- 5 months ago
26/04/2023
FTS 10.30
*Colombia: 33 soldiers held by residents of department of Guavire released
*Tenth group of children from Gaza arrives to receive medical care in Jordan
FTS 10.30
*Colombia: 33 soldiers held by residents of department of Guavire released
*Tenth group of children from Gaza arrives to receive medical care in Jordan
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NewsTranscript
00:00A new enlistment day is underway in Venezuela's population volunteers to defend its homeland.
00:21In Colombia, the 33 soldiers held by residents of the municipalities of El Retorno in the
00:27Department of Guaviare have been released. And the Jordanian Armed Forces, in collaboration with
00:36the World Health Organization, have welcomed a new group of 19 children from the Gaza Strip.
00:48Hello and welcome to From the South. My name is Belen de los Santos. I'm from a Tesla Studios
00:52in Havana, Cuba. We begin with the news.
00:57We were saying it at the beginning. It's a new enlistment day in Venezuela as the government
01:12has summoned the people to join forces against U.S. military threats. People are going and heading
01:18to squares once again and other enlistment points to enroll themselves and get ready to defend
01:24their homeland. To go deeper into this topic and to really understand what this means,
01:30we welcome now International Studies Professor Danny Scho. Danny, it's a pleasure to have you here
01:35with us in From the South as usual.
01:39Good morning, Belen. Thank you for the invite.
01:41So, Danny, you've been following, of course, the latest developments between the U.S. and its new
01:46escalation against the region. How do you evaluate this response from the Venezuelan people?
01:54The Venezuelan people have every right to defend their sovereignty. This has nothing to do with a
01:59war on drugs, as the Trump regime would want us to believe. This has everything to do with a war on
02:06Venezuela, a war on all of South America's sovereignty. The war on drugs with the fall of
02:13the Soviet Union became the new convenient ideological smokescreen, an excuse for U.S. intervention.
02:21So much of the world's cocaine, something like 90 percent, comes from Colombia, where the United
02:28States has nine military bases, as well as three drug enforcement agency centers. But as Hugo Chavez told
02:35us about a generation ago, it's the DEA and it's the CIA, those who pretend to combat drugs, that are
02:43actually behind this nearly $1 trillion international cocaine economy.
02:50Now, Danny, from an international studies perspective, there's a lot that has been said regarding
02:56how this discourse that the U.S. is trying to enforce regarding the alleged war on drugs,
03:03how does this really relate to what is happening in the United States? So how are you looking at this
03:08scenario from what is happening to the Trump administration at this moment?
03:15Well, it's very cynical and hypocritical. They would try to use this war on drugs as an excuse to make war
03:23on other lands, because the truth is we're dying at home here in the United States. We do suffer from an
03:30opioid epidemic that's been going on now for almost a generation. An average of 200,000 Americans lose their
03:38lives every year and overwhelming it from overdoses, from opioids, from heroin, and of course, fentanyl. This has
03:45nothing to do with Nicolás Maduro. This has nothing to do with Venezuela. But Trump, as the demagogue in chief and
03:53the scapegoater in chief, they're very good at deflecting blame, not assuming any blame. If we want to
04:01understand the role of drugs in the United States, it's the number one consumer, not just of cocaine and
04:07illegal drugs, but also of all the quote-unquote legal drugs, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety
04:14medications. So we live in a culture consumed in violence and consumed in drugs. And this is a moment for us
04:20as a nation, as American people, to look deep within, to ask ourselves, where does this pandemic,
04:26this drug pandemic, come from? And it doesn't come from Venezuela. It doesn't come from China.
04:31It doesn't come from Mexico. That's just a way for the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the
04:35State Department to continue to go after their international geopolitical rivals.
04:41Now, of course, this military threat in the Caribbean Sea is really a new development in the last
04:49weeks. And there's been a lot of alarm, of course, from the countries in the Caribbean, in South
04:55America, regarding to what this means. You were saying, of course, this discourse of the war on
05:01drugs is just a pretext that is being used. But how should we really understand that deployment? And
05:06also, how should this government's response to this? Is unity the way? Is this collaboration that
05:13we are seeing between different countries the way to go? How are you looking at what is maybe to come
05:19in the coming weeks?
05:22This is an egregious threat. Up until now, it's been more of a shadow war or a quiet war or a
05:30hyper war against the Venezuelan people. This is a huge escalation, sending four of the U.S.'s top
05:39warships, thousands and thousands of sailors and marines. This represents a very grave threat.
05:47We've seen a history of how many interventions, how many invasions and occupations in the hemisphere
05:52by the U.S. government the world is watching very closely. They know that Russia is completely bogged
05:59down with the proxy NATO-U.S. war against them using the Ukrainian people. They know Iran is on their
06:08back heels right now. And they know Venezuela is the key piece to the multi-polar project
06:13throughout the world. It being the spearhead of the Bolivarian momentum of the quote-unquote
06:19pink tide in the late 1990s, that legacy is still there. And they want to do everything they can to
06:25thwart that legacy to make sure that Venezuela cannot team up with Beijing and Moscow and Tehran
06:31in Havana. So that's what this represents. And these colonial bullies know no bounds. We see the
06:39colonial holocaust playing out in Gaza every day. We see what they're doing occupying Haiti,
06:46turning U.S. guns against the Haitian masses. And now they're trying to inflict more instability
06:53in Venezuela. So, of course, the Venezuelan people are going to mobilize. Some five million Bolivarian
06:59militia members have been called up and are standing guard on the nation's frontiers and
07:05borders to defend their self-determination, and correctly so.
07:10Thank you so much, Danny, for giving us, of course, your perspective to continue understanding
07:15not just what is happening today in Venezuela, but also just understanding the deeper roots and deeper
07:22causes of this escalation that the U.S. has brought upon the region. Thank you, Danny, for joining us
07:28once again in from the south. Thank you, Billy. That was Danny Show, professor of international
07:36studies. We continue with more information on this topic. President Nicolás Maduro called on the
07:42Venezuelan people to join the Bolivarian national militias, as we were saying. This amid a militarist
07:48campaign against Latin America and the Caribbean headed by the United States. But what are the
07:54militias? The following report has the answer. The Bolivarian militia is the fifth component of the
07:59Bolivarian National Armed Forces, FANB. It is a special corps organized by the Venezuelan state and made up of
08:07the people who organized, trained, and armed are meant to support the FANB in the integral defense of the
08:14country's independence and sovereignty. Its mission is to register, organize, equip, train, and prepare the
08:23people for its contribution to the national security at all levels of the territorial defense system.
08:28The Bolivarian national militia was created during the presidency of Hugo Chavez, who established the
08:35cornerstone of the Bolivarian revolution, the civic military union. In 2008, the organic law of the FANB
08:43recognized the militia as a special corps and in 2020, under the leadership of President Nicolás Maduro,
08:50it was formally integrated as the fifth component of the armed forces. According to official data,
08:58the Bolivarian national militia has five million men and women distributed across 15,751 popular integral
09:06defense bases with more than 600,000 militia patrols operating throughout the country. The
09:13militia is present in 5,336 communities through the so-called peace squadrons, a political territorial
09:20division where all state security institutions are coordinated, including firefighters and civil
09:26protection. Together with the Bolivarian national armed forces, the militia has been fundamental in
09:32defeating destabilization plans and invasion attempts promoted by the Venezuelan far-right in
09:38complicity with the U.S. government, such as the so-called Battle of the Bridges in 2019 or Operation
09:45Gideon in 2020, consolidating national sovereignty and showing the importance of the civic military
09:51union in maintaining stability and peace in Venezuela. And we continue on topic because the
09:58Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, condemned on Thursday the violations by the
10:04United States government of Latin America and the Caribbean's territorial sovereignty.
10:09Moncada accused Washington of seeking to undermine the peace and sovereignty of the Venezuelan people
10:15through maneuvers aimed at destabilizing the nation. In his address at the International Body,
10:21the Venezuelan representative reaffirmed his country's commitment to the preservation of peace
10:27and self-determination of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and also accused Washington
10:33of violating the United Nations Charter.
10:42As we were saying, Samuel Moncada and his address also made reference to the actions taken together
10:48with the government of Colombia to protect the sovereignty of both countries and to fight drug trafficking
10:55without the intervention of the United States.
10:59Very interesting question, because we need coordination with Colombia, and fortunately,
11:05if you see the news from Colombia today, the president of Colombia has stated that he is also
11:09mobilizing Colombian and Venezuelan troops to the same place on the border, because that is the only
11:14way, coordinated. If one country does it on its own, without coordination with its neighbor,
11:20it seems an aggressive action, or it would not have the desired effects. But the two presidents have
11:25said that in coordination, working on the border, and we want it to be a border of peace and economic
11:30prosperity, in coordination, the danger of drug trafficking will be really controlled.
11:38And Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro led on Thursday the closing ceremony of the second
11:44revolutionary special operations course. The event took place in the Macarao Parish in Caracas and
11:51brought together more than 1,000 members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, who completed an
11:57intensive training course for the protection and tranquility of the nation against any foreign aggression.
12:04And we continue following the events in Venezuela. Now live, we go to our correspondent in Caracas, Bruno Falsi.
12:22Hello, Bruno. Thank you for joining us once again. Please tell us how this day is developing there in
12:28Caracas with this new enlistment day. Hello, Belen. We are here. We are still here in the
12:39Quartel de la Montaña, in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, here in a very big community called 23 of
12:46January, where people are still coming since earlier in the morning. As you can see, many people are still coming to answer the call
12:55of the call of the President Nicolás Maduro of this enlistment day, another enlistment day. After the last weekend, with any, many
13:04working-class population enlisted, thousands of people answered this call in the last weekend. And now, thousands again are coming to
13:15enlist, to show the national unity of this country against any provocation, any menacing of the United States.
13:24And here is one of the enlistment centers. There are thousands of these in all the country. There are almost 1,000 of these in all the country.
13:34And the people, as you can see, in complete peace and very organized and tranquility, they are answering this call of
13:43defending the nation against any kind of menacing or a future military invasion. They will fight to the last. They say they will fight to the last to
13:53defend their nation. They will use arms, if necessary, to defend their peace, to defend their democracy, to defend the sovereignty of their nation that is against menacing by United States.
14:07As I was saying before, it's important to explain to you how all of this started. It started with a false accusation of the United States, accusing Venezuela of being part of the international traffic of drugs,
14:24and the government and the government and their leader of being the head of this criminal organization. Accusation without proofs. They didn't show any
14:34kind of documents. They just said, and they now start to menace Venezuela of an invasion. It's another communication war against Venezuela. But people here are very conscious of their rights,
14:48rights of their revolution, and they show with this national mobilization of this national enlistment that they are ready to defend their nation against this new provocation. And the government of Venezuela answered different for the United States. The government of Venezuela answered with documents showing United Nations document that showed the root of international narcotics,
15:16politics, and Venezuela, and Venezuela isn't part of that. So Venezuela is having many supports in all the world, as Brazil and Mexico showed their support, China and Russia, and many other governments are starting to say they are against any kind of attacks against Venezuela, because the South American continent, the Latin American continent, is a continent of peace.
15:43They don't want any kind of peace. They don't want any kind of peace. They don't want any kind of troops in this continent. Now we go back with Belen in the studio in La Havana.
15:52Thank you so much, Bruno. It's always, always such a pleasure to have your report from site, from what is happening there in Caracas. Such an important day as well, as we were seeing all the people heading towards those significant points as the mountain barracks in Caracas.
16:09So we will continue to join Bruno throughout the day. But for now, we have a short break coming up. First, remember, you can join us on TikTok at Tell Us Your English, where you will find news in different formats, news updates, and much more. And we'll be right back. So stay with us.
17:23And Colombia's President Gustavo Pedro is set to announce an increase in the coverage and amount of financial assistance that vulnerable elderly people will receive.
17:35During the event, a new initiative will be launched with the aim of benefiting more than 3 million senior citizens with limited resources.
17:44The so-called solidarity pillar seeks to guarantee a basic monthly income for elderly people living in poverty and will gradually replace the Colombia mayor program without affecting its current beneficiaries, according to the Department of Social Prosperity.
18:01The basic solidarity income is expected to provide for 3,100,000 elderly people living in extreme poverty, poverty, or vulnerability.
18:12And we'll continue with other topics because increasing insecurity in some of Costa Rica's major tourist destinations is causing concern among local businesses, government authorities, and the population as well.
18:29According to a survey, executives in the sector, which accounts for nearly 8% of the national gross domestic product and generate thousands of direct and indirect jobs,
18:40are experiencing growing fear about the impact of violence on the country's image as a safe destination.
18:47The Costa Rican Tourism Institute reported that it is responding to the situation by reinforcing the presence of the tourist police in areas such as Tamarindo, Playa Panama, Cahuita, Santa Teresa, and Jaco.
19:02The institution also allocated millions to the Costa Rican Red Cross to strengthen beach safety.
19:16And in Argentina, a report that was carried out in different parts of the country revealed the situation of vulnerability of the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods across the nation.
19:27A study carried out by the Civil Association for Equality and Justice and La Poderosa organization is in nine poor neighborhoods in different parts of the country has shown that over 40% of its inhabitants attend community kitchens to feed themselves.
19:45More than 70% require some state economic assistance and over 80% have inadequate access to basic services.
19:54In addition to warning about overcrowded conditions, the final report shows the various environmental problems affecting the neighborhoods, most of them linked to the proximity to sources of contamination, such as watercourses in poor condition, garbage dams, or sewage drains.
20:10And in other news, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has welcomed the International Federation of Association Football, FIFA, his President Gianni Infantino, to the National Palace as part of the working tour ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
20:36During the meeting, Sheinbaum highlighted that Mexico will have the honor of hosting the tournament's opening ceremony at the Azteca Stadium on June 11, 2026, marking a historic event by becoming the first country to host three World Cups.
20:52With Infantino's visit to the National Palace, FIFA reaffirms Mexico's role as a key host of the championship, where 13 matches will be played in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey.
21:06And now we have a second short break coming up, but before we invite you to visit our Facebook page at Tell Us Your English, there you'll be able to watch our top stories, special live coverages, and much more.
21:20Follow our page and activate notifications to stay up to date on the world's most recent events. Final short break, don't go away.
21:36Welcome back to From the South. We continue with more information. In this case, we go to Palestine.
21:41Welcome back to From the South. We continue with more information. In this case, we go to Palestine.
21:43Where health authorities have confirmed that more than 70 civilians were killed in the last 24 hours alone, as part of the Islamic State.
21:48Welcome back to From the South. We continue with more information. In this case, we go to Palestine, where health authorities have confirmed that more than 70 civilians were killed in the last 24 hours alone, as part of the Islamic State.
22:02Israel's ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Another 22 civilians lost their lives and 203 were injured just by attempting to receive humanitarian aid, this highlighting, of course, the serious risks that they face every day.
22:14Hospital records show that more than 317 people have died from starvation and malnutrition, this including 121 children.
22:21Furthermore, statement details that since Israel resumed its aggression on more than 317 people have died from starvation and malnutrition, this including 121 children.
22:38Furthermore, statement details that since Israel resumed its aggression on March 18th, more than 11,000 people have died and another 47,225 have been injured.
22:59Meanwhile, the Jordanian armed forces in collaboration with the World Health Organization have welcomed a new group of 19 sick children from the Gaza Strip who will receive treatment in Jordanian hospitals.
23:12This is the 10th group to be evacuated since humanitarian operations began on March 4th.
23:18This action brings the total number of evacuees to 518, including 153 pediatric patients and 365 of their companions.
23:29The arrival took place through the King Hussein Crossing where Jordanian military and medical personnel welcomed the children and their parents.
23:42And two Lebanese soldiers were killed and one was injured in an Israeli attack on Nakoda, a town in southern Lebanon.
23:53The incident occurred while soldiers were inspecting the explosive-equipped drone.
23:58Shortly after, Israeli occupation forces bombed southern towns as well as the highlands of Havur.
24:04On the same day, it was reported that an Israeli helicopter crashed while attempting to drop a bomb on an excavator in the area.
24:13These attacks add to the series of violations by Israel of the declaration of cessation of hostilities, which took effect on November 27th of last year.
24:24The International Via Pontica Kite Festival returns for the fifth consecutive year to the beaches of Bárbara on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.
24:53This event, which follows the ancient migration route of birds, attracts thousands of local and international visitors who enjoyed impressive giant kite shapes of animals and aerial acrobatics.
25:06This year, the festival will take place in six locations, promising an energetic celebration full of nature, art and community.
25:15Visitors can enjoy creative workshops, live music and shows that promote the protection of birds and their habitats until September 7th.
25:25And the seventh International Book Fair for university students will be held in Mexico.
25:35This until August 31st. The exhibition and conference center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico is hosting this literary event, whose slogan this year is Spanish, the language of culture and science, in order to highlight the importance of this language throughout the world.
25:53There will be free workshops, presentations, forums and talks during the conference and speakers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History will showcase over 300 titles.
26:05In addition, the University of Chile is the guest of honor this year, whose presence seeks to strengthen transdisciplinary dialogue and academic relations between the two countries.
26:21And like this, we have come to the end of this news brief.
26:25You can find this and many other stories on our website at www.tellusreenglish.net.
26:28Also join us on social media. We are on Facebook, X, Instagram, Telegram and TikTok as well.
26:33For Tell Us Your English, my name is Belen De Los Santos. Thank you for watching.
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