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Like Libya & Syria, Venezuela is not “just about oil”

Andre Vltchek

Yes, the latest research confirms that Venezuela is so rich in natural resources, that it could single-handedly satisfy all global demand for oil, for over 30 years. And it has much more than oil to offer, in its Orinoco basin and in other areas of the country.

But it is not all ‘about oil’; actually, far from it.

Those who believe that what propels the spread of Western terror all over the world, are just some ‘business interests’ and legendary Western greed, are, from my point of view, missing the point.

I noticed that such individuals and analysts actually believe that ‘capitalism is responsible for everything’, and that it creates the culture of violence of which, both victims and victimizers, already became hostages to.

After working in all corners of the world, I am now more and more convinced that capitalism is actually the result of Western culture, which is predominantly based on expansionism, exceptionalism and aggression. It is also constructed on a deeply rooted desire to control and to dictate. Financial/monetary greed is just a by-product of this culture which has elevated its superiority to something that could be defined as religious, or even religiously fundamentalist.

Or in other words: belief in its own superiority is actually now the main religion in both Europe and North America.

*

What makes the Libyan, Syrian and Venezuelan scenarios so similar? Why was the West so eager to viciously attack, and then destroy these three, at the first glance, very different countries?

The answer is simple, although it is not often uttered in the West; at least not publicly:

‘All three countries stood at the vanguard of promoting and fighting with determination for such concepts as “pan-Africanism”, “pan-Arabism” and Patria Grande – essentially Latin American independence and unity.’

Gaddafi, Al-Assad and Chavez have been, regionally and internationally, recognized as anti-imperialist fighters, inspiring and giving hope to hundreds of millions of people.

Gaddafi was murdered, Chavez was most likely killed as well, and Al-Assad and his nation have been, literally and for several long years, fighting for their survival.

The current Venezuelan President Maduro, who is determinedly loyal to the Bolivarian revolutionary ideals, has already survived at least one assassination attempt, and, is now facing direct mafia-style threats from the West. At any moment, his country could get attacked, directly or through the Latin American ‘client’ states of the West.

It is because Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have been considered, and for centuries treated, as colonies. It is because whenever people stood up, they were almost immediately smashed into pieces by the iron fist of Western imperialism. And those who think that they are in control of the world by some divine design, do not want things to change, ever.

Europe and North America are obsessed with controlling others, and in order to control, they feel that they have to make sure to exterminate all opposition in their colonies and neo-colonies.

It is a truly mental state in which the West has found itself; a state which I, in my earlier works, defined as Sadistic Personality Disorder (SPD).

To get the complete picture, one also has to recall Indonesia, which was literally liquidated as an independent and progressive nation, in 1965. Its internationalist president Sukarno (father of the Non-Aligned Movement, and close ally of the Communist Party of Indonesia – PKI) was overthrown by the handpicked (by the West), treasonous, intellectually and morally deranged, General Suharto, opening the door to turbo-capitalism, and to the unbridled plunder of the natural resources of his nation. Once a guiding light for the entire Asian independence struggle, after the US/UK/Australia-orchestrated extreme genocide, Indonesia has been reduced to nothing more than a lobotomized and dirt-poor ‘client’ state of the West.

The West has an incredible capacity to identify true regional independence leaders; to smear them, to make them vulnerable by inventing and then upholding so-called ‘local opposition’, and later, by liquidating them and with them, also their countries and even their entire regions.

Sometimes, the West attacks particular countries, as was the case with Iran (1953), Iraq, or Nicaragua. But more often, it goes directly for the ‘big fish’ – leaders of regional opposition – such as Libya, Indonesia, Syria, and now, Venezuela.

Many defiant individuals have literally been murdered already: Gaddafi, Hussein, Lumumba, and Chavez, to name just a few.

And of course, whatever it does, the West is trying to destroy the greatest leaders of the anti-Western and anti-imperialist coalition: Russia and China.

*

It is all far from only being about oil, or about profits.

The West needs to rule. It is obsessed with controlling the world, with feeling superior and exceptional. It is a game, a deadly game. For centuries, the West has been behaving like a fundamentalist religious fanatic, and its people have never even noticed that their world views have actually became synonymous with exceptionalism, and with cultural superiority. That is why the West is so successful in creating and injecting extremist religious movements of all denominations, into virtually all parts of the world: from Oceania to Asia, from Africa to Latin America, and of course, to China. Western leaders are ‘at home’ with Christian, Muslim or even Buddhist extremists.

*

But Syria has managed to survive, and up to today it is standing. The only reason why the government forces are not taking the last terrorist bastion, Idlib, yet, is because the civilian population would suffer tremendous losses during the battle.

Venezuela is also refusing to kneel and to surrender. And it is clear that if the West and its allies dared to attack, the resistance, the millions of people, would fight for the villages and countryside, and if needed, would withdraw to the jungle and wage a guerilla liberation war against the occupiers, and against the treasonous elites.

Washington, London, Paris and Madrid are clearly using an extremely outdated strategy: one that worked against Libya, but which failed squarely in Syria.

Recently, in Syria, near the frontline of Idlib, two top commanders told me that they are fighting “not only for Syria, but for the entire oppressed world, including Venezuela.” They clearly detected that the West is using precisely the same strategy against Caracas, which it tried to use against Damascus.

Now, Venezuela is also suffering and fighting for the entire oppressed world.

It has ‘no right to fail’, as Syria had no right to surrender.

The destruction of Libya had already brought a tremendously negative impact on Africa. And it has opened the doors to the renewed and unbridled French plunder of the continent. France was promptly joined by the U.K. and the U.S.A.

Syria is the last bastion in the Middle East. It is all there is now, resisting the total control of the Middle East by the West. Syria and Iran. But Iran is not yet a ‘front’, although often it appears that soon it might become one.

Venezuela cannot fall, for the same reasons. It is at the northern extreme of South America. Below, there is an entire continent; terrorized by Europe and North America, for decades and centuries: brutalized, plundered, tortured. South America, where tens of millions used to be exterminated like animals, forced to convert to Christianity, robbed of everything and ordered to follow bizarre Western political and economic models.

In Brazil, the progressive socialist government of the PT had been already overthrown.

If Venezuela falls, everything could be lost, for decades, maybe even centuries.

And so, it will fight. Together with those few other countries that are still left standing in this ‘Western Hemisphere’; countries which the dictators in Washington D.C. openly describe as ‘their backyard’.

Caracas stands and fights for the vast slums of Peru, for destitute millions in Paraguay, for Brazilian favelas, for privatized aquifers and the murdered rain forest in Brazil.

As Syria has been fighting for the Palestine, for the destitute minorities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, for Yemen, for Iraq and Afghanistan – two countries robbed of almost everything by NATO.

Russia has already showed what it can do for its Arab brothers, and now is demonstrating its willingness to support its another close ally – Venezuela.

China is rapidly joining the coalition of anti-imperialist fighters, and so is South Africa.

*

No – Venezuela is not only about oil.

It is about the West being able to close access to the Panama Canal, by Chinese ships.

It is about the total control of the world: ideological, political, economic and social. About liquidating all opposition in the Western hemisphere.

If Venezuela falls, the West may dare to attack Nicaragua, and then the bastion of socialism and internationalism – Cuba.

That is why it – Venezuela – should never be allowed to fall.

The battle for Venezuela is now already raging, on all fronts, including the ideological one. There, we are not only fighting for Caracas, Maracaibo or for Ciudad Bolivar: we are fighting for the entire oppressed world, as we did and are doing in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Idlib, as we may soon have to do in many other cities, all over the world. For as long as Western imperialism is alive; for as long as it is not going to give up its dreams of controlling and ruining the entire planet, we cannot rest, we cannot let down our guard, we cannot celebrate final victory in any part of the world.

Therefore, this is all far from being ‘just about oil’. It is about the survival of our planet.

First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook

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Basher
Basher
Apr 6, 2019 7:04 AM

Oil (or other natural resource) is a commodity that can allow a non-US-Imperialistic compliant state to remain non-compliant, and aid other states to attempt the same. Saddam was planning to trade oil in Euros & Gaddafi was planning a pan-African currency, backed by Libyan oil. This could not be allowed to happen. The petroDollar could not be challenged. The debt based imperialism of the US, which makes the US ‘too big to fail’ would begin to be stripped back.

But the oil isn’t for the US, it doesn’t need it……

“It was no longer a case of grabbing the hydrocarbons from the rest of the world (Washington has absolutely no need of them), but to determine who may have them to use for their own development, and who will be deprived of them.”

Read the rest of this article, from a political genius, Thierry Meyssan.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article205782.html

BigB
BigB
Apr 6, 2019 2:13 PM
Reply to  Basher

Oh man, please don’t fall for Washington’s own Bloomberg and Forbes self-advertised faery story that “America is the world leading oil producer”. It’s pure hype: Washington need’s oil as much as ever before.

Digging a bit deeper you will find that Eagle Ford and Bakken are already post-peak. The Permian is an ongoing environmental catastrophe that will result in a Dustbowl. One that will make the 1930s one look like an epic fantasy Hollywood extravaganza – but without Dorothy and Toto to save the day. Wall St is financing this paper exercise in fictional prediction to the tune of trillions, and regaining only billions. America is the world leading oil producer, but not for long (a big chunk of this is imports – with exports counted as ‘production’).

Never believe an oil boom based on the involved oil firms own projections!

https://www.globalresearch.ca/fracked-shale-oil-wells-drying-up-faster-than-predicted-wall-street-journal-finds/5665323

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 5, 2019 6:54 PM

I agree, Andre, it’s all about control. Let’s keep in mind that the motive to control is resides not in abstract concepts of Western exceptionalism, capitalism, or class struggle, but rather in the beating hearts of individual human beings. The social forces of human history are captained by greed and opportunism.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 6, 2019 12:55 AM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

I would say that the motive to control is the son of the existential fear and the grandson of humam ignorance….it is not an innate characteristic but the result of blind illusion.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 2:39 AM
Reply to  Ramdan

Sorry, my brain instructed a finger to click “up”, but it disobediently clicked “down”. My apologies.

It’s easy to imagine “existential fear” in the presence of scarcity (eg, food, energy, shelter, security, etc.), or even a reasonable chance of scarcity. Such fear would qualify as existential but not ignorant, no? It seems to be the basic glue needed hold us together is altruism, but the history is clear: fanning the flames of existential fear melts the glue.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 6, 2019 6:28 AM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

.”fanning the flames of existential fear”…. Is exactly what is used to control the masses….there is lot of research on death saliency and how people tend to conservative views and accept extreme measures at the sole thought of death….

As Ibs Rushd put it: “Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation.”

The scarcity idea, though valid as a general survival fear, it is highly manipulated and also depends on what we have cnstrued as “scarcity”….which will not be the same for an american than for, lets say, a Congolese…

Altruism, when not just an intellectual pretense, does not go away….it only goes if fear succeeds….and that is the result of mind manipulation on one side + ignorance (of ourselves, of the very basics of life spiritual meaning)….
Regrettably…spiritual meaning is something very scarce this days….

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 6, 2019 11:40 AM
Reply to  Ramdan

Ramadan: “spiritual meaning is something very scarce these days”. Fully agree – especially in those countries that have fully embraced Neoliberalism, and the new ‘religion’ seems to be mass binge consumerism. Grasping for more and more stuff – the very antithesis of spirituality. I also agree with you about fanning fear – the other > Them. Divide and Rule.

comite espartaco
comite espartaco
Apr 5, 2019 6:14 PM

In the history of the world, the savagery and tyranny of Oriental Despotism and Imperialism has never been matched. From the Russian to the Chinese empires, from the cannibalistic terrorist regimes of Pre-Columbian America to the Japanese Empire of the recent past or the Islamic world of yesterday or today, to mention but a few cases, ‘Oriental’ Despotism and underdevelopment, has been one of the worst curses visited upon mankind. So much so that the crimes of Western imperialism, if put into perspective, are but footnotes in the pervasive misery of the human race.

Indeed, the true revolutionaries of the world and especially those of Russia, China or Indonesia, have always acknowledge and realised that Orientalism was the true enemy of their peoples and regions and did not hesitate to join, faithfully and wholeheartedly, the greatest and ultimate WESTERN ideology that allowed them to save the working classes of their countries, that is, COMMUNISM.

At the forefront of Lenin’s revolutionary activity was a fixed idea: the destruction of Tsarist autocracy, Oriental Tyranny and Eastern cultural backwardness and brutality, as well as the spiritual and material UNION with the WEST. The belated attempts of the revived Eastern criminal oligarchies to resuscitate their former despotic ‘glories’ and religions, are just the result of corrupt linkages with those exploiters of the West that try, in an antithetic movement against Lenin and the Proletarian Revolution, to join the regressive East in an effort to destroy the Western Progress of the workers of the world, as they fully well know that, for the International Proletariat WEST IS BEST…!!!

Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 5, 2019 6:36 PM

…so Espartaco…let’s see: there are good killings and bad killings, no? And good exterminations and bad exterminations, right?…
..and good explotations and bad exploitations, uhm?….
And they are good or bad depending on who is the responsible and the reasons purported as justifying the killing, extermination and explotations, right?….
Got it!…Man you suffer from something called Neglect Syndrome…google it…you’ll see..or I hope so….

comite espartaco
comite espartaco
Apr 5, 2019 7:11 PM
Reply to  Ramdan

You must be suffering from it too… because that is, precisely, what this article and you are saying… ‘Oriental Goodness Syndrome’ it’s called… welcome to the ‘Syndrome’.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 6, 2019 12:58 AM

I knew it: Your officially blind. Sorry my friend.

Robert J.
Robert J.
Apr 5, 2019 3:36 PM

Wise of Vlček to re-establish a balance of sorts, but it would hardly be needed if the precious tool of marxist dialectics hadn’t been thrown out with the bathwater, sometime beginning in the 1920’s.

comite espartaco
comite espartaco
Apr 5, 2019 11:15 AM

This article is a poor show of pure racism and oriental bigotry of the worst kind, a pedantic display of ignorance, lies and thirdworldist fatuity. To portray Assad’s Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya or even Chavez’s Venezuela as models of pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism and ‘Patria Grande’, is just another demonstration of the infantile and feverish frame of mind of a feckless Orientalism that is out of its historical depth.

Assad was a Syrian secessionist and prominent member of the reorganisation of the (right-wing, liberal and pro-Gulf Monarchies), Baath party and the coup that ended the PAN-ARABIST United Arab Republic (union with Nasser’s Egypt) in 1961. He was also, as Minister of Defense and a high ranking Officer of the Syrian military, the direct responsible for the shameful and major Arab defeat and DISASTER in the Six-Day War of 1967. As an AGGRESSIVE IMPERIALIST and GREEDY ORIENTAL expansionist, Assad’s Syria sought to compensate its cowardly impotence against Israel by invading Lebanon (changing sides at will and as needed), with disastrous consequences for the region, the Palestinian ’cause’ and Arab unity.

Gaddafi’s Pan-Africanism, in spite of all the talk, was a GREEDY ORIENTAL proposition, based on the corruption afforded by ill gotten oil revenues disposed of in a tyrannical and private way to ‘grease’ the putrid oligarchies of ‘Black’ Africa. That IMPERIALIST Pan-Africanism was soon stopped, in 1983, with the Libyan occupation of Northern Chad and the subsequent and famous Toyota War (1986-87), that destroyed the Libyan forces in the region. The truth is that, as the civil war in Libya has recently shown, Gaddafi DID NOT even unify his own country.

The ‘Patria Grande’ of Chavez and the Bolivarians is just a fake concept, that has not worked and could not work, since the wars of independence led and organised by the oligarchies of South America against the will of the majority of the working people of the Spanish Empire. Chavez, that was killed by its own stubbornness and ignorance in a propagandistic effort to represent underdeveloped Cuba as something that is not and cannot be (when he could have had a better treatment in WESTERN countries with strong systems of SOCIALIST health care), could not understand that American disunion was the necessary result of Bolivar’s oligarchic policies and wars. Today, the expansionist and imperialist will of a thirdworldist Venezuela, still a WESTERN country, is projected around the world with Christian-Bolivarian parties generously funded by the badly managed oil, and only, revenue of Venezuela. However, the house of cards policies of Bolivarian nonsense and shit are crumbling before our own eyes. As it could not be otherwise.

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 5, 2019 1:03 PM

I think much of the above post is a very selective view of mainly long past events. While history is relevant in many ways to events today, much of the above is a distorted view, not relevant and is remote to why Libya and Syria are being attacked today.

I think the best judge of Assad today is his people. Considering the number of ethnic groups and religions, he commands overwelming support. Gaddafi was widely respected among Africans. And even if this and the positive view on the three states in the article is exaggerated, what right has the West got to murder heads of states and dictate who should run these countries? What right have they got to provoke a war with Russia and China and endanger the planet?

The main points in the article stand and is far away from racism in any form. In contrast the above post very much resembles the highly dangerous, toxic, interfering, superior and racist mindset described in the article.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Apr 5, 2019 1:39 PM

Man…your mind is a complete mess….Cuba imperialist….really???
Pal, you definitely need to stop reading the New York Times and watching Fox (Faux) News!!!!

Gwyn
Gwyn
Apr 5, 2019 1:53 PM

Pure projection on your part, comite, when you accuse others of racism.

Helmut Taylor
Helmut Taylor
Apr 5, 2019 4:25 PM

And ya carne even speke proper English, Maertee; yo woss known asa “shill”!
Ya dig; somewhere outta Eastern Europe..ya sounds a bit like an Ashkenazi yobbo.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 5, 2019 6:09 PM

“Black is white!. White is black!”

mark
mark
Apr 6, 2019 4:01 AM

Over the past 500 years, the history of western countries has formed a consistent unbroken record of slaughter, massacre, genocide, slavery, racism, tyranny, and rapacious, vicious inhuman exploitation utterly devoid of any redeeming features whatsoever. This has continued until the present day, and will continue indefinitely until such time as the rest of the world acquires sufficient strength to defend itself from western aggression.

This has been coupled with smug, nauseating, self serving, hypocritical assertions of civilised standards and moral superiority.

The slaughter reached its apogee in the New World that is the subject of this article. Well over 100 million Native Americans were butchered throughout the continent by most European states and the new American republic. Genocide was the official and openly expressed policy objective of all these powers. Their dead victims were replaced with the live human loot from Africa, which experienced exploitation of a similar character and on a similar scale.

This may be changing rapidly with the development of a multi polar world. Whatever comes to replace the current order can only be an improvement.

Most of the more recent slaughter and exploitation could have been avoided if the victim countries had developed WMD to defend themselves. Every country in the cross hairs of western imperialism should produce nuclear weapons to defend themselves. Had they done so, millions of murdered people now in their graves would still be alive. It’s as simple as that.

I know all about similar barbarism by people like Genghis Khan and the Mongols. But we’re talking about the past and present rape of the New World, and the people responsible.

Paul
Paul
Apr 5, 2019 10:46 AM

Racism together with unbridled Nationalism has been Europe’s curse for centuries, it underlies all of British history. The Brits still really do believe they are superior humans partly by virtue of the fact they’ve ruled the World for 500 years but mainly through some strange belief that white people are better than dark. An absurd idea but it’s one that remains irrationally strong.

binra
binra
Apr 5, 2019 12:29 PM
Reply to  Paul

Is this belief used as the basis for the technocratic globalism that seeks to kill the baby in the bathwater?

In other words are such evils used to justify what then seems ideologically sound as does ‘war on cancer’ But actually protects ‘war’ by projecting its cause onto selected effects?
Or in modern terms kill the cancer but at the loss of the patient?

I understand that for many, destroying an evil (regime, ideology or mind) is presumed to be all that is called for – as if Good automatically follows.

A key part of this in my opinion is the use of evil or hate to ‘get rid of’ or destroy itself – but under the possession of the deceit one is good or right in hating, fighting and destroying evil.

Perhaps it may be seen that we only see the symptoms of a cause that has roots within our own heart and mind (that sets them apart), and in war on symptoms is the hidden cause always best protected from exposure or change.

Possession and control operate the mind of a dissociated sense of self of a split mind – hidden and protected under narrative control.

The idea of ‘self’ is NOT self-evident or a physically ‘given’ self-evidence – but a construct within a consciousness that operates levels and compartments of shifting allegiance.

The human world is largely framed and experienced in terms of such a largely hidden construct as power struggle in a sense of survival under threat.
But the deepest level of threat is the where the mind is set to defend against its own exposure by maintaining conflict as the primary sense of differentiation from feared or hated chaos of pain and loss – over and against which is set the ‘mind’ or idol of a ruling order.

The god-king idea – as I now see it – arose under catastrophic and traumatic experience. This also initiated the ‘subjective’ sense of self and the development of human consciousness.
The archetypes of that pre-historical construct remain active and unbroken throughout their dramatic re-enactments of (Gods) as parents eating their children, sons usurping fathers, power struggles and shifting allegiances, and nothing BUT the breakdown of order and the attempt to survive or forfend chaos, by emulating the archetypes of a self-defined by terror or set in adaptation and strategy of survival within its term and under its power.

The self-construct is necessarily part of our human experience – but so is a self transcendence – from which the nature of the self construct can be recognised as image and form of invested meanings that are not true or the whole truth.
The undoing of the self-deceit is not a result of the persisting in the self-illusion but from a recognition, appreciation and sharing in the true. But the investment in a personal or private sense of possession and control is defended against truth and assigns a destructive intent or effect to truth that IT then seeks to usurp.

In fear of truth we bring destruction upon ourself believing it is done to us against our will.
In love or energy and allegiance given to a seeming righteous hate, we usurp truth under the conviction we already have it – and wield it.
And anything that would introduce doubt or question such conviction in believed power is attacked and demonised or derided, ridiculed and walled out.

How does one discern the true from the false?
As the very basis or self from which we then think and act?

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 5, 2019 6:35 PM
Reply to  binra

Human behavior and their social ideas degenerate like currencies according to Gresham’s Law: selfishness triumphs over altruism. Fear undermines fact and reason. Pacifism cannot withstand the frenzy of war fever. Opportunism vanquishes morality– then, in his old age, Evil authors history books claiming the mantle of good for himself.

Evil is rooted in the survival instinct, along with a realization that God, if he exists at all, is certainly not “good” in any human sense, and that self interest is the only currency of real value in this world.

binra
binra
Apr 6, 2019 2:42 AM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

That fear can interject as an autonomic response of learned or conditioned strategy of fight or flight is evident. But within the mind of such reaction is a fearfully defined sense of self and life that sees only as directed.

Regardless of what anything or anyone seems to be, we are perceiving through and interpretive structure that is generally invisible BECAUSE we take that experience to be reality – and self-evidently or even overwhelming so.

The survival instinct is indeed a key to the understanding of a life and a world framed or defined by evils. But I hold such a world is made by fear to hide in, and is not the Creation that God beheld as Good.

That term is a way of indicating Self Recognition as the function of Mind.
‘Know Thyself’ is therefore the underlying and innate purpose to existence AS the nature of relational being, and therefore true now.
The result of our mind-creation can be aligned, resonant, in tune or of like quality and kind to Creation – that never leaves the Mind of Creator for there is no gap of separateness or otherness in totality. Nor is there any way to bring truth into illusions – but that we become unmindfully under illusion of truth.

The bringing of truth to limitation, division, conflict, corruption and death is a deceit or a case of mistaken identity, invested in and defended against true.
That this effects a reversal in the mind that so elects is NOT apparent to such a mind that projects not to create in like kind – but to GET RID OF the hated and feared and KEEP IT OUT.

This split mind knows not what it does because it is defended against knowing what it is.
An uses EVERYTHING to serve such purpose until the choice that upholds the split is released.

Illusion replaces truth in the mind that chooses it, but truth is not changed by the choice not to see – and so the mind must see something ‘else’ – other than true to ‘survive’ or persist in a sense of private possession and control (defence) set against transparency and true account.

Illusions that serve purpose are investments and have all the meaning and power given them – but only that because they are nothing in and of themselves.

The Human world is a psycho-physical experience of truth rendered hidden by illusions that persist because they are serving purpose in the mind that holds them. That self interest of survival as a sphere of possession and control operates is the nature of fear-defined self.
But the result of such a self-definition is always self-sacrificing or self denying – but experienced as being denied or deprived.

That this mode of consciousness has been developed over time out of mind is also its seemingly unchallengeable status as fact because the conditioning is self-reinforcing response.

It is not just the history that is twisted by deceit but the narrative continuity that generates its justifications in order to seem to exist – as a private or autonomous power.
This has never been true – but it is a wish that has been given priority in the mind that thinks it thinks alone – not least from a fear of powerlessness or lack seeking expansion.

The nature of yielding to truth is not death – but may be resisted and avoided as fear of death by the attempt to do something or think something instead.

The human experience has a true harvest. The mind that runs ahed or refuses to listen, shortchanges us or our true appreciation – but there are gifts we have given and received that wait our recognition.

But in the split mind that is predicated to protect the split as its sense of survival, lovelessness goes forth and multiplies. That humanity has not moved despite technological extension is partly because WHAT is extended is predicated on the private or split sense of possession and control.

All the themes or devices by which truth is replaced by illusion are in our face and in our world and less recognized, accepted or owned within ourself – while the purpose of our mind is set in using these to protect invested illusions deemed too big to fail, instead of waking to see that failure is built into the very structure because of the purpose that gave rise to it.

If bitterness and resentment fill our world it is because we withhold our full and true presence from it (from our relations). And only by bringing present will our perspective and therefore our relationships and world transform.

Fears, guilts and hates are the nature of what we have tried to get rid of – and it doesn’t work and can never work, beyond buying time in which to persist under such convictions even while thinking to have escaped.

A split mind or a split nation attracts possession and control – by dealing in it. Uncovering common cause can be hijacked by hate, but standing in and extending from common cause is not hate-defined – even if hates have been part of the uncovering of the need for a deeper honesty and integrity of being. There is a love that rises of itself when mind join in common cause. But a joylessness beneath the zeal of the usurping of love by deceits that would hide fear and hatred rather than bring it to light to be corrected or undone. Again – a mind of self-survival runs a protection racket. But it is the fear and hate that is protected as IF its hiding is a personal salvation.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 4:32 AM
Reply to  binra

Darn, my finger did it again– hit the down icon instead of up. My apologies. My true self thwarted by the self bamboozled by illusion, no doubt.

A couple of thoughts . . .

1. If God exists, I very much doubt She/He/It is anthropomorphic, or even aware of Its myriad infinitesimal individual constituent beings, any more than a Silicon Valley engineer is aware or worries about the possibility he may be causing distress to a particular atom when he induces charge in a nano-transistor.

2. I respect the great spiritual saints through the ages, who teach that the key to end suffering is to end desire. This transcendent awakening is difficult to achieve (for me at least), and there remains the nagging metaphysical issue of uncertainty (am I delusional?). Pacifism faces a similar conundrum. If there is no beneficent god keeping an eye on the store, then the ultimate consequence of pacifism is likely to be the triumph of evil, who slaughter the peaceful leaving only themselves in control. Lord Krishna admonished Arjuna to take up arms and fight, did he not?

3. I remain encrusted and rusted to a lower rung of consciousness. The world (and its suffering) feels all-too real to me.

4. More than fear for oneself, there is fear for the well-being of loved ones. When relinquishing this world as illusion, then also relinquished are one’s prior sense of duties and responsibilities to protect and nourish spouse, children, pets, friends, Mother Earth. The CIA and the Mafia both know the most potent coercion is a threat to spouse, children, and parents. Phillip Marshall’s ‘suicide’ in February of 2013, along with his two teenage children and his dog, no doubt serves as a potent reminder to other would-be whistle blowers.

binra
binra
Apr 6, 2019 4:25 PM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

The nature of an existence that includes you is already fact – even if ideas and definitions as to who or what you are, are in error, mistaken or ‘illusion’ passing off as true.

Feelings that arise to reinforce any existing belief are results of a prior self-definition – that of course may be unconscious or automatic habit. It serves your current sense of need to frame your self belief as you do. But the framing is not so thick or heavy as to completely close off other perspectives that may be available as new information and experience comes in.

Feeling our existence is a direct yielding or resting from thinking to presence. If I wanted to write about this I have to use ‘thinking’ or concepts to point to where you already are. Mind wandering does not really ‘go’ anywhere ‘else’.

The truth can be framed falsely – but then is not truly recognised but only in part – and under partiality. You are already a ‘spiritual being’ or self-aware regardless the themes and forms of your experience.

That you may be delusional does not mean that existence doesn’t exist but that the image and idea or self-definition may be mistaken or indeed taken in error. The cost of the error is not guilt – but the loss of a true and shared appreciation for a world of conflict and indeed fear of pain and loss. That this is always associated with guilt is not a punishment – unless of course you insist – but a by product of being out of true or indeed not whole and thus operating ‘wrong-mindedly’ and in need of restoring your right mind – which does not reject or attack wholeness in fear of loss.

We don’t see ourselves as rejecting wholeness when we divide or judge our mind, world or experience, but rather as trying to regain our idea of love, power or peace, by getting rid – or trying to get rid of what doesn’t fit or support who we are believing ourself and world to be.

This ‘shadow’ or denied self is part of our wholeness but not in the frame of fear, guilt or hate that it has been associated with. The true release of what is no longer recognised as having any belonging in you is by the whole embrace of what does. The current mind is set in the pattern of power over evil or fear. But the power invoked is the same as that which induces fear – which is the mind or purpose of division.

Where you choose to accept yourself is up to you – but instead of making images of self-depreciation, you might simply feel the honesty of not knowing and leave this space open.

What is then already true and already a movement of unfolding fulfilment will then register with your free awareness BECAUSE you are not engaged in distractions and diversion of conflicts or problems of a habit mind running in your own name – and as if the power to make you choose rather than make a choice.

Self-illusion is in a sense what we take to be self – whenever we take it as a substitution for a real relationship. The world of image and form given our own private spin of meanings and associations, can blind us to the sanctity of life. Because you do not accept this for yourself and share it – you hide your heart in special others – whose pain and fear then hurt you in a way you otherwise armoured against.

Taking any part of a whole into a private agenda can cite Scripture or invoke holiness for deceitful purpose or hidden agenda. The deceiver – as I use it – is pervasive to the human mind or wish to BE deceived. But wholeness is indivisible.

The mind of judgement of good and evil is a ‘second creation’ or rather the overlay of meanings of possession and control upon a living Inherence. Truth is inherently feared by lies or illusion taken in place of true and so is demonised, reviled and feared. But truth itself is beyond the reach or the conception of a mind made to hide it – and so it can only subvert the forms of association deemed threat to its existence to support and ‘prove’ itself ‘real’.

Death is the inevitable result of identifying exclusively in form.
Love is the quality of a recognition that extends and embraces.
Your loved ones are no illusion, but your judgements about them can hide their presence while you dally in in model as if it is the reality. Of course it does give us a ‘reality-experience’ – but if this is conflicted – it implicates conflicts that, being aware of, we can bring curiosity to rather than having already reacted as true.

I have had many instances where a moment of willingness allowed a completely different perspective on what seemed attack calling for defence. Holding integrity as a basis to relate from it with another who is out of integrity – ie ‘triggered in their own stuff’, is not a trick or an achievement or personal status – but the willingness to release the personal reaction to a deeper self honesty.

I don’t think of life as non violent or pacifist – but as one with Itself. As soon as we give something a negative charge, it is attracted into our field of manifestation. Fears that are hidden or masked over are no less active and this includes manipulation by others as part of a deeper self manipulation.

Thinking is not the basis from which to act, unless recognised as resonance in the heart of true desire.
This may seem abstract but the manipulative intent of false thinking is the root of evil given power that then corrupts and undermines the residual memories of a true recognition. Without which not even the wish or illusion of love would find any place in our mind.

Hate given power is corruption.

Nothing I write is telling anyone what to think or do – but only pointing to that ‘what we do’ automatically proceeds from what we think, and that the mind can be used to deceive rather than receive – so as to gain a world but lose the Soul of a recognition, felt and known.

That the mind is a powerful creator is evidenced in be-lived reality. Limiting this as protection from evil is itself a self-denial and rejection. Re-aligning our mind in the felt qualities of life is no great difficulty – excepting when triggered in fears that shut off our capacity to feel in re-enacting old scripts into situations we are bind to – because we have dissociated.

Rather than the temptation to fight evil as if such a role makes us valid or legitimate or right, we can cultivate and share the conditions in which it has no soil in which to grow, or backdoor via which to hack. This may look like struggle against evils – but it wells up from the true of being because we are no longer trying to usurp, manipulate or control life as a private sense of judgement set against conflicting opposition – as if this can ever really work, as if this time will be different, as if without such an identity, we are nothinged and left naked against every kind of evil.

But the opposite is true.

“Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. Michael Ellner

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 6:44 PM
Reply to  binra

I appreciate your very thoughtful and lengthy response. Topics such as these branch off in all directions. I fear that in mistaking illusion as reality, I wind up mistaking reality as illusion.

I feel the need to make a reasonable effort to help others, including family, other people, other species, and Mother Earth herself. I that all is energy and vibration, and that human perception is subjectively mediated through the faulty lenses of our senses. Realizing that pain is merely a manifestation of quantum energy, however, does not lessen the perception of pain, not mitigate the burden of guilt if I fail to help another.

In traditional Vietnam, men would sometimes abandon their families and station in life to become monks. Mandarins became monks, peasants became temple workers. The justification was philosophical: to escape the world of suffering one must pierce the illusion of “reality”, eliminate desire, etc., etc. This was often catastrophic for the families involved. More often than not the monks involved devoted more effort to ritual than transformation.

If I abandon the world as illusion, what happens to those I leave behind?

binra
binra
Apr 6, 2019 8:37 PM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

I didn’t suggest any of your examples. The function of an illusion is to replace reality. Once seen as illusion it can no longer function as a wholly believed reality – because we cannot altogether un-know. Of course we may try – just as we are free to accept what is not true and experience our life and world in its framing..

My point is more to invite noticing what we accept true and bringing curiosity to it – particularly where a sense of dissonance, conflict, pain or emotional reaction is involved.

Truth is already true. We need do nothing for it to be All That Is. But our awareness of truth requires our cooperation. While truth makes no conditions, we do and have made conditions in which truth is not welcome. Not least because it is feared. Nothing is a better hiding place from truth than searching for it – from the belief or presumption that we must find it in some other time and place or attain some other state.

Truth is pointed to in the opening to love of God, love of brother as love of self. Your being may be out of range of your thinking, but is entirely within your capacity to accept. If you want to be ‘someone else’ – perhaps from a sense of unworthiness of love acquired or taken on from your family, your society or a theme you brought with you – then you are in the right place to act it out or make a meal out of it. Only if your capacity to tolerate the costs or burdens of self denial breaks or wears down are you ‘disturbed’ enough to recognize living a lie or suffering a meaninglessness that then moves you to QUESTION your reality, your worldview, your thinking – and of course the social context that supports and reinforces it.

While the world for many seems to be increasingly disturbed and disturbing – this doesn’t yet promote a widespread recognition of a corruption of our currency of thought as cause, but seeks and finds witnesses to support the assigning of guilt and seek vengeance in effecting penalty.

If you use your family or world as an excuse for a lack of self honesty, self love and the extending of a presence of integrity TO your world – then why would abandoning the world or your responsibilities to others free you?

If you are in some addictive cycle and those you associate with are unwilling or unable to support your release of an addictive habit, then you may need a change of circumstance to grow stronger before re-embracing a wider society from a new place. But the desire for true joy, peace, and freedom is exactly like the yielding and replacement of habits of thought and response that are recognised false or empty of whatever promise they once had, and so choosing NOT to invest in or give support to the false opens the moment of awareness through which a more consciously aligned perception and appreciation extends through you, and not by you. Love is clearly beyond our capacity to ‘do’ – but altogether within our ability to recognize and accept. The only qualification for love’s awareness is the willingness to share it. I not the word misery is an extension of the word miser. Look at our world and see how much it operates on a negative definition and results in a negative outcome. But look well, because the negative is set in false frames of seeming positive goals that few would stand critical of without seeming dissonant and heartless to their society.

Evils are used to set in identity against instead of addressing where we experience them. Not blaming this but noticing what runs beneath. Identity is shared and recognised as shared in honesty or integrity of relationship. Fear seems to be the power that kills love. The word seems is the opening to look and see.
Fear begets illusion begets fear.

When you release the body, no one is left behind but this is accomplished by truth, not by death.
The willingness to lean into challenging the ‘edge of the world that fear sets’ for even a moment, opens a true glimpse.
But we cannot override our fears and expect not to then be undermined by them. In some sense our denials are like denied children – for they are part of us – and that part which seems to have the stolen the light of the gods – by which we develop the mind of control – has a dark underbelly of denied light and life and whose call is unrecognized.

The capacity to recognise our own call one who we judged against – and give it full acceptance and answer is where a present love replaces an ancient hate. This is our way out of a self induced insanity. But of course this is the very last place anyone would look for answer.

“If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” ― Rita Mae Brown.
When time runs out, the timeless is recognised to have been here all along.
We don’t know how anything happens – but only make a reality of what happened and predict a correspondence with a sense of control that starts to substitute for the truly lived in bubbles of self-insulation.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 10:54 PM
Reply to  binra

Indeed, perhaps empathy, duty and attachment are illusory chains binding unenlightened souls to the wheel of karma. Perhaps not. It would be nice if God had a compassionate affirmative action program for slow learners.

Why would a sentient universe be so flawed in its inception that it would require the crucible of self-evolution in the first place? Better the Void.

dhfabian
dhfabian
Apr 5, 2019 2:46 PM
Reply to  Paul

Real life is more complicated than our simplistic “it’s all about race” meme. We could look into the long history of WASPS viewing Slavs, for example, are inferior as well.

Paul
Paul
Apr 5, 2019 7:59 PM
Reply to  dhfabian

I’d very much include the White European hatred of Slavs as what I meant as ‘racism’. It’s tribalism writ large.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2019 3:51 AM

Good article again Andre. Three words are involved here: Power, Control, Greed; with a hefty dose of WASP superiority complex thrown in as well. This article got me thinking of Frantz Fanon’s ‘Wretched Of The Earth’. And its very obviously about control , hence the targeting of the few independent countries left in the World. The hegemon will not take no for an answer. However, without a steady supply of oil, what is the fate of the West’s economy? Complete collapse.

Wilmers31
Wilmers31
Apr 5, 2019 4:38 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Yes, we need the oil – but could we not survive on somewhat less? Power, greed, control – don’t forget monopoly as in ‘full spectrum dominance’.

The mendacity of the West is quite sickening. Not all countries can be remade in the US image. When will they learn to sweep their own doorstep? I was full on the West’s side but then I experienced it makes no difference who ‘steals’ my land, communist East Germany or the new westernized re-united Germany.

Then dig this: Pompeo warned the EU (or maybe just France) to not tax google. Does he not understand that the money for US troops in Europe comes from taxes (not from money printing)??

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2019 5:27 AM
Reply to  Wilmers31

Wilmers31. Agreed – full spectrum dominance as well. I’ve never been to the United States, but there is far enough Americanism here in Australia. Others in Aussie may disagree, but I see this country becoming a mirror image of the U.S, especially among people under 40.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 1:48 AM

Because different witnesses directly witness different aspects of a given reality, the more testimonies one gathers up and integrates into an analytical and composite interpretation of that given reality, the more likely it is that one’s affected second hand impression of that reality will actually correspond to the reality.

Here, then, is another notable reading of the situation in Venezuela, albeit perhaps not as poetically eloquent and thus as emotionally compelling as Vltchek’s version: Venezuelan Socialist, Eva Maria, Speaks to Middle Eastern Socialists

lundiel
lundiel
Apr 5, 2019 9:31 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Err, she’s based in America which says it all for me.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 11:16 AM
Reply to  lundiel

Err, Vltchek is a Russian visiting Venezuela. Err, Eva Maria is a Venezuelan with Venezuelan roots, albeit for the time being a Venezuelan expat living in Portland, Oregon. Err, you are who living where? Err, your point is what, exactly?

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 11:29 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

. . . but okay, let’s go with your mode of argumentation, that only those who are “based” outside of America, say, preferably Venezuela itself, but Russia being “okay,” what should we make of this interview with Milton D’León, a Marxist worker from Caracas and editor of [the] site La Izquierda Diario Venezuela?

Ray Raven
Ray Raven
Apr 5, 2019 11:42 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Err, your Russophobia is showing.
From the font of all knowledge (/s) “André Vltchek (pronounced “vultcek”) was born in St. Petersburg [Leningrad] the Soviet Union, in 1962. His father was a Czech nuclear physicist and his mother a Russo-Chinese painter.[14] He was raised in Central Europe”.

Err, so Andre is a Rooskie because :
1) His mum was part Russian, thus at most he is 25% ethno-Rooske ?
2) He was born in St Petersburg, during the time of the USSR, but is now Russia ?
3) He currently holds US citizenship ?

If he is a Rooskie, why was he raised in Central Europe ?
Was he raised as a Rooslie sleeper cell ? And Pootine is now calling in the debt ?

Do tell.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 4:16 PM
Reply to  Ray Raven

Err, I guess you must have missed something about the tone of my reply, eh?

lundiel
lundiel
Apr 5, 2019 12:09 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

” the more testimonies one gathers up and integrates into an analytical and composite interpretation of that given reality, the more likely it is that one’s affected second hand impression of that reality will actually correspond to the reality”.

Testimonies from expats living in America don’t count. The only Venezuelans living in america are anti government elitists, they wouldn’t be allowed in otherwise. Eva Maria sounds like a typical American “Socialist”….rich, elite, social democrat.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 4:14 PM
Reply to  lundiel

“Testimonies from expats living in America don’t count.”

I guess, then, by that criteria that Vltchek’s opinion on Venezuela also doesn’t count.

BigB
BigB
Apr 5, 2019 10:02 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Norm:

Eva Maria writes a very balanced and nuanced appraisal of the Venezuelan crisis. I’m not sure why it has gathered even 2 downvotes?

It is important to explore the territory that Eva Maria left out, in order to get a truly balanced picture. If we go back in time: Hugo and Tony Blair were often mentioned in the same breath, same sentence, same dulcet melotone praise of neoliberal idols. Only one of them changed their way.

So the criticism of distributionism, and not enough true socialism is well founded. Chavez did his best to rectify this before his, shall we say, ‘untimely’ death? When the bottom fell out of the oil market – post 2008 – oil plummeted from $150 pb to zip, and barely recovered. But another, unmentioned fact occurred, on broadly the same time-scale – Venezuela’s oil ran out. That is its cheaply recoverable lighter grades of oil. What is left in the Orinoco Belt is viscous, sulphurous, tar-like extra-heavy crude.

Cut off from the $$$$, and much of international finance, Venezuela does not have the finance or infrastructure in place to recover it. Not without Russian and Chinese investment. A percentage of what is recovered has to be given away – de nada – in return for debt repayments. However the wrong kind of socialist Maduro may be, to omit this analysis and lay the blame solely on Maduro – for things that are way beyond his control, such as entropy (see below) – is a little unfair, I feel.

There are other factors: such as the inordinate control the US Gulf Coast refineries have; the internal neoliberal 5th columnists; etc – which worsen the situation. The mining fiasco is one of them. This links me back into my own analysis below: carbon capitalism is killing us, we are all its victims, and there will be nowhere to hide on a dead planet – if we allow things to develop to the logical ends entailed is carbonised ‘negentropic’ hypertrophied growthism.

The truth is, Venezuelan ‘oil’ is valueless to a meaningful, humanist global society (don’t worry, I’m not advocating the family of man just yet – not while there are the like of the scions of Soros around). With an EROI of less than 5:1: it will cost more to recover than it is worth – as available socially beneficial exergy (excess energy) – to either a socialist or even a capitalist society (is it even worth drawing a distinction these days?) Obviously though, the current globalised neoliberal negentropic neo-classical economics, is blind to this. So someone will debt-fund its infratstructure, upgrading, recovery, and economic use. Which is inimical to all life on the planet – environmentally and economically unviable (let’s leave AGW out of it).

Debt-funding only continues to make sense if it produces growth – real growth convertible into meaningful existence an holistic wellbeing of planet and society. No need to argue, that boat was never raised by the rising tide. It was a lie form that start. Escher’s waterfall only ever flowed one way – ever upward.

So we are stuck in a death spiral, doing Jurassic neoliberal hydrocarbonism, whilst slowly being submersed in the ever more entropic viscous tarpit of unrecoverable heavy crude – that will fossilise us soon enough. None of this partial negentropic analysis is helping to get a true handle on this, which is an axiomatic brute fact of economics and socio-politics. We have to do whole earth system analysis. There is no ‘good’ negentropic capital. As we have discussed before; capital is not easily bifurcated hemispherically. Especially, when most FDI is created as unregulated offshore EuroDollars – which is liquid, untraceable, and globally unbound.

So long as we exchange oil for capital, depleting standing sources and polluting sinks – for minimised, rapidly decreasing benefits to societies, externalising the true costs and burdening the globally poor with said costs – denying our spirituality and humanity to ourselves and each other – reacting in a fear heightening anxiety – looking to protect our pathetic material faux-wealth; scapegoating and dehumanising others in the process – again at the cost of our true wealth as a Universal Humanity …so long as we as societies do this, Venezuela will bleed and suffer, Gaza will bleed and suffer, the Congo will bleed and suffer, Syria will bleed and suffer, Mali will bleed and suffer. No need to name every country globally. The countries at the top of the imperial and sub-imperial pile will bleed and suffer last – as they continue to bleed an immiserate the periphery. France will bleed and suffer – despite its neo-colonialism. There is nowhere to go on a dead planet.

If that is too harsh for some: study entropy. It is not isolated or inequally distributed East and West: the Zeroth Law accounts for that. Only holistic World System analysis reveals that.

We are all Venezuela, Gaza, Syrians now. So long as we are reliant on oil; our tarpit fate is sealed.

Jen
Jen
Apr 5, 2019 12:01 PM
Reply to  BigB

Reading Eva Maria’s appraisal of the situation in Venezuela, I see she says nothing about how US sanctions and the political elites’ collusion with Washington (such as hoarding food supplies or selling imported food – whose import was subsidised by the Venezuelan government – to Colombian companies at a profit, and those Colombian companies then reselling the food at further profit to Venezuelans across the border) have affected Venezuela’s economy and encouraged corruption. She puts nearly all the blame for the current crisis on Bolivarian policies past and present, and claims they were / are “unstable”. She claims that Maduro’s government no longer enjoys popularity with most Venezuelans. She reports Juan Guaido’s claim to be Interim President of Venezuela and US recognition of Guaido’s claim in a bland, matter-of-fact way as though we ought to accept the claim without complaint or protest.

I get the impression that Eva Maria is about as genuinely socialist as that Syrian fellow Yassin al-Haj Saleh who (in an op ed for the New York Times) admitted living for a time with the White Helmets in Douma some time in 2013 before scooting off to Raqqa in August 2013, just before ISIS entered Douma.

Perhaps that’s why she got two down votes?

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 2:53 PM
Reply to  Jen

No, Jen, that isn’t why she got two thumbs down. She got two thumbs down because people such as yourself do not understand that Maria’s perspective is not a top down perspective, that is to say, that she does not — as you and lundiel and Ray Raven and, yes, Vltchek (pronounced “vultcek”) do — only see things from the perspective of geopolitics or the perspective of ‘national’ interests, a distorted perspective that in knee jerk fashion sees all ‘nations’ that it imagines to be ostensibly at odds with what it calls the ‘West’ as being bastions of leftist progressivism, when in fact they are all without exception neck deep in the business of capitalist exploitation.

The problem with Venezuela is that it never managed to escape the now globalized dynamics of capitalist production and distribution.

The redistribution of wealth undertaken by Chavez, as laudable as it was, for the time that the price of a barrel of oil was able to subsidize it, was not and could not be a ‘socialist’ solution to anything.

The subsidization of living standards remained dependent on all of the prerogatives of commodity production and exchange.

Oil was pumped out the ground and sold on the international markets, and the income thereby generated, net of debt payments to international creditors, was in part used to import goods rather than to independently develop and diversify Venezuela’s means of domestic production and distribution, and to help the poor of Venezuela afford through redistribution programs a better standard of living.

Notwithstanding the machinations of American capital, something which Eva Maria well recognizes and understands far better than you do, any economy which remains entangled in the prerogatives of for profit production is inherently unstable, and this was and is the case for Venezuela, as it is everywhere else on the planet.

Of course, if you understood that capitalist economies must by the very logic of their operations always descend into crises of production and distribution, you would recognize that Chavez’s so-called ‘socialist strategy’ could not succeed, even in the absence of the subversion being directed against it by what you and the intellectual company you keep call the ‘West.’

Obviously, however, you don’t really understand how it is that capitalist economies are a circle that can’t be squared. So perhaps I can try to spell it out for you in simple terms that a child might comprehend, but that, granted, someone as dogmatic and indoctrinated as yourself probably won’t be able to: at bottom, capitalism generates profits off the backs of people who work for wages. But notice that wages are a cost of production. Question: can the sum of all costs of production in a capitalist society ever equal a sum comprised of all costs of production plus all of the so-called profits generated in a capitalist society, profits that stand in excess of all costs of production? Do you see the difficulty?

Let me try to spell it out for you: wages which are a cost of production simply cannot add up to a sum sufficient to cover both the aggregate costs of all production plus all of the profit that capitalists would extract from the aggregate wages paid out to the working class, an aggregate sum that represents the purchasing power from which all profit is to be derived.

That was and is the essential and inherent instability in Venezuela’s economy, which as it happens is also the essential and inherent instability in the globalized economy, that is to say, in all other national economies that together comprise the overarching system of global production and exchange.

Now I realize that you have a penchant for conspiracy theories, and that you see all social, economic and political instabilities everywhere only in terms of the dastardly and covert destabilization operations conducted by the ‘West,’ operations that happen to be real and not mere figments your overly rigid imagination, but the fact of the matter is that capitalist economies, all on their own, without any help from anyone at all, cannot but generate social crises that now and again assume the guise of outright revolutions, bloody rebellions that spontaneously erupt from the ‘bottom up.’ Oh, I know it’s difficult to credit, indeed, that this is beyond your ability to imagine, but ordinary people are actually capable sometimes of collectively understanding that their lives are no longer tolerable and that something has to be done, and that to change things, they must come together to muster the strength of their numbers to try to overturn the intolerable order of things. And because people like you can’t credit that, you are prepared to cheer the drowning in blood of spontaneous uprisings if only those capitalist nations that do not comprise what in your mind comprises the ‘West,’ are the nations doing the drowning.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 5, 2019 8:27 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

The American Dream and the desire for social justice each have powerful and broad appeal. However, it’s difficult to stuff both dogmas into one ideological bottle. Maybe it’s time to give Karl Marx and Adam Smith their due, recycle the labels, and move on.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 8:59 PM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

What?

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 5, 2019 9:42 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Dead-end narrow alleyways of capitalist and socialist dogmatism are more distraction than help in finding practical solutions in today’s world. Who carse how many angels may properly fit on the head of a pin?

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 11:27 PM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

Dead-end narrow alleyways of dogmatism:

For a while, Chavez’s ‘socialism of the 21st century’ found a great deal of approbation among the vast majority of Venezuelans, that is, while the price of a barrel of oil hovered above $100, and profits were ample enough to fund the social programs that legitimized Chavism.

Then the price of oil predictably collapsed à la Marx as a result of a global recession, and Chavism no longer had anything to offer Venezuelans other than a full-blown economic and social crisis.

So was this crisis born of capitalism?

Or was it the result of socialism? Or of Chavez’s ‘socialism of the 21st century?’

Or are these questions utterly meaningless, in that answering them would explain absolutely nothing about what is currently happening in Venezuela and thus offer not the slightest hint about how such a disaster might be avoided in the future?

Angels on the head of a pin, you fancy?

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 12:34 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

I agree. You have nicely limned Venezuela’s complex predicament without resort to ideology or having to count angels. It seems to me that non-ideological, pragmatic perspectives on public and private ownership/control/management are the most realistic strategy for achieving shared societal goals.

I admit to suffering from Marxist Jargon Syndrome, caused in part from injudicious exposure to essays by Louis Proyect, and in part to Free Market Narcissistic Disorder caused by improperly vented hot air at Zero Hedge.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 7, 2019 3:32 AM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

“It seems to me that non-ideological, pragmatic perspectives on public and private ownership/control/management are the most realistic strategy for achieving shared societal goals.”

Not that I want to count angels, or to lapse into Marxist jargon, or to call anyone out on their ‘free market narcissistic disorder’ . . . but . . . is it really possible to be more ideological than to believe that ‘shared societal goals’ can exist between, on the one hand, the interests of private ownership buttressed by the public purse, the very current state of things, and, on the other, the interests of people employed by private ownership, that is to say, the overwhelming majority, unencumbered by any means of subsistence, save for the ability to slave for a wage?

Where the essence of a social relation is exploitation, a true commonality of interests can’t possibly exist, save as a fiction of such interests between those who can exploit and those who can’t but be, usually presented in the guise of ‘non-ideological, pragmatic perspectives,’ you know, those perspectives that are the most ‘realistic’ of all.

Other than that, I pretty much agree with everything else that you wrote.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Apr 5, 2019 6:18 PM
Reply to  Jen

@Jen. There are quite a few socialist ideologists making the rounds at the moment. They speak as citizens of a country, but not of the citizens of that country. Ideological thinking has taken over discourse and the people on the ground are not asked if they agree with a given narrative because they would be unlikely to point the finger of blame in the desired direction and their views, are therefore, dismissed. Nor are those making assumptions based on their own ideology sharing their onservations with the people they pupport to represent – in the case of Venezuela, AM would have been told which bus to catch on leaving(ASAP). EM speaks words that would be considered a betrayal by those she claims to represent, just as there are supposed lefties in Britain who claim to speak for me and many others like me. We usually let them know in no uncertain times where they can go, without the niceties of directions to a bus stop. I’ve more than once told fanaticals spouting their socialist credentials and trying to tell me what I should think, exactly where to shove their credentials, usually with the addendum, not in my f******g name. Not only do they not know what I think, they don’t even want to know, just in case it doesn’t fit with their clever agenda. Too many on the left took a right turn somewhere and ended up in an empty field, I refer to prats like Owen Jones and his ilk, you’d only know about him if you were British, but he makes a living out of being a leftie, a very lucrative one. Andre would wipe him off his shoe.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 7:49 PM
Reply to  mohandeer

You make it sound like “socialist ideologists” come from nowhere and belong nowhere.

Why does your opinion count but not that of a “socialist ideologist,” of which I imagine I might be one, and that Andre, who surely subscribes to no ideology, but only to the absolute and objective truth, wipes me off his shoe?

You see things one way. I see them another. I speak for no one but myself, but I notice that some others also see things as I do. Do they then speak for me and I for them? What if there are some Venezuelans who see things much as I do? Do they speak for me when they speak and I for them when I do? But do they speak as Venezuelans?

And so it is, that if it were to happen that many or most ordinary Venezuelans became ‘socialist ideologists,’ Andre would surely have to wipe them off his shoe, and if these ‘socialist ideologists’ got it in there heads to topple their government, then surely Russia and China, who would be allies to what would not be an illegitimate Maduro government, would be right to join in the fray to but down such a rebellion, not because they might be the majority of Venezuelans, but for being “socialist ideologists.”

But maybe I misapprehend you, having taken a right turn somewhere along the way.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 5, 2019 5:35 PM
Reply to  BigB

“Not without Russian and Chinese investment.”

Of course, you mean to imply, “not without the Russian and Chinese ‘socialist‘ investement.” 😉

. . . and it’s not so much about blaming Maduro or anyone else as underscoring that the imploding Venezuelan economy is really your run-of-the-mill imploding capitalist economy, with all the suffering that such a crash always entails . . .

The impersonal dynamics of social structure matter more than a lot of people around here seem to realize.

BigB
BigB
Apr 5, 2019 9:46 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

There is a world dialectic to capitalism that we have touched on before. The entire system is falling into an entropic black hole from which very little can escape. We discussed that BRICS is a capitalist globalisation strategy …and that Russia-China-India’s capital is sub-imperial – extending the financial dictatorship of the IMF-WB-WTO Bretton Woods 2.0 institutions. All the BRICS “anti-imperialist” institutions are $$$$ denominated sub-imperialist credit extensions. Some alternative!

Within this imperialist/sub-imperialist framework of hyper-exploitation and carbon extractivism: under the auspices of globalist capital (much of which is ‘offshore’ with no particular country of origin – mediated through international shell companies and secrecy jurisdictions) is its own intra-capitalist carnivore-culture dynamic. But there is NO alternative model emerging – merely an extension of the globalist cannibalist model.

There seems to be a miscognition that there is a benign form of capitalism – one that does not alienate or retardate our spiritual consciousness. And that China is building a model ‘Tianxia’ Ecological Society. Oh dear, not in my estimation.

So Euro-Americanism – hardcore old school imperialism is bad. Then Sino-Russianism – neophyte new school sub-imperialism is benign? Has no one been paying attention for the last 150 years?

Whether they like it or not, Sino-Russianism – or Eurasian Integrationism – will be drawn into the same imperialist gangster protectionist racket as NATO European Integrationism. NATO-EU is militarising and ‘tooling up’ to protect its capitalised ‘free’ market investments. So Sino-Russia must follow suit – even if they do not have to invest quite so much capital. They can stay put – EU-NATO-Japan-Australia will have to bring the fight to them. Has anyone checked out the navy China is building? Some alternative community under heaven!

Everyone will be involved in proxy asymmetric hybrid warfare – in MENA, Sub-Sahel, Congo, The Horn d’Afrique, South America. The whole world will be a proxy battleground for the last few ounces of rare earth minerals, the last blood diamonds, the last GMO rice plant, the last drop of potable water – to sell to Nestle for the last ounce of profit.

Venezuela is collapsing within this ongoing dialectic. Capitalism has become a thing and taken on a life of its own. I’m calling it Wetiko materialism. It is not local to Venezuela; it is happening simultaneously globally on more or less acute scales.

All of this is entirely predictable from the slightest cursory reading of Marx. Or the library of post- and neo-Marxist analysis. Including ‘eco-Marxism’ or eco-socialism that belatedly accounts for entropy.

Globalisation favours conglomerate TNCs; de-territorialised ‘offshore’ markets; a single global currency; centralisation, monopolisation, singlepoint control; federalisation; supranational trading blocs; and ‘global governance’. The infamous NWO. Anyone who believes in an “anti-imperialist” bloc should search “global governance”. There is no New World …not for us under the aegis of the globalised governance of corporate capital.

It is not a conspiracy theory: it is the teleology of capital. It is an ontogenetic cancer that has taken over the world. It is quite naive to suppose that there is a place in it for humanity and community enterprise. Or even just community. Every person in the world should be militantly anti-capitalist; radically anti-imperialist – AND anti-sub-imperialist; and profoundly anti-war. They are all inexorably linked by the motion of capital. They are the motion laws of capital. And the motive power is oil.

Personally, I cannot see the alternative – because there is not yet an alternative. Perhaps when we collectively realise how perilous our position is. We will have two broad choices: to fracture communities further along ancient faultlines that capitalism exploits. Or, come together in a Universal Humanist internationalist solidarity: pro-humanity and against capitalist globalist insanity.

Right now, it has to be said: we are sleepwalking into the former.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 12:48 AM
Reply to  BigB

Does this perspective compass the psychopathy of Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton?

BigB
BigB
Apr 6, 2019 11:25 AM
Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

It is a whole system overview of globalised capital rape of humanity and the ecosphere. It includes all 7.4 billion of us – mostly as victims. But everyone interacts to create the convergence crisis humanity is being inexorably sucked into by our dependency on oil and capital. Which as I showed below are, for all practical purposes, the came thing.

Do you honestly think three psychotic individuals account for our civilisational crisis? Looking to individuals, anylysisng governments, comparing nation states, and dividing the world into a good hemisphere and a bad hemisphere obfuscates the system dynamics that produced a Trump, a Pompeo, and a Bolton. On what normalised planet would they be anywhere near the levers of power? They would be in permanent care in an isolation ward in all but a thoroughly and irrevocably psychotic system.

Understanding the ubiquity of the capitalist system is key to understanding the psycopathy of key individuals. Capitalism is not just and economic system. It is a psychological system that rewards the most ruthless, narcissistic, egomaniacal, megolamaniac, unstable personalities. It promotes them to positions of power and rewards them with status and wealth. The three you name are prominent now, but they are ten-a-penny and not at all unique.

So, are you suggesting that if we got rid – by imprisonment, say – of these three …the world would be normalised? Nothing short of a paradigm shift and re-orientation away from the material to the spiritual will truly achieve that, IMHO.

Capitalism is algorithmic and proceeds along an invariant path to monopolisation and totalisation. That includes, by definition, monopolisation and totalisation of identity. Capitalism produces micro-, meso-, and macro-capitalists – that then intensify and extremise the capitalism. It is a closed loop involution cycle – resulting in the extinction of the species. Do you think a ‘free willed’ humanity would cannibalise its own life commons – for short term profit. That is insane: but it is exactly what we are doing.

No one in particular is in control. We are acting out capitalised behaviourist fear-first responses – even when we can see the results – as the actual dying off of the ecosphere – happening all around us. No one is driving the dreambus. It is the result of group dynamics which further isolate and disempower the individual.

Our obsession with oil, capital, and materialised pseudo-wealth is killing us. And producing psychotic individuals who kill us. And as this plays out, today’s psychos and sickos will seem like children as capital seeks to protect capital. So yes, it does include those three fuckwits, with plenty more to come. Unless we address the entire systemic Wetiko psychoses.

Dimly Glimpsed
Dimly Glimpsed
Apr 6, 2019 4:53 PM
Reply to  BigB

“Do you honestly think three psychotic individuals account for our civilisational crisis”

No, of course not. On second thought, John Bolton’s mustache may, in and of itself, constitute a civilizational crisis. A reflective observer of the sordid ebb and flow (mostly ebb) of human events can see that individual action by powerful actors seem to influence, on occasion directly and significantly, the course of events.

Trump’s withdrawal from the INF nuclear treaty serves as example. Another example might be the plotting of the neocon cabal responsible for America’s regime change wars in the Middle East. Or the quixotic decision by Bernie Sanders to primary challenge Hillary in 2016, which likely cost Hillary the election and which rehabilitated the word “socialism” in America.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Apr 7, 2019 4:04 PM
Reply to  BigB

“There seems to be a miscognition that there is a benign form of capitalism – one that does not alienate or retardate our spiritual consciousness.”

You mean a miscognition that seems to find an echo in these lines(?):

“I noticed that such individuals and analysts actually believe that ‘capitalism is responsible for everything’, and that it creates the culture of violence of which, both victims and victimizers, already became hostages to.

“After working in all corners of the world, I am now more and more convinced that capitalism is actually the result of Western culture, which is predominantly based on expansionism, exceptionalism and aggression.”

First came Western culture, then the disaster of capitalism which ins’t really capitalism, but really only the primordialism of Western culture, a thing unlike everything else not culturally Western, all of those other discrete and as yet untainted cultures, not at all exceptional, to be sure, unless, of course, if contrasted against the background of Western culture.

And then for reasons I can’t explain, I’m reminded of this guy, Samir Amin, an Egyptian scholar of no real account, who swears that ‘capitalism’ did not first appear in the world in the West, certainly no in Europe, but in the East, and to be precise, in China, a long, long time ago, and from which it slowly migrated, if in fits and starts, in the fullness of time, over many thousands of years, to eventually encompass the entire globe.

If Samir Amin is right, and Western culture is really just a knock off of Eastern culture, aren’t a lot of people around here who now have it in for only the West not really guilty of something some have called psychological projection? I mean, if we are going to explain the world to ourselves by dividing it into a good hemisphere and a bad hemisphere, into the East and the West . . .

Mucho
Mucho
Apr 5, 2019 1:21 AM

We are at a stage where you cannot discuss US/Western foreign policy without discussing Israel, because the two are so intertwined. Israel has a lot to answer for, needs to be exposed, and if this website is what it claims to be, it needs to be doing a lot more to address this problem, instead of skirting around the issue, which is all it seems to do, other than in the comments.
For example, check this video looking into the true role of ISIS. This is fucking ridiculous. Why is no-one reporting this? Why is true journalism left to lone wolf YouTubers? Where are the real journalists?

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Apr 5, 2019 12:09 AM

“After working in all corners of the world, I am now more and more convinced that capitalism is actually the result of Western culture, which is predominantly based on expansionism, exceptionalism and aggression.”

Ghandi got it a little more succinctly. When asked what he thought of Western Civilization he replied that he thought it would be a good idea.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Apr 4, 2019 11:25 PM

No one is born a psychopath, a sociopath, or with sadistic personality disorder.
They are learned behaviours.
Without Love, or at least a minimal amount of nurturing, humans revert to survival mode.
It is a ‘default’ setting in our brains.
Unfortunately there have been enough of these individuals throughout history to take us down the path towards extinction.
They are outnumbered.
They can be stopped.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2019 1:43 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Fair Dinkum: my first reply ‘dissapeared’ so I’ll try again. Really appreciate the tip about Joe Toscano and his show on 3CR. Listened last night, and was very impressed. Didn’t know about PIBCI either; now I do! Cheers…

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2019 10:54 PM

It’s that bloke gibbering in the corner again, muttering “entropy, entropy”.

As Summitflyer attests from personal experience, I admire Andre’s dedication and perseverance. No contesting his humanitarianism.

That said, for the aforementioned reason: I cannot agree with his premise on a biophysical basis. I’m sure a whole array of reasoning goes into the decision making process – of strategic gain and strategic denial – but in the final analysis – it’s all about the oil. That is because there is biophysical correlation of almost 1:1 (R2 = 0.99072) between GDP ($ trillions) and primary energy consumption (TOE billions) …(that’s ‘billion tonnes of oil equivalent’). If you want to be pedantic: that’s all hydrocarbons converted to their oil equivalent. But oil is still our primary fuel, particularly for motion. So I have no real qualms in stating: even if it is not all about the oil – it’s all about the oil.
comment image

Capitalism is hydrocarbonism. It flourished in the brief ‘Petroleum Interval’ from around 1880 – 2008 when it died. Almost all gains in GDP since then have been debt funded. Even with this seeming mild decoupling, oil production still reached an all time high recently [2018] at 100 billion bpd – double 1970s consumption – and still increasing at 1.5% pa [IEA]. You cannot separate capitalism from hydrocarbon consumption. To all intents and purposes; capital is oil.

So, whilst the behaviour of the West is undeniably appalling – China is increasing its oil consumption to 13.8 bn bpd towards a projected peak in 2030 (CNPC). There is no ‘good capital – bad capital’ from a biophysical POV. Nor is there an ‘East v West’. Neither hemisphere is negentropic. Both are subject to a low entropy source depletion to high entropy waste sink gradient. That gradient is ineluctably one way for time and entropy.

This is a stone cold brute fact of existence. It is not something one can just make up. Nor is it something anyone can afford to ignore. Ignorance can’t alter entropy or re-write the Laws of Thermodynamics. I use Hall and Klitgaard’s “Energy and the Wealth of Nations” for reference. I suggest everyone else does too.

As I often get accused of over-analysing: here it is. Capitalism is killing us and there is no escaping it. Capitalised hydrocarbonism is a globalised phenomena. Food – the green revolution – is hydrocarbon oil too. Due to entropy: oil has long since become an economic drag. There is something called the ‘asymptotic relationship of happiness and wealth’. Which basically means we are using more and more resources and energy to make ourselves unhappier. This stands to common sense analysis. Carbon capitalism is killing us physically and spiritually.

Whilst it is amazing to observe so many intelligent people – including ALL world leaders – living in a negentropic quasi-mind imaginal …which is the only place growthism can be exponential on a finite planet. Make-believing that more energy and more resources will eventually make us happy. But entropy increases whether it is ignored or not. The more we do will not make it go away – so the ‘money is virtual and infinite’ neurobabblers are in for a shock.

Of course Euro-Americanism is insane and psychotic. But there is no benign negentropic ‘Eastern’ alternative. The entire hydrocarbonism paradigm is omnicidal – quantitatively, qualitatively, and tangibly so. And yet we seem to live under the pretension that if we ignore entropy for long enough, it will become benign or go away. It won’t.

So, it’s all about the oil. So long as the world is entranced is its quasi-mind imaginal – afforded by cheap oil – converted into counterfeit prosperity, unequally distributed …the less time there will be to do something meaningful about it. Time and entropy wait for no one.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2019 1:17 AM
Reply to  BigB

BigB: Profound. Again. Agree with your sentence that Capitalism is killing us both physically and spiritually, and also regards the role of oil in the functionality of society – incl China’s increased consumption as you point out. Don’t know where you live, but if you’re in a large City, observe those around you. Just the sense of alienation and individualism and ennui. And everyone staring at their phones. A truly sad state of affairs BigB.

BigB
BigB
Apr 5, 2019 8:09 AM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Gezzah

If you knew where I lived: you would confirm my madness, or schizophrenic cognitive dissonance. I live in the beautiful and magical Sussex countryside: not far from ‘Pooh bridge’ and the real life ‘600 acre wood’. For all intents and purposes, it looks like a negentropic landscape, untouched by time and chaos. I’m looking at the South Downs now. It’s a bit misty today, so I can’t see Jack and Jill (two windmills atop Ditchling Beacon). It’s hard to believe this area – the Weald – was once an industrial heartland, centre of the iron smelting industry. Given time, nature can return to wonder our fire, brimstone, all-coating toxic ash, and deforesting industrialisation.

I’ve spent enough time in cities to observe the self-absorbtion and loneliness there. I occasionally travel to London for work, but less and less. I’d rather earn less, and stay sane. Even Brighton, which is more local, even with its ecological counter-culture, is not somewhere I would choose to spend overlong.

Yep, all those people in their black-screen, mirror-reality, techno-utopian, negentropic silos. A truly sad state of affairs, my friend …a truly sad state.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Apr 5, 2019 1:05 PM
Reply to  BigB

BigB: you’re in a truly beautiful part of the World, aye. No, havn’t been to the UK either – but have seen the South Downs on TV, in photos, etc. Perfect place for hiking – or meditating, or just contemplating. I’m a New Zealand citizen living in Melbourne, and as such, not entitled to any welfare, so sell The Big Issue mag to survive, as it’s my only source of income. Had a factory job that is now in China (along with 200 other jobs from the same company = globalisation). I go all over Melbourne selling mag. Its tough, but hey; no time clock, no supervisor, get to meet so many people from all walks of life, some truly beautiful (and quite profound) connections with other human beings. I observe so much out there on the streets; the good and the bad. I also see the effects Neoliberalism has on society. Cheers BigB….

Paul
Paul
Apr 5, 2019 5:35 PM
Reply to  Gezzah Potts

Must be Burwash?

BigB
BigB
Apr 5, 2019 8:15 PM
Reply to  Paul

Close, Old Heathfield. Burwash is ten minutes down the road.

Paul
Paul
Apr 5, 2019 8:40 PM
Reply to  BigB

Beautiful part of the country.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Apr 4, 2019 10:23 PM

‘If Venezuela falls, everything could be lost, for decades, maybe even centuries.’

But we haven’t got centuries or even decades. I don’t blame Venezuela for that. We have about 2 decades before it is game over. The rampaging bull-elephant of western imperialism must be stopped, and stopped soon otherwise this longer term perspective is purely academic.

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 4, 2019 8:35 PM

Another excellent read and have to agree. These are 3 points I picked up on the mention of Syria.

1) ‘What makes the Libyan, Syrian and Venezuelan scenarios so similar? Why was the West so eager to viciously attack, and then destroy these three, at the first glance, very different countries?

The answer is simple, although it is not often uttered in the West; at least not publicly:

‘All three countries stood at the vanguard of promoting and fighting with determination for such concepts as “pan-Africanism”, “pan-Arabism” and Patria Grande – essentially Latin American independence and unity.’

2) ‘But Syria has managed to survive, and up to today it is standing. The only reason why the government forces are not taking the last terrorist bastion, Idlib, yet, is because the civilian population would suffer tremendous losses during the battle’.

3) ‘Syria is the last bastion in the Middle East. It is all there is now, resisting the total control of the Middle East by the West. Syria and Iran. But Iran is not yet a ‘front’, although often it appears that soon it might become one’.

Looking at the very start of the Syrian conflict personally I’m not convinced the West was fully on board directly and determined to urgently overthrow Syria as Libya before and Venezuala now. Yes, supporting proxies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia – which they incorrectly thought would overthrow Assad. I think the West fully showed its hand a little later in the conflict.

I agree with the point about Syria promoting ‘pan Arabism’ but this was not a real or imminent threat to the West (or Middle East) so I think with Syria, the reasons for attacking by proxy and directly were numerous and have evolved over time as Israel has intensfied attacks and a very anti-Iranian regime was installed in Washington.

Andre has reported on the Idlib front and no doubt knows that there could be heavy losses. But my feeling is the main reason Syria has not yet attacked is because the West will dangerously escalate the situation through another false flag. I think Putin and Assad are waiting for an opportunity to retake Idlib possibly when the imperialists are distracted elsewhere or something else makes the prospect of intervention less risky.

And finally I have no doubt the Syrian Army have saved the Middle East from destruction and Europe from millions of refugees. Iran would (and perhaps still will be) the next target. But I do sense a change in mood in other countries in the Middle East which are tiring of regime change and chaos. Some Gulf states have re-opened Embassies in Syria and Lebanon (where Hezbollah are powerful) and Iraq would not support further meddling. And the so called ‘Shia Crescent’ is largely intact – largely thanks to Syria.

So I think if the West were to attack Syria or Iran they might have to do it with limited support by other states in the Middle East. And with Venezuala still on the agenda, I don’t think the imperialists can be everywhere at once. But the main risk still is from Israel – will they be prepared to see final defeat in Syria and of their objectives in the Middle East? Very unstable in that respect given it could be just one further incident between Israel and Russia which could set things off once more.

Just some of my thoughts. But, yes still a very dangerous situation and I agree with the sentiments in the article about the attitude towards independent states. One word to partly describe this might have come from one of Andre’s previous articles – ‘ethno-centrism’. An attitude they are superior to the rest of the world so should control it.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 5, 2019 12:11 AM
Reply to  Loverat

“Looking at the very start of the Syria conflict personally I’m not convinced the West was fully on board directly and determined to urgently overthrow Syria as Libya before and Venezuela now.”

@Loverat, whilst I agree with much of what you say I cannot agree with this viewpoint. In an interview given in 2007, retired US General Wesley Clark relates information he was given shortly after ‘9/11’ in 2001 revealing plans at Secretary of Defense level for the US to “take out” seven (named) countries in five years. In order of priority, Syria is second after Iraq on the list.

The link to the interview is here – you only need to look at the first few exchanges with General Clark to find the relevant statements.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

Loverat
Loverat
Apr 5, 2019 4:59 AM
Reply to  JudyJ

Judyj

Fair enough what you say although I’m aware of that interview and the one with Roland Dumas of France who revealed Britain was planning regime change or ‘something’ in Syria as early as 2008. But I should have tried to make my point clearer in the context of the article. I do entirely accept that the main point Andre is making is the long standing attitude and mentality of the West, not to become too distracted on oil or other causes.

But while there was this wish to overthrow Assad at earlier stage indicating a degree of planning it doesn’t change the point I was trying to make. Assad was courted after 2001 and later by Tony Blair (as was Libya). I think it was their response not to ‘play ball’ with the US and the West which accelerated this general wish. At the specific time of the ‘uprising’, of course there were mainly external elements – but I think at this point the direction of these events was more by regional players than US/UK/France which makes it slightly different from Libya and Venezuala.

So the point I’m making is yes, as Andre says there is this destructive and diseased mentality which is overidding in all regime change but the Syrian ‘uprisings’ themselves I don’t were planned directly by Obama – although he probably had prior knowledge and supported them. There were many regional factors at play at that time driving this, making Syria slightly different. I think the fact Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Iran have all been heavily involved supports my side point.

Andre’s comments are spot on – just in some cases I don’t think the plans for western regime change have not been mapped out precisely and events and motives evolved as time went on.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Apr 5, 2019 6:52 PM
Reply to  Loverat

@Loverat. Something you might like to read:How the War Broke Out in Syria
https://www.globalresearch.ca/deraa-how-war-broke-syria/5672626
Eight Years Ago, March 2011. The Day before Daraa: How the War Broke Out in Syria. By Steven Sahiounie. Global Research, March 26, 2019. American …

mohandeer
mohandeer
Apr 5, 2019 6:54 PM
Reply to  mohandeer

and this one:I am a Syrian Living in Syria: “It Was Never a Revolution nor a Civil …
https://www.globalresearch.ca/i…a-syrian…syria…war…/5544450

Feb 4, 2019 … But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand. Please help us … Syria’s War For Humanity. American … The Day before Daraa: How the War Broke Out in Syria. Mar 25, 2019 …

mark
mark
Apr 6, 2019 4:17 AM
Reply to  Loverat

Syria was in the cross hairs of the Neocohens and targeted for destruction from the late 1990s,
It was one of 7 countries to be attacked and destroyed over a 5 year time scale, in a series of wars serving Zionist interests, with America and satellite countries like the UK supplying the dumb goy muscle, blood and treasure.
The SAS was training jihadi terrorists in Turkey and Jordan from at least 2006-7.
The notion that the US and UK were somehow not involved in orchestrating the terrorist invasion of Syria is utterly ludicrous.

binra
binra
Apr 4, 2019 8:01 PM

I don’t see ‘West’ being so unique to a pattern that goes back to the god-kings at the dawn of the civilisation phase.

The globalist agenda has many strands. The USA has been used as a military asset for a globalist agenda that is no less subjugating of its own population. The Corporate cartels are effectively used as proxies by the ability to control money supply and regulatory structures.
So I find your good v evil narrative doesn’t begin to address what is going on – and nor do I think that pointing to a hate object and rallying against it, is intelligent, effective or helpful.

Yes, there is this mindset of arrogance associated with those who are corrupted by power, just as can be stored in worshipped grievance to effect vengeance in a future where the power shifts.

The main thing I notice about such a mindset, is its presumption to judge and indeed accuse others of what it holds itself in exception to. Or in Jesus terms, ‘let he who is without sin throw the first stone’. Why? Because the outsourcing (projecting or getting rid of) pain, conflict, guilt, penalty, consequence, toxicity, debt – as hated and feared experience is the reflex of the attempt to escape it or mitigate it. So we have a world where hate NEEDS a target and will always find one, to then set the conditions that propagate hate, teach hate, make a currency of hate.

Might there be some other way than hating hate in others to find perhaps the freedom to live a love rather than lament a lost or denied love under the lure of power that disempowers and dehumanises?

I don’t see that energy freedom is something the technocracy of energy control is willing to tolerate. Scare-cities are the future for dumb terminals. I believe their goal is insane but I see that it is believed achievable and desirable as a replacement for the past under nationalism, religion capitalism and ideology which are all seen as evils. The idea of eradicating evils is still running a mind in judgement – and so the past is all there in the intent to define, predict and control.

Now does chaos invoke the call to power to stamp it out, or does power generate the chaos in the attempt to coerce or impose itself over the true or free will?

I don’t subscribe to the big bang but the idea includes a moment of self-inflation immediately before the fragmentation (explosion is but a metaphor). As an intuitive, I see self inflation comes before a fall, and the fall sets the mind in terror, as both victim and rage. The psychic-emotional territory of a fear of extinction is that of a cornered rat – so to speak.

If you can see that humans are dissociated from their own being – such as to live under complex narrative masking identity – then don’t wonder that we are like a jack-in-the-box of triggerable reactions until and unless hate is brought to a relational awareness.

I am not justifying or apologising for anyone or anything here. I want sanity to rise in all minds like a new tiding. But I have to live that willingness in my own life to even have the perspective.

Let the experience of persecutions become a call to deepen faith in our self, in our brother and in Life – or let them reveal you have none – and NEED it.

summitflyer
summitflyer
Apr 4, 2019 7:25 PM

André just left Winnipeg this morning after a whirlwind tour in Regina Saskatchewan and a stop over in Winnipeg .
It was indeed a pleasure to meet him and listen to his shared experiences all over the world on war hotspots .
I would urge anyone to support this man in whatever means you can afford .He has basically dedicated his life to reporting the truth on the ground in geopolitical affairs .He is a genuine humanitarian .
He supports himself mostly through the sale of his books and I would especially recommend “Exposing Lies of the Empire ” Check out his web site http://andrevltchek.weebly.com

mark
mark
Apr 6, 2019 4:30 AM
Reply to  summitflyer

We are very lucky to have a small number of exceptional and courageous individuals like Andre to get the truth out and cut through the smokescreen of lies of the MSM.
Vanessa Beeley
Eva Bartlett
Lizzie Phelan
Patrick Henningsen
Peter Ford
Max Blumenthal
Norman Finkelstein
Chris Hedges
John Pilger
There are others, like Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, who may shortly be murdered or disappeared into the US Gulag.