Festive Left Friday Blogging: What RCTV didn’t want Venezuela (or you) to see

9 Responses to Festive Left Friday Blogging: What RCTV didn’t want Venezuela (or you) to see

1. Manaat says:

   January 29, 2010 at 2:15 PM

   Ya see, it is funny. Technically, you can’t run partisan campaigns on cadenas (Chavez does those on VTV, but you can’t force explicit mention of partisan things on cadenas). Hence the effort to keep it as a 23rd January message, with calls to women, intellectuals, etc. vaguely enough to not appear partisan. Did the cadena end after 10 minutes? Or did it go on?
2. Slave Revolt says:

   January 29, 2010 at 2:36 PM

   For the life of me, I have never understood the compunction to defend the right of corporations to own the airwaves, the means of conveying information, without strict checks. I just don’t get it, and I have never heard an argument from a liberal with respect that the rich controlling the airwaves as a type of free speech that is in any way compelling.
   When the rich and their corporations control the flow of information you have a type of dictatorship–with the anticipated results that you see currently in the US.
   Capitalism is simply a mutation from fuedalism and slave societies–socialism is the only political and economic system through which people can eliminate the vestiges of slavery.
   But a necessary precondition of this is for the means of distributing ideas, entertainment. And information to be influenced by the democratic will, and with the participation of the citizenry.
   Liberals in capitalist countries cannot see this as a pecondition for the functioning of democracy. A slave mentality, indeed.
3. Manaat says:

   January 29, 2010 at 2:42 PM

   One of the sillier things about this brouhahaha is that when RCTV operated on the public airwaves, they had to play the cadenas anyway (which they did, however grudgingly). So what’s the point now? Would they be losing money?
4. Sabina Becker says:

   January 29, 2010 at 2:53 PM

   Well, to answer your first question, Utpal, the cadena ran only those ten minutes. They certainly weren’t going to lose money on it. I think this move was designed specifically to create unrest–look at those “student protests” that cropped up right on the heels of it. The oppos, like I said, have no campaign going at all–unless you count brawls at all their “unity tables”. They’re not holding primaries, and they’re not making any democratic choices as to whom to field as candidates, so this is all they can do in order to try to create another coup climate like the one in 2002–“protests” with pre-planned sharpshooters, leading to chaos, death and a putsch. This is an attempt to signal to the US that it’s time to move in the Marines and kill Chávez.
   That old fool Oscar Yánez, whom Globomojón cut off when he called for you-know-whose head, was giving the game away; that’s why they shushed him. And Daniela Bergami too, for revealing the deep divisions in the right-wing mediocracy they’re trying to impose. The truth is, they’re in disarray, and the only way to hide the fact is the old non-starter of ’02–“zero Chavismo on screen”. Since their own democratic cred is in tatters, they’re not even bothering anymore to put forth the veneer, only to conceal their own agenda–and the truth that the PSUV is going to roll over them no matter what.
5. Manaat says:

   January 29, 2010 at 3:29 PM

   Strange stuff:
   http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/28/australian-censor-bo.html
6. Sabina Becker says:

   January 29, 2010 at 5:02 PM

   OMG. And they (BoingBoing) complain about “censorship” in Venezuela, just because you’re not allowed to buy some stupid video game that advocates a coup? The women there get boob jobs as status symbols–often for their 15th birthdays. I don’t know what the age of sexual consent is there, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that early.
   EDIT: Looks like BB got punk’d. There’s something called the Australian Sex Party, and they basically made the whole sensational thing up. Figures!
7. Manaat says:

   January 29, 2010 at 7:20 PM

   Did you see the “garrapiño” thingie on El NaziOnal dissected in LH? Dontcha think it’s great?
   It reminds me of the column in 2004 where a “journalist” for El NaziOnal made up the story about the explosive supposedly discovered by the Spanish police after the Madrid bombing which allegedly was only manufactured in a factory in Venezuela 🙂
8. Slave Revolt says:

   January 29, 2010 at 8:33 PM

   Bina, get used to the charges of ‘censorship’ when it comes to Venezuela enforcing its laws–while they expand democratic discourse and entertainment media.
   Most the folks from Western nations are acclimated and brainwashed into believing that corporate control over the flow of information IS ‘democratic’.
   Just goes to show, when you pound corporate oligarchy as being ‘normative’ for decades on end, the resulting ideology is one that reinforces acceptance of fundamentally illegitimate hierarchies.
   The media/entertainment corporate complex functions to reinforce apathy and passive acceptance of injustice and oppression.
   You know all of this…I’m just say’n.
9. Sabina Becker says:

   January 29, 2010 at 9:56 PM

   @Slave: Yep…I know full well.
   @Utpal: watching it now. That Nitu is one ignorant slut. Can’t even recognize a common grappling hook, much less ask what the National Guard is really using it for–I guess ripping up burning barricades doesn’t make for a very sensational story.
   (BTW, has she gotten a nose job? Her nostrils held me transfixed, and not in a good way. They are threatening to eat up her face.)

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