Obama Signals Four More Years of Bad Relations With Latin America

[Peace Patriot]

7. i'll tell you who DID suppress dissent--RCTV media moguls!

"To these governments, Obama’s broadsides about Chávez’s 'authoritarian policies' and 'suppression of dissent' have a bad smell...". --from the OP

RCTV in Venezuela not only hosted the rightwing coup regime that had kidnapped the elected president and suspended the constitution, the courts, the national assembly and all civil rights, and they not only told the public outright lies (that Chavez had resigned) and broadcast falsified video footage (Chavistas shooting rightwing protestors), on behalf of the coup, but they also FORBADE ANY CHAVEZ GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL FROM APPEARING ON TV, and furthermore incited rightwing mobs to hunt down government officials and 'arrest' them!

Would you renew the license of such a media conglomerate to continue operating on the PUBLIC airwaves? No government in the world would do so. And the Chavez government, in the PUBLIC INTEREST, did not do so.

When Chavez refused to renew those jerkwad traitors' broadcast license, and began discussions on measures that the government might take in the spirit of the "Fairness Doctrine" that we once had here (that the Reagnites got rid of), the corpo-fascist media here and there began screaming about "free speech" and other 19th century crap they DON'T believe in and actively try to deny to the rest of us. "Free speech!" I tell you! "Free speech" to overthrow democratic government and brainwash the poor majority with "Big Lie" propaganda. "Free speech" to make the rich richer, to promote corporate resource wars and slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people (Faux News: War as entertainment); "free speech" to blast utter shitfaced lies into every home in the world!

On. Our. PUBLIC. Airwaves.

So, WHO "suppresses" free speech? In Venezuela, it was the corporate media moguls, led by RCTV, who suppressed the speech OF THE ELECTED GOVERNMENT and of ALL THE PEOPLE who supported and voted for that government! NO pro-government protests or spokespeople were allowed on TV! No Chavez government officials were allowed on TV!

That is one of main reasons that the Irish filmmakers in Venezuela at the time of the coup called their documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." They were referring to the corporate blackout of the news (they ran cartoons) during critical hours of the unfolding coup plot, and to the corporate media lying on behalf of the coup and hosting of the coup declarations but they were also referring to the BLACKOUT OF DISSENT--to the leftist democracy revolution that was occurring in Venezuela, with the election of the Chavez government--nothing but hostile coverage, if any coverage at all, of the ELECTED government and its millions of supporters. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The elected government ITSELF will not be televised. Its overthrow will not be televised--merely declared and a "president" APPOINTED. And the million Venezuelans who poured into the streets of Caracas to protest the coup will, of course, not be televised. Cartoons will take their place.

It is just utterly laughable--darkly so--that the corpo-fascist press here and there dares to accuse Chavez of "suppressing free speech." He and his government--in response to the will of the people--have done more than any other government in the world to EXPAND free speech--funding and providing training for hundreds of new community-run radio stations, vastly improving the inclusiveness of political life in Venezuela--to women, to the indigenous, to Afro-Venezuelans, to all previously excluded groups; greatly improving public participation and voter turnouts; getting Telesur off the ground (news service for all of LatAm independent of corporations); creating community councils to funnel federal funds to local projects decided upon by the local community; LISTENING TO and HEEDING grass roots groups on all kinds of issues--from women's health to workers' rights to housing needs to the fabulous Venezuelan Children's Orchestra (now expanded all over the country, to every community). The Chavez government has DOUBLED college enrollment and has wiped out illiteracy in Venezuela. They print the Constitution on grocery bags, for godssakes! They WANT people to READ it! They WANT people to know their rights and to assert their rights.

Our "Fairness Doctrine" obliged those getting licenses to use our PUBLIC airwaves to broadcast BOTH sides of political issues and controversies, and to provide PUBLIC SERVICE--such as broadcasting all of the political conventions and other important civic events. It also forbade media monopolies--one humungous private corporation controlling information on TV and radio, in newspapers, magazines, books and movies, or controlling a region, or five of them controlling all information in the country.

We are now suffering horribly from the loss of the "Fairness Doctrine"--and the importance of the "Fairness Doctrine" has never been better illustrated than during our plight over the last decade, as fascist policy after fascist policy has been foisted upon us, including unjust war, the torture of prisoners, the looting of our public coffers by war profiteers and multi-billionaires, and, currently, the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security, the complete takeover of our health care system by private insurance profiteers, vicious attacks on labor unions and public education, and on-going war, including the "war on drugs" in direct contempt of the will of the people, and anonymous U.S. government assassinations around the world by drone aircraft.

Typically, our woes are foreshadowed by events in Latin America. Our plight at the hands of vicious, war profiteering, corporate media moguls was foreshadowed in Venezuela in 2002 when media moguls directly tried to overthrow Venezuelan democracy. We should learn from this WHY the "Fairness Doctrine" was important in the first place, and WHY that horrible murderer (Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemela) and first slayer of our democracy, Ronald Reagan, got rid of it. We need to remedy this, among other things we need to remedy (first priority: get rid of the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines). And we can look to Venezuela as a prime example of REAL "free speech": "free speech" for EVERYBODY, "free speech" for the poor, "free speech" for the excluded, "free speech" for workers, the elderly, the sick, the homeless, those burdened with onerous debt and other victims of the banksters, the war profiteers and the 1%.

Free speech only for the 1% is NOT free speech at all. It is tyranny.