Chavez demands action against owner of TV channel

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez stepped up his threats against Venezuela's only remaining opposition-aligned television channel on Saturday, calling its owner a fugitive criminal and accusing him of conspiring against his government.

Chavez demanded that authorities including the attorney general and the Supreme Court take action in a pending criminal case against Globovision owner Guillermo Zuloaga, who fled the country earlier this year after a court issued an arrest warrant.

"Something must be done," Chavez said on state television. If Zuloaga does not return to face justice, Chavez said, "something must be done in relation to this channel and the properties this man has here."

Zuloaga, who has been charged with usury and conspiracy, denies wrongdoing and says prosecutors are carrying out a vendetta on Chavez's orders. Zuloaga criticized Chavez at a forum in Washington on Wednesday, denouncing him as a threat to democracy in the region.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101120/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_venezuela_anti_chavez_tv_2

If Mr Zuloaga did not exist no doubt Mr Chavez would invent him.

Always look for the tiny "ap" in the url, if the poster doesn't identify the source. AP = Associated Pukes.

AP was the corpo-fascist 'news' source, which, about a half decade ago, began using tricks like describing Chavez as "the leftist president of Venezuela, friend of Fidel Castro." They of course NEVER desribed Bush Jr as "the rightwing president of the U.S., friend of Prince Bandar."

But the one that really got me watching their wording carefully was: "His critics say that he is increasingly authoritarian." No quote. No attribution. "His critics say...". So I went looking for the source, and, a half decade ago, the only source I could find--the only person who had said that Chavez is "increasingly authoritarian"--was a far rightwing Catholic cardinal in Venezuela, who had spent his entire career at the Vatican banking office, and was the only person ever fired from that office (in the Italian banking scandal in the 1980s). He was very old and had retired to Venezuela (he's now dead) and regularly fulminated against Chavez from the pulpit.

AP is egregiously biased against Chavez--and, by implication, against the honest, transparent election system that put him in office, and the voters who voted for him. AP much prefers our corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' code infested election system and its fascist results--and they totally love the idea of five rightwing billionaires monopolizing all media. They will never tell you a damn thing about either of these egregiously anti-democratic, fascist, oppressive conditions--multinational corporate control of the vote counting in the U.S. and multinational corporate control of the media virtually everywhere.

But let the Chavez government de-license a corporate predator like RCTV--whose owner was an active participant in the 2002 rightwing coup d'etat in Venezuela--or demand justice for another corrupt media mogul, who also supported the coup attempt, and, oh dear, Chavez "is suppressing free speech." The REAL condition of free speech in corporate hands, here or in Venezuela, is never revealed. The Chavez government's great expansion of public participation and public access in Venezuela is of course never mentioned.

Chavez is doing what OUR government SHOULD BE doing--busting abusers of the public airwaves like Faux News and Clear Channel, busting up corporate media monopolies--conglomerates that own TV/radio networks, newspapers, movie studios, book publishers, magazines, often with unrelated subsidiaries such as weapons manufacturing or pharmaceuticals that gravely compromise their news businesses--and opening up our public airwaves to a wider political and public information spectrum.

WE are the ones with a highly controlled and very narrowly pro-corporate, rightwing/fascist media. WE are the ones being deprived of freedom of speech. WE are the ones being deprived of information. WE are the ones being deprived of proper representation in government. And we are about to lose the last vestige of OUR "New Deal" because of it.

Corporations have NO RIGHT to use the public airwaves--not in any country in the world. They have to merit a license to broadcast--this is a privilege not a right--and the best countries REGULATE that license in the interest of the common good--whether to prevent media monopolies, or require public service broadcasting or BALANCED political coverage. We used to have regulation like that HERE. The airwaves belong to you and me and everybody. We have a collective, democratic right to regulate them in the public interest.

Don't confuse free speech with CORPORATE speech. Corporations are business entities. They are not individuals. They have no inherent rights--none! They only have the rights that "We the People," as the sovereign entity of a country, GIVE them. Faux News has NO RIGHT to broadcast. RCTV had NO RIGHT to broadcast. And this other criminal corpo in Venezuela has NO RIGHT to broadcast. That right has to be EARNED. And criminal activity is one way to lose it--in a country that asserts "common good," democratic regulation of the broadcast media.

The Chavez government has gone after a number of scofflaw corporations--and also tax scofflaws--and the rich just hate it, and the Associated Pukes and brethren actively support them in that. Venezuela was just designated THE MOST EQUAL COUNTRY IN LATIN AMERICA, on the rich vs. poor indexes. The rich hate this. And AP and brethren hate it and don't want you to know it. They will never publish THAT story--that the Chavez government has cut poverty in half, and cut extreme poverty by more than 70%--but they WILL color a story on proper government regulation of the PUBLIC airwaves in Venezuela as anti-free speech story.

Look for the tiny "ap" in the url. Look at how they legitimized Bush--an unelected, corporate/war profiteer pimp--and are still trying to de-legitimize Chavez, an honestly elected crusader against corporate rule. Look for the black holes in their so-called 'news' stories where objective information and context should be.