{"id":39655,"date":"2017-08-05T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39655"},"modified":"2017-08-04T11:07:41","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T15:07:41","slug":"at-least-someone-on-the-left-is-willing-to-find-fault-with-venezuelas-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/05\/at-least-someone-on-the-left-is-willing-to-find-fault-with-venezuelas-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"At least someone<\/em> on the left is willing to find fault with Venezuela’s leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course, when I say “find fault”, I mean “criticize for not being even more horrible<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London, has blamed the turmoil in Venezuela on the unwillingness of the former president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, to execute \u201coligarchs\u201d after he came to power.<\/p>\n

Livingstone, who is suspended from the Labour party, also blamed the economic crisis in the country on the government\u2019s failure to take his advice on investment in infrastructure, which he said would have reduced the Latin American state\u2019s dependence on oil.<\/p>\n

The former mayor, a longtime supporter of the late president Ch\u00e1vez and his successor Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, said the socialist leader\u2019s enemies wanted to restore their power.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that Ch\u00e1vez did when he came to power, he didn\u2019t kill all the oligarchs. There was about 200 families who controlled about 80% of the wealth in Venezuela,\u201d Livingstone told Talk Radio.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe allowed them to live, to carry on. I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro.\u201d When pressed, Livingstone said he was \u201cnot in favour of killing anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n

Livingstone visited Venezuela during his time in office as mayor of London, striking a cut-price oil deal with Maduro to supply Transport for London. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has also regularly expressed his admiration for Ch\u00e1vez, saying in 2013 he was \u201can inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics in Europe\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of course, when I say “find fault”, I mean “criticize for not being even more horrible“: Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London, has blamed the turmoil in Venezuela on the unwillingness of the former president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, to execute \u201coligarchs\u201d after he came to power. Livingstone, who is suspended from the Labour party, also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,53],"tags":[86,76,398],"class_list":["post-39655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-politics","tag-criticism","tag-socialism","tag-venezuela"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ajB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39657,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39655\/revisions\/39657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}