title: Hugo Chávez

text: The various attempts at overthrowing the Bolivarian government from power had only served to further radicalize Chávez. In January 2005, he began openly proclaiming the ideology of "socialism of the 21st century", something that was distinct from his earlier forms of Bolivarianism, which had been social democratic in nature, merging elements of capitalism and socialism. He used this new term to contrast the democratic socialism, which he wanted to promote in Latin America, from the Marxist–Leninist socialism that had been spread by socialist states like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China during the 20th century, arguing that the latter had not been truly democratic, suffering from a lack of participatory democracy and an excessively authoritarian governmental structure.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In May 2006, Chávez visited Europe in a private capacity, where he announced plans to supply cheap Venezuelan oil to poor working class communities in the continent. The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone welcomed him, describing him as "the best news out of Latin America in many years".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In the presidential election of December 2006, which saw a 74% voter turnout, Chávez was once more elected, this time with 63% of the vote, beating his closest challenger Manuel Rosales, who conceded his loss. The election was certified as being free and legitimate by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center. After this victory, Chávez promised an "expansion of the revolution".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 15 December 2006, Chávez publicly announced that those leftist political parties who had continually supported him in the Patriotic Pole would unite into one single, much larger party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela ("Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela", PSUV). In the speech which he gave announcing the PSUV's creation, Chávez declared that the old parties must "forget their own structures, party colours and slogans, because they are not the most important thing for the fatherland". According to political analyst Barry Cannon, the purpose of creating the PSUV was to "forge unity amongst the disparate elements [of the Bolivarian movement], providing grassroots input into policy and leadership formation, [and] uniting the grassroots and leadership into one single body". It was hoped that by doing so, it would decrease the problems of clientelism and corruption and also leave the movement less dependent on its leadership: as Chávez himself declared, "In this new party, the bases will elect the leaders. This will allow real leaders to emerge."


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez had initially proclaimed that those leftist parties which chose to not dissolve into the PSUV would have to leave the government; however, after several of those parties supporting him refused to do so, he ceased to issue such threats. There was initially much grassroots enthusiasm for the creation of the PSUV, with membership having risen to 5.7 million people by 2007, making it the largest political group in Venezuela. The United Nations' International Labour Organization however expressed concern over some voters' being pressured to join the party.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 28 December 2006, President Chávez announced that the government would not renew RCTV's broadcast license which expired on 27 May 2007, thereby forcing the channel to cease operations on that day. On 17 May 2007, the government rejected a plea made by RCTV to stop the TV station's forced shutdown. Thousands of protesters marching both against and in support of the government's decision remained on the streets in Caracas. Other marches took place in Maracaibo and Valencia. On 21 May 2007, hundreds of journalists and students marched in Caracas carrying a banner reading "S.O.S. Freedom of Expression". A few days later, on 25 May 2007, university students from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, the Universidad Simón Bolívar and the Universidad Central de Venezuela protested against the government's intentions. On 26 May, tens of thousands of protesters marched in support of RCTV to their headquarters. Since the week prior to the shutdown of RCTV, many individuals, international organizations and NGOs—including the OAS's Secretary General José Miguel Insulza and its Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, the Inter American Press Association, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists,—have expressed concerns for freedom of the press following the shutdown. However, Secretary Insulza also stated that it was up to the Venezuelan courts to solve this dispute and that he believed that this was an administrative decision.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2007, the Bolivarian government set up a constitutional commission in order to review the 1999 constitution and suggest potential amendments to be made to it. Led by the prominent pro-Chávez intellectual Luis Britto García, the commission came to the conclusion that the constitution could include more socially progressive clauses, such as the shortening of the working week, a constitutional recognition of Afro Venezuelans and the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. It also suggested measures that would have increased many of the president's powers, for instance increasing the presidential term limit to seven years, allowing the president to run for election indefinitely and centralizing powers in the executive. The government put the suggested changes to a public referendum in December 2007. Abstention rate was high however, with 44% of registered voters not turning out, and in the end the proposed changes were rejected by 51% of votes. This would prove to the first electoral loss that Chávez had faced in the thirteen electoral contests held since he took power, something analysts argued was due to the top-down nature of the changes, as well as general public dissatisfaction with "the absence of internal debate on its content, as well as dissatisfaction with the running of the social programmes, increasing street crime, and with corruption within the government".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In mid 2010, tons of rotten food supplies imported during Chávez's government through subsidies of state-owned enterprise PDVAL were found. Due to the scandal, PDVAL started being administrated by the Vicepresidency of Venezuela and afterwards by the Alimentation Ministry. Three former managers were detained, but were released afterwards and two of them had their positions restored. In July 2010, official estimates stated that 130,000 tons of food supplies were affected, while the political opposition informed of 170,000 tons. As of 2012, any advances in the investigations by the National Assembly were unknown. The most accepted explanation of the loss of food supplies is the organization of PDVAL, because the food network allegedly imported supplies faster than what it could distribute them. The opposition considers the affair as a corrupt case and spokespeople have assured that the public officials deliberately imported more food that could be distributed to embezzle funds through the import of subsidized supplies.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In order to ensure that his Bolivarian Revolution became socially ingrained in Venezuela, Chávez discussed his wish to stand for re-election when his term ran out in 2013, and spoke of ruling beyond 2030. Under the 1999 constitution, he could not legally stand for re-election again, and so brought about a referendum on 15 February 2009 to abolish the two-term limit for all public offices, including the presidency. Approximately 70% of the Venezuelan electorate voted, and they approved this alteration to the constitution with over 54% in favor, allowing any elected official the chance to try to run indefinitely.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 7 October 2012, Chávez won election as president for a fourth time, his third six-year term. He defeated Henrique Capriles with 54% of the votes versus 45% for Capriles, which was a lower victory margin than in his previous presidential wins, in the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election. Turnout in the election was 80%, with a hotly contested election between the two candidates. There was significant support for Chávez amongst the Venezuelan lower class. Chávez's opposition blamed him for unfairly using state funds to spread largesse before the election to bolster Chavez's support among his primary electoral base, the lower class.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The inauguration of Chávez's new term was scheduled for 10 January 2013, but as he was undergoing medical treatment at the time in Cuba, he was not able to return to Venezuela for that date. The National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello proposed to postpone the inauguration and the Supreme Court decided that, being just another term of the sitting president and not the inauguration of a new one, the formality could be bypassed. The Venezuelan Bishops Conference opposed the verdict, stating that the constitution must be respected and the Venezuelan government had not been transparent regarding details about Chávez's health.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Acting executive officials produced orders of government signed by Chávez, which were suspected of forgery by some opposition politicians, who claimed that Chávez was too sick to be in control of his faculties. Guillermo Cochez, recently dismissed from the office of Panamanian ambassador to the Organization of American States, even claimed that Chávez had been brain-dead since 31 December 2012.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Due to the death of Chávez, Vice President Nicolás Maduro took over the presidential powers and duties for the remainder of Chávez's abbreviated term until presidential elections were held. Venezuela's constitution specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president cannot be sworn in.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez promoted the socialism of the 21st century. His approach was more heavily influenced by the theories of István Mészáros, Michael Lebowitz and Marta Harnecker, who was Chávez's adviser between 2004 and 2011, rather than by those of Heinz Dieterich.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Hugo Chávez defined his political position as Bolivarianism, an ideology he developed from that of Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and others. Bolívar was a 19th-century general who led the fight against the colonialist Spanish authorities and who is widely revered across Latin America today. Along with Bolívar, the other two primary influences upon Bolivarianism are Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), a philosopher who was Bolívar's tutor and mentor, and Ezequiel Zamora, (1817–1860), the Venezuelan Federalist general.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The fact that Chávez's ideology originated from Bolívar has also received some criticism because Chávez had occasionally described himself as being influenced by Karl Marx, a critic of Bolívar. Beddow and Thibodeaux noted the complications between Bolívar and Marx, stating that "[d]escribing Bolivar as a socialist warrior in the class struggle, when he was actually member of the aristocratic 'criollos', is peculiar when considering Karl Marx's own writings on Bolivar, whom he dismissed as a false liberator who merely sought to preserve the power of the old Creole nobility which he belonged".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez's connection to Marxism was a complex one, though he had described himself as a Marxist on some occasions. In May 1996, he gave an interview with in which he remarked, "I am not a Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist." In a 2009 speech to the national assembly, he said: "I am a Marxist to the same degree as the followers of the ideas of Jesus Christ and the liberator of America, Simon Bolivar." He was well versed in many Marxist texts, having read the works of many Marxist theoreticians, and often publicly quoted them. Various international Marxists supported his government, believing it to be a sign of proletariat revolution as predicted in Marxist theory. In 2010, Hugo Chávez proclaimed support for the ideas of Marxist Leon Trotsky, saying "When I called him (former Minister of Labour, José Ramón Rivero)" Chávez explained, "he said to me: 'President I want to tell you something before someone else tells you ... I am a Trotskyist', and I said, 'well, what is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky's line, that of permanent revolution", and then cited Marx and Lenin.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez's early heroes were nationalist military dictators that included former Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado and former Panamanian "Maximum Leader" Omar Torrijos. One dictator Chávez admired was Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a former president of Venezuela that he praised for the public works he performed. Chávez praised Pérez Jiménez in order to vilify preceding democratic governments, stating that "General Pérez Jiménez was the best president Venezuela had in a long time ... He was much better than Rómulo Betancourt, much better than all of those others. They hated him because he was a soldier."


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez was also well acquainted with the various traditions of Latin American socialism, espoused by such figures as Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and former Chilean president Salvador Allende. Early in his presidency, Chávez was advised and influenced by the Argentine Peronist Norberto Ceresole. Cuban Communist revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro also influenced Chávez, especially with Castro's government assistance with the Bolivarian Missions. Other indirect influences on Chávez's political philosophy are the writings of American linguist Noam Chomsky (according to Venezuelanalysis) and the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ. Other inspirations of Chávez's political view are Giuseppe Garibaldi, Antonio Gramsci and Antonio Negri.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In September 2006, Chávez said 9/11 conspiracy theories were "not absurd" and that "A building never collapses like that, unless it's with an implosion." Chávez also told Christopher Hitchens that he did not believe that the footage of the Apollo 11 moon landings was genuine.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: From his election in 1998 until his death in March 2013, Chávez's administration proposed and enacted populist economic policies. The social programs were designed to be short-term, though after seeing political success as their result, Chávez made the efforts central to his administration and often overspent outside of Venezuela's budget.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: With increasing oil prices in the early 2000s and funds not seen in Venezuela since the 1980s, Chávez created the Bolivarian Missions, aimed at providing public services to improve economic, cultural, and social conditions, using these populist policies in order to maintain political power. According to Corrales and Penfold, "aid was disbursed to "some" of the poor, and more gravely, in a way that ended up helping the president and his allies and cronies more than anyone else". The Missions, which were directly overseen by Chávez and often linked to his political campaigns, entailed the construction of thousands of free medical clinics for the poor, and the enactment of food and housing subsidies. A 2010 OAS report indicated achievements in addressing illiteracy, healthcare and poverty, and economic and social advances. The quality of life for Venezuelans had also improved temporarily according to a UN Index. Teresa A. Meade wrote that Chávez's popularity strongly depended "on the lower classes who have benefited from these health initiatives and similar policies". Following elections, social programs saw less attention from the government and their overall effectiveness decreased.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, dropped from .495 in 1998 to .39 in 2011, putting Venezuela behind only Canada in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuelans aged 15 and older, 95% could also read and write, with Venezuela having one of the highest literacy rates in the region, though some scholars have disputed that literacy improvements during Chavez's presidency resulted from his administration's policies. The poverty rate fell from 48.6% in 1999 to 32.1% in 2013, according to the Venezuelan government's National Statistics Institute (INE). The drop of Venezuela's poverty rate compared to poverty in other South American countries was slightly behind that of Peru, Brazil and Panama with the poverty rate becoming higher than the Latin American average in 2013 according to the UN. In the two years following Chávez's death, the poverty rate returned to where it had been before his presidency, with a 2017 NACLA analysis stating that "reductions in poverty and inequality during the Chávez years were real, but somewhat superficial ... structural poverty and inequality, such as the quality of housing, neighborhoods, education, and employment, remained largely unchanged".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez's populist policies eventually led to a severe socioeconomic crisis in Venezuela. The social works initiated by Chávez's government relied on oil products, the keystone of the Venezuelan economy, with Chávez's administration suffering from Dutch disease as a result. Economist Mark Weisbrot, in a 2009 analysis of the Chávez administration stated that economic expansion during Chávez's tenure "began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003". Chávez gained a reputation as a price hawk in OPEC, pushing for stringent enforcement of production quotas and higher target oil prices. According to Cannon, the state income from oil revenue grew "from 51% of total income in 2000 to 56% 2006"; oil exports increased "from 77% in 1997 ... to 89% in 2006"; and his administration's dependence on petroleum sales was "one of the chief problems facing the Chávez government". In 2012, the World Bank also explained that Venezuela's economy is "extremely vulnerable" to changes in oil prices since in 2012 "96% of the country's exports and nearly half of its fiscal revenue" relied on oil production, while by 2008, according to "Foreign Policy", exports of everything but oil "collapsed". The Chávez administration then used such oil prices on his populist policies to gain the approval of voters.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Economists say that the Venezuelan government's overspending on social programs and strict business policies contributed to imbalances in the country's economy, contributing to rising inflation, poverty, low healthcare spending and shortages in Venezuela going into the final years of his presidency. Such occurrences, especially the risk of default and the unfriendliness toward private businesses, led to a lack of foreign investment and stronger foreign currencies, though the Venezuelan government argued that the private sector had remained relatively unchanged during Chavez's presidency despite several nationalizations. In January 2013 near the end of Chávez's presidency, The Heritage Foundation and "The Wall Street Journal" gave Venezuela's economic freedom a low score of 36.1, twenty points lower than 56.1 in 1999, ranking its freedom very low at 174 of 177 countries, with freedom on a downward trend. Nicholas Kozloff, Chávez's biographer, stated of Chávez's economic policies: "Chávez has not overturned capitalism, he has done much to challenge the more extreme, neo-liberal model of development." According to analysts, the economic problems Venezuela is suffering under President Nicolás Maduro would have emerged even if Chávez had remained president.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In the 1980s and 1990s, health and nutrition indexes in Venezuela were generally low, and social inequality in access to nutrition was high. Chávez made it his stated goal to lower inequality in the access to basic nutrition, and to achieve food sovereignty for Venezuela. The main strategy for making food available to all economic classes was a controversial policy of fixing price ceilings for basic staple foods implemented in 2003. Between 1998 and 2006, malnutrition related deaths fell by 50%. Chávez also expropriated and redistributed 5 million acres of farmland from large landowners.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Price controls initiated by Chávez created shortages of goods since merchants could no longer afford to import necessary goods. Chávez blamed "speculators and hoarders" for these scarcities and strictly enforced his price control policy, denouncing anyone who sold food products for higher prices as "speculators". In 2011, food prices in Caracas were nine times higher than when the price controls were put in place and resulted in shortages of cooking oil, chicken, powdered milk, cheese, sugar and meat. The price controls increased the demand for basic foods while making it difficult for Venezuela to import goods causing increased reliance on domestic production. Economists believe this policy increased shortages. Shortages of food then occurred throughout the rest of Chávez's presidency with food shortage rates between 10% and 20% from 2010 to 2013. One possible reason for shortages is the relationship between inflation and subsidies, where no profitability due to price regulations affect operations. In turn, the lack of dollars made it difficult to purchase more food imports. Chávez's strategy in response to food shortages consisted of attempting to increase domestic production through nationalizing large parts of the food industry, though such nationalizations allegedly did the opposite and caused decreased production instead.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: As part of his strategy of food security Chávez started a national chain of supermarkets, the Mercal network, which had 16,600 outlets and 85,000 employees that distributed food at highly discounted prices, and ran 6,000 soup kitchens throughout the country. Simultaneously Chávez expropriated many private supermarkets. According to Commerce Minister Richard Canan as reported by Venezuelanalysis, "The average [savings] for the basic food bundle (at the Mercal Bicentennial markets) is around 30%. There are some products, for example cheese and meat, which reach a savings of 50 to 60% compared with capitalist markets." The Mercal network was criticized by some commentators as being a part of Chávez's strategy to brand himself as a provider of cheap food, and the shops feature his picture prominently. The Mercal network was also subject to frequent scarcities of basic staples such as meat, milk and sugar—and when scarce products arrived, shoppers had to wait in lines.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: After his election in 1998, more than 100,000 state-owned cooperatives—which claimed to represent some 1.5 million people—were formed with the assistance of government start-up credit and technical training; and the creation and maintenance, as of September 2010, of over 30,000 communal councils, examples of localised participatory democracy; which he intended to be integrated into regional umbrella organizations known as ""Communes in Construction"".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produced some of their own food, and were able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds. In September 2010, Chávez announced the location of 876 million bolivars ($203 million) for community projects around the country, specifically communal councils and the newly formed communes. Chávez also criticised the bureaucracy still common in Venezuela saying, when in discussion with his Communes Minister Isis Ochoa, that "All of the projects must be carried out by the commune, not the bureaucracy." The Ministry for Communes, which oversees and funds all communal projects, was initiated in 2009.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Despite such promises, the Venezuelan government often failed to construct the number of homes they had proposed. According to Venezuela's "El Universal", one of the Chávez administration's outstanding weaknesses is the failure to meet its goals of construction of housing.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In the first few years of Chavez's office, his newly created social programs required large payments in order to make the desired changes. On 5 February 2003, the government created CADIVI, a currency control board charged with handling foreign exchange procedures. Its creation was to control capital flight by placing limits on individuals and only offering them so much of a foreign currency. This limit to foreign currency led to a creation of a currency black market economy since Venezuelan merchants rely on foreign goods that require payments with reliable foreign currencies. As Venezuela printed more money for their social programs, the bolívar continued to devalue for Venezuelan citizens and merchants since the government held the majority of the more reliable currencies.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The implied value or "black market value" is what Venezuelans believe the hard bolívar is worth compared to the United States dollar. The high rates in the black market make it difficult for businesses to purchase necessary goods since the government often forces these businesses to make price cuts.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: This leads to businesses selling their goods and making a low profit. Since businesses make low profits, this leads to shortages since they are unable to import the goods that Venezuela is reliant on. Chavez used exchange rate subsidies to underwrite imports; this policy was not welfare-maximizing, but rather benefited special interests.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: During the 1980s and 1990s there was a steady increase in crime in Latin America. The countries of Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Brazil all had homicide rates above the regional average. During his terms as president, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans were murdered due to violent crimes occurring in the country. Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers stated in their book "Youth violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective" that, "With the change of political regime in 1999 and the initiation of the Bolivarian Revolution, a period of transformation and political conflict began, marked by a further increase in the number and rate of violent deaths" showing that in four years, the murder rate had increased to 44 per 100,000 people. Kidnappings also rose tremendously during Chavez's tenure, with the number of kidnappings over 20 times higher in 2011 than when Chavez was elected. Documentary filmmaker James Brabazon, stated "kidnapping crimes had skyrocketed ... after late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez freed thousands of violent prisoners as part of controversial criminal justice system reforms" while kidnappings and murders also increased due to Colombian organized crime activity as well. He further explained that common criminals felt that the Venezuelan government did not care for the problems of the higher and middle classes, which in turn gave them a sense of impunity that created a large business of kidnapping-for-ransom.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Under Chávez's administration, crimes were so prevalent that by 2007 the government no longer produced crime data. Homicide rates in Venezuela more than tripled, with one NGO finding the rate to have nearly quadrupled. The majority of the deaths occur in crowded slums in Caracas. The NGO found that the number of homicides in the country increased from 6,000 in 1999 to 24,763 in 2013. In 2010 Caracas had the highest murder rate in the world. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2012 there were 13,080 murders in Venezuela.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In leaked government INE data for kidnappings in the year 2009, the number of kidnappings were at an estimated 16,917, contrasting the CICPCs number of only 673, before the Venezuelan government blocked the data. According to the leaked INE report, only 1,332 investigations for kidnappings were opened or about 7% of the total kidnapping cases, with 90% of the kidnappings happening away from rural areas, 80% of all being express kidnappings and the most common victim being lower-middle or middle class Venezuelans and middle-aged men. Also in 2009, it was reported that Venezuelan authorities would assign judicial police to Caracas area morgues to speak with families. At that time, they would advise families not to report the murder of their family member to the media in exchange for expediting the process of releasing the victim's body.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In September 2010, responding to escalating crime rates in the country, Chávez stated that Venezuela was no more violent than it was when he first took office. An International Crisis Group report that same year stated that when Chávez took office, there were some factors beyond his control that led to the crime epidemic throughout Venezuela, but that Chávez ignored it as well as corruption in the country; especially among fellow state officials. The report also stated that international organised crime filters between Colombia and Venezuela with assistance from "the highest spheres of government" in Venezuela, leading to higher rates of kidnapping, drug trafficking, and homicides. Chávez supporters stated that the Bolivarian National Police has reduced crime and also said that the states with the highest murder rates were controlled by the opposition.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: During Chávez's presidency, there were reports of prisoners having easy access to firearms, drugs, and alcohol. Carlos Nieto—head of Window to Freedom—alleges that heads of gangs acquire military weapons from the state, saying: "They have the types of weapons that can only be obtained by the country's armed forces. ... No one else has these." Use of internet and mobile phones are also a commonplace where criminals can take part in street crime while in prison. One prisoner explained how, "If the guards mess with us, we shoot them" and that he had "seen a man have his head cut off and people play football with it".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Edgardo Lander, a sociologist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela with a PhD in sociology from Harvard University explained that Venezuelan prisons were "practically a school for criminals" since young inmates come out "more sort of trained and hardened than when they went in". He also explained that prisons are controlled by gangs and that "very little has been done" to control them.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The electoral processes surrounding Venezuela's democracy under Chávez were often observed controversially. According to "Bloomberg", he changed Venezuela from a democracy to "a largely authoritarian system".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Given the protests and strikes, some of which were quite big, like on 10 December 2001, then the largest in the history of Venezuela, some confidential cables published on WikiLeaks tried to explain the discrepancy between Chávez's relatively low popularity and his overwhelming electoral victory.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: According to the cables, Hugo Chávez used "practically unlimited state resources" for propaganda activities, and high oil prices facilitated his success. The opposition, on the contrary, was divided into different parties, which ran for the same office, and the limited financial resources were badly invested. During his re-election campaigns, Chávez, through food, health, and literacy programs for the poor, handed money to prospective voters. He reportedly mobilized the lower class Venezuelan voters who had historically abstained from elections for years, providing both undocumented Venezuelans and foreigners with identity cards; 200,000 foreigners were naturalized before August 2004 and around 3,000–4,000 foreigners per year that might have been naturalized thereafter. Most of them purportedly voted for him.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: According to the same cable, Chávez had control over the CNE (National Electoral Council) "and, by extension, the international observer missions". Moreover, "The CNE's decision to use fingerprinting machines 'cazahuellas' to verify a voter's identity led to the widespread belief that a person's vote would not be secret".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Finally, Chávez allegedly used the judiciary in order to detain or intimidate opposition politicians or NGOs accused of receiving money from the United States (through the National Endowment for Democracy – NED) purportedly in order to overthrow the government. According to the same source, the received money amounts to $30,000. He reportedly also put pressure in the attorney general's office in order to replace three key employees and have any case that might damage the government or Chávez himself undisclosed.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In December 1998, Hugo Chávez declared three goals for the new government; "convening a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, eliminating government corruption, and fighting against social exclusion and poverty". However, according to the libertarian Cato Institute, during Hugo Chávez's time in power, corruption has become widespread throughout the government due to impunity towards members of the government, bribes and the lack of transparency. In 2004, Hugo Chávez and his allies took over the Supreme Court, filling it with supporters of Chávez and made new measures so the government could dismiss justices from the court. According to the Cato Institute, the National Electoral Council of Venezuela was under control of Chávez where he tried to "push a constitutional reform that would have allowed him unlimited opportunities for reelection". The Corruption Perceptions Index, produced annually by the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International (TNI), reported that in the later years of Chávez's tenure, corruption worsened; it was 158th out of 180 countries in 2008, and 165th out of 176 (tied with Burundi, Chad, and Haiti). Most Venezuelans believed the government's effort against corruption was ineffective; that corruption had increased; and that government institutions such as the judicial system, parliament, legislature, and police were the most corrupt.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In Gallup Poll's 2006 Corruption Index, Venezuela ranked 31st out of 101 countries according to how widespread the population perceive corruption as being in the government and in business. The index listed Venezuela as the second least corrupt nation in Latin America, behind Chile. Some criticism came from Chávez's supporters, as well. Chávez's own political party, Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), had been criticized as being riddled with the same cronyism, political patronage, and corruption that Chávez alleged were characteristic of the old "Fourth Republic" political parties. Venezuela's trade unionists and indigenous communities participated in peaceful demonstrations intended to impel the government to facilitate labor and land reforms. These communities, while largely expressing their sympathy and support for Chávez, criticized what they saw as Chávez's slow progress in protecting their interests against managers and mining concerns, respectively.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), "Chavez's government funded FARC's office in Caracas and gave it access to Venezuela's intelligence services" and said that during the 2002 coup attempt that "FARC also responded to requests from [Venezuela's intelligence service] to provide training in urban terrorism involving targeted killings and the use of explosives". The IISS continued saying that "the archive offers tantalizing but ultimately unproven suggestions that FARC may have undertaken assassinations of Chavez's political opponents on behalf of the Venezuelan state". Venezuelan diplomats denounced the IISS' findings saying that they had "basic inaccuracies".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2007, authorities in Colombia claimed that through laptops they had seized on a raid against Raúl Reyes, they found in documents that Hugo Chávez offered payments of as much as $300 million to the FARC "among other financial and political ties that date back years" along with other documents showing "high-level meetings have been held between rebels and Ecuadorean officials" and some documents claiming that FARC had "bought and sold uranium".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2015, Chávez's former bodyguard Leamsy Salazar stated in "Bumerán Chávez" that Chávez met with the high command of FARC in 2007 somewhere in rural Venezuela. Chávez created a system in which the FARC would provide the Venezuelan government with drugs that would be transported in live cattle and the FARC would receive money and weaponry from the Venezuelan government. According to Salazar, this was done in order to weaken Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, an enemy of Chávez.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Shortly after Hugo Chávez's election, ratings for freedom in Venezuela dropped according to political and human rights group Freedom House and Venezuela was rated "partly free". In 2004, Amnesty International criticized Chavez's administration of not handling the 2002 coup in a proper manner, saying that violent incidents "have not been investigated effectively and have gone unpunished" and that "impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators encourages further human rights violations in a particularly volatile political climate". Amnesty International also criticized the Venezuelan National Guard and the Direccion de Inteligencia Seguridad y Prevención (DISIP) stating that they "allegedly used excessive force to control the situation on a number of


title: Hugo Chávez

text: occasions" during protests involving the 2004 Venezuela recall. It was also noted that many of the protesters detained seemed to not be "brought before a judge within the legal time limit".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report reviewing Chávez's human rights record over his first decade in power. The report praises Chávez's 1999 amendments to the constitution which significantly expanded human rights guarantees, as well as mentioning improvements in women's rights and indigenous rights, but noted a "wide range of government policies that have undercut the human rights protections established" by the revised constitution. In particular, the report accused Chávez and his administration of engaging in discrimination on political grounds, eroding the independence of the judiciary, and of engaging in "policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela". The Venezuelan government retaliated for the report by expelling members of Human Rights Watch from the country. Subsequently, over a hundred Latin American scholars signed a joint letter with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a leftist NGO that would defend Chávez and his movement, with the individuals criticizing the Human Rights Watch report for its alleged factual inaccuracy, exaggeration, lack of context, illogical arguments, and heavy reliance on opposition newspapers as sources, amongst other things.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The International Labour Organization of the United Nations had also expressed concern over voters being pressured to join the party.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2009, Judge María Lourdes Afiuni was arrested on charges of corruption after ordering the conditional release on bail of businessman Eligio Cedeño, who then fled the country. She was moved to house arrest in Caracas in February 2011, but she is still barred from practicing law, leaving the country, or using her bank account or social networks. Human rights groups accused Chávez of creating a climate of fear that threatened the independence of the judiciary. "Reuters" said Afiuni is "considered by opponents and jurists as one of the most emblematic political prisoners" in Venezuela, because Chávez called for her to be imprisoned.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2010, Amnesty International criticized the Chávez administration for targeting critics following several politically motivated arrests. Freedom House listed Venezuela as being "partly free" in its 2011 Freedom in the World annual report, noting a recent decline in civil liberties. A 2010 Organization of American States report found concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy, as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure and ability of the president to appoint judges to federal courts. OAS observers were denied access to Venezuela; Chávez rejected the OAS report, pointing out that its authors did not even come to Venezuela. He said Venezuela should boycott the OAS, which he felt is dominated by the United States; a spokesperson said, "We don't recognize the commission as an impartial institution". He disclaimed any power to influence the judiciary. A Venezuelan official said the report distorted and took statistics out of context, and said that "human rights violations in Venezuela have decreased". Venezuela said it would not accept an IACHR/OAS visit as long as Santiago Cantón remains its Executive Secretary, unless the IACHR apologizes for what he described as its support of the 2002 coup.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In November 2014, Venezuela appeared before the United Nations Committee Against Torture over cases between 2002 and 2014. Human rights expert of the UN committee, Felice D. Gaer, noted that in "only 12 public officials have been convicted of human rights violations in the last decade when in the same period have been more than 5,000 complaints". The United Nations stated that there were 31,096 complaints of human rights violations received between the years 2011 and 2014. Of the 31,096 complaints, 3% of the cases resulted in only in an indictment by the Venezuelan Public Ministry. In 2009, the Attorney General announced the creation of an investigative team to examine 6,000 reports of extrajudicial killings between 2000 and 2007.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chavez's opposition to Zionism and close relations with Iran led to accusations of anti-Semitism. Such claims were made by the Venezuelan Jewish community at a World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Jerusalem, after Venezuela's oldest synagogue was vandalized by armed men. Claims of antisemitism were prompted by various remarks Chávez made, including in a 2006 Christmas speech where he complained that "a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ", now had "taken possession of all of the wealth of the world". In 2009, attacks on a synagogue in Caracas were alleged to be influenced by "vocal denunciations of Israel" by the Venezuelan state media and Hugo Chávez, even though Chavez promptly condemned the attacks, blaming an "oligarchy". A weeklong investigation by the Venezuelan CICPC stated the synagogue attack to be an 'inside job', the motive apparently being robbery rather than anti-Semitism.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Under Chávez, press freedom declined while censorship in Venezuela increased. He used state-run bodies to silence the media and to disseminate Bolivarian propaganda. Other actions included pressuring media organizations to sell to those related to his government or to face closure.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression". Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In 2004, Chávez used the National Commission of Telecommunications and the Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Electronic Media law to officially censor media organizations.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez inaugurated TeleSUR in July 2005, a Pan-American news channel similar to Al Jazeera, which sought to challenge Latin American television news by Univision and the United States-based CNN en Español. In 2006 Chávez inaugurated a state-funded movie studio called "Villa del Cine" (English: Cinema City).


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region's worst press freedom offenders." Freedom House listed Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010."


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez also had a Twitter account with more than 3,200,000 followers as of August 2012. A team of 200 people sorted through suggestions and comments sent via Twitter. Chávez said Twitter was "another mechanism for contact with the public, to evaluate many things and to help many people", and that he saw Twitter as "a weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Though Chávez inspired other movements in Latin America to follow his model of "chavismo" in an attempt to reshape South America, it was later seen as being erratic and his influence internationally became exaggerated. He refocused Venezuelan foreign policy on Latin American economic and social integration by enacting bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements, including his so-called "oil diplomacy" making Venezuela more dependent on using oil, its main commodity, and increasing its longterm vulnerability. Chávez also aligned himself with authoritarian nations and radical movements that were seen as being anti-Western, with relations with Cuba and Iran becoming a particular importance. In particular relations between Venezuela and the United States deteriorated markedly as Chávez became highly critical of the U.S. foreign policy, opposing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and condemning the NATO–led military intervention in Libya. Relations thawed somewhat under President Barack Obama in June 2009, only to steadily deteriorate once again shortly afterwards. Chávez also focused on a variety of multinational institutions to promote his vision of Latin American integration, including Petrocaribe, Petrosur, and TeleSUR. Bilateral trade relationships with other Latin American countries also played a major role in his policy, with Chávez increasing arms purchases from Brazil, forming oil-for-expertise trade arrangements with Cuba, and creating unique barter arrangements that exchange Venezuelan petroleum for cash-strapped Argentina's meat and dairy products. He also befriended pariah states such as Belarus and Iran. Domestic mishandling of the country under Chávez prevented Venezuela from strengthening its position in the world.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez married twice. He first wed Nancy Colmenares (), a woman from a poor family in Chávez's hometown of Sabaneta. Chávez and Colmenares remained married for 18 years, during which time they had three children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Rafael, the last of whom suffers from behavioural problems. The couple separated soon after Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. During his first marriage, Chávez had an affair with historian Herma Marksman; their relationship lasted nine years. Chávez's second wife was journalist Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez, from whom he separated in 2002 and divorced in 2004. Through that marriage, Chávez had another daughter, Rosinés. Both María and Rosa had children. When Chávez was released from prison, he initiated affairs with women that had been his followers. Allegations were also made that Chávez was a womanizer throughout both his marriages, having encounters with actresses, journalists, ministers, and ministers' daughters. The allegations remained unproven and are contradicted by statements provided by other figures close to him, though one retired aide shared that while Chávez was married to Marisabel and afterward, he participated in liaisons with women and gave them gifts, with some rumors among his aides stating that some of the women bore children from Chávez.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Those who were very close to Chávez felt that he had bipolar disorder. Salvador Navarrete, a physician that treated Chávez during his first years in the presidency believed that Chávez was bipolar. In 2010, Alberto Müller Rojas, then vice president of Chávez's party, PSUV, stated that Chávez had "a tendency toward cyclothymia—mood swings that range from moments of extreme euphoria to moments of despondence". A different explanation was that such behavior was a tactic used by Chávez in order to attack opponents and polarize.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez was a Catholic. He intended at one time to become a priest. He saw his socialist policies as having roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ (liberation theology), and he publicly used the slogan of "Christ is with the Revolution!" Although he traditionally kept his own faith a private matter, Chávez over the course of his presidency became increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that he interpreted Jesus as a Communist. He was, in general, a liberal Catholic, some of whose declarations were disturbing to the religious community of his country. In 2008 he expressed his skepticism of an afterlife, saying that such an idea was false. He also would declare his belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, stating that "it is a lie that God created man from the ground". Among other things, he cursed the state of Israel, and he had some disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic clergy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission, whose evangelical leader he "condemned to hell". In addition, he showed syncretistic practices such as the worship of the Venezuelan goddess María Lionza. In his last years, after he discovered he had cancer, Chávez became more attached to the Catholic Church.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In June 2011, Chávez revealed in a televised address from Havana, Cuba, that he was recovering from an operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells. Vice President Elías Jaua declared that the president remained in "full exercise" of power and that there was no need to transfer power due to his absence from the country. On 3 July, the Venezuelan government denied, however, that Chávez's tumor had been completely removed, further stating that he was heading for "complete recovery". On 17 July 2011, television news reported that Chávez had returned to Cuba for further cancer treatments.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Chávez gave a public appearance on 28 July 2011, his 57th birthday, in which he stated that his health troubles had led him to radically reorient his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" outlook, and he went on to call on the middle classes and the private sector to get more involved in his Bolivarian Revolution, something he saw as "vital" to its success. Soon after this speech, in August, Chávez announced that his government would nationalize Venezuela's gold industry, taking it over from Russian-controlled company Rusoro, while at the same time also moving the country's gold stocks, which were largely stored in western banks, to banks in Venezuela's political allies like Russia, China and Brazil.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 9 July 2012, Chávez declared himself fully recovered from cancer just three months before the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election, which he won, securing a fourth term as president. In November 2012, Chávez announced plans to travel to Cuba for more medical treatment for cancer.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 8 December 2012, Chávez announced he would undergo a new operation after doctors in Cuba detected malignant cells; the operation took place on 11 December 2012. Chávez suffered a respiratory infection after undergoing the surgery, but it was controlled. It was announced on 20 December by the country's vice-president that Chávez had suffered complications following his surgery. It was announced on 3 January 2013, that Chávez had a severe lung infection that had caused respiratory failures following a strict treatment regimen for respiratory insufficiency. However, he was reported to have overcome this later that month and it was reported that he was then undergoing further treatment. On 18 February 2013, Chávez returned to Venezuela after two months of cancer treatment in Cuba. On 1 March 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro said that Chávez had been receiving chemotherapy in Venezuela following his surgery in Cuba. On 4 March, it was announced by the Venezuelan government that Chávez's breathing problems had worsened and he was suffering a new, severe respiratory infection.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: On 5 March 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced on state television that Chávez had died in a military hospital in Caracas at 16:25 VET (20:55 UTC). The Vice President said Chávez died "after battling a tough illness for nearly two years". According to the head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Chávez died from a massive heart attack, and his cancer of the pelvic region was very advanced when he died. Gen. Jose Ornella said that near the end of his life Chávez "couldn’t speak but he said it with his lips ... ‘"No quiero morir, por favor no me dejen morir"’ ('I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die), because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country". Chávez is survived by four children and four grandchildren.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: Maduro alleged that Chávez was poisoned or infected with a cancer virus by the U.S. government. A spokesman for the U.S State Department dismissed the claim as "absurd".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: After defecting from Venezuela, former bodyguard for Chávez, Leamsy Salazar, stated that he died in December 2012, months before his death was officially announced. In July 2018, former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz also said that Chávez had actually died in December 2012 and the announcement of his death was delayed for political reasons. In an interview cited by Venezuelan daily "El Nacional", the former Chávez supporter said that the Venezuelan president died on 28 December, but his closest allies decided to delay the announcement and never submitted the death certificate to the Office of the Attorney General. The supposed delay in announcing Chávez's death raised concerns that laws signed in his name during that period were forged for political purposes.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: His death triggered a constitutional requirement that a presidential election be called within 30 days. Maduro, Chavez's vice president, was elected president on 14 April 2013.


title: Hugo Chávez

text: The United States-based "Time" magazine included Chávez among their list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2005 and 2006, noting the spreading of his anti-globalization efforts and anti-US sentiment throughout Latin America. In a 2006 list compiled by the left wing British magazine "New Statesman", he was voted 11th in the list of "Heroes of our time". In 2010 the magazine included Chávez in its annual "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures". His biographers Marcano and Tyszka believed that within only a few years of his presidency, he "had already earned his place in history as the president most loved and most despised by the Venezuelan people, the president who inspired the greatest zeal and the deepest revulsion at the same time".


title: Hugo Chávez

text: In the Belarusian capital Minsk a park was named after Chávez on 18 October 2014. In addition in Al-Bireh and in Moscow, streets were also named after Chávez.


title: Guillotine

text: A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single, clean pass so that the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below.


title: Guillotine

text: The guillotine is best known for its use in France, particularly during the French Revolution, where the revolution's supporters celebrated it as the people's avenger and the revolution's opponents vilified it as the pre-eminent symbol of the violence of the Reign of Terror. While the name "guillotine" itself dates from this period, similar devices had been in use elsewhere in Europe over several centuries. The use of an oblique blade and the stocks set this type of guillotine apart from others. The display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways European sovereigns exhibited their power to their subjects.


title: Guillotine

text: The guillotine was invented in order to make capital punishment less painful in accordance with new Enlightenment ideals about human rights. Prior to the guillotine, France had used manual beheading alongside a variety of methods of execution, many of which were more gruesome and required a high level of precision and skill to carry out successfully. After its adoption, the device remained France's standard method of judicial execution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981. The last person to be executed in France was Hamida Djandoubi, guillotined on 10 September 1977.


title: Guillotine

text: The use of beheading machines in Europe long predates such use during the French Revolution in 1792. An early example of the principle is found in the "High History of the Holy Grail", dated to about 1210. Although the device is imaginary, its function is clear. The text says:


title: Guillotine

text: The Halifax Gibbet was a wooden structure consisting of two wooden uprights, capped by a horizontal beam, of a total height of . The blade was an axe head weighing 3.5 kg (7.7 lb), attached to the bottom of a massive wooden block that slid up and down in grooves in the uprights. This device was mounted on a large square platform high. It is not known when the Halifax Gibbet was first used; the first recorded execution in Halifax dates from 1280, but that execution may have been by sword, axe, or gibbet. The machine remained in use until Oliver Cromwell forbade capital punishment for petty theft.


title: Guillotine

text: A Hans Weiditz (1495-1537) woodcut illustration from the 1532 edition of Petrarch's "De remediis utriusque fortunae", or "Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune" shows a device similar to the Halifax Gibbet in the background being used for an execution.


title: Guillotine

text: Holinshed's Chronicles of 1577 included a picture of "The execution of Murcod Ballagh near Merton in Ireland in 1307" showing a similar execution machine, suggesting its early use in Ireland.


title: Guillotine

text: The Maiden was constructed in 1564 for the Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh, and was in use from April 1565 to 1710. One of those executed was James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, in 1581, and a 1644 publication began circulating the legend that Morton himself commissioned the Maiden after he had seen the Halifax Gibbet. The Maiden was readily dismantled for storage and transport, and it is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.


title: Guillotine

text: For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a "louisette". However, it was later named after French physician and Freemason Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a special device to carry out executions in France in a more humane manner. A death penalty opponent, he was displeased with the breaking wheel and other common, more grisly methods of execution and sought to persuade Louis XVI of France to implement a less painful alternative. While not the device's inventor, Guillotin's name ultimately became an eponym for it. Contrary to popular myth, Guillotin did not die by guillotine but rather by natural causes.


title: Guillotine

text: French surgeon and physiologist Antoine Louis, together with German engineer , built a prototype for the guillotine. According to the memoires of the French executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, Louis XVI suggested the use of a straight, angled blade instead of a curved one.


title: Guillotine

text: On 10 October 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the National Assembly that capital punishment should always take the form of decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism".


title: Guillotine

text: Sensing the growing discontent, Louis XVI banned the use of the breaking wheel. In 1791, as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class, consistent with the idea that the purpose of capital punishment was simply to end life rather than to inflict unnecessary pain.


title: Guillotine

text: A committee formed under Antoine Louis, physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery. Guillotin was also on the committee. The group was influenced by beheading devices used elsewhere in Europe, such as the Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja, which had been used since Roman times), the Scottish Maiden, and the Halifax Gibbet (3.5 kg). While many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, a number of them also used a crescent blade to behead and a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim's neck.


title: Guillotine

text: Laquiante, an officer of the Strasbourg criminal court, designed a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and harpsichord maker, to construct a prototype. Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype. France's official executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, claimed in his memoirs that King Louis XVI (an amateur locksmith) recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to cut through all necks; the neck of the king, who would eventually die by guillotine years later, was offered up discreetly as an example. The first execution by guillotine was performed on highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792 in front of what is now the city hall of Paris (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). All citizens condemned to die were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to the Place du Carrousel.


title: Guillotine

text: The machine was deemed successful because it was considered a humane form of execution in contrast with the more cruel methods used in the pre-revolutionary "Ancien Régime". In France, before the invention of the guillotine, members of the nobility were beheaded with a sword or an axe, which often took two or more blows to kill the condemned. The condemned or their families would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to achieve a quick and relatively painless death. Commoners were usually hanged, which could take many minutes. In the early phase of the French Revolution before the guillotine's adoption, the slogan "À la lanterne" (in English: To the lamp post! String Them Up! or Hang Them!) symbolized popular justice in revolutionary France. The revolutionary radicals hanged officials and aristocrats from street lanterns and also employed more gruesome methods of execution, such as the wheel or burning at the stake.


title: Guillotine

text: Having only one method of civil execution for all regardless of class was also seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was then the only civil legal execution method in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, or for the death sentences passed by military courts, which entailed execution by firing squad.


title: Guillotine

text: Louis Collenot d'Angremont was a royalist famed for having been the first guillotined for his political ideas, on 21 August 1792. During the Reign of Terror (June 1793 to July 1794) about 17,000 people were guillotined, including former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette who were executed at the guillotine in 1793. Towards the end of the Terror in 1794, revolutionary leaders such as Georges Danton, Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre were sent to the guillotine. Most of the time, executions in Paris were carried out in the Place de la Revolution (former Place Louis XV and current Place de la Concorde); the guillotine stood in the corner near the Hôtel Crillon where the City of Brest Statue can be found today. The machine was moved several times, to the Place de la Nation and the Place de la Bastille, but returned, particularly for the execution of the King and for Robespierre.


title: Guillotine

text: For a time, executions by guillotine were a popular form of entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators, with vendors selling programs listing the names of the condemned. But more than being popular entertainment alone during the Terror, the guillotine symbolized revolutionary ideals: equality in death equivalent to equality before the law; open and demonstrable revolutionary justice; and the destruction of privilege under the "Ancien Régime", which used separate forms of execution for nobility and commoners. The Parisian "sans-culottes", then the popular public face of lower-class patriotic radicalism, thus considered the guillotine a positive force for revolutionary progress.


title: Guillotine

text: After the French Revolution, executions resumed in the city center. On 4 February 1832, the guillotine was moved behind the Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, before being moved again, to the Grande Roquette prison, on 29 November 1851.


title: Guillotine

text: In the late 1840s, the Tussaud brothers Joseph and Francis, gathering relics for Madame Tussauds wax museum, visited the aged Henry-Clément Sanson, grandson of the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, from whom they obtained parts, the knife and lunette, of one of the original guillotines used during the Reign of Terror. The executioner had "pawned his guillotine, and got into woeful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property".


title: Guillotine

text: On 6 August 1909, the guillotine was used at the junction of the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé, behind the La Santé Prison.


title: Guillotine

text: The last public guillotining in France was of Eugen Weidmann, who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on 17 June 1939 outside the prison Saint-Pierre, rue Georges Clemenceau 5 at Versailles, which is now the Palais de Justice. Numerous issues with the proceedings arose: inappropriate behavior by spectators, incorrect assembly of the apparatus, and secret cameras filming and photographing the execution from several stories above. In response, the French government ordered that future executions be conducted in the prison courtyard in private.


title: Guillotine

text: The guillotine remained the official method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The final three guillotinings in France before its abolition were those of child-murderers Christian Ranucci (on 28 July 1976) in Marseille, Jérôme Carrein (on 23 June 1977) in Douai and torturer-murderer Hamida Djandoubi (on 10 September 1977) in Marseille. Djandoubi's death was the last time that the guillotine was used for an execution by any government.


title: Guillotine

text: In Germany, the guillotine is known as the "Fallbeil" ("falling hatchet") or "Köpfsmaschine" ("head [cutting] machine") and was used in various German states from the 19th century onwards, becoming the preferred method of execution in Napoleonic times in many parts of the country. The guillotine and the firing squad were the legal methods of execution during the era of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933).


title: Guillotine

text: The original German guillotines resembled the French Berger 1872 model, but they eventually evolved into sturdier and more efficient machines. Built primarily of metal instead of wood, these new guillotines had heavier blades than their French predecessors and thus could use shorter uprights as well. Officials could also conduct multiple executions faster, thanks to a more efficient blade recovery system and the eventual removal of the tilting board (bascule). Those deemed likely to struggle were backed slowly into the device from behind a curtain to prevent them from seeing it prior to the execution. A metal screen covered the blade as well in order to conceal it from the sight of the condemned.


title: Guillotine

text: Nazi Germany used the guillotine between 1933 and 1945 to execute 16,500 prisoners – 10,000 of them in 1944 and 1945 alone. Notable political victims executed by the guillotine under the Nazi government included Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist blamed for the Reichstag fire and executed via guillotine in January 1934. The Nazi government also guillotined Sophie Scholl, who was convicted of high treason after distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans, and other members of the German student resistance group, the White Rose. The guillotine was last used in West Germany in 1949 in the execution of Richard Schuh and was last used in East Germany in 1966 in the execution of Horst Fischer. The Stasi used the guillotine in East Germany between 1950 and 1966 for secret executions.


title: Guillotine

text: A number of countries, primarily in Europe, continued to employ this method of execution into the 19th and 20th centuries, but they ceased to use it before France did in 1977.


title: Guillotine

text: In Antwerp, the last person to be beheaded was Francis Kol. Convicted of robbery and murder, he received his punishment on 8 May 1856. During the period from 19 March 1798 to 30 March 1856, there were 19 beheadings in Antwerp.


title: Guillotine

text: In Switzerland, it was used for the last time by the canton of Obwalden in the execution of murderer Hans Vollenweider in 1940.


title: Guillotine

text: In Greece, the guillotine (along with the firing squad) was introduced as a method of execution in 1834; it was last used in 1913.


title: Guillotine

text: In Sweden, beheading became the mandatory method of execution in 1866. The guillotine replaced manual beheading in 1903, and it was used only once, in the execution of murderer Alfred Ander in 1910 at Långholmen Prison, Stockholm. Ander was also the last person to be executed in Sweden before capital punishment was abolished there in 1921.


title: Guillotine

text: In South Vietnam, after the Diệm regime enacted the 10/59 Decree in 1959, mobile special military courts were dispatched to the countryside in order to intimidate the rural population; they used guillotines, which had belonged to the former French colonial power, in order to carry out death sentences on the spot. One such guillotine is still on show at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.


title: Guillotine

text: In the Western Hemisphere, the guillotine saw only limited use. The only recorded guillotine execution in North America north of the Caribbean took place on the French island of St. Pierre in 1889, of Joseph Néel, with a guillotine brought in from Martinique. In the Caribbean, it was used quite rarely in Guadeloupe and Martinique, the last time in Fort-de-France in 1965. In South America, the guillotine was only used in French Guiana, where about 150 people were beheaded between 1850 and 1945: most of them were convicts exiled from France and incarcerated within the "bagne", or penal colonies. Within the Southern Hemisphere, it worked in New Caledonia (which had a bagne too until the end of the 19th century) and at least twice in Tahiti.


title: Guillotine

text: In 1996 in the United States, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper unsuccessfully sponsored a bill to replace that state's electric chair with the guillotine.


title: Guillotine

text: In recent years, a limited number of individuals have died by suicide using a guillotine which they had constructed themselves.


title: Guillotine

text: Ever since the guillotine's first use, there has been debate as to whether or not the guillotine provided as swift and painless a death as Guillotin had hoped. With previous methods of execution that were intended to be painful, few expressed concern about the level of suffering that they inflicted. However, because the guillotine was invented specifically to be more humane, the issue of whether or not the condemned experiences pain has been thoroughly examined and has remained a controversial topic. While certain eyewitness accounts of guillotine executions suggest anecdotally that awareness may persist momentarily after decapitation, there has never been true scientific consensus on the matter.


title: Guillotine

text: The question of consciousness or awareness following decapitation remained a topic of discussion during the guillotine's use.


title: Guillotine

text: The following report was written by Dr. Beaurieux, who observed the head of executed prisoner Henri Languille, on 28 June 1905:


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: Power Book II: Ghost is an American drama television series created by Courtney A. Kemp that premiered on September 6, 2020 on Starz. The series is both a sequel and spin-off to "Power".


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: In December 2021, the series was renewed for a third season which is set to premiere on March 17, 2023.


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: "Ghost" follows Tariq navigating his new life, in which his desire to shed his father's legacy comes up against the mounting pressure to save his family. Along the way, Tariq gets entangled in the affairs of the cutthroat Tejada family, adding further complications as he tries to balance his drug operations with his education, love life, family affairs, and mounting pressure from Cooper Saxe.


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: On July 26, 2019, Starz announced the straight-to-series order with the news that Mary J. Blige would star. On February 9, 2020, Starz announced the premise of the series. On September 22, 2020, Starz renewed the series for a second season. On December 7, 2021, Starz renewed the series for a third season with Brett Mahoney taking over as the showrunner.


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: Mary J. Blige was cast on July 26, 2019, with the initial news. On January 14, 2020, Method Man was cast in a main role. The remainder of the main cast was entirely announced on February 9, 2020. On July 21, 2020, Sherri Saum was cast for the series. Two days later, Shalim Ortiz was cast in a recurring role. On February 24, Daniel Sunjata was cast as a new series regular for the second season. On April 27, 2021, Redman joined the cast in a guest starring role for the second season. On June 21, 2021, Paton Ashbrook, Berto Colon, and Alix Lapri were promoted to series regulars while Lahmard Tate joined the cast in a recurring role, reprising his role as Kamaal Tate from the sixth season of "Power". On October 1, 2021, Frank Whaley joined the cast in a recurring role for the second season. In January 2022, Keesha Sharp, David Walton, Monique Curnen, and Moriah Brown were cast as series regulars while Petey McGee joined the cast in a recurring role for the third season. In March 2022, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Kyle Vincent Terry, and Caroline Chikezie were cast in recurring roles for the third season.


title: Power Book II: Ghost

text: The series premiered on September 6, 2020 on Starz. The series' official trailer was released on August 4, 2020. The second season premiered on November 21, 2021. The third season is scheduled to premiere on March 17, 2023.


title: Boxing

text: Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring.


title: Boxing

text: Although the term "boxing" is commonly attributed to "western boxing", in which only the fists are involved, boxing has developed in various ways in different geographical areas and cultures. In global terms, boxing is a set of combat sports focused on striking, in which two opponents face each other in a fight using at least their fists, and possibly involving other actions such as kicks, elbow strikes, knee strikes, and headbutts, depending on the rules. Some of the forms of the modern sport are western boxing, bare knuckle boxing, kickboxing, muay-thai, lethwei, savate, and sanda. Boxing techniques have been incorporated into many martial arts, military systems, and other combat sports.


title: Boxing

text: While humans have fought in hand-to-hand combat since the dawn of human history, the earliest evidence of any type of boxing can be seen in Sumerian carvings from the third and second millennia BC. The earliest evidence of boxing rules date back to Ancient Greece, where boxing was established as an Olympic game in 688 BC. Boxing evolved from 16th- and 18th-century prizefights, largely in Great Britain, to the forerunner of modern boxing in the mid-19th century with the 1867 introduction of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.


title: Boxing

text: Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and is a standard fixture in most international games — it also has its own world championships. Boxing is overseen by a referee over a series of one-to-three-minute intervals called "rounds".


title: Boxing

text: A winner can be resolved before the completion of the rounds when a referee deems an opponent incapable of continuing, disqualifies an opponent, or the opponent resigns. When the fight reaches the end of its final round with both opponents still standing, the judges' scorecards determine the victor. In case both fighters gain equal scores from the judges, a professional bout is considered a draw. In Olympic boxing, because a winner must be declared, judges award the contest to one fighter on technical criteria.


title: Boxing

text: Hitting with different extremities of the body, such as kicks and punches, as an act of human aggression, has existed across the world throughout human history, being a combat system as old as wrestling. However, in terms of sports competition, due to the lack of writing in the prehistoric times and the lack of references, it is not possible to determine rules of any kind of boxing in prehistory, and in ancient times only can be inferred from the few intact sources and references to the sport.


title: Boxing

text: The earliest known depiction of any form of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the third millennium BC. A relief sculpture from Egyptian Thebes () shows both boxers and spectators. These early Middle-Eastern and Egyptian depictions showed contests where fighters were either bare-fisted or had a band supporting the wrist. The earliest evidence of use of gloves can be found in Minoan Crete (–1400 BC).


title: Boxing

text: Various types of boxing existed in ancient India. The earliest references to "musti-yuddha" come from classical Vedic epics such as the "Rig Veda (c. 1500–1000 BCE)" and "Ramayana (c. 700–400 BCE)". The "Mahabharata" describes two combatants boxing with clenched fists and fighting with kicks, finger strikes, knee strikes and headbutts during the time of King Virata. Duels ("niyuddham") were often fought to the death. During the period of the Western Satraps, the ruler Rudradaman—in addition to being well-versed in "the great sciences" which included Indian classical music, Sanskrit grammar, and logic—was said to be an excellent horseman, charioteer, elephant rider, swordsman and boxer. The "Gurbilas Shemi", an 18th-century Sikh text, gives numerous references to "musti-yuddha". The martial art is related to other forms of martial arts found in other parts of the Indian cultural sphere including Muay Thai in Thailand, Muay Lao in Laos, Pradal Serey in Cambodia and Lethwei in Myanmar.


title: Boxing

text: In Ancient Greece boxing was a well developed sport called "pygmachia", and enjoyed consistent popularity. In Olympic terms, it was first introduced in the 23rd Olympiad, 688 BC. The boxers would wind leather thongs around their hands in order to protect them. There were no rounds and boxers fought until one of them acknowledged defeat or could not continue. Weight categories were not used, which meant heavier fighters had a tendency to dominate. The style of boxing practiced typically featured an advanced left leg stance, with the left arm semi-extended as a guard, in addition to being used for striking, and with the right arm drawn back ready to strike. It was the head of the opponent which was primarily targeted, and there is little evidence to suggest that targeting the body or the use of kicks was common, which resembles it in that sense of modern western boxing.


title: Boxing

text: Boxing was a popular spectator sport in Ancient Rome. Fighters protected their knuckles with leather strips wrapped around their fists. Eventually harder leather was used and the strips became a weapon. Metal studs were introduced to the strips to make the cestus. Fighting events were held at Roman amphitheatres.


title: Boxing

text: Records of boxing activity disappeared in the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire when the wearing of weapons became common once again and interest in fighting with the fists waned. However, there are detailed records of various fist-fighting sports that were maintained in different cities and provinces of Italy between the 12th and 17th centuries. There was also a sport in ancient Rus called "kulachniy boy" or 'fist fighting'.


title: Boxing

text: As the wearing of swords became less common, there was renewed interest in fencing with the fists. The sport later resurfaced in England during the early 16th century in the form of bare-knuckle boxing, sometimes referred to as "prizefighting". The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the "London Protestant Mercury", and the first English bare-knuckle champion was James Figg in 1719. This is also the time when the word "boxing" first came to be used. This earliest form of modern boxing was very different. Contests in Mr. Figg's time, in addition to fist fighting, also contained fencing and cudgeling. On 6 January 1681, the first recorded boxing match took place in Britain when Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle (and later Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica), engineered a bout between his butler and his butcher with the latter winning the prize.


title: Boxing

text: Early fighting had no written rules. There were no weight divisions or round limits, and no referee. In general, it was extremely chaotic. An early article on boxing was published in Nottingham in 1713, by Sir Thomas Parkyns, 2nd Baronet, a wrestling patron from Bunny, Nottinghamshire, who had practised the techniques he described. The article, a single page in his manual of wrestling and fencing, "Progymnasmata: The inn-play, or Cornish-hugg wrestler", described a system of headbutting, punching, eye-gouging, chokes, and hard throws, not recognized in boxing today.


title: Boxing

text: The first boxing rules, called the Broughton Rules, were introduced by champion Jack Broughton in 1743 to protect fighters in the ring where deaths sometimes occurred. Under these rules, if a man went down and could not continue after a count of 30 seconds, the fight was over. Hitting a downed fighter and grasping below the waist were prohibited. Broughton encouraged the use of "mufflers", a form of padded bandage or mitten, to be used in "jousting" or sparring sessions in training, and in exhibition matches.


title: Boxing

text: These rules did allow the fighters an advantage not enjoyed by today's boxers; they permitted the fighter to drop to one knee to end the round and begin the 30-second count at any time. Thus a fighter realizing he was in trouble had an opportunity to recover. However, this was considered "unmanly" and was frequently disallowed by additional rules negotiated by the seconds of the boxers. In modern boxing, there is a three-minute limit to rounds (unlike the downed fighter ends the round rule). Intentionally going down in modern boxing will cause the recovering fighter to lose points in the scoring system. Furthermore, as the contestants did not have heavy leather gloves and wristwraps to protect their hands, they used different punching technique to preserve their hands because the head was a common target to hit full out. Almost all period manuals have powerful straight punches with the whole body behind them to the face (including forehead) as the basic blows.


title: Boxing

text: The British sportswriter Pierce Egan coined the term "the sweet science" as an epithet for prizefighting – or more fully "the sweet science of bruising" as a description of England's bare-knuckle fight scene in the early nineteenth century.


title: Boxing

text: Boxing could also be used to settle disputes even by females. In 1790 in Waddington, Lincolnshire Mary Farmery and Susanna Locker both laid claim to the affections of a young man; this produced a challenge from the former to fight for the prize, which was accepted by the latter. Proper sidesmen were chosen, and every matter conducted in form. After several knock-down blows on both sides, the battle ended in favour of Mary Farmery.


title: Boxing

text: The London Prize Ring Rules introduced measures that remain in effect for professional boxing to this day, such as outlawing butting, gouging, scratching, kicking, hitting a man while down, holding the ropes, and using resin, stones or hard objects in the hands, and biting.


title: Boxing

text: In 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry rules were drafted by John Chambers for amateur championships held at Lillie Bridge in London for lightweights, middleweights and heavyweights. The rules were published under the patronage of the Marquess of Queensberry, whose name has always been associated with them.


title: Boxing

text: There were twelve rules in all, and they specified that fights should be "a fair stand-up boxing match" in a 24-foot-square or similar ring. Rounds were three minutes with one-minute rest intervals between rounds. Each fighter was given a ten-second count if he was knocked down, and wrestling was banned.


title: Boxing

text: The introduction of gloves of "fair-size" also changed the nature of the bouts. An average pair of boxing gloves resembles a bloated pair of mittens and are laced up around the wrists.


title: Boxing

text: The gloves can be used to block an opponent's blows. As a result of their introduction, bouts became longer and more strategic with greater importance attached to defensive maneuvers such as slipping, bobbing, countering and angling. Because less defensive emphasis was placed on the use of the forearms and more on the gloves, the classical forearms outwards, torso leaning back stance of the bare knuckle boxer was modified to a more modern stance in which the torso is tilted forward and the hands are held closer to the face.


title: Boxing

text: Through the late nineteenth century, the martial art of boxing or prizefighting was primarily a sport of dubious legitimacy. Outlawed in England and much of the United States, prizefights were often held at gambling venues and broken up by police. Brawling and wrestling tactics continued, and riots at prizefights were common occurrences. Still, throughout this period, there arose some notable bare knuckle champions who developed fairly sophisticated fighting tactics.


title: Boxing

text: The English case of "R v. Coney" in 1882 found that a bare-knuckle fight was an assault occasioning actual bodily harm, despite the consent of the participants. This marked the end of widespread public bare-knuckle contests in England.


title: Boxing

text: The first world heavyweight champion under the Queensberry Rules was "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, who defeated John L. Sullivan in 1892 at the Pelican Athletic Club in New Orleans.


title: Boxing

text: The first instance of film censorship in the United States occurred in 1897 when several states banned the showing of prize fighting films from the state of Nevada, where it was legal at the time.


title: Boxing

text: Throughout the early twentieth century, boxers struggled to achieve legitimacy. They were aided by the influence of promoters like Tex Rickard and the popularity of great champions such as John L. Sullivan.


title: Boxing

text: The modern sport arose from illegal venues and outlawed prizefighting and has become a multibillion-dollar commercial enterprise. A majority of young talent still comes from poverty-stricken areas around the world. Places like Mexico, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe prove to be filled with young aspiring athletes who wish to become the future of boxing. Even in the U.S., places like the inner cities of New York, and Chicago have given rise to promising young talent. According to Rubin, "boxing lost its appeal with the American middle class, and most of who boxes in modern America come from the streets and are street fighters".


title: Boxing

text: The "Marquess of Queensberry rules" have been the general rules governing modern boxing since their publication in 1867.


title: Boxing

text: A boxing match typically consists of a determined number of three-minute rounds, a total of up to 9 to 12 rounds with a minute spent between each round with the fighters resting in their assigned corners and receiving advice and attention from their coach and staff. The fight is controlled by a referee who works within the ring to judge and control the conduct of the fighters, rule on their ability to fight safely, count knocked-down fighters, and rule on fouls.


title: Boxing

text: Up to three judges are typically present at ringside to score the bout and assign points to the boxers, based on punches and elbows that connect, defense, knockdowns, hugging and other, more subjective, measures. Because of the open-ended style of boxing judging, many fights have controversial results, in which one or both fighters believe they have been "robbed" or unfairly denied a victory. Each fighter has an assigned corner of the ring, where their coach, as well as one or more "seconds" may administer to the fighter at the beginning of the fight and between rounds. Each boxer enters into the ring from their assigned corners at the beginning of each round and must cease fighting and return to their corner at the signalled end of each round.


title: Boxing

text: A bout in which the predetermined number of rounds passes is decided by the judges, and is said to "go the distance". The fighter with the higher score at the end of the fight is ruled the winner. With three judges, unanimous and split decisions are possible, as are draws. A boxer may win the bout before a decision is reached through a knock-out; such bouts are said to have ended "inside the distance". If a fighter is knocked down during the fight, determined by whether the boxer touches the canvas floor of the ring with any part of their body other than the feet as a result of the opponent's punch and not a slip, as determined by the referee, the referee begins counting until the fighter returns to their feet and can continue. Some jurisdictions require the referee to count to eight regardless of if the fighter gets up before.


title: Boxing

text: Should the referee count to ten, then the knocked-down boxer is ruled "knocked out" (whether unconscious or not) and the other boxer is ruled the winner by knockout (KO). A "technical knock-out" (TKO) is possible as well, and is ruled by the referee, fight doctor, or a fighter's corner if a fighter is unable to safely continue to fight, based upon injuries or being judged unable to effectively defend themselves. Many jurisdictions and sanctioning agencies also have a "three-knockdown rule", in which three knockdowns in a given round result in a TKO. A TKO is considered a knockout in a fighter's record. A "standing eight" count rule may also be in effect. This gives the referee the right to step in and administer a count of eight to a fighter that the referee feels may be in danger, even if no knockdown has taken place. After counting the referee will observe the fighter, and decide if the fighter is fit to continue. For scoring purposes, a standing eight count is treated as a knockdown.


title: Boxing

text: In general, boxers are prohibited from hitting below the belt, holding, tripping, pushing, biting, or spitting. The boxer's shorts are raised so the opponent is not allowed to hit to the groin area with intent to cause pain or injury. Failure to abide by the former may result in a foul. They also are prohibited from kicking, head-butting, or hitting with any part of the arm other than the knuckles of a closed fist (including hitting with the elbow, shoulder or forearm, as well as with open gloves, the wrist, the inside, back or side of the hand). They are prohibited as well from hitting the back, back of the head or neck (called a "rabbit-punch") or the kidneys. They are prohibited from holding the ropes for support when punching, holding an opponent while punching, or ducking below the belt of their opponent (dropping below the waist of your opponent, no matter the distance between).


title: Boxing

text: If a "clinch" – a defensive move in which a boxer wraps their opponent's arms and holds on to create a pause – is broken by the referee, each fighter must take a full step back before punching again (alternatively, the referee may direct the fighters to "punch out" of the clinch). When a boxer is knocked down, the other boxer must immediately cease fighting and move to the furthest neutral corner of the ring until the referee has either ruled a knockout or called for the fight to continue.


title: Boxing

text: Violations of these rules may be ruled "fouls" by the referee, who may issue warnings, deduct points, or disqualify an offending boxer, causing an automatic loss, depending on the seriousness and intentionality of the foul. An intentional foul that causes injury that prevents a fight from continuing usually causes the boxer who committed it to be disqualified. A fighter who suffers an accidental low-blow may be given up to five minutes to recover, after which they may be ruled knocked out if they are unable to continue. Accidental fouls that cause injury ending a bout may lead to a "no contest" result, or else cause the fight to go to a decision if enough rounds (typically four or more, or at least three in a four-round fight) have passed.


title: Boxing

text: Unheard of in the modern era, but common during the early 20th Century in North America, a "newspaper decision (NWS)" might be made after a no decision bout had ended. A "no decision" bout occurred when, by law or by pre-arrangement of the fighters, if both boxers were still standing at the fight's conclusion and there was no knockout, no official decision was rendered and neither boxer was declared the winner. But this did not prevent the pool of ringside newspaper reporters from declaring a consensus result among themselves and printing a newspaper decision in their publications. Officially, however, a "no decision" bout resulted in neither boxer winning or losing. Boxing historians sometimes use these unofficial newspaper decisions in compiling fight records for illustrative purposes only. Often, media outlets covering a match will personally score the match, and post their scores as an independent sentence in their report.


title: Boxing

text: Throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, boxing bouts were motivated by money, as the fighters competed for prize money, promoters controlled the gate, and spectators bet on the result.


title: Boxing

text: The modern Olympic movement revived interest in amateur sports, and amateur boxing became an Olympic sport in 1908. In their current form, Olympic and other amateur bouts are typically limited to three or four rounds, scoring is computed by points based on the number of clean blows landed, regardless of impact, and fighters wear protective headgear, reducing the number of injuries, knockdowns, and knockouts. Currently scoring blows in amateur boxing are subjectively counted by ringside judges, but the Australian Institute for Sport has demonstrated a prototype of an Automated Boxing Scoring System, which introduces scoring objectivity, improves safety, and arguably makes the sport more interesting to spectators. Professional boxing remains by far the most popular form of the sport globally, though amateur boxing is dominant in Cuba and some former Soviet republics. For most fighters, an amateur career, especially at the Olympics, serves to develop skills and gain experience in preparation for a professional career. Western boxers typically participate in one Olympics and then turn pro, Cubans and other socialist countries have an opportunity to collect multiple medals. In 2016, professional boxers were admitted in the Olympic Games and other tournaments sanctioned by AIBA. This was done in part to level the playing field and give all of the athletes the same opportunities government-sponsored boxers from socialist countries and post-Soviet republics have. However, professional organizations strongly opposed that decision.


title: Boxing

text: Amateur boxing may be found at the collegiate level, at the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, etc. In many other venues sanctioned by amateur boxing associations. Amateur boxing has a point scoring system that measures the number of clean blows landed rather than physical damage. Bouts consist of three rounds of three minutes in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, and three rounds of three minutes in a national ABA (Amateur Boxing Association) bout, each with a one-minute interval between rounds.