Hugo Chavez shutting down Radio Caracas Television

[lalenin]

@BrainGlutton

Multiple cites in post #7.

All I see in post # 7 is articles that come down to RCTV supporting the removal of Chavez, but that’s a long way from participating in the coup. Essentially they are guilty of opposing and criticizing the Chavez government which is precisely the role of the opposition.

[BrainGlutton]

@lalenin

All I see in post # 7 is articles that come down to RCTV supporting the removal of Chavez, but that’s a long way from participating in the coup.

:dubious: No, it isn’t.

[XT]

@lalenin

All I see in post # 7 is articles that come down to RCTV supporting the removal of Chavez, but that’s a long way from participating in the coup. Essentially they are guilty of opposing and criticizing the Chavez government which is precisely the role of the opposition.

Where there is smoke, there MUST be fire! A lot of it sounded like stuff you might here from a highly liberal source concerning Bush…

:smack:

Lets hope HE doesn’t put two and two together (I know, bit of a stretch for the man, but there IS Rove and Chaney out there…) and decide to take similar steps…

-XT

[lalenin]

@BrainGlutton

:dubious: No, it isn’t.

Yes it is. Is this how a debate works?

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

I told you so:

I told him so, too.

Anyway, I’m glad you finally see this would-be tyrant for what he is, BG. Better late than never.

[BrainGlutton]

@lalenin

Yes it is. Is this how a debate works?

I’m starting to come round to tagos’ way of thinking on this. Consider: If a coup were attempted against an American president, and a TV station openly supported the coup while it was happening, and the coup failed, how long do you think that station would keep its FCC license? In fact, the responsible parties at the station – even if they did not provably collude with the coup plotters beforehand – would be justly convicted of treason under the “aid and comfort” clause.

In Venezuela, AFAIK, most of the actual plotters of the failed coup are still free.

[kidchameleon]

@lalenin

Yes it is. Is this how a debate works?

If only Monty Python had thought of this before now…

[XT]

@BrainGlutton

If a coup were attempted against an American president, and a TV station openly supported the coup while it was happening, and the coup failed, how long do you think that station would keep its FCC license?

Well, if this coup attempt had happened during the Civil War, you probably would have a point. However today? I’d say that the station would not lose their FCC license regardless of if they had ‘supported’ the coup openly or not…unless America had some sort of fundamental shift. As things are today? Get real.

But, way to look for an excuse BG…I knew that you were just fishing for a good reason TOO handwave away Chavez and his actions. Go back to sleep…all is well…

@BrainGlutton

In fact, the responsible parties at the station – even if they did not provably collude with the coup plotters beforehand – would be justly convicted of treason under the “aid and comfort” clause.

Doubtful. Freedom of Speech and all that. Now, had they given material aid to a coup attempt…and if you had a bit more than the thin BS thats been presented as ‘evidence’ thus far…then its possible that those people would have been prosecuted. But to then revoke its FCC license? Do you really not know even that much about the country you live in that you think this is even possible? That POLITICALLY its possible here? :rolleyes:
Regardless…your OP asked if there was a leftist meme to excuse this, and you have one…tagos has provided, and unsurprisingly enough, you are ‘coming around’ to his way of thinking. So, the thread has been answered already…

-XT

[GIGObuster]

@xtisme

Regardless…your OP asked if there was a leftist meme to excuse this, and you have one…tagos has provided, and unsurprisingly enough, you are ‘coming around’ to his way of thinking. So, the thread has been answered already…

-XT

It is not a meme, it is based on that happened.

The picture can not be erased, if you ever see the documentary “The Revolution will not be televised” you will see with your own eyes that the TV people and military men were in cahoots in the days just before and during the coup. The TV network just “forgot” to tell the Venezuelan people what was coming. Then during the violence that incited the coup, the TV channel edited the camera shots to make it appear that Chavez men shot at people indiscriminately (they were shooting back at the snipers and people who shot first at them) and then the TV editors and reporters told the army to openly get rid of Chavez, on false evidence they had made, no less.

- YouTube

- YouTube

Two things to notice: One, the shutdown was not suddenly and it was old news. Second, that OP article seems to me that is distorting things even from the intro that says “dead air” [in Venezuela] giving the impression that other private TV stations that are opposed to Chavez were shut down too, nope.

While I do dislike Chavez I still abhor the opposition in Venezuela much more, just imagine if the Democratic party had decided to boycott the last elections in protest for the previous election “fraud” (and in Venezuela the evidence piled up that the opposition was lying when they say they lost because of fraud) and then act surprised that the Republicans got a super majority. One thing is for sure, I would work to get rid of a leadership that thought coups, fraud and boycotts would make you win, the Venezuelan opposition needs to clean house and then not be afraid of saying that some of Chavez reforms are here to stay, but that the populism of Chavez is not to be followed.

[GIGObuster]

@Jackson Diehl

Chavez apologists frequently claim that his actions might look bad to foreigners but are hugely popular in Venezuela. This one is demonstrably not. A poll in April by the firm Datanalisis showed that 70 percent of Venezuelans oppose the closure of RCTV, including 40 percent of those who call themselves Chavistas.

I was missing that bit, since the article in the OP is an opinion piece, I feel the need to point out to Mr Diehl that the Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis is IMO as reliable as a Fox news TV poll.

http://www.counterpunch.org/delacour08072004.html

In early February 2003, the anti-Chavez Venezuelan polling firms Datanalisis and Consultores 21 held a joint press conference in Caracas claiming to be "neutral parties"in the country’s deeply polarized political conflict. Just over two weeks before the press conference, I reported that Datanalisis’ President Jose Antonio Gil Yepes had told the Los Angeles Times in July 2002 that Chavez "has to be killed."I pointed out that a simple glance at Datanalisis’ website revealed “the kind of blatant political partisanship that one normally does not associate with respectable polling operations”(as this report goes to print, Datanalisis’ website has been running John Kerry’s Chavez-bashing misstatement at the top of their "news"column for over a month).

Since I first reported on Datanalisis’ blatant partisanship and biased polling, Gil Yepes has mysteriously disappeared as a public spokesperson for his company (although he occasionally pops up brandishing a letter from L.A. Times correspondent T. Christian Miller, who now supposedly claims that the pollster did not have criminal intent when he told Miller that Chavez “has to be killed”).

With Gil Yepes’ reputation in question, the job of restoring Datanalisis’ mythic neutrality was left to company director Luis Vicente Leon. Never mind that Leon had also been making blatantly anti-Chavez statements to the press long before Gil Yepes blurted out his homicidal fantasies to the L.A. Times. In Venezuela, where Chavez-bashing journalists abound, "neutrality"means telling the business-controlled propaganda apparatus what it wants to hear.

Thus, in the spirit of "neutrality,"Leon made a startling announcement at the conference of February 2003. Although it had long been established that Chavez enjoyed his highest levels of support among the poor, Leon declared that Datanalisis’ latest "poll"disproved the "myth"that public opinion was divided along class lines. According to Leon, "people of lower incomes"had become even more inclined to reject Chavez than the rest of Venezuelan society.

For anyone even slightly in tune with reality, Leon’s claim should have sent off alarm bells. Hardly more than two months before, Gil Yepes himself told the Associated Press that_while only 30 percent of the overall Venezuelan population supported the government_45 percent of the poor still approved of Chavez. Setting aside the question of whether or not Gil Yepes’ figures were based on methodologically sound polling (that issue will be taken up in the second part of this series), the figures suggested that the poor were more than twice as inclined to support Chavez as the rest of society, a finding that was consistent with past polls and election returns. Given that Venezuela’s poorest stratum (stratum E) accounts for just over 40 percent of the adult population, the only way Gil Yepes could arrive at an overall 30 percent approval rating amid 45 percent support for Chavez among the poor is if the President’s approval rating among the non-poor was close to 20 percent.

Did Leon actually expect people to believe that_in the course of two months_the poor had gone from being more than twice as likely to support Chavez to rejecting him at a higher rate than the middle and wealthier strata?

[BrainGlutton]

Update: There was a protest march against the station’s closure yesterday.

Venezuela’s supreme court has approved the shutdown.

According to this, RCTV has been in trouble with the law many times, even long before Chavez’ administration.

Democratic Underground discussion thread

Free Republic discussion thread

(It’s enlightening, or at least interesting, to look at things from all sides.)

[BrainGlutton]

@xtisme

Well, if this coup attempt had happened during the Civil War, you probably would have a point. However today? I’d say that the station would not lose their FCC license regardless of if they had ‘supported’ the coup openly or not…unless America had some sort of fundamental shift. As things are today? Get real.

“As things are today” there can’t be the kind of coup d’etat in the U.S. that was tried in Venezuela in 2002, not even the attempt. But granting the hypothetical – the station would keep its license?! You can’t seriously believe that. Stations can lose their FCC license for much less than treason. And treason it would be, legally and constitutionally. The responsible journalists/executives would be indicted and convicted.

[GIGObuster]

From the protest march link:

Chavez’s government announced on Saturday it had renewed the broadcast license of four other television stations, including Venevision, which the government said committed many of the same crimes that were used to deny a license to RCTV.

AFAICR the difference that doomed RCTV was that RCTV never bothered to make a correction or their owners to stop calling for the head of Chavez.

[Sam_Stone]

Gah. Both of those threads (at DU and Free Republic) are useless. DU is full of people basically regurgitating the left-wing line that the station was shut down not to squelch speech, but because they ‘broke the law’. The Free Republic thread is just full of wankers making commie jokes and photoshopping pictures.

The truth is somewhere in between. If the real issue is RCTV’s support for a coup some time ago, why wasn’t it dealt with when Chavez first took power? If RCTV had changed its tone and started supporting Chavez, do you think it would have been shut down because of its previous coup support? Not a chance. What’s going on here is that Chavez is silencing an opposing media voice, and he’s got an ‘out’ to do so because of some previous bad behaviour by that media voice. But make no mistake - this is still all about stifling dissent.

This is the same reason why he’s now making all the kids in school take a course in the ‘correctness’ of socialism. The Soviets did the same thing. Brainwash them early, and you can keep a lid on dissent as time goes on.

There will be more of this in the future. Chavez will continue his clamp down. The fellow travelers at the Democratic Underground wll faithfully regurgitate the talking points fed to them by Chavez’s PR machine. And the Free Republic morons will continue to eschew real debate and instead thumb their noses, make up funny words for Democrats, and sneer.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam Stone

This is the same reason why he’s now making all the kids in school take a course in the ‘correctness’ of socialism. The Soviets did the same thing. Brainwash them early, and you can keep a lid on dissent as time goes on.

Can you? The Soviet experience suggests otherwise.

[Martin_Hyde]

@BrainGlutton

Can you? The Soviet experience suggests otherwise.

You’re aware the USSR was around for a good 70 years?

[Quartz]

@BrainGlutton

I didn’t mind when he nationalized the oilfields … But as a former journalist I say silencing opposition media is beyond the pale

I think this is entirely appropriate:

@Holocaust Museum in Washington

When they came for the gypsies, I did not speak, for I am not a gypsy. When they came for the Jews, I did not speak, because I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak, for I am not a Catholic. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam Stone

Gah. Both of those threads (at DU and Free Republic) are useless. DU is full of people basically regurgitating the left-wing line that the station was shut down not to squelch speech, but because they ‘broke the law’. The Free Republic thread is just full of wankers making commie jokes and photoshopping pictures.

Just out of curiousity, is there a Libertarian board analogous to DU/FR?

[Martin_Hyde]

Also, last I checked, in the United States a military leader who attempted a coup would never be allowed to run for elected office a few years later. People seem to conveniently forget that Chavez attempted to overthrow the government as a military leader in 1992.

But I guess that’s okay because “might makes right” as long as the “might” is a leftist autocrat who wants to nationalize industry and give the country “back to the people?” I find it amazing after 70+ years of this stuff throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, tons of human suffering and general economic failure people still think leftist autocrats are the “good guys” who never get a fair break because of the evil capitalist powers.

What’s amazing is another world leader lead a disastrous coup years before his eventual rise to power. This leader was imprisoned for it much like Chavez was, and eventually the political establishment forgave him in large part because of his vast public popularity and the downward spiral of the country in question.

[Sam_Stone]

@BrainGlutton

Can you? The Soviet experience suggests otherwise.

The Soviet people were quite thoroughly indoctrinated in ‘correct’ thought, and that indoctrination was part of what kept them from dissenting for a long, long time. For an enlightening read, pick up ‘Mig Pilot’ by Victor Belenko. He was the pilot who defected by flying his Mig-25 to Japan. His experiences in discovering the ‘real’ west and the cognitive dissonance he had trying to reconcile what he was taught with what he saw was fascinating. For instance, when he first saw a western supermarket, he was certain that it was staged to fool him, because he could not believe that there was such variety in food, but most especially that it would just be out in the open on shelves, because he had been taught that the west was full of criminals and gangs who will simply steal anything of value. He also thought there was a good chance he would be executed by the west, simply because he had been taught that they were all mad dogs who would kill any Soviet citizen they came in contact with.