Newspaper vice president shot dead in Venezuela

[Bacchus39]

Source: none listed

CARACAS, Venezuela - The vice president of a Venezuelan newspaper was shot and killed by a gunman who police said could have confused the victim for his brother — the president of a daily that has closely covered corruption cases.

Pierre Fould Gerges, vice president of the Reporte Diario de la Economia, was shot about a dozen times by an assassin on a motorcycle Monday night, newspaper editor Jose Palmar told the Venezuelan broadcaster Union Radio.

"Everything indicates it was a hit," Palmar said, adding the 48-year-old was shot about a dozen times and that the gunman stole nothing during the attack outside a Caracas gas station.

The possible motives remain unclear, but the victim's brother Tannous Fould Gerges is the newspaper's president and has reported receiving threats while the newspaper has covered corruption cases.

Police said the Fould had been driving his brother's car when he was killed on Monday night, raising the possibility his killer confused him with the newspaper's president.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080603/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_media_slaying;_ylt=Aqg1zYc4sqjdgG7JbY4RBum3IxIF

[bow-tie]

1. 12 shots?

That's nothing, he must have been say "Hello". Hell, here in "God's" land the "Cops" shoot you 50 times for possession of a comb!

[Judi Lynn]

2. This headline writer says he wasn't shot, hell, he was SLAIN!

Slain is way worse than being shot!

Newspaper executive slain in Venezuela

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D912N3MO2.htm

It's the same AP story, but bearing a headline amended to show the importance, the dignity, the splendor of the victim!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Adding visual effects:

http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/114.jpg http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/25.jpg http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/46.jpg

http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/22.jpg http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/83.jpg http://www.zefrank.com.nyud.net:8090/web/18.jpg

[Zynx]

22. That's pretty common in a lot of discussions of murders.

Ever read a newspaper in a big city before?

[Judi Lynn]

23. Maybe you can make an informed guess on whether or not a DU poster has read

a newspaper in a big city.

Does this mean I must BE in a big city while reading a newspaper, or what?

[Zynx]

26. My point is that "slain" is used all of the time to talk about someone being murdered.

I don't know why you are making a big point about this.

[UTUSN]

4. ...

[ohio2007]

7. LOL

Chávez decree tightens hold on intelligence

CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country's intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.






The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.



Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela's two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office,



under the control of Chávez.

snip


The drafting and passage of the law behind closed doors, without exposing it to the public debate it would have had if Chávez had submitted it to the Assembly, also contributed to the public uproar and suspicion.

One part of the new law, which explicitly requires judges and prosecutors to cooperate with the intelligence services, has generated substantial concern among legal experts and rights groups, which were already alarmed by the deterioration of judicial independence under Chávez.

While the language of this passage of the law, and several others, is vague, legal experts say the idea is clear: justice officials, including judges, are required to actively collaborate with the intelligence services rather than serve as a check on them.

"This is a government that simply doesn't believe in the separation of powers,"

said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization. "Here you have the president legislating by decree that the country's judges must serve as spies for the government."

Even within the Bolivarian movement, this would officialize Soviet- and Cuban-style purges, accusing dissidents of being spies, traitors or agents of the imperialist enemy," El Nacional, a normally staid opposition newspaper, said in an editorial that ended, "This is revolting."

snip




http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/03/america/03venez.php

Newspaper vice president shot dead in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela - The vice president of a Venezuelan newspaper was shot and killed by a gunman who police said could have confused the victim for his brother — the president of a daily that has closely covered corruption cases.

Pierre Fould Gerges, vice president of the Reporte Diario de la Economia, was shot about a dozen times by an assassin on a motorcycle Monday night, newspaper editor Jose Palmar told the Venezuelan broadcaster Union Radio.

"Everything indicates it was a hit,"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3336803


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSUWRv-Wc38&feature=related


collaborators with be shot

[Truth2Tell]

24. What gives you the slightest clue

that this killing had anything at all to do with Chavez?

Not even the neocon media is saying that.

This gets the award for the most freeperish post of the year. Congratulations.

[Judi Lynn]

5. I can imagine it has devastated you each time the paramilitaries killed a Colombian journalist.

Here's just one of the articles touching on this ugly business:

Interviews with three dozen news professionals show that media outlets and journalists across the country routinely censor themselves in fear of physical retaliation from all sides in the nation’s conflict.

At least 30 Colombian journalists have been murdered over the past decade for their work. “We love our profession, but we’re human,” says Carmen Rosa Pabón, news director of Voz de Cinaruco, the Caracol Radio affiliate in the northeastern city of Arauca. “Threats and killings make us afraid. To survive, we have to limit ourselves.”

On some occasions, verified news is suppressed shortly before broadcast or publication. In other cases, probing journalists are killed, detained, or forced to flee. More often, investigations never even get started. The issues shortchanged are human rights abuses, armed conflict, political corruption, drug trafficking, and links from officials to illegal armed groups. Journalists end up focusing instead on “pleasant topics like fauna and flora,” says Angel María León, news chief of Arauca’s RCN Radio affiliate.

Communities pay a high price. “Any region without investigative journalism is going to have impunity,” says Jaime Vides Feria of Radio Caracolí in Sincelejo, a provincial capital near the Caribbean coast.

And the self-censorship has international dimensions. The Uribe administration, for example, is pushing for U.S. and European funding of a $130 million plan to reintegrate the demobilized paramilitaries into society. But foreign taxpayers can hardly judge whether the plan might bring peace if the press doesn’t dare investigate drug trafficking by paramilitaries or their civilian attacks.

“We’re talking about serial massacres—extremely cruel deaths with torture,” notes reporter Beatriz Diegó Solano of El Universal, a daily newspaper that curtailed its investigation of scores of unmarked graves discovered near Sincelejo this year. “Do you think these people are going to become corn farmers? They’re psychopaths.”

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:_zbpTmCr6YQJ:www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/colombia/colombia_DA_fall_05.html+Colombia+newspaper+editor+murdered+paramilitaries&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us

[Judi Lynn]

6. Here's a f'r instance, Carlos Castaño, right-wing para. (death squad) narcotrafficker's

bloody battle against unarmed journalists:

Bogotá—On May 3, 2001, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) named Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño to its annual list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Six weeks later, a reporter from the Paris daily Le Monde caught up with Castaño in northern Colombia and asked how he felt about the distinction.

"I would like to assure you that I have always respected the freedom and subjectivity of the press," said the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Colombia's leading right-wing paramilitary organization. "But I have never accepted that journalism can become an arm at the service of one of the actors of the conflict. Over the course of its existence the AUC has executed two local journalists who were in fact guerrillas." He no longer remembered their names.

Since 1999, in fact, forces under Castaño's command have been linked to the murders of at least four journalists, the abduction and rape of one reporter, and threats against many others, according to CPJ research. "Against the violent backdrop of Colombia's escalating civil war, in which all sides have targeted journalists, Carlos Castaño stands out as a ruthless enemy of the press," CPJ's citation noted.

This self-confessed murderer of journalists is now turning to the local press in an effort to rehabilitate his image in Colombia. To that end, Castaño has launched a uniquely Colombian public relations campaign, seemingly modeled after tactics employed by legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar. Not unlike Escobar, Castaño's strategy combines a charm offensive with forthright acknowledgements of the AUC's use of terror.

While Escobar attacked journalists who favored his extradition to the United States to face drug trafficking charges, Castaño attacks any journalist whom he suspects of cooperating or even sympathizing with Colombia's left-wing rebels. This year, Castaño admitted that he had murdered journalists and tried to bomb a newspaper for its alleged communist sympathies. He has been implicated in many other attacks on the press in recent years.

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/Colombia_sep01/Colombia_sep01.html

[MarkR1717]

8. Right Wing or Left Wing....

..narco-traffickers. Which is the worst?

I know.

It's the Right Wing.

But why?

Is Murder Aduction Rape Threats and Violence OK when it's the FARC:

Bombings, murder, mortar attacks, narcotrafficking, kidnapping, extortion, hijacking, as well as guerrilla and conventional military action against Colombian political, military, and economic targets. In March 1999, the FARC executed three US Indian rights activists on Venezuelan territory after it kidnapped them in Colombia. In February 2003, the FARC captured and continues to hold three US contractors and killed one other American and a Colombian when their plane crashed in Florencia. Foreign citizens often are targets of FARC kidnapping for ransom. The FARC has well-documented ties to the full range of narcotics trafficking activities, including taxation, cultivation, and distribution.

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/farc.htm

[Judi Lynn]

9. If you know, you're doing a great job concealing it.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Embargo Date: 1 September 2005 10:00 GMT

~snip~
In the last 20 years, Colombia’s armed conflict has cost the lives of at least 70,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians killed out of combat, while more than 3 million people have been internally-displaced since 1985. Tens of thousands of other civilians have been tortured, “disappeared” and kidnapped. The vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, “disappearances”, and cases of torture have been carried out by army-backed paramilitaries.

The government began demobilization talks with the paramilitary umbrella organization, the Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC), soon after the AUC announced a ceasefire in December 2002. Under the Santa Fe de Ralito agreement, signed in July 2003, the AUC agreed to demobilize all its combatants by the end of 2005. More than 8,000 paramilitaries have so far reportedly demobilized.

However, the latest figures suggest that the paramilitaries have been responsible for at least 2,300 killings and “disappearances” since they declared their unilateral ceasefire.

More:
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR230252005?open&of=ENG-COL

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

A Dirtier War
Colombia’s fake “Peace Process” and US Policy
by Jake Hess
June 19, 2007

~snip~
Nor do the Democratic proposals appear to include any new mechanisms for ensuring that remaining military aid is not used to commit human rights abuses. The Democrats claim to be devoted to justice for Colombia’s struggling social movements; yet, as evidence presented in this article amply demonstrates, the military and government they’re funding continues to collaborate with deathsquads in violently suppressing those activists brave enough to speak out. Democrats claim to be especially concerned about labor rights; yet, the President they’re prepared to hand some $600 million to has presided over the assassination of some 400 trade unionists, almost all of which have been carried out with impunity. As in the past, the majority of these killings are blamed on deathsquads allied with the Colombian state and, as has become clear recently, Uribe’s political network in the government. (7)

More:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15149

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

2/7/2005 – IPSnews

snip~
The final declaration of the G-24, as the international group of donors meeting in Cartagena is known, came a day after the collapse of negotiations between the rightist Uribe administration and lawmakers of different stripes, on legislation aimed at holding the paramilitaries accountable for abuses.

The United Nations and leading human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch blame the paramilitary militias for the vast majority of atrocities committed in Colombia's armed conflict.

More:
http://www.educweb.org/webnews/ColNews-Feb05/English/Articles/DonorsSetConditionsforSup.html

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


Percentage of Human Rights Violations
in Colombia and Group Responsibility

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Brittain40.htm#r6

[Judi Lynn]

10. Here's something which carries on in the same vein as your excerpt, which is worth considering.

It is taken from an article which ran in Colombia's big paper, El Tiempo, owned by the family of the Vice President of Colombia, Francisco Santos. It was a little startling to Colombians to see this article coming from this paper:

Colombia: Paramilitary Scandal, Crimes, and Media ‘Coincidences'
Saturday, April 28th, 2007 @ 04:13 UTC
by Carlos Raúl van der Weyden Velásquez

El Tiempo recently devoted its crime and law section to a shocking special on paramilitary crimes , titled Colombia looks for 10,000 people, which includes some grisly pictures. In one of the articles, Francisco Villalba, a.k.a. Cristian Barreto, who participated in the Ituango massacre in 1997, has confessed to making use of the Justice and Peace law, some of the atrocities that happened on his “training” three years before:

Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts'. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, they had a family”.

Villalba describes the process: “The people were opened from the chest to the belly to take out the guts, the innards. Their legs, their arms, their heads were ripped off, with a machete or a knife. The rest, their remains, by hand. We, who were on instruction, took out the intestines”.

The training was compulsory, according to him, to “test courage and learn how to disappear people”. During the month and a half Francisco Villalba says he was in the course, he saw cutting instructions three times. “They chose the students to participate. Once, one of them refused to do it. ‘Doble cero' stood up and told him: ‘Come here, I can do it'. Then he ordered to cut him up. They made me to cut one girl's arm. She was already taken her head and one leg out. She asked them not to do it, because she had two children”.

The bodies were taken to common graves at the same place, La 35, where it is estimated 400 people were buried.

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/04/28/colombia-paramilitary-scandal-crimes-and-media-coincidences/

[Judi Lynn]

15. One day during which the public dared to protest earned them 6 murders among protest leaders.

This happened AFTER they received numbers of death threats to discourage the protest effort.

Anti-Uribe Protest
May, 01 2008 By James Brittain



Massive demonstration on March 6 in Bogotá, Colombia—photo from colombia.indymedia.org

~snip~

While a consistent disdain toward the Colombian state continues to resonate throughout various Latin American countries, so, too, has opposition within Colombia. On Thursday, March 6, Colombians from all walks of life not only protested the illegal incursion of their country's forces on Ecuador's territory, but denounced human rights abuses against sectors of the Colombian populace by the Uribe and Santos administration and their links to the Colombian paramilitary.

Promoted by the National Movement of Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado or MOVICE) and various social justice-based organizations, March 6 was a day of remembrance, homage, and protest. For months, human rights groups, sectors of organized labor, and politically conscious civilians worked together to create a domestic and international response to the atrocities. Journalist Luis Alberto Matta pointed out that 270 cities, medium sized towns, and large villages within Colombia had connected with each other. Outside Colombia, an estimated 140 cities in 23 countries across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and Latin America coordinated events outside Colombian embassies in conjunction with protest.

After months of preparation and days of travel, Colombians peacefully demonstrated their opposition. Radio reporter Manuel Rueda described how hundreds of thousands of people came to condemn the state. The BBC documented that over 40,000 Colombians surrounded the Casa de Nariño and the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá to indirectly confront paramilitaries who had forced communities and individuals to vote for the Uribe administration or face torture and death; who publicly raped and molested children, women, and men and executed and/or mutilated civilians with chainsaws; forced live castrations; cut off the limbs of non-combatants; murdered the mentally and physically challenged; suffocated children in front of their parents; committed acts of cannibalism; and decapitated suspected guerrillas and subsequently used their skulls during soccer games with the Colombian army.

In the past year just under 80 governors, mayors, and Congressional politicians have been alleged or found guilty of having direct connections, meetings, and/or contracts with the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Auto- defensas Unidas de Colombia or AUC). The AUC has targeted, threatened, and disappeared trade unionists and various community organizers. Included in the list of those linked to the AUC are Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón, his cousin Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, President Uribe's brother Santiago, and their cousin, former Senator Mario Uribe.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/17484

[MarkR1717]

27. So the Right wing started murdering the....

...left wing, and the Left retaliated in kind. Is that correct? Action and re-action. Provocation and retaliation?

[Judi Lynn]

28. Here's a description I've seen many times before:

But U.S. meddling in Colombia didn't begin with the Bill Clinton regime. Washington and Langley have a long history of interfering with their domestic affairs and violating their national sovereignty. Theodore Roosevelt was responsible for severing the province of Panama from Colombia to establish Panama as a U.S. client country in the interest of building the Panama Canal. Roosevelt's involvement came near the end of the 1000 days war that cost 100,000 lives. The CIA was implicated in the murder of Liberal Party leader, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, which triggered the period history knows as "La Violencia" (The Violence). 300,000 Colombians were killed during the period and FARC was born under the leadership of Manuel Marulanda to oppose government atrocities and oppression of the poor.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_26913.shtml

Another reference:

An estimated 300,000 people were killed in clashes over the next several years, a period known simply as La Violencia - the Violence.

"Gaitan was a revolutionary. The Conservative government took advantage of his death to mount a reign of terror to destroy the opposition," argues Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist newspaper Voz.

Among those radicalised during the Violence was Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda.

Then a gaitanista peasant, Mr Marulanda took up arms against Conservative forces and went on to found the Farc, which he still leads.

http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:Pc3BodB_nh4J:news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7334165.stm+La+Violencia+1948+FARC+United+States+murder+Jorge+Eli%C3%A9cer+Gait%C3%A1n&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

[AlphaCentauri]

14. Just think about it

when you have 75% of the murders linked to the government of Colombia and 25% to the FARC, someone must be kidding me if they try to make me focus only on the FARC and not on the bigger killing machine.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. Because it's visceral. They weren't corrupted, they were always that way.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness,” as JK Galbraith once commented.

[Truth2Tell]

25. Which is the worst?

They are both bad. But the ones I'm most concerned about are the ones carried out with the support of MY tax Dollars. So that means the Right Wing.

Let's at least stop supporting the death merchants on the side of the oppressors. That some of the oppressed have gone over the line in their fight for their lives and freedoms is also a problem - but they are not using my money so I have less of a say about what they do.

[ann_american2004]

11. This thread's been hijacked

Sorry, but it appears this thread has been hijacked by Columbia...

[Bacchus39]

12. I'd like to see more of your "discussion" with Judi on Bolivia, that was fabulous!!

whenever Chavez does something stupid, which is often, either Colombia or the US is brought up. never the FARC though.

[ann_american2004]

17. Hi Bacchus39

Thanks. I responded just a minute ago but am not going back to that thread anymore. Too personal. I just wish my family would move here, be safe, but they love Bolivia so much. I understand that though, they really fought for its freedoms.

I dont want to hijack this thread either, lol. Thanks for the articles/OP
Later! =)

[Judi Lynn]

18. So did Hugo Chavez have the newspaper vice president zapped, Bachhus39?

Is that what happened?

Would you be good enough to explain how you came to divine the connection between Venezuela's President, and the murdered newspaper vice-president?

Did someone spot him in his getaway car?

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/02dEeWS6vWcG9/610x.jpg

[Andrushka]

21. "Did someone spot him in his getaway car?"

:spray: :rofl:

If it's not the Magic Laptop producing "evidence," it's Hugo personally causing everything, doncha know Judi? Apparently there were a total of 3 murders throughout the country last Tuesday - bet he did all three!

[Judi Lynn]

16. Maybe you'll be the genius who can explain how this murder connects to Hugo Chavez. n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. It wouldn't be the first false-flag op, fer sure.

[AlphaCentauri]

13. Looks like it could be an act of the COPEI and EL Nuevo Tiempo sympathizers

There have been other victims like Flavia Araujo Pizzapio, B* sympathizer may remember her.
El Nuevo Tiempo is asking people to create "Commandos" or squads, just ad the Arm or Dead adjectives to make them more descriptive.