Venezuela. / Chavez / Moduro

But then there is the problem of 2000 generals and countless other cronies on the gravy train
Who may well change sides when they see the writing on the wall.

Apologists for Chavez and Maduro will come up with anything to avoid shaming them and their regimes.

So why was the US buying so much Venezuelan oil until recently and why have most countries affected by oil sanctions successfully find other ways to get oilout, like Iran.

Venezuela has several land borders and the Chavez and Maduro families and others of their friends have got very rich in recent years, so rich they have exported billions of $ to secret havens overseas. The Chavez family are said to be worth $5.5bn. Maduro is trying to catch up.

Perhaps they were growing olive trees in their gardens and selling the oil from that in order to build up these fortunes.

For anyone who cares to inform themselves about why Venezuela has slipped into starvation and misery when it remains one of the most oil rich countries in the world I recommend this www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/01/sanctions-of-mass-destruction-americas-war-on-venezuela/
And although you may not agree with all of it the link between the petro-dollar, the decline of countries that have oil reserves, and the US relationship with Saudi Arabia must arouse some doubts.

Much easier to fight long lost battles once all those involved are dead and where we would do differently now than deal with the real problems that face the unhappy and starving population of Venezuela.

Emergency food stocks will soon be on the borders of Venezuela in neighbouring countries. Will the well upholstered Maduro and his equally well-fed military cronies let it in? Or will these food stocks, ostensibly for feeding the starving be let in and then will they disappear to supplement the morbidly obese bank accounts these portly men have amassed in secret foreign bank accounts.

The bombing of Dresden was demanded by Stalin, it was strategically important to him at the time and the allies obliged. It had been done to other German cities everybody knew what the result would be, the Nazis had started a war that cost 60 million dead, (25m Russian) nobody cared much about loss of life they just wanted it to end.

To compare that with Venezuela is ridiculous, Maduro is just another failed corrupt left wing despot, his time will pass, hopefully without too much bloodshed. But then there is the problem of 2000 generals and countless other cronies on the gravy train

On the news this evening, a woman said that life is fine for those who support Moduro; the ones who do not are the ones not getting food and starving.

So the IRA bombed to subdue and terrorise the civilian population? Didn’t trouble Corbyn, just as the suffering of the people of Venezuela doesn’t bother him,

trisher

" But of course if it's your side doing it it's different."

That's what some of us have been saying about Corbyn and the far left Apologists for Moduro is it not?

The bombing of Dresden is one of the most debated actions of WW2 . There was no strategic reason for it, it was purely a measure to subdue and terrorise the civilian population much like the Blitz and the IRA bombings, But of course if it's your side doing it it's different.

Burgon. not Burton

Monica

See my post Fri 01-Feb-19 17:26:43.

Livingstone came out with the same scripted clap trap Corbyn/Williams/Burton /McDonnell come out with.

It is like an instruction manua

To be fair to Sean McBride. He was in the IRA in his youth and left it in 1939 and for the rest of his life worked for international causes and in a peaceful way for his vision of Ireland. I for one think that 50 years actively working for peace after leaving an underground organisation is sufficient expiation.

However, for a little black humour, watch Andrew Neil interviewing Ken Livingstone, inews.co.uk/news/politics/ken-livingstone-andrew-neil-venezuela-this-week-interview-video/ I could almost feel sorry for him (but not quite). He is now a busted flush.

Comparing bombing in WW2 with the Omagh bombing ?

Human Rights cannot be selective.

I don't care..

It his and his cohort's virtual silence over Venezuela that is deafening.

For a Defender of Human Rights he certainly picks and chooses Who/What and Where.

Yes, I remarked on his fat, well-fed appearance to DH.

It is often the case with these leaders - they are over-fed whilst their people starve.

Has anyone noticed how well fed Maduro looks compared with the emaciated Venezuelans protesting on the streets.

A teacher's monthly salary buys a litre of milk.

Lets talk about what the Venezuelans are suffering. Now feeding stations are to be set up in neighbouring countries to bring aid to the starving.

Lets get back to the nitty gritty and stop talking about the irrelevancies

Human rights are often abandoned in wartime trisher by virtually every country in the world.What about the horrific bombings here in the blitz by Germany?

Well said, lemongrove
and M0nica Sun 03-Feb-19 19:58:12

We should find some balance trisher?
There are horrific acts perpetrated on all sides during wartime but perhaps no excuse for a leader murdering millions of his own citizens, as Stalin did.
Plus others, of course.

What the hell has Dresden got to do with corrupt Venezuela?
I am struggling to find the connection, POGS.

Perhaps comparison with other S American countries such as Chile - Allende to Pinochet?
Do some of these countries veer from one extremist to another?

Perhaps it should be a lesson to all of us.

Sean MacBride was so much more Annie
MacBride was a founding member of Amnesty International and served as its International chairman. He was Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists from 1963 to 1971. Following this, he was also elected Chair (1968–1974) and later President (1974–1985) of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva. He was Vice-President of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation and President of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

He drafted the constitution of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU); and also the first constitution of Ghana (the first UK African colony to achieve independence) which lasted for nine years until the coup of 1966.

Some of MacBride's appointments to the United Nations System included:

Assistant Secretary-General
President of the General Assembly
High Commissioner for Refugees
High Commissioner for Namibia
President of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems, which produced the controversial 1980 MacBride report
He also won the Nobel Peace Prize

So lemongrove human rghts are not then set in stone? In that case the IRA was quite justified in abandonig them. You can't say it's right sometimes and wrong others. Who decides when?

What the hell has Dresden got to do with corrupt Venezuela?

It would fall in line ANYBODY who understands Moduro is corrupt and thousands of his people have been murdered/tortured or missing , the country turned into a dictatorship by his hand would/should condemn the man and those who enable him

Only Moduro apologists believe otherwise.

Getting a peace prize is no guarantee of respectability. Bear in mind Aung San Suu Kyi , the Burmese leader responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohinga people in Burma won the Nobel peace prize

Human rights are often abandoned in wartime trisher by virtually every country in the world.What about the horrific bombings here in the blitz by Germany?
The IRA may have considered themselves ‘at war’ to make their dreadful acts more acceptable to themselves.They were not in a war situation though, it was political.
Corbyn isn’t lauded here at all thankfully because most people see him for what he is: a far left wing rebel who puts any country he thinks of as being in the right and his own country as something less, ( seems to be a failing amongst far left people.)Remember the Salisbury poisonings, he was all for sending the samples to Russia as they had requested and cast doubt over Russia involvement ( almost alone in Parliament over that one!)
He is a weak, vacillating excuse for a politician.

Sean Macbride ? one time Chief of staff of the IRA

Annie would you defend the human rights of the people of Dresden during the carpet bombing of WW2? There were probably more people killed and certainly more property destroyed than in all the IRA bombs combined. What about their human rights?
Or is human rights something we abandon in wartime? (and even then the IRA always considered themselves at war)
Jeremy Corbyn has received two international peace prizes,
The Ghandi Prize in 2013 and the Sean Macbride prize in 2017.
No other British politicaian has received more but he is not lauded for it in the UK. "Verily a prophet is not without honour except in his own country"