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IPFS News Link • Venezuela

"No One Will Stop Us" - Venezuela's Maduro Slams Trump's UN Speech Which Hinted At

• Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden

During his Tuesday UN General Assembly address President Trump held nothing back in terms of excoriating the socialist pariah state of Venezuela and leader Nicolas Maduro.

"Not long ago, Venezuela was one of the richest countries on Earth," Trump said. "Today, socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty."

Trump continued, "Virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried, it has produced suffering, corruption, and decay. Socialism's thirst for power leads to expansion, incursion, and oppression. All nations of the world should resist socialism and the misery that it brings to everyone."

The US president blamed Venezuela's collapsed economy and worthless currency, which has created a humanitarian crisis resulting in some 2 million citizens fleeing the country in recent years on the "Maduro regime and its Cuban sponsors".

But a usually defiant Maduro, who didn't attend the UN Assembly in New York for fear of his safety, slammed the speech via Twitter, stating in Spanish, "The empire points to us because it knows that we are on the socialist road to economic recovery." He shot back at Trump: "And no one will stop us in our efforts to achieve self-sustainability." 

Also in response to Trump's speech, Venezuela's foreign minister Jorge Arreaza said Venezuela was a sovereign country and will continue to exercising the right to choose its own path. "It's not the problem of the United States," Arreaza said during a UN news conference in response to Trump's listing a litany of the small Latin American country's pressing problems. 

Maduro has further called Trump's mention of more sanctions to come against Maduro's wife and his inner circle an "imperialist" intervention by "oligarchs".

The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of foreign Assets Control indicated that it had imposed sanctions on Venezuela's first lady, Cilia Flores, along with Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez. The U.S. Treasury further confirmed the seizure of a Florida-based Gulfstream jet worth $20 million that belongs to Rafael Sarria, a powerful former Venezuelan official close to Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly.

But Trump's speech didn't stop with theorizing on the dangers of socialism and its failures in history, but the president used the momentum to take direct aim and Maduro, and went so far as to hint at regime change


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