Chavez Shutting Down Media In Venezuela

Newstex Web Blogs
Copyright 2007 Say Anything
Say Anything
January 24, 2007 Wednesday 4:20 PM EST

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/chavez_shutting_down_media_in_venezuela/


Jan. 24, 2007 (Say Anything delivered by Newstex) --

Any Chavez apologists like to respond to this? Cindy Sheehan, would you still rather live in Venezuela than America? Harry Bellafonte, bot anything to say? Union leaders and college professors, are you still standing and applauding?

CARACAS--The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chà vez, has verbally announced his decision to shut down Radio Caracas Television ( RCTV)--our TV station, the oldest in Venezuela as well as the one with the largest audience.

So continues a long series of attacks against journalists, employees, management and shareholders of many independent media companies. The aim of all this is to limit the citizens' right to seek information and entertainment in the media of their choice, to impede public access to those media where they might express or encounter criticism of the government or their proposals for reform, to stifle the pluralism of opinion in news and talk programs, and to cut off the free flow of information and debate in Venezuela. Instead, the Chà vez government seeks to install a system that it has described, without apparent irony, as the "communicational and informative hegemony of the state."

On June 14, 2006, President Chà vez--dressed in military fatigues--gave a speech on the occasion of the delivery of a batch of Kalashnikov AK-103s to an army battalion. He brandished a weapon, then pointed it at a cameraman and said: "With this rifle, which has a range of 1,000 meters, I could take out that wee red light on your camera." Moments later, he declared: "We have to review the licenses of the TV companies."

As I've said many times before, Chavez is a communist dictator. He may not be as overt in his totalitarianism as some of history's dictators have been, but he's no less a totalitarian because of that. Yet still many on the left insist on sympathizing with him, simply because he's a socialist and he hates our President.

It's disgusting.