This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: Truth, Lies, & Venezuela
Authored by Ricardo Hausmann, originally posted at Project Syndicate,
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has a problem with me again. The government-controlled national television station recently broadcast an illegally taped private phone conversation in which I proposed a study to explore how to rescue the Venezuelan economy by leveraging the support of the international community. The government unsuccessfully edited the recording to make what was said sound nefarious, lied about the conversation’s meaning and about me, and plans to prosecute me.
This got me thinking about the eternal problem of evil. Is it entirely relative, or are there objective grounds to characterize a behavior or act as evil? Do all confrontations occur between legitimate parties – with, say, one person’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter – or can we say that some fights really are between good and evil?
As the son of Holocaust survivors, I have always had an intuitive aversion to moral relativism. But what objective grounds are there to say that the Nazis were evil? As Hannah Arendt famously pointed out, people like Adolf Eichmann were plentiful and “neither perverted nor sadistic”; rather, “they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” A similar normality emerges from Thomas Harding’s portrait of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, a man proud of having excelled at his assigned task.
So what do we mean by evil in the first place?
Moral philosophy has taken two very different approaches to this question. For some, the goal is to find universal principles from which to derive moral judgments: Kant’s categorical imperative, Bentham’s utilitarian principle, and John Rawls’s veil of ignorance are some of the best-known examples.
For others, the key is to understand why we have moral sentiments in the first place. Why have our brains evolved to generate feelings of empathy, disgust, indignation, solidarity, and pity? David Hume and Adam Smith pioneered this way of thinking, which eventually spawned the fields of evolutionary and moral psychology.
According to this latter view, moral sentiments evolved to sustain human cooperation. We are programmed by our genes to feel concern for babies and empathy for people in pain. We seek others’ recognition and avoid their rejection. We feel better about ourselves when we do good and worse when we do bad. These are the underpinnings of our unconscious moral sense.
As a consequence, I doubt that any modern society has ever broadly supported what they saw as evil. Events like the Holocaust or the genocides in Ukraine (1932-1933), Cambodia (1975-1979), or Rwanda (1994) have been based either on secrecy or on the dissemination of a distorted worldview designed to make evil appear good.
Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for everything: Germany’s defeat in World War I, universal moral values that prevented the Aryan race from exerting its superiority, and both communism and capitalism. Ukrainians were accused of being Polish spies, kulaks, Trotskyites, and whatever else Stalin could invent.
The spread of evil requires lies, because lies form the basis of the worldview that makes evil seem good. But the dependence of big evil on big lies gives us a chance to fight back.
The biologist Martin Nowak has argued that the only way humans have been able to sustain cooperation is by developing cheap ways to punish misbehavior. To discourage A from hurting B, the reaction of C can be important, because if A knows that C will punish him for what he does to B, he might think twice before hurting B.
But if punishment is risky or costly for C, she may not do much to A, making A feel unconstrained. But if C can punish A in a cheap and even enjoyable way, the threat to A may be more substantial.
According to this view, the need to solve this conundrum is the evolutionary basis of gossip and reputation. Humans love to gossip, and gossip can harm our reputation, which in turn affects how others treat us. So punishment through gossip is both cheap and pleasant – and A’s fear of becoming the subject of gossip by C may be enough to deter bad behavior toward B.
This opens an important avenue for the control of evil. As US Senator and Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.” So one way to contain evil is by attacking the lies on which it is based and condemning those who propound them.
In the US, there is a natural tendency to punish political candidates when they lie, but mostly about their personal peccadillos. It would be great, for example, if Donald Trump’s calumnies about Mexicans made him unelectable. If a country’s political culture is such that all agree on condemning intentional lies and liars, especially when their goal is to promote hatred, a country may avoid big evil.
But this is not the case in Venezuela. Its government has run the country’s economy and society into the ground, overseeing the world’s steepest decline in output, highest inflation rate, and second highest murder rate, not to mention shortages beyond compare. And now it is systematically lying about the causes of the mess it created and inventing scapegoats.
Maduro’s government blames its economic collapse on an “economic war” led by the US, the oligarchy, and international financial Zionism, of which I am supposedly an agent. The problem is that the government has paid almost no cost for its systematic lies, even when these involve scapegoating poor Colombians for Venezuela’s shortages, and illegally expelling hundreds of them, and destroying their homes.
While Latin American former presidents have spoken out against this outrage, important leaders such as President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and President Michelle Bachelet of Chile have remained quiet. They should heed Albert Einstein’s warning: “The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”
»
- 11190 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I feel that despite the inconveniences faced by Venezuelans, they will rally around this government and propel it to a landslide win in December's elections. Just a gut feeling.
A jew complaining about lies? What has the world come to?
seriously.. those Rothschild palaces aren't lies but they were built from them
Next step for Venezuela is North Korean style prison camps. Disagree with dear leader??? You, your kids, and your grandkids get a free pass to permanent vacation followed by a long dirt nap. Probably coming to a town near you in the not too distant future Utopian dream, the USSA.
Venezuelans must be proud to have propped up the Castros for so long, and must feel ashamed they can no longer do so.
"Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for everything."
Thank god we don't have any of that on Zero Hedge!
Fuck you ass kissing scumbag.
http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/j...
Explain this, shit for brains.
Nazis and Jews got along so well in the 1930s that the Geman government struck a commerative medal for it.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/09/07/Nazi_Zionism.html
Fuck YOU.
http://biblebelievers.org.au/expelled.htm
The fastest way Venezuela could recover would be to burn down their central bank and return to silver. Everything else is bullshit. Hanging a few central bankers in public would be a moral booster for sure.
True - but it's not their fault they're as dumb as they are.
The white colonizers were so much better.
‘Extreme Dishonesty’ And A ‘Quite Deceptive’ Report:
‘I think what's happened in Latin America in the past 10 years is probably the most exciting and positive development to take place in the world. For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence. Furthermore internally there was a model that was followed pretty closely by each of the countries: a very small Europeanised, often white elite that concentrated enormous wealth in the midst of incredible poverty. And this is a region, especially South America, which are very rich in resources which you would expect under proper conditions to develop far better than east Asia for example but it hasn't happened.’
http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=638:extreme-dishonesty-the-guardian-noam-chomsky-and-venezuela&catid=24:alerts-2011&Itemid=173
Prosecutions for political views are already coming to France, Germany and England.
A shit complaining about a saint. Your world will end and the Jews will be forever.
And you wnder why we hate you? And why 100+ countries/governments kick you to the curb?
You smug assholes are going to get yours at the hands of the goyim, just wait.
The fix is in on Venezuela; they collapse, the people (military) rise up in a bloody revolution, and then they dollarize.
"... propel it to a landslide win in December's elections"
They'll reap what they sow.
Venezuela may very well be making monster policy errors feeding this reported economic decline, but it would be terribly naive to discount US actions via the CIA, et al, to undermine this Venezuelan regime.
Wasn't much of a Holocaust if there were so many survivors.. Pompeii was a holocaust... Hiroshima was a holocaust, Pripyat was a holocaust... and yes the Kulaks but liars like this guy weave in truths to give their bullshit substance instead of just being complete diarrhea
the more downvotes just shows there are lots of survivors and thus was a mere fart than a holocaust
What it shows is that you are a sick fuck. And I ain't Jewish.
Well when you realize that there never were any gas chambers (impossible technically and logistically) and most of these deaths were starvation after the end of war when many of the German soldiers starved too since the supply lines were all cut off. If soldiers starve so do their prisoners. I guess no one else died except Jews during WWII? Japan didn't kill anyone in China and Japan didn't get nuked? Bolsheviks murdering their own people by the millions? In fact just study WWI and you'll wake up to the real atrocities
"...In the US, there is a natural tendency to punish political candidates when they lie, but mostly about their personal peccadillos...."
Bull shit.
Now if you'd said something like "..there used to be a tendency to punish political candidates when they lie..." I might have agreeded.
But I have to say bull shit.
Agreed.
Maybe it was meant to read as
In the US, there is a natural tendency to punish political candidates when they tell the truth
/s
This guy is proly on your side peeps. Not to be concern trolling but a broader brush than necessary seems to be used sometimes. Venezuela seems to be a classic case of Atlas Shrugged combined with a leader who apparently didn't take macro economics 101 in college lol. It is painful to watch because I spent time there and it used to be one of the highest income countries in Latin america
Venezuela is a place blessed with huge natural resources and even great scenic beauty. I went twice to Venezuela pre-Chavez, it had its problems, but it also had a future. Too bad their people opted for Chavez & Maduro.
But then, the USA opted for Obama...........
And then there was Jimmy Carter to certify the bogus election.
No one lies like the Nobel Prize Winner:
US Declares Venezuela a Threat to ‘National Security’Global Research, March 09, 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-declares-venezuela-a-threat-to-national-...
China Undermines Washington’s “Economic War” against Venezuela
In countering US economic aggression against Venezuela, China steps in with a 10 billion dollar loan. China is making a habit of bailing out countries targeted by US sanctionsThe recent fall in oil prices is one contributor to Venezuela financial pressure. Interest rates on bonds have risen again. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claimed the US is responsible for the fall in oil prices late last year. “Are you aware that an oil war rages?” said Maduro on Monday in a broadcast speech to businessmen. “This war has one goal – to destroy Russia.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-undermines-washingtons-economic-war-a...
"US Declares Venezuela a Threat to ‘National Security’"
Which is why you eventually have to eliminate incompetency or misguided intentions from Venezuela's leadership, as the likely cause for their sub-70 IQ level decisions.
At this point, no matter what their posturing and rhetoric says, you have to conclude that they have been corrupted and bought off by US interests.
The only thing that their People can do, is to get the military to throw out the regime, and keep peace while they hold new elections.
The alternative, and probably a better and wiser one, is to become a Chinese protectorate and have the Chinese whip them into shape. Which will never happen, of course, given that the two cultures just do not dovetail.
Sounds legit. That nasty Maduro, just a dirty plebe goy, usurping the benevolent and omnipotent Banking Class in Venezuela. Whatever shall the .01% in Venezuela do? Are they too good for Miami, Manhattan, Tel Aviv? Wah wah wahhh into their shekels, all day.
I mean this guy is LITERALLY the enemy. WTF Tylers?
I mean this guy is LITERALLY the enemy. WTF Tylers?
WTF is correct. Remember the situation of who owns you as those that you cannot criticize.
Nuff said.
The author is full of shit when he claimed that the Jews were not the problem in Hitler's Germany.
FULL OF SHIT.
Do we really need the IMF's "personal" take on Venezuela?
What is this, Daily Kos?
Is this Hausmann guy Tyler's uncle or summin?
The Tylers would be gleeful--jumpiing for joy--if Uncle Sam could successfully overthrow the regime in Venezuela.
In 1973, they would have been gleeful with Pinochet taking power and running op-eds written by Kissinger.
It's a class thing.
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, severed ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Seems like the Juice Bankers didnt like that. Let me count the ways of how much I hate these evil Zionist Juice lying murdering devils.
I can only hope and pray that Vlad gets even with the Bolsheviks that killed millions of his countrymen and turns Isreal into glass along with JewJersey and NY.
Free helicopter rides for all commies.
First, he should leave the moral ruminationss to professionals (philosophy).
Secondly, the Maduro regime has no qualms about lying to their peeps. They are also corrupt - as is shown by te "sudden" rise in the minimum wage and pension benefits two weeks before the election.
Yes, the situation is entirely the Venezuelans' fault; it has absolutely nothing to do with the US' economic warfare waged against a country which dared to resist...
I see Maduro has a ZH account.
This is de rigeur for failed states. Give out lots of free stuff when your rentier model is booming. Then wen the inevitable fall in prices comes, and there's no industry left in the state as people have forgotten how to work - blame outsiders for an economic war, come up with imagined coups. Say, "we will provide evidence . . . " that never comes. Yell about the IMF, but still draw funds from them (as they did in June). Subsist on loans from others (China). All the U.S. did was (and does) buy their oil, to provide them with the only of value left there, hard currency.
It's somebody else's fault.
White Capital has ratfucked Venezuela's economy since Chavez won the first of about 40 straight elections. Killing him clearly hasn't worked, so now Rockefeller lieutenants like Ricardo Hausmann write petty little screeds on ZeroHedge.
Here's why Venezuela is under attack, still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bOMnJyJkHY
All the crocodile tears cried on the pages of ZeroHedge for the poor, poor Venezuelan oligarchy and their limited access to tampons don't mean much, and their only recourse is to cry for help from the devil himself!
Maybe Uncle Sam can send the Tylers' best buddies--ISIS--into Venezuela!
It worked in Detroit. It works in California.
How groovy, a guy complaining about lying who then outright lies about what Trump actually said. And, why was that even necessary or relevant to his subject?
And although the U.S. was destabilizing almost every thing else on the planet including using the Saudi Oil to hurt Russia's economy they did nothing at all in Venezuela and used a magic shield so the cheap oil attack wouldn't affect Venezuela so they could say, "See socialism never works". Damn Socialists they must have run out someone else's money.
You fucks get the Guillotine after the revolution if you're found with cake crumbs on your chin.
Problem is Venezuela is screwed no matter which direction it choses to go. Hausmann is a Jewish Neo-Con elitist who really doesn't deserve a platform to spew his worldviews in here Tyler. At the same time Maduro is a corrupted neo-communist working in collaboration with crony military and the drug mafia, squeezing the lemon that is Venezuela to the last drop. Both of them share much more in common than what they would like to admit.
They serve their masters instead of their own people. Hausmann's Masters are well known, the same ones that stuffed the Washington consensus down Venezuela's throat and created the mess the country is currently in. They only have themselves to blame for the rise of the bolivarian revolution, this fact is of course blatantly ignored by this Harvard professor.
Suggesting his country should use the IMF as help to get 'back on its feet' once Maduro is out shows that his best interests are certainly not aligned with his home country. At the same time Maduro's masters are in Havana and in Beijing and both of which don't have the best interests of Venezuela in their minds either.
Venezuela is a classic example of a nation uber wealthy in natural resources falling prey to the vultures on either side of the divide.
and if you fight you end up like Libya..
there is no honesty in debt, burn this IMF jackal
Both are globalists
Sorry, but I don't have any trust in a Soros mouthpiece outlet...
No different than the behavior of any other government at that stage of the left-progressive deep dive. The right-progressive version is same destination, different reasons for borrowing their country into its grave. If you wish to measure how intrinsically good and peaceful ordinary human beings are, count the many years of increasing-force they have endured in making a country poor. Any rational person knew it was insane, but the crazies owned the left, as usual, and the sane didn't own the right, as usual, and at the end of the day, there was no sane path. Extremists are always careful to leave us with no sane path, at least one side or the other will 'win', for some value of live population and economic wealth. If we do not think carefully, our leaders will herd off the same cliff that they so successfully and so frequently herded other countries over. Buzzards like herd animals and cliffs, exactly the conditions for natural good feasting.
Meanwhile, I have solved the mechanism for the 'Out of Africa' vs long-distance gene exchange theories. So obvious, really.
Does anybody know how to nominate me for an IgNobel Prize? So awkward to nominate yourself, I heard they really look down on that.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/african-advantage/
We've heard it before: "While the propaganda on your side is shit, the propaganda on our side smells like roses..." For example:
Reb Hausmann omits for one reason or other the American invasion of South Vietnam in 1964 until 1975, when it poured down from the skies flaming jellied gasoline which stuck to the clothing and skin it fell upon.The holocaust of European Jews was evil. Burning Vietnamese women and children with napalm was kosher. Have you ever heard of our invasion of Vietnam called EVIL Reb Hausmann? Don't you mean scapegoating the Government of Colombia for their shortages? Can you say with Talmudic certainty that all of the Colombians expelled were not working for the Colombians and the CIA.
You know that Colombia is the US's Latin America butt boy, with 7 US military bases in that postage stamp size country? Makes you wonder id the CIA really wants to rid the world of cocaine. Oh, Venezuela had help doing that from the CIA, from the Venezuelan oligarchs and American corporations Do you think that made Chavez very popular with Booger Bush and the neocons rulers of America? I'm afraid, Reb Hausmann your efforts to paint the Maduro government as responsible to for "running the Venezuelan economy into the ground" is replete with the gimmicks that you are so offended by. Omitting what contradicts your argument. Exaggerating any thing that supports it.
Where's the part of how the CIA used mind-control and forced the Venezuelan Gov't to nationalize industries and confiscate property?
Where's the CIA mind-control that forced the VZ gov't to think Price Controls would work and not lead to shortages?
Where's the CIA mind-control that kept the VZ gov't from investing some of their oil-money in maintenance of the eqpt and wells?
VZ is Socialism's failure.
Socialists destroyed the economy, and they lie. That's what they do.
EVERY 'government' is a criminal enterprise. Pointing out the particularly extreme (inept) examples of 'government' generally disregards the scope and scale of this war against human liberty.
Seems to me that they've been 'winning' for quite some time now eh?
Was the media shut down there? Not much youtube vid anymore.
The article above attempted to present a more philosophical view of the idea of "evil," which interests me, and so, I will pass some time articulating my views.
The word ponerology has been coined to refer to the allegedly scientific study of "evil." However, I have found that to be too psychologically based, and so, too superficial. Similarly, I find most of the efforts that I am aware of to attempt to apply the concepts of evolutionary biology to understand human behaviors, including "evil," to have, so far, been similarly too superficial. My view is that the deeper place to start is with the first and second laws of thermodynamics and information theory.
The existence of energy is "good," while entropy is "evil."
However, it is generally taken for granted that inserting an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory was not a huge philosophical error. However, effectively what that did was invert the meaning of entropy, which was generally done in order to make progress in physical science continue to be consistent with the biggest bullies' bullshit world views, which depend upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, in order that the biggest bullies can present themselves as the opposite of what they actually are.
What I am suggesting is an approach that is a creative synthesis of ancient mysticism with post-modernizing science. The past presumptions that time and space were independent absolutes have been proven to be wrong. Rather, the time-space continuum is relative to the conservation of energy. Since entropy is the distribution of energy through time and space, the past presumptions regarding entropy, based upon old-fashioned ideas about time and space, are also wrong. Indeed, they are totally wrong, in the sense that the concept of entropy was totally inverted when the measurements of power and information were changed from having relative negative values, into having relative positive values, by the insertion of an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations.
In general, we are living inside of Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds, where everything is being misunderstood in absurdly backward ways. That the dominate philosophy of science has inverted the meaning of entropy is one of the most abstract and profound manners in which that happened. As I said, that happened as one of the many ways the the history of science developed as series of compromises with the biggest bullies' bullshit world views.
There is only one energy, and therefore, there is only one sociopolitical system, which is that human beings and civilizations necessarily operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, because the death controls systems, with the murder systems as the most extreme form of those, are the central controls. Warfare was organized crime on larger and larger scales. Civilization was made by the history of warfare. Governments are necessarily the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals were able to develop their language about false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, in order to continue to operate as the biggest and best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. The fundamental concept is SUBTRACTION. After perceiving human beings as separate from their environment and each other, then, across those boundaries thereby defined, the fundamental concept is ROBBERY.
Human beings and civilization necessarily operate as systems of organized lies operating robberies, and nothing else actually exists but the dynamic equilibria between those different system of organized lies operating robberies. However, those who become the biggest and best systems are then able to achieve the promotion of social stories which could be described as the subtraction of subtraction, whereby they are able to present the ways that they operate as entropic pumps of energy flows as being positive. However, what they have actually thereby done is negate their negations. They are still living as entropic pumps of environment energy flows, as more or less organized lies operating robberies, however, they are able to publicly present that as being positive, rather than negative.
That returns us to the significance of having inverted the meaning of entropy. Human beings and civilizations necessarily operate as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, however, the biggest bullies' bullshit world views have dominated the natural languages and philosophy of science which tend to be most taken for granted inside of the biggest civilizations. Ultimately, there is no "evil," in the sense that everything is energy. To put that another way, ultimately there is no time nor space, other than as relative illusions, due to human consciousness operating through various subtraction processes. It is the original subtractions that create the world of human consciousness. Human beings have internalized natural selection as intelligence, and then, that intelligence was applied to the problems presented by natural selection pressures, which, for human beings, tended to become first and foremost other human beings. Hence, the history of warfare.
Militarism is the supreme ideology, because the ideologies the murder systems are self-actualizing and self-justifying, due to natural selection pressures driving the creation of the human artificial selection systems that currently operate. However, the intense paradoxes with respect to The Art of War were presented in the first book on that subject, which started by saying "success in war depends upon deceits," and ended by saying that "spies are the most important soldiers." Thousands of years of human history have been the elaboration of those precepts.
As information became more important than power, civilization based upon the history of warfare gradually morphed, so that the War Kings were replaced by the Fraud Kings. The history of civilization being controlled by backing up deceits with destruction transformed to become civilization being controlled by ENFORCING FRAUDS. Generally speaking, that is what all governments are doing now, whereby those governments tend to enforce the frauds by privately controlled banks, which have effectively captured control over the political processes by dominating all aspects of the POLITICAL FUNDING. There could not be any actually existing alternatives which did not become different murder systems, backing up different monetary systems.
Money is measurement backed by murder, since the debt controls depend upon the death controls. That is the most abstract form of the ways that all private property is based upon backing up claims with coercions. Private property does not exist outside of some systems of public violence. Everyone operates through their own perceptions and precepts. All human beings are able to build mental models of their world, with mental models of themselves within their models of their world. All of that mental model building is based upon SUBTRACTIONS, and therefore, after that, there necessarily follows taking energy across the thereby defined boundaries, which are basically ROBBERIES.
To think more deeply about the ways that the biggest bullies, which are currently the banksters, have been able to present themselves as not being the best organized gangsters, one has to go through the processes of subtracting the subtraction of their subtractions, or negating the negation of their negations. Indeed, that applies universally, throughout all of the areas where there are promoted various false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals. Not only are we living inside of Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds, where everything appears as absurdly backwards, due governments actually being the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, who were able to promote their bullshit to become dominate, but also, that applies equally to their controlled opposition groups as well.
Whenever some sort of controlled opposition group is somehow able to emerge to the degree that they capture control over the powers of government, they tend to continue to be still controlled by professional hypocrites, who are merely promoting slightly different forms of organized lies operating robberies, which they usually tend to not do as well as the previous systems that they supplanted. The only ways that there could be genuine progress is through the development of better death controls to back up better debt controls. However, what actually usually happens is that those get worse instead, due to some new crop of professional liars taking over from some previous group of professional liars. Since the most of the general population has be brainwashed to believe in the bullshit of impossible ideals, the professional hypocrites that are able to influence those people tend to never actually do a better job of governing.
Everyone has some power to think, and tell stories, from which follows that everyone is engaged in some more or less organized systems of organized lies operating robberies. Everyone has some power to rob, and some power to kill to back up their power to rob, since murder is the most extreme form of robbery. Governments assembled and channeled the powers to rob and to kill, which then were presented as being "taxation" enforced by the "rule of law." Meanwhile, the best organized gangs of criminals effectively captured control over the actual uses of the powers of governments, in ways which effectively privatized those powers. In other words, POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCING FRAUDS was what made and maintained the dominate sociopolitical systems that exist today.
Nothing else actually exists but the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies, operating robberies. The only realistic resolutions to the real problems are changes what are different dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. However, intense paradoxes have accumulated due to successful warfare being based upon deceits, which morphed to become successful financial based upon enforcing frauds, which sociopolitical systems are currently being operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. Tragically, that trajectory tends to still continue whenever some old crop of professional hypocrites is somewhat supplanted by some new crop of professional hypocrites (which is what I would expect has actually happened in Venezuela, as what would probably eventually happen in North America too.)
Those are universal problems, which therefore apply to any country, including Venezuela, as well as the USA, etc. ... Various political problems are always due to the ways that their dynamic equilibria between organized lies operating robberies are working. There often tends to be final failure from too much success based upon being professional hypocrites. Although I do not know that details, I would guess that is what has happened to Venezuela. Furthermore, that is what is also happening in North America now too ... The systems of checks and balances tend to break down, and then the remaining systems become more extremely unbalanced.
On a deeper level, since we collectively tend to misunderstand everything in the most absurdly backward ways, that also applies to almost all of the bogus "solutions" promoted for various political problems. There is almost nothing but a core of organized crime, surrounded by layers of controlled opposition groups, all of which tend to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference, based upon the same false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, despite that those tend to backfire badly, and actually cause the opposite to happen in the real world. Indeed, since the biggest bullies' bullshit world views so totally dominate civilization, including the ways that people think and communicate, it becomes extremely difficult and dangerous to attempt to think in different ways, or to communicate that different thinking. Meanwhile, it could be regarded as ironic that the various controlled opposition groups are promoting the impossible ideals that the biggest bullies originally promoted. In that sense, it is not an accident that such opposition, based upon such impossible ideals, actually causes the opposite to actually happen in the real world.
There are, and must necessarily be, some combined money/murder systems. However, those have developed to become most socially successful by being based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds. We are all stuck inside of that context, where the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals are controlling civilization, while mostly getting away with presenting that situation to publicly be the opposite of what it actually is. Furthermore, there is nobody who is not necessarily living as an entropic pump of environmental energy flows. There is nobody who is not living through some systems of organized lies operating robberies. Any alternative governments are necessarily some alternative organized crime gangs, which tend to continue to be professional hypocrites regarding themselves actually being that.
However, since the original subtractions were never absolute, so too, the processes of robberies are never finished. The stories that human beings tell themselves and each other, which more or less direct their associated behaviors, are generally misunderstood in the most absurdly backward ways, by people who have been almost totally brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world views. There has been a perverse sort of "progress" in doing that, by that brainwashing becoming more scientific, within the context of an oxymoronic dictatorship, that thereby gets better at lying to people, and becomes more arrogantly dishonest in proportion to the degree to which people are more effectively brainwashed to believe in bullshit, and to want to continue to believe in that bullshit. Therefore, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the degree to which were are living inside absurdly backwards Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds. Of course, that also applies to the concept of "evil," and indeed applies there more than anywhere else.
The most important things that human beings must do is operate their death control systems, that back up their debt control systems. However, since natural selection pressures have driven the existing artificial selection systems to become based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds, it has become politically impossible to develop better death controls, to back up better debt controls, other than through those systems first going through series of psychotic breakdowns, crazy collapses into chaos, and severe social storms blowing through.
That appears to be happening to Venezuela, and is also headed to happening to North America too. Ideally, we should go through series of intellectual scientific revolutions, that apply to political science, and therefore, to the combined money/murder systems. However, that continues to appear to be politically impossible, due to the degree that the established systems are currently controlled by professional hypocrites. In the Bizarro Mirror World, everything appears to be proportionately backwards and distorted. That applies just as much, and indeed more so, to the concepts of entropy and "evil."
Entropy is the scientific Satan. Within social pyramid systems based upon a long history of being able to back up lies with violence, entropy is deliberately misunderstood in the most absurdly backwards ways, while the flip side of that is that the principle of the conservation of energy tends to be as deliberately ignored as possible. Better ponerology ought to be based on the concept of evil being understood through the concept of entropy. However, since we currently tend to misunderstand entropy in the most absurdly backward ways possible, we also tend to deliberately misunderstand evil in the most absurdly backward ways too.
Meanwhile, the Grand Canyon Chasms between prodigious progress in physical science, that has been based upon series of profound paradigm shifts, has not been matched, much less surpassed, by paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive political problems. Ideally, we should approach political problems through using unitary mechanisms, instead of continuing to rely upon the dualities of false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals. However, doing that demands that we would perceive our own perceptions in more self-aware and self-referential ways. I.e., everyone lives through some systems of organized lies operating robberies, and so, the bigger sociopolitical systems are always bigger systems of organized lies operating robberies.
The profoundly paradoxical political problems we face are due to the degree that the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals, e.g., bankster controlled governments, tend to be most able to promote their bullshit world views, by brainwashing other people to believe in that bullshit, to the degree that they want to continue to believe in that bullshit. So far, I an not aware of any opposition groups that would actually provide better real government, because all of the publicly significant opposition groups that I am aware of are also professional hypocrites (which appears to be the case in Venezuela.)
Overall, civilization that was always based on backing up lies with violence, that became more sophisticated and integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, has become globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. Therefore, we are drowning in our own bullshit, and appearing like we may soon be going down under for the metaphorical third time. Progress in physical science has tended to converge back to ancient mysticism, from whence it started, long ago. However, mostly the technologies enabled by that progress in science have ended up being applied to become better at backing up lies with violence, e.g., electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs.
Theoretically, our political science should integrate and surpass the profound paradigm shifts which have already been achieved in physical science, and indeed, there are probably more profound paradigms shifts that science should go through, which also, in turn, should be integrated and surpassed by paradigm shifts in political science. However, since the actually existing political situations are dominated by various professional hypocrites, who mostly operate through various old-fashioned religions and ideologies, that adamantly refuse to change their metaphysics to adapt to progress made in physics, it appears to be politically impossible for the current political problems to actually be resolved other than through various psychotic breakdowns, collapses in to crazy chaos, along with severe social storms blowing through. But nevertheless, even then, IF a technologically based civilization is able to survive, it must do so by changing its philosophy of science. Such changes in the philosophy of science I have outlined above, which involve changing the ways that we think about entropy, which then becomes a more scientific way that we would think about the problem of "evil."
However, from a more practical point of view, is was probably pointless for me to bother to write what I have above, and therefore, I will not bother to reread, correct or edit that any better, before I post it. Sociopolitical systems based upon backing up lies with violence do not care about anything else that continuing to be able to back up their lies with their violence. Nothing beyond that matters to those systems. They are NOT interested in more rational evidence or logical arguments, EXCEPT to the degree that those could assist them to improve their own systems of organized lies operating robberies.
The biggest bullies' bullshit already almost totally dominates the lives of everybody, including the ways that they think, and the ways that they can communicate with each other. I have attempted to develop uses of the English language to express that, by presenting more radical truths, however, one of the radical truths is that "the truth" makes hardly any difference to sociopolitical systems that are based upon backing up lies with violence. Therefore, we are ALREADY inside of systems whereby POLITICAL FUNDING ENFORCES FRAUDS. Since enforcing frauds never stops those frauds from still being false, the overall longer term consequences are that civilization controlled by being able to back up lies with violence becomes more and more criminally insane, due to the excessive successfulness of its dominate organized crime gangs. Moreover, there tends to not be any reasonable chance of alternative organized crime gangs, that may capture control over the powers of governments, not still being professional hypocrites, only less competent ones. (Indeed, that is what I would expect to actually happen in North America too, if or when the banksters lost control over North American governments.)
There are never any genuine solutions which are not still different organized crime gangs. Human beings and civilization necessarily operate as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, which necessarily match the principles and methods of organized crime, because the death controls must be the central controls to everything else. That is ALREADY the ways things are! Civilization is ALREADY based upon triumphant organized crime, while the excessive successfulness of that necessarily drives civilization towards manifesting runaway criminal insanities. Overall, that is how I would try to understand South American politics, as well as North American politics, and everywhere else too ...
Thanks for providing that brevity is the soul of wit.
radical cheech and chong is tl;dr personified.
You have some good thoughts in your comment but it is WAY too long. Maybe next time you should see about getting something like that posted as an article. Just some friendly advice . . . in the future try to keep your comments short and to the point. My guess is that most ZHr's will not make it past the 2nd or 3rd paragraph otherwise.
As I wrote above, Dickweed, I am posting just to pass the time, and because I am attempting to understand how things work, for its own sake. Doing so will make no difference. It will make no material difference if a few more ZH readers consider my comments or not ... From that perspective, I find "replies" that complaining about the length to be useless. I am only interested in any critical replies that enabled me to think better.
The world is already committed to its runaway criminal insanities, while my diagnosis of that is merely my attempts to understand how and why that happened, while that will not change what is going to still happen anyway. Zero Hedge readers are more like the temporary occupants of a hospice, receiving palliative care, while the society they were born into is already terminally sick and insane. That is working its way in from the periphery and the bottom of the social pyramid systems, towards the core and the top. Venezuela is merely another country added to the list of basket cases, and failed states, that will eventually include North American countries too.
Even your rebuttal is too long . . . get your own blog page, o.k.?
actually it is pushing a garbage mindset as a basis for human reasoning and thus only the miracles of scientific process should be used to govern.. iGov commeth
"Meanwhile, the Grand Canyon Chasms between prodigious progress in physical science, that has been based upon series of profound paradigm shifts, has not been matched, much less surpassed, by paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive political problems. Ideally, we should approach political problems through using unitary mechanisms, instead of continuing to rely upon the dualities of false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals. However, doing that demands that we would perceive our own perceptions in more self-aware and self-referential ways. I.e., everyone lives through some systems of organized lies operating robberies, and so, the bigger sociopolitical systems are always bigger systems of organized lies operating robberies."
There are people of sound mind that can reason beyond their cravings and bias.. for example if some zionist baby eater is playing tennis against you, you need not cheat a point during the match since it is only a game.. but afterwards you may then throw them into a lake of fire
Yes, dark pools of soros: "There are people of sound mind that can reason beyond their cravings and bias." However, they are relatively too few to change the political realities based upon the existing patterns with respect to Political Parables about Wolves and Sheeple ... I am forced to agree with the following that was published there, which I have copied below. Unfortunately, after being forced to agree with those social facts, then it is NO longer possible to imagine any practically possible political solutions!
"I see western populations grouped as a stratification of three distinct personalities. I may get the percentages wrong, but you’ll get the idea. The lowest (and largest) layer is around 80% and consists of mostly naive people who believe the propaganda they’re served. I’ll call these the lemmings. They aren’t stupid, but hopelessly believe what they’re told and don’t look below the surface at all. They are too concerned what others think of them and they’re trying to validate their own existence using metrics served to them by others. They go with the flow and try to avoid making waves. They believe in the American Dream and they think they have a chance at the nice home and car if they do what they’re told. Their understanding of reality is guided by mainstream media. They are simply ignorant.
The next (and middle) group is a clever and largely criminal group that make up perhaps 15% or so. I’ll call them assholes. These are somewhat smarter people who realize the difference between what you’re supposed to do and what actually happens in reality. They understand that most people can be fooled most of the time. They structure their affairs around cleverly taking advantage of others, from the occasional shitty misdeed all the way to hard-core criminals who defraud thousands (or even millions) out of the retirement they were promised. This group produces successful politicians, war lords and big bankers.
The last group I consider brilliant – perhaps 5%. Many of these end up being taken advantage of by assholes because they’re not fully aware of the technicolor delusions all around us, but they’re so capable that they often end up successful despite the odds. These are truly good people who try to live their lives honestly and with integrity. This group produces no politicians.
Unfortunately, assholes run the world. Why? Because to be wildly successful in the modern world, you have to understand the dark underbelly of deception. The truly brilliant may see the problem (or part of it) but haven’t yet come up with an effective way to change it. The lemmings have no hope of correcting this problem because they’re not even aware it is happening – they’re essentially cattle being led to slaughter by the systems run by the assholes."
- - sapioplex
http://sapiocracy.com/
____________________________________________
"to understand the dark underbelly of deception"
takes some profound paradigm shifts in politics!
Most of my blah, blah, blah, for decades, has been
attempting to understand organized lies operating
as the NECESSARY foundation of human reality.
I do agree it is few.. but few in those with courage to act. Many lemmings understand individually but will not stand out to fight the lemming/asshole groupthink. Confronting deception usually recoils the asshole snakes but they know to just give a little to the squeaky wheel and then run over the rest. So by action, the lemmings are passive assholes to their own via bribes. This becomes the large playing field that the brilliant shake their heads at and know the only way to change it is by building a spiritual fabric that trumps material wants. Thus religion, love, karma, liberty... but then assholes use deception to subvert those teachings for their own gains, rinse repeat.. Every once in a long while you get a brilliant that rises to smite the assholes in creative ways, but it is usually short lived and then the next generation it all goes back to the cravings game..
I read & re-read this, Radical. And yes, it needs serious editing. That said, am in agreement. I especailly like your contention that North America [could] devolves along the Venezuelan model, not the other way around.
Of course, a miscalculated global war/apocalypse would reset things back to zero, with an interesting path forward, huh?
Salah
He lost me at "leveraging the support of the international community" in the second phrase. Nevertheless, I read up to"As the son of Holocaust survivors".
That's how much I can take. A jew trying to justify meddling in Venezuela's affairs gets from me the green light to be hang by Maduro.
"internation community" = "zionist snakes"
Maduro’s government blames its economic collapse on an “economic war” led by the US, the oligarchy, and international financial Zionism,
And you know what? Maduro, and Chavez before him, are (were) exactly right about this issue!! The financial oligarchy, which by the way is led by Jews/Zionists, along with the oil cartel has for decades tried to steal Venezuela's oil resources - with the blessing (and covert direct support) of the USA government. A good part of that effort has been to interfere with, or outright overthrow, the elected government in that country and to damage the economy in the country with the hope that the Venezuelan people will turn on their government. So whoever this tribe member is he is really completely full of shit. I didn't realize that ZH was now giving tribe members a free pass to post their propaganda bullshit.
For a good summary of what's been going on there, that totally contradicts this guy's BS by the way, click on the following link:
https://hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/venezuela-defiant-tow...
Google is <-paying 97$ per hour! Work for few hours and have longer with friends & family! On tuesday I got a great new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $8752 this last four weeks. Its the most-financialy rewarding I've had. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it...
•••••••>>>> www.onlinejobs100.com
Venezuela's sovereignty claim on most of neighbouring Guyans is based on the misconception that uti possidetis juris, customary law, can be applied in the dispute. UPJ can only be used with the consent of both parties: https://www.academia.edu/10573590/Falklands_-_Uti_Possidetis_Juris_and_Nootka_Sound_Convention_1790
(Argentina makes similar claims re the Falklands).
Rule of Law, predicated on Natural Law
You don't have it, you get generalized poverty, corruption, crime...
I used to work in Latin America, they don't have it, and now we don't either