News of the Restless

Oh lordy, lordy, good Gordie. I have about a week’s worth of stupid Google alerts in my e-mail box right now, burning a hole in my head. All of them concern Venezuela, and if they weren’t so damn commonplace, they’d be egregious. But there’s nothing egregious about the anglo media getting Venezuela and Chavecito wrong, so let’s just give the most classically stupid ones a quick rundown before I delve into the hot stuff:

First up–FUX Snooze, with “‘Terrorist’ Twitter Threatens Hugo Chávez’s Stranglehold on Media. Only, of course, it doesn’t, because there isn’t any stranglehold. In fact, if any of these FUX Snoozers could read Spanish, they’d realize that Chavecito has actually advocated using Twitter. (A half-assed and snotty “fair and balanced” English account can be found here.) Perhaps the Chavistas will start an anti-FUX campaign once they’re done polishing off what’s left of RCTV!

Next, we have the LAHT, parroting a discredited “national college of journalists”, who in turn are parroting the media owners’ line about Venezuela being a “disaster zone for free speech”. Note: Not one of these shameless palangristas has been killed, as they would be in Colombia for breathing a word of boo about Alvaro Uribe (or any lesser right-wing corrupto). Neither has a single one been arrested for lying to the people, as they do all the time in Venezuela. And meanwhile, the majority of Venezuela’s media remain firmly in the hands of crapitalists who dictate–yes, DICTATE–to their “journalists” the same old editorial line: Chávez has a stranglehold on the media here! Your free speech is under attack from the state!

Following that, we have some “analysis” by the Dissociated Press via the WaHoPo, claiming that Chavecito’s “socialist project” is “badly hobbled”. Only, of course, they, too, are parroting the silly oppos with their dimwitted slogans (which are pure wishful thinking, or perhaps a projection of where they themselves stand). Something’s hobbled, all right, but it’s not the ‘Cito. He at least has a coherent (and popular!) electoral platform for the coming September. And that’s just what the oppos are trying to stage yet another boring coup d’état against–they got NADA.

Next, a shitty little fascist blogger tries hard to convince us that he has a finger on the pulse of Venezuela. Sorry, dude, but you’ve got it up your own rectum, and what you feel is nothing but your own peristalsis. You know nothing about Che, either, and all your flatulent free-form musings won’t convince us that what you do is “journalism”, not even the ultra-crappy kind that the Dissociated Press and the Venezuelan “college” favor. Face it, Humberto, you’re just another brownshirt hack. (And don’t ask me where that brown came from; if you can’t smell it, I shan’t enlighten you.)

Then, some twit from Tulsa thinks that TV stations are being “shut down”. No, they’re not. They’re being held accountable. Horrible as it sounds, Venezuela has media regulations and standards, and they must be complied with by all domestic stations broadcasting there. Shockingly, other democracies also have ’em, and most are comparable to Venezuela’s. Eeek, creeping socialism! (PS: RCTV is NOT “International”. Its programming is 90% domestic. Get your facts straight, or risk looking a complete idiot.)

And speaking of twits, here’s a little more derivative twaddle about the Twitter non-revolution that will most certainly NOT topple 11 years of successful Bolivarianism, to the utter disappointment of the derivative twit who twaddled it. See you in September, “Business Insider” dude. You may want to borrow my crystal ball, it works better than yours.

BTW, the same publication is a veritable fountain of mirth for this entry, too. Petro-economy in Venezuela deteriorating? Not even hardly. Needless to say, the ‘Cito is not “backtracking”, either. He’s doing business with China and India, whose demand is growing. And he’s a caution to the Saudis!

The Jamaica Observer can’t even spell his name right, much less grasp the fact that these “former loyalists” of which it speaks are all crooked, back-stabbing coattail riders who thought they could use his popularity for a springboard and then overthrow him when the time was ripe. Needless to say, they are all wrong. And at least one of them is facing corruption charges! Funny dat.

The Moderate Voice sounds very shrill, and not at all moderate. Srsly, comparing the ‘Cito to that weirdo from Libya? You may want to get to a vet, it sounds like you’re about to hork up a big-ass hairball there.

Even the CBC haz Teh Stoopid, since they open and close with RCTV’s viewpoint–which is a tacit endorsement of it, in other words. That’s Bhad Nhews! (But perhaps symptomatic, since they’ve been in a state of degeneration ever since Harpo kept cutting their funding or threatening to do so. Maybe they’re currying favor?)

Okay. Enough with Teh Stoopid, it could go on all night and I’m getting sick of it. Here’s the straight dope, and it comes from no less a figure than Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s ambassador to the OAS:

Part one of two; click through to hear it all. Here’s what he said:

February is the month of carnivals. I refer to Rio de Janeiro, Port of Spain, Barranquilla, New Orleans and Québec City, among others. Yes, there is a carnival in Canada, but there’s a difference; not because the winter carnival of Québec occurs un
der extreme low temperatures. The difference is that when in other countries they start to put on carnival masks, in Canada the ultra-right starts to take off its mask.

I speak of diplomacy and respect for freedom of expression; I had the opportunity to tell the story of a far-right journalist who recently visited Venezuela. He asked for interviews with the Foreign Minister and other official functionaries who could not fit him into their schedules. In reality, he was not interested in speaking to my Government, but with the opposition, in order to motivate them and offer them support, among others, to putschists and destabilizers. He met with two important government deputies whose opinions were irrelevant to him.

The recent media censoring of a speech by President Hugo Chávez, by the putschist station RCTV, was supported by this journalist, who on his return dared to say that in my country democratic spaces have been reduced. Who is this gentleman? Anyone with moral authority, or a journalist who, like any other, can opine whatever brings him gain without greater consequences than a democratic polemic? NO!! His name is Peter Kent, Minister of State for Latin America in the Canadian Foreign Ministry. So, who has seen a person of such high rank, who could not and did not seek a meeting with his potential host, impose his presence in a country, abusing his diplomatic flexibility? What a lack of democracy, what a lack of respect!

Canada has long been the country that has functioned the best on our continent; however, there are new little details:

For its intromission, I denounce the violation of the no-intervention norms on the part of the current Canadian minority government. This is not the Canada of Lester B. Pearson, posthumous Nobel peace prizewinner, who universalized healthcare rights for his people; nor is it that of John Diefenbaker, the conservative Prime Minister open to socialized medicine. Neither is it that of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the leader who took no orders from Washington, and was one of the most brilliant western statesmen of the 20th century, steeped in the ideas of Christian socialism. Nor is it that of Jean Chrétien, Liberal leader, elected several times by his people, who had a cordial relationship of mutual respect with President Hugo Chávez. I am speaking of a Canada governed by a far-right, which closed Parliament for several months in order to halt an investigation over the violations of human rights by its soldiers in Afghanistan; which censors protests in Ontario and the criticisms of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver; which has flirted with the Honduran putschists; which is preparing for an offensive in favor of the media dictatorship in Latin America, and to destabilize leftist governments. However, I must thank the Government of Canada for its concern over the two students who were killed, and inform them that they were leftist militants, murdered by gunmen of the opposition.

Oh, Canada! What crimes are being committed in your name!

In this ultra-right-wing circus, an embarrassing Inter-American Human Rights Commission participated, which kept mum about the Caracazo massacre in Venezuela and supported the coup against President Chávez along with the inter-American mafia of human-rights bureaucrats which have infiltrated the OAS, with the complicity of its highest authority, such as a Secretariat of Freedom of Expression which believes that the private initiative to defame, censor and destabilize is a freedom deserving of protection.

In the face of the media dictatorship, the Empire and its partners, under the Bolivarian Revolution we enjoy extreme freedom of expression and are developing to the fullest all the human rights, such as those of the indigenous peoples, a mater in which we offer our advice to Canada in order to rescue its impoverished indigenous from the claws of exclusion and extreme poverty. It is very easy, just treat them as equals.

The Axis of Evil is trying new tactics. Knowing that the ultra-right cannot win popular support against President Chávez, it is doing its best to sabotage Venezuelan democracy with the hope of winning the presidential elections in September and, from there, repeating the operation in Tegucigalpa and after that, the one in Jakarta, such as that mounted at the time by the CIA and the media star Henry Kissinger against the Chilean democracy.

This is not an anecdote. The agenda of the Republican Party continues unabated in Latin America. Behind the curtain is the most violent power in history, which violates all human rights in the name of democracy and security; so historically aggressive that if I were to seek a show of hands from all ambassadors whose countries were dismembered, invaded by marines, or whose democratic governments have been brought down by US intervention, a forest of arms would rise, and of course, immediately the Secretary General would leap up to visit all the affected countries, to build bridges of straw and in the process gather some small votes for his re-election.

The law is the law; for this reason we protest before the governments of the United States and Canada for inciting RCTV to disobedience. Mediocre, racist, violent and vulgar, accustomed to transmitting adult programming during children’s hours, while during the coup against President Chávez in 2002, they broadcast only children’s programs (The Jungle Book, Tom and Jerry, etc.) during adult hours, in order to conceal the popular rebellion against the coup. Five years later, the concession, property of the state, was not renewed, and RCTV was relegated to cable. Now, with 90% Venezuelan programming, it pretends to be an “international” station in order not to classify its programming, play the National Anthem, or transmit required official messages. Other suspended stations returned to air on complying with the law. For TV Chile, it was enough to register and prove that it was not Venezuelan; the same happened with the Televisa stations.

RCTV is a station with a long-standing media criminal tradition. Since 1984, it has been a leader in the silencing by the private media of the former president Luís Herrera Campíns. He was castigated for prohibiting the advertising of liquors and cigarettes in the media, and for imposing the playing of a Venezuelan piece of music on radio for each imported one played. This sanction lasted until the day of his death in 2007. It’s a curious fact that the radical opposition station, Globovisión, transmitted freely because it accepted this norm. RCTV is the spoiled brat of the dregs of the international media, and did not abide by the law.

So it can be said that the Axis of Evil relies on the support of RCTV, El Nazional, and Globovisión in Venezuela, and on that of FOX News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, the Miami Herald, CNN in Spanish, the Grupo de Diarios América, El Tiempo (owned by the Santos family of Colombia), El Universal (owned by the Ealy family), El País de Madrid, the Inter-American Radio Association, the Inter-American Press Association, the representatives of media terrorism, the Southern Command, and the Fourth Fleet in this witches’ sabbath of the inter-American demons.

Translation mine.

Those are harsh words, but I agree with them absolutely. I am not one of those “my country, drunk or sober” morons who call themselves patriots. I’m one who believes that any Canadian with an honest sense of pride in our country, as well as a conscience, can only agree that this is no longer the healthy, progressive, democratic Canada of Lester B. Pearson, Tommy Douglas, and Pierre Trudeau. Our parliament is fucking prorogued, and all decision making is now going on over our heads and without question or scrutiny. Ambassador Chaderton is right–we used to function the best of all, and now we no longer do. As he says, we have lost our political virginity. We are dysfunctional.

Our parliament is in an advanced state of degeneration, and our media a
re in grave danger of going the same way. Many of them, since they go along with the lies about RCTV, are already there. And yes, CBC, I’m glaring at YOU. I expect such crap from CTV and CanWest Global, because they are private broadcasters who favor the side their bread is buttered on, but you are a PUBLIC network. You have the resources and the means to do a whole lot better. In case you forget, you too have a responsibility to the public, and you’re not meeting it adequately.

Especially not with regard to our sister nation, Venezuela, which IS a functioning democracy and deserving of all the respect due to one.