Rick Moran at the Right Wing Nuthouse probably had more to do with me getting into blogging than anyone – besides my own ego, of course – when he first linked to my blog, I almost peed myself a little. He’s contemplating leaving the business. If you can throw a coupla bucks his way, please do so.
See, this is why I’m not in sales.
UPDATED: He called me “whimsically named This ain’t Hell” again. Martha! Get the Depends!Â
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As soon as I heard about the busted terror plot this last weekend, I shot over to Yahoo and searched for news stories. The only national network that had anything on the internet was CBS (shiver), but I went over to read the details. At the end of the story were readers’ comments. Every comment was about how this was a story planted by “BushCo” to scare the American people into submission. I should have screen-shot the article, but I figured “Well, it’s just a fringe”. People remember 9-11 sort of, these writers were just lunatics. I mean, someone must take these stories seriously besides Republicans, right?
But, SisterToldja reports that the LA Times says that the plot wasn’t a big deal anyway. So the terrorists that BushCo didn’t really catch in the act, weren’t going to be successful anyway. Bloodthirsty Liberal takes the NY Times to task for similar treatment of the story.
See, here’s the way I see it. Yeah, these four dimwits and the Dix Six were pretty incompetent and borderline retarded in their planning, but the fact remains that they were committed to killing scores, if not thousands of Americans on our own soil. Left to their own devices, sooner or later they would have been successful. Maybe not as successful as they’d have liked, but somewhat successful. Even one life lost would have been one too many.
So why are these acts being marginalized in the media? Lord help me, the media still brags about Clinton’s awesome success at stopping the Millenium LAX bombing – which was just as half-assed as any of these. And Eric Rudolph’s Atlanta, Georgia bombing at the Olympics still killed 2 and injured 111 people – again a half-assed attempt by an incompetent moron.Â
Even the Murrah Building bombing was accomplished by a gaggle of want-wits who didn’t have a plan more complicated than the old infantryman’s demolition math (P=Plenty, for the uninitiated) and parking a truck in front of the target and skee-daddling. McVeigh couldn’t even do that right – driving down the interstate with no license plate on his car.
All criminals are stupid – that’s why they’re criminals.
And yesterday I heard rumors about John Murtha blaming Bush for these terrorists, but I wanted to see it for myself (I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my Sunday morning staring at that idiot George Stephanopolis and his ridiculous 12-year-old schoolboy haircut).
So this morning, sure as it rains, I find the video at Newsbusters and Flopping Aces. Murtha claims that if President Bush hadn’t attacked Iraq, those terrorist plotters wouldn’t have been tempted to bomb JFK airport (not that it would have been successful or that the terrorists really existed in the first place).
One of them had been in this country, working and retired for 30-fricken-years. He just decided in 2003 that we needed to be attacked? And how about the attack in 1993? Was that because we attacked the Iraqi Army in 1991 while they barbequeing in Kuwait? How about the embassy bombings in Africa, the Khobar Towers bombing, the attack on the USS Cole – did those attacks happen because of something we had done?
Murtha is cranky old fool and the Democrats had better put a lid on him before he becomes the face of their party. Or before someone takes a swing at his wrinkled old mug.
Makes me agree with Brit Hume when he said a few months ago;
Even the “Washington Post†noted [Murtha] didn’t seem particularly well informed about what’s going on over there, to say the least. Look, this man has tremendous cachet among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.
And that sound bite is naivete at large, and the man is an absolute fountain of such talk, and the fact that he has ascended to the position he has in the eyes of the Democrats in the House and perhaps Democrats around the country tells you a lot about how much they know or care about what’s really going on over there.
Maybe if we put Murtha’s office in Okinawa he’ll have a better idea of what’s happening in the world.
But, put him in the group of idiots like one of my own crackpots who emails me (because I won’t let him post here) this morning that since 17 of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis we should have attacked Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq. That’s just simplistic and naive – can you imagine what the Democrats would be saying if we’d attacked Saudi Arabia?
It also demonstrates the childishness of these morons. They’re convinced that our foreign policy should be based on pure, simple revenge – an emotion – instead of reasoned insight about who are our enemies and who wishes us ill because of who we are. The Saudis are fighting the same groups that we’re fighting – for the same reasons we’re fighting them. How does it make sense that we’d turn on the Saudis?
But no one has ever accused the Left of being reasonable people.Â
Paul Kane of the Washington Post gushes over what he calls the “unity” in the Democrat Congress;
Through the first five months of the year, the average House Democrat has voted with a majority of his/her caucus colleagues on 94 percent of the 425 roll calls. Enjoying their honeymoon period, 110 Democrats — nearly half of the 232 Democrats — have sided with a majority of the caucus on at least 98 percent of the votes cast this year.
Consider this: Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) has been the most partisan Republican in the 110th Congress, voting with a GOP majority on 98 percent of votes. But if someone prints out the washingtonpost.com’s chart of most partisan voters in the House, they will have to turn through eight and a half pages of House Democrats before they see Putnam’s red-headed mug shot (Rep. Charles Norwood R-Ga., who died on Feb. 13 and cast only nine votes in the 110th Congress, is the lone exception.)
No other caucus of House Republicans or Democrats has maintained such a unified voting bloc over a two-year Congress, according to washingtonpost.com’s vote tracking feature.
Just for grins, I did a “Yahoo search” of “rubber stamp congress” and got 1.3 million hits from the likes of Glen Greenwald, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars – none of them refering to the partisanship of the Democrats in this session of Congress, of course. Another search, “partisanship congress” got another 1.1 million hits, again most about the last Congressional session. And one odd one about this session needing MORE partisanship in Congress.
So I did a search on Washington Post just on the word partisanship – I got 43 hits in the last 60 days. Every one of the articles (except the one I linked above) was about the evils of Republican partisanship.
I’m just sayin’….
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Last week Russia’s president Vlad Putin declared that the Soviets had developed a hypersonic missile that could evade any missile defense system in the world. According to Breitbart;
“Russia … has tested missile systems that no one in the world has,” the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted him as saying at a news conference. “These missile systems don’t represent a response to a missile defense system, but they are immune to that. They are hypersonic and capable of changing their flight path.”
Faster than the speed of light, Vlad? Because that’s how fast a laser travels. I guess that since we’ve acted like we believe that Iron Age North Korea has developed a nuke, Putin figures he can try to convince us of Russia’s technological advantages over our own systems. Actually it’s a trick – a trick to convince the Left in the US that developing a missile defense will only lead to an arms race. The US Left being the gullible group of suggestable idiots that they are.
So after making this big announcement about these fantastic missiles the Russians have developed (even though they can’t make a decent toaster), this week he announces that he’ll point his missiles at Europe, according to Gregory White of the Wall Street Journal;
President Vladimir Putin’s threat to retarget Russia’s missiles toward Europe ratchets up already simmering East-West tensions just as the U.S. and Europe were seeking to cool them.
Mr. Putin said in an interview ahead of a summit this week of the world’s major powers that Russia would take the action if Washington went ahead with plans to install an antimissile shield in some former Soviet bloc countries. Coming just days before Mr. Putin meets with President Bush and other leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Germany, the comments underscore the dilemma Western leaders face in dealing with a Russia that is increasingly intolerant of dissent at home and blunt in its economic and foreign relations.
So where were they aimed before? At the polar ice cap? Probably at Western Europe – gotta point ’em somewhere, right?
Does Putin really think that there’s more of a threat from Europe than from his Eastern neighbors? Even the Russians can’t be that ignorant. It’s just bluster designed to keep the Left from funding and deploying a missile shield without Putin expending anything more than air.
From the London Daily Telegraph, via the Washington Times;
In comments that seemed calculated to cause consternation and division at Wednesday’s meeting in Germany, the Russian leader said U.S. plans to erect a missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe had left him with no choice but to retaliate.
    “It is obvious that if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States is located in Europe, we will have to respond,” he told reporters from G-8 countries in Moscow over the weekend.
    “What kind of steps are we are going to take in response? Of course, we are going to acquire new targets in Europe.”
    Mr. Putin’s anti-Western rhetoric has grown more strident since Washington confirmed plans to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic by 2012 — a project he says is directed at Russia.
So he’s saying that NATO doesn’t have the right to defend itself – five years from now? I’m pretty sure if the US or Europe had designs on overrunning Russia, they would have done long before now. Like when there was so much political turmoil after the break up of the Soviet Union, or when the old Soviet Union was embroiled in Afghanistan.
In fact, the US says the missiles are intended to defend against Iran – which may indeed have nukes in five years;
   The United States says privately that the program is designed to stop one or two missiles fired by Iran, which continues to develop a nuclear program despite mounting international pressure.
    In a defiant speech yesterday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “Even if all the world powers are slitting their own throats, the Iranian people are invincible and will remain invincible.
    “Iran is not trying to make aggression against other countries. It only wants that its right be accepted and will not accept the injustice of the great powers,” he said.
That certainly seems more reasonable. of course, Putin would prefer to use the West as a boogeyman to frighten the Russians into submission. He’ll probably succeed in frightening Congress into submission, too.
(Photos from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)
Jose Ferero from the Washington Post (in a story that I can’t find in the Post, by the way – oops, here it is; h/t VZ News and Views), writes that the anti-Chavez movement is picking up steam;
But press-freedom groups note that the [RCTV television] station has not been officially sanctioned, nor have its owners or managers been charged with conspiracy against the state. Other private stations that were harshly anti-Chávez but have toned down critical coverage avoided the same fate, as communications Minister William Lara readily acknowledged in an interview broadcast Friday on CNN’s Spanish-language service.
Polls show that 65 to 80 percent of Venezuelan respondents disagreed with the government’s decision to end RCTV’s concession, though many were simply upset that they wouldn’t be able to see some of their favorite soap operas.
The widespread dissatisfaction has re-energized an opposition movement that lost much of its momentum after its efforts to recall Chávez were defeated in 2004 and after its decision to boycott parliamentary elections in 2005 left it without representation in the National Assembly.
60-85% is a pretty significant number in anyone’s book. But to read the news reports today, one might believe the opposite is true. Here is all Deutche Welle reports this morning;
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Venezuela’s capital Caracas Saturday in a show of support for President Hugo Chavez. The march follows the president’s controversial closure of an opposition television station, which back in 2002 had openly called for the president’s removal from office. The country’s telecommunications Minister Jesse Chacon said the president was democratizing the country’s broadcast spectrum. The country’s political opposition views the move as a gross violation of press freedoms.
The protest against Chavez last week happened in every major city in Venezuela, but this support for Chavez was concentrated in Caracas – the capitol. DW merely parrots the Chavez line and calls it news. AFP goes a step beyond the German press and counts “hundreds of thousands”;
Hundreds of thousands of President Hugo Chavez’s backers Saturday marched in a show of support for his controversial closure of an opposition television station, now an international scandal.
Supporters of the leftist president marched under his slogan of “democratizing television and radio,” one day after students surprised the government with large anti-Chavez demonstrations demanding freedom of expression.
“Starting today, the (pro-government) counterattack must be maintained across the country,” Chavez rallied the throng, claiming that a “destabilizing maneuver was afoot to carry out a gentle coup” and topple his government. He did not offer details.
“If the Venezuelan oligarchy … does not accept this call to live together in peace that we are making, if it keeps on attacking using the things it still controls, it will keep losing those things one by one,” Chavez warned.
(Editor Note: I noticed APF just changed the story to read “tens of thousands” Odd, huh?)
I guess “Venezuelan oligarchy” is code for “vast right wing conspiracy”. Associated Press toned down the numbers even further;
Earlier Saturday, reggaeton music blared and fireworks crackled as thousands of “Chavistas” gathered at an opposition stronghold in wealthy eastern Caracas before converging with other marches in the capital.
Information Minister Willian Lara said the march would “demonstrate before the world that the non-renewal of (RCTV’s license) … is a democratic conquest,” claiming the private media has been “held ransom by a small economic group.”
A democratic conquest. Get that? When you can silence your opposition, that’s democratic. From the invisible Washington Post story;
Michael Shifter, a senior analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington, D.C., that closely follows Venezuela, said he didn’t think [Chavez attacks on the “oligarchy”] would get much traction this time.
“All of his previous attacks were on the corrupt capitalists, but this goes way beyond that and it touches on Venezuela’s cultural identity,” Shifter said of Chávez. “It’s very hard for him to talk of the rancid oligarchy here. These are university students protesting, not part of the old order.”
If students took to the streets to protest their president silencing the opposition anywhere else in the world, they’d have the support of the media and the Left here in the US. Just like that first picture above – a single man, shirtless, weaponless holding back the tide of government forces while others rush to his aid – would have been on every frontpage and magazine cover as a symbol of the popular stuggle against a totalitarian government, if only it’d been taken in a protest against a more conservative government.
APF went on to say that the incident may have isolated Chavez somewhat from anothe Leftist ally;
However, the struggle now jeopardizes relations with at least one of Chavez’s fellow leftist leaders in South America.
Brazil’s Senate formally requested on Wednesday that Chavez reconsider his decision to close RCTV.
Chavez retorted, “The Brazilian Congress should worry about Brazil’s problems,” and accused it of being Washington’s “subordinate.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended Brazilian lawmakers and told Chavez to mind his own business, a position welcomed in the Brazilian press.
Lula “did what he had to do to defend Brazil’s independent and democratic principles,” Folha de Sao Paulo editorialized Saturday.
Ratcheting up the pressure, Lula asked his foreign ministry to call in Venezuela’s Ambassador to Brazil to have him explain Chavez’s response.
I guess we all have these little victories to cling to for awhile. RDTV (India) published this AP story;
”We don’t accept interferences from anybody about internal Venezuelan matters. Absolutely from nobody,” Chavez said to thousands of red-clad supporters on Saturday.
He also warned that if the ”bourgeoisie of Venezuela” continued their undermining of the ”Bolivarian people of Venezuela, they will continue losing their possessions one by one. One by one,” he said to a roaring crowd.
Large, sometimes violent protests by students warning of a threat to freedom of expression erupted after his decision to take RCTV off the air.
Chavez says the outcry is being fomented by government opponents trying to topple his administration.
He has warned other broadcasters, radio stations and newspapers covering the protests of unspecified sanctions if they continue to ”incite” instability.
Saturday’s warning took that a step further, warning the private media he could abruptly end their licenses at any moment.Â
He’s threatening the middleclass and the remaining private broadcasters. We probably can’t trust much that comes out of Venezuela in the near future.
The US Left has been mostly silent on Venezuela. Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to Chavez announcing her “concern”, but the Daily Kos had a long post by heathlander describing the Leftist party line (I won’t link to it because Kos doesn’t need my comparably pitiful traffic) in case anyone is tempted stray from the plantation over this loss of civil rights for Venezuelans;
RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected.
So why didn’t Chavez prosecute those billionaires and businessmen five years ago after he defeated this supposed “coup attempt”? Why did he just let their license expire instead of taking the case through his administrative law judges and jerking their license with proof that they had supported the coup? In our system (admittedly not the Venezuelan system), we don’t deprive citizens of their property without their day in court. The Left constantly tells us that we should use our system of justice and rights to other nations’ citizens (as in Guantanamo) so why aren’t they for imposing our legal protections on Venezuela? If George W. Bush shut down a TV network comparable to RCTV, or let their license expire without a hearing, and defended his actions by claiming the network had plotted his demise, the Left would be apoplectic. So why doesn’t the Left care about this particular group of brown people?
Well, that’s because Chavez is the next best hope for the Left to re-establish a successful communist dictatorship, since all they’ve had up to this point is Cuba and North Korea – two miserable failures that are starving their inhabitants and are punchlines in more jokes than Brittany Spears. Chavez has the benefit of petro-dollars to finance his workers’ paradise. Although I don’t understand why a truly socialist society would need money – isn’t that th whole point of socialism?
And besides we all know who’s behind those rich media guys in Venezuela;
 
The good news, according to VivirLatino is that RCTV is still broadcasting – on the internet.
I’ve been getting email from readers asking why I’m so focused on this story – because I think we need to support this anti-Chavez movement until they are successful and they get their government back. It’s a cinch that our own government will do nothing, given our history in the region and the fragility of our reputation. Latin America has been so inundated with anti-US propaganda for decades (I’ve watched and read alot of it while studying modern history there and in my travels) that anything we do, as a government, would be labeled “imperialist”. We should encourage Venezuelans to restore Venezuela themselves, though – they have the power and the wherewithall to accomplish this. They just need to know that we support them.
 
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez subscribes to a Latin American version of the British “Third Way” politics (it’s supposed to be an alternative between capitalism and socialism – but it’s really just a step towards socialism) called “bolivarism” – meant to recall Simon Bolivar’s revolution against Spain which led to the liberations of that continent. Bolivar is often called the South American George Washington. Well, this latest move of Chavez’ – shutting down RCTV, the last opposition Television voice on the Venezuelan airways – might have been a step too far according to Bloomberg;
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s shutdown of the country’s most-watched television network has set off growing condemnation in Latin America and may derail his drive to become the region’s leader.
Brazilian senators today debated a motion to “condemn” Chavez after he called lawmakers there “parrots” of the U.S. for criticizing his decision to close the broadcaster. Chavez last month branded Chile’s legislature “a bunch of fascists” after the body passed a resolution objecting to his plans.
“I’m afraid that if we don’t raise our voices to denounce this situation, we could become accomplices through omission,” Chilean senator Jaime Naranjo, a member of President Michelle Bachelet’s socialist party and head of the senate’s human rights committee, said in a telephone interview today. “As Chileans we know how important international solidarity is when a country starts to violate human rights.”
Well, how does Chavez respond? Like everyone else, he blames Bush,according to Associated Press;
 President Hugo Chavez has claimed that a right-wing conspiracy led by Washington is out to demonize his government for forcing an opposition TV channel off the air.
Speaking during an event Thursday with the visiting leader of Vietnam’s communist party, Chavez said “international rightist, extreme-rightist and fascist movements are attacking Venezuela from everywhere — from Europe, the United States, Brasilia.”
He targeted Brazil’s Senate for approving a motion earlier in the day including a call for Chavez to reopen the channel.
“Nobody should interfere,” Chavez said, accusing lawmakers in Brazil of “repeating like a parrot what is said in Washington.”
“To those representatives of the Brazilian right, I say that it is much, much, much more probable that the Portuguese empire will again install itself in Brasilia than that the Venezuelan government will return the expired (broadcast) concession to the Venezuelan oligarchy,” Chavez said.
Fianlly, the Carter Center speaks out against Chavez – not Carter himself, but the Carter Center;
Also Thursday, the Atlanta-based Carter Center joined the European Union , the Chilean Senate, the U.S. government, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others who have said RCTV’s removal could chill free speech in Venezuela.
The organization founded by former President Carter, which has observed past elections here, expressed concern that “non-renewal of broadcast concessions for political reasons will have a chilling effect on free speech.”
“A plurality of opinions should be protected,” it said. “The right of dissent must be fiercely defended by every democratic government.”
The center said if the government wants to deny renewal of a license based on alleged crimes, “these should be tried through the justice system before a decision is made.”
Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders accused Chavez of seeking to stamp out the country’s opposition media entirely.
“Media that criticize the government will be snuffed out one by one until only the pro-government media are left,” it said.Â
I watched Telemundo’s new sbroadcast tonight and some Venezuelan Madeleine Albright look-alike spokeswoman for the Chavez regime accused President Bush and his State Department of fueling the protests. As if Chavez can’t believe that Venezuelans would stand up to his revolution without being incited from outside. Of course, he realizes that maybe he’s not as popular as he thought and he needs to stir up his base using the world’s favorite boogeyman.
Bloomberg quotes Chavez a little differently than AP;
“The extreme right and the fascists are attacking Venezuela from the U.S., Europe and Brasilia,” Chavez said in a televised speech yesterday. “Nobody should be butting in here.”
I guess Cindy Sheehan is writing his material now – no wonder she quit the US.
In spanish-language news, it’s being reported by AP that Venezuelans are leaving with their money and going to Panama – like the Cubans flocked to Miami to escape Castro. I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.
Not surprisingly, the International Action Center (founded by Ramsey Clark – you know, Saddam’s lawyer pal who’s always complaining that this Administration is always violating someone’s civil rights) is sending out an email to defend Chavez’ violation of every Venezuelan’s basic human rights and to anounce their intent to start a media campaign defending Chavez’ government. MFVOV has a copy of the email and the letter from the Venezuelan ambassador reassuring Nancy Pelosi that no Venezuelans’ rights are in danger.
Red Alert warns us that Chavezistas are right here in the US and has the video of Chavezistas shooting at unarmed Venezuelan patriots. Babalu Blog details Jimmy Carter’s role in silencing Chavez’ media opposition.
I’ve discovered an interesting blog about events in Venezuela called Venezuela News and Views (hat tip to The Reaction my current battlebuddy on Real Clear Blogs – Saturday versus Boing Boing and the Daily Kos) for anyone who is interested.
I think this thing happening in our hemisphere is at least as important as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And if it’s true that an important reason we freed Iraqis and Afghanis from their respective oppressors, this should be prominent on our radar screens, too. Maybe moreso – continued oppression of the middle class in South America can only expand illegal immigration here. In fact I remember last year that a boatload of Peruvians were bound for the US until mother nature intervened and sunk their leaky boat off the coast of Panama. So it’s not that hard to imagine a wave of Venezuelans since Congress would rather talk than build a wall.
Let me say this upfront; I don’t like illegal immigrants. They are lawbreakers, just as much as anyone robbing a liquor store or jacking a car. And just like a thief robbing a store or stealing a car, economics is no excuse for breaking the law. I certainly sympathize with the conditions with which people are forced to exist in Central America (having spent quite a few years down there, I understand it better than most Americans). The United States is certainly an irresistable beacon to the millions mired in poverty south of our border. But that’s a problem better-solved with local solutions.Â
I don’t like that the current administration is crafting a plan to give what might be considered “amnesty” with the likes of Ted Kennedy. Today in the Washington Times I read that declining donations to the RNC triggered the firing of their solicitors;
    Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.
    “Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee.Â
The RNC denies falling revenues, but I believe the people who were fired. I’ve been snubbed by a couple of the Right’s biggest bloggers in the past few weeks and I’m pretty sure it’s because of my wishy-washy position on immigration that I wrote about a week or so ago calling for calm on the Right.
I honestly believe the Right is overreacting – overreacting on the same scale that the anti-war Left is overreacting to the collapse of their Congressional heros. And I think that it’s playing right into the hands of the Democrats.
The Democrats know that unless they come up with a coherent strategy for the war against terror next year, they’ve lost the election. So they pretend there is no war against terror – and they try to divide the Republican party. How do they do it? They know this president is a man of action – unlike his predecessor who just had blue-ribbon commissions and town hall meetings and the press tried to convince us that he had solved whatever problem he was interested in that moment.
They know this president wants to solve the immigration problem. They also know that the reactionary xenophobes on the Far Right will run to the microphones and their PCs and condemn anyone who avocates anything short of shipping 12 million illegals home and they’ll whip the blogs into a frenzy of anti-immigration platitudes. Which is exactly what happened.
Yeah, we all feel betrayed by Republicans, but are we going to let our emotions drive us into a third and fourth Clinton term? On one single issue? I’ll grant that it’s an important issue, but is it so important that we’ll gamble the future of our country?
I guess I’ve set myself up for some more snubbing.
More Chavez news as opposition leaders call for the release of protesters from the past weeks’ demostrrations against Venezuela’s government crack down on oppostion media outlets. From the Associated Press today;
Former presidential candidate Manuel Rosales said protests over the government’s move to halt the broadcasts of Radio Caracas Television show that “freedom cannot be negotiated nor bargained.”
Protesters have filled the capital’s plazas and streets since the opposition-aligned channel went off the air at midnight Sunday. Chavez refused to renew its broadcast license, and police have clashed with angry crowds hurling rocks and bottles.
A total of 182 people — mostly university students and minors — have been detained in nearly 100 protests since Sunday, Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said late Tuesday. At least 30 were charged with violent acts, prosecutors said, but it was unclear how many remained behind bars.
Manuel Rosales also pointed out that Globovision, Chavez next target, is running some disturbing home videos;
Rosales noted that a home video broadcast on the Globovision network showed unidentified men in the doorway of a government office — apparently Chavez allies — firing guns at unseen targets. “For that there is no justice?” he said.
Meanwhile, the Bolivian Senate is condemning Chavez publicly for interferring in that country according to El Universal.com;
The Bolivian Senate, with a majority of opponents of President Evo Morales, accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of interfering with Bolivian domestic affairs, and demanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make the relevant protest.
The Washington Times’ Martin Arostegui reports today that Evo Morales and Rafael Correa of Equador also have plans to shut down their opposition media outlets;
   Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa both announced steps to crack down on independent broadcasters within days of Mr. Chavez’s closure on Sunday of Venezuela’s main independent television station, RCTV.
    Speaking before an international gathering of leftist intellectuals in Cochabamba last week, Mr. Morales proposed creating a tribunal to oversee the operations of privately owned press and broadcast outlets. Mr. Correa announced over the weekend that he would order a review of the broadcasting licenses of opposition news channels in his country.
    Both leaders have drawn support and inspiration from Mr. Chavez’s increasingly authoritarian government since coming to power in the past 18 months, and both are drafting new constitutions that would greatly increase their own powers.
    Mr. Correa has ousted 51 opposition deputies from his nation’s Congress and Mr. Morales this week ordered the arrests of four high court judges after they issued rulings that challenged his government.
    “The main adversaries of my presidency, of my government, are certain communications media,” Mr. Morales said at the Fifth World Conference of Artists and Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity, a Venezuelan-backed group supporting “the process of change in Latin America.”
    Appearing alongside Cuba’s minister of culture, Abel Prieto, Mr. Morales suggested “drawing on the experience of our friends in Venezuela and Cuba” to establish closer controls over the press.
And why wouldn’t they? What price has the international community foisted upon Chavez for his stunning moves in the last few months? He promises to aid terrorist-enabling Iran, supports Iran’s nuclear program, pays for the election of Chavez-friendly dictators in nearby Bolivia, Equador and Nicaragua and cavorts with the Cubans-arguably the worst human rights offenders in the hemisphere. And the world stands by, shaking it’s collective head.
From the WashTimes piece;
   “Morales identifies his enemies,” read a banner headline in the Santa Cruz newspaper El Mundo, which pictured a newsroom in the cross hairs of a telescopic rifle.
    Mr. Morales tried to deflect mounting protests on Sunday by saying that he had no immediate plans to close down any TV station and that his criticism was aimed at owners of news organizations and not at individual journalists.
And Correa targets Equadorian media;
 In Ecuador, meanwhile, Mr. Correa issued a statement saying that “radio and TV frequencies have been granted in ways that are frequently dark and it’s time to analyze the matter.”
    He accused owners of major news outlets of using political influence to get their broadcasting licenses and using the press “to defend private interests that are often corrupt.” He also announced legal action against Ecuador’s opposition newspaper La Hora.
Spain, in the meantime, is negotiating for the release of political prisoners in Havana. This link is a few days old from my guilty pleasure Uncommon Sense.
And still, the American Left remains silent on the civil rights of brown people.