Venezuela: Resistance or disintegration?

[angelburst29]

The lawyer of García Palomo says he was tortured, as he had bruises in the stomach, cuts on the legs, burns on the wrists and that he was injected with some substance on the hands. Having said that, his story, tone of voice and body language ring true to me. Perhaps he thought it best to speak out because his main concern was preventing a US invasion?

This is even more interesting because yesterday Maria Zakharova said that Russia concluded that the US had already made the decision to invade Venezuela. Did they reach that conclusion because they watched the video and found it to be credible?

I have yet to come across a statement given by Maria Zakharova to be false - proof always surfaces to back up her claims - so plans for a US Military invasion of Venezuela is a strong possibility.

Moscow: Washington Already Made Decision on Forceful Intervention in Venezuela
The United States is working on scenarios for regime change in Venezuela, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated at a weekly briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

Several reports have surfaced in the news that Maduro suspects the build up of Humanitarian Aid on the Columbian/Venezuela Border is a mask for a US Military invasion. My thoughts - a strong possibility. I'm still of the opinion, what is being offered up as Humanitarian aid was stripped from the Venezuelan shelves (months ago) passed through the Border into Columbia and then was stocked in a warehouse?

The United States has declared a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela to create a cover for its military plans, President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro stated while speaking at the Plaza Bolivar in the centre of Caracas during a campaign to collect signatures against a US intervention in the country.

Fri Feb 08, 2019 - Maduro Accuses US of Using Humanitarian Crisis as Cover for Military Plans
Farsnews

"The humanitarian crisis is only a cover for the military plans of the [Donald] Trump government. The whole crisis in Venezuela is that the United States imposed sanctions and imposed a financial blockade", he stated, RIA Novosti reported.

Maduro came to the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas on Thursday, where one of the signature collection centres had been set up, accompanied by his spouse Cilia Flores. Both put their signatures on the letter to President Donald Trump. The campaign aims to collect at least 10,000 signatures against US intervention in Venezuela.

Large numbers of Venezuelan citizens have come out to sign a petition against possible US intervention, as government activists began gathering signatures for a campaign to showcase “support for peace” amid mounting threats, according to RT. Maduro announced that the pamphlet openly condemning Trump’s potential intervention in the ongoing political turmoil would be circulated country-wide.

“I thank people that came to Bolivar Square in Venezuela to sign a petition and speak against the interference of the US empire into the affairs of our Motherland. This is a wonderful manifestation of love and consciousness. We are going to collect 10 million signatures for peace!” Maduro tweeted.

Russia Says Guaido Is Not Independent, No Use Talking to Him
Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido coordinates his every step with a foreign country and Moscow sees no point in communicating with a dependent figure, the Russian foreign ministry said.

US Envoy to Venezuela: Time for Dialogue with Maduro 'Has Long Passed'
Elliott Abrams, US President Donald Trump's special envoy to Venezuela, told a US State Department press briefing Thursday that the time for dialogue with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has "long passed" and advised other countries to deal with Juan Guaido, the self-appointed interim president recognized by Washington.

Venezuelan FM: Caracas Ready to Negotiate with Opposition ‘within Next 15 Days’
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza stated that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is ready to sit at the negotiating table with the opposition “within the next 15 days”, even as he voices skepticism about opposition intentions to pursue real dialog.

 

[Joe]

The capitalists would argue that human beings are compelled by self interest alone, yet they cannot fathom that self interest is dialectically related with the interests of the masses in society

Human beings are under the influence of various forces or ideas, including self-interest and, at times, altruism. There are psychopaths in all walks of life, and the ambitious ones can be found at the forefront of any political ideology or economic system. It seems to be the case, however, that under a capitalist economic system psychopaths can more easily hide 'in plain sight' because that system encourages overt self-interest in all of the people living under it by promoting it as not only 'natural' but a noble ideal. In addition, such an ideology finds fertile ground in the minds of most people because most people ARE self interested to a large extent. Extreme excesses and corruption under a capitalist system are therefore viewed as merely the work of those who are the 'best' at being capitalist, an an example which should be followed. Unlike socialism, extreme corruption and self-interest produces no internal contradiction in a capitalist system.

 

[Joe]

Thing is, capitalists can be unselfish (to the degree this is possible for humans) as well, and often are. I'm not talking about pseudo-philantropic billionaires (though that can be genuine as well), but about all those SME owners who feel responsible for their employees and who work extremely hard.

But that's not capitalism as we know it today, which is defined by a massively rich elite with the rest of the people increasingly poor.

 

[mabar]

Extreme excesses and corruption under a capitalist system are therefore viewed as merely the work of those who are the 'best' at being capitalist, an an example which should be followed. Unlike socialism, extreme corruption and self-interest produces no internal contradiction in a capitalist system.

Pretty much of what is about in the book of Pemex Rip (what I post back is just a little tiny hail of the iceberg) and the goverment through the sexenniums... After 70 years of the same party in power (PRI), the PAN (Fox, Calderón) entered ... corruption didn't change much, was very common to hear people saying that they "stole less" ... ok??? and one has to thank them???, then came the PRIAN (Peña Nieto's government), bread of the same ... AMLO won, many people I know are in a panic because, how dare he(goverment) support Maduro not going against him???? ... propaganda has been working very well in this region, some/many people have a huge terror that Mexico will become Venezuela 2.0 ...

Marco Rubio begins to bother with subtleties, but I think it will go up in tone, I hope the government endures.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Extreme excesses and corruption under a capitalist system are therefore viewed as merely the work of those who are the 'best' at being capitalist, an an example which should be followed.

Except that if public opinion is anything to judge by, people do NOT see the corrupt excess as the best to be followed. They tend to see it as excessive and corrupt. I've met very few people who idolize wealth gotten by corruption. Most people tend not to like rent-seekers and freeloaders. And to the extent that movements like Occupy were NOT motivated simply by jealousy, it is because people are naturally repulsed by corruption. As for "extreme excess", that's trickier because in some situations it can be seen as immoral, but not in others. Most people don't have a problem with excess, as long as that extreme wealth is perceived as having been earned relatively fairly, e.g., through hard work or talent. That's where psychopaths can operate: if they can give the impression of being hard workers or talented and hide the corruption, fakery, and real exploitation they've used to get where they are. Once they're exposed, they're generally reviled, even among other rich people. (That doesn't mean they get their comeuppance, though - their influence can often protect them from that.)

Found this while doing some searching:

A substantial majority of Americans – 65% – say the economic system in this country “unfairly favors powerful interests.” Fewer than half as many (31%) say the system “is generally fair to most Americans.” (US economic system unfair, say most Americans)

One of the reasons Trump was so popular was because even Republicans (not the rich ones) see politicians and "the 1%" as a bunch of corrupt goons who aren't looking out for their best interests. (Bannon's strategy highlighted this.) But even those 31% mentioned in the quote aren't totally delusional. For instance:

The 1% isn't a class of individuals; it's an income bracket with fairly permeable borders. But that's not to say that income inequality isn't a problem, either. It does lead to revolutionary sentiments, especially when the rich are perceived as a 'class' of exploiters (even if that class is much less numerous than assumed) who haven't earned their wealth or position fairly. I think that perhaps the problem is that our society doesn't a means of resetting the balance. Maybe Michael Hudson's example of periodic debt relief in ancient Mesopotamia was one such method (haven't read his book to judge one way or the other). But then there's also the argument of Walter Scheidel in The Great Leveler that the only solutions to inevitable inequality is collapse or catastrophe of one sort of another.

I'm skeptical that 'capitalism' is much of an ideology at all. (I think perhaps that marxism was basically an ideology that manufactured an ideology out of capitalism that didn't really exist.) It seems to me to be more of just the way humans tend to organize themselves economically in groups larger than a family or perhaps tribe, though there is inequality even in tribes. You don't need an ideology to produce something and sell it. And as long as there have been humans there has been disparity of wealth, influence, and every other measure. And for various reasons, including something as simple as access to rivers meeting the ocean/sea - see Thomas Sowell's books for more examples of the chance factors leading to wealth disparities between groups.

Basically I don't think the problem is so much capitalism as it is materialism. Inequality will ALWAYS exist. But it's materialism that provides an implicit and sometimes explicit justification for bad behavior. And it's religion - i.e. a system of actual values - that provides the motivation and justification to hopefully mitigate inevitable inequality: through charity, for instance. We can't escape 'capitalism', I don't think. We can either seek to control it through state coercion and intervention (e.g. socialism), or regulate it individually as groups through the adoption of a set of values.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

'Saving human lives': The US puppet Juan Guaido will 'authorize' a US intervention to kill the civilians who support Maduro - 'They are not humans, but just Maduro's supporters'.

Venezuela’s self-proclaimed ‘president’ Guaido isn’t ruling out ‘authorizing’ US intervention
9 Feb, 2019

 

[Hi_Henry]

Basically I don't think the problem is so much capitalism as it is materialism. Inequality will ALWAYS exist. But it's materialism that provides an implicit and sometimes explicit justification for bad behavior. .

You hit it on the nail there. One could go a few steps further but that suffices for now.

 

[Joe]

Except that if public opinion is anything to judge by, people do NOT see the corrupt excess as the best to be followed. They tend to see it as excessive and corrupt. I've met very few people who idolize wealth gotten by corruption. Most people tend not to like rent-seekers and freeloaders. And to the extent that movements like Occupy were NOT motivated simply by jealousy, it is because people are naturally repulsed by corruption. As for "extreme excess", that's trickier because in some situations it can be seen as immoral, but not in others. Most people don't have a problem with excess, as long as that extreme wealth is perceived as having been earned relatively fairly, e.g., through hard work or talent.

I'm not sure public opinion, via polls, is anything to go by. People aren't very self-aware and will denounce the rich elite when asked but secretly admire them and wish to be like them. That's the allure and the trap I suppose. As for corrupt excess, there's a problem with what defines that, it's kind of murky these days (think of the term 'lovable rogues') and is likely to change from person to person. In any case, people will perhaps honestly denounce corrupt methods of getting rich, but only the corrupt methods part, not the rich part. And the corrupt are well able to successfully obscure their corrupt methods, or spin them as 'savvy'.

Basically I don't think the problem is so much capitalism as it is materialism

My point really was that the USA today has been defined by the 'century of the self, and it is has leveraged capitalism to promote that kind of crass materialism, so I don't think you can separate the two in terms of what we see in the West today. People have been made party to the corruption, in many cases their livelihoods depend on it: consider the number of people employed by "defense contractors". Tell one of those people that their employer is actively bribing politicians to wage wars so that the weapons that the employees manufacture can be used on innocent people, and they may not like it, but their jobs depend on them finding some way to rationalize it.

 

[luc]

I'm skeptical that 'capitalism' is much of an ideology at all. (I think perhaps that marxism was basically an ideology that manufactured an ideology out of capitalism that didn't really exist.) It seems to me to be more of just the way humans tend to organize themselves economically in groups larger than a family or perhaps tribe, though there is inequality even in tribes. You don't need an ideology to produce something and sell it. And as long as there have been humans there has been disparity of wealth, influence, and every other measure. And for various reasons, including something as simple as access to rivers meeting the ocean/sea - see Thomas Sowell's books for more examples of the chance factors leading to wealth disparities between groups.

I think that's a great observation. Come to think of it, capitalism as a theory (Hayek, Friedman etc.) has a very schizoidal flavour that's very similar to Marxism. Sure, they make some good points perhaps (just like Marx), but just like Marxism it's a gross, almost criminal over-simplification of what human life looks like.

I think since reading Darwinian Fairytales I finally understand what it is that these schizoidal theories do to our thinking: they steal the richness of our human experience. They narrow our field of vision to such an extent that we can only perceive a complete caricature of life - if even that!

Take "capitalism" - the "free market" and all that is just a way of saying that people engage in exchanges of energy, in one form or another. That's all! Duh.

In modern times, they often do it with money, but not exclusively. It's often a totally mixed bag of mutual exchange where money is one factor, but a myriad of other factors play into it: someone just likes to have someone else around, someone likes having power over someone else, someone likes helping people he likes, someone wants to work in a good atmosphere, someone wants to have a surrogate family, someone likes being helped with certain things, someone is in love with a colleague and so on and so forth. The whole richness of the human experience!

Personally, I have seen tons of corporations, large and small, tons of employees and business owners on all levels of the hierarchy, and never ever has anything I've seen corresponded with any of these schizoidal theories, both capitalist and Marxist. These theories proclaim that we all are "profit maximizers", selfish and in a constant fight for resources and so on, and it's just ridiculous. People - no matter where they are in the hierarchy - have diverse goals, dreams, aspirations, problems, pathologies, selfishness, altruism, love, hate, thinking errors, goodness, temperaments etc., and these all play out in human interactions in infinite ways. And what is business life if not just another form of human interaction that has a specific set of rules? How could it be otherwise? Human life is so diverse and rich!

One problem today though is that these schizoidals and pathologicals who think up all this stuff (because their own worldview is pathologically narrow) managed, to a degree, to "make the world in their own image". So in some ways today's world actually corresponds to these schizoidal theories - think mega-corporations, for example. But interestingly, from my experience, the richness of human life almost always manages to shine through, no matter how hard they try!

 

[Niall]

My conclusion so far is that the Maduro govt's 'crime' is that it was not brutal enough towards that segment of its own people who are constitutionally brutal. In the US, people caught (and legally tried, assuming they survive long enough to make it to trial) for committing acts of sabotage and terrorism would be either sentenced to death or sentenced to life in prison. In Venezuela, they're put under house arrest or jailed until granted amnesty because they proclaim themselves 'the political opposition'. In that respect, the Bolivarian regime is naive and socialistic and 'oh-can't-we-all-just-get-along'.

We're looking at a variation of the hybrid war against Syria here, so beware falling for, as Lobaczewski put it, "demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique." Venezuela's 'moderate rebels' are vile, and thus they of course find common cause with Western pathocrats from Washington to Ottawa to London to Paris to Tel-Aviv.

 

[Hi_Henry]

My conclusion so far is that the Maduro govt's 'crime' is that it was not brutal enough towards that segment of its own people who are constitutionally brutal. In the US, people caught (and legally tried) for committing acts of sabotage and terrorism would be either sentenced to death or sentenced to life in prison.

At time it may be just words, too loud voicing of opinion or living too close to the Constitution Life Style. Tiring subject trying to point these things out to those who find gospel truth on CNN or FOX News.

 

[Joe]

One problem today though is that these schizoidals and pathologicals who think up all this stuff (because their own worldview is pathologically narrow) managed, to a degree, to "make the world in their own image". So in some ways today's world actually corresponds to these schizoidal theories - think mega-corporations, for example. But interestingly, from my experience, the richness of human life almost always manages to shine through, no matter how hard they try!

Is it possible that your reading on anti-Darwinism is making you swing a bit too far in the opposite direction, towards seeing the wonderful complexity of life etc. and extrapolating from there to the inherent goodness in people? IMO, it's not that people are inherently evil, but that they are all too easily manipulated to support evil goals. Most of them are fickle, and cannot be relied on to be consistent and 'true' to an aim, mainly because they don't really have a fixed aim that is not subject to the changes of life. Everything can be rosy in 'good times' when its easy, but when things turn bad, when the pressure mounts, it would be a mistake, IMO, to assume that most people can be relied on not fall prey to the dominant ideology, however destructive it might be.

 

[luc]

Is it possible that your reading on anti-Darwinism is making you swing a bit too far in the opposite direction, towards seeing the wonderful complexity of life etc. and extrapolating from there to the inherent goodness in people? IMO, it's not that people are inherently evil, but that they are all too easily manipulated to support evil goals. Most of them are fickle, and cannot be relied on to be consistent and 'true' to an aim, mainly because they don't really have a fixed aim that is not subject to the changes of life. Everything can be rosy in 'good times' when its easy, but when things turn bad, when the pressure mounts, it would be a mistake, IMO, to assume that most people can be relied on not fall prey to the dominant ideology, however destructive it might be.

Of course! I didn't mean to imply that all is rosy with human nature. I just think it's much more rich and complex than any of these ideologies allow - both in the good and the bad direction. And what we see playing out in our world, I think, is a strong tilt towards the bad, for all the many reasons we discuss here. My point was just that these various theories and ideologies make us lose touch with our own experience and with common sense and completely warp our perception - and as you say, people easily fall prey to these things.

Perhaps my comment about "richness shining through" was a bit confusing (or confused). What I meant was that even in highly pathological environments, such as in mega-corporations let's say, where a strong ideology is "dictated", humans will still be humans, with all the good and all the bad stuff. If you dictate them an ideology that "all humans are good", they will still be scheming and lying. If you dictate them that "all humans are only maximizing their profit in capitalism", they will still be staying in that low-paying job because they have some friends there and so on. All of that doesn't make it better necessarily; it's just an observation about how completely wrong all these ideologies are in describing reality.

 

[Pierre]

I'm skeptical that 'capitalism' is much of an ideology at all. (I think perhaps that marxism was basically an ideology that manufactured an ideology out of capitalism that didn't really exist.) It seems to me to be more of just the way humans tend to organize themselves economically in groups larger than a family or perhaps tribe, though there is inequality even in tribes. You don't need an ideology to produce something and sell it. And as long as there have been humans there has been disparity of wealth, influence, and every other measure. And for various reasons, including something as simple as access to rivers meeting the ocean/sea - see Thomas Sowell's books for more examples of the chance factors leading to wealth disparities between groups.

Capitalism, is called a theory to provide a gloss of scientific legitimacy to it. Like marxism, psychoanylisis or darwinism these are projections of schizoid individuals.

Capitalism stands on a bunch of "hypothesis": self-regulating markets (the invisible hand of the market), perfect economic agents (getting the same information at the same time), profit maximization (as sole goal of economic agents), balance through supply and demand (including the wealth distribution between labor and capital), etc.

Those "hypothesis" have been proved wrong again and again, when the "hypothesis" on which a "theory" stands are so obviously wrong, it is not a theory anymore, it is an ideology, i.e. a set of beliefs.

Not only capitalism is an economic ideology but it is also a sociopolitical ideology because it asserts very specific motivation to individuals and model of society.

From this perspective, darwinism and capitalism are very similar. They are both fundamentally based on predation. Darwinism is to biology, what capitalism is to economy. Both enforce a purely materialistic and individualistic vision of the world where people are exclusively driven by selfishness/greed and where 'nature' rewards those traits (survival of the fittest/success of the greediest).

The main virtue of capitalism was to deconstruct the insanity of marxism and vice versa. Like any good schizoidal ideology, they are very good at debunking competing ideologies but very poor at spotting their own inconsistencies.

 

[angelburst29]

According to this article, the US has been manipulating Venezuela's political climate since the early 1950's.

US ‘Regime Changes’: The Historical Record

Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019

During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.

In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years.

In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power and replaced by the independent, anti-imperialist government led by President Chavez.

The free and democratic election of President Chavez withstood and defeated several US led ‘regime changes’ over the following two decades.

Following the election of President Maduro, under US direction,Washington mounted the political machinery for a new regime change. Washington launched, in full throttle, a coup by the winter of 2019.

The record of US intervention in Venezuela is mixed: a middle term military coup lasted less than a decade; US directed electoral regimes were in power for forty years; its replacement by an elected anti-imperialist populist government has been in power for nearly 20 years. A virulent US directed coup is underfoot today.

The Venezuela experience with ‘regime change’ speaks to US capacity to consummate long-term control if it can reshuffle its power base from a military dictatorship into an electoral regime, financed through the pillage of oil, backed by a reliable military and ‘legitimated’ by alternating client political parties which accept submission to Washington.

US client regimes are ruled by oligarchic elites, with little entrepreneurial capacity, living off of state rents (oil revenues).

Tied closely to the US, the ruling elites are unable to secure popular loyalty. Client regimes depend on the military strength of the Pentagon —but that is also their weakness.