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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."
> Any chance of convincing some gray/black hats to strike a blow for decency
> and sanity, and hack Chavez's websites to portray him as a transvestigial
> equinophiliac paedo-cannibal?
> anything that will make the common people laugh at him...
Why do you imagine that would "make the common people laugh at him"? He'd successfully portray it as a CIA attack.
He's the Venezuelans' problem and only they can solve it. Either they will get rid of the kook or they won't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I don't know that he can last too much longer. Even the poor are starting to turn against him. His attempt a couple of years ago to amend the constitution to allow him to run for president forever turned out to be an embarrassing failure, though he handled it with as much dignity as he has anything else. Oil revenues have declined as output has slowed, in part because much of Venezuela's oil is heavy and difficult to extract, and the expertise to do so was largely provided by foreign companies. When he nationalized the oil industry there, many of those experts told him to go pound sand when he asked for assistance. The electricity grid has declined in reliability as well, and the money just isn't there to fix it (courtesy of the declining oil production).
That Venezuela provides discounted or free oil to certain other nations does not help the fiscal line, nor does the refusal (or perhaps political inability) to charge market rates for petroleum products at home, which results in gasoline that costs a tenth of what it does elsewhere in the world, something that Venezuelans see basically as their right as an oil-producing nation.
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.
Then again, I said that he couldn't possible last a few years ago when the troubles began. A fragmented opposition that can't get a basic unified message together combined with further limited opportunities to get the message out and Chavez's persistent presence on TV for hours on end mean that Chavez will continue to hold the edge for some time to come.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The Venezuelan president has a right a legal defense on unwarranted attacks on his reputation - if he is defamed then he can take the matter to court. This doesn't make him a dictator.
Zuloaga has a defense to the charges against him: if he can prove his statements were true, then he can get off. But if his allegations about Chavez are in fact just inflammatory lies, then he's in some serious legal shit.