OAS Warn Venezuela Concerning TV Station

[cal04]

The Organization of American States warned Friday that the possible closing of an opposition-aligned TV station by President Hugo Chavez's government could undermine press freedom and democracy in Venezuela.

Chavez has said his government will not renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV, when it expires in May, accusing the channel of having backed a brief coup against him in 2002 and of other subversive activities.

``The closing of a mass communications outlet is a rare step in the history of our hemisphere and has no precedent in the recent decades of democracy,'' OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said in a written statement.

(snip)
The government did not immediately respond to the OAS statement, though Chavez has said the decision is final.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6326058,00.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Imagine this; Faux News calls for Nancy Pelosi to be kidnapped, and

removed from office, and Congress shut down, and openly calls for such action in 24/7 broadcasts and supports those who do so. Would be for pulling Faux News' license to use OUR public airwaves?

That's what RCTV did to Chavez and the National Assembly and the Courts--all shut down by a coup that RCTV directly colluded in. Use of the public's airwaves is not a right, it is a privilege--in Venezuela, as here.

-----

Poll: Venezuelans Have Highest Regard for Their Democracy
Wednesday, Dec 20, 2006
By: Gregory Wilpert - Venezuelanalysis.com
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2179

-----

Even the Guardian can be slanted when it comes to BIG money and Corporate Rule, and the OAS didn't do so well in Mexico this time--the result was more deaths, kidnappings, rapes and "disappearances" of poor indigenous in Oaxaca. Shame on them! And why don't they tell the whole story on Venezuela?

Go to www.venezuelanalysis.com as antidote to the spin of Corporate interests.

[billbuckhead]

2. "brief coup"?

Is that like "brief rape"?

[daleo]

12. I noticed that too, and expect better of The Guardian

It was only brief because it failed. Had they succeeded we might have seen a Pinochet scale bloodbath.

[Say_What]

15. A ' Pinochet scale bloodbath' was the plan... "Venezuela - Uncle Sam's Coup?"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4124074101371070575&q=golinger&hl=en

and a website with the CIA docs.

http://venezuelafoia.info/cia.html

[Judi Lynn]

25. Valuable Eva Golinger video. Great seeing her copies of the FOIA coup material.

"Building the case." That surely looked like a familiar pattern. I haven't read them all, but no doubt there's an eyewitness account of babies, incubators!

These people are shameless, which is o.k., if they are dirty on their OWN time. We don't want them running our country, committing atrocity in our names.

[Say_What]

42. History repeats intself... US bought and paid for *opposition* media...

From declassified docs we find Gerald Ford defending the Chilean coup and also the same kind of destabilizing tactics now being used against Chavez.

<clips>

Supporting Pinochet

In September 1974, when Seymour Hersh exposed the CIA's broad covert operations to destabilize Allende in The New York Times, President Gerald Ford was forced to publicly defend them as "in the best interest of the people of Chile, and certainly in our best interest." There was an effort by the Allende government "to destroy opposition news media, both the writing press as well as the electronic press," Ford told reporters. "The {covert} effort that was made in this case was to help and assist the preservation of opposition newspapers and electronic media . . . ."

It was, in fact, the Pinochet regime, not Allende, that would destroy Chile's free press. In the aftermath of the bloody military takeover — some 1,500 people were murdered by the military in the ensuing weeks — the junta closed down all but the government-controlled outlets. There were a few exceptions. The most prominent: El Mercurio.

Under the CIA's fiscal year 1974 propaganda budget for Chile, the Santiago station continued covertly to underwrite the Chilean right-wing press as it reincarnated itself from the voice of anti-Allende opposition to the main independent promilitary media in Chile. With funding due to expire in early 1974, the Western Hemisphere division determined an extension was necessary to allow the military regime's media oracles a smooth transition off the clandestine U.S. payroll.

Covert funding was "essential to maintaining the trust and continued collaboration of the and through them, to maintain our capability for influencing the Junta and molding Chilean public opinion," an adviser wrote to David Atlee Phillips, the CIA division chief, in a January 9, 1974, memorandum. The project had not only "played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup," but was now essential to national and international propaganda efforts in support of the Pinochet regime. "Since the coup, these media outlets have supported the new military government," Phillips wrote in his own memo that same day. "They have tried to present the Junta in the most positive light for the Chilean public and to assist foreign journalists in Chile to obtain facts about the local situation . . . . The project is therefore essential in enabling the Station to help mold Chilean public opinion in support of the new government."

Faced with State Department pressure to close down its pre-coup covert action projects, the CIA's Western Hemisphere division appears to have sought, and obtained, an additional $176,000 to give "this multifaceted propaganda mechanism the opportunity to locate alternative funding sources," according to secret agency memorandums. But with Pinochet firmly entrenched, the need to continue the media project finally subsided. It appears from documents that in late February 1974, agents from the CIA station met with their Chilean conduits, and told them that "all subsidy support . . . would cease" at the end of the fiscal year. For these longstanding Chilean media assets, the CIA station chief reported back in a secret March 1, 1974, cable to Phillips, "this news came as a shock and disappointment."

Pinochet would stay in power for seventeen years. During that time, El Mercurio served as a shill for the dictatorship, maximizing its economic success and minimizing — to the point of distortion and obfuscation — its widespread repression, which included the murder and disappearance of thousands of Chileans, systematic torture, and multiple acts of international terrorism in Latin America, Europe, and even the U.S.

Thirty years after the coup, Chile is only beginning to open the book to this chapter of its past. General Pinochet's 1998 arrest in London — he fought extradition to Spain for human rights crimes and eventually was allowed to return to Chile, where the Supreme Court ruled he was mentally unfit for a trial — has led to indictments, arrests, and incarceration of a number of his military men.

And what of Edwards and his media company, and other private sector actors who actively collaborated in the downfall of electoral democracy and the advent of a brutal military dictatorship?

The effort to bring ethics charges against Agustín Edwards at the Academy of Journalists is a wholly symbolic gesture, although it does mark a growing movement to hold civilian collaborators responsible for their actions. The U.S. government documents that secretly recorded those actions may provide valuable evidence — if not for legal action then at least for a moral accounting.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/chile-kornbluh.asp

[Judi Lynn]

45. They were so deeply involved in this evil business. It's past time the information became

commonly known by as many people as possible who will put out the effort to find out what was done in our name, with our own U.S. government demanded tax money.

I know you remember, Say_What, and some of the other posters on this thread, the rather LONGISH, smelly visit by a poster from the Free Republic probably within the last year or two. You may remember that he INSISTED that the CIA had absolutely nothing to do with the overthrow of the government.

He had to leave before we got really started with the information we wanted him to see, but he's still probably skulking around here, probably under another name. He needs to know we remember his stupid assertions. Here's more on that non-intervention he claims for the CIA in the violent Chilean coup:

U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile

II. U.S. Covert Activities in Chile

U.S. planning for the 1970 election began in June, 1970, when the Forty Committee met on Chile and Richard Helms promised John McCone $400,000 of CIA funds to assist the anti-Allende news media.54 The CIA also contributed $1 million to Allende's opponents.55 Allende's election went to the Chilean congress sitting as an electoral college, where an additional $350,000 was paid out by the CIA in an attempt to buy votes.56

After Allende's victory, Nixon, Kissinger, Helms, and John Mitchell met on September 15, 1970. Helms came from that meeting with the impression that "Nixon wanted a plan for action that would include a military coup and a broad-based destabilization effort that would 'make the economy scream.'" Helms' notes of the session read, "Not concerned with risks involved. Full time job -- best men we have."57 An additional $6 million was spent over the next three years,58 including $1.5 million to rightist candidates in the March, 1973 congressional election.59 The grand total of $8 to $11 million spend by the CIA since 1970 may have been worth $40 to $50 million after being funneled through the black market.60

On the day that Helms received his instructions from Nixon, the owner of El Mercurio, wealthy Chilean businessman Agustin Edwards, conferred with top officials of the Nixon administration.61 The El Mercurio network consists of newspapers, radio station, ad agencies, and a wire service; it dominates the Chilean media in audience, size, and prestige, and includes the three principal newspapers of Santiago and seven provincial papers.62 In the seven-month period from September 9, 1971 to April 11, 1972 the CIA spent $1.5 million on El Mercurio,63 but the funding also preceded and followed this period. El Mercurio may have been the recipient of almost half of the total CIA expenditures in Chile since 1970.64 In addition to the sort of ads that were used successfully in the 1964 campaign, CIA funding also sponsored mailings before the election on forged Popular Unity stationery to hundreds of thousands of voters. These mailings asked voters to list household goods and indicate whether they would be willing to share with the poor after the election.65 The CIA even purchased a radio station for the right-wing.66 The El Mercurio network was used by the CIA to "launder propaganda, disinformation, fake themes and scare stories which were then circulated through 70 percent of the Chilean press and 90 percent of the Chilean radio. The USIA and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in turn circulated these stories all over the world."67 CIA agents at El Mercurio included Enno Hobbing, Alvaro Puga, and Juraj Domic.68

The CIA helped finance truckers' strikes in 1972 and June, 1973, probably through the International Transport Workers Federation,69 and may have had a hand in funding, training, and arming the Patria y Libertad, an extreme right-wing party in Chile.70 Michael Townley, a former Peace Corp volunteer in Chile recruited by the CIA, directed groups of Patria y Libertad to paint "Djakarta is approaching" slogans all over Santiago immediately before the coup.71 CIA money also subsidized a strike of middle-class shopkeepers and a taxi strike in the summer of 1973.72
(snip/...)

http://www.namebase.org/chile.html

And WHERE was our "liberal press" all that time? Was it keeping us informed on what was going on as Nixon and Kissinger overthrew Allende's government, and put a treacherous, murderous monster on the throne for the next 16, 17 years?

[Say_What]

73. Gotta love that CIA illustration...

[Say_What]

35. The Official OAS Press Release didn't say 'brief coup', Insulza described

the coup as frustrated military coup of 2002, not brief coup as the AP article reported.

See post 34 for the official OAS report. Insulza, secretary general also admonishes the media and points out that this is an internal matter for each member state.

[GainesT1958]

6. Would this administration do ANYTHING against FOX...

Even if Rupert Murdoch himself got on the air and called for the things you're talking about? Um, no...

Chavez doesn't have any more right to stymie free speech and opinion than anyone else...should he be able to play the role of "Decider" of Venezuela, just as Dub fancies himself to be the "Decider for 'Murka"?

Yes, I know to some here Chavez is fancied as a hero for being so strongly against Dub, and for being against corporate oligarchists in Venezuela, but in this case, I assure you, the enemy of our enemy is clearly NOT our friend.

Dictators are wrong for a society, no matter where they sprout up...and not even if (unlike Dub the first time around :eyes: )the majority of people voted them into office!

B-)

[Say_What]

7. US CODE: TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES

"Stymie free speech" my arse.

Every country has laws about advocating the overthrow of elected leaders. Here's the US CODE. Have a look and click whatever interests you. Seditious conspiracy and Advocating overthrow of Government is what closely matches what went on in Venezuela.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 115

CHAPTER 115—TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES


2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

2385. Advocating overthrow of Government

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_115.html

[Judi Lynn]

11. What is it about facing the truth that's so hard for these peeps?

Could NOT be clearer that that same station would have been a parking lot in this country long ago, yet the right-wing idiots insist that the people of Venezuela should overlook actions which are certainly understood to be sedition here, and public advocacy of a violent overthrow, which is ALSO illegal.

The fact right-wing news organizations did it apparently seems like the touch of the Divine to the right-wing loons among us.

[Say_What]

13. Two words:

Propaganda works. :evilgrin:

[Judi Lynn]

14. Isn't that the truth? I'm reading a Kornbluh article I just found on Chile. You would remember

the newspaper the Nixon administration used for propaganda purposes, "El Mercurio." I need to find out more about that, because the ultra-violent (US engineered) coup against Salvador Allende had many, many intense propaganda operations going on to set the stage, "mold public perception," and condition the American public to see the coup of an elected Communist President as a good thing.

We won't be able to see the details of what _Bush has been doing until the secret documents are realeased, long in the future, as this was with the attack on Allende, and it's good to read about other crap Republican Presidents have gotten by with, as any time spent at all will tell you the pattern gets repeated over and over, right?

Anyway, here's what this article has to say about "El Mercurio:"

Covert funds were funneled into Chilean congressional campaigns; CIA agents stayed close to disgruntled
Chilean military officers; to keep the military on edge, the CIA planted false propaganda suggesting that the Chilean left planned to take control of the armed forces; and the CIA secretly poured $1.5 million into one of Chile's leading newspapers, El Mercurio.
(snip)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Chile%20Coup_USHand.html

On edit: More from the above article, which just might sound strangely familiar to DU'ers who have been watching or researching US/Latin American history:

The Nixon administration also moved to isolate Allende's government diplomatically around the world.
Secret strategy papers were drawn up by an inter-agency working group in early December 1970. The papers reported on "USG consultation with selected Latin American governments ... to promote their sharing of our concern over Chile."
The mix of economic sabotage, political propaganda and army prodding worked
Allende found himself confronted by growing disorder and soaring inflation. At every turn, his policies encountered well-funded adversaries.
(snip)

Haven't finished it yet, and hope to have time to look around for stuff specifically on the paper, the organ they used the most to spread their poison from Nixon's office.

Here's what the article says concerning the small window of time they used in the run-up to the Allende election, trying to control mass perception about Allende, during President Frei's time:

The CIA inducements to Frei included offering substantial sums of money to his "re-election" campaign, bribing other Christian Democrats outright, and orchestrating visits and calls from respected leaders abroad
To influence Frei through his wife, the CIA instigated the wiring of telegrams to Mrs. Frei from women's groups in other Latin American nations.
Other mailings to Frei included ClA-planted news articles from around the world about Chile's peril. The articles were part of a covert "black" propaganda campaign which, the CIA boasted, resulted in at least 726 stories, broadcasts and editorials against an Allende presidency.
(snip)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Chile%20Coup_USHand.html

I need to find out about the newspaper, because I'm almost certain I heard once that they almost OWNED the paper, lock, stock, and barrel, paying for it, of course, with taxpayers' money, behind our backs.

You bet propaganda works. I have no doubt Otto Reich, that twisted, grotesque Cuban "exile" dwarf from the Reagan Office of Public Diplomacy (who got in bad trouble with Congress for his illegal propaganda actions) is very much in the middle of _Bush's dirty tricks throughout the region.



the 3 faces of Otto Reich, propaganda meister

[Judi Lynn]

17. More, this from the Church Committee's investigation, covert activities in Chile,

1963 to 1973, this snip focusing on propaganda:

THE STUDY
COVERT ACTION IN CHILE 1963-1973 -- STAFF REPORT of the SELECT COMMITTEE TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS with respect to INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES: UNITED STATES SENATE; was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington: 1975.

Covert activity was a factor in almost every major election between 1963 and 1973 and United States intervention was massive. "The scale of CIA involvement in Chile was unusual but by no means unprecedented."

From 1953 through 1970, the CIA subsidized wire services, magazines and a right-wing weekly newspaper. In the 1964 election, CIA supported the Christian Democratic (CD) candidate. (CIA support to CD candidates around the globe followed and preceded this operation). CIA funded an array of pro-Christian Democratic student, women's, professional and peasant groups and helped the CD party with polling, voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives.

In the 1964 Election -- the U.S. massively intervened in the election -- via fifteen covert action projects ranging from organizing slum dwellers, to passing funds to political parties. Specifically the Christian Democratic Party, the Democratic Front (a coalition of rightist parties), and a variety of propaganda and organizing activities. It also employed projects conducted since the 1950's among peasants, slum dwellers, organized labor, students and the media.

The CIA also conducted a massive anti-Communist propaganda campaign using the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, direct mailings, paper streamers, and wall paintings. The Agency directed a scare campaign at women using images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads. Christian Democratic organizations distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of a pastoral letter from Pope Pious XI. The CIA also concocted disinformation and black propaganda -- material attributed falsely to the Chilean Communist Party.

The propaganda campaign was enormous -- one group produced twenty radio spots a day in Santiago and on 44 provincial stations; twelve-minute news broadcasts five times daily on three Santiago stations and 24 provincial outlets, 26 weekly "commentary" programs, and distributed 300 posters daily. CIA rated this anti-Communist scare campaign as the deciding factor in the election of 1964 that enabled Eduardo Frei to win over Salvador Allende -- a liberal opposed by the CIA.

The Agency also ran an international propaganda campaign. It replayed contrived articles in and from abroad. These included endorsement of Frei by the sister of a Latin American leader, a "message from the women of Venezuela," and dire warnings about an Allende victory from various military governments in Latin America.

The CIA used some of the propaganda and polling mechanisms of 1964 repeatedly thereafter, in local, congressional and presidential campaigns.
(snip)

1. Propaganda
CIA's most extensive operation was propaganda. With recruited media assets CIA provided direct editorial guidance. One CIA project supported five media assets between 1965-1971. Most assets worked for . They wrote articles criticizing the Soviet Union; suppressed news harmful to the United States about Vietnam, and others.

Covert propaganda included "black propaganda" -- material falsely attributed to innocent individuals or groups. The Station financed wall posters, passed out leaflets and conducted other street activities. Of thirty plus covert operations, approximately half were propaganda. Each press placement had a multiplier effect -- picked up and relayed around Chile and (in some cases - the world).

The largest propaganda operation was El Mercurio. In 1971 the Station said El Mercurio and other media assets supported by CIA set the stage for the September 11, 1973, military coup.

Projects wrested control of university student organizations; supported a women's group (who conducted the CIA universal "Pots and Pans" marches to protest high prices), fought in the labor unions, and exploited a civic action front group.

CIA also funded local elections giving support to candidates selected by the American ambassador and the Station. Most funding of political parties occurred on a massive scale during the Allende years 1970-1973.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42a/123.html

[Say_What]

18. CJR: El Mercurio File: Secret:Documents Shine New Light on How the CIA Used a Newspaper to Fomen

What almost happened in Venezuela was a cookie cutter plan that has been used by Tio Sam around the globe for decades and is still being used. No mystery to that one--and the dirty covert plans to discredit and set Chavez up for a fall have not stopped. Check the similarities here with RCTV and the other private tv stations in Venezuela.

The attacks against Allende were unrelenting and started before he was inaugurated. Tio Sam tried to stop him from being inaugurated. They succeeded in dividing Chile just like the Bushistas have divided the USA--all with propaganda.

This article, written by Peter Kornbluh in 2003, can probably be found at NS Archives site as well. Lengthy, but worth the read.

<clips>

Secret Documents Shine New Light on How the CIA Used a Newspaper to Foment a Coup

El Mercurio served as a shill for the dictatorship, maximizing its economic success and minimizing its repression

September 11, a day of infamy in the U.S., is also a dark day in the history of Chile. This 9/11 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. Although former U.S. officials such as Henry Kissinger have insisted that Washington had no involvement in the military takeover, and was trying only to preserve democracy in Chile, CIA and White House records, analyzed here for the first time, show how the CIA used Chilean media to undermine the democratically elected government of Socialist Salvador Allende, an operation that "played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973." From these documents emerges the story of the agency's main propaganda project — authorized at the highest level of the U.S. government — which relied upon Chile's leading newspaper, El Mercurio, and its well-connected owner, Agustín Edwards. In Chile, the aged Edwards remains an influential media power, and here in the U.S., covert action has again been unleashed and executive-branch secrecy is on the rise. The story behind 9/11/73 continues to echo.

...Building a Coup

How was this money used? "Assistance provided to El Mercurio has enabled that independent newspaper to survive as an effective spokesman for Chilean democracy and against the UP government," the CIA said in a Secret/Eyes Only memo to the 40 Committee. But leading the anti-Allende opposition was not the same as supporting the democratic process in Chile. Indeed, sustained by the covert funding, the Edwards media empire became one of the most prominent actors in the fall of Chilean democracy.

By 1972, the paper was "publishing almost daily editorials criticizing the Allende Government," and "had been guiding and acting as a rallying point for the opposition," the CIA reported in a summary of the El Mercurio Project. "El Mercurio continues to play a leadership role in molding Chilean public opinion," the CIA's Santiago station advised in a February 21, 1973, status report. "El Mercurio launched an extensive advertising effort to place the blame for Chile's economic ills at the doorstep of the Allende Government, placing ads wherever possible."


http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/chile-kornbluh.asp


Allende with another US casualty, General Pratts, assassinted in Argentina by DINA

[Judi Lynn]

20. My God! Just as I have to leave for a while, you showed up with a real gift for us.

I'm coming back later to study this, and thank you so much, Say_What.

That's the first photo I've seen of General Pratts. Thanks for including it.

[Judi Lynn]

23. This is a very worthy source. Going to save it immediately for future reference.

From the article:

But with the declassification of thousands of CIA and White House records at the end of the Clinton administration, the history of the "El Mercurio Project" emerges in far greater detail. Among the key revelations in the documents:

• Even before Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile, Edwards came to Washington and discussed with the CIA the "timing for possible military action" to prevent Allende from taking office.
  
• President Nixon directly authorized massive funding to the newspaper. The White House approved close to $2 million dollars - a significant sum when turned into Chilean currency on the black market.
  
• Secret CIA cables from mid-1973 identified El Mercurio as among the "most militant parts of the opposition" pushing for military intervention to overthrow Allende.
  
• In the aftermath of the coup, the CIA continued to covertly finance media operations in order to influence Chilean public opinion in favor of the new military regime, despite General Pinochet's brutal repression.
  (snip)

The documents provide the most comprehensive record to date of one of the CIA's most famous covert propaganda projects, one that in retrospect played a far greater role than previously understood in the run-up to Pinochet's dictatorship. And they shed new light on the willingness of Chile's leading newspaper — a paper often compared in prestige and importance within Chile to The New York Times in America — to collaborate in fomenting the coup.
(snip)

The effort to bring ethics charges against Agustín Edwards at the Academy of Journalists is a wholly symbolic gesture, although it does mark a growing movement to hold civilian collaborators responsible for their actions. The U.S. government documents that secretly recorded those actions may provide valuable evidence — if not for legal action then at least for a moral accounting.
(snip)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'll bet someone might notice the strange resemblance in function by Chilean/coup plotter/CIA employee/jackpot winner of funneled US taxpayer millions, Augustín Edwards of El Mercurio to Cuban-Venezuelan billionaire media owner/_Bush family friend/coup plotter Gustavo Cisneros. Very, very ugly.

[rebel with a cause]

24. only if they called for the over throw of bush and all the repubs.

Nothing would be done if it was just for the take over of the democrats. IMHO

[Peace Patriot]

28. Are you saying Chavez is a dictator because he wants to deny a license to

RCTV for using the PUBIC airwaves? Didn't you understand anything I said? Would you approve of continuing to license Faux News if it participated in the kidnapping of Nancy Pelosi, her removal from office and the shutdown of Congress?

Use of the public airwaves is a privilege not a right--in this country, and in Venezuela. That privilege must be used for the public benefit. A LICENSE to use the public airwaves is NOT the same thing as Free Speech and the First Amendment. And no democracy in the world would put up with a corporation using their PRIVILEGE of a LICENSE to use the PUBIC airwaves to instigate or support violent overthrow of the government!

I think you've been too brainwashed by our war profiteering corporate news monopolies into believing that THEY are human beings with civil rights. A corporation is a business consortium. It has no right to exist. Period. We CHARTER corporations, via state governments. We GRANT THEM PERMISSION to exist--for the public benefit. They've managed to become undemocratic monarchies, and monstrous multinational powermongers. But essentially they have NO rights--none at all. The public denying a corporate charter, or denying a license for use of the public airwaves, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

[Toots]

29. Is Gore's Internet also a privilege and could DU lose it's right to voice opinions?

I suspect there are many here that would love nothing more than the removal from office of the current Administration by virtually any means possible. Would you feel the same if DU was suddenly unable to operate?

[Judi Lynn]

30. Read Peace Patriot's post #28. Take time to try to comprehend it. n/t

[Toots]

32. Ummmm and this answers my question about the Internet...How?

My comprehension skills are just fine thankyou but how are yours? How was my post about free speech issues? I was asking if the Internet is public space and can it also be revoked if a perceived threat were to be found. Is that comprehensible to you? I will type real slow... Is the Internet considered Public venue the same as the broadccast airwaves?

[oNobodyo]

47. Broadcast licenses are inherently different worldwide...

because of the finite broadcast bandwidth i.e. there are a fixed number of broadcast frequencies that can be used in any given space without interfering with every other one.

The interent is different in this regard and a few others...although the wire lines that it's carried on are considered a 'public resource' just the same.

There are a lot of technical, financial and legal realities that keep them from doing so but yes they can shut it down...They just can't keep it from popping up elsewhere without shutting down everything...

[Say_What]

33. Hellloooo??? Voicing an opinion and ORGANIZING a COUP

are two very different things.

It is always amazing to me how ignorant murikans are of what has happened in Venezuela yet they post these kneejerk reactions without doing any kind of research at all Pathetic.

[Nevernose]

48. If Skinner & Co. called for armed insurrection, then hell yes!

n/t

[Say_What]

3. MSM in lock step around the globe... Coup against Hugo Chavez - media complicity VIDEO CLIP

Chavez should have shut them down right after the failed coup for treason. Check out this video of the media thanking RCTV and then ucking it up about how the media planned the coup. Yet the MSM still claims this *freedom of the press* bullshit.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xKLtJIRmjxE

[Judi Lynn]

26. Hard to avoid the truth when it's staring you in the face.Taken directly from their own programming.

They are so shifty, so sleazy. Like someone's prototype perverts! Anyone who can't see what kind of people they are is simply blind, or someone who identifies with trash.

The fact they lost their coup they were boasting about not long after this circle-gloat makes it a treasure!

I wonder if the DU'er who refuses to watch the video has dared to look, yet. I surely doubt it. Reminds you of the charge: "You can't handle the truth!"

[Say_What]

4. Venezuelan Government Will Not Renew “Coup-Plotting” TV Station’s License

<clips>

Caracas, January 3, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— In a controversial decision, President Chavez announced last week that the broadcast license of the oppositional TV station RCTV, which expires in May of this year, will not be renewed. Government officials explained that according to Venezuelan law the renewal is a discretional decision of the government and is thus completely legal.

Last week, during a military ceremony, President Hugo Chavez announced, “There will be no new concession for this coup-plotting channel, known as Radio Caracas Television !”

He went on to say, “The measure has already been prepared, so they might as well go ahead and turn off their equipment. No media will be tolerated that is at the service of coupism, against the people, against the nation, against the dignity of the Republic. Venezuela is to be respected!”

The TV channel RCTV has been one of the most consistent opponents of the Chavez government, along with the all-news channel Globovision. During the April 2002 coup attempt RCTV was one of the main protagonists in the organization and execution of the coup. It was the first to broadcast the false claim that Chavez supporters were shooting at opposition demonstrators, which then served as a justification for high level generals to declare their disobedience to the government, also on RCTV.

RCTV then had exclusive interviews with coup plotters and the talk show host Napoleon Bravo read Chavez’s supposed resignation letter on RCTV. Later it turned out that the letter was never signed by Chavez and that he had actually not resigned at all, but had been taken into custody.

When the coup began to falter and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in support of Chavez, RCTV refused to provide any news coverage of the developments and switched from 24-hour news coverage to the broadcasting of old cartoons and movies instead.

Other reasons Chavez and his supporters refer to RCTV as a “coup-plotting” channel are because it also supported the December 2002 shutdown of the oil industry that was designed to force Chavez from office. At the time RCTV (along with Globovision) gave free advertising time to the opposition, broadcasting these in lieu of commercial advertising, urging citizens to support the so-called general strike.

Also, during the August 2004 presidential recall referendum, RCTV refused to accept pro-Chavez advertisements.


http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2182

[IndianaGreen]

5. OAS is a puppet of American imperialism

Not renewing the license of a TV station that was funded by the US government to carry propaganda against the democratically elected government of Venezuela, and that sided with a paid-for American coup, falls within Venezuela's sovereignty.

Imagine the outcry if we had a TV station in the US that broadcast pro-Bin Laden propaganda, and that rejoiced publicly about the 9-11 attacks. Would anyone complain if its license were pulled?

[Judi Lynn]

8. They've done such outstanding work over the years the American right-wing

Presidents have wrought havoc in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Loved their fabulous performance during _Bush's overthrow of President Aristide and the following bloodbath, and his clever blockade around the island to catch every one who was trying to escape and turn them right back into that tree-shredder operated by former Papa Doc (supported by the U.S. and OAS) Duvalier's death squads, the leaders of which found safe haven and protection in the U.S. under the wing of the first _Bush after their previous right-wing engineered overthrow of the same man (who was briefly returned to his office by Bill Clinton).

Loved the mah-vellous work they also did during Reagan's time, when Reagan's puppet pal Rios Montt obliterated entire Mayan villages, slaughtering all the inhabitants they could catch.

The list is apparently endless of all their tender help to the poor of the Western Hemisphere. God bless these fellas. :sarcasm:

Yeah, OAS is really a champion. Of the American right-wing.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Sure wish those who understand the ability of these threads to attract

freeps would stick around to help with the heavy lifting after they float the original articles out there.

It's a lot of work for the people who have to go get the facts to counter the right-wing effort to make sure it's only the right-wing propaganda that gets heard. Takes a LOT of time. We're the ones who have to spend our own hours looking for information, while the right-wingers simply hurl their lies and charges in here.

Very exhausting, but not something people who know the truth are likely to overlook. NO WAY is anyone going to get to use his/her lies as the last word if anyone decent can help it.

[David__77]

10. They shouldn't just close the station, but prosecute the executives.

Too many of the authors of the fascist coup walk freely, plotting new crimes. Chavez needs to close the station precisely to preserve democracy in Venezuela.

[rpannier]

16. Call me a skeptic

but I happen to think all governments and their leaders are corrupt in some form of the other.

I have real problems with this story:

I am supposed to believe that this station blatantly plotted with the failed coup in 2002 and after the coup failed, the government of Venezuela did nothing for four years.
The government just allowed an important wing of the coup to continue reporting the news and undermining an elected government.

I'm not convinced of this at all.

In addition Reporters without Borders lists Venezuela #115 in press freedoms out of 168. That puts them behind Bolivia, Panama, Chile and Brazil in the region. But ahead of Colombia.

link:
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639

[Judi Lynn]

19. When you have some spare time you owe it to yourself to start doing your homework,

and learn something about what happened there, like very many other posters here.

You owe it to yourself to be informed. This is something you must do for yourself. Don't expect people to summarize what they have spent tons of time finding out for themselves, and offer it to you.

I've got to go, but I'm sure someone else will have the time to steer you toward the awareness RSF is supported financially by the U.S. Government.

God knows enough has been posted here about it to have informed you, had you taken time to read the damned stuff.

[Say_What]

21. Reporters Without Borders-- An organization funded by NED, and the Repukes...

International Republican Institute Grants Uncovered
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

By DIANA BARAHONA and JEB SPRAGUE

British press baron Lord Northcliff said, "News is something that someone, somewhere wants to keep secret, everything else is advertising." If this is true, then U.S. government funding of Reporters Without Borders must be news, because the organization and its friends in Washington have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover it up. In spite of 14 months of stonewalling by the National Endowment for Democracy over a Freedom of Information Act request and a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED has revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute.

The NED still refuses to provide the requested documents or even reveal the grant amounts, but they are identified by these numbers: IRI 2002-022/7270, IRI 2003-027/7470 and IRI 2004-035/7473. Investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood asked Morillon on April 25 if her group was getting any money from the I.R.I., and she denied it, but the existence of the grants was confirmed by NED assistant to the president, Patrick Thomas.

The discovery of the grants reveals a major deception by the group, which for years denied it was getting any Washington dollars until some relatively small grants from the NED and the Center for a Free Cuba were revealed (see Counterpunch: "Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"). When asked to account for its large income RSF has claimed the money came from the sale of books of photographs. But researcher Salim Lamrani has pointed out the improbability of this claim. Even taking into account that the books are published for free, it would have had to sell 170 200 books in 2004 and 188 400 books in 2005 to earn the more than $2 million the organization claims to make each year ­ 516 books per day in 2005. The money clearly had to come from other sources, as it turns out it did.

The I.R.I., an arm of the Republican Party, specializes in meddling in elections in foreign countries, as a look at NED annual reports and the I.R.I. website shows. It is one of the four core grantees of the NED, the organization founded by Congress under the Reagan administration in 1983 to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been devastated by exposure by the Church committee in the mid-1970s (Ignatius, 1991). The other three pillars of the NED are the National Democratic Institute (the Democratic Party), the Solidarity Center (AFL-CIO) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). But of all the groups the I.R.I. is closest to the Bush administration, according to a recent piece in The New York Times exposing its role in the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide:

"President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration's democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Last spring, at an I.R.I. fund-raiser, Mr. Bush called democracy-building 'a growth industry.'" (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006)

http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona08012006.html

[Judi Lynn]

22. Might have known! Otto Reich, Reagan and Bush's favorite propagandist.

From this article:

Funding from the I.R.I. presents a major problem for RSF's credibility as a "press freedom" organization because the group manufactured propaganda against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Haiti at the same time that its patron, the I.R.I., was deeply involved in efforts to overthrow them. The I.R.I. funded the Venezuelan opposition to President Hugo Chavez (Barry, 2005) and actively organized Haitian opposition to Aristide in conjunction with the CIA (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006).

The man who links RSF to these activities is Otto Reich, who worked on the coups first as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and, after Nov. 2002, as a special envoy to Latin America on the National Security Council. Besides being a trustee of the government-funded Center for a Free Cuba, which gives RSF $50,000 a year, Reich has worked since the early 1980's with the I.R.I.'s senior vice president, Georges Fauriol, another member of the Center for a Free Cuba. But it is Reich's experience in propaganda that is especially relevant. In the 1980's he was caught up in investigations into the Reagan administration's illegal war on the Sandinistas. The comptroller general determined in 1987 that Reich's Office of Public Diplomacy had "engaged in prohibited covert propaganda activities." (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006). In early 2002, once George Bush had given him a recess appointment to the State Department, "Reich was soon tasked to orchestrate a massive international media defamation campaign against Chávez that has continued until this day" (Conkling and Goble, 2004).

Did Reich introduce RSF to the I.R.I. grants and coach the group in its propaganda efforts against Aristide, Chavez and Cuba? A look at the group's methods indicates this may be the case; the propaganda against Aristide, a former priest, was as crude as any of Reich's trademark slanders of Latin American leaders. RSF branded the Haitian president a "predator of press freedom" after linking him, without any evidence whatsoever, to the murders of journalists Jean Dominique and Brignol Lindor. It prominently featured photographs of the journalists' bodies on its web site, turning them into poster victims of Aristide's alleged repression against the press.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona08012006.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Written in April, 2002!

On September 30, 1987 a Republican appointed comptroller general of the U.S. found that Reich had done things as director of the OPD that were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities, "beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities...". The same report said Mr. Reich's operation violated "a restriction on the State Department's annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." Reich used the covert propaganda to demonize the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua and establish the Contras as fearless freedom fighters. The purpose was to make the U.S. public afraid enough of the Sandinistas to get Congress to fund the Contras directly. The Boland Amendment was passed by Congress in 1982 that prohibited U.S. funds from being used to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Meanwhile, the Contras were being illegally armed by the Reagan administration via the Iran-Contra arms deal.

On the night of Reagan's re-election in 1984, Reich's office put out the news that "intelligence sources"revealed that Soviet MIG fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua and Andrea Mitchell interrupted election night coverage on NBC to give the phony report. This resembles the Joseph Goebbel's fabrication that Polish troops had attacked German soldiers to give the Third Reich an excuse to launch the Nazi blitzkrieg into Poland to begin World War II in 1939. Other Reich prevarications given to media sources included: Nicaragua had been given chemical weapons by the Soviets, according to the Miami Herald; and leaders of the Sandinistas were involved in drug trafficking, according to Newsweek magazine.

In Latin American countries the United States has a history of doing business and siding with wealthy oligarchies of business, professional and military elites who tend to be lighter skinned people of European descent against the poor and working class composed mainly of darker skinned, indigenous people and those of African descent. The second Bush administration appears to be adhering to this tradition with gusto. With Otto Reich churning out the hate and fear, it is a safe bet to predict that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will be increasingly presented as the devil incarnate and his government as evil, anti-American terrorists. Mr. Reich will dish out the poisonous propaganda to every news source that covers the Bush administration's Latin American policy. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0419-03.htm

[Say_What]

41. A government by and for WAR CRIMINALS... Reich, Negroponte, Rummy Abrahms, Cheney,

Rice, Libby, El Mono, the list is endlist. And people knock the Venezuelan government?? One word: HYPOCRITES!!

[Judi Lynn]

27. Scrambled Priorities of "Reporters Without Borders" Precede Shooting

Scrambled Priorities of "Reporters
Without Borders" Precede Shooting

With a Statement By
Paul Emile-Dupret
Advisor to the European Parliament

Three weeks ago, on July 29, Narco News informed three millionaire "press freedom" organizations of the escalating attacks against Community Media journalists by rogue pro-coup police forces in Venezuela.

Only one of the three organizations - the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York - responded to our open letter. CPJ did so within 12 days, by filing an amended report on the state of press freedom in Venezuela. This report marked the first time that CPJ denounced the attacks on Community Media by the US-backed Carmona dictatorship that briefly took power last April. It also, even more significantly, contained the first statements from CPJ in its history acknowledging that the behavior of the commercial media owners - through censorship and orders to reporters to simulate, rather than report, the news - is itself a serious threat to press freedom.
(snip)



The Penalty for Carrying a Community TV Camera
in front of Alfredo Peña's Metropolitan Police
The man in the photo above is not just any cameraman, though. He is not, in fact, Venezuelan. And he was merely holding the camera for the journalists from Catia TV while he was observing municipal police behavior during protests outside of the Supreme Court (judges heard arguments over the prosecution of generals who participated in the violent attempted military coup of April 11, 12 and 13).

This man's name is Paul Emile-Dupret, and he was cameraman-for-a-day. He is - and this should have consequences for the European Commission-funded "Reporters Without Borders" - a citizen of Belgium and is a staff member of the European Parliament.



Paul Emile-Dupret, advisor to the European Parliament,
and the War Wounds of Being Community Journalist-for-a-Day
I, Paul-Emile Dupret, Belgian citizen, staff member of the European Parliament as a political advisor, make the following complaint:

Finding myself in Venezuela to understand the political situation in greater detail, for personal and political interest, I was victim of an aggression by the Caracas police while I accompanied a news team of the Community Television station Catia-TV that covered the demonstrations by Venezuelan citizens both in favor of the military generals implicated in the April 11 coup d'etat, and others opposed to the impunity of that action, in front of the Supreme Court. Suddenly, the metropolitan police of Caracas, in an act of evident provocation, made very rapid maneuvers in which they gratuitously attacked the sector of the demonstrations that was in favor of the (national) government, whom they violently beat and attacked with rubber bullet gunshots. At this moment, I was shot by rubber bullets that caused me some 40 wounds in the head, back, shoulder and left arm. Fortunately, these are wounds without worse consequences, but for a while I lost vision in one eye, because the bullets shot from some five meters way hit only two centimeters from the eye.

I protest this aggression and file a judicial complaint to the Venezuelan prosecutor, and inform my Embassy to file protest over this action by the Metropolitan Police.

I am aware of the fact that the Metropolitan Police of Caracas have a black history for many years in violations of human rights. It is worth stressing that for almost two years the Metropolitan Police agents have been trained by United States agents belonging to the Bratton Group (headed by former New York and Boston police commissioner William Bratton). This "security" corps acts under the command of Mayor Alfredo Peña, who is a bitter opponent of the Chávez government and the social reforms that this government has implemented.
(snip/...)

http://narconews.com/Issue23/communitymedia2.html

[hang a left]

31. Judi Lynn,

You are a priceless DUer. I cannot tell you how much I have learned from your posts over the years on issues that involve Central and South America. I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the countless hours of research you do for those who do not have the time, and how you tirelessly continue to always set the record straight.

Many many thanks.

[ret5hd]

38. I wholeheartedly second that...

It sometimes seems as if she has a photographic memory and research skills to match. A true treasure here.

[Say_What]

34. The Official OAS Press Release... very revealing

Friend and long time DU reader :hi: sent along the official OAS statement and pointed out the following information conveniently omitted from or changed in the MSM reports. This is how the MSM operates, they take a source, twist the words to form a more ominous meaning, and omit important information. Your *free and democratic* press at work around the planet, working hard to discredit and demonize a leader who refuses to kowtow to Tio Sam.

Insulza expressed his concern, not warned, and never said could undermine press freedom and democracy in Venezuela.

Insulza described the coup as frustrated military coup of 2002, not brief coup as the AP article reported.


OAS SECRETARY GENERAL EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER DECISION NOT TO RENEW BROADCASTING LICENSE OF VENEZUELAN TELEVISION STATION
January 5, 2007

<clips>

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today expressed his concern in light of the announcement made by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Television would not be renewed.

Insulza said that apart from any legal considerations related to this type of measure – a matter he believes corresponds to the internal laws of each member state – it is necessary to take into account the political repercussions that such a measure could bring about. The closing of a mass communications outlet is a rare step in the history of our hemisphere and has no precedent in the recent decades of democracy, Insulza affirmed.

The Venezuelan government has justified its decision based on serious political accusations against the broadcasting station, ranging from its support of the frustrated military coup of 2002 to a systematic policy against the democratic process. Certainly these are serious accusations, Insulza maintained, but he added that on the one hand, the existence of a large number of media outlets is what allows for the widest diversity of opinions to be expressed; and on the other, if an illegal act has been committed, the appropriate path to take in a democracy is to bring charges against the presumed perpetrators within the justice system.

By contrast, Insulza added, the adoption of an administrative measure to close a news outlet gives the appearance of a form of censorship against freedom of expression and at the same time serves as a warning against other news organizations, leading them to limit their actions at the risk of facing the same fate.

Such a decision, Insulza warned, runs contrary to the political climate generated at the time of the December elections, when the opposition’s recognition of President Chávez’s victory seemed to open the door to a climate of dialogue and understanding among all Venezuelans. In that positive electoral process, the presence of a free and pluralistic press played a fundamental role.

The Secretary General expressed his hope that this decision would be revised and that Radio Caracas Television would be allowed to continue broadcasting normally, in accordance with the will expressed by the government to protect democratic liberties. At the same time, he called on the news media to continue to exercise its role to inform in a truthful, free and objective manner that serves all citizens.

http://www.oas.org/OASpage/press_releases/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-001/07

[Judi Lynn]

44. This friend, DU reader should get a big "thank you" for that statement.

It DOES have a totally different tone from the slimey product AP slid into the public realm, thinking none of us would ever know the difference.

They've got NO RESPECT for the people on this planet when they practice deception. They've been known to carry straight, manufactured propaganda pieces in the past. People need to develope their journalistic lie detectors.

A gulf lies between the real article and the imitation news they arranged: perception molding, and conditioning, bidness as usual.

Thanks to you and to this very knowledgeable friend.

[Pavulon]

36. "Frame Jacking"

That is what i call it when someone starts discussing something in a way that shifts the frame of reference in such a way that what is accepted as wrong can become right. A simple explanation is someone who argues that they do stupid shit only when they are drunk, thus blaming the drinking.

It applies here because the guy in the red shirt who claims to be running a revolution (you pay for it) is consolidating power. Research will show changes in the court system, land seizure, and asset seizure. This is all justified by the socialist shills by citing past evils. Capitalist oppression, whatever.

Bottom line Venezuela is a petro state with a loud mouthed castro understudy who bitches about his biggest customer. We float their world. If perto drops his brains will see the light of day by his own army. SOP for the benevolent dictator.

Before I am attacked I will say I could not give a shit what they do there. If the chavistas go the whole mile and make it cuba2 good for them. I have traveled to many places and done business with communists, single party states, and they all take money. Money and power are behind all governments. Period.

But fix yur frame of refrence and thing what is next? The station backed civil unrest and the wrong politician in a coup. So if some outlet backed gore (mother jones) it is ok for bush to shut it down?

Oil go up, good things happen...Our demand for dead animals to burn it the only reason this guy is in the press. Does anyone know the political structure in Ecuador, no (hint they have no oil so it has no impact here)

[Peace Patriot]

39. Pavulon, "frame jacking" is what AP did to the OAS press release.

---

"Capitalist oppression, whatever."

Venezuela is a mixed capitalist/socialist economy, with a strong component of social justice. The Venezuelan Constitution protects private property and investment, and no property has or will be seized without compensation. The Chavez government has taken a stricter stance on these property protections than some local leftist governments, and has nixed projects to seize property BECAUSE they are unconstitutional. Have you any idea what your talking about? The "whatever" you tag onto "capitalism" is the global corporate predators, many of them US-based, who are prowling the world for the cheapest labor markets and most unprotected natural resources, and kill people to obtain them. That is not capitalism. It is organized crime.

"...changes in the court system, land seizure, and asset seizure."

Court system. Chavez's government and the National Assembly have added justices to the courts because of the backlog of court cases due to the incompetence and corruption of previous rightwing regimes. Our Constitution allows the same. The number of Supreme Court justices is not specified in our Constitution. Congress can change it--and they have the legal right to do so, whether for political or practical reasons.

Land seizure. No land has been seized without compensation, and most land seized is unused land, long neglected by its owners, where there are thousands of unlanded peasants with no way to feed their families. Robert Kennedy and the Alliance for Progress called for land reform in South America. So has the Catholic Church. This is nothing new--it is a LIBERAL measure, not even socialist, LIBERAL, and it is common sense. All these poor peasants will soon be beggars on the streets of Caracas if they can't acquire a few acres to farm. Venezuela furthermore wants to become food self-sufficient. That will never happen if they can't place farmers on farm land. It is BAD government policy not to do so.

Asset seizure. I have not heard of any asset seizure. Please fill me in. And I can't imagine that if there HAD been any significant asset seizure, we WOULDN'T have heard about it--with the way Venezuela's and our corporate news monopoly press is. Our government seizes assets all the time, in drug and other criminal cases, and, with the Patriot Act, any of us could be placed in a criminal category at any time, at the will of one man--George Bush. Things don't work that way in Venezuela--at the word of one man. They actually have a much superior democracy to ours! (You say "research will show...". Well, show us some research. What assets have been seized?)

---

"I will say I could not give a shit what they do there."

I'm afraid that that is obvious.

---

"...if some outlet backed gore (mother jones) it is ok for bush to shut it down?"

You are equating political advocacy with a violent military coup? Even if it's protest, or agitation, or civil disobedience--say, about the 2000 stolen election--that is night and day from a coup, in which violence is used to overthrow the government. Don't you know the difference? Or is it all one to you?

RCTV did not just "back" Chavez's political opposition. They participated in violent military coup attempt. If "Mother Jones" participated in a violent military coup attempt, I'm not quite sure what I would think should be done. They are a print medium (and internet, I believe). They are not licensed to use the public airwaves for the benefit of the public. Public airwaves is a different matter than print media. An argument could be made that private corporations should not be permitted to use the public airwaves, because they will inevitably attempt to monopolize news and opinion, and misuse the public airwaves for political purpose, which they have certainly done in Venezuela and here. But use of the public airwaves for a violent military coup is such an egregious abuse of their license, it would be derelict on the part of the government NOT to act in the public interest, and remove their license, and give it to someone who will use it responsibly and according to the purposes of the licensing law.

Someone upthread asked, why now? I think the reason is obvious. Their license is about to run out. If Chavez had invaded the station, and shut it down, and seized its assets--then the OAS letter would be quite different (in its real contents--not the AP re-wording). As it is, there isn't much they can or do criticize him for. Chavez clearly wanted to RESPECT THE LAW. Some dictator. The left of his own party wanted him to clamp down on them. But he waited. He showed patience. Now he's being criticized for that. The man can't win--he really can't, with some people.

-------

"Does anyone know the political structure in Ecuador, no (hint they have no oil so it has no impact here)."

Ecuador is the second largest So. American exporter of oil to the U.S. And Ecuador just elected a new leftist economist as president, Rafael Correa, friend of Hugo Chavez--and I guarantee you that Ecuador is going to have a large impact here. He was elected by 65% of the vote--more than Chavez. So the Bushites now face a solid wall of leftist democracies in the Andes, where the Bushites hunger for control of vast rich oil, gas and mineral deposits and other resources. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have all now rejected US "neo-liberal" (global corporate predators) policies, and are setting a new course, for the Andes democracies and for all of South America. And I predict that they will be joined within a year or two by Peru and Paraguay (big new leftist movements there).

You are dismissive of Chavez, Pavulon, as if he were just some jerk, and as if the momentous changes in South America were summed up by your view of Chavez as some tinpot oil rich dictator ripping everybody off, or buying everybody off. You have a very limited view, you know. I have encountered you here before, and, whenever anyone challenges you with facts and analysis, you say you don't give a shit. Well, I'm now thinking maybe you do, beneath your cynical facade.

The chart you provide is interesting, but it does leave out an important factor. The Venezuela oil profits are not only sustaining the economy, but they are also being used to massively provide schools and university educations for the poor, health clinics, housing, and infrastructure--for instance, the new Orinoco bridge to Brazil, and a planned gas pipeline--also, to encourage small businesses and farms, and local culture (as opposed to imported corporate mono-culture). Instead of all the profits being poured into the pockets of a few rich people, Venezuela is investing in the future. These policies are the will of the Venezuelan people, not just Chavez. These are why he and his government have won five elections, each with bigger margins than before. And you insult the Venezuelan people when you assert that this is all just some tinpot dictator's show. It isn't. And that is a fact. And these startling developments in Venezuela are by no means limited to Venezuela. This is the new thinking throughout South America. It is revolutionary, and marvelous in many ways. From brutal repression, for decades and centuries, to...democracy and social justice and self-determination. That is a great achievement--even just psychologically, let alone in real and potential material gain.

One of the NeoCons--Wolfowitz or Bolton--said something similar to your view: That Chavez was on a roll, with oil profits--but that it would all fall apart. They were expressing contempt for the people of Venezuela, as if they couldn't plan their future, as if they were being run by "Big Daddy." Well, I think that if you spent some time in barrios of Carracas, you'd find out who was running whom. This is a peoples' movement. It has nothing to do with dictators, or any past models in South America. It is something new. It is a tidal wave of change for the good, coming from the bottom, not the top. And its impact is going to set the agenda for all of Latin America for the rest of the century.

[Say_What]

40. Kick for such as EXCELLENT post...

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

49. Peace Patriot, you come prepared to conversations. It's such an experience reading your posts.

You make it hard for them to shout down the truth.

[Pavulon]

51. Long post, short response...

I have been to caracas an done business there. Passport stamped (they dont do that really), but I am aware of the economic state. Not every person there loves chavez. It is a divided place. I do not talk politics on trips but I do listen to others.

Market force has been around for ever. It is like gravity, you can not deny it. It can be manipulated but not controlled.

I assure you the vehicle you drive and the computer you use were built under this construct. Capitol finds cheap labor. So unless you are in a public library and live in a house you built by hand with nothing but books around, you are a consumer in this system.

Land seizure is not liberal. My frame of reference is simple. I am an American democrat, I am center left. Governments taking things (not taxes passed by a representative body) that rich people or evil killer corporations have to give away is not liberal. Mugabe is not a liberal.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2005/09/modern-xxi-century-highway-robbery-in.html

expropriation is a big word for taking stuff. (the site has an opinion however the incidents listed are examples. Its advocacy is not the point)

I do not give a shit who they elect. They are free to do what ever they like. Chavez runs his mouth and talks about the american empire, and how soon we will fall. This is irony at its best because they are complete Dependants on our consumption of their SINGLE factor economy.

The chart is key. Like Ecuador, whose presidents never seem to finish their terms, Venezuela is Dependant. The trends on the chart will change.

All of your sentiment in the last paragraph about the grand revolution rely on the price of a dead rotten animal.

[ret5hd]

54. Now I just wonder if you make shit up as you go...

[Pavulon]

58. Didn't stamp mine in VA

OR Brazil. Seems like it is not as common. My old passport is full of them, new one has a very few. They looked at it and I was on my way. No hassles. No problems. Business visa was easy too.

[Say_What]

57. WTF??? Land REFORM not Land Seizure... and this thread is not about Mugabe

Are you sure you're not a high school student? That remark of yours: expropriation is a big word for taking stuff. is a very juvenile way of expressing a concept you don't seem to know anything about. Most countries compensate owners when they expropriate property, including Venezuela, which compensates at market value.

COHA wrote an article about Venezuela's land reform that explains from a non-biased view how that process works in Venezuela. We know that since *you don't give a shit* that you won't read it, but there are others here who are interested and will:

<clips>

Venezuela's Agrarian Land Reform: More like Lincoln than Lenin

• Land Reform is the traditional third rail of left-of-center governments and social reform movements.

• President Hugo Chavez’s plan is fundamentally different from other Latin American attempts at land reform. The proper historical parallel is President Lincoln’s Homestead Act.

• Chavez’s opponents, who see him as “another Castro,” wrongly view his agrarian reform program as a total assault on private property.

• Land Reform is one of the most progressive aspects of Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” as it seeks to alter the fundamental power structure of the landed versus the landless, reduce Venezuela’s dependence on foodstuff imports, and redress the country’s disastrous experience with the “Dutch Disease.”

• The government should concentrate more on shoring up the agricultural base of the public lands it already has distributed to peasant cooperatives, rather than draw a premature bead on private lands.

...The Facts Regarding Chavez’s Land Reform
The Venezuelan leader first articulated his land reform plan, or what he calls “Vuelta al Campo,” (Return to the Countryside) under the Law on Land and Agricultural Development in November 2001. The goals of this legislation were as follows: to set limits on the size of landholdings, tax unused property as an incentive to spur agricultural growth, redistribute unused, primarily government-owned land to peasant families and cooperatives and, lastly, expropriate uncultivated and fallow land from large, private estates for the purpose of redistribution. On the last and most controversial goal, the landowners would be compensated for their land at market value. The National Land Institute (INTI) was set up to facilitate achieving these goals by establishing criteria to determine what land could be redistributed and the eligibility of those applying for new land deeds. Under Plan Zamora of 2003, both the INTI and its sister organizations, the National Rural Development Institute and the Venezuelan Agricultural Organization, have been tasked to administer agricultural expertise to the new peasant landowners and to provide markets for their goods. After a slow start, the Chavez government has redistributed about 2.2 million hectares of state owned land to more than 130,000 peasant families and cooperatives (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). So far, although not one acre of private property has been expropriated by the government, tensions are beginning to mount as Chavez extends his reform program from government-owned land to the latifundios (large, privately owned estates of more than 5,000 hectares, roughly 12,350 acres).

Chavez Emulates Lincoln
In the history of land reform, the most accurate analogy to illustrate what is transpiring in Venezuela is not Zimbabwe or Cuba – Chavez officials have repeatedly emphasized that they are not emulating the Cuban model of land reform – but the U.S.’ own Homestead Act. Signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the measure declared that any U.S. or intended citizen of at least 21 years of age could claim up to 160 acres of government land. Like Chavez’s Vuelta al Campo, there were many restrictions in the Act which benefited the recipients by ensuring that the new reform could not be manipulated by entrenched, moneyed interests. Under Lincoln’s legislation, the land could not be sold to speculators or used as debt collateral, and only after five years of “actual settlement and cultivation,” according to Section 2, could the homesteader submit an application for a land patent. Similarly, in Chavez’s plan, only after three years may the peasants obtain legal ownership of the land, and only then after they have rendered it productive. The Homestead Act was one of the most progressive and far-reaching government initiatives in U.S. history insofar as it helped to develop and secure an agrarian-based middle class, which had an epic impact on the future democratization of the nation. That Chavez is trying to emulate it in his own country, as part of his plan to extirpate Venezuela’s entrenched inequality, is an effort that all right-minded people should applaud.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1384

[Pavulon]

59. It gets old

because an elementary student can just stomp on the crap you put out.

Chavez is no Lincoln. The land given was not taken from corporations and rich elites. An argument can be made regarding indian treaties but that is WAY off topic here. Please if you want to talk about land distribution in the US lets open a new thread.

He is seizing assets owned by private individuals and corporations. It is there right to do so. So I don't give a shit. But it is funny how many people view this as some Utopian act that will create peace and happiness. Mugabe without any oil.

So if I were doing risk assessment in VA there is no fucking way I would put capitol into a country in the form of anything the government can seize. No different than staging orders in so if it gets "lost" at customs or port of miami for that matter, you are only screwed out of part of a multi million dollar order.

Your op-ed is nice but my OPINION is different. I am entitled to it as you are entitled to yours.

[Say_What]

60. It sure does... See Peace Patriot's post #39...

[Pavulon]

61. Content?

Generally on these internet message board things people post content backing up their ideas. Just my experience, yours may differ.

Whats up with the petroleum world graphic?

[Say_What]

67. How did I miss that one?? You say there's NO OIL IN ECUADOR??

I must remember to read your posts more carefully. You are very entertaining.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Judi Lynn]

69. You've got an inflammatory oil rig graphic, apparently! Feel free to use this one!

Actually, your triptych seems appropriate.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

43. Funny, for a guy who always says how much he doesn't give a shit what they

do over there, you always seem to show up every time someone types the word "Chavez". For some reason you seem to be obsessed with his fashion style (You should work for E Entertainment). It seems to me that you do care a whole lot. You and your boys must be terrified of him.

[Pavulon]

50. Not quite

I have done business in SA for years. I read history. They all take dollars. My boys make money selling equipment to petro indudtry in locations all over. Communists, socialists, whomever. They all do business.

My not giving a shit means I could care less who they elect. It is the choice of the people. However it is funny to see chavez talk shit about his biggest customer. It amuses me to no end.

Chavez should be afraid of falling oil prices.

You are in the same posts, all the time.

So if showing up has some special connotation we are in the same boat.

[Say_What]

55. For one who *does business in SA for years and reads history*,

you sure don't know shit about Venezuela.

That statement of yours: "My boys make money selling equipment to petro indudtry in locations all over" is questionable. Your post #139 the other day about CITGO financing Venezuela's economy revealed how much you actually know about the petro industry in Venezuela or LatAm.

CITGO is simply one very small part of the state run PDVSA. Nobody who does business with the petro industry would be stoooopid enough to make that blunder. But then as you claim, you don't give a shit.
:rofl:

[Pavulon]

56. Do you have any content

or just doing a drive by. I work for a company that sells and sets up tooling equipment. Petro companies buy machines, but the AUTO manufacturers in VA spend millions on this stuff. There are thousands of corporations doing business in VA, it is a massive market.

PDVSA is not the only consumer of tooling equipment in the country. Their subs like Hovensa buy equipment as does CITGO. It is pretty numb nuts simple. Citgo is not very small, they are fucking huge. I am aware of their structure. Their money is green (figuratively) But what the fuck would an oil drilling and exploring operation need with machine tools.

Here is the graph again. Remember who is paying the tab down there. Numb nut simple, we buy the oil they pump out of the ground. Citgo sells and REFINES here. vertical integration and control of the product from pipe to pump is smart. But what the fuck do I know.




If they could make a decent turning or milling machine or program working cam software I would not make a living there. They don't have the facilities or people to do it. Longer airplane rides would result if they did. LA is so much easier to travel to than Asiapac.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

65. So in other words you do care, because you always feel the

need to "educate" people about Venezuela every time somebody mentions the place. It's a "petro state", no shit really? Man you sure know your stuff Sherlock. Hey, why don't "educate' us some more on how Ecuador has no oil. I'm pretty sure you'll be sharing with us how much you don't care about them either in the coming months.

You see i'm not the one talking out of boths sides of my mouth here. I don't go around qualifying every other post with "I don't give a shit but blah, blah, blah...." every time someone types Chavez or Venezuela around here.

[Judi Lynn]

66. I really loved the oilless Ecuador idea.

Maybe he's seen the photos and believes the only oil they've got is the oil American companies have left in their lakes and streams, etc. Who knows how long it will take the country to recover from this oil they don't have?





ETC.

[Judi Lynn]

68. That must be some business which allows you to be an employer

of legions of men, an international potentate, and still have enough time left over to haunt all the Venezuela threads!

[Say_What]

72. Touche!!! I thought the same thing.. n/t

[mitchtv]

63. No expert but...

1)Ecuador does indeed have substantial petroleum resource
2) if a US entity advocated kidnapping the president or any other citizen, and overthrow of the Government by force, That is illegal and libel to prosecution.

[Joe Chi Minh]

37. He should sequestrate such TV stations, on the rounds that they

are routinely misused against the State by seditious anarchists, and make sure they are sold to an honest individual or organisation, prepared to criticise honestly, but to report honestly the benefits and progress made in building up the nation, once wrested from the malefactors; malefactors with a long and criminal history of murderous greed, social oppression and seditious national international alliances (no name, no pack drill...).

Thatcher's government sequestrated the funds of trade unions, on the grounds that by fighting for the jobs of their members, they were acting against the interests of the State. It is now clear that the boot was on the other foot. Not that it should even be in doubt that the far right wing and its rich supporters plunder their nation, whatever it might be, to their own enrichment and aggrandsiement.

A Democratic government, such as Venezuela, is surely fully entitled, therefore, to sequestrate the assets of the country's real malefactors, impenitent, indeed, hostilely active, as they remain.

[Judi Lynn]

46. Absolutely have to post this in memory of a Free Republic poster who used to infest the

Latin America threads during his brief stay with us. You may remember how he loved, God bless him, to inform us how exceptionally well the economic reforms Pinochet put in place pulled Chile out of (the Nixon/Kissinger/CIA-created) economic hell and how they became a beacon of capitalistic light throughout the world. Yeah, you bet! This info. can throw a little more light on his claims:

Overthrow: the Chilean disaster
December 14th, 2006

Tis the season, if you can’t be jolly, try a little truth-telling.And that’s exactly what Stephen Kinzer has done in his elegantly written popular history Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change. The veteran New York Times reporter, a former Bureau chief in Turkey Guatemala and Berlin prepares us for what lies ahead:
(snip)

The recent death of the arch thug and sycophant, Pinochet directs us to Kinzer’s excellent summary of the U S. involvement in the destruction of Chilean democracy. Again it is the brain child of another war wimp, Richard Nixon who attended the Quaker college Whittier. As some wag said years ago about one of the most reviled (pre Bush) presidents in U.S. history,”If only he had made the football team.”

Salvador Allende, A socialist had won the presidency of Chile on September 4,1970. Agustin Edwards one of Chile’s richest men and owner of the largest paper El Mercurio, could not stomach the possibility and went directly to Edward Korry the US ambassador to ask for his help. Korry told him the US would do nothing. Edwards would not take no for an answer and flew to New York to go over Korry’s head. Edwards went to Donald Kendall the head of Pepsi Cola and told Kendal Chile was about to fall under communist rule.Richard Nixon had prior to the Oval Office, been a lawyer for Kendal.On September 14, Kendal met Nixon and Chile’s fate was sealed.Richard Helms the head of the CIA at that time took notes of that meeting and one command of Nixon’s stood out: “Make Chile’s economy scream.”

Prior to this destabilization campaign, from 1950-1969 4,000 Chilean officers had already been schooled at the notorious School of the Americas, then located in the Panama Canal zone. This is the same school which largely catholic activists have been trying to close for years because of its nefarious role in teaching counterinsurgency t and torture techniques to its many graduates, one of whom was Augusto Pinochet. This rabid anticommunist and anti-Marxist indoctrination was aimed at domestic control of local populations who might be so stupid as to vote for the eradication of poverty and more social justice in their countries.

Nixon had made a stark choice.Instead of building up Latin America’s democratic left as both Johnson and Kennedy had opted for, he cast his lot with the business elite and the military because of his close corporate connections. After all as one former president so honestly said, “the business of America is business.”

It was here that the oleagenous Henry Kissinger, a man bereft of any scruples, truly made his Machiavellian mark. As one of his longtime associates Lawrence Eagleburger said about him,”Americans tend to want to pursue a set of moral principles. Henry does not have an intrinsic feel for the American political system and he does not start with the same values.”

Nixon’s orders were to the point.To the US ambassador Korry Nixon raged, “That son of a bitch,Allende.We’re going to smash him.” Economic levers were primed-the cutting of loans and credit; opposition parties funded;ITT,Kennecott and Anaconda (Copper was Chile’s number one export),Firestone,Pfizer and a host of others radically slowed the economy down.On July 11,1971 the Chilean Congress authorized the nationalization of Kennecott and Anaconda, both of whom were accused by Allende of making immorally high profits.He paid them 12% per year and to Allende’s reckoning they had made $774 million in excess profits.On the other side, radical supporters of Allende pressured the president to move even faster. And then there was Kissinger’s famous quip” “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”

Nixon and Kissinger found their traitor Augusto Pinochet and Chile descended into a country ruled by fear; over 3,000 were killed, thousands tortured and economic ruin, the failed nostrums of the Chicago Boys, Milton Friedman’s disciples descended on what had been a model democracy. When Pinochet seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. after ten years of free-market castor oil, unemployment reached 22%. In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990 when Pinochet left office, the number of poor had doubled to 40%.
(snip/...)

http://theologyinthevineyard.wordpress.com/tag/about-theology-in-the-vineyard/church/profiles/

[Judi Lynn]

52. Statement from a Democratic Congressman, JOSEPH P. KENNEDY 2ND:

Warm up to Chavez

Joe Kennedy says N.Y.'s poor are reason enough for his
controversial oil deal with Venezuela's notorious prez

By JOSEPH P. KENNEDY 2ND

The record warmth being felt here is a rare gift. But the truth is that for average New Yorkers, staying warm remains a struggle, with temperatures plunging at night and heating prices hovering near record highs.

About five years ago, the cost of crude oil stood around $10 a barrel. Today, it trades around $60 a barrel. The cost of heating oil in New York City now averages $2.61 a gallon, a spike of more than 100% over the past couple of years.

For many Americans, the increase hardly matters. But for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living on the edge, staying warm is a fight each and every night. It's no coincidence that after a cold winter night newspaper reports describe homes that have burned down in poor neighborhoods of this great city.

That's because the needy turn to dangerous tactics to stay warm. Families use kerosene lanterns that light curtains on fire, or overload electrical circuits with space heaters. An elderly woman drags a cot into the kitchen so that she can warm herself in front of an open broiler door at 2 a.m.
(snip)

When our government fails to meet the needs of the less fortunate while handing out tax breaks to the wealthy, and subsidies to our biggest corporations, when energy companies refuse to help those in need while charging them record-high prices, the message to the poor is loud and clear: "You're on your own."

We reject this policy of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. We refuse to leave our most vulnerable friends and neighbors out in the cold.

Kennedy is chairman and president of Citizens Energy Corp.

Originally published on January 6, 2007
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/486275p-409434c.html

[Pavulon]

53. This is my primary concern, really

As I have said and we have "discussed" I dont care who is in power in Venezuela. It has little to no impact on my day to day or my politics. The us and EU have MASSIVE business presence in VA.

HOWEVER, any democrat who snugs up with this guy publicly is doing the party a disservice, imho.

It is my opinion this guy is continuing to move left into a cuba like power structure. The benefits of the benevolent dictator to his people can be debated. He will continue to seize power until he has it all and can manipulate the vote by buying it or someone will kill him.

However in the frame of reference Americans use dictators spewing anti american sentiment is not a popular thing.

Sure there is more depth to chavez and he certainly is taking steps to help the poor.

However in the sound-byte world he is not a guy I would go on record supporting no matter ho much of an oil donation he makes.

Just a political call. To bad there is no online site with odds taking bets on how long before he joins kim jung il and castro as dictators. My bet no more than 5 years, if oil stays above $50 a bbl.

Then he can ban furry underwear and tv stations. http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1694489.html

[Judi Lynn]

64. Just as the movement going on in Venezuela did not start with Chavez,

since that astonishing misjudgement is, of course, foolish, there are far more people involved in the U.S. SIXTEEN individual states and ONE HUNDRED SIXTY THREE Native American tribes in their decision to ask Venezuela for discounted oil last year, and this year.

This group of many, many, MANY people is far larger than just the "rogue" or non-representational Democrat you attempt to portray Joseph Kennedy as being. (Don't downgrade Democrats to Democrats.) There are Republicans involved in this as well who, along with the Democratic officials and Native American representatives are "snuggling down" with Hugo Chavez, as well. Whatever possessed you to attempt to use a word like "snuggling down" to describe Joseph Kennedy's hard work for his constituents? Exceedingly snotty and, of course, stupid.

All of these states and tribes appealed to U.S. oil companies for cooperation last year and were flatly denied long before they approached Venezuelan authorities to get help for their struggling citizens.

In case you try perpetually to claim it's all Chavez's doing, I'd like to remind other DU'ers that the tradition of extending preferential rates to poorer areas actually had its roots YEARS AND YEARS ago, before Chavez, when Venezuela AND MEXICO had arrangements with Central American countries, and Caribbean Islands.

On edit: for DU'ers who would like a look at how OLD this practise of discounting oil is, please see the following:

Mexico and Venezuela renew San Jose Accord
03-08-04 Mexico and Venezuela renewed the San Jose Accord whereby the two oil producing nations supply a total of 160,000 bpd of crude to 11 Central American and Caribbean nations at discount prices.
The document was signed simultaneously in Mexico and Venezuela by Presidents Vicente Fox and Hugo Chavez, according to a joint communique.

The San Jose Accord came into existence on Aug. 3, 1980, and it has never been suspended. The countries that benefit from the special crude prices are Barbados, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, the communique noted.
The pact also establishes "a cooperation mechanism to promote the economic and social development of the beneficiary nations."

The cooperation accord finances social-economic development projects in the participating nations, as well as trade of goods and services by Mexican and Venezuelan firms.
Mexico and Venezuela each provide half of the total 160,000 bpd of the crude sold at discount prices.

http://www.gasandoil.com/GOC/news/ntl43392.htm

[killbotfactory]

62. I didn't know any media corporation had a right to use public airwaves

Especially those who use those airwaves to attempt to overthrow a democratic government.

[Doctor_J]

70. Well, in a way this is true

A few of the radio hate mongers in the US routinely advocate assassination of Dems, liberals, gays, etc., and they're never removed from the airwaves - most of them get improved ratings in fact.

[Judi Lynn]

71. They've never participated in an organized violent coup, either, have they?

They (your hate radio and tv stations) also have never seized total control of ALL information flow within a country, closed out the independent radio stations, then blanketed the country in silence so people could NOT KNOW what in hell was happening while their comrades carried out the violent coup.

The Venezuelan oligarchy's media LIED about an extreme situation involving the entire country, then they CONCEALED THE TRUTH in an attempt to keep the population from finding out what had happened in time to mount an effective response.

How could you NOT grasp this? Please take time to learn more about it, in order to discuss it from an informed position.