BS: Chavez moves against second TV channel

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Peace
Date: 28 May 07 - 11:53 PM

"Third, it is said that Chavez opposes the forthcoming Aug. 15 presidential referendum that could oust him from power. The reality is that it is the opposition that rejected the idea of the referendum and has done everything possible to avoid it: the two-day coup; a two-month lockout/strike by big business and by many well-paid executives and workers in the national petroleum industry; and, millions spent on media campaigns against him.

Chavez himself proposed the idea of a presidential referendum midway through the term and has constantly voiced it as the constitutional way to remove him.

Fourth, international news releases often refer to Chavez as "a former lieutenant colonel who led a failed bloody rebellion in 1992." This would be similar to continuously identifying President Bush as "a former National Guard captain who avoided service in Vietnam and had a bout with alcoholism in his youth."

About 12 militants died in the rebellion. What is not mentioned is the multitude that had been shot down on the streets by the Perez government before and after that attempt. Perez was impeached in 1993 and now lives in New York.

A great difference exists between what one reads in the U.S. newspapers and what one hears in the barrios and villages of Venezuela, places where the elite do not tread. Adults are entering literacy programs, senior citizens are at last receiving their pensions, and children are not charged registration to enter the public schools. Health care and housing have improved dramatically."

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Peace
Date: 28 May 07 - 11:52 PM

" Speakout: Picture of Venezuela's Chavez twisted

Saturday, Jun 26, 2004 Print format
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By: Charles Hardy

While I was watching a huge rally in support of Venezuela's current government, President Hugo Chavez passed through the crowd on the back of a truck. A stranger nearby commented: "Look at the eyes of the men. They're crying." They were - a reaction few presidents could provoke.

I have lived in Venezuela for most of the past 19 years. As a Catholic missionary priest, I spent eight of those years in a cardboard-and-tin shack with mice, rats and cockroaches, surrounded by human and animal excrement. It was part of a public housing project constructed during the first presidency of Carlos Andres Perez (1974-1978) when oil money was pouring into the country.

In 1989, a few months before the happenings in Tiananmen Square, I witnessed the Caracas massacre when hundreds were shot down in the streets. I saw naked bodies strewn on the floor of a hospital morgue.

A year later I slept in the cemetery several nights when bodies that the government had buried in black garbage bags were being excavated from a pit that it denied ever existed.

The beautiful democracy that the aristocracy here painted for the world was a fraud.

In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected president with almost 60 percent of the votes, incredibly overthrowing the entrenched and well-financed elite that had controlled the country for decades. That elite has never forgiven him and today is doing everything possible to tumble him. Sadly, the U.S. government and mass media have joined in this very undemocratic effort.

Their accusations have some common themes. First, Chavez is a communist because of his close association with Cuba. Is George W. Bush a communist because the U.S. has close ties with China?

Chavez's hero is Simon Bolivar, not Marx or Lenin. Bolivar liberated much of South America from the Spaniards, but he was also concerned about another colonial power, saying that "the United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty." It is a concern Chavez shares. After the April 2002 coup against him, Condoleezza Rice warned Chavez, not the coup leaders, to "respect constitutional processes."

A second accusation is that Chavez is a dictator and will limit freedom of expression very shortly. This has been said since 1998 when he was just a candidate for the presidency. To date, there is not one deprecating word against Chavez that has not been printed or spoken.

But I have government-censored Venezuelan dailies, before the time of Chavez, with blank pages."

And in the next post.

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Peace
Date: 28 May 07 - 11:51 PM

Sometimes a guy just HAS to call bullshit, and I do so now, Dickey.

"Speakout: Picture of Venezuela's Chavez twisted

By: Charles Hardy

While I was watching a huge rally in support of Venezuela's current government, President Hugo Chavez passed through the crowd on the back of a truck. A stranger nearby commented: "Look at the eyes of the men. They're crying." They were - a reaction few presidents could provoke.

I have lived in Venezuela for most of the past 19 years. As a Catholic missionary priest, I spent eight of those years in a cardboard-and-tin shack with mice, rats and cockroaches, surrounded by human and animal excrement. It was part of a public housing project constructed during the first presidency of Carlos Andres Perez (1974-1978) when oil money was pouring into the country.

In 1989, a few months before the happenings in Tiananmen Square, I witnessed the Caracas massacre when hundreds were shot down in the streets. I saw naked bodies strewn on the floor of a hospital morgue.

A year later I slept in the cemetery several nights when bodies that the government had buried in black garbage bags were being excavated from a pit that it denied ever existed."

Article continues in next post.

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 07 - 10:47 PM

My Rog has to work tonight, after working most of the day. All he has time to say at the moment is Chavez is a fascist in all things and as always in VZ, nobody knows (anything for sure when it comes to politics, etc.) until it happens.

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Dickey
Date: 28 May 07 - 10:43 PM

The two TV chanels have nothing to do with US corporate interests.

The steel company is Argentinian.

evidently LH thinks Teargas and rubber bullets for protestors are OK.

I guess I will have to recite the old acid test for people who support dictators. Go live there a while and then tell me how great it is.


    Some 70 to 80 per cent of Venezuelans opposed the closure, according to recent polls.
    Chavez announced the decision not to renew RCTV's licence soon after he was re-elected in late 2006.
    During the campaign, RCTV openly called for the president's defeat, and Chavez never forgave the network for calling for an April 2002 coup that deposed him for two days.
    "The decision was mine" to close RCTV, Chavez said on Saturday, calling its steamy soap operas "a danger for the country, for boys, for girls."
    RCTV, which notably airs the popular "telenovelas" and variety shows, had one of the largest audiences in Venezuela and is one of the few stations with national broadcast capabilities.
    As of Monday, the government will control two of the four nationwide broadcasters in Venezuela, one of them state-owned VTV.
    However, the government renewed the broadcast licence for Venevision, RCTV's main competitor, which expired on Friday.
    Venevision is owned by billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who dropped his open opposition to Chavez in 2004.
    Since 1999, Chavez has gradually tightened his grip on the levers of power in Venezuela, and in January the National Assembly allowed him to rule on most matters by decree, without legislative debate.
    Criticism of the RCTV shutdown poured in from around the world, including from Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the US Senate, which unanimously approved a resolution last week expressing "profound concern" over the move.
    El Nacional daily in a front-page editorial said RCTV's shutdown marked "the end of pluralism" in Venezuela and the government's growing "information monopoly".
    Chavez and his ministers deflected criticism, saying other media could still carry the RCTV signal.
    However, Granier said, "the government is pressuring cable and satellite companies not to carry us."
    RCTV filed charges Saturday with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=137314®ion=4

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: kendall
Date: 28 May 07 - 09:27 PM

The republicans have been trying to shut down NPR for years. Is there a difference?

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 07 - 09:15 PM

Dickey, if you were to get a job with the CIA, maybe you could arrange to be stationed down there in Venezuela and be instrumental in arranging another coup. Look into it. If it didn't pan out, there's always plently of work down in Latin America serving as a triggerman in a CIA-connected death squad, and I hear that the pay is really good too. All you have to do is kill anyone who stands in the way of North American big business interests...

There are a lot of silly buggers down there who have got the crazy idea that their own national sovereignty and independence is more important than US corporate interests. Such people, clearly, cannot be allowed to flourish nor can they be allowed to be openly defiant. The Mafia doesn't allow it on their turf...why should we?

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Dickey
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:37 PM

Chávez of Venezuela jabs at banks and a steel maker
By Simon Romero Published: May 7, 2007
    CARACAS: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is deepening efforts to assert greater control over the economy by dictating changes to the operations of a large Argentine-controlled steel maker and threatening to nationalize banks controlled by financial institutions from the United States and Spain.
    Markets here have reacted with distress to his latest moves. The main index of the Caracas stock exchange fell 2.7 percent Friday, while Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, also weakened by about 3 percent, to 3,950 to the U.S. dollar in unregulated trading, as rich Venezuelans rushed to take money out of the country.
    The announcements by Chávez are part of a broader project to reconfigure Venezuela's economy to strengthen worker-led cooperatives and state enterprises. Chávez is also trying to build regional financing alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to be financed largely by his government.
    Chávez dressed down the foreign owners of the steel maker Siderurgica del Orinoco over the weekend, asking them to halt exports and focus on meeting domestic demand. The company, also known as Sidor, is controlled by Techint Group of Argentina. Chávez said he had summoned Paolo Rocca, the company's chairman, to Caracas for talks.
    "I'll grab your company," Chávez said in a taunt to Rocca on Saturday at an event celebrating the creation of a single Socialist party among his followers.
"Give it to me, and I'll pay you what it's worth," the president said. "I won't rob you."
    Chávez threatened Thursday to nationalize Sidor, and to take over the banking system unless banks agreed to offer low-cost financing to domestic industry. He made similar threats before nationalizing telephone and electricity companies.
    Erratic policy shifts have led foreign direct investment to plunge in Venezuela, the only country in Latin America besides tiny Suriname to register an outflow of those investments last year, of $543 million.
    Comparable economies in the region enjoyed high levels of direct foreign investment, with Argentina receiving $4.8 billion and Colombia $6.3 billion, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
    Cushioned by high oil prices and $25 billion in reserves, Venezuela is still far from a painful crash of the type that plagued it in the wake of past oil booms, according to economists.
    But problems like a widening budget deficit are growing more acute as growth slows from the torrid 10.3 percent of last year.
    "There is fear that all of Chávez's different spending projects will lead to a depletion of funds," said Francisco Rodríguez, a former chief economist at Venezuela's national assembly who teaches at Wesleyan University. "Chávez's threat to the banks may reflect increasing resistance in the sector to rolling over internal debt."
    Both Chávez and Venezuelan banks face a dilemma as a surge in public spending widens the budget deficit this year to an estimated 4.9 percent of gross domestic product from 1.8 percent in 2006. The government can cover that shortfall by getting banks to buy its debt or by printing more money, a choice that could cause inflation to jump.
    The government is already trying to reduce inflation, the highest in Latin America at 19.4 percent a year. And officials are grappling with continuing scarcity of foods subject to price controls, like beef, eggs, sugar and milk. Producers say the controls have made it hard to meet demand while labor costs are soaring.
    Showing exasperation with these claims, senior officials are growing increasingly adversarial in their treatment of private industry. Elías Jaua, the agriculture minister, said last week that a "destabilization campaign" was to blame for the short supply of some food products.
    Beyond such talk is a redistribution of income under Chávez, making imports like cellphones and refrigerators and services like modest plastic-surgery procedures more widely available. Monthly stipends to the poor or indirect subsidies to buy food and consumer goods, channeled through an array of social-welfare programs, have also lifted corporate income.
    Profits for the banking sector climbed 33 percent in 2006, led by a jump of more than 100 percent in credit card loans and a 143 percent increase in automobile credit, according to Softline Consulting, a financial analysis firm in Caracas.
    Blessed with such profits, few bankers are explicitly critical of Chávez. Some, in fact, express admiration.
    "President Chávez is saying it's the job of all of us for Venezuela to press ahead," Francisco Aristeguieta, president of Citibank Venezuela and director of the Venezuelan Banking Association, told the government's official news agency.
    Still, economists fear that a bill is coming due for the spending spree and the nationalizations. They point to the costs of reimbursing foreign owners for seized assets and meeting their debt obligations, which could be more than $10 billion for oil projects the government is taking over from U.S. and European companies.
    Unregulated trading in the bolivar has become the most visible indicator of eroding confidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Dickey
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:23 PM

Troops Fire Upon Protesters in Venezuela
Washington Post Radio

Riot police officers jump from a truck upon their arrival to a student protest in Caracas, Monday, May 28, 2007. Crowds of students demonstrated across Caracas saying they fear for the future of free speech after the popular opposition-aligned TV station radio Caracas television, RCTV, was forced off the air under a decision by President Hugo Chavez to replace it with a public broadcasting station

By FABIOLA SANCHEZ Associated Press Writer
CARACAS, Venezuela May 28, 2007 (AP)

    National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday into a crowd of protesters angry over a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a critical television station off the air.
    University students blocked one lane of a major highway hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV's broadcast license, accusing it of "subversive" activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.
    Two students were injured by rubber bullets and a third was hit with a tear gas canister, said Ana Teresa Yepez, an administrator at Caracas' Metropolitan University. She said about 20 protesters were treated for inhaling tear gas.
    The new public channel, TVES, launched its transmissions with artists singing pro-Chavez music, then carried an exercise program and a talk show, interspersed with government ads proclaiming, "Now Venezuela belongs to everyone."
    "I plan to keep protesting because we're Venezuelans and it's our right," said Valentina Ramos, 17, a Metropolitan University student who was hit in the head with a tear gas canister and received stitches.
    She said the protest was peaceful, but National Guard troops said they acted after students hurled rocks and sticks. Police said 11 officers were injured in separate protests on Sunday that were broken up with water cannon and tear gas.
    Thousands of government supporters reveled in the streets as they watched the midnight changeover on large TV screens, seeing RCTV's signal go black and then be replaced by a TVES logo. Others launched fireworks and danced in the streets.
    Inside the studios of RCTV the sole opposition-aligned TV station with nationwide reach disheartened actors and comedians wept and embraced in the final minutes on the air.
    They bowed their heads in prayer, and presenter Nelson Bustamante declared: "Long live Venezuela! We will return soon."
    The socialist president says he is democratizing the airwaves by turning the network's signal over to public use.
    Germany, which holds the European Union presidency, expressed concern that Venezuela let RCTV's license expire "without holding an open competition for the successor license." It said the EU expects that Venezuela will uphold freedom of speech and "support pluralism."
    Founded in 1953, RCTV regularly topped viewer ratings with its talk shows, sports, soap operas and comedy programs. But Chavez accused the network of helping to incite a failed coup in 2002, violating broadcast laws and "poisoning" Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism. RCTV's managers deny wrongdoing.
    The government promises TVES will be more diverse, buying 70 percent of its content from independent Venezuelan producers.
    "We've come here to start a new television with the true face of the people, the face that was hidden, the face that they didn't allow us to show," said Roman Chalbaud, a pro-Chavez filmmaker appointed by the government to TVES' board of directors.
    TVES received $4 million in startup funds from the government, but officials say it also may seek commercial advertising.
    Most Venezuelan news media are in private hands, including many newspapers and radio stations that remain critical of Chavez. But the only major surviving opposition-sided TV channel is Globovision, which is not seen in all parts of the country.

http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=111&sid=1152194

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:22 PM

Margaret Thatcher revised the entire system of allocation of broadcast TV channels in the UK in order to get Thames TV after they made and broadcast "Death on the Rock".

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:16 PM

McGrath, I'll ask my Rog to come in later tonight if he has time, but it is my understanding this is a move to quash ANY kind of opposition to Chavez and most of the Venezuelans are against it. (Kind of like what George Bush has tried to do, with some success, to our media.) As you may remember, Rog worked down there for several years as a television broadcast engineer and came to know many very well. he is also on a daily blog with Venezuelans, both living in their country and elsewhere, with front row seats to this latest action by Chavez. I asked him how the situation was, today, from those people he is in contact with. His reply was an understated "pretty bad." If he doesn't have time to come in, I'll ask him for some links to other thoughts on the subject and post them.

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:14 PM

So, you agree that Bush can shut down any station critical of his administration?

Or does your statement only apply to other countries?

Subject: RE: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:02 PM

TV channels which actively support an armed coup against an elected government can normally expect a hard time when their licence comes up for renewal - in any country.

Subject: BS: Chavez moves against second TV chanel
From: Dickey
Date: 28 May 07 - 06:45 PM

Hugo "Tha Man" Chavez seeks to shut down second TV chanel that is critical to his administration. Chavez claims "There's no country in the world where there is so much freedom of expression," Anything to the contaray is labled "Capitalist, Imperialist lies"

Chavez moves against second opposition TV channel
Brian Ellsworth, Reuters
Published: Monday, May 28, 2007

    Hours after President Hugo Chavez shut down Venezuela's main opposition broadcaster, his government demanded an investigation of news network Globovision today for allegedly inciting an assassination attempt on the leftist leader.
    Mr. Chavez took Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV, off the air at midnight yesterday and replaced it with a state-run channel to promote his socialist programs. The move sparked international condemnation and accusations from the opposition that he was undermining democracy in the OPEC nation.
    Seizing on the momentum of RCTV's closure, Communications Minister Willian Lara presented a case to the state prosector's office saying experts hired by the ministry had found that opposition broadcaster Globovision was inciting assassination attempts on Mr. Chavez.
    As evidence, he cited Globovision showing footage of an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981 accompanied by the song "This Does Not Stop Here," sung by Ruben Blades, now Panama's minister of tourism.
    "The conclusion of the specialists ... is that (in this segment) they are inciting the assassination of the president of Venezuela," Mr. Lara told reporters at the prosecutor's office.
    Globovision was not immediately available to respond to the government's charge, but one of its reporters at the prosecutor's office said the footage was taken out of context.
    The journalist said Globovision had been showing archive footage from RCTV accompanied by songs with a farewell theme the week before RCTV's closure.
    At a Caracas news conference, Benoit Hervieu, Americas director at Reporters Without Borders, said: "Yesterday we saw the takeover of the principal media critical of President Chavez. ... Besides Globovision, what television media is left that can criticize the government of Mister Chavez?"
    Mr. Chavez's reforms, since he assumed the presidency in 1999, have given him greater control over the country's judiciary, the military and the oil sector.
    Critics had said an independent media was the only safeguard against Mr. Chavez forging a Cuban-style regime. The closure of RCTV leaves Globovision as the main media voice opposed to Mr. Chavez, but it does not broadcast nationwide.
    Venezuela's opposition media has been widely accused of violating basic journalistic standards. Mr. Chavez accuses both Globovision and RCTV of backing a bungled 2002 coup against him.
    RCTV ran movies and cartoons when protests by Mr. Chavez supporters turned the tide in Mr. Chavez's favor during the 2002 coup. It also joined a grueling two-month strike that year by showing only anti-Chavez propaganda and marches for weeks.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=9afed4e1-b750-4f12-8325-bdd7629b6f4f