Buried in the story below is a bit about Venezualan officials going around to various broadcast media outlets and... now get this... making sure they're broadcasting on the correct frequency.

Unbelievable.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20040816_116.html

On Friday, four TV stations were the subject of surprise inspections by Venezuela's National Commission of Telecommunications. Minister of Communications Jesse Chacon said the inspectors wanted to ensure the stations were operating on the correct frequency so as to not miss a moment's coverage of Sunday's referendum.

The opposition characterized Friday's spot checks as a "scare tactic" aimed at spooking the free television media ahead of the Aug. 15 vote, while Alberto Federico Ravel, president of leading TV network Globovision, called the a "clumsy" effort on the government's part.

Riiight. Goodness, we wouldn't want you guys to broadcast on the wrong frequency and have nobody know about the election, now would we?

I think even George Orwell would be astonished at the audacity of this.

scare tactics? why... what could the y (the gov't) do if the "frequency was wrong" (i.e. they weren't broadcasting the intented show)

Call Dan Rather maybe? "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

(hehe)

We demand that the voice of the people be heard ;-) or else...

But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush can appoint the government of Iraq and call it "sovereign," the government of Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in this slum-choked land don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most look in the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as their President Hugo.

The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's farmers own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez, land redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But today, the landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man may not, against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. But they are convinced he would never forget them.

http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=362&row=0

Chavez is a story I’ll tell you that, it’s easy for us to criticize Chavez but Venezuela has huge oil reserves yet the poor in the country make a meager $377 a year! It’s a country that is typically Latin American where there is a huge amount of money in the elite classes the highest 10% of the population owns 36.5% of the nation income! Now do I support Chavez? No I don’t because he is ruining the economy but do I support the opposition, no because they aren’t going to represent the interests of the poorest in Venezuelan society. It’s not us who passes judgment on Chavez it’s the Venezuelan masses.

I think it should be pointed out that in the statistic quoted above:

and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%.

The "big oil" in question would be not one of the "big sister" companies, but rather Venezuela's own national oil company, PDVSA. Venezuela owns its resources, which it pumps out and sells to the internationals (typically used to be Exxon and Shell, and possibly Gulf, I believe, although my information here is rather dated).

Venezuela's problems are internal. Not external.

Venezuela's problems are internal. Not external.

A little from column A and a little from column B, they are not exclusive to each other. One of the US largest importers if Venezuela, remember 1991 to protect 90 billion barrels of oil? The US especially now cannot afford a Venezuelan boycott for instance. The US has her fingers in there don’t worry…

Don't forget the coup.
The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has established. They have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.

Washington's involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

It also also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup. It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona. But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html

Chavez has been targeted for removal. When your struggle to remain in power means you have to battle the might of the U.S., you might be driven to extremism.

We here in the U.S. constantly blather about democracy. But we don't seem to care much for it in practice if it means a regime hostile to our interests. That will not be tolerated.

Don't get uppity you there in south and central America, remember El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Etc....

Chavez according to the economist (not big fans):

Before daybreak on Monday, the CNE said that, with counting almost complete, 58% of voters had said “no” to the proposition on the ballot paper—put forward by an alliance of opposition groups—to ditch the president. Soon afterwards, a victorious Mr Chávez appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace in Caracas to sing to the cheering crowds of supporters below.
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Mr Chávez winning by a margin of around 1.5m votes, anyvote-fixing would need to have been on a massive scale to alter the outcome. So it looks like Mr Chávez has comfortably seen off his opponents and will continue governing the South American oil-producing country until at least 2007.
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Furthermore, the president has remained popular among Venezuela’s poorest, despite the way his policies have impoverished the country. Since he was first elected six years ago, Venezuelans’ average income has fallen by around a quarter. The recent surge in oil prices has showered the government in oil revenues, allowing Mr Chávez to introduce some populist social programmes that may have swung him the vote. But these handouts are unlikely to compensate fully for years of steep economic decline, nor for roaring inflation (around 30% last year).
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Mr Chávez has sought to wrest Venezuela’s main institutions—from the courts to the state oil company—from the hands of the elite “oligarchy”. This has led to violent clashes between opponents and supporters of the president.
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Emerging victorious from the recall vote, Mr Chávez promised that his government would continue pumping oil, to help stabilise the world market. Venezuela is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, providing around 13% of America’s oil imports. So, though Mr Chávez, with his fierce anti-capitalist rhetoric, is hardly a market trader’s pin-up, his soothing comments were welcomed, and brought American light crude down from the record high of $46.91 a barrel it had reached shortly before the results were announced.
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The Latinobarómetro poll shows that Venezuelans are among the region’s strongest supporters of democracy, with 74% agreeing that it is preferable to any other kind of government, a rise of 12 percentage points since a similar poll in 1996.
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http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3102178

With oil prices not seeming to ever go back down below $40 a barrel, and demand next year for oil will be a mind blowing 83 million barrels (compared to 75 million in 2003!) Chavez seems to co-opted the poorest of the population, and he may be able to afford to do it as well. Democracy has worked in Venezuela by current accounts, and for the US this should be a lesson Democracy in countries with a poor majority class, is usually not in the best interest of the United States. I don’t suspect Iraq will be very different then Venezuela, frankly only that much worse for the US.