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Venezuela's Last Opposition TV Owner Arrested
WrongSizeGlass writes "AP is reporting the owner of Venezuela's only remaining TV channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez was arrested Thursday. 'Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, was arrested on a warrant for remarks that were deemed "offensive" to the president,' Attorney General Luisa Ortega said. This comes on the heels of last week's story titled Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom."
I've got no beef with socialism in general, but what Chavez is doing isn't socialism. I'm perpetually annoyed by socialism supporters like Sean Penn who defend Chavez, claiming he is not a dictator. I'm sorry, but taking over the media, rewriting the constitution to remove term limits so he can stay in power indefinitely and possibly attempting to assassinate the democratically elected president of a neighboring country (see the first link) are not the actions of a democratic leader. Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods, the man has crossed that line that divides "pompous but legitimate ruler" from "dictator in all but name."
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linky
Fairing everything is unnecessarily hard because the right wing still has air time. A few more major policy enactments and they'll be ready to revisit the Fairness Doctrine in the US.
Since this is Slashdot, I'm assuming "our country" is the United States. If not, I apologize.
The only example which I found on a Google search was one from today, when Fidel Castro praised the new US Health care plan. I hardly would call that "praising the direction our country is heading" - are there any other examples. Everything else I found was generally negative.
Actually, the venezuelan government has been trying to close Globovision for a while now, and one of the biggest problems is that they have NEVER advocated any kind of violence against the government, be it the president or anyone else. It would cost too much international support for them to close another oposition TV station without a good reason.
The other two big independent TV stations have been scared off enough that they don't dare play anything political. The only other one is VTV, the government's channel (and I don't mean Bush' Fox, I mean wholly owned by the government). They do play show like "La Hojilla" (The razor blade) that openly advocated a few times killing oposition as a legitimate means of defending "the revolution".
Not to mention Chavez himself sometimes applauding relatively violent acts in his defense.
Now, I won't say that Globovision is fair and balanced, but as far as I can tell they never outright lied about anything. I understand Fox news to be more radical and distorting than Globovision and yet I don't see the Fox owners being hounded for years and finally arrested like Zuloaga.
FWIW, it seems Zuloaga was released after appearing in court, with a prohibition against leaving the country. We'll see whether he'll fold and close Globovision or be thrown in jail on trumped up charges.
Time to claw things back and give Chavez a chance to reform the country, like a majority of the population say they want.
Disclaimer on my stance on the government: Chavez has been in power for 10 years. He's changed the constitution multiple times, tried out different reforms all while oil was at an all time high and money was flowing into the country like crazy. He's had a BIG chance to reform the country and It's all been a failure. Lately all he's doing helps the government more than the people.
Hell, we even have rolling blackouts now, when we used to export electricity. This is a situation that was predicted over a year ago, but 10 years of ignoring the power infrastructure have left its mark, and yet he blames it all on el niño and the previous governments.
If you want change, don't prop up the same old government. If you're a socialist, elect a different socialist president. If you're a capitalist, same thing. There's no reason to maintain Chavez in power for another 50 years.
"You're also right that the Venezuelans are the only ones that can do something about him."
Why didn't they kill him 18 yrs ago when he tried to assassinate the president? He even said he "failed (at assassination) for now". But instead of execution, he was released two years later and made president 4 years after that?? We might as well make John Hinckley the next US President
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
He's also warned of "defensive actions" against Colombia (a nation that is not even close to being able to stage a successful attack on a country like Venezuela) on a couple of occasions, and has modernized the military. It would not surprise me at all to see them fighting in the next few years, though, and I will laugh if Venezuela's modern but inexperienced army gets their heads handed to them by the lesser-equipped but far more combat-experienced Colombian army.
I was about to mod you up, but having read that part I'll give you this information instead: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8343692.stm
Colombian opposition groups have reacted angrily after details of a controversial military deal with the US were made public.
Under the 10-year deal, the US military will not only have access to military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports.
You can't take the sky from me...
They are big in the Truther and Birther movements. You know, thought 9/11 was punishment from God for New York's sins.
Why do you imagine that would "make the common people laugh at him"? He'd successfully portray it as a CIA attack.
Then bring in the Russians. Those ex-KGB guys knew how to run a good disinformation campaign. Throw mud, keep throwing mud, fling mud into real news stories that spin them the wrong way, do everything you can to make the target look incompetent and buffoonish at every turn. Be sure to use deniable cut-outs so that the deceit can't ever be traced directly back to you.
They caused plenty of dissent in the USA during the cold war. They also learned that disinformation wasn't enough to topple the leaders of the U.S. government, nor did it give them the clear advantage in negotiations. Occasionally it gave them blackmail opportunities to create informants, but for the most part it was a giant waste of money. The KGB apparently never saw it that way, as they stated in 1984 that "Our chief task is to help to frustrate the aggressive intentions of American imperialism ... We must work unweariedly at exposing the adversary's weak and vulnerable points." The job of Service A was to fabricate disinformation through "active measures."
Service A was responsible for casting doubt upon the lone gunman "theory" of the Kennedy assassination; they portrayed J. Edgar Hoover as a Bircher and amplified the rumors of him being a gay cross dresser; and they successfully caused gullible third world leaders to believe all kinds of lies, from AIDS being created by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick to the U.S. importing third-world orphans to use as organ donors to supposed plans to overthrow the Indian president Rajiv Gandhi.
John
Since last week's story titled "Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom." was really only about taking down a single webpage that demanded Chavez to be killed for years I can only guess this guy was promoting the same or similar things on TV. I would assume the same takedown is possible in most number countries using hate speech, promotion of criminal acts or libel laws.
Chavez uses Pablo Escobar tactics when it comes to the poor. They are just a means to his absolute control. Speech should be protected at all costs and anyone that works in the opposite direction of that goal has their own agenda.
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