Venezuela halts talks with U.S. over diplomat comment: minister

[Judi Lynn]

Venezuela halts talks with U.S. over diplomat comment: minister
By Mario Naranjo | Reuters – 42 mins ago.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has cut off an informal channel of communication with the United States because of comments by a State Department official about next month's presidential election, the foreign minister said on Wednesday. The OPEC nation established contact last year with Roberta Jacobson, the senior U.S. diplomat for Latin America, to improve bilateral ties after years of tensions.

But Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said that was now on hold after Jacobson's recent statements about the April 14 election to replace the late president, Hugo Chavez.

"With Jacobson's latest comments ... we have realized that it doesn't make sense to continue wasting our time," Jaua said during a ceremony to honor two Venezuelan diplomats expelled from Washington in a tit-for-tat dispute. "Any contact that had been established has been deferred," he said, adding that routine diplomatic contacts such as consular relations would continue.

Jacobson told Spain's El Pais newspaper last week that Venezuelans deserved a free and fair election, adding that this "includes a free press, which we haven't seen in recent years."

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-halts-talks-u-over-diplomat-minister-191542787.html

[Bacchus4.0]

1. the Ven administration has difficulty with accurate statements

either making them or hearing them.

[tblue]

2. They have trouble with CIA coups too.

Hugo Chavez, (champion of the poor, less so the rich), refused to play ball with Big Oil....So naturally we in the US are told the Venezuelan gov't is scary, ensuring we will support our gov't's interference in their business. Don't believe anything without reading up on it. Check out Greg Palast re: Hugo Chavez and the coup we attempted to oust him. If the Venezuelans are skeptical of what US officials say, they have good reason to be. We have proven we are no friend of their democratic process.

[Bacchus4.0]

3. Maduro says the CIA is trying to kill Capriles

do you believe that?

[reteachinwi]

7. Otto Reich

The OPD has been strongly criticized. A report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee characterized it as a domestic political and propaganda operation.[3] The 1987 bipartisan "Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran/Contra Affair" found it guilty of "′white propaganda′: pro-Contra newspaper articles by paid consultants who did not disclose their connection to the Administration."[4] In 1987, an investigation by the Comptroller General determined that the OPD engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities, beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities". The OPD also violated “a restriction on the State Department’s annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress.”[5]

Reich held the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the time of the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt on April 11, 2002 against Hugo Chávez. On the day Pedro Carmona was installed as president, Otto Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office to express their support and that of the US administration for the new government.[6]

In 2002, Reich was also nominated to serve on the board of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, a U.S. army institution that provides tactical training and assistance to military personnel from overseas. As a member of the board, Reich's job was to review and advise "on areas such as curriculum, academic instruction, and fiscal affairs of the institute."[10]

Reich currently runs a Washington, DC-based business consultancy.

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

Perhaps Otto is consulting with the CIA on April 14 and Venezuela.

[Bacchus4.0]

8. no, we are talking about Maduro saying the CIA was trying to kill Capriles

some of the other chavistas here didn't even believe that Maduro would say something so stupid until he kept saying it again.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Otto Reich is one of the most twisted maggots who ever slimed his way to Washington.

What a filthy history.

I am stunned and sickened to learn from your post he was nominated to serve on the board of the School and Assassins. As if they needed any help with treachery. What a dirtball.

He started a character assassination program against individual U.S. mainstream reporters who were covering Nicaragua, who published articles he didn't like, when he was running Reagan's Office of Public Diplomacy. He started rumors against them, indicating they were getting, along with their information, the private sexual companionship of Central American prostitutes, both male and female, really trying to smear them personally.

He went FAR, FAR FAR beyond the description of what would have been his job being financed by the U.S. hard-working taxpayers.

[center]



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[reteachinwi]

11. Discrediting Maduro before the election would be a typical tactic

of Otto Reich and his disciples. Speculation of course, but the propaganda seems to be working on Bacchus 4.0.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Absolutely right. You would think Reich would have crawled back to Miami after having been outed

by Congress for having used illegal forms of proganda during Reagan's laughable presidency, but it merely seemed to make him bloom under the camera lights, and to seek more and more involvement in trying to lie this country into darker ignorance with his special talent for twisting and prevarication.

He passed everything he knows on to his replacement, Roger Noriega, who once worked closely with Jesse Helms when Helms was the towering southern racist, "better dead than red" Senator Jesse Helms who couldn't agitate enough against Latin American leftists during his lifetime.

Unfortunately, both Reich and Noriega seem prepared to act as human-sized cancers for the rest of their lives, working day by day to infest Latin American policy.

[reteachinwi]

15. I always enjoy your posts and your scholarship Judi Lynn.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Likewise! We're all learning together what our own media refuse to tell us! n/t

[sabrina 1]

25. It says more about this country than any other that those criminal slimebags are not sitting

in a prison for the rest of the lives, but instead are roaming free and apparently still working for this government using their 'special skills' on our behalf.

Not to mention that Helms and his wife are also still not under investigation at least for some of their own actions.

We have a cabal of criminals still running this country behind the scenes and sometimes quite openly who have doing so for decades. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Reagan's band of criminals. This is the fault of Clinton who decided to let them off the hook for some insane reason.

Thanks for your posts in this forum, Judy, it is sickening to see any Democrat join forces with the likes of these criminals to push their lies and distortions.

[naaman fletcher]

20. I notice you didn't answer the question.

So let me restate it:

Maduro claims the CIA is trying to kill Capriles. Do you believe that?

[Judi Lynn]

21. I notice it's not your job to harrass DU'ers. Take off. n/t

[naaman fletcher]

22. How is that harassment more than your message to me? nt

[Judi Lynn]

10. You're missing the actual article, itself. Do take time to read it first before using it

as your starting place for adding your anti-leftist gibberish.

The article indicates there was resistance to the whopper she laid publicly, with her dirty propaganda smear.

THAT'S the focus, or where it started out to be, at least, before the corporate "journalist" finished the article.

[Bacchus4.0]

12. the bigotted homophobe Maduro in the clown suit is no progressive

I can give a crap about "leftist". Stalin was a leftist, China is leftist, Cuba leftist, Venezuela. All conservative governments.

The US diplomat was 100% correct. I realize that truth doesn't mean much to you. I mean you just reposted a story on Colombia from 3 years ago that was debunked two and a half years ago.

thanks for playing, Miss Information.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Why not provide your debunking material, since you've got some time on your hands.

By the way, you forgot to tell the working people at D.U. how you sneer at Maduro's having worked as a bus driver for part of his life.

[Bacchus4.0]

17. I already responded to that falsehood in that thread, read it.

and I remember posting it wayback too. Although, I did admit that a cemetery is a type of mass grave.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Right. So much truth has always been at the forefront of your efforts, hasn't it? n/t

[Bacchus4.0]

19. its not part of your efforts whatsoever n/t

s

[sabrina 1]

23. The Venezuela administration recognizes lies when they see them. It is embarrassing

or should be for all Americans to see a Representative of this country make such a lying statement. As if the world is not aware of our criminal history in that part of the world and the desperation to try to regain control over its resources. Thanks to Chavez the Venezuelan people have regained their sovereignty and watching the West desperately struggling to discredit some of the most transparent elections in the world, is simply pathetic. If we lived in a real democracy, anyone lying like that would be instantly fired.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Buying Venezuela's Press With U.S. Tax Dollars

Buying Venezuela's Press With U.S. Tax Dollars
Posted: 07/19/10 02:28 PM ET

Originaly published in NACLA

The U.S. State Department is secretly funneling millions of dollars to Latin American journalists, according to documents obtained in June under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The 20 documents released to this author--including grant proposals, awards, and quarterly reports--show that between 2007 and 2009, the State Department's little-known Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor channeled at least $4 million to journalists in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela through the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), a Washington-based grant maker that has worked in Latin America since 1962. Thus far, only documents pertaining to Venezuela have been released. They reveal that the PADF, collaborating with Venezuelan NGOs associated with the country's political opposition, has been supplied with at least $700,000 to give out journalism grants and sponsor journalism education programs.

Until now, the State Department has hidden its role in funding the Venezuelan news media, one of the opposition's most powerful weapons against President Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian movement. The PADF, serving as an intermediary, effectively removed the government's fingerprints from the money. Yet, as noted in a State Department document titled "Bureau/Program Specific Requirements," the State Department's own policies require that "all publications" funded by the department "acknowledge the support." But the provision was simply waived for the PADF. "For the purposes of this award," the requirements document adds, " . . . the recipient is not required to publicly acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of State."

Before 2007, the largest funder of U.S. "democracy promotion" activities in Venezuela was not the State Department but the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), together with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). But in 2005, these organizations' underhanded funding was exposed by Venezuelan American attorney Eva Golinger in a series of articles, books, and lectures (disclosure: This author obtained many of the documents). After the USAID and NED covers were blown wide open--forcing USAID's main intermediary, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a Maryland-based contractor, to close its office in Caracas--the U.S. government apparently sought new funding channels, one of which the PADF appears to have provided.

Although the $700,000 allocated to the PADF, which is noted in the State Department's requirements document, may not seem like a lot of money, the funds have been strategically used to buy off the best of Venezuela's news media and recruit young journalists. This has been achieved by collaborating with opposition NGOs, many of which have a strong media focus. The requirements document is the only document that names any of these organizations--which was probably an oversight on the State Department's part, since the recipients' names and a lot of other information are excised in the rest of the documents. The requirements document names Espacio Publico and Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, two leading organizations linked to the Venezuelan opposition, as recipients of "subgrants."

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-bigwood/buying-venezuelas-press-w_b_650178.html

[sabrina 1]

24. We just can't win anything without bribery and lies and criminal behavior. That a so-called

democracy would stoop to bribing journalists shows the deep rot present in our own government. Yet, we continue to try to convince the world that we are 'bringing democracy' to other countries.

So glad that USAID and NED were so thoroughly exposed. It boggles the mind, the dishonesty of the US Government.

If they want oil, why not do with other countries are doing, like China and Russia eg, make a deal with oil-producing nations and stop stealing other people's resources and destroying the lives of millions of people around the world?

And then people wonder why we are so despised everywhere.

[Zorro]

26. Latin Americans rate Barak Obama as the most popular leader

That doesn't jibe well with your completely imaginary assertion that "we are so despised everywhere".

[Judi Lynn]

5. Media In Venezuela: Facts and Fiction PDF

Media In Venezuela: Facts and Fiction PDF

Written by Caitlin McNulty and Liz Migliorelli
Monday, 17 August 2009 09:36

~snip~
Media Sources in Venezuela

The preferred news source of most Venezuelans is television media. There are at least five nationally broadcasted television stations that dispatch via "free-over-the-air" and publicly allotted signals. These stations include Venevisión (controlled by Grupo Cisneros), Univision, Televisión de Venezuela (Televen) and previous to it's closing (which will be explained later in the article), Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).2

For several decades, commercial television in Venezuela has belonged to an oligopoly of two families, the Cisneros and the Bottome & Granier Group. The tremendous influence of these parties reaches beyond broadcast networks into advertising and public relations agencies that operate for the welfare of the stations, as well as record labels and other societal industries that produce material to be promoted on the stations. Not only does the Cisneros family own Venevisión, the largest station in Venezuela, they own over seventy media outlets in 39 countries, including DirecTV Latin America, AOL Latin America, Caracol Television (Colombia), the Univisión Network in the United States, Galavisión, Playboy Latin America as well as beverage and food distribution such as Coca Cola bottling, Regional Beer and Pizza Hut in Venezuela. They also own entities such as Los Leones baseball team of Caracas and the Miss Venezuela Pageant.3 The reach of the Cisneros power is massive; the media monopoly broadcasts to more than four million television screens in Venezuela, giving it tremendous power and influence.

Globovisión, a channel that is widely broadcast in major metropolitan centers such as Caracas, Carabobo and Zulia and is also available on satellite on DirecTV, and CNN en Español are both private stations that have a harsh anti-Chávez rhetoric. President of CNN en Español Christopher Cromwell has said that Chávez may not like the programming on his network, but this meant that CNN was doing its job correctly. Another station, Valores Educativos Televisión (Vale TV) is a major regional network that is neither state-run nor commercially aimed, run by the Asociación Civil, which is managed by the Catholic Church.4 These smaller, regional networks are never mentioned in reports of media in Venezuela. Five major private television networks control at least 90% of the market and smaller private stations control another 5%. This 95% of the broadcast market was quick to express its opposition to President Chávez's administration as early as 1999, soon after Chávez first took office.5 There are three public and state-controlled television channels that exist on the same national electromagnetic spectrum, including Venezolana de Televisión (VTV, established in 1964, a state-owned television network); Visión Venezuela (ViVe TV, established in 2003, a cultural network funded by the government that is not yet broadcasted nationally); and Televisora Venezolana Social (TVes, established in 2007 as RCTV's substitute).6 These channels cannot compete with the privately owned, commercial media that serve as the dominant source of television news media in Venezuela.

Print media in Venezuela is diverse, but it depicts a greater opposition presence than seen in television networks. Many publications are corporate-owned and extremely critical of the Chávez administration. In comparison to the United States, where New York, the largest city, has only four daily papers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Daily News), two of which are markedly sympathetic to the Bush administration, Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, has twenty-one daily papers. Whereas the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Washington Post are the only nationally distributed daily papers in the United States, Venezuela circulates eight daily papers nationally. A Washington D.C. based think-tank Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) has described the print media situation in simple terms: "nine out of ten newspapers, including [the most prestigious daily] El Nacional and (the business oriented) El Universal, are staunchly anti-Chávez." 7

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2059/1/

[Judi Lynn]

6. Media Misperceptions: Venezuela: The Spin vs. The Truth

Venezuela: The Spin vs. The Truth

~snip~

Spin: Chávez is clamping down on freedom of the press.

The Truth: Venezuela continues to have strong opposition broadcast and print media, as any casual visitor to Venezuela can plainly see. The supposed deterioration of freedom of the press under the Chávez government is a favorite theme of U.S. media coverage of Venezuela, and it is regarding this topic that the gap between reality and media claims is usually at its widest. Anyone who travels to Venezuela will easily find numerous front-page criticisms and broadcast denunciations of the Chávez government that go well beyond the sort of attacks on Obama that appear in the U.S. press. Yet that Chávez is attempting to “eliminate independent media”[1] by “muzzling the press”[2] are favorite themes for U.S. editorial pages, with news articles chiming in that “Chavez’s administration is moving to tighten its grip over Venezuela’s media industry.”[3] U.S. media coverage has often also distorted the facts regarding the Venezuelan government’s conflicts with opposition media outlets, some of which have openly supported undemocratic and extra-constitutional means to undermine or even overthrow the government.

Claims that Chávez is an enemy of press freedom reached a peak in 2007 when the Venezuelan government chose not to renew the broadcast license of opposition TV station RCTV. U.S. media and commentators claimed that RCTV was being “censored”[4] and “shut down”[5], but in reality, RCTV continued to broadcast via cable and Internet with large audience numbers, and maintaining its anti-Chávez line. While opponents of the government criticized the decision to allow RCTV’s license to expire, it is important to note that a TV station that had done even some of the things that RCTV had done would never obtain a broadcast license in the United States or any European democracy. Most importantly – as was admitted in news articles on the controversy,[6] RCTV openly supported the 2002 coup against Chávez by encouraging people to participate in opposition protests, by reporting the false information that Chávez had resigned,[7] and then, when Chávez returned to power, by airing Disney cartoons rather than report this news.[8] RCTV head Marcel Granier met with coup president Pedro Carmona during the coup, as Carmona enlisted the media’s help in attempting to ensure the coup’s success.[9] RCTV also actively promoted the oil strike (2002-2003) that attempted to topple the government, and other, legal political and electoral campaigns.

Even some observers who harshly criticized the government’s decision on RCTV admitted that the issue was much more complicated, and that RCTV was not automatically entitled to its license. “Broadcasting companies in any country in the world, especially in democratic countries, are not entitled to renewal of their licenses,” José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch explained. “The lack of renewal of the contract, per se, is not a free speech issue. Just per se.”[10]

In the years since the RCTV decision, instead of correcting its hyperbolic claims of Venezuelan censorship, U.S. media outlets have continued the theme. The new focus is on broadcaster Globovisión, routinely described as “Venezuela’s only remaining opposition TV television station on the open airwaves.”[11] This characterization is simply false, as numerous local TV stations in Venezuela have an opposition political line (and national broadcasters such as Televen continue to run programs with a strong opposition slant). The great majority of Venezuelan media continues to be privately owned, and the opposition dominates the newspaper industry as well. As Human Rights Watch – a frequent critic of freedom of the press in Venezuela – noted in a 2008 report, “the balance of forces in the print media has not changed significantly”, with the majority of Venezuelan newspapers continuing to be privately-owned and two of the three top newspapers maintaining an opposition political line (the third is neutral).[12]

More:
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/spin-vs-the-truth/