"a small, state-connected minority controlling much of a nation’s wealth" is the new definition of "capitalism". Try to keep up. Like redefining "gender" as non-biological (varied and fluid), and "liberal" as intolerant of and committed to suppressing all but The Party approved views. Got it? Like declaring yourself the party of the working class because you have the support of the majority of the nations billionaires. There is a pattern. I'd say "black is white" and "hot is cold" as examples, but then I'd be called racist. [if you are wondering now how "hot" and "cold" have anything to do with race, you're getting it!]
And clearly the Trump assassination attempt was staged. Everybody knows (that always reliable source) that Trump supporters are crazed and willing to commit suicide to further their furor. And Trump, being the devil himself, goes along because he knows he can't be killed with ordinary bullets.
[SARCASM excess alert]
Here's good sport: I've been pointing out in various forums the observation that Harris, the now appointed candidate, received zero votes in 2024 primary elections or caucuses. If you voted as a democrat in the primary, you did not vote for Harris as her name wasn't on the ballot. The common response it to call me a right-wing racist and misogynistic idiot, enumerate the evils of Mr. Trump, vaguely extol the Virtues of Ms. Harris without actually enumerating any beyond skin tone and gender. Some actually assert that her name WAS on their ballot, next to Biden, and that makes it official (so far I've turned up no primary ballot with Harris listed since 2020). One expert even claimed this was in the constitution under duties of the VP (I suppose it might be in some constitution, other than the constitution of the United States of America). I have to admit that interpretation extending taking on the duties of the president when incapacitated to running for reelection isn't the most absurd interpretation of the constitution I've ever heard. I've found, in short, this is an excellent way to irritate the followers of the party (and clear the room at most social gatherings). It gets even richer when I inform them I was once one of them ;-).
All of which supports my theory that Orwell was a time traveler.
It is strangely ironic that I watched an MST short over the weekend, a 1950's industrial film about the life of an american oil worker in Venezuela. Of course, it was slanted toward recruitment and such, but it showed a relatively prosperous country that, at least in the cities, was firmly in the 20th century. It reminded me of those old pictures from Iran and Afghanistan in the same era where the people are in modern clothes and doing well.
By blocking moderate reforms in the 50's and 60's, assassinating, disappearing, etc moderate opposition politicians, and bolstering corporatist regimes, the CIA et al drove a lot of people into the waiting arms of the socialists/communists. Unintended consequences indeed.
Where would we be now if the assassinations in our own country did not happen? If the Kennedys and King, et al had been allowed to remain. I can't imagine we'd be any worse off.
Thank goodness that this will never happen here. Never. Refer to a protest as 'insurrection?' nope never. Try to remove an opposition candidate from the ballot? Of course not. Declare non-conforming thought or speech "misinformation"? nah. Hold a trial based on secret charges, without informing the accused of the actual charges, instructing the jury of the outcome ahead of time by directing them NOT consider if the prosecution established that a crime was committed, withholding evidence and witness lists from the defense and terminating witnesses testimony when it diverged from the prosecutions assertions? Not in this country, Bubba!
I have to stope now - I have exceeded my daily allotment of sarcasm and cynicism.
Well they ran out of other countries to do it to, after they destroyed our industrial base, it was just a matter of time before they got around to us. I guess we should be grateful it is out in the open now. It was so hard to see this happening in the '90's (Gore Vidal warned us for decades before he said 'eff this' and retired in Italy) when no one would believe the 'lunatic fringe'. One of my hobbies is mentally marking off Conspiracy Theories bandied about on Godlike Productions, David Icke and Alex Jones 20 + years ago that have become pretty much substantiated fact these days. The only saving grace is that now more people know. Perhaps that will help somehow.
As the Firesign Theater so preciently sang- We're Bringing the War Back Home! So much for the 'new normal'.
They did the same in 2019 - we actually sanctioned them for it, and then Biden came in and made Maduro pinky swear to run a fair election to get the sanctions lifted. (LOL, Biden strikes again!)
But overall, I think maybe Biden and the Democrats don't want us looking too closely at what happened in Venezuela, because the 'cheat the election' game has gone global -- they use the same tricks as Maduro.
Election fraud exists everywhere. In the States, as far as I know, it wasn't massive until 2020. Two things scare me: 1. That they thought they could get away with it and 2. They did.
Once again why a transparent election system is so important -- the losing side MUST feel like they lost fairly.
The 2020 general election was simply a refined version of the 2004 WA governor's race:
================
Washington is unusual for a U.S. state in that it only requires that an absentee ballot be postmarked by the day of the election to be valid, while most other states require the ballot to have arrived at the election office by that time. Due to this as well as the state's high number of absentee ballots—more than 60% of all King County voters voted absentee—the initial result of the election was not known until November 17, the last day under state law for election results to be certified by each county's election officials.
Yep! I remember in history class when I was a child... seeing the pictures of Russians standing in line for their allotment of bread for the month under the old Soviet Union system. These young people in America that think socialism and communism is a panacea and that everyone is going to be "equal" are completely ignoring the big picture. Socialism and Communism creates equality alright: All of us will be equally poor and destitute. While the monsters at the top own everything and live lavish lives. America has it's problems, there's no doubt. But I've had a damn good life here. It hasn't always been easy, but if I was willing to work, I could make as much money as I wanted to and could get ahead. Under these hellish socialist and communist systems there's almost no opportunity to pull yourself out of the hole because the hole is firmly put in place by the monsters at the top and they make it nearly impossible to do anything on your own. People are "wards of the state" for their entire lives. Innovation, imagination, joy, etc. are almost non-existent. These young people in America have been duped into thinking that "Gay", "Trans", and other "rights" are what they are fighting for. They don't have a clue. We already have those "rights" in America. These young people are being hoodwinked into accepting a system of NO rights or very limited "rights". And once all of our rights are gone, it takes decades to regain them (if ever).
All governments are socialist to some extent, even the pretend "freedom loving" government of the US. Some go well beyond socialism into Marxism and Communism. We are headed there directly. All governments practice centralized control because otherwise they would never be able to coral the citizens into a herd of lemmings.
In 2008-2009 I worked with a guy in his twenties from Venezuela after he moved to Orlando, FL. He hated his country because nobody wanted to work, everyone his age wanted to just sit around and live off the state, so nobody was working.
Kamala is less like trudope, and a lot more like Canada’s deputy prime minister Christian Freeland- another complete failure as politician and finance minister; her specialty is deflecting with word salads, gaslighting and blatant lying.
While Venezuela would be exactly where they are anyway, the embargoes enforced when oil was nationalised has had the desired effect too: break the economy to prove socialism doesn't work.
While nations who in the past had mixed economical models (such as here in Scandinavia) weren't subjected to embargoes while natural resources were national (which they'd been for five centuries in Sweden's case, and succesfully too) and therefore had very succesful economical growth for about a century, up until adopting Hayekian-based neo-liberal economics in the 1990s.
Can't discount the ethnicity of the nation(s) involved: that is the deciding factor over all others. Secondary to that is outside interference in domestic matters - consider Iran before France, Britain and the US started mucking it up when oil was nationalised there too, and Iran after the interference: islamic theocratic dictatorship.
It's almost as if western colonial capitalist powers actively sabotages any nation not wanting to adopt the USUK corporativist-capitalistic economic model, or any nation trying to make business-alliances outside the USUK power sphere (Nordstream being the most recent example).
But Venezueal would still have failed, for the same reason South American banana-republic always fails: high corruption and low mutual trust as an endemic cultural factor.
"inflation hurts the poor the most" Not according to regime economist and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman! He actually said there's no proof for that, lol. Of course, it's true, but he'd never let that get in the way of his support for his paymasters.
Speaking of firing everyone who knows how to get oil out of the ground, the demographic wall in petroleum engineering is having a similar effect, they are retiring and dying. If you have smart kids in school looking for a promising career, petroleum engineering would be an excellent choice. The oil market will continue to be crucial for decades to come.
American universities, especially the premiere Ivy League psychopath factories have long been dominated by Marxist 'intellectuals' in their social science, humanities, and other programs. Marxist indoctrination of American youth spans more than 4 generations on many of these campuses. These institutions produce the bulk of the 'leadership' and functionary corps that manage government AND to a lesser degree corporate operations. So the mythology of socialism is deeply entrenched in the administrative class.
It is also important to look at what made socialism appealing to the masses. American corporations and CIA control of governments, CIA/cartel drug operations, gun running, human trafficking, control via Wall Street bank debt burden, private militias, annexation of indigenous lands and subsequent abuse indigenous populations, etc. etc. Often justified with the excuse of 'fighting communism' - which is not entirely false - of course now it's terrorism. The point being the many of the problems in Latin America are seeded in bad policy and CIA meddling - the US government and corporations have a long despicable history in this part of the world. To what extent this has affected Venezuela I don't know. They were effectively a vassal state of Standard Oil for decades before WWII and continue be a petrostate to this day. Almost complete reliance on a single commodity is a big part of their problem as well.
"So the mythology of socialism is deeply entrenched in the administrative class."
Which is exactly why they've been trying to ignore the downfall of Venezuela for so long. And until the wheels really came off with the death of Chavez, plenty of people were saying it was the socialist paradise finally come to life.
----------
"The point being the many of the problems in Latin America are seeded in bad policy and CIA meddling - the US government and corporations have a long despicable history in this part of the world."
No argument from me on that point, but the CIA didn't force Venezuela into the socialism death spiral.
The CIA didn't *force* Venezuela into the socialism death spiral, they just made "capitalism" look *so bad* that communism seemed like a good idea. And those actions long predate the existence of the CIA, with United Fruit Company going back all the way to the early 1900s, if not the late 1800s.
I understand why landless, penniless peasants in feudalistic societies embrace communism, particularly when the notion of "capitalism" has been used to abuse them for a good long while. I *can't* understand why upper class folks in first world democracies do.
Yes, I think the CIA is the culprit in many other nations, not really so much in Venezuela, but the apologists for failed socialism find it convenient to lump them all together. Each nation is unique of course.
One of the best Central American nations, Costa Rica has been spared meddling by the psychopaths in DC and Wall Street. One reason may be their banking system and election system, both are largely unriggable by design.
Outstanding piece! You're getting better and better at this...
Random report, here in Utah, saw a "Libre Venezuela!!!" sign marked on a car this Monday.
"a small, state-connected minority controlling much of a nation’s wealth" is the new definition of "capitalism". Try to keep up. Like redefining "gender" as non-biological (varied and fluid), and "liberal" as intolerant of and committed to suppressing all but The Party approved views. Got it? Like declaring yourself the party of the working class because you have the support of the majority of the nations billionaires. There is a pattern. I'd say "black is white" and "hot is cold" as examples, but then I'd be called racist. [if you are wondering now how "hot" and "cold" have anything to do with race, you're getting it!]
And clearly the Trump assassination attempt was staged. Everybody knows (that always reliable source) that Trump supporters are crazed and willing to commit suicide to further their furor. And Trump, being the devil himself, goes along because he knows he can't be killed with ordinary bullets.
[SARCASM excess alert]
Here's good sport: I've been pointing out in various forums the observation that Harris, the now appointed candidate, received zero votes in 2024 primary elections or caucuses. If you voted as a democrat in the primary, you did not vote for Harris as her name wasn't on the ballot. The common response it to call me a right-wing racist and misogynistic idiot, enumerate the evils of Mr. Trump, vaguely extol the Virtues of Ms. Harris without actually enumerating any beyond skin tone and gender. Some actually assert that her name WAS on their ballot, next to Biden, and that makes it official (so far I've turned up no primary ballot with Harris listed since 2020). One expert even claimed this was in the constitution under duties of the VP (I suppose it might be in some constitution, other than the constitution of the United States of America). I have to admit that interpretation extending taking on the duties of the president when incapacitated to running for reelection isn't the most absurd interpretation of the constitution I've ever heard. I've found, in short, this is an excellent way to irritate the followers of the party (and clear the room at most social gatherings). It gets even richer when I inform them I was once one of them ;-).
All of which supports my theory that Orwell was a time traveler.
It is strangely ironic that I watched an MST short over the weekend, a 1950's industrial film about the life of an american oil worker in Venezuela. Of course, it was slanted toward recruitment and such, but it showed a relatively prosperous country that, at least in the cities, was firmly in the 20th century. It reminded me of those old pictures from Iran and Afghanistan in the same era where the people are in modern clothes and doing well.
By blocking moderate reforms in the 50's and 60's, assassinating, disappearing, etc moderate opposition politicians, and bolstering corporatist regimes, the CIA et al drove a lot of people into the waiting arms of the socialists/communists. Unintended consequences indeed.
A thought I just had...
Where would we be now if the assassinations in our own country did not happen? If the Kennedys and King, et al had been allowed to remain. I can't imagine we'd be any worse off.
Thank goodness that this will never happen here. Never. Refer to a protest as 'insurrection?' nope never. Try to remove an opposition candidate from the ballot? Of course not. Declare non-conforming thought or speech "misinformation"? nah. Hold a trial based on secret charges, without informing the accused of the actual charges, instructing the jury of the outcome ahead of time by directing them NOT consider if the prosecution established that a crime was committed, withholding evidence and witness lists from the defense and terminating witnesses testimony when it diverged from the prosecutions assertions? Not in this country, Bubba!
I have to stope now - I have exceeded my daily allotment of sarcasm and cynicism.
Well they ran out of other countries to do it to, after they destroyed our industrial base, it was just a matter of time before they got around to us. I guess we should be grateful it is out in the open now. It was so hard to see this happening in the '90's (Gore Vidal warned us for decades before he said 'eff this' and retired in Italy) when no one would believe the 'lunatic fringe'. One of my hobbies is mentally marking off Conspiracy Theories bandied about on Godlike Productions, David Icke and Alex Jones 20 + years ago that have become pretty much substantiated fact these days. The only saving grace is that now more people know. Perhaps that will help somehow.
As the Firesign Theater so preciently sang- We're Bringing the War Back Home! So much for the 'new normal'.
No worries, when they inevitably turn on us, we can start bombing!
USA! USA! USA!
Amazingly, the White House is criticizing Maduro for rigging the election!
They did the same in 2019 - we actually sanctioned them for it, and then Biden came in and made Maduro pinky swear to run a fair election to get the sanctions lifted. (LOL, Biden strikes again!)
But overall, I think maybe Biden and the Democrats don't want us looking too closely at what happened in Venezuela, because the 'cheat the election' game has gone global -- they use the same tricks as Maduro.
Election fraud exists everywhere. In the States, as far as I know, it wasn't massive until 2020. Two things scare me: 1. That they thought they could get away with it and 2. They did.
Once again why a transparent election system is so important -- the losing side MUST feel like they lost fairly.
The 2020 general election was simply a refined version of the 2004 WA governor's race:
================
Washington is unusual for a U.S. state in that it only requires that an absentee ballot be postmarked by the day of the election to be valid, while most other states require the ballot to have arrived at the election office by that time. Due to this as well as the state's high number of absentee ballots—more than 60% of all King County voters voted absentee—the initial result of the election was not known until November 17, the last day under state law for election results to be certified by each county's election officials.
Yep! I remember in history class when I was a child... seeing the pictures of Russians standing in line for their allotment of bread for the month under the old Soviet Union system. These young people in America that think socialism and communism is a panacea and that everyone is going to be "equal" are completely ignoring the big picture. Socialism and Communism creates equality alright: All of us will be equally poor and destitute. While the monsters at the top own everything and live lavish lives. America has it's problems, there's no doubt. But I've had a damn good life here. It hasn't always been easy, but if I was willing to work, I could make as much money as I wanted to and could get ahead. Under these hellish socialist and communist systems there's almost no opportunity to pull yourself out of the hole because the hole is firmly put in place by the monsters at the top and they make it nearly impossible to do anything on your own. People are "wards of the state" for their entire lives. Innovation, imagination, joy, etc. are almost non-existent. These young people in America have been duped into thinking that "Gay", "Trans", and other "rights" are what they are fighting for. They don't have a clue. We already have those "rights" in America. These young people are being hoodwinked into accepting a system of NO rights or very limited "rights". And once all of our rights are gone, it takes decades to regain them (if ever).
Exactly! Relevant article here - with a video of those old Russian stores.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/how-freedom-enriches-us
All governments are socialist to some extent, even the pretend "freedom loving" government of the US. Some go well beyond socialism into Marxism and Communism. We are headed there directly. All governments practice centralized control because otherwise they would never be able to coral the citizens into a herd of lemmings.
SC - Excellent work, keep digging Mr Mulder.
In 2008-2009 I worked with a guy in his twenties from Venezuela after he moved to Orlando, FL. He hated his country because nobody wanted to work, everyone his age wanted to just sit around and live off the state, so nobody was working.
Kamala is less like trudope, and a lot more like Canada’s deputy prime minister Christian Freeland- another complete failure as politician and finance minister; her specialty is deflecting with word salads, gaslighting and blatant lying.
That's a better comparison. Obama was more like Trudeau.
While Venezuela would be exactly where they are anyway, the embargoes enforced when oil was nationalised has had the desired effect too: break the economy to prove socialism doesn't work.
While nations who in the past had mixed economical models (such as here in Scandinavia) weren't subjected to embargoes while natural resources were national (which they'd been for five centuries in Sweden's case, and succesfully too) and therefore had very succesful economical growth for about a century, up until adopting Hayekian-based neo-liberal economics in the 1990s.
Can't discount the ethnicity of the nation(s) involved: that is the deciding factor over all others. Secondary to that is outside interference in domestic matters - consider Iran before France, Britain and the US started mucking it up when oil was nationalised there too, and Iran after the interference: islamic theocratic dictatorship.
It's almost as if western colonial capitalist powers actively sabotages any nation not wanting to adopt the USUK corporativist-capitalistic economic model, or any nation trying to make business-alliances outside the USUK power sphere (Nordstream being the most recent example).
But Venezueal would still have failed, for the same reason South American banana-republic always fails: high corruption and low mutual trust as an endemic cultural factor.
"inflation hurts the poor the most" Not according to regime economist and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman! He actually said there's no proof for that, lol. Of course, it's true, but he'd never let that get in the way of his support for his paymasters.
Selling out long before covid made it cool.
Thanks. I try. I want to be a big meanie someday.
Speaking of firing everyone who knows how to get oil out of the ground, the demographic wall in petroleum engineering is having a similar effect, they are retiring and dying. If you have smart kids in school looking for a promising career, petroleum engineering would be an excellent choice. The oil market will continue to be crucial for decades to come.
Just goes to show how government attitudes can dissuade an entire industry from existence.
It's kind of impressive how utterly fucking retarded the NYT is.
People who read NYT and believe they are well-informed are even more retarded.
How anyone can take them seriously so many years after Judy Miller I'll never understand. Most people are just too comfortable with the lies.
Ironically, the article wasn't TOO bad until that whopper. Bad, but not NYT bad.
I guess the editor took care of that ;)
Shoot, just realized there was no link to the original article! My bad:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/americas/venezuela-election-results.html
archived to avoid paywall, being Marxists, the NYT should appreciate giving their content away:
https://archive.vn/4tRjm
Oh yeah, there's a paywall. I use Reader Mode so don't have to worry about that. *nudge nudge*
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhconnjiflfimocjggfjdlmlhblm
Wow. Thanks, Messiers Sim and Bill.
American universities, especially the premiere Ivy League psychopath factories have long been dominated by Marxist 'intellectuals' in their social science, humanities, and other programs. Marxist indoctrination of American youth spans more than 4 generations on many of these campuses. These institutions produce the bulk of the 'leadership' and functionary corps that manage government AND to a lesser degree corporate operations. So the mythology of socialism is deeply entrenched in the administrative class.
It is also important to look at what made socialism appealing to the masses. American corporations and CIA control of governments, CIA/cartel drug operations, gun running, human trafficking, control via Wall Street bank debt burden, private militias, annexation of indigenous lands and subsequent abuse indigenous populations, etc. etc. Often justified with the excuse of 'fighting communism' - which is not entirely false - of course now it's terrorism. The point being the many of the problems in Latin America are seeded in bad policy and CIA meddling - the US government and corporations have a long despicable history in this part of the world. To what extent this has affected Venezuela I don't know. They were effectively a vassal state of Standard Oil for decades before WWII and continue be a petrostate to this day. Almost complete reliance on a single commodity is a big part of their problem as well.
"So the mythology of socialism is deeply entrenched in the administrative class."
Which is exactly why they've been trying to ignore the downfall of Venezuela for so long. And until the wheels really came off with the death of Chavez, plenty of people were saying it was the socialist paradise finally come to life.
----------
"The point being the many of the problems in Latin America are seeded in bad policy and CIA meddling - the US government and corporations have a long despicable history in this part of the world."
No argument from me on that point, but the CIA didn't force Venezuela into the socialism death spiral.
The CIA didn't *force* Venezuela into the socialism death spiral, they just made "capitalism" look *so bad* that communism seemed like a good idea. And those actions long predate the existence of the CIA, with United Fruit Company going back all the way to the early 1900s, if not the late 1800s.
I understand why landless, penniless peasants in feudalistic societies embrace communism, particularly when the notion of "capitalism" has been used to abuse them for a good long while. I *can't* understand why upper class folks in first world democracies do.
Marxism was effectively weaponized by the Hapsburgs to destroy Russia. It worked. We've been plagued by this cancer ever since.
Yes, I think the CIA is the culprit in many other nations, not really so much in Venezuela, but the apologists for failed socialism find it convenient to lump them all together. Each nation is unique of course.
One of the best Central American nations, Costa Rica has been spared meddling by the psychopaths in DC and Wall Street. One reason may be their banking system and election system, both are largely unriggable by design.
Hold on to your guns, amigos. That's the only thing keeping these tyrants in check.
correct, like.
Only if they get used.