Venezuelans Protest as TV Station Shuts

I really wish we'd stop seeing news clips of our outspoken left-leaning celebrities pal-ing around with this guy. This leftist government is starting to look more and more like pre-WW2 Germany or basically any post-revolutionary government. They may start out with good intentions, but soon the lust for power grips the former idealist, and they become the thing they hated.
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Excerpt from Associated Press article by FABIOLA SANCHEZ

Venezuelan police fired tear gas and plastic bullets Monday into a crowd of thousands protesting a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a television station critical of his leftist government off the air.

Police fired toward the crowd of up to 5,000 protesters from a raised highway, and protesters fled amid clouds of tear gas. They later regrouped in Caracas' Plaza Brion chanting "freedom!" Some tossed rocks and bottles at police, prompting authorities to scatter demonstrators by firing more gas.

It was the largest of several protests that broke out across Caracas hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight Sunday and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV's broadcast license, accusing it of "subversive" activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.

Office workers poured out of buildings to join student protesters, while organizers called for the demonstration to remain peaceful. RCTV talk show host Miguel Angel Rodriguez led the crowd in chants of, "They will not silence us!"

Separately, Information Minister Willian Lara accused the private Globovision TV channel of encouraging an attempt on Chavez's life by broadcasting the chorus of a salsa tune — "Have faith, this doesn't end here" — along with footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square.

"They incite the assassination of Venezuela's president," he said.

Globovision director Alberto Federico Ravell denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations "ridiculous."

The new public channel, TVES, launched its transmissions early Monday with artists singing pro-Chavez music, then carried an exercise program and a talk show, interspersed with government ads proclaiming, "Now Venezuela belongs to everyone."

Chavez says he is democratizing the airwaves by turning the network's signal over to public use.
The socialist president accused the network of helping to incite a failed coup in 2002, violating broadcast laws and "poisoning" Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism. RCTV's managers deny wrongdoing.

Some protesters on Monday blocked roads with rocks and burning trash, saying they fear for the future of free speech. Police used tear gas to break up at least two protests, and were seen handcuffing and detaining one man.

"I plan to keep protesting because we're Venezuelans and it's our right," said Valentina Ramos, 17, a Metropolitan University student who was hit in the head with a tear gas canister and received stitches.

The group Reporters Without Borders called for international condemnation of the RCTV decision as "a major setback to democracy and pluralism."

Germany, which holds the European Union presidency, officially declared its concern that Venezuela let RCTV's license expire "without holding an open competition for the successor license."

UNDERNEWS: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A MEXICAN CUT YOUR PENSION OR HEALTH BENEFITS?

This is an interesting opinion article on the immigration "crisis" that was written almost exactly 1 year ago. Note, when it talks about the Texas Rangers, it's talking about the police force, not the baseball team. Because I'm an idiot, it threw me at first... ;-)

UNDERNEWS: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A MEXICAN CUT YOUR PENSION OR HEALTH BENEFITS?

A Definition of "Terrorism"

What does it mean? Why is one man's terrorist another man's freedom fighter? Why is it called "terrorism" when insurgents in Iraq kill innocent people in the streets, but not when U.S warplanes bomb a wedding party in Afghanistan? Why was the Washington D.C. sniper called a terrorist, but the kids at Columbine weren't?

This is a serious question. I'm not using this post to criticize our military by calling them terrorists, as some have done. I just want to make sure that we know what we mean when we call someone a terrorist.

Because unless we have a firm definition of terrorism, we will always be swayed by the whims of politicians and the media, who seem to be able to attach that label to anyone they want us to hate.

Help me out. What are your ideas?

Didn't Want to Kick a Dead Horse's Ass, But...

Jerry Falwell died this past week, and while many feel that the world has lost a great man, I just can't stop myself from wondering if his afterlife is quite what he expected.

Here's a selection of his greatest quotes, taken from the Website The Progressive Review, by Sam Smith.

• If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being
• I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.
• AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals
• The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.
• The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.
• I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status.
• We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself.
• The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.

And this list doesn't even include some of his later hits, such as his duet with Pat Robertson about how Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on the gays of New Orleans. The Daily Show did a piece on this that I remember. It showed a graphic of the neighborhoods of New Orleans that had been flooded, and pointed out that one of the few places there that had remained relatively undamaged was the predominantly gay section. The lesson? God loves the gays, but hates the "gay-adjacent".

That's what this "great" man stood for. My heart goes out to his family in his time of grief, and my thoughts go out to the poor people who followed him. Your world must be very dark, indeed.

From Associated Press via Yahoo!

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AUSTIN, Texas - The agency that runs the state's juvenile prison system said it will release 226 inmates after a review found their sentences were improperly extended.

Advocates for Texas Youth Commission inmates and their families have complained that sentences are often extended inconsistently or in retaliation for filing grievances.

Jay Kimbrough, who is heading an investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the agency's facilities, formed a panel to review the records of nearly all inmates with extended sentences. The six-member panel, which included community activists and prosecutors, reviewed the cases of 1,027 inmates whose sentences were extended.

"For the youth we're releasing, we did not find that the extensions were warranted," agency spokesman Jim Hurley said Friday. "The others will be reviewed on a regular basis."

Hurley said the 226 inmates will be released on parole as soon as guardians can pick them up or they can be transferred to an interim halfway house.

Kimbrough said in March that the panel would review the documentation on each inmate's sentencing extension and discuss whether the decision was just and appropriate, and then refer their recommendation to a retired judge.

The review is one of many ongoing reforms to the state's juvenile system after the disclosure of allegations of sexual abuse of inmates by staff and a possible cover-up by agency officials. The commission incarcerates about 4,700 offenders ages 10 to 21.

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First off, this is from Texas, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised about it. Secondly, this is great evidence about why we need to abolish the death penalty. Since judges are fallible -- and in some of these cases, even vindictive -- we shouldn't give the power of life and death to them.

Dr. Bushlove, Or How I Learned to Stop Hedging and Love Iraq Timetables

We've been hearing all about timetables to leave Iraq for months now, and it looks like Bush will soon have yet another opportunity to veto a bill with an Iraq timetable.

Now, as I've said elsewhere, I don't know much about anything, but from a purely pragmatic POV, I've kind of been wondering why Bush would be against a timetable in the first place. Don't know why he wouldn't have come up with it himself. It would have given him a way to save face.

The USA is not going to stop violence in Iraq by staying. That should be fairly clear by now. We don't have enough troops, we don't have enough money, and we don't have public support for the war. If you set a timetable for withdrawal, then that accomplishes a few things that the Republicans would want:

• The Iraqi government suddenly becomes in charge of getting ready for their own country's security
• US troops get to leave in the foreseeable future. That has to help troop morale, doesn't it?
• US hawks will get to say that we didn't lose -- we just set a timetable and folowed it
• Republicans get to claim that they helped stop the war
• The US public will start to feel better about the war right away, possibly helping the next Republican candidate for President

Bush's people have been trying to spin this war since the beginning, so why couldn't they be able to spin a timetable this way?

G. Beck Uncovers Muslim Plot to Silence Dissent in America

Just put quotation marks around just about every word in the sentence, and you've got it!

My blog was getting a little cold. That's because I've been wasting my time working and commenting on other people's uninformed opinions.

Speaking of which... this video is of Glenn Beck, a cable-TV blowhard saying that there's some conspiracy to get Americans to shut up. And he's not talking about the Bush Administration's need to stop us from criticising his war, either.

A few points:

1. The headline to this video is a little misleading. There was no uncovering done here by Bleck... because he came up with no proof--only a few possibly tangential pieces of circumstantial evidence linking ONE of the Imams to charity groups that, as he says, "HAVE BEEN SUSPECTED" of having ties to terrorist groups. As we've seen in some court cases like this, those suspicions can turn out completely wrong.

2. Blech makes no case for a "Plot to silence dissent" by Muslims. Seems he thinks that if nobody else is telling this half-baked story that he made up, then that's evidence enough of a plot to silece dissent.

3. Several statements by Belch clarify, to me at least, that he doesn't care if Muslims are peaceful or not--they're Muslims and therefore have no place in our culture. Things like "we'll have to worry about separation of mosque and state" rather than separation of church and state. That has nothing to do with terrorism, but only a fear of another religion.

4. One piece of evidence that he "uncovers" and claims is damning is the fact that he used to belong to a Muslim group who had in their philosophy that "governments should eventually be Islamic." First, that's fairly innocuous--I mean, most Christians would say the same thing regarding their own religion, that governments should eventually be Christian, and will be so during the Millennium. The group's philosophy statement, as related by Belloq, does not advocate a holy war to bring about such a change, only that they should "eventually" be Muslim.

I'm against both notions myself.