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Hugo Chavez Watch: Protests Continue in Venezuela – United States Calls on Chavez to Reopen Television Station
An opponent to the Venezuelan government waves a flag in front of the police during a protest 28 May 2007, in Caracas, in the aftermath of the closure of private network RCTV (Radio Caracas Television). The United States called on Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, Tuesday to reverse his decision to close the country’s oldest television station.
AFP: US calls on Venezuela’s Chavez to reverse television closure
The United States joins the expressions of concern made by the international community about the May 27 closure of RCTV, Venezuela’s only independent television network with nationwide broadcast coverage,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, it’s an essential element of democracy anywhere in the world,” he said.
“We’d certainly call on the government of Venezuela to abide by its commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Inter-American Democratic Charter and to reverse these policies that they’re pursuing to limit freedom of expression,” he said.
In this photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez speaks during a meeting with retired people in La Guaira, Venezuela, Tuesday, May 29, 2007. Chavez defended his decision not to renew the license of a popular opposition-aligned television network and warned he might crack down on another critical TV station, accusing it of trying to incite attempts on his life.
But, Hugo Chavez will not reverse course. In fact, he has threatened a second station.
Venezuela’s leftist government accused a leading TV station of calling for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez, El Universal reported Tuesday.
Globovision TV was said to be openly calling for the death of Chavez when it aired the 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II accompanied by the phrase, “This doesn’t end here.”
The accusation against Globovision follows the decision by Venezuela to shut down an opposition TV station and replace it with a state-backed network triggered angry protests Monday.
The Venezuelan Social Television started broadcasting shortly after midnight, taking over the frequency previously occupied by Radio Caracas Television.
The state-run broadcast included traditional songs and dances, cartoons, documentaries and a statement from station President Lil Rodriguez — who said that as a self-respecting nation, Venezuela now has a new source of messages of dignity, VOA reported.
But RCTV employees and university students protested in Caracas Monday, calling the station closure an attack on free speech. Bank worker Marycel Montiel said she joined a protest to denounce Chavez’ authoritarian policies, comparing them to measures taken in Cuba.
And the protests continue despite Hugo Chavez’s threats:
Riot police stand guard as university students protest against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez’s decision to shut down opposition-aligned television station Radio Caracas Television, RCTV, and replace it with a new state-funded channel, in Caracas, Tuesday, May 29, 2007.
Students protest against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez’s decision to shut down opposition-aligned television station Radio Caracas Television, RCTV.
Will Chavez use deadly force against his own people to stifle freedom of the press?
Fidel Castro is his mentor.
Here is some video from today’s street protest in Venezuela:
Stay tuned……
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Hugo Chavez Watch: Chavez Closes and Re-Opens Nationalized Venezuelan Television Station
Hugo Chavez Watch: Iran and Venezuela Plan to Fund Projects – To Thwart United States Domination
Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela
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Mitt Romney Watch: Campaign Finance Reform Flip Flop
Another Flip Flop for Mitt Romney?
The Washington Post says Yes and add it to the other flip flops:
Illegal aliens mowing his lawn
Scientology book one of his favorites
Let’s see Mitt is good at pandering and flipping……..
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Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney
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Miss USA Booed by Mexican Miss Universe Audience
First Miss USA is booded and heckled at Miss Universe pre-pageant events (about half-way through the video above) and then last night during the pageant:
Perhaps these Mexicans are doing the booing that Americans don’t want to do?
Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have more about these classless POS.
By the way, the immigration reform bill and Senator John McCain are EVEN more deeply in trouble.
Update:
Here is Donald Trump saying they were not booing Miss USA but somepolicies of the United States.
And Donald what policies might those be?
Immigration, perhaps?
Are those Mexicans really helping themselves?
NOPE and not helping Mexican tourism or the Miss Universe Pageant either.
Technorati Tags: Mexico, Miss Universe, Illegal Immigration
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Missile Defense Watch: Russia Tests New ICBM – RS-24
An RS-20 booster blasts off from the launching pad in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in April 2007. Russia has said it has successfully tested a new-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, firing it 6,000 kilometres across the country, news agencies reported. The new RS-24 was designed to replace the RS-18 and RS-20 rockets.
Russia tests a new first strike ICBM Missile, is a known apologist in the United Nations for Iran’s nuclear weapon program and and then wants the United States to abandon portions of its missile defense shield.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cautioned against turning Europe into a “powder keg”, referring to Washington’s plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Europe.
“We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a “powder keg” and to fill it with new kinds of weapons,” Putin told a news conference after talks with the Portuguese prime minister in Moscow.
“It creates new unneeded risks for the entire system of international and European relations,” he said.
Are the Russians kidding?
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Missile Defense Watch: Ground-based Midcourse Defense System Test – Postponed Until Summer
Missile Defense Watch: Ground-based Midcourse Defense System To Be Tested Thursday
Missile Defense Watch: USA and Israel in $205 Million Missile Defense Deal
Missile Defense Watch: Russia and USA Clash Over European Missile Shield
Missile Defense Watch: THAAD Missile Defense Test is Successful
Missile Defense Watch: United States Missile Defense Operational Within a Year
China Watch: China Uses Ballistic Missile to Destroy a Satellite in Space
Missile Defense Watch: U.S. Missile Defense Agency Rolls Out the Airborne Laser (ABL) Aircraft
Missile Defense Watch: The LEFT’S Revisionist History on Missile Defense
Missile Defense Watch: Reagan’s Vision
Missile Defense Watch: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld Tours Alaska Missile Defense Center
Missile Defense Watch: United States and Israel Collaborating on Missile Defense
Missile Defense Watch: “Concept of Operations†To Be Done by Fall
Technorati Tags: Missile Defense Agency, Missile Defense
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Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Quits Democrat Party Over Iraq War Funding Part Two
The light bulb has turned on in Cindy Sheehan’s brain.
The Democrats DON”T care about Iraq, the Iraq War, the Iraqi people or the American troops fighting in Iraq, including Sheehan’s dead son, Casey. They want to make CHEAP political points, control the Congress and regain the Presidency.
Did You finally figure it out?
Somehow Flap doesn’t think this is the last we have heard from Cindy Sheehan – but it should be.
Maybe she will return to Venezuela and help out her friend, Hugo Chavez.
Previous:Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Quits Democrat Party Over Iraq War Funding
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Ignores Appeal From Cuba’s Political Dissident’s Wives
Cindy Sheehan Watch: “De-Escalate, Investigate, Troops Home Nowâ€
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Arrested AGAIN – This Time in Crawford
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Convicted of Trespassing
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Arrested in Washington AGAIN
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize?
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan and Entourage Disrupt Karl Rove At GOP Reception
Cindy Sheehan Watch: She’s BACK
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Hospitalized in Waco – To Be Released Later Today
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Anti-Israel Demonstrators Join Sheehan at Sacramento Street Protest
Cindy Sheehan Watch: Sheehan Heads to the Middle East for Peace Talks?
Technorati Tags: CindySheehan
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Giuliani Notes: Rudy 25% Romney 16% McCain 15% Thompson 12% in Latest Rasmussen National GOP Poll
Rasmussen Reports: 2008 Republican Presidential Primary
Romney Catches McCain in National Poll for GOP Nomination
The immigration reform debate may be shaking up the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has inched past Arizona Senator John McCain for second place in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll. Just two weeks ago, Romney was in fourth place among GOP hopefuls.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) remains on top with 25% support. That’s essentially unchanged from last week. In fact, Giuliani has been at 25% or 26% in the polls for four straight weeks.
This week, Giuliani is followed by Romney at 16%, McCain at 15%, and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson at 12%. While Romney’s one-point edge over McCain is statistically insignificant, it’s worth noting that McCain had a six-point advantage over Romney just two weeks ago.
McCain, once considered the dominant frontrunner, has been strongly supportive of the immigration reform bill being debated in the Senate. That bill is unpopular with the general public—just 26% of voters favor its passage.
The GOP NUTS:
Rudy continues to lead by almost double digits as he has for months. Yet, the big news is McCain’s collapse and the rise of Mitt Romney.
Why?
Probably a number of factors:
1. McCain’s support of an unpopular Senate Illegal Immigration AMNESTY Bill
Romney has announced his strong opposition to the immigration bill and Giuliani called it a “hodgepodge… without any central focus.†Thompson said “We should scrap this bill and the whole debate until we can convince the American people that we have secured the borders or at least have made great headway.” Most Americans are willing to support an enforcement-only approach at this time.
2. Romney is on-air in a number of early primary states
3. McCain’s FLIP remarks about Bombing Iran among others
4. Fred Thompson’s “supposed” candidacy
Although Romney’s lead is statistically insignificant, will this spur Fred Thompson into the race, replacing McCain?
In the short term, how will this affect McCain’s second quarter fundraising?
Stay tuned…….
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Technorati Tags: Rudy Giuliani
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Day By Day by Chris Muir May 29, 2007
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Hugo Chavez Watch: Chavez Closes and Re-Opens Nationalized Venezuelan Television Station
A woman supporter of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez displays a doll representing Chavez during a demonstration organized by Venezuela’s embassy in Managua, Sunday May 27, 2007. The demonstration was to support Chavez’s decison of not renewing the license to broadcast of RCTV, Radio Caracas Television channel, the sole opposition-aligned TV station with nationwide reach. The writing on the background pro-Chavez sign reads in Spanish ‘Yes to integration, Yanquis ( Americans ) out of our America’.
Venezuelan TV station goes off the air
Venezuela’s oldest private television station went off the air at midnight Sunday as thousands banged on pots and pans in protest against President Hugo Chavez’s decision not to renew the license of the opposition-aligned channel.
If the press disagrees or ridicules your government, then why not take over the press? In a blatant demonstration of government censorship, ala Cuba, and the Soviet Union, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez finds a solution.
Control the press – in this case television.
And when the people protest, stage a counter-demonstration and unleash the police and water cannon to stifle the dissent.
A water cannon sprays demonstrators during a protest against the closure of private network RCTV (Radio Caracas Television) in Caracas, 27 May 2007. Venezuela’s oldest television network has gone off the air at midnight in a move slammed by the opposition as a new push by President Hugo Chavez to tighten his grip on the nation’s media.
Will the print press that is mainly privately owned be the next to go?
Probably, if they criticize Hugo Chavez.
A woman shouts slogans during a protest against the closure of private network RCTV (Radio Caracas Television).
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Hugo Chavez Watch: Iran and Venezuela Plan to Fund Projects – To Thwart United States Domination
Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela
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Memorial Day 2007: They Did God’s Work
The American Spectator: They Did God’s WorkBy Ben Stein
Remarks delivered on Saturday evening in Arlington, Virginia, at the Memorial Day weekend seminar and grief camp of TAPS — the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.
THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME be a part of your family. This is the most important family on the planet right now. There is a First Family on Pennsylvania Avenue, but this is the real first family. The family of those who have paid the ultimate price to keep us free and dignified and alive.
A bad day for me is when I get stuck in traffic or have a toothache or notice that I have gained weight or my teenage son is surly.
A bad day for you is realizing that the only man or woman you have ever loved is one for this lifetime.
A difficult day for me with my wife is when she’s out at her bridge lesson and comes home late so my dinner is late.
A difficult day for you is when you wake up from a dream that your husband or wife or son or daughter or mother or father was alive and laughing with you and realize you’ll never see that loveable person again for the rest of your natural lives.
A bad day for an ordinary American is seeing the stock market go down or watching his son sneak a beer.
A bad day for you is a sort of loneliness, a hopeless, cruel loneliness that cuts right to the bone like the cut of a knife, that tells you that there is no one there to hug you, no one to kiss you, no one to fix the kids’ bikes, no one to wipe away the tears that just come uncontrollably when you least expect them.
A bad day for me is getting stuck in an airport security line. A bad day for you is being on the plane alone.
Yet your loneliness has meaning. Your loneliness, your pain, is the mortar and concrete that anchors the nation. The sacrifice your loved ones made, the sacrifice you made, that your kids made, is what makes the whole American world safe from terror.
Your loved ones’ lives had what we all want: meaning. The knowledge you were doing something big for others. That is EVERYTHING in life.
Wall Street does not have it. Hollywood does not have it. They’re just in it for the fame and the money.
Your loved ones were in it for unselfishness, for kindness, for love of one’s fellow man. There is no higher meaning on this earth.
The media try to rob your husbands’ and wives’ and kids’ lives of meaning saying this war is not about anything.
They’re wrong and they say what they say because they don’t see the truth. They print a story on the front page about Marines killing civilians in a town in Iraq and if they did, it was wrong. But the big media never report a MARINE throwing himself on a bomb to protect an Iraqi child, or a Marine giving his life to rid a town of murderers or a Marine or an Army man or woman or a Navy Seal or a Coast Guardsman offering up his life so that Iraqi human beings can have the same freedoms and rights we take for granted here in America.
The media are like grave robbers, robbing you of the certain knowledge that your spouses gave their lives for something deeply worthwhile: human dignity.
Your loved ones’ lives and deaths had as much meaning at the lives and deaths of every American who died for freedom from Valley Forge to the Battle of the Bulge to Cho-Sin Reservoir to the Cu Chi tunnels to the Balkans to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Falluja, Iraq.
And if the media doesn’t know it, every other American does. This is a very difficult fight, but the ordinary American knows what your loved ones have done and respects them.
Your families, your loved one, your children have more respect than Sean Penn and Barbra Streisand and the Dixie Chicks all put together times a million. And the media like to criticize because they know — in their hearts — that they will never have the guts that the man and woman in uniform have. I think media envy of your loved ones’ courage has a lot do with media mockery of the war.
To heck with them. Your husbands are the real stars. Your wives and kids are the real stars. They burn brightly forever as long as there are free men and women and the longing for human freedom burns bright in the human heart.
John F. Kennedy said that here on earth, God’s work is our work. That doesn’t mean Wall Street’s work. It doesn’t mean the Washington Post’s work. It doesn’t mean Hollywood’s work. It means the work you guys do and the work of your husbands and wives and kids. Living and dying for your fellow man. That is God’s work in the deepest sense, and God bless you for what you do, and God keep you until you are with your loved ones again.
Thanks……..
Flap reprinted Ben Stein’s comments last year and find they ring as true today.
Remember…..they did God’s work.
An excellent round-up for Memorial Day is here.
Technorati Tags: Memorial Day
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Day By Day by Chris Muir May 28, 2007