Venezuela sets up 'CNN rival'

[Say_What]

Two articles about Telsur, one from BBC and the other from Granma.

<clips>

In a popular shopping area of Caracas, with street musicians playing a bolero in the background, Jorge Botero is filming a promo for Latin America's most ambitious new satellite channel.

"Grabando," he shouts ("recording").

A young journalism student walks into shot and says: "The news on Telesur, the true face of Latin America."

Telesur is a new pan-Latin American TV channel based in Venezuela. It aims to rival CNN and the other Spanish-language news channels coming out of Miami and Atlanta.

Some have already dubbed it Al-Bolivar - a combination of the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and President Hugo Chavez's favourite independence hero.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4620411.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<clips>

US warnings and threats to Telesur

IT’S only just begun. Telesur, a television project initiated by Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba, which intends to do away with CNN’s virtual monopoly of the Americas as a source of news and opinions and as a continental, Spanish-language network, has unleashed the fury of the empire.

This new Latin American channel made its first test broadcasts on Tuesday, May 24. Just a few hours later, Richard Lugard, chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had already begun the game of warnings and threats, probably soon to be joined by its loyal ally: the European Union.

The U.S. is not at all happy about independence for the countries of Latin America. And that is what this is about: "For the first time, we Latin Americans are going to see ourselves with our own eyes, and make ourselves seen as we are before the world" is how Uruguayan Aram Aharonian, the network’s director, has stated it in various interviews. He also notes, very precisely, that Telesur may be defined as "the first anti-hegemony project on a mass scale in Latin America." The diffusion of Latin American and indigenous cultures is another fundamental element.

Any Latin American project – not including the to date servile OAS – is immediately eliminated by the U.S. Much more so when it comes to something that intends to establish a network of information via satellite, preferably dedicated to "news, documentaries, investigative reports and films, especially on Latin America," as Jorge Botero, Telesur’s news director, has explained. Telesur is a television station with its own sources that seeks to compete with Latin networks broadcast from the U.S., like CNN En Español.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/junio/lun27/27tele.html

[CottonBear]

1. Why the hell is Ricahrd Lugar sticking his nose into this matter?

Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch. The USA shouldn't try to control every media outlet in the world. The Republicans are very desperate.
:grr:

edit: The BBC article mentions Lugar's comments about Chazez's "authoritarina message." What total bullshit:

'Leftist propaganda'

"To some, that sounds like propaganda. Last year, the chairman of the US Senate's foreign relations committee, Richard Lugar, referred to the planned channel as a vehicle to spread President Hugo Chavez's authoritarian message around the region."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4620411.stm

[acmejack]

4. The imperious clowns!

They think they own the entirety of the Americas.

[Judi Lynn]

18. It's not as if they haven't tried, either!

Apparently to our right wing pResidents, EVERYONE in this hemisphere has to bow low before us, since we're the ones with all the weapons, and won't hesitate to kill them if they don't. The only consideration which keeps their war on South, Central America and the Caribbean islands from being more graphic here is the careful protection they get from the media bottom feeders who are happy to look away from the truth, and not shake the pompous "holier than thou" right-wingers from their twisted reveries. They depend on the illusion people WANT us to be in charge of the world. They want to be loved. Their rotting narcissistic stupors would be shattered without their grandiose views of themselves as benign, adored, admired rulers, as precious to the rest of the world as they were to their confused parents as babies.

[Miss Chybil]

20. Jesus Christ on trailer hitch? ROFLMAO!

I've never heard that one before...

[CottonBear]

32. It comes from a picture at a Terri Schiavo protest

A RW fundie drove up with, and I'm not kidding, a boat trailer with a life size Jesus on a crucifix statue lashed to the trailer.
Thus: Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch. You had to see it to believe it. They later unlashed Jesus and stood him up on the lawn where they were protesting. :eyes:

[Miss Chybil]

35. I'm keeping that one in my RW repetoire. I write satires every now and

then and I swear to God, when I write about those idiots, I don't have to make one thing up!

[CottonBear]

36. I'll look for the picture and add to this post if I can find it.

It is a classic. :)



:) Here's a link to a thread on this very picture:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3423181

[Miss Chybil]

39. OMG! OMG!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I can't stop! It's too much!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

It is absolutely classic!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Cha]

34. Fuck you, lugar..two more words..

Faux Sux!

[marbuc]

38. As opposed to

GWB's imperialist message?

[Oversea Visitor]

2. CNN

is all crapshit nowadays sorry world need news and many groupings forming for localised regional news.

[CottonBear]

3. CNN is awful. Even CNN International is bad.

We Americans get our real news from British, European, Middle Eastern and Asian news sources. CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC are not to be trusted. It is too bad that we used to have real news and good journalists. Now news is just part of the entertainment business.
:(

[dArKeR]

8. Cut their funds

[Kenergy]

5. This is good...also, if you haven't already,

check out IWT (Independent World Television) which looks
promising as an alternative to the fascist MSM being foisted on us.

Peace

[goforit]

6. What a great idea!!!!........A little competition for Pentagon News

LOL!!!

[Rainscents]

7. My thought exactly!

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

9. Our militarization of space should take care of this

We have all kinds of methods for disabling inconvenient enemy satellites.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. That was my first thought, too.

How long before their satellites begin to disappear?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. I will DEFINITELY annoy my cable provider to carry this. (nt)

[cascadiance]

12. Would they have an English language channel too?

Would be nice to be able to tune in (hopefully Dish Network would add it then too). I'm guessing though initially it would primarily be in Spanish and/or Portuguese (for Brazil). I'd commit to going out and buying only Citgo gas (stop buying at Costco) if this could happen.

[Spazito]

13. Excellent news!

The British have the BBC, Canada has CBC and now Venezuela has it's own publicly owned station instead of having the bush propaganda vehicle, CNN, being force-fed to their citizens. Go Chavez!

[Say_What]

15. Telesur is a group effort of a number of LatAm countries--not

just Venezuela, although Venezuela is funding 51%.

<clips>

4 nations backing channel in Spanish

CARACAS, Venezuela - Flickering across the TV screen, images of native dancers gave way to highlights of political protests, some denouncing the United States. One segment spotlighted a Bolivian string instrument, another a Brazilian police murder. At one point appeared the words, ``Finally we see our own faces.''

The excerpts were part of a May test broadcast of Telesur -- Spanish for ``TeleSouth'' -- a Latin American news and cultural channel scheduled to launch July 24.

Funded by the governments of Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela, the channel calls itself a homegrown alternative to foreign and commercial media coverage such as CNN.

``The productions we get from abroad are a black-and-white vision of Latin America, usually in black when there is a disaster,'' said Telesur's director, Aram Aharonian. He said the channel will help integrate a region that currently knows other parts of the world better than itself.

Venezuela is funding 51 percent of the Telesur project, will house its headquarters and has a communications minister who is also Telesur's president.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/11990190.htm

[Spazito]

17. True, I did read that in the various articles and neglected to

add that to my post. It is wonderful that Latin America is throwing off the yoke of US interference and establishing their own 'sphere of influence'.

[Say_What]

25. Interesting where their bureaus are gonna be too...

Telesur will have news bureaus in cities across the Americas, including Washington, Caracas, Mexico City, Havana, Bogotá, La Paz, Buenos Aires, Brasília and Montevideo.

If Socialist front runner Michelle Balachet (center photo with glasses) wins the presidency in Chile as predicted, will they open a bureau in Santiago? More truckloads of Maalox for the Bushistas.

[Cha]

37. YES! At least they can get some

real news and not propogandized cnn..certainly not news.

[Judi Lynn]

14. CNN and FOX do everything to BLOCK news.

They are UN-NEWS networks. It's their goal to overturn the progress made since the invention of the printing press, the centuries of moving toward public awareness and understanding of how the world works, by providing actual dead-end information.

The slow ones among us imagine they are informed, the rest has already learned we are NOT, and it's intentional. Anything you can learn now, you have to work to uncover.

It's going to drive the right-wing beserk seeing the possibility the masses will slide out of its control by simply seeing behind the propaganda screen. I'll bet they're going to sabotage operations. That's their style.

The mayor of Caracas, who used to be an official at El Universal, (hate media) completely shut down the independent tv station in his town:

Opposition Mayor Shuts Down Community TV Station
Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jul 16 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government and rights activists charge that the Caracas city hall -- under a mayor who opposes the Hugo Chávez administration -- has violated freedom of expression by ordering the closure of a community television station.
(snip)

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19274

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two Venezuelan Mayors
Press Freedom, Soft Drinks, and Democracy in the Andes
by Justin Podur
August 03, 2003

A recent Human Rights Watch report, which was harshly criticized by supporters of Venezuela's 'Bolivarian Revolution', said that "there are few obvious limits on free expression in Venezuela. The country's print and audiovisual media operate without restrictions." Two months after the report was published, on July 14, one of the country's audiovisual media outlets came up against a rather serious restriction-it was shut down and its equipment confiscated. The outlet in question is called CatiaTV, but it was not shut down by the Chavez government but by the mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena, who is an opponent of Chavez.

CatiaTV was an experiment in genuine community television. It was started by a group of people in Catia, a vast and extremely poor borough of Caracas, who thought to film one of the community's events to show it to the community. It gave poor people the opportunity to make their own programs, about themselves, for themselves. In April 2002, when the coup against the Chavez government took place, workers in CatiaTV were instrumental in helping to get the state television channel, Channel 8, back online, breaking the monopoly of misinformation of the private television networks and facilitating the reversal of the coup.
(snip)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=3993

[wallwriter]

16. It will take an awful ot of Michael Jackson coverage

if they really want to rival CNN

[mom cat]

19. Nominated! They want to define their own reality? What nerve!

I wish them well in this exciting endeavor. I may just have to brush up on my Spanish so I can listen.

[1932]

21. Here[s teh link for telesur: http://www.telesurtv.net/

http://www.telesurtv.net/

[Judi Lynn]

24. It's looking good! Thanks. n/t

[Frederik]

22. Excellent news

Hope they will have a website as well!

[Robeson]

23. The United States Government's hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me...

..."Richard Lugar, referred to the planned channel as a vehicle to spread President Hugo Chavez's authoritarian message around the region."

I guess he means as opposed to the U.S. government's authoritarian message around the region... :eyes:

[killbotfactory]

28. Empowering the poor = Authoritarian

Yeah, fuck you too, Lugar.

[samsingh]

26. ironic that freedom and competition is on the march

to stop bush froming taking over the world as an evil emperor.

[Judi Lynn]

27. I hope the world wins, too, rather than Bush and his evil cohorts.

I'll bet _Bush feared Chavez would confront him after he tried to get him wiped off the face of the earth. Most people have more dignity than _Bush. He doesn't seem to know we've ALL got lives going on here, and don't WANT him to sit on our faces.

[Judi Lynn]

29. That first photo's a great one!

He looks as if he radiates ENORMOUS energy. It shows up in a lot of photographs, too.

It truly sets him apart from many other politicians.

[Say_What]

30. NACLA: IS VENEZUELA THE NEW CUBA?

I love Teo Ballvé. The best first...

<clips>

...Latin America stands poised at a historic crossroads. Left-leaning governments are consolidating power amid the hemisphere’s evisceration by Washington-backed military and economic policies. The moment is ripe for a profound, continental transformation, and that Venezuela is trying to be the progressive locomotive driving this process makes Washington (and Wall Street) nervous.

Within the community of American governments, Venezuela has taken a prominent role in mapping out a future course for the Americas. President Hugo Chávez’s words, and in many cases his actions, resonate deeply with Latin Americans struggling to escape poverty, inequality, exclusion and the yoke of neoliberal domination.

It is Chávez’s efforts, along with those of neighboring leaders, to create a “counter-hegemonic bloc” that has more potential bite than bark. Although substantive steps toward greater and deeper regional economic and political integration have been largely led by Brazil, it is Chávez’s emotive billing of integration under an anti-neoliberal banner that gives the process widespread support throughout the region. Helped by Brazil, he has also sought regional economic cooperation with Asian countries, particularly China, in an effort to diversify his country’s U.S.-dominated trade and investment portfolio. Instead of perceiving Latin America’s integration projects as sure-fire ways of ceding sovereignty, he understands regional integration, bloc-building and South-South solidarity as vehicles for attaining national sovereignty amid coercive U.S. power.

Of course, there are more radical forces at work in the region, notably in Bolivia, but none have yet achieved state power. Undoubtedly, Chávez is attempting a state-sponsored transformation of Venezuela, and by extension the hemisphere. He has invited Venezuelans to join him in constructing “a socialism for the twenty-first century”—presumably as opposed to Cuba’s. But in today’s context, what the Venezuelan government is carrying out is almost as radical as what the bearded revolutionaries achieved in the Caribbean. In both cases, immediate efforts focused on the radical inclusion of the nations’ poor, darker-hued majorities, and the chipping away of elite power.

Much ink has been spilled about Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” his policies, his ideas and his style— especially by those questioning his “democratic credentials.” It seems the stagnation of the Cuban predicament has given way to a new crucible of debate and critique around questions of social justice, anti-imperialism, neoliberalism, socialism, democracy and, ultimately, the liberation of a hemisphere.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2571

[Say_What]

31. NACLA: AMERICAS: CONDOR FIGURES REAPPEAR

Meanwhile, Venezuela today made its third request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carilles.

<clips>

Two dirty warriors associated with Operation Condor, the Cold War-era assassination program organized by six South American militaries, resurfaced recently. Manuel Contreras, currently in prison for the 1975 disappearance of a left-wing activist, is the former chief of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), Chile’s secret police, and a former CIA asset. Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist, is a former CIA operative who was involved in the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the Contra war of the 1980s.

On May 13 Contreras submitted a notarized document to the Minister of Justice and the Supreme Court strenuously defending DINA’s behavior during Chile’s dirty war. He sharply criticized Gen. Augusto Pinochet for his “permanent, ominous silence” and lack of courage in the face of “unmerited sufferings and humiliations” purportedly inflicted on DINA agents by human rights groups and the courts. Contreras included a list of over 580 persons with information supposedly clarifying their disappearances. But Contreras’ report was an exercise in gray propaganda, a mix of truth and deception aimed at deflecting responsibility from DINA.

Chilean human rights groups were quick to point out errors and disinformation in Contreras’ data. For example, Contreras claimed DINA was responsible for only 80 of the disappearances, when in fact it carried out the majority of human rights crimes. He omitted mention of notorious DINA detention centers such as Villa Grimaldi, where many died under torture. In known Condor cases in which individuals were detained/disappeared in one country and secretly handed over to others, Contreras also withheld and manipulated data. He listed Chilean Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, for example, as detained by Paraguayan police and killed in Paraguay in an escape attempt. But the Paraguayans acted with the collaboration of Argentine intelligence and the U.S. Embassy, and Fuentes was secretly transferred to Villa Grimaldi, where he permanently disappeared.

For the first time, Contreras asserted that Pinochet directly ordered two infamous Condor assassinations: of Chileans Carlos Prats (1974) and Orlando Letelier (1976). Contreras also repeated his often-asserted claim that the CIA was the perpetrator of these crimes, but added new details.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2584


A member of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) holds up a poster with the image of Cuban anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, during a protest in front of the US embassy in San Salvador, June 13, 2005. The protesters demanded to the government of the U.S president George W. Bush the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela. Posada was twice acquitted in Venezuela of charges related to the bombing that killed 73 people when the Cuban airliner crashed off the coast of Barbados. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 as a prosecutor's appeal was pending .The sign reads 'We do not want terrorist in El Salvador'. REUTERS/Luis Galdamez

[Cha]

33. I hope they have it in English, too!

For us English speaking people(US citizens) who don't have access to real news.