Methinks the Post doth protest too much, especially in regards to 'paid pundits.' It looks to me like the DLC, NDN and their corporate sponsors are just playing their part in demonizing Chavez.
It's high time that the U.S. stopped jacking around with other countries' democratic processes. In short, let's have functional elections
here first. Quit pouring money into the NED, and pour it into squaring up the electoral process in the U.S. Any black Democrat from Ohio will tell you so.
Regarding the media law that was passed actually last year, the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, was a law that had been in the works for about three years. Actually, it preceded even the coup in 2002.
Well, I don't know if any of the listeners have ever been down to Venezuela and seen the private media channels, but it's like a thousand times worse than Fox Cable News, and we're talking every channel except the state-owned channel. Not just with political opinions, but in terms of presenting outright lies, lots of violence, there was a lot of soft porn -- and sometimes even beyond that -- during daytime hours.
So, basically this law, the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, is to put some kind of control on sex and violence that can be shown during children's and family viewing hours. Once again the United States Dept. of State together with U.S. media and Venezuelan private media, have launched this massive campaign saying freedom of speech and expression is being stifled and the government is censoring the media. But that's absolutely absurd. You turn on any of the channels here and you'll see that there's more freedom of expression enjoyed in Venezuela than probably anywhere else in the world. It's the only place where they can go on television and talk about killing the president, or saying the most derogatory and offensive things on a news hour.
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Thus far, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, named for South America's nineteenth-century liberator, Simón Bolívar, has deepened and politicized a pre-existing tradition of Venezuelan populism. Despite Chávez's often radical discourse, the government has not engaged in mass expropriations of private fortunes, even agricultural ones, nor plowed huge sums into new collectively owned forms of production. In fact, private property is protected in the new Constitution promulgated after Chávez came to power. What the government has done is spend billions on new social programs, $3.7 billion in the past year alone. As a result, 1.3 million people have learned to read, millions have received medical care and an estimated 35-40 percent of the population now shops at subsidized, government-owned supermarkets. Elementary school enrollment has increased by more than a million, as schools have started offering free food to students. The government has created several banks aimed at small businesses and cooperatives, redeployed part of the military to do public works and is building several new subway systems around the country. To boost agricultural production in a country that imports 80 percent of what it consumes, Chávez has created a land-reform program that rewards private farmers who increase productivity and punishes those who do not with the threat of confiscation.
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Through it all, occasional armed clashes between hard-core Chavistas and opposition militants have left about twenty people on both sides dead or seriously wounded. And the Chávez government has enacted a media law that punishes slander with jail time and prohibits broadcast of the twenty-four-hour-a-day video loops that were an opposition favorite, drawing sharp criticism from press-freedom advocates. But there has been no major government campaign of repression, not even against the architects of the coup, many of whom are at liberty and still in Venezuela.
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So I visit the offices of the right-wing tabloid Así Es la Noticia, owned by one of Venezuela's top-circulation dailies, El Nacional. "Look, Chávez won the referendum. People have to accept that," says the editor, Albor Rodriguez. She is in her early 30s, an escuálido all the way, but she respects the facts.
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Albor, to my surprise, is almost as harsh on the opposition: "They lost because Chávez has a deep emotional connection with the people, and they have no connection with the people. Also, he has spent a lot of money on the barrios. He pours money into the barrios."
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Right-wingers, extreme Right-wingers and many moderates with strong corporate ties are horrified by this form of populism. I think that the same crew that took down Howard Dean views Chavez in the same light.
Is Chavez even remotely like Howard Dean? No. Does that matter to rabid, non-thinking, attack-mode-all-the-time, freaks who are still looking for Reds under their beds?
No.