Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Saw a piece on George Galloways excellent Sputnik programme last Saturday, on Russia Todays network, ch.135 on Freeview if anyone is interested.
Nice thread to start Stavros, thanks.
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peejaye
Saw a piece on George Galloways excellent Sputnik programme last Saturday, on Russia Todays network, ch.135 on Freeview if anyone is interested.
Nice thread to start Stavros, thanks.
I don't think George Galloway is qualified to speak about anything, and he like Ken Livingstone and others have either been silent on their 'favourite' socialist country or make excuses. Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London and Labour MP (suspended from the party at the moment) denies saying the mistake Chavez made was not to murder all the 'oligarchs' but also concedes the poor investment decisions of Chavez and his successors has weakened the economy. A good example of the desperation with which some attempt to both defend Chavez and accept he did wrong things is in the Guardian link below. What always puzzled me was why Labour people like Livingstone and Corbyn had such a hard-on for the combination of Venezuelan Nationalism and Socialism, two concepts that in practice have been disastrous in history when joined together. Blaming the Americans is also standard fare. What they could have said was that under Venezuela the attitude was 'we've won the lottery, so let's go spend!' At one time the government was funding a Formula 1 driver to the tune of $45 million a year even though he could not get round the track without trashing his car.
Meanwhile, the country's Chief Prosecutor, Luisa Ortega has been removed from office in classic style: first she was arrested, then the new 'Constituent Assembly' voted to remove her from office, and even though she was a former ally of Maduro, his supporters after the vote denounced her as a 'traitor'. The problem for Maduro is that his most potent rival in his own party, Diosdado Cabello is an army officer. A coup now looks like the next step in Venezuela, but as the army was the vehicle Chavez used to initiate the 'Bolivarian Revolution' this does not look like a long term solution.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ortega-removed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...itics-violence
excuses, excuses-
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ution-chavismo
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Looks like the US President is making good his promise to put America First...
Donald Trump said last night he was considering possible military action against Venezuela in response to Nicolas Maduro's power grab.
Mr Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf course that he was "not going to rule out" a military option".
"The people are suffering and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary," the US president said.
He adds that it's "certainly something that we could pursue".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...litary-option/
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
You won't like George Galloway or Ken Livingstone if you support right wing politics! Simple as that! :yayo:
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peejaye
You won't like George Galloway or Ken Livingstone if you support right wing politics! Simple as that! :yayo:
I am surprised that you would make such a facile remark. Have you ever met either of them? I could give you some insight from my now ancient days in the party, Livingstone in particular, but it would not be 'the sorrow and the pity' so much as 'the sordid and the petty'. This so-called left was divided against itself in the 1980s, as it was in the 1950s, and just as the 'left' could not decide if Nye Bevan was their leader, so on one day I had an argument with one party member on the left who believed Livingstone was the only hope and another, also on the left, who denounced him as a fraud. George Galloway should be remembered as the man who took over the campaigning charity War on Want, and transformed it into the George Galloway Fan Club, before walking away to make a nuisance of himself in Parliament.
The issue in Venezuela can only be understood with references drawn from its own history, the socially fractured country which has been producing oil and gas for most of the last century. But whoever was in power, civilian or military, left or right, they failed to use its wealth for the benefit of all through long term investment in the economy and society. It has always been easy for outsiders to parachute into the country to congratulate whichever dictator was in power at the time. The so-called left turned a blind eye to the fact that Chavez was a soldier and a nationalist, as if those two factors did not ring alarm bells, and lacking any depth of understanding congratulated him for spending money on the poor much as one would congratulate a millionaire who picks up a group of refugees from Calais, takes them to Maxim's for dinner, then buggers off. In the end, for Livingstone and Corbyn, the 'Bolivarian Revolution' (the one that in reality never happened), was more about themselves and their need to find a cause that made them feel good, it had nothing to do with socialism, and nothing to do with the people. Most times it is better to think about a point of view than from it.
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peejaye
You won't like George Galloway or Ken Livingstone if you support right wing politics! Simple as that! :yayo:
When you make comments like this, it pretty much just paints you as a left wing idealogue.
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
I understand the purpose of this thread is to talk about Venezuela and not Galloway or Livingstone but I am interested in discussing (maybe in the thought of the day thread) what makes them men of the left. One cannot be a person of the left simply because he identifies with a country or loathes a country but rather because he supports certain principles and applies them equally whether he is discussing his enemy or a comrade in arms. Even an adversary is capable of behaving well and even a country that symbolizes the aspirations of socialism can make policy mistakes. These are not principled men but clowns.
Re: The Crisis in Venezuela
Quote:
Originally Posted by
broncofan
I understand the purpose of this thread is to talk about Venezuela and not Galloway or Livingstone but I am interested in discussing (maybe in the thought of the day thread) what makes them men of the left. One cannot be a person of the left simply because he identifies with a country or loathes a country but rather because he supports certain principles and applies them equally whether he is discussing his enemy or a comrade in arms. Even an adversary is capable of behaving well and even a country that symbolizes the aspirations of socialism can make policy mistakes. These are not principled men but clowns.
As I think I have pointed out before, the issue with Livingstone and Corbyn is their belief that revolution is a positive thing and that socialist revolution is even better. Talk to any of the Trotskyists in Momentum and they will cheerfully tell you what a rotter Stalin was, denounce the USSR as a 'state capitalist' distortion of socialism, but without pausing for breath defend Lenin and the Bolshevik (as opposed to the Russian) Revolution, Fidel and the Cuban 'Revolution' though they still can't work out if Mao was one of them. Again, there are different traditions within the Labour Party and the 'revolutionary left' only had a brief moment at the top in the early 1980s when Michael Foot was leader, and though he had never been part of the revolutionary left, he was leader at a time when the Labour Party Annual Conference was a policy making body and he could not control it (as Blair later did, by turning Conference into a rally and neutralizing it as a policy making forum). It is still not clear how long Corbyn can last though here are predictions in some quarters that the Tories may be the party that loses most from Brexit, presumably to Labour's advantage.
The Bolivarian Revolution was a magnet for people like Livingstone and Corbyn who cut their teeth opposing the US in Vietnam at countless demonstrations in London in the 1960s and for whom the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 was an even greater challenge. Allende became the tragic hero and Pinochet (another 'liberator' in Uniform) the most wicked man in the world, but a puppet on American strings, even though the 'Marxist' Allende as President in Chile offered a political programme more modest and less radical than the Civil Rights and Social Welfare legislation passed in the US when capitalist LBJ was President. The Sandinista Revolution by contrast proved what the people, united, could achieve while Reagan's support for the 'Contras' underlined the extent to which the Americans would go to derail a popular revolution determined to improve people's lives.
So for this version of the left in Britain, the context with Venezuela is provided by successful and failed revolutions in which the military, the US and its 'corporate clients', and the People are locked in a perpetual struggle while rational people wonder when success will be marked by an end to a few elites controlling most of the economy, an end to corruption on a scale that draws every part of society into its venal net and promotes organized crime, and the freewheelin' spending of money made from oil until there is none left, often on projects that have a shelf-life of six months or a year at best.
None of this should degrade the issues of importance in Venezuela, but having tried military rule before, why did anyone think a military man then or now was going to be the saviour of the nation? The curious obsession people have with leadership as a form of salvation is found on left and right, yet in the UK the most effective and successful Labour leader, Clement Attlee, had no ideology and certainly no charisma, being dull to the point of anonymity. What he did have in 1945 was a practical mind and an ability to get things done and in doing so improved the quality of life for everyone in Britain for decades to come. There are alternatives, and they don't involve mass casualties and endless rallies and parades.