How bad can socialism be

[Sir X]

[FONT='Trebuchet MS', sans-serif]Alejandra Benitez, three time fencing Olympian, was named Venezuela’s new sports minister by newly elect president Nicolas Maduro. (OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images)[/FONT]

Venezuela’s new sports minister posed nude for magazine

by Ignacio Torres, @igstorres 1:37 pm on 04/23/2013

Venezuela’s newly-named sports minister may be making history as the first female to be appointed for such position, but it’s her beauty and physical attributes that are getting worldwide attention.
Over the weekend, President Nicolas Maduro announced on national television his new cabinet members, which included former fencing Olympian Alejandra Benitez.
The 32-year-old, who represented Venezuela during the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympic summer games, has the nation talking over a recent photo-shoot in 2008 for the Sunday magazine Dominical, where she poses with nothing but her fencing equipment.
Benitez joined other famous Venezuelans from different professions who stripped down in a series titled ”El pais se desnuda,” which translates to “The country strips down.”
“Clothes can hide anything,” said Benitez during her interview. “But when you are naked, you are yourself.”
In her new role Benitez, who is a dentist by profession, will be in charge of providing financial support to sports programs around the nation.
After hearing about her appointment, Benitez took to Twitter writing, “ Today starts a new challenge and I will assume that challenge with the same commitment as an athlete who defends his homeland at all costs.

[Sir X]

Nicolas Maduro did not Steal the Venezuelan Elections

By Greg Palast
Global Research, April 24, 2013
Vice 22 April 2013

Region: Latin America & Caribbean
Theme: Intelligence

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The guy in the cheap brown windbreaker walking up the dirty tenement steps to my New York office looked like a bus driver.
Nicolas Maduro, elected President of Venezuela last Sunday, did indeed drive a bus, then led the drivers’ union, then drove Chávez’s laws through the National Assembly as Venezuela’s National Assembly chief.
And this week, the US State Department is refusing to accept the result, suggesting Maduro hijacked the vote count. But did he?
Maduro came to me that day in 2004 on a quiet mission, sent by President Hugo Chávez to give me information I needed for my investigation for Rolling Stone – and to get information from me that might save Chávez’s life.
The central topic was the “Invisible Ring”. Venezuelan intelligence had secretly taped US Embassy contractors in Caracas talking in spook-speak: “That which took shape here is a disguised kind of intelligence… which is annexed to the third security ring, which is the invisible ring.”
(“Invisible Ring”? Someone at the State Department has read too many Alan Furst novels.)
On the grainy film, they worried that “Mr Corey” (a code name we easily cracked) would blow his cover and begin barking, “I am from the CIA! I am from the CIA!”

Maduro at Greg Palast’s office.
“Mr Corey” was certainly not from the CIA, an agency holding on to one last fig-leaf of discretion. This crew was far more dangerous, from a spy-for-hire corporation, Wackenhut Inc. I’d been tracking Wackenhut for years, ever since their spies – more Austin Powers than James Bond – were arrested while on a black-bag job for British Petroleum. They’d attempted to illegally tape a US Congressman by running a toy truck with a microphone through the ceiling vents over the lawmaker’s head.
But even clowns, when heavily armed, can be deadly. In 2002, Chávez was kidnapped with the blessing of the US Ambassador right out of the presidential palace and flown by helicopter over the Caribbean where, Chávez later told me, the President assumed he’d be invited for a swim from 2,000 feet. Instead, just 48 hours later, Chávez was back at his desk.
But Washington wouldn’t quit the coup business. New documents revealed several interlocked methods (“rings”) for overthrowing Venezuela’s elected government.
First, US operatives would monkey with voter registrations – and if that didn’t steal the election from Chávez’s party, the next step was to provoke riots against Chávez’s elections “theft”. The riots would lead to deaths – the deaths would be the excuse for the US to back another coup d’etat to “restore order” and “democracy” in Venezuela – and restore Venezuela’s oil to Exxon. (Chávez had seized majority control of the oil fields and Exxon was furious.)
Maduro had already figured the US operatives wanted to use, “The collection of [voters’] signatures… to [occur] amidst a climate of violence and uncertainty, national and international uncertainty…To cause deaths the day of the collection of signatures.”

Hugo Chávez in 2003, the year after his kidnapping. (Image via.)
Would this be to justify another coup?
“Yes: The justification to tell the world Chávez is a murderer, Chávez is a dictator, Chávez is a terrorist and the OAS [Organisation of American States] should intervene and Chávez should be ousted.”
This week, the warlords of the rings are back in Caracas as, per the original script, the US State Department is backing opposition claims (no details provided) that Maduro’s win is in question. And per the old playbook, the losers are taking to the streets, seven voters are dead (mostly Chávistas, but not all) and Caracas waits for the coup’s next boot to drop.
Is a manoeuvre to remove Maduro far-fetched? George W Bush promoted the botched kidnapping of 2002. But it was the progressive Barack Obama who, newly elected President, blessed the overthrow of the elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.
Still, it’s fair to ask if Maduro and the Chávistas stole last week’s presidential election?
Answer: They didn’t have to. Even the Wall Street Journal accepts that, “for a majority of Venezuelans, Mr Chávez was a messiah,” and Maduro, the successor Chávez chose from his deathbed, had too big a lead to lose.
Still, the election was nearly stolen – by the US-backed anti-Chávistas.
How? That’s what Chávez wanted Maduro to find out from me: how could US operatives jerk with Venezuela’s voter rolls? It wasn’t a mere policy question: they knew Chávez wouldn’t be allowed to survive through another coup.
My answer: They could steal the vote the same way Bush did it in Florida – in fact, using the very same contractor. Take a look at these documents… from the pile I reviewed with Maduro:

The FBI memo detailing the shoplifting of Venezuela’s voter rolls. (Click to enlarge.)
According to this once-secret FBI memo, ChoicePoint Corp – under a no-bid contract – had shoplifted Venezuela’s voter rolls, as well as the voter rolls of Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico and Honduras, all of whom were on the verge of electing presidents from the political left.
I did ask myself how our national security apparatchiks could say that filching these voter rolls made our nation more secure? What were they for?
I had little doubt. In November 2000, working for the Observer and BBC Newsnight, I discovered that a subsidiary of ChoicePoint had, for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, obtained his state’s voter rolls and “purged” more than 56,000 voters, the vast majority black and poor, illegally denying them their vote. And that was how Jeb’s brother, George W, won the US presidency by just 537 ballots.
And now ChoicePoint had the data to allow Homeland Security to do a Florida on Venezuela – and Honduras and the others. (In 2006, the candidate of the left, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, won the election but lost the presidency through gross ballot-box finagling.)
Chávez himself read my findings on potential elections theft – to his nation on his TV show – and then he moved swiftly, establishing an election system that Jimmy Carter, who has headed vote observer teams in 92 nations, called, “an election process that is the best in the world”.
Here’s how it works: every Venezuelan voter gets TWO ballots. One is electronic, the second is a paper print-out of the touch-screen ballot, which the voter reviews, authorises, then places in a locked ballot-box. An astounding 54 percent of the boxes are chosen at random to open and check against the computer tally. It’s as close to a bulletproof count as you can get.
Still, the loser bitched and – his bluff called – was allowed to pick all the precincts he wanted – 12,000 – to add to the audit.
And that’s why the US State Department then has to turn to the threat of bullets and “Third Ring” mayhem in the streets – to undermine the legitimacy of the new Maduro government and signal the US willingness to support a new coup.

Nicolas Maduro in 2010. (Image via.)
It won’t succeed this time, either. The populist socialist governments that the US couldn’t remove have now replaced the juntas and stooges that once gave the US control of the Organisation of American States. And Venezuelans themselves won’t let it happen.
What impressed me about Maduro and his boss Chávez was their reaction to the Third Ring and the attempted Florida-tion of their election. Instead of ordering mass arrests, their response was to strengthen democracy with a no-tricks voting system.
I should note that ChoicePoint, once exposed, apologised to Mexico’s government, agreed to destroy its ill-gotten voter rolls and, soon thereafter, sold itself to a credit-rating company. Wackenhut fired its goof-ball spooks and sold itself off in pieces. Both deny knowingly breaking laws of any nation. And in Bush’s US State Department, all hell broke loose, as UN Ambassador John Negroponte, sources verified, fumed over what he deemed a renegade neo-con escapade endangering remaining US oil interests. (In fact, Chevron ended up paying what I call a “coup tax”.)
The vote was still close, mainly because Maduro – a sincere, competent administrator – is no singing-dancing-camera-perfect Sinatra of politics like Chávez was.
Secretary of State Kerry’s challenge to Maduro’s 270,000-vote victory margin struck me as particularly poignant. Because in 2004, besides Chávez, I gave another presidential candidate evidence of the Bush gang’s ballot banditry: Senator John Kerry. Kerry lost to Bush by a slim 119,000 in Ohio, blatantly stolen, but Kerry refused to call for a recount. It took him two years to publicly acknowledge our findings – when he introduced, with Senator Ted Kennedy, legislation to fix America’s corrupted voting system, then let the proposed law die of neglect.
Chávez knew, and Kerry will never learn, that democracy requires more than a complete count – it requires complete courage.
Greg Palast is a New York Times bestselling author and fearless investigative journalist whose reports appear on BBC Newsnight and in The Guardian. Palast eats the rich and spits them out. Catch his reports and films at www.GregPalast.com, where you can also securely send him your documents marked, “confidential”.
For one more week, readers of VICE can download Palast’s short documentary, The Assassination of Hugo Chávez, originally filmed in Venezuela for BBC, without charge.

[Jawge]

If the above is socialism then it can't be bad at all. One should seek a coexistence with capitalism. What say ye?

[Assasin]

A wonder if only she has that privilidge?? If not it ain't bad at all

[Sir X]

Like Wall Street alone ave privilige fi get bail out ..kissteeth.

Under my presidency, Chávez's revolution will continue

Venezuela has lost an extraordinary leader, but his democratic and socialist project of transformation is more alive than ever

• Read the article in Spanish here

• Email

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• 
• • Nicolás Maduro
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 April 2013 16.00 EDT
  • Jump to comments (463)

Supporters cheer Nicolás Maduro as he brings his election campaign to a close at a rally in Caracas. Photograph: Santi Donaire/ Santi Donaire/Demotix/Corbis

A month ago Venezuela lost a historic leader who spearheaded the transformation of his country, and spurred a wave of change throughout Latin America. In Sunday's election Venezuelans will choose whether to pursue the revolution initiated under Hugo Chávez – or return to the past. I worked closely with President Chávez for many years, and am now running to succeed him. Polls indicate that most Venezuelans support our peaceful revolution.
Chávez's legacy is so profound that opposition leaders, who vilified him only months ago, now insist they will defend his achievements. But Venezuelans remember how many of these same figures supported anill-fated coup against Chávez in 2002 and sought to reverse policies that have dramatically reduced poverty and inequality.
To grasp the scale of what has been achieved, it's necessary to recall the state of my country when Chávez took office in 1999. In the previous 20 years Venezuela had suffered one of the sharpest economic declines in the world. As a result of neoliberal policies that favoured transnational capital at the expense of people's basic needs, poverty soared. A draconian market-oriented agenda was imposed through massive repression, including the 1989 massacre of thousands in what is known as the Caracazo.
This disastrous trend was reversed under Chávez. Once the government was able to assert effective control over the state oil company in 2003, we began investing oil revenue in social programmes that now provide free healthcare and education throughout the country. The economic situation vastly improved. Poverty and extreme poverty have been reduced dramatically. Today Venezuela has the lowest rate of income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean.
As a result our government has won almost every election or referendum since 1998 – 16 in all – in a democratic process the former US presidentJimmy Carter called "the best in the world". If you haven't heard much about these accomplishments, it may have something to do with the influence of Washington and its allies on the international media. They have been trying to de-legitimise and get rid of our government for more than a decade, ever since they supported the 2002 coup.
We have also worked to transform the region: to unite the countries of Latin America and work together to address the causes and symptoms of poverty. Venezuela was central to the creation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), aimed at promoting social and economic development and political co-operation.
The media myth that our political project would fall apart without Chávez was a fundamental misreading of Venezuela's revolution. Chávez has left a solid edifice, its foundation a broad, united movement that supports the process of transformation. We've lost our extraordinary leader, but his project – built collectively by workers, farmers, women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and the young – is more alive than ever.
The media often portray Venezuela as on the brink of economic collapse – but our economy is stronger than ever. We have a low debt burden and a significant trade surplus, and have accumulated close to $30bn in international reserves.
There are of course many challenges still to overcome, as Chávez himself acknowledged. Among my primary objectives is the need to intensify our efforts to curb crime and aggressively confront inefficiency and corruption in a nationwide campaign.
Internationally, we will continue to work with our neighbours to deepen regional integration and fight poverty and social injustice. It's a vision now shared across the region, which is why my candidacy has received strong support from figures such as the former Brazilian president Lula da Silva and many Latin American social movements. We also remain committed to promoting regional peace and stability, and this is why we will continue our energetic support of the peace talks in Colombia.
Latin America today is experiencing a profound political and social renaissance – a second independence – after decades of surrendering its sovereignty and freedom to global powers and transnational interests. Under my presidency, Venezuela will continue supporting this regional transformation and building a new form of socialism for our times. With the support of progressive people from every continent, we're confident Venezuela can give a new impetus to the struggle for a more equitable, just and peaceful world.

[Jawge]

Boss dem should ah tell mi dat years back mi would ah juss embrace it gladly LOL

[1of1]

is she a parliamentarian

[Jawge]

Yes, is there a problem?

[Sir X]

Mauduro/Venez on the way to Brazilian socialism.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

April 23, 2013

Economics & Finance

Central bank's Merentes named new Finance Minister
President Nicolas Maduro has replaced Venezuelan Finance Minister Jorge Giordani, appointing central bank chief Nelson Merentes in his place two days after being sworn in as the late Hugo Chavez's successor. It will be the third stint as finance minister for Merentes, a mathematician by training who is seen as a more pragmatic economist than his ideologically driven counterpart Giordani, a Marxist academic who was nicknamed "the Monk." "I've great faith in Nelson Merentes. We've known each other for many years," Maduro said. In his speech, he also confirmed Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, Defense Minister Diego Molero, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua and Vice President Jorge Arreaza in their current roles. (Reuters, 04-22-2013; http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...3L01S20130422; El Universal, 04-22-2013; http://www.eluniversal.com/economia/...ed-ministries; Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...-cabinet.html; Latin American Herald Tribune, http://www.laht.com/article.asp?Arti...egoryId=10717; The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...e2-9493-2ff3bf

[Don1]

[FONT='Trebuchet MS', sans-serif]Alejandra Benitez, three time fencing Olympian, was named Venezuela’s new sports minister by newly elect president Nicolas Maduro. (OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images)[/FONT]

Venezuela’s new sports minister posed nude for magazine

by Ignacio Torres, @igstorres 1:37 pm on 04/23/2013

Venezuela’s newly-named sports minister may be making history as the first female to be appointed for such position, but it’s her beauty and physical attributes that are getting worldwide attention.
Over the weekend, President Nicolas Maduro announced on national television his new cabinet members, which included former fencing Olympian Alejandra Benitez.
The 32-year-old, who represented Venezuela during the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympic summer games, has the nation talking over a recent photo-shoot in 2008 for the Sunday magazine Dominical, where she poses with nothing but her fencing equipment.
Benitez joined other famous Venezuelans from different professions who stripped down in a series titled ”El pais se desnuda,” which translates to “The country strips down.”
“Clothes can hide anything,” said Benitez during her interview. “But when you are naked, you are yourself.”
In her new role Benitez, who is a dentist by profession, will be in charge of providing financial support to sports programs around the nation.
After hearing about her appointment, Benitez took to Twitter writing, “ Today starts a new challenge and I will assume that challenge with the same commitment as an athlete who defends his homeland at all costs.

Now dis is a Sports Minister to believe in...

Portia, please guh oneside

[Muadib]

Wheh mi waan know is how di election was suh close ?

[Lazie]

[FONT='Trebuchet MS', sans-serif]Alejandra Benitez, three time fencing Olympian, was named Venezuela’s new sports minister by newly elect president Nicolas Maduro. (OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images)[/FONT]

Venezuela’s new sports minister posed nude for magazine

by Ignacio Torres, @igstorres 1:37 pm on 04/23/2013

Venezuela’s newly-named sports minister may be making history as the first female to be appointed for such position, but it’s her beauty and physical attributes that are getting worldwide attention.
Over the weekend, President Nicolas Maduro announced on national television his new cabinet members, which included former fencing Olympian Alejandra Benitez.
The 32-year-old, who represented Venezuela during the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympic summer games, has the nation talking over a recent photo-shoot in 2008 for the Sunday magazine Dominical, where she poses with nothing but her fencing equipment.
Benitez joined other famous Venezuelans from different professions who stripped down in a series titled ”El pais se desnuda,” which translates to “The country strips down.”
“Clothes can hide anything,” said Benitez during her interview. “But when you are naked, you are yourself.”
In her new role Benitez, who is a dentist by profession, will be in charge of providing financial support to sports programs around the nation.
After hearing about her appointment, Benitez took to Twitter writing, “ Today starts a new challenge and I will assume that challenge with the same commitment as an athlete who defends his homeland at all costs.

Can this woman be trusted as a politician? It is clear she won't bare all for the people to see, she will obviously cover up something.

[Rockman]

Interesting Jawge,given socialism is a political philosophy and capitalism is NOT, speaking about both as an alternative to each other is mind boggling.
Years ago I said capitalism without discretion is an ugly religion(in a conversation I had with Balla about Roman's Chelsea). Ergo,socialism is not without capitalism but its capitalism is devoid of corporate apathy.
The aforementioned type of capitalism(one without discretion) is invariably about a monopoly.
This is where it get interesting, the only political philosophy that comes close to that is a government led by a dictator, we know communism for what it i(the capitalist made sure of that) but do we really can say the same about capitalism?

[Mosiah]

Venezuela?

She probably has done a nose job, liposuction and all the rest. The country is obsessed with looks.

Di doctor bad still!

[1of1]

no boss