With the recent revelation that President Hugo Chávez underwent emergency surgery to remove a cancerous tumor during a visit to Cuba in mid June, an explosion in political speculation has been swirling through the streets of Venezuela and catching fire around the world.
Venezuela is a victim of media warfare, executed in large part by private media outlets who years ago decided to become the loudest voice for the country’s political opposition.
This week Latin American television network teleSUR expanded its distribution capacity to allow the Caracas-based news channel to reach over 100 million homes across the United States.
On Wednesday Venezuela’s Oswaldo Alvarez Paz was formally convicted of “spreading false information” to the general public by making unsubstantiated claims on national television that his country had “become a safe haven for drug trafficking and terrorism.”
There was no missing the glee with which Rory Carroll reported in the UK Guardian that "speaking to the Observer last week, Chomsky has accused the socialist leader [Hugo Chavez] of amassing too much power and of making an 'assault' on Venezuela's democracy."
Two weeks after deadly rioting sparked an ongoing siege in Venezuela’s notorious El Rodeo jail, authorities say they have arrested two of the prison’s directors on drug and arms trafficking charges.
By Workers’ Collective of the Radio of the South, May 16th 2011
In light of the dismissal of the president of the Radio of the South, the Workers’ Collective of the Radio of the South has, in a meeting, agreed on the following statement.
Caracas-based Radio del Sur suffered a shake up this week after Venezuela’s Minister of Communication and Information replaced the station’s president in what workers there described as a reprisal for having aired “the exercise of self-criticism” in the aftermath of Venezuela’s controversial deportation to Colombia of alternative media activist Joaquin Pérez Becerra.
Finally, the corporate media reports, "Gaddafi figures prominently on the roadmap for peace," and after fully supporting the criminal attack on Libya by the U.S., England and France, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports with an egg-smeared face, "Libya: Gaddafi government accepts truce plan, says Zuma."
The fate of the only media company in Venezuela to be taken over by its workers now rests in the hands of President Hugo Chávez and his administration.
