah” Samuel was a middle-school pupil at the time and was part of a crowd of students who raced to save Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft and other revolutionary leaders from execution at Fort George. Sitting down at a local hangout in the capital of Saint George’s, he explained to this writer Grenada’s role in the global class struggle known as “The Cold War”:
“As a Black, English-speaking country very close to America, imagine America has a population of over 42 million Afro Black Americans. Obviously they understand our swag because we are all Black people, African people. So Ronald Reagan feared the situation and we had just finished our international airport, which was sponsored by Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

Internationalist educator Chris Searle’s book, Grenada Morning: A Memoir of the “Revo”, details the accomplishments of the revolution in overcoming a history of colonial and neocolonial servitude and degradation. Gerhard Dilger of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation studied the revolutionary contributions of poets and calypso singers from 1979 to 1983. Dr. Horace Campbell’s Rasta and Resistance highlights the participation of the Rastafari community, long oppressed under the Gairy dictatorship, in the Revolutionary People’s Government and Army.
All of Grenada was ablaze with the flames of revolutionary optimism, unity and growth.

The Invasion: An Attempt to Kill Hope
Alarmed at the existence of another workers’ state in Washington’s “backyard,” Ronald Reagan and the U.S. foreign policy establishment were hellbent on overthrowing the 4-and-a-half-year revolution.
Internationalist scholar Carlos Martinez artfully captures the U.S. campaign of psychological warfare and saber rattling. In 1981, Reagan mobilized over 120,000 troops, 250 warships and 1,000 aircraft to Vieques, an island that is part of Puerto Rico, for a mock invasion. They code-named the operation “Amber and the Amberines” because Grenada’s official name is Grenada and the Grenadines, as it includes the two smaller islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique. U.S. intelligence worked overtime to monitor cracks in the revolutionary leadership and create divisions to exploit them, ultimately leading to the assasination the revolution’s top leadership. 18 civilians were killed when the U.S. Navy bombed a hospital for patients with mental challenges. Meanwhile, 24 Cuban construction workers were murdered.
It was a David-versus-Goliath scenario, but David stood up to the invasion. Maurice Bishop sounded the battle cry:
“This land is ours, every square inch of its soil is ours, every grain of sand is ours, every nutmeg pod is ours, every beautiful young Pioneer who walks on this land is ours. It is our responsibility and ours alone, to fight to defend our homeland.” (p. 283, Maurice Bishop Speaks, Pathfinder Press)
A break in the top leadership of the New Jewel Movement helped distract cadres while Reagan’s accusation that 600 U.S. medical students were in danger provided cover for a “humanitarian intervention” that illegally assaulted a democratic state.

The U.S. military project then helped prop up a pro-U.S. power structure that sought to dismantle the very memory of the revolution. Artist Suelin Low Chew Tung writes, “…images of the revolution years were deliberately erased from the landscape… Three decades later, as far as local visual art records are concerned, it is as if the Grenada Revolution never happened.”
This writer’s experience visiting Grenada in August made clear today’s young people are disconnected from Grenada’s definitive break with neo-colonialism. To many youths, this appears to be ancient history. How many Grenadians born after 1983 fully comprehend their small homeland has inspired the world?
The Washington Examiner, owned by right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz, captures how U.S. ruling circles viewed military action against Grenada as a strategic, easy victory after defeat in Vietnam and Iran. In a September 12 editorial, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute advocated for a Grenada-like invasion into a yet-to-be-determined location to shore up respect for the United States after the humiliating defeat of empire in Afghanistan, writing, “Where and under what circumstances might a future commander in chief send troops to draw a new red line for America’s enemies?” He ominously ended the article, warning, “There will be a new Grenada; the question to ponder is where and when.”
The Blackout: Liquidating Memory
On August 26, this writer sat down with Dr. Terence Marryshow, captain of the People’s Revolutionary Army, which was responsible for the personal security of Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement leadership. Marryshow also was a former political leader of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (MBPM) and grandson of T.A. Marryshow, father of the West Indian Federation. He elaborated on Pan-Caribbeanism in Grenada today:
“Caribbean leaders today are not pursuing this goal as vigorously as they ought to in the interests of the people of the Caribbean. The problem is many of them are not willing to give up that lofty position that they hold. During the period of the revolution there was certainly a great effort with the People’s Revolutionary Government led by Maurice Bishop to forge that kind of Caribbean integration. But with his demise there is no real voice out there [in Grenada] championing that cause. Today leaders are hardly concerned with that. Yes, we do have CARICOM which in the final analysis is really a talk shop because nothing concrete decisions and progress for the people comes out of it.”

In the extensive interview, the Cuban-trained physician stated, “Concerning teaching on the revolution in the schools, there is a complete blackout. There is a concerted effort not to speak about it, except for groups like The Maurice Bishop and October 19th Martyrs Foundation, the Grenadian Cuba Friendship Society and the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement. But there is no space on the [mainstream school] curriculum today for teaching anything about that revolutionary period.”
A soldier of the People’s Revolutionary Army, nicknamed Salt, who chose to remain anonymous and only wanted his nickname published, remembered what it meant to stand up to the hegemon of the north. He remembered the Center for Popular Education, his own exposure to critical Marxist texts and the day the call came from his superior officers to prepare to defend the country. On censorship today, Salt said, “The educators are not documenting anything and are not teaching our young people about the progress the revolution made.”
To add insult to injury, the invaders and new rulers of Grenada disappeared the bodies of key New Jewel Movement leaders. Local community leaders showed this writer where the invaders and their underlings had disappeared the body.
Carlin “Lely” Matthew asks: what did the U.S. forces of occupation do with #MauriceBishop’s body? This remains a mystery almost 40 years after the execution of the #Grenadian revolutionary leader. #Grenada 🇬🇩 pic.twitter.com/ukF1AS4yyl
— Danny Shaw (@dannyshawcuny) August 22, 2021
Bishop’s mother, Alimenta, captured the horror of not knowing the location of her son’s body in an interview with Grenadian news outlet, NOW Grenada. Having already lived through her husband’s murder at the hands of Prime Minister Eric Gairy and the same U.S.-backed state machinery, she said “I could go to the grave and say this is the spot where my husband is buried, but I can’t say that for my son.” This was what Marryshow and Grenadians remember as the triple assassination of their revolution.
Which Way Forward?
In 2019, the Venezuelan government published a bilingual tribute to Maurice Bishop and the October martyrs in Correo del Alba (Message of ALBA).
El #29Mayo de 1944, nace en Grenada el político revolucionario Maurice Bishop, encabezó junto al New Jewel, la rebelión para derrocar al régimen de Eric Gairy. Erigió un gobierno revolucionario popular. Bishop es traicionado y ejecutado y Grenada fue invadida por tropas de EEUU pic.twitter.com/EdPuFIOMgm
— Correo del Alba #CorreoDelAlba (@correodelalba) May 29, 2020
Previously unpublished testimonies of dozens of cadres and combatants of the revolutionary process express how it brought Grenada closer to Africa and all oppressed nations, how Venezuela is a Grenada of today, and Grenada’s defiant participation in multi-state organizations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), television network TeleSUR and Caribbean oil alliance PetroCaribe. Today, Grenada is charting a path of friendly relations both with the United States and with the blockaded Bolivarian nations of Venezuela and Cuba, attempting to emerge from centuries of colonialism and decades of U.S. hybrid war. What is clear is the Grenadian Revolution is an example that the colonized and silenced can stand up, organize and win. Like the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, Nicaraguan and other revolutions, it is our responsibility to study, remember, learn the lessons and emulate the spirit of these earth-shaking processes that our class enemies can never take away from us.
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels within the Americas region. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.

2 Years Since Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab Was Abducted for Defying U.S. Sanctions

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Kawsachun News.
JUNE 12, 2022—Today marks two years since the kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Nain Saab, while on a humanitarian mission to Iran, his third mission to the country, to try to alleviate the effects of the U.S. economic warfare against Venezuela.
Saab, an accredited diplomat protected under the Vienna Convention, was abducted in Cape Verde without an arrest warrant or Interpol alert, and was taken to the United States in October of 2021. Cape Verdean authorities kept him arbitrarily imprisoned for 491 days without due process, in violation of the laws of Cape Verde, during which Saab experienced torture.

In the book, A Sacred Oath, written by former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Esper admits that the kidnapping was part of “soft” options to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.
Esper also admits that Saab’s efforts, as a diplomat and businessman, were always aimed at making the situation of the Venezuelan population more bearable. “According to reports, under the direction of Maduro, Saab was on a special mission to negotiate a deal with Iran for Venezuela to receive more fuel, food and medical supplies . Saab was Maduro’s point man for a long time when it came to crafting economic deals and other transactions that kept the regime afloat.”
Meanwhile, the movement calling for the release of Alex Saab has gone international, and demands for his release were made at the counter-summits both in Los Angeles and Tijuana, during Biden’s Summit of the Americas.
Back in Venezuela, defense of Alex Saab is seen as not only the defense of an individual but as the defense of the sovereign actions of the Bolivarian government and people. The diplomat is also a member of the Venezuelan government delegation in the dialogue process which has taken place in Mexico.