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Freddie Stubbs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 01:27 PM
Original message
House OKs plan to broadcast to Venezuela
Source: Miami Herald

BY PABLO BACHELET
[email protected]

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives Thursday approved an amendment that would provide $10 million for the Voice of America to boost its broadcasts to Venezuela, where news media freedoms have been seen as under attack by President Hugo Chávez.

The amendment, proposed by Rep. Connie Mack, a Cape Florida lawmaker who has been sharply critical of Chávez, suggests the Broadcast Board of Governors, which oversees operations like the Voice of America and Radio and TV Martí, allot $10 million for its Venezuela operations.

''Freedom of the press died in Venezuela on May 27, 2007, when Chávez shut down Radio Caracas Television,'' Mack said on the floor, referring to RCTV, an opposition TV station that was denied its broadcast license, triggering international condemnation.

''Voice of America must provide and create additional programs. With targeted funding, Voice of America can have an even greater ability and capability to broadcast longer with more programming,'' he said.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/146946.html



No roll call is available on this vote as it was a voice vote.
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Robbien Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 01:35 PM
Response to Original message
1. There are over sixty some odd other television stations in Venezuela
and hundreds of radio stations. Most of all of these are rabid Chavez haters.

Any anti-Chavez broadcast by VOA will just be lost in the chatter. Stupid waste of money.
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Tempest Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:01 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Much like the U.S. station in Iraq that no one watches
The Iraqis see the station as a joke.
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AX10 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:09 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Agreed!
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BornagainDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:09 PM
Response to Original message
3. "Voice of America"??? Isn't this being a bit
Edited on Thu Jun-21-07 02:09 PM by BornagainDUer
presumptuous. Those loonies have no right to claim to be the voice of anything except their own squirrelly rantings.

Isn't there some law somewhere about false advertisement?
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eridani Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-22-07 04:53 AM
Response to Reply #3
21. Indeed. I always think of the Lone Ranger/Tonto joke
Its punchline was "Whatchu mean WE, white man?" Whatchu mean "America", globberotting corporate elite? Might it even be that the rest of us poor saps who just live here are "America"? Naw, couldn't be. :sarcasm:
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RethugAssKicker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:12 PM
Response to Original message
5. Fucking bastards... Wasting our money on Propaganda !
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Hulk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:22 PM
Response to Original message
6. Broadcasting the fox channel in Venezuela? ....
More unbalanced bullshit for the Latinos to scoff at. Holy shit, we just never get it, do we?
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Skink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:39 PM
Response to Original message
7. Maybe now they'll vote to increase funding for NPR.
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SpikeTss Donating Member (308 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:42 PM
Response to Original message
8. That'll teach them!
I can't help but realize that this is exactly what

the soviet regime did in the USSR. This is so hilarious

and absurd that it's really, really funny.

What kind of sad, crazy old people make decisions this this? :crazy:

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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 02:48 PM
Response to Original message
9. Rant all you want against Connie Mack, a foaming at the mouth Bushite and
Edited on Thu Jun-21-07 02:52 PM by Peace Patriot
anti-democracy fascist, but look at the first part of the lead paragraph: "The House of Representatives Thursday approved..."

Our Democrats.

$10 million for fascist Bushite propaganda into the steaming cauldron of fascist Bushite propaganda that already characterizes the corporation-dominated TV/radio news media of Venezuela, with one exception--no more RCTV and its active support of violent military dictatorship; one airwave has been liberated for independent producers and wide spectrum political discussion. But for that, think of Faux News, all channels, all the time--that's Venezuela broadcasting. And our Democrats are SUPPORTING IT, now with **U.S.**-sponsored Bushite programming!

Yet more evidence that our elections are fixed. 70% of the American people opposed to the war, and they not only don't stop it, they ESCALATE it, and lard $100 billion MORE into Dick Cheney's retirement fund!

And now, siding with the fascists AGAINST DEMOCRACY in Venezuela!

I'd say "Shame on them," except, what good does it to do, and what "shame" is there, for people (s)elected for office by machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and calling themselves "Democrats"?

And not one word do they whisper against the coup d'etat of non-transparent vote counting.

No shame.

--------------------------

Just to give you a little perspective on this: In Venezuela, they use electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which votes are tabulated--and they handcount FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots as a check on machine fraud. Our system--fast-tracked across the country in the 2002 to 2004 period to manufacture a phony endorsement of Bush's war--is not only run on SECRET code, a "property right" for the winger corporations that have hijacked our elections, but there is, in many states, a ZERO handcount of ballots to check for machine fraud, and even in the best states, a mere 1% audit. These were the conditions in 2004, and in 2006, and why the war continues and has been escalated, now with a "D" in front of its name. Our "Democratic" Congress is proposing central control of the secret code, under the President (!), with a "paper trail" and a mere 2% audit (continued egregious vulnerability to insider hacking).

But for Diebold/ES&S, the Iraq War would be over, the military budget would be significantly slashed, and we would be giving $10 million either to widen access to the airwaves in Venezuela for the excluded groups (the vast poor population, minorities, the left, unions) or to Hugo Chavez and the Chavez government's magnificent education efforts--building and staffing schools in poor areas never before served by government, and wiping out illiteracy--or to other social justice programs, and not to Bushites to make the U.S. more ridiculous and scorned and despised by the majority of South Americans, with MORE fascist propaganda, in the service U.S.-based global corporate predators.

The Venezuelans have democracy, and we do not. They have fought for their democracy, and won, DESPITE relentless 24/7 fascist propaganda on the their airwaves, all channels, all the time--and we have not. That is the reality of the situation. And that is why "our Democrats" have raised no cry of alarm about corporate-controlled elections here, and have endorsed, rather than opposed, the heinous, murderous theft of Iraqi oil, at the cost of a half a million lives, and our soul as a nation.
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Flanker Donating Member (530 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 03:24 PM
Response to Original message
10. What is deeply ironic is that we already get VOA and Fox News
On select cable packages, so much for losing freedom of the press... we allow propaganda against us that is ilegal in the US to begin with.

Don't believe me? I was shocked myself

http://corp.supercable.com/supercable/television/tvmargarita.html

Click on the WorldNet icon channel 75.
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Joanne98 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 03:26 PM
Response to Original message
11. Venezuela doesn't want their broadcasts!
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LynnTheDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 04:53 PM
Response to Original message
12. And Americans STILL wonder "why do they hate us".
Gee, maybe coz too many Americans are incredibly deeply ignorant and allow their government & their "media" to lie and lie and lie and spin and lie and lie and lie to them, whilst doing crap in all our names?

Problem is, the rest of the world do know the facts...and they just can't believe so many Americans truly are ignorant of the facts.

Dear world; yeah, they are.
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Celeborn Skywalker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 07:04 PM
Response to Reply #12
15. I've traveled around Europe and Latin America.
Most do not hate Americans themselves, just our stupid fucking government. I've been treated very well pretty much everywhere I've went.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 06:32 PM
Response to Original message
13. Just happened to find an article which relates to this grotesque imposition very well:
~snip~
The perception management of foreign politics for imperialist propaganda purposes works across countries as a self-fuelling, one-sided Moebius-strip production line. Re-selling by corporate US media of the propaganda spin retailed as "news" by television channels in Venezuela is the best known example. An unusually flagrant exposé of this degenerative international media symbiosis occurred on Fox News recently when New York councillor Charles Barron was called a "son-of-a-bitch" by Adam Housley, Fox's correspondent in Caracas, during an exchange in which Barron contradicted Housley's mendacious reporting on Venezuela.

Disinformation and outright falsehoods broadcast in countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico become fake virtual news that is then broadcast as if it were real in the imperial centres of North America, Europe and the Pacific. This in turn is made to produce a re-confected virtual reality that is then retailed back as the basic premise of news analysis by international corporate news outlets to media in the original source countries. The process not only validates the original propaganda but itself tends to generate yet more fake virtual news to feed the cycle.

Self-perpetuating and vicious, thoroughly disingenuous and totally political, this cycle is probably the single most important perception management mechanism for promoting Americanism. The cycle's purpose is to subordinate the interests of all the peoples of the Americas, and beyond, to the aims of the United States' plutocrat corporate elite and their allies. This all-pervasive perception management production line is at work constantly, almost everywhere in Latin America, but is especially noticeable in countries where governments develop strategies contrary to the policies of the US government, its European and Pacific allies and their respective multinational corporations.

The aggressive politicization of corporate media outlets and their disinformation output is an established fact throughout Latin America. Freedom of speech is regularly hijacked, given a brutal working over in corporate editorial conference rooms and then thrown back out onto the airwaves and the printed page. The corporate media make-over varies from country to country. In Venezuela, corporate editorial-brutalized freedom of speech gets dressed up as a victim of State repression. In Mexico and Colombia, it appears as the endlessly harrassed public good under threat from popular movements exercising basic rights but branded as vicious terrorists. The same corporate gangsterism is at work in Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. It both serves and feeds dominant local corporate political options. Currently, Nicaragua is an especially good example of this phenomenon.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=13115
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Mika Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 06:54 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. It'll be a duplicate of Radio & TV Marti. (A method of washing taxpayer $ to political campaigns.)
n/t
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KamaAina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 07:42 PM
Response to Original message
16. They do have someone there who speaks Spanish, right?
Or is it Venezuelan? :sarcasm:

Remember, this is the same outfit that started a propaganda outlet in Iraq without having anyone handy who spoke Arabic. Extremists quickly caught on and effectively turned the channel into an outlet for their own hate-filled rantings. And it's not like there's any shortage of Arabic translators out there, not since the military canned dozens of them for (gasp) being gay.
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 07:45 PM
Response to Original message
17. Maybe Hugo can have a network here to offset the WH noise machine
of Fox, CNN, MSRNC, CNRC, CBS, ABC, NBC, NPR, and PBS
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 09:54 PM
Response to Reply #17
18. Don't forget 98% of all talk AM radio, also. n/t
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DBoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 10:53 PM
Response to Reply #17
19. Venezuela should beam broadcasts to the USA!
Call it "Radio George Washington" or something like that.
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burrowowl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-21-07 11:03 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. YESSSSSS!
LOL

Congress should have given the money to NPR and IPR!
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toopers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-22-07 05:25 AM
Response to Original message
22. Funny how our reps are concerned about Chavez' . . .
controlling the media in his own country, yet our reps want to do the same thing to our media stations.
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