Satellite network sponsored by Hugo Chavez ("Latin America's al Jazeera")

[Barad Simith]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/26/1419255&mode=thread&tid=25

Tuesday, July 26th, 2005

Some are calling it Latin America's al Jazeera. This weekend, a coalition of leftist governments, media outlets and movements, led by Venezuela, officially launched Telesur - a new Latin America-wide satellite TV network.

Just after noon on Sunday, Telesur began broadcasting a pilot service from studios in Caracas with a team of 25 journalists in nine regional bureaus presenting news "from a Latin American perspective". The channel's first news program began with a critical report on the failure of the humanitarian mission in Haiti followed by a story on the plight of refugees in Colombia.

The station is being launched with help from other Latin American governments including Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay. The driving force has been Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose government has contributed 70 percent of Telesur's financing and owns 51 percent of the channel. The channel's board members include a group of international supporters including the actor Danny Glover, the writer Tariq Ali and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

But even before its launch, Telesur was being attacked in Washington. Last week the House passed an amendment calling for the U.S. to begin broadcasting its own channel into the region to counter Telesur. Chavez responded by saying, "We will take measures to neutralize the attempt, and what we will have is a kind of electronic warfare."

Right-click the link below to download Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! interview with Andres Izarra, Minister of Communication for Venezuela and president of Telesur; and Eva Golinger, attorney who has represented the Venezuelan government, and author of The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela.

http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0726/dn2005-0726-1_64kb.mp3

(27 mb, 64 kpbs, 59:04)

[bobbieinok]

1. is the fed govt still beaming radio into Cuba??? (on top of WHO in

Des Moines???

[Barad Simith]

2. Radio Habana Cuba...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Habana_Cuba

Radio Habana Cuba (RHC) is the official international broadcasting station of Cuba. It began broadcasting in 1961, two years after the Cuban Revolution. During the Cold War, RHC relayed propaganda broadcasts from North Vietnam and North Korea, and the USSR, as well as its orginal programming. In the 1960s, Radio Habana Cuba broadcast "Radio Free Dixie" aimed at African-Americans struggling against segregation and Jim Crow in the southern United States.

At times in the 1980s, in order to protest the Reagan administration's Cuba policy and its instigation of the anti-Castro Radio Martí program from the Voice of America, Radio Habana Cuba broadcast briefly on mediumwave frequencies at a greatly boosted power allowing the station to be heard on American AM radios and overwhelming local American AM stations broadcasting on that frequency, including clear channel station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. This practice has not been repeated frequently, and Radio Martí is still audible in Cuba on 1180kHz.

In 2004, RHC and related mediumwave transmitters, such as Radio Rebelde, broadcast speeches by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as well as Castro.

[Village Idiot]

3. Viva Chavez!!!