Racist media?
A lot of people have died in Kiev this week. We know that because the media has been showing us the dramatic images of fires and clashes. The Washington Post has two articles about the Ukraine on it’s front page today, including the lead article. Same thing on the New York Times. But, you know what’s not on the front page of either? The riots in Venezuela which are just as dramatic and violent. The riots in Venezuela began when the main opponent of the current regime, Leopoldo Lopez, was arrested and tossed in jail on charges of murder, terrorism and arson. The murder and terrorism charges have been dropped, but Lopez remains in jail. The riots in Venezuela have claimed lives, including a Venezuelan beauty queen, in a country jam-packed with beauties, 22-year-old Genesis Carmona. But, the media is reluctant to cover it. I wonder if it’s because it’s only a bunch of brown people.
The blogger, Francisco Toro, a Venezuelan ex-patriot at Caracas Chronicles writes;
Throughout last night [Wednesday-Thursday], panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting. People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an urgent plea for an investigation into widespread reports of torture of detainees. There are now dozens of serious human right abuses: National Guardsmen shooting tear gas canisters directly into residential buildings. We have videos of soldiers shooting civilians on the street. And that’s just what came out in real time, over Twitter and YouTube, before any real investigation is carried out. Online media is next, a city of 645,000 inhabitants has been taken off the internet amid mounting repression, and this blog itself has been the object of a Facebook “block” campaign.
What we saw were not “street clashes”, what we saw is a state-hatched offensive to suppress and terrorize its opponents.
Armed thugs are roaming the streets suppressing opposition to a thuggish regime. Sounds like the stuff that the liberals in this country could get vocal about, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what liberals like to claim about themselves – they’re human rights activists, right? But they’re strangely silent now. Three US diplomats have been expelled from Venezuela, because the government claims that the Great Satan is behind the protests in an attempt to get a regime change. As if this president has the cojones to sponsor a regime change anywhere. But, the US is to blame for anything in that part of the world.
A CNN news crew was relieved of their cameras and broadcast equipment at gun point by a group of secret police on motorcycles;
The Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, has threatened to toss CNN out of the country if they don’t “rectify” their coverage. The local media has been effectively silenced by the government, as well as internet activity.
So are liberals working to get the government there to stop killing their citizens? Um, nope. Venezuelanalysis, the home of American liberals who focus on Venezuela blame the US and cheer on the Venezuelan government in their murderous rampage. From El Universal, a Venezuelan, normally Spanish-language, newspaper;
Capriles Radonski noted that while the government has warned against a coup, there are not detainees or proof of that. That is why he suspects of conspiracy inside the government, that is: “self-coup.”
Capriles Radonski referred to repression, including torture, sexual abuse and ill-treatment by the National Guard and the Bolivarian National Police backed with videos, testimonies and photos.
“A student reported to a judge that he had been violated with a rifle. I wonder why that was not said in the obligatory simultaneous broadcast. (…) Some others related that they were given cloths soaked with gasoline to clean their wounds; some others were put down on their kneels or more than five hours and their heads hit with helmets, and some others complained about torture with electricity.”
So, the US media is perfectly happy to focus on the repressed white people in the Ukraine and totally ignore the equally repressed brown people in Venezuela. I guess it’s a matter of convenience, since so many in the media and Hollywood have supported the Venezuelan government’s slide into a repressive communist morass for so long, this might make them look stupid and corrupt themselves.
Category: Media
C’mon, Jonn – you know the deal. It ain’t racism. It’s politics.
The “sides” in the Ukraine aren’t all that clear – and the protesters there are “One World” types (they advocate “European Union”). Many such individuals are leftists at heart.
The mainstream media loves them some leftist causes.
In Venezuela, the protesters are fighting for their freedom against a leftist/borderline Communist Latin American regime.
Does anyone really need further explanation why the mainstream media is focusing on the Ukraine and ignoring Venezuela?
CDS drop those poor people some 3/16 cable…. miles of it.
Two things – first, we as Americans really don’t care about Venezuela (remember our buddy Chavez); and two, the Olympics are going on in Russia. That’s where the world’s news people are so with Ukraine being a hop-skip & a jump away, that’s where the news is. No racism…
But I just saw a commercial with Joe Kennedy telling us how benevolent the new Dicatat… I mean President is in Venezuela. I mean, they give him cheap oil to bribe him for his kind words.
Well, we should care about Venezuela. They were the largest oil producers in the hemisphere until Chavez nationalized (i.e. screwed up) the industry.
nbcguy54: I disagree. If it were a conservative Latin American government and leftists were protesting (and being abused), the US media would be on it like flies on fresh dogsh!t – Olympics or not.
I’m not kidding. Look at what happened in Central America circa 2009-2010 when a leftist lost an election, then rigged things to stay in power – and their own courts pitched him. The US media was all over that, and was sympathetic to the leftist trying to subvert his nation’s constitution.
CDS drop Sean Penn and Danny Glover in at the same time.
@5 – Not saying we shouldn’t care about them, you’re dead right about their oil and I personally am still wary of their connections to the rest of the commie world and close proximity to us. I just think as a general rule, most Americans couldn’t even find the country on a map and really don’t care about it, primarliy due to ignorance of the situation.
@6 – I agree with you also, if the Olympics weren’t going on, our news people would be all over it. But right now the big news is the Pussy Riot girls and the Ukraine “uprising”. They’ll show up in Venezuela after the Olympics.
Did I mention that Chavez threw out Christian missionaries working with the indigenous population and then replaced them with Hezbollah missionaries? That was seven years ago, and still not a peep from the media.
nbcguy54: don’t think so, amigo. My guess is that even after the Olympics we won’t hear much at all about Venezuela – but will continue to hear about the Ukraine. I hope you’re correct, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Hondo’s got it clearly enough-Chavez was a cause celebre among various ditzy American lefties and showing the entirely predictable outcome of lefty rule would embarrass them and maybe make some of the LIVs start to ask questions. Can’t have that-got to protect the agenda.
@6 Exactly as was the case in Nicaragua…the MSM has taken their bias so far they aren’t even aware of it anymore.
As a nation though, we’ve never given a lot of attention to the South Americans…we prefer to waste our time half way around the globe and ignore what’s happening south of our own borders in the same time zones…as you point out with a major oil producer in our own back yard taking care of business 1000 miles away makes more sense than 12,000 miles away for a great many reasons. Because our politicians lack South American/Central American focus the news media tends to ignore that as well….Columbia was never a really wonderful nation when I was there in the late 70s and early 80s but it’s become much uglier in my opinion over the last 30 years. I haven’t been in Panama since 1979 so I don’t know what it is like there lately but I suspect it’s not become a tropical nirvana either…when Afghanistan matters more than Venezuela we need to rethink our global presence.
VOV: um, the folks in Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic might beg to differ with your “not a lot of attention” statement. We’ve deployed troops to each of those nations – plus a few others – at times. (smile)
Yeah, technically that’s not South America. But in general, until the 1980s there was little reason for the US to focus on South America. There simply wasn’t a threat, and relations were generally friendly. That changed with the rise of narco-cartel violence in Columbia, coupled with the various leftist movements inspired by the Sandanista’s success in Nicaragua.
Thank Jimmy the Clueless for yet another fiasco that’s still having repercussions today.
It’s not just that we import Venezuelan oil, and that the heir to the Kingdom, Joe Kennedy is their spokesman. The three countries where these United States gets the bulk of imported oil are, in order, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
In a twist of fate, however, Venezuela needs us as more than we need them. Their oil is a heavy crude, and requires special cracking plants to refine it for commercial use. The only plants like that left are here in these United States.
Chavez destroyed the oil industry there when, as Jonn points out, he took over all the fields and refineries from folks who actually knew what they were doing and gave them to folks who promptly effed things up. It’s not unlike what happened in Rhodesia when Mugabe took the fars away from the white folks and gave them to his friends: Rhodesia went from a food exporting state to near-starvation.
It’s no wonder that Venezuela is chummy with the Iranians. They also need eachother. Iran has the only skilled people Venezuela will permit to come in and run their oil operations.
Problem: Media Bad!
Solution: Press room watch dogs!
The control of the press and other media by Venezula is the envy of our emperor, B. Hussein. As for the Ukraine, I could not care less. Same with Venezula–and, for that matter, Detroit.
CBS radio news on WMAL (local DC station) has completely ignored Venezuela all week, while reporting on Ukraine every hour… WTFO?
It’s not just our media either: most mornings I watch the BBC news on BBC America-lots of Ukraine coverage, but nothing on Venezuela. They’re usually a lot better about international news, but not this time.
Venezuelan goings-on were on my front page last night. Now they’re gone.
You’re right about the fact that it doesn’t fit the libbies media meme, but you have to remember that they have teensy weensy minds that can barely hold one thought at a time. There was widespread reporting for a while on Venezuela’s loss of basic necessities – things like toilet paper, for example – which indicates an incompetent governance as much as anything else. Then that disappeared from the news.
It’s not Allende, after all. It’s just another ho-hum riot and you’re right that it’s less important to cover something so close to home than it is to get something nearer the Olympics. The people who inhabit media output nowadays simply have too much to think about, like how many tweets they can accommodate at one time. Not, mind you, that I’m saying they can actually think….
@18. Yep. I happened upon a French News channel a couple of weeks ago and was amazed at the international coverage. Talk about a study in contrast with US TV news. I really hate to give la froggies any credit but, damn, their world news actually covers world news events.
@2/17AirCav, the French have a different attitude toward what goes on in the world. If you can dig your way through Le Monde, you learn a lot.
This is all I could find on Venezuela. The rest is the distress of not getting gold medals in the Olympics.
http://news.msn.com/world/beauty-queen-the-latest-victim-in-venezuela-unrest-1
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: if the regime in power in Venezuela was conservative and the protesters leftists, the media would be on it like maggots on week-old summer roadkill – Olympics be damned. Since it’s a leftist regime oppressing people fighting for their freedoms, they’ll ignore it.
I agree with Jonn on two points. If we could make an ally out of Venezuela, it would be to our economic benefit. Second, Christian missionaries out…Hezbollah missionaries in…a very bad thing. Most of South America has been a bastion of the Catholic Church for centuries. Now we bring in Hezbollah missionaries? They aren’t there to sing Kumbaya and teach peace and harmony with your fellow man. They are their to make western hemisphere…terrorists, period. As to media coverage I have not in decades been able to figure out the mindset on MSM, except when I factor liberalism into their equation. I am happy and glad they snagged at gun point all the CNN crap. I wish they have given the CNN guys a good beatdown while they were at it. But that has to do with my personal opinion of CNN. Hate that media outlet as well as MSNBC. But that’s just me. I am with GDContractor. Made airdropping some our Hollywood limousine liberals, Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Oprah, Rosie O’Donnell (she’ll take a C-5) and a few others, just to, you know, talk some peace sense into the folks. That’s where GDContractor’s 3/16 cable will come in…for the hangings.
@22 Indeed the lesson the liberals don’t want to learn about the 1st amendment is that it’s important to exercise that right across the spectrum or there will be a reasonable effort to suppress the exercise of that right on a host of grounds.
A free press should always be looking to expose both sides of every issue, unfortunately in the United States the free press has long since ceased to exist.
It has been replaced with a media that sells soap and prescription meds along with investment advice to middle aged audiences….the mainstream media is no longer an investigative free press, it’s a product that is packaged and sold to audiences that are already in sync with the mindset of the network they view. The sad part is that many believe the network they watch is the honest one and the other fellow’s network is the dishonest one, when the reality is they are all dishonest and biased and there is little difference between them.
People, people, people! First thing is, the Obama Admin & DoS had a hand in the Egyptian overthrow via *independent means*. So don’t be giving them a free pass on jackshit. Obama Admin raised holy hell with Egypt over them shutting down the internet there. Egypt wheter they were aware of it or not and it remains to be proven out, had no idea who was behind the uprising. Several Google billionaires “on paper of course” and others from the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, ect had a fricking huge hand in the ensuing rioting and propping up the Brotherhood. Marxist groups such as CODEPink were boots on the ground over there with the Google guys definitely contributing their significant portion to the “cause”. Medea and friends ran to the Egyptian military for safety, they were taken to the airport and put on a flight back to the USA AND they didn’t have to clear customs upon return. Another stateside group of kids at the behest of DoS was also involved and were mentored by “former” State Department staffers that were personally involved, several of whom are or were working at Google, Yahoo and Twitter. Bet your ass, Obama Admin & DoS are up to their eyebrows in Venezuela via proxies…In fact, I’m willing to gamble and say that Medea and her fugly friends are or were boots on teh ground down there, agitating all they could and then bailed out. To say or think that communism isn’t entrenched in Venezuela is a big mistake. The commies are there, boots on the ground and be damned all to hell if they lose control of that country. Why? Because of its oil resources, nothing else. Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico all run through their stated owned oil companies have a great big huge chunk of Gulf of Mexico deepwater exploration that Obama couldn’t and won’t shutoff. He shutdown BP and everybody else because of their Louisiana and some Texas base of operations and those are all he went after. Tell BP to give him what was it…$20 billion green backs? THAT was… Read more »
From Reuters yesterday:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/20/us-venezuela-protests-idUSBREA1J1BX20140220
I kept waiting for CBS or PBS or someone to mention Genesis Carmona the day she died. Zip. Nada.
@16: That’s why he wants press room watchdogs, now, so that his lies……..I mean message, can get out the way he wants them to, not that the msm would deviate from their propaganda talking points anyway, but for those not as friendly to this administration, they are going to intimidate them into complying with mein fuhrer’s dictates.
Damn, two more places scratched off my Bucket List.
As for the “can’t find it on a map” argument, I can find both Ukraine and Venezuela, and know at least a little about the histories of both, because I paid attention in school. Furthermore, I would bet that most who couldn’t find Venezuela probably think Ukraine is, “uh, someplace in Russia?” So that argument justifies nothing. And while Sochi is near (not on) the Ukrainian border, the actual violence was taking place a couple hundred miles away.
The MSM fucking LOVED Hugo The Fat Bastard Chavez (may he burn in hell). Their ideological suck affair is well-documented, and has been extended to his heirs. Venezuelan socialists can do no wrong. Sean Penn would still tell the world how great they are even if they gang-raped his mother right in front of him, and the same could be said of the execs at Communist News Network, BSNBC, etc. Hell, we already knew that Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman jerk off to picture of Fidel Castro, this should come as no surprise. There’s no morality with these people, only ideology.
I have no trouble believing that racism comes into play here too. Nicholas Cage nailed that one in “Lord of War,” talking about how he didn’t have to try very hard to hide his arms shipments to Liberia and Sierra Leone: “Nobody cared about Africans slaughtering eachother when there was already a white war in Bosnia.” And it’s true. Death tolls in West Africa in the 90s were way worse than in the Balkans. And what now much news coverage was devoted to Bosnia/Kosovo/Serbia vs Liberia, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone? The same phenomenon is likely still at work here.
Oliver stone is comparing the protestors to the Republican Party here in the US, so they have that going for them, I guess.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/sean-long/2014/02/20/four-outrageous-celebrity-supporters-venezuelan-socialism
Oliver stone is comparing the protestors to the Republican Party here in the US, so they have that going for them, I guess.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/sean-long/2014/02/20/four-outrageous-celebrity-supporters-venezuelan-socialism
@32 CAs6 My opinion, to Oliver “the poor, pity me Vietnam vet” Stone, just GFY and then GFY.
Oliver Stone has had his head up his fourth point of contact so long I’m surprised he didn’t asphyxiate himself decades ago.
HOndo, maybe Ollie didn’t asphyxiate himself, but the lack of oxygen has definitely cause severe brain damage.
I dunno. Racist or most favored news status, I read somewhere (yesterday I think) the far left loons in Congress are pushing for the FCC to “more closely monitor” what news gets pushed forward.
Fuck Oliver Stone and the horse he rode in on, with a frozen trout in the ear. His platoon and CO from Nam don’t have any use for him, thats for damn sure. He don’t get anywhere near them either, he knows some would like to kick his ass like they should have in country. Heh.
Looks like the late HC’s daughters still residing (refuse to move out) at the presidential palace & allegedly yucking it up w/loud parties…http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2564825/Hugo-Chavezs-daughters-refuse-presidential-palace-hold-deafening-parties-five-die-violent-protests-streets-Venezuela.html
I wonder how much the lack of Venezuela coverage has to do with people trying to overthrow a tyrannical Socialist government?
ArmyATC: see comments 1, 6, 10, and 22. Great minds think alike, no? (smile)
Ha! Hondo. Yeah, I should have read all the comments before posting.
@30 Whitey. True. No one cared about the goings on in Africa during that period till the powers that be got pissed about a group of white contractors working for Executive Outcomes, cleaned up Sierra Leone. They couldn’t have people thinking that they actually had some power and control over their own lives without their government sockpuppet interference.
And where, pray tell, is our own vwp? Oh, wait, it’s little brown people killing little brown people for communism. He like that.