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the corporate press here, who think it's perfectly okay for a broadcast corporation to participate in a fascist coup d'etat, and who NEVER TELL YOU that RCTV forbade members of the ELECTED government of Venezuela to speak on TV after Chavez was kidnapped in 2002.
What they mean by "free speech" is CORPORATE SPEECH--and no one else gets to speak. That's what they've got here. 24/7 corporate speech on our PUBLIC airwaves. That's what they had in Venezuela until the Chavez government challenged their monopoly.
The Chavez government has been trying to create BALANCE, of the kind that our Fairness Doctrine sought here, at one time (pre-Reagan). The airwaves belong to the PUBLIC. Corporations have to EARN THE PRIVILEGE of using them, by providing politically neutral news coverage, BALANCED political discussion, equal time for opposing views and public service broadcasting, and furthermore without forming media monopolies. The government should also provide portions of the PUBLIC airwaves for PUBLIC access, so that ordinary people, who don't have million dollar lobbyists and P.R. firms, can express their views and for broadbased cultural coverage. The Chavez government has taken this latter approach--improving public access, with the publicly funded news broadcaster Telesur and other such initiatives. Chavez himself provides an antidote to the pervasive corporate propaganda that dominates Venezuelan broadcasting, by his weekly radio show, where he talks to and with the public about the issues (reminiscent of FDR's "Fireside Chats").
Public participation and voter turnouts have been better than at any time in Venezuela's or Latin America's history, with these and many other efforts of the Chavez government to encourage participation.
Just remember what the rightwing coup general in Honduras said about their coup, that its purpose was "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). "Communism," in this general's mind = New Deal, i.e., the government siding with the people. Clean elections and countering corporate monopoly of the public airwaves are the sort of "communist" ideas that Latin America's rightwing feels tasked with preventing HERE. That's why the U.S. government gives them billions of our tax dollars in military aid and USAID political aid--to stem the leftist democracy tide that has swept much of Latin America from lapping to these shores.
It is a "BIG LIE" that Chavez is anti-free speech. He is anti-CORPORATE MONOPOLY OF SPEECH. That's why they hate him so much. Corporate monopoly of public discussion, combined with corporate-controlled 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, are HOW these multinational corporations, banksters and war profiteers are robbing us blind and destroying our democracy. They hate and fear anyone challenging their power.
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