Venezuela: Proof Corbyn’s no ‘Man of Peace’

Maikol Mendoza is a 17 year old Venezuelan who finally got a chance of life with a rare kidney transplant. The rat infested, medicine deprived state of his country’s health care system has now deprived him of that second chance.

Then, Maikol became infected with a highly resistant bacteria borne out of the hospital’s poorly maintained water pipes.

Karla Zabludovsky piece for Buzzfeed on Mendoza and others suffering under a collapsing health care system is but one of many.

Stories like Maikol’s are everywhere in Venezuela, where the health care system is on the brink of total collapse and patients who thought they were in the clear are back to fighting a harsh reality. Hospitals have left patients’ families to fend for themselves, scurrying to purchase everything from syringes to anesthesia, often at exuberant black market rates, and forcing doctors to perform surgery with antiquated equipment in operating rooms cleaned with dirty water.

Many of those reading this will have read similar reporting from Venezuela. What escapes me is why the leadership of the UK Labour party, who have so publicly identified themselves with the ‘Bolivarian revolution’, has not been asked about it.

The great cut off
June 2015 is that last time Jeremy Corbyn said anything on the record about Venezuela. Eight months later he scrubbed his website of any mention of the country.
To my knowledge Diane Abbott, Ken Livingstone, Richard Burgon, Owen Jones, Neil Findlay, and Seumas Milne have also all said nothing since this time. Bar a single reference discovered by Jack Staples-Butler:

As of this writing, Owen Jones has not used the word ‘Venezuela’ in print or online in the English language since 31st May 2015, over 580 days, mentioning it only when interviewed for a Spanish newspaper in June 2016, admitting “Venezuela is in a horrible state”[17] while making no reference to Chávez, socialism or his own involvement.

Since Corbyn’s election as the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition the Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign most prominent public backer has been a Gandalf impersonator from a rail union.

Venezuela? Where’s that?
This January Corbyn was in Mexico, on holiday, discussing his “dream of realizing a world government based on justice and fraternity,” with Mexico’s Lopez Obrador, Venezuelan state TV channel Telesur reported.
The same month I imagine that Maikol Mendoza was wondering whether his transplant was happening.
A year ago on the day of Theresa May’s election and to, presumably, cock a snoot at the Parliamentary Labour Party’s meeting, Corbyn instead chose to not comment on May and to attend a Cuba Solidarity event in Parliament.

In the time since he stopped talking about Venezuela the Organisation of American States, Spain and the Vatican have all ramped up their efforts at a peace process President Maduro has trashed.
At the end of April the Pope, in his weekly address, said: “I make a heartfelt appeal to the government and all components of Venezuelan society to avoid any more forms of violence, respect human rights and seek a negotiated solution.”

People are starving

Francisco Toro, executive editor of the excellent English language website Caracas Chronicles, spoke to a worker for the Catholic charity Caritas last week:

Caritas constructed a sample of more than two dozen at-risk areas in the poorest parishes of four Venezuelan states and started weighing children under 5 years old. This allows Caritas to measure “global acute malnutrition” — the key mechanism humanitarians use to assign numbers to the severity of hunger. In October, 8.9 percent of the children they measured faced either moderate or severe acute malnutrition. The number was high, and it has kept rising. By April, 11.4 percent of of children in vulnerable areas were experiencing acute malnutrition — well above the 10 percent threshold humanitarian agencies use to declare a food crisis.

Maduro refuses to declare a food crisis, which would trigger international support, and refuses to allow humanitarian aid agencies to properly do their work or to bring in food and medicines. Instead he has publicly joked about starvation and putting the nation on the 'Maduro diet'. The military is now starving the populace for profit.

Chavistas will blame the situation on the fall in the price of oil and the sulfurous Yankees, but malnutrition in children was already reversing from last decade's gains five years ago, before that price fell. The BBC World Service's 'The Inquiry' showed that Venezuela's economy has long had structural problems - and Chavista policies have only made them worse and led to today's situation.

The Maduro regime is now relying on financing from, amongst others, Goldman Sachs. Yes that Goldman Sachs.

Why are they doing this? Because they still believe they are creating a socialist paradise.

Writing for Caracas Chronicles César Crespo explained how Chavez' long game "was always establishing an “alternative” to capitalism." Spanish Marxist Professor Alfredo Serrano Mancilla, the main economic advisor to the government, has been described by Maduro as the "Jesus Christ of the economy." His prescriptions include:

Expropriations, the seizure of businesses, “urban agriculture” on balconies, the soviet supply system and forced employment in the public agriculture sector.

Mancilla wants any crisis hidden and no aid allowed in. According to the Spanish newspaper El Nacional, Mancilla has "solidified the idea that the socialist economic model of the 21st century is unquestionable, and that any failure is the result of attacks from the opposition."

Corbyn could have acted - he chose not to

When his visit to the region he professes to love was reported by Telesur at the beginning of this year Corbyn could have spoken out on Venezuela. When he spoke to the Cuban Solidarity crowd last June he could have spoken out.

He could have demanded:

[*]That the Venezuelan government rejoin the peace process

[*]That the Venezuelan government declare a food crisis

[*]That the Venezuelan government allow humanitarian aid agencies and NGOs to freely operate and to bring in aid


He could have repeated the words, practically word-for-word, of the Pope.

Here's the thing. Even within the worldview of supporters, like him, of Chavismo the country is deemed under attack from the evil behemoth to the North - yet still Corbyn (and all the others) has stayed silent and refused to come to the aid of the 'revolution'.

Never mind what happened 35 years ago or even 14 years ago (see an 'Exclusive!' piece today about Corbyn and North Korea) - what about now? Right now?

Venezuela is Corbyn's opportunity to not just play a 'Man of Peace' but to actually be one. He failed.

I have no doubt that even if I had published this weeks ago it would have had little impact, it is clear that such issues are largely irrelevant in this election. But it remains important that people know - Venezuela is the proof everyone has missed in this election, that Corbyn is no 'Man of Peace'.

Edited to add: Corbyn could have taken a lead from Spain's left wing party Podemos. They realised back in 2014 that they had to distance themselves from Chavismo, something they had previously been entwined with. This has caused the Maduro regime a lot of pain and demonstrates how someone like Corbyn similarly reversing could have a positive impact. See Caracas Chronicles from last May.




http://paulocanning.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/venezuela-proof-corbyns-no-man-of-peace.html

Sassy thinks that Venezuela is the peak of socialist perfection.

Nicko, have you got an unhealthy desire to dream up one liners to show how stupid you are?

Venezuela is a third world country whose economy is heavily dependent on one commodity. When the price of that commodity crashed, so did their economy. It would have crashed if the economy had been socialist, capitalist or whatever. This, unfortunately, happens from time to time throughout the third world. A one-commodity economy ought to diversify but in fact it is very hard to do. Many have tried and not succeeded. Britain, on the other hand, is a developed first-world nation with a highly diversified economy. If you think you can draw simple conclusions from one and apply them directly to the other I honestly do not know what you are using for brains.

What Venezuelan socialism did achieve was to give the poor access to levels of education and health care they had never previously had. This is an achievement, but also an achievement South American elites hate, because they long had a deliberate policy of denying education and health care to the poor. Let them be educated and healthy and they might get ideas above their station. When the Contras were fighting in Nicaragua, their modus operandi was to raid a village, burn the health centre and school, rape, torture and kill the staff, to discourage people from staffing such centres and schools in other villages. A lot worse than the current Tory attacks on education and the NHS, in other words.

However it should not be forgotten the specimen who runs that right-wing gossip-mine “Guido” was, back in the day, involved in arming the Contras and has expressed pride in the murders and atrocities they committed. Like Thatcher’s girlish crush on the abominable Pinochet, the British right has always had its fingers in some very putrid pies.

PMSL, so again delusions by Sassy, as the country is a complete mess and shows once again socialism in practice never works and has never worked. The excuse now is that it would have crashed, really?

Is that really the case, or a convenient excuse for some of the worst polices that saw to the destruction of this countries economies

You cannot make it up, so why are other countries within the area, not facing the same problems, especially those rich in oil, as is this country is?

Hey but lets ignore all the human rights abuses or the point Corbyn, has since fallen silent on his former hero state and removed any mention of it.

While Americans are subjected to a political circus in our nation’s capital, riots, shortages, and repression are rocking the streets of Venezuela as their citizenry is finally fed up with Socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s rule.

Thousands have been arrested as inflation spirals into Weimar territory and Venezuelans are even losing large amounts of weight en masse from food shortages in one of the world’s most oil-rich nations. The Socialist experiment has neared the end of its natural and inevitable course in Venezuela.

When Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez died in 2013, there briefly was a glimmer of hope that the socialist state apparatus he had built over the prior decade would start on the road towards reform and freedom. However Nicolas Maduro has continued many of Chavez’s socialist policies, both economically and politically.

Almost two decades of strongman socialist rule in Venezuela has led not to more prosperity for the people, but, according to the Economist, to 82% of households living in poverty compared to 48% prior to Chavez. Amid rhetoric championing redistribution and struggle against wealthy elites, Venezuelans now have neither liberty nor prosperity and must watch as their nation collapses around them.


http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/17/venezuelas-disaster-demonstrates-socialisms-failure/

sassy wrote:Nicko, have you got an unhealthy desire to dream up one liners to show how stupid you are?

Since you continue to question the intelligence of practically anyone who holds and expresses opinions that do not comply with your own, may I point out that you yourself can hardly be described as the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

sassy wrote:Nicko, have you got an unhealthy desire to dream up one liners to show how stupid you are?

Since you continue to question the intelligence of practically anyone who holds and expresses opinions that do not comply with your own, may I point out that you yourself can hardly be described as the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer.

Have to disagree, Fred. Sassy's posts are relevant, intelligent and most insightful. Perhaps her barbs are a little too sharp for you.

I like her energy. She picks up the place.

Quill, your a idiot.

Original Quill wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Since you continue to question the intelligence of practically anyone who holds and expresses opinions that do not comply with your own, may I point out that you yourself can hardly be described as the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer.

Have to disagree, Fred.  Sassy's posts are relevant, intelligent and most insightful.  Perhaps her barbs are a little too sharp for you.  

I like her energy.  She picks up the place.

You and I have disagreed in the past, Quill, and we will no doubt disagree in the future - and, I hope, without the rancour and abuse that all too often occurs in forums like this.

But downloading and asserting to be "the truth" material from overtly partisan websites that are set up specifically to support a particular faction, and to exclude and ridicule any dissent, is not, actually, my idea of relevance, intelligence or insightfulness.

I hold no dislike of Sassy; she and I have had a pretty cordial relationship in the past. But I find her present dismissive attitude towards the opinions of anyone who has the temerity to question the philosophies of what has become an intolerant, Marxist oriented party machine to be patronising in the extreme.

And when she chooses today, of all days (perhaps none of you had noticed the date) to try to ridicule the views of, and question the intelligence of, a fellow veteran who has helped to secure the freedom of expression that she now enjoys, I cannot - and will not - remain silent.

And as for Sassy's "barbs" being a little too sharp for me...believe me, my rhino-like skin has been deflecting barbs of far greater penetrative effect for more years than I care to remember.

Thorin wrote:PMSL, so again delusions by Sassy, as the country is a complete mess and shows once again socialism in practice never works and has never worked. The excuse now is that it would have crashed, really?

Is that really the case, or a convenient excuse for some of the worst polices that saw to the destruction of this countries economies

You cannot make it up, so why are other countries within the area, not facing the same problems, especially those rich in oil, as is this country is?

Hey but lets ignore all the human rights abuses or the point Corbyn, has since fallen silent on his former hero state and removed any mention of it.

What about economic collapses in "capitalist" regimes during the 20th century, Thorin...

Germany, USA, Brazil, Argentina, Haiti..

Just bad luck, were they ???

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Thorin wrote:PMSL, so again delusions by Sassy, as the country is a complete mess and shows once again socialism in practice never works and has never worked. The excuse now is that it would have crashed, really?

Is that really the case, or a convenient excuse for some of the worst polices that saw to the destruction of this countries economies

You cannot make it up, so why are other countries within the area, not facing the same problems, especially those rich in oil, as is this country is?

Hey but lets ignore all the human rights abuses or the point Corbyn, has since fallen silent on his former hero state and removed any mention of it.

What about economic collapses in "capitalist" regimes during the 20th century,  Thorin...

Germany,  USA,  Brazil, Argentina,  Haiti..

Just bad luck,  were they ???

What about them?

Has all capitalist governments failed/

Nope

has every single socialist one failed?

Yep

there are so many smoking guns of proof over corbyn that it is a surprise that britain is not covered in pea soupers again.