As a Venezuelan, I think the difference is not the Natural Resources, or at least is not the main difference. In 2017, the shortages and economic crisis generated by 15 years of communist policies has pushed around 4 million people out, and then, the regime "elected" a Constitutional Assembly which has the power to create a new Constitution and to overrid any previously elected organism (as it was at the time the opossition controled National Assembly).

At that point I leaved Venezuela inmediatly with my 2 minor aged kids, because for me it was a NO BRAINER that the first thing they will do was to limit the emigration and the free ciruculation. My train of tought was very simple. As any other Socialist Dictatorship before, this one needs to halt the staggering loss of skilled proffesionals like Medics, Engineers or whatever they deemed of National Security, I mean, you still need Doctors, you still need the Electricity and Water to get into the industries and houses, and specially for Venezuela, you need to keep the Oil flowing off the earth...

BOY WAS I WRONG, they never put a formal limit to the emigration and at least another 5 million people leaved Venezuela (so far). It did not matter at all that the already in shambles Public Health system collapsed, they doctors that stayed were private and they attended only the capacity that could pay for the scarse services, the basic services did not matter that much either, as people got use to get them once or twice per week, and even a country wide blackout of 3 weeks was not the end of the regime, and the Oil, well, does not matter either because what was once 3.5 million barrels per day went to be as low as 300.000 bpd.

So, what was the difference? well, for all its downfalls, it seems to me that the XX century Communist/Socialist dictatorships were guided by Ideology, they really thought theirs ideas were for the better of their people, so having no Healthcare was a REAL PROBLEM, having no public services was a REAL PROBLEM. Of course, their recipes were doomed as their political ideals, but at least they tried.

The Venezuelan Regime has no Ideology (it has some in form of propaganda, but that is different that actions) as the latest news can attest, They couldn't care less about the people and the wellness. They did not use any "Natural Resouces" to keep any level of living conditions, they just let loose the ruins of the economy they had messed so badly to let the most savage neoliberalism to correct the course while they stayed in power to keep leaching two sources of income, whatever oil they could produce and the drugs operations revenue, alongside their cut on any business their allies (AKA "Enchufados) could come up in the "liberalized" economy.

All the people that leaved the country (including me) just made them easier to keep control of whatever was left. Ever decreasing political or social opposition, less pressure of the shambles public services and so on and on...

The Natural Resources is just a part of their Income, it does not affects the hability to control or to even extract richness from the system.

I can only speak of Czechoslovakia, but from 1968 to 1989 there was no ideology. After the soviet occupation, there was normalization era, that was explicitly about compliance with the regime, not about believe in communism.

I agree though that it is more complex, but for some reason, Czechoslovakia wanted to keep all the people and exploit their work, while Venezuela and Iran seems to let the people go in exchange for the regime stability.

Would that be possibly because while Venezuela and Iran have oil to extract and sell on the international market to enrich the coffers of the oligarchs in power, the only resources Czechoslovakia had was labour. The oligarchs could only enrich themselves by exporting manufactured goods like shoes and buses, mostly made from imported materials, extracting the excess wealth from the labour of others the way Venezuela and Iran extract oil from the ground?

No, the whole USSR had exit visas but it was resource rich. Russia still is. It's not the case that the USSR's only resource was labor.

First, of course I am talking about Socialist Dictatorships of the XX Century in an academic way, from what I have read, So I really don't know as much as what I have lived through in Venezuela.

When I talk about Ideology, I am not referring to the people, but the regime hiercachy. I would guess in the case of Czechoslovakia the regime had some Ideology alignment with the Soviets, but I truly don't know. But yes, they modern approach seems to favor the exile instead of the reclusion or so it seems

No communist ideology? What was the regime demanding compliance with, do you think? The normalization era was a return to Marxism-Leninism, not a departure from it.

Czechoslovakia in that period had one party politics, justified because multiparty democracy was "bourgeois deviation". It was a state run centrally planned economy, because the left wing don't believe in capitalism or free markets. Officially unemployment didn't exist, because only imperialist capitalist right wing economies had unemployment. Party membership and associated ideological compliance was required for any important role. Culture was censored, people were imprisoned by ideology police.

It is bizarre to claim that the USSR was not ideological. It collapsed because it was pure ideology in defiance of reality.

The reason the USSR kept people behind a wall is because they were able to mentally justify it to themselves within the framework of their far left ideology. They viewed the west as corrupt and, more importantly, full of corrupting ideas. They were just much more committed to winning the propaganda war than a place like Venezuela is because their worldview was formed at the end of the Victorian era when travel and communication was much more easily restricted. Maduro's socialist worldview was formed much later, when the idea of preventing Venezuelans having access to capitalist ideas would have seemed much more ridiculous.

Of course there was a state ideology. Just the majority of the society and even the party did not actually believe it. There was a saying that there was more communists at a western university than in the whole Czechoslovakia

Are you Czech or Slovak to be able to speak with this much confidence?

I have spent 13 years in Czech Republic, admittedly after the curtain fell, and I can tell you for a fact that they were “communist” because otherwise tanks.

You can see the relationship they had with the ideology in pretty much any sliver of cultural material from the period and after.

Is not the phenom in itself, is the fact that someone can predict/call upon it that was surprising. The fact that they had already given esoteric meanings to the phenom previously is just the icing of the cake.

And I for one am grateful for the Enlightenment illustrating the deification of Knowledge

The story has beed reused many times in Arts. One more example is in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court from Mark Twain (1890) and I am sure is many more examples

733927

Still remembered, always remembered

I guess one can argue that, in North America, by the hands of anglo saxon protestant pilgrims, were some mass killing of native population over the course of 4 centuries (although calling it Genocide is a naive simplicity IMO). But this was not the case for Spanish conquered America and much less for Columbus 4 trips. The only thing you are showing saying that Columbus was continuing some general genocidal douchebaggery in 1504, with a small crew and non functional ships to his command is that you are indoctrinated. I would recommend to ask yourselfe who did this indoctrination and what is their agenda.

Is funny, because that kind on unscientific unrational thinking was the main handicap the native population of America had against the Europeans migrants and the moral of the story in question is precisely that the power of knowledge and rational thinking can help you survirve some very long odds stacked against you

the main handicap the native population had was vulnerability to diseases, but Columbus' habit of using them as slaves and cruelty sufficient for even the Spanish Crown to act against him was also a factor in the majority of the Taino being dead within a generation of him discovering them.

Ironic that someone in denial of the well established historical facts of the conquistadors and insistent that only "Anglo Saxon Protestants" did any harm in the Americas is lecturing about "indoctrination" and the "power of knowledge"

Diseases contagions between isolated populations is not an intentional act of agression from a bad invasor that wants to kill all the native population. There was also transmission of new diseases from native american populations to europeans without those crippling effects you might suggest are the main cause of the conquest of America.

The well established historical facts you mention are neither well established more less facts. For example, the Bodadilla report is argued in some circles to be just part of political bickering, which of course, is totally normal in the context, as it is the fact that Columbus itself has marginal control and presence over little territory for a very short period of time. To call it genocidal is still, inequivocally, for much that you dont like it, indoctrination

An unironicall one

To call Spanish treatment of native Americans 'genocidal' simply echoes the opinion of Raphael Lemkin, the guy who literally defined the term. I'm not sure your assertion that there was no mass killing in Spanish-conquered America (presumably the writings of the conquistadors and their contemporaries are part of the "indoctrination"...) is more intellectually respectable...

As for Columbus as an individual, there are certain circles that will argue that despite being the sort of bloke whose reaction to the natives' peaceful inclinations and ignorance of swords was "with fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever they want", who insisted on making good on that by deporting some of then to Spain even when explicitly asked not to and presaging the encomienda system with demands to find gold in greater quantities than the locals actually knew about, Columbus was a nice man who just wanted to make friends and religious converts who was unfairly maligned by his compatriots, just as there are certain circles that argue that Auschwitz was merely a temporary internment camp. And I've already acknowledged the unintentional role of diseases which helped Columbus and his compatriots depopulate territories with far more efficiency than the Final Solution, but it's more than a little difficult to insist that the forced labour and punishments and roundup of nine and ten year old girls to be used as sex slaves didn't play any role. The best thing that could be said for Columbus is that some of his compatriots were likely a lot worse.

I don't know the parent's brand but I have a CECOTECT CONGA 11090 that fills exactly the description. CECOTEC is a spanish brand tho, and may not be available everywhere, and almost sure they manufacter the hardware in China so very possible the same specs are offered by other brands elsewhere, but those are my two cents

From valetudo.cloud: Conga is a brand that uses existing robot designs with a slightly customized cloud.They’re not a robot manufacturer.

Yeah, the lights in the back of your car can warn of exactly four things:

- The car is going to turn left (one blinking yellow light) - The car is going to turn right (one blinking yellow light) - The car is stopping (three solid red lights) - An unspecified error occurred (two blinking yellow lights).

It's not exactly a high - bandwidth form of communication. Most of the purpose of the lights behind your car is to remind other human drivers of your continued existence. As you point out, some of this deficiency can be made up by not looking at them.

Imagine a world where you could automatically talk over an intercom with the driver in front of you about traffic conditions. I bet you'd find safer, better-informed driving. Self-driving cars make that theoretically easy and humanly pleasant.

Every time I find some idealized piece about the 30s and 40s, and specially in USA, I wonder what kind of history was taught to the writer and by whom was taught, what was the agenda behind this history instruction?

I really hope we don't get back to any of that in 1, 2 or 100 generations

The concept of living in a society where people contribute to it for the benefit of the society instead of themselves is not a lamentable one. Regardless of whether or not nationalist propaganda is good or bad in your morality system, there's no civilization that lasts when the culture no longer believes in itself.

The idea of america is how this country can keep going. Yes the reality is that we often fall short. But defeatist naysayers who decry any attempt at making things better are worse than turncoats.

Rule of Thumb comes from ancient measure systems (its basically an inch)

AKA "bad trip"

The risk of having one can be reduced with a good Set and setting

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting