Venezuela

Wednesday

Nick Cohen

‘Fake news’: the far left’s favourite new excuse

Admirers of violence and lies must go carefully. As true cowards they must leave themselves an escape hatch in case they are forced to retreat. They never quite commit to the suppression of rights, the rigged elections, the secret policemen and the torture chambers. Instead they tell us we are not hearing the full story, and switch the argument. The real problem is not the oppressive state and its suffering citizens, they say. The problem is the fake media. Not media faked by government propagandists and controlled by censors, not countries where every TV station and mass circulation newspaper must follow the party line, but the free media in their

Tuesday

Steerpike

Corbynista MP: Media bias is the real story in Venezuela

Despite admitting in an interview in this morning’s edition of the Morning Star that he was ‘no bloody expert on Venezuela’, Chris Williamson, the Labour MP for Derby North, made it quite clear this afternoon who he believes is to blame for the socialist country’s problems – and it most certainly isn’t Maduro’s socialist government. Speaking at a Solidarity with Venezuela fringe event at Labour conference, Williamson described how the country – a place where women now exchange sex for nappies for their babies and where the capital city is the most murderous city on earth – was undoubtedly witnessing ‘difficult and tough times’ and that ‘mistakes had been made’.

Steerpike Steerpike

Chris Williamson blasts fellow Labour MPs over Venezuela

Venezuela’s crisis shows no sign of stopping: protesters have been gunned down, opposition leaders rounded up – and the country recently unveiled a plan to combat food shortages by telling people to eat their rabbits. The country’s situation ‘ain’t perfect’, admits Labour’s Chris Williamson. In an interview with the Morning Star – where else? – the Corbyn ally is still keen to look on the bright side though: ‘I accept that Venezuela has its problems still…But look at where they’ve come from and where they’ve got to’ Admittedly, Williamson is angry at the ongoing situation. But instead of directing his fury at the country’s leadership, he turns it elsewhere: towards

Thursday

Toby Young

The mystery of socialism’s enduring appeal

One of the mysteries of our age is why socialism continues to appeal to so many people. Whether in the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia or Venezuela, it has resulted in the suppression of free speech, the imprisonment of political dissidents and, more often than not, state-sanctioned mass murder. Socialist economics nearly always produce widespread starvation, something we were reminded of last week when the President of Venezuela urged people not to be squeamish about eating their rabbits. That perfectly captures the trajectory of nearly every socialist experiment: it begins with the dream of a more equal society and ends with people eating their pets.

Friday

Nick Cohen

What are Corbyn’s Venezuelan critics actually doing to help?

The victims of foreign dictatorships have become chips in our political games. In our corner of the rich world, for instance, the suffering of Venezuela matters only because Jeremy’s Corbyn’s enemies can use it to attack his support for the Chavist regime when it was unchallengeable, and his cowardly equivocation when the inevitable catastrophe followed. Saudi Arabia matters only because leftists can use it to damn the British establishment’s bootlicking support for the House of Saud and its suppression of democratic, women’s and minority rights. Yet the smallest concern of the Venezuelans is the praise the western far left lavished on their corrupt and massively incompetent dictators. I don’t mean

Sunday

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn still cannot bear to condemn his fallen idols in Venezuela

Jeremy Corbyn finally broke his silence on Venezuela this week, but in the manner of a man who has his head buried in a very large bucket of sand. He condemned violence ‘on both sides’, painting the country’s problems as a battle between factions rather than a case of a repressive government snuffing out popular protests. No one would know from the Labour leader’s words that President Maduro’s regime is engaged in what the UN Human Rights Office described this week as a ‘widespread and systematic use of excessive force’. More revealing still was Corbyn’s reply when prodded on the economic and social conditions which led to the protests. The

Thursday

The Spectator

Corbyn’s fallen idols

Jeremy Corbyn finally broke his silence on Venezuela this week, but in the manner of a man who has his head buried in a very large bucket of sand. He condemned violence ‘on both sides’, painting the country’s problems as a battle between factions rather than a case of a repressive government snuffing out popular protests. No one would know from the Labour leader’s words that President Maduro’s regime is engaged in what the UN Human Rights Office described this week as a ‘widespread and systematic use of excessive force’. More revealing still was Corbyn’s reply when prodded on the economic and social conditions which led to the protests. The

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 10 August 2017

Home British negotiators are prepared to pay up to £36 billion to the EU to settle the so-called divorce bill for Brexit, according to the Sunday Telegraph. By voting for Brexit, ‘the old have comprehensively shafted the young’, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, aged 74, wrote in the Mail on Sunday, ‘imposing a world view coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a younger generation much more comfortable with modern Europe.’ Lord Neuberger, who will retire as president of the Supreme Court next month, said that the government should ‘express clearly what the judges should do about decisions of the European Court of Justice after

Monday

Jack Staples-Butler

14 questions Owen Jones and Venezuela’s silent fans on the left must answer

Dear Owen, I hear you have finally broken your silence on Venezuela. With that in mind, here are a few questions which you have not answered: 1) In 2008, Human Rights Watch was expelled from the country by force. Why didn’t you feel the need to mention this in any article you wrote? 2) Who paid for that ‘Election Observer’ trip you went on in 2012? 3) Did it ever cross your mind from 2012 onwards that Hugo Chavez referring to Kim Jong-il as a ‘comrade’ he mourned might be a warning sign? 4) Did Chavez’s hero-worship of Fidel Castro and claims that he wanted to turn Venezuela into ‘Venecuba’ ever cause you concerns?

Friday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Mark Carney, Brexit & Corbyn’s silence over Venezuela

Mark Carney is often accused of being downbeat about Brexit. But the Bank of England’s quarterly inflation report is ‘more sanguine than one might expect’, says the FT. The paper points out that despite a cut in the country’s growth forecast, the Bank ‘expects stronger net trade and business investment to drive a recovery in 2019’. Yet Carney remained ‘candid’ about the damage Brexit is already doing to Britain’s economy. Businesses are investing less, reports the FT, and ‘this has uncomfortable implications’. With the Bank warning that ‘the level of investment in the UK economy (will be) be 20 percentage points lower in 2020 than it forecast before the referendum’,

Thursday

Steerpike

Red Ken: Venezuela went wrong when they ignored my economic advice

Ken Livingstone caused a stir this week when he blamed Venezuela’s problems on the United States. Now, the former Mayor of London has a new reason for the country’s desperate state – and it isn’t the fault of the leader Nicolas Maduro. Instead, Red Ken said one of the explanations for Venezuela’s woes is simple: they failed to listen to his pearls of wisdom. During an interview this morning on Talk Radio, Livingstone said that he had offered economic advice to the country’s minister of finance back in 2008. But instead of taking his suggestions on board, Ken said his wise words were brushed aside – and now the country is reaping the consequences. Here’s

Steerpike Steerpike

John McDonnell’s words on Venezuela come back to haunt him

As Jeremy Corbyn tries to enjoy his summer holiday, the Labour leader is under increasing pressure to speak out against the Venezuelan regime. With opposition leaders under arrest and mass protests ongoing, the Labour leader has so far kept shtum on the regime he previously lauded as showing a ‘better way of doing things’. So, why the silence among Labour’s top command? It can’t be that they don’t think Venezuelan politics to be of interest. As David Aaronovitch notes in today’s Times, there was a time when Corbyn’s comrade John McDonnell compelled every MP to step up and talk about the country’s regime. Speaking at the Hands Off Venezuela national conference in

Wednesday

Steerpike

Corbyn attacks Arsenal’s owner – but keeps quiet on Venezuela

Venezuela is on the brink of collapse, with thousands taking to the streets and the government locking up those who dare stand in its way. Yet while Jeremy Corbyn has been all too eager to voice his support in the past for Venezuela, the Labour leader is keeping a radio silence on the current situation. Corbyn has said that the country’s previous leader, Hugo Chavez, showed ‘a different and better way of doing things’. Having been called on today to condemn the country’s current regime by Labour MPs, Corbyn has so far kept schtum. But Mr S was curious to note that Jezza isn’t afraid to speak out on some matters close

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Venezuela’s crisis exposes the true depravity of the hard-Left

Which British politician would be loopy enough to defend the Venezuelan regime as it guns down protesters and arrests opposition politicians? Need a clue? Didn’t think so. This week, Ken Livingstone – once an adviser to the late Hugo Chavez – said that the reason for the country’s woes was that Chavez ‘did not execute the establishment elite’ when he came to power. For good measure, he added: ‘America has got a long record of undermining any Left-wing government as well… it’s not all just down to the problems of the [Venezuelan] government.’ While reporting recently on the appalling collapse of that country, I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun

Monday

Stephen Daisley

Socialism is destroying Venezuela – but the left will never admit it

If ever I have to live in a dictatorship, put me down for one of those right-wing set-ups. To toil under leftist autocracy would be too exhausting — you plant potatoes all day, get chased around by the secret police, then have to wade through articles in the Guardian explaining why you’re not experiencing true socialism. It’s the standard response of Western radicals faced with the brutal truth about the regimes they fetishise. They will not be dissuaded by evidence that their ideology tends to result in mass immiseration and exciting opportunities in the garbage-scavenging economy. For no evidence is possible: when command economies go wrong, it turns out real socialists

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 April 2017

Cadbury and the National Trust stand accused of taking the Easter out of Easter eggs. The Trust’s ‘Easter Egg Trail’ is now renamed the ‘Cadbury Egg Hunt’. My little theory about the National Trust is that all its current woes result from the tyranny of success: it has become so attached to ever-growing membership (now more than four million) that everything is skewed to this and the original purposes are neglected. No doubt the substitution of the word ‘Easter’ by the word ‘Cadbury’ seemed a small price to pay for big sponsorship. This decision is a symptom of the Trust’s problem. But for the fate of Easter itself, one need not

Sunday

Jason Mitchell

Britain under Corbyn? Just look at Venezuela

Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest. Venezualans are starving. The farms that President Hugo Chavez expropriated, boasting about the great increase in production that would follow, have failed. Inexperienced management and corruption under both Chavez and the current president, Nicolas Maduro, mean that there is less of each crop each year. Across the country, supermarkets are empty and most ordinary people queue for hours every day just for flour. Many of the animals in Caracas zoo have starved to death, but even those who survive aren’t safe — Venezuelans have taken to raiding the cages to

Thursday

Jason Mitchell

Corbyn’s blueprint

Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest. Venezualans are starving. The farms that President Hugo Chavez expropriated, boasting about the great increase in production that would follow, have failed. Inexperienced management and corruption under both Chavez and the current president, Nicolas Maduro, mean that there is less of each crop each year. Across the country, supermarkets are empty and most ordinary people queue for hours every day just for flour. Many of the animals in Caracas zoo have starved to death, but even those who survive aren’t safe — Venezuelans have taken to raiding the cages to

Wednesday

Steerpike

Solidarity for Venezuela at Labour conference

Recent reports on the situation in the socialist haven of Venezuela suggest that not everything is so tickety-boo. With five-hour queues for toilet paper, the prospect of forced labour looming and a mass food shortage, Mercosur — the South American trade bloc — has threatened to expel the country over human rights violations and not complying with trade laws. Despite this, the Labour party continues to show solidarity with the country. Last night, comrades gathered at conference for Cuba and Venezuela: International Solidarity Needed Now More Than Ever!. At the event Labour’s Baroness Angela Smith was joined by the Venezuelan ambassador HE Rocio Maniero as Tony Burke — assistant General

Wednesday

Catherine Addington

Venezuela’s doomed love affair with socialism continues

It’s hard to imagine now but just decades ago Venezuela was the richest country in South America. The late President Hugo Chávez’s social programs thrived on record oil revenues; Venezuelan industry was left underdeveloped but poverty was glitteringly – yet only temporarily – relieved. Now that the price of oil has plummeted, the country’s hollow economy is dependent on imports it does not have the cash to buy. Normally reliable Chinese lenders are having second thoughts. Inflation has hit triple digits. Venezuela’s economy is in utter recession and is projected to contract eight per cent this year, making it officially the slowest-growing economy in the world. The litany of consequent disasters is