robbo203
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The hacktivist group, Anonymous, has been publishing loads of stuff about corruption among the Venezuelan oligarch class. Here’s one example – Cilia Flores, Maruro´s missus, who has been implicated in drug trafficking. There are many more such examples
https://x.com/AnonymousVene10/status/1823881905932058683?t=575P2QRmz-49HS363R8aiw&s=08
These people – the Venezuelan capitalist class – have got seriously wealthy with a network of bank accounts, investments and properties in various parts of the world. This, in a country that has one of the highest GINI indices anywhere. It is a grotesquely unequal society. I cannot understand why the more gullible sections of the left, even allowing for their basic state-capitalist sympathies, would want to support such a regime. It’s so blatantly obvious that this whole “chavismo” thing and the BS about “socialism of the 21st century” is just such a con – a money-making racket
There is an interesting report here that I came across on the links between the regime and organised crime
According to this website, all the other candidates contesting the election (there were 10 candidates in all) except the US-backed candidate González (and alternative gang of gangster capitalists) have submitted evidence, including their tallies, to the Supreme Court. Why not? What have they got to hide? What game are they playing?
My understanding of the situation is that the main opposition PUD party of Gonzalez and Machado has refused to appear before the Supreme Court and present the physical evidence that they had won the elections because
1) they believe they will be arrested on various charges. (Machado is currently in hiding)
2) they believe that once the physical evidence of voting tallies – the actual slips of paper representing the voting results generated by each voting machine – had been presented to the court, they would lose control over this evidence which could then be destroyed. Having expended so much effort collecting this evidence, they want to keep this ace card up their sleeve….
It’s a political game of chess that each side is playing but one should bear in mind that both the CNE and the Supreme Court are, to a lesser or greater extent, tools of the authoritarian Maduro regime. They are not neutral.
The article says
On Tuesday, CNE President Elvis Amoroso delivered the electoral evidence requested by the Supreme Court, including disaggregated voting records and totals. The electoral authority was likewise asked to provide evidence of the cyberattack, with experts calling for thorough answers given that the CNE’s data transmission is an offline, encrypted process.
This is curious. The electoral body or CNE has yet to publish a breakdown of the results which it is obliged to do legally. This is a departure from past elections when the disaggregated results were published. I suspect it is because they know the opposition candidate had won the election. The disaggregated election results published on the opposition website showing this, cannot be forged because they are based on the evidence of scanned copies of the original actas each with their unique QR code, ID number and the original “wet signatures”. Though the opposition did not manage to collect all of the actas, they did collect about 83% of them, enough to demonstrate that Gonzalez had won convincingly by more than 2 to 1. The problem is that the regime has blocked access to this website inside Venezuela itself, as I understand it, even if you and I can access it from outside the country.
If the Supreme Court requires definitive evidence then presumably they have it in the form of the disaggregated results provided by the CNE. So why are they asking others to present evidence? The thing is the Supreme Court is not going to publish these results itself, I don’t think, and doesn’t really have the competency to assess them. That is the job of the CNE but they have refused to publish them.
This is why I strongly suspect that the Supreme Court is just being used by Maduro to rubber stamp what is a massive electoral fraud. It will then deflect criticism of the regime by coming up with trumped-up charges against the opposition about insurrection and the like. The detailed results will likely never get published….
The problem is that the opposition has not helped its cause by aligning themselves with unsavoury regimes like the US At the end of the day they, like the Maduro regime, are capitalist entities intent upon administering a socio-economic system that can only ever be administered against the interests of the workers. Even so what is at stake here is some semblance of the democratic process and what we are witnessing is the slide into a kind of fascism.
The Maduro regime with its hired thugs and stasi-like network of informants is bent on ratcheting up the repression. I have seen videos of streets with doors marked with a big “X” signifying the presence of opponents of the regime to be later rounded up and incarcerated. Chilling. Bit like the Nazis and the Jews if you ask me. Mind you, the hacktivist group Anonymous has not helped matters, in my opinion, by publishing lists of the contact details of literally hundreds of police officers and others implicated in the repression. It just gives these people an additional reason to stick with the regime
Interesting article on the elections in Venezuela and how the opposition anticipated an electoral fraud
“According to it, the Maduro government has apparently passed on the famous “actas” — the full results — to the Supreme Court examining the elections, so somebody else has got them. Surely they will be leaked at some time?”
____________________________________________-Ive heard that the hacktivist group, Anonymous, has hacked over 300 government websites as well as the CNE´s website which presumably has 100% of the Actas. Cant confirm it yet but this information is supposed to show that the opposition did indeed win by a big majority (meaning the government knew this all along). This is in line with the results given on the opposition´s own website which is based on just over 80% of the actas and has to be considered reliable because it contains scanned images of the original actas
The regime suggested that some entity in Macedonia might have hacked the data from the voting centres. But this is not possible because the results were communicated via landlines, not the internet. I guess the CNE must have been compiling the results and entering them in on its website which website might have been hacked by Anonymous
It’s been nearly two weeks and STILL Maduro´s gangster capitalist regime has provided zero evidence (which he promised he would provide) in support of the claim that he won the election. However much we might dislike and oppose the right-wing opposition and its hypocritical Western backers like the US State Department (who bleat about “democracy” when it suits them and oppose it when it doesn’t) the hard empirical evidence in the form of scanned copies of the actual voting returns for each voting centre unequivocally shows that the opposition won by a landslide – more than 2 to 1
It’s like the emperor has been found with no clothes on. No one seriously believes Maduro won apart from a few sad deluded trendy lefties on the West coast of the US still peddling the lie that is laughably called “21st century socialism”. Oh and, of course, predictably enough, Russia and China (there are plenty of Russians and Chinese setting up base in Venezuela) The fat cats that surround the figurehead of Maduro have creamed off a great deal of the wealth of Venezuela while the economic plight of Venezuelan workers steadily worsens – not just as a result of sanctions but also because of the corrupt policies of the regime itself
In the meanwhile, the activities of the hacker group, Anonymous, are causing havoc to the regime. Hundreds of names of officers in the military and police forces have been published – including photos and contact details – following the increase in state repression particularly in favelas or shanty towns, erstwhile strongholds of Chavismo. Bank accounts of the regime´s fat cats including Maduro´s, have apparently been hacked as well. The computer history of some of the top brass in the military has been exposed including in one case, this individual´s multiple visits to porn sites. It’s all designed to make a laughing stock of the regime and it seems to be working
Where it’s all going to lead to I don’t know. The opportunity for Maduro to save face and leave quietly – maybe to Cuba or somewhere else friendly to the current regime – seems to have disappeared. He has nailed his colours to the mast and will probably go down fighting to keep alive the lie. Or he might be overthrown by the military, in due course, but at the moment the military is backing him
It seems that some organisation called Anonymous has been hacking the accounts of government departments of the Venezuelan regime and also the personal accounts of individuals associated with the regime and involved in the repression of the opposition.
https://x.com/revistacodigo21/status/1820670044730237027?t=S8kE87wUMeZxtgyDSYVZUQ&s=08
Hundreds of photos and personal numbers of high-ranking military, police and other individuals, have been released on to the internet. Also released is information about the extraordinary wealth of the tiny capitalist clique at the heart of the regime. These individuals are well and truly loaded as the expression goes and no doubt have some luxurious bolthole to retire to if things go pear-shaped. I understand Turkey is one of the favoured destinations but there are other options including Cuba
Difficult to know how things are going to pan out. Though we obviously oppose the right-wing opposition and its Western backers, just as we oppose the thuggish capitalist Maduro regime, there can zero doubt now that, in fact, the opposition did win the election by a big margin and as democrats it behoves us to acknowledge this. The concrete empirical evidence is irrefutable
https://resultadosconvzla.com/
If anyone hasn’t seen the evidence click on the above link, scroll down and click on any blue button to the right. Continue in this fashion and then on the last page for “mesa”(or voting table) click on “acta” (or voting slip). These actas cannot be forged or faked (they each have a QR code and unique ID number) and so the result as recorded on that site (with 80 per cent of the actas) has to be accurate
The big question is – how does Maduro, having lied about having won the election wriggle out of this impossible situation and still keep face? I cant see that happening and at the moment I can’t see the army coming in, either, and staging a coup. The activities of Anonymous might prompt a backlash and cause them to close ranks around Maduro
At the risk of being accused of relying too much on the “MSN”, here´s an update on the situation in Venezuela from the “Irish News”
Hi there,
Are you a member of the SPGB?
……………………………………….
Toby – Yes, I am. Are you wanting to say something? Make a comment about what I wrote?To anticipate any flak for saying what I said in my comments about the Maduro regime (since I seem to have run into some flak elsewhere!), I should copy and paste something here that I posted elsewhere (slightly amended for greater clarity). If anyone can show me that I am mistaken in writing what I have written, I would be grateful if you could point out specifically where and how I have erred. This is my genuine understanding of what the situation is in Venezuela but I am open to correction if I am wrong….
…………………………………………Yes of course we should be sceptical of Western sources and statements from the US State Department. We should also be sceptical of sources like Consortium News, that Alan linked to, that come to quite different conclusions about this election. We should accept no argument at face value but should examine the evidence forensically. I am fortunate in this respect in that my partner is Venezuelan and has explained how the procedure works in detail.
The evidence centres on the “Actas de manos” or voting tallies that each voting machine on every table in every voting centre throughout the country, produces. The Acta is a long slip of paper which has a QR code and a unique identification number that cannot be forged. It is also time dated. At the end of the vote copies are given to accredited witnesses of the different parties present, signed and counter signed by the person responsible for the voting centre. The results are sent to the CNE the central electoral body, but the people on the ground have physical proof of how the voting went in the form of the Acta. It’s an excellent system – the best in the world in fact according to the Carter center that monitored the elections but it precisely because it is so good that the Maduro regime, I believe, was found out to have committed fraud on a grand scale. It was caught with its trousers down.
What happened is that it did not anticipate that the opposition had a plan to deliberately collect together all of these actas and totalise the results to ensure the vote was accurate. Nearly every acta produced throughout the country – about 90% at last count I believe – has now been published on its website and made available for complete public scrutiny. I repeat again – you cannot fake or forge an Acta. It has a QR code and a unique identification number. The totalised result of the Actas on the website show that the opposition got somewhat more than twice the number of votes that Maduro got.
This is the basic argument in support of the claim that result declared was a fraud.
Significantly the CNE declared Maduro had won before all the votes had been counted and to date has still not provided any factual evidence that he got 51 per cent of the vote . I could not care less if it so happens that the US State Department or other western outlets have come to the same conclusion or that the opposition is a “right-wing bourgeois party” I obviously oppose it without reservation but what we have here is the principle of democratic practice that is at stake.The evidence seems pretty overwhelming that a fraud has been committed. We shouldn’t allow the fact that US State Department has said this to prevent us from saying this as well. Even the Communist Party of Venezuela has declared that the result was a fraud and, like I say, it is very telling that the CNE, has still not published any actual evidence supporting its claim that Maduro won. That’s because it is in an impossible situation, in my view, that it never anticipated would happen. What happens next I have no idea…
Starmer. What a hypocrite
https://x.com/TweetForTheMany/status/1818220080439742825
(IN case people here don’t have access to X – Twitter – what the script accompanying the video of the Starmer interview says is as follows:
“Keir Starmer talked before the election – he was worried about pensioners who struggle to afford to put the heating on – even WITH the winter fuel allowance!
Yesterday, the allowance was removed from millions of pensioners who earn basic £220 per week.”
Useful idiots like the so-called Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign lending their support to a gangster capitalist state like Venezuela seem to be utterly oblivious to the utterly corrupt nature of the regime. Economic inequality in Venezuela is one of the highest in the world and the gini coefficient has steadily increased over the last decade to a staggering 0.6
A tiny clique of extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected economic parasites has flourished under this regime which ranks as number 177 out of 180 countries in terms of corruption according to the Transparency Index. According to this article, “the Maduro family heads up a racket aiming at pillaging gold mines in the south of the country, by buying up the gold at low cost and then selling it overseas through the central bank”.
https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/gamechangers-venezuela-maduro-criminal-ties/
It makes my stomach turn when I come across expressions such as “Chavista socialism” or so-called “21st-century socialism” in Venezuela. This is as bad as the abuse of the term “socialism” by the Nazis. Maduro and his cronies have nothing whatsoever to do with socialism. They are a bunch of capitalist criminals out to enrich themselves and cynically using politics to achieve their aim. Those who support him should be exposed for what they are- useful idiots
More anti-working class measures from the Party of Business
The authors seem to have been overly influenced by Cockshott and Cottrell´s so-called “cyber socialist” approach. The latter advocate central planning and consider the Soviet Union to have been basically “socialist” but not sufficiently democratic and also lacking, at that time, in the computer technology that could have made central planning a success – allegedly.
This bit from their article is revealing:
“Fully resolving the demand side calculation problem requires a mechanism which ensures that the consumer valuations captured by token prices will also be reflected in production targets. For this purpose, Cockshott and Cottrell (1993) proposed a double control loop through which the plan target is continually adapted to consumer demand. In the first control loop, the token prices of final goods are continuously adjusted to approximate the market clearing rates at which demand matches supply as described above. Should demand for a good exceed its supply, its price must be increased. Should demand be below supply, the price must be reduced. In the next step, the approximated market clearing rates of each are compared to the cost of producing it. Cockshott and Cottrell (1993) use labor values as a measure of cost, while Dapprich (2022)uses shadow prices instead.”
This is a world away from anything we would recognise as being socialism tbh….
There is also this curious passage in the article.
“We highlight the potential for such an immanent critique, explaining how, in light of technological advancements, planning processes might be capable of fulfilling the same kind of epistemological functions that markets fulfil.”
What are these supposed “epistemological functions” that markets are supposed to fulfil? Markets don’t tell us much about human needs or production costs, for that matter (think of the problem of externalities)
So no – sadly there was not much in the article that one could sink one´s teeth into. It did not say anything new. Perhaps a future article might be more interesting if it shifted the focus away from a system where you have a single universal unit of account (necessary only in a society based on a market exchange) to a system involving calculation in kind and where the only purpose of production is to directly meet human needs. In other words, socialism as we would define it
Bit of a disappointing (and rather predictable) article, really…. Doesn’t really go much beyond the stale old limited choice of the market versus central planning (both of which we can reject) and doesn’t really question what is meant by “demand” or even “economising of resources”(the so-called “least-cost combination” of resources is not a reliable guide in that respect). The only thing that is slightly interesting is Dapprich´s “socialist tokens as an alternative to money”. Not quite sure what he has in mind but it ain’t labour vouchers apparently…
Im still puzzled at what you think the relevance of this is to anything?
…….
More money to spend on other things, obviously!Jayzus, you people are fucking clueless.
============================
So more money is available to be spent on other things. Which means the market demand for other things increases. Which means, all things being equal, the price of other things increases….yeah?
Or alternatively, the downward pressure exerted by capital on wages increases bringing the latter into line with the value of labour-power
Despite what Lizzie45 thinks, there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism. Workers have to struggle to hold on to their share of the social product and if her dismal view of the potential for working-class militancy is correct, that does not augur well for their future economic prospects under capitalism.
