This video, from the WSJ, provides a short and concise explanation about the recent closure of the most popular TV station in Venezuela. Imagine if most of the population in the U.S. could only receive over the air broadcasts and the government decided to close one of the networks. How would you feel about it? The implications of such a move are terrible.
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What do you expect when your president takes away your rights slowly and then takes away one of your biggest news sources?
Things like no-knock warrants
Warrantless evesdropping
Detainment without charges or trials
Secret prisons
Taking power from the states in an emergency
We are talking about Venezuela right?
Everything is on a continuum, so I don’t discount your concern – – as bad as Bush has been for the GOUSA, Chavez takes it up more than a few notches. He has grabbed the ring, and the ring has him firmly in its power. He wants another Cuba? The lesson of history is that bad capitalism is better than good communisim.
Well, when Chavez dies, the people the country will have another chance. I wonder what the church is doing all this while?
You are intentionally loading this story.
The station/network in question openly supported an armed insurrection that took the President hostage in 2003. A foreign news crew documented that the US was behind the coup. This was a President elected with a 90% voter landslide, recall.
All that has happened is that they have lost their license for egregious behavior — ie open treason and insurrection. If Chavez was the madman the Americans keep painting him as, they’d have been arrested and executed four years ago. They are welcome to broadcast on the internet; they are no longer holding a license to use the public airwaves. They may speak all they like, but they no longer can incite rebellion and violence using public facilities. Freedom to speak is not the freedom to broadcast on the commons.
Imagine that in 2003, an faction of the, oh, what hot button, Americorps took up arms and declared themselves the government of the US, killing some people and taking Bush hostage. Imagine CBS News taking to the air, with Dan Rather listing the crimes of the President and declaring the new era of Americorps rule.
Imagine Bush not taking any action against CBS for four years, then taking away their broadcast license. YES. I can see that happening; he wouldn’t have them shipped to torture camps and killed, declare the Consuitution and future elections suspended until all the terrorists in the media were rounded up. I don’t see him granting Fox News all the CBS frequencies. I don’t see Rather in Gitmo in a monkey trial.
Please. They got off easy.
Hillary is already on record as being against internet news. If she banned internet news and had Murdock change Fox to hard Left, there would be no news sources left for the Right except talk radio.
All you righties need do is ignore anything that happened in really real reality, and just remember what Fox News tells you happened.
How can you people NOT REMEMBER the 2003 takeover by the military? Do you pay attention to anything at all? People died! We had a schmuck fly down to become El Presidente for us. A BBC crew accidently on the spot recorded or misdeeds in real time. We lost because the military backed down due to their realization that they had no popular support, even in their own ranks, for the rightist overthrow of the supremely popular president. The entire country knew we were behind the violence, yet another American attempted takedown of a democratic government that was going to take our precious oil away. Bush’s people made no secret of it. And you don’t understand why Chavez is so popular?
Hey, Chavez called Bush the devil and he’s even handing out cheap oil to poor people. Stop your criticism.
#4, I can see that you are the first apologist. You have avoided the issue that all the other channels, except the government one, participated in the activities of the ‘alleged’ coup, which resulted in no arrests or trials after so many years. How come the other TV stations have not been prosecuted? This is very convenient of you to dismiss the actions of the rest and twist the story to suit your incredibly wrong views. I guess some people are more equal than others?
If in fact what you wrote had been the case, then no private TV channel should be operating at the moment.
This is just another intimidation move for the others to get in line with the local government.
If you think that the government is not censoring access to Venezuelans to websites that present a view different from the government, you are deluding yourself. CANTV, the telephone company recently acquired by the government, is actively preventing people from accessing certain websites.
#1 Maybe you should live in Venezuela for a few years and come back and tell us that the US is as bad. Give it a rest, Bush in no where near as bad as that asshole.
#7, Yes, kuzco is giving oil to the poor people in London, which live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Oh brother.
And you are an apologist for murderers and kidnappers. It’s murder, treason, kidnapping and sedition even if it is little brown foreign people who are the victims.
Imagine what we would do if Cuba had tried to install a president by inciting a rebellion in our armed forces. Why can’t you believe that another nation wouldn’t be equally as furious with the instigators? We went nuts and suspended human rights because 19 Saudis flew planes into buildings. Can you imagine what we would do to Americans who incited an armed revolt ON TV?? They got off easy. We’d have killed them and liquidated tens of thousands of “terrorists” who “aided” the “enemy”. The employees of that station would have been tortured by American soldiers with glee until they were dead. I can’t even imagine what you would demand be done to the station employees. And at no time would you be calling people supporting Bush’s crackdown an “apologist”. Please stop watching FOX News.
#11, Wrong, again. The only people who are keeping the money are kuzco and his merry band of thieves. This has been always the situation with the people in power in Venezuela. I can assure you that this infuriates most Venezuelans.
#12, where are the convictions from the murders and the kipnappings? This is something that I would like to see. But after so many years, there has been no justice. Ask yourself why that is. The government has complete control off all institutions and this is the only thing that it has been able to do?
I wonder when people are finally going to figure out that every time a communist government is installed, the country ends up with a bloodthirsty dictatorship?
Catbeller is the Chavez apologist here. What he neglects to mention is that Chavez tried to overthrow the government in the 90s when he was not president.
The other thing that catballer is wrong about is the U.S. was behind the 2002 coup. The reason there was a coup was there was a peaceful and huge protestation march in Caracas,and Chavez ordered his generals to shoot at the crowd. The generals refused and dumped Chavez. After that, though, the opposition leader, Pedro Carmona, came in and pissed just about everyone off. Within days, the generals reinstated Chavez. And Pedro known in Venezuela as, Pedro the brief, was gone. Despite Chavez’s desire for the world to think otherwise, this was an entirely Venezuelan event.
Since winning the election this December, Chavez has had enabling laws passed. The term, enabling laws, were first used in Nazi Germany by Hitler to change German Democracy into a dictatorship. Chavez is no longer hiding what he wants to do. He wants to be a dictator like Hitler or Castro. The Venezuelan Constitution has strict term limits so it is of course being rewritten.
The reason I know so much about Venezuela is that if you go beyond political matters, it has the potential to be the richest country in the Western hemisphere, and I looked to invest there. Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia. At current prices, by my calculations, Venezuela has a $1 million in oil reserves per citizen. I would love to see an end to our having to get oil from the Middle East, but that is not going to happen.
Quite frankly, the Venezuelan run oil company, pvdsa, stinks. So Chavez has invited other oil comapanies in to drill and produce oil. Once they have made a substantial investment, Chavez then yells that these oil companies are ripping Venezuela off, buys their operations at below market prices, and takes over the oil fields. He has also pulled this stunt with utility companies.
I know people think this could happen here, and we certainly have to be on guard against losing democracy, but it would be a mistake to just blame Chavez. The Venezuelan mindset is such that the only reason that they are poorer than the U.S. is because we have been stealing from them for years, and Chavez stokes that sentiment.
Instead of using oil to build the overall economy, most Venezuelans want to just live off the oil. The end result is that Colombia despite having much less natural wealth is in fact more wealthy. Traveling from Caracas to Bogota reminded me of the time I flew from then communist Moscow to Helsinki. It was that different.
Although Chavez is trying to become another Castro, I doubt it will happen. Venezuela may have more murder than any other Western country, and once the oil money starts drying up, Venezuelans will blame Chavez and another coup will be under way.
The real lesson in Venezuela is not RCTV being closed. The lesson is that if a population starts relying on the government for its financial needs, it is only matter of a time before that government morphs into a dictatorship. When a government starts using funds to pay the populace to vote for them, it ceases to be a democracy.
This sounds like a liberal’s wet dream. No wonder the guys around here aren’t coming out inforce against it.
#20 – Bit of humor, that is Chavez’s line not mine.
22. – mxpwr03,
I understand. I couldn’t find the emoticon for “tongue firmly in cheek”.
pedro and jz, Are you saying that Columbia is a better place to live than Venezuela?
Fascist Columbia has a worse crime rate than Venezuela. And poor people are poorer there.
60% of Venezuelans voted for Chavez. Get over it. Fascists.
Why no facts about what is really going on in Venezuela for everyone involved.
Pre Chavez, during the neoliberal “foriegn capital” years, economic growth was anemic.
Now during high oil prices, Venezuela’s economy is the fastest growing of all oil exporting economies. There rich-poor gap is getting smaller and Chavez’s popularity is at all time highs.
Now compare to there fascist neighbor to the west. Chiquita bananas pay bribes to right wing paramilitaries. Uribe has had ties to these FARC members. But don’t worry, crime is down in Colombia. Albeit it is still the highest in the world.
Chavez knows what Americans CIA operatives do to people who don’t bow down to American capitalist interests. He already got a taste of it in 2002.
BTW, this is exactly what Dvorak is talking about when he mentions the book Economic Hitman book.
Here is an economic hit going down in the Philippines. You think Michelle Malkin cares about this?
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/06/05/breast-beating/
“Look at what is happening, right now, in the Philippines. This country has many problems, but one stands out: just 16% of children between 4 and 5 months old are exclusively breastfed(1). This is one of the lowest documented rates on earth, and it has fallen by a third since 1998(2). As 70% of Filipinos have inadequate access to clean water, the result is a public health disaster. Every year, according to the World Health Organisation, some 16,000 Filipino children die as a result of “inappropriate feeding practices”(3).”
read more in the post above. yes it does have something to do with formula.
I know my post won’t change the minds or influence the thoughts of the free-market ideologues. But I want to get this out to those that still have a heart.
The Venezuelan deserve Chavez more than anything else, they kicked him out of power and then placed him back on the throne.
#19
So far George Jr and his sidekick Dick aren’t exactly the spitting image of Republican values.. Apart from wasting the lives of soldiers into a senseless war and sending the country into the greatest debt in history.
Come on people. The US is far worse. They control the media but do it quietly in the background. At least Chavez is up front. When I started seeing US Military “guests” acting as correspondents on the Gulf War, I knew that the deception was complete. Our media isn’t even allowed to report on the real issues of the war, let alone take pictures of our fallen soldiers. Reporters go to jail for not leaking their sources…
#28 Bullshit
Well according to the video, it sounds like its backfiring on him. Uneless Chavez is gonna replace sappy drama’s with something else (state run tv perhaps?)… sounds like a great time to go get a license to sell cable tv in Venezuela
What is also interesting is that this whole episode is barely a blip on the MSM here in the US and in Britain. Could it be that the leftists and Liberals who decide what gets reported on also have been treating Chavez like some kind of populist messiah for the last 5 years? Nothing about the loss of freedon of the press or media from Ken Livingston, Mayor of London, who welcomed Chavez to London and then visited him in Venezula and went with Chavez to visit Castro, and got free oil from Chavez for the poor of London. *Red* Ken is very quiet right now. So is Robert Kennedy Junior, who had nothing but great things to say about the saviour Chavez when he gave Kennedy’s group discounted oil for the poor in the US.. The silence is deafening from the left, which is usually what happens when one of their leftist dictators goes public with his authortarian regimes.
We have a couple people in here that will admit publically that they live in Veneuzula, and their comments are far more enlightening than catbeller(alias BH), the rabid leftist.
#4 and #7. Listen, I´m a Venezuelan who LIVES in Venezuela… YOU´RE MORONS!!!!… He gives away oil (Good) to people in other countries (BAD). He gives away Oil (Still Sort of good) But if you break your arm and need to go to a public hospital you need to take your own cast for them to apply it (BAD). WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER SPEAKING OF WHAT YOU DON´T UNDERSTAND???
Listen, last elections were setted up by the goverment AND smartmatic, there was no chance he’d win without that.
Meanwhile I was born and raised in the upper class, 8 years ago I could go to NYC for some nice vacations easily with my family’s waige, my family keeps having the same jobs and the same [linear] income now I can’t even go to Margarita (the local vacation island).
Yes I’ll say this, and according to the law HE established if the police know this I’d go to jail, He’s an idiot (6 months in jail for that one) who needs a fricking bullet in his head (10 years for that one). There’s freedom of speech, as long as you’re willing to say the goverment is a good thing.
Fuck all of you who can’t understand this goverment is killing this wonderful country, and may God forbid this country become the next cuba…
#33
That makes it pretty clear to me….
die die rctv you f…. rich pig’s
#33, rantsh, F*** all of you who can’t understand this goverment is killing this wonderful country, and may God forbid this country become the next cuba…
I really want to visit your beautiful country to explore the southern skies with a great telescope, but with circumstances the way they are today, I’m uncertain I’d be welcome. Dang.
#35. Sorry man, you’ll probably get shotted for being a rich wealthy gringo…
Pedro,
I compare Venezuela with Colombia with facts, not anecdotes, and you ignore that.
Rantish, at least you are not living in the hills where the people love Chavez and for good reason. Their life is finally improving. Health care and education is being invested in them. You think you deserve vacations to NY every year while the poor in your country have NOTHING? Cry me a river.
I am not catbeller.
Only rich people in Venezuela have internet access. Still even after 7 years of Chavez policies. Remember, Chavez did not make the poor in Venezuela.
I wish something would be done about our corporate media. It sucks. They barely have interesting stories. They ignore for the most part that 40 million of us have no health insurance. And for the one that do health care sucks. Except for the rich of course.
No one has denied that RCTV was ACTIVE in the coup. RCTV can still broadcast on cable and the internet.