Monday 17 November 2008

Imagine a European government showing its phone eavesdropping on state TV

Would it not be weird? Imagine this: the party in power in Spain/Germany/Great Britain/Norway is campaigning and it uses the state television to show it "knows" of some bad practices by the opposition. The "bad practices" may be just normal things as talking about usual political tactics ("we have to form a coalition") or they may be - much less often - supposed or real corruption
affairs. Imagine the way the government shows on state TV about what the opposition people are talking is by letting their citizens listen to illegal tapping of phone conversations. Imagine this is a customary thing: the government wants to say the opposition is planning something bad and it plays a record of what it was tapping: some conversation between a journalist and a politician, two politicians. Imagine most of the "shameful things" the government shows about the opposition do not have anything to do with a violation of the law but just things they consider "shameful" from the opposition. Yes, imagine your EU government showing how it eavesdrops on the opposition leaders it dislikes, with no judge order or anything.

Well, you would feel outraged, right?

In Venezuela that is now the norm: the Chavez regime plays time after time its eavesdropping on national (state) TV.

Here the news in Reuters, but there are lots of videos of the state channel doing that.

A government of thugs, nothing less.

4 comments:

  1. We were subjected to phone taps while under investigation but they at least tried to pretend it was not so. Now, against people of much more national importance they flaunt it.
    Human and civil rights are no longer even given lip service.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Guardian also reported on it today.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/18/hugo-chavez-venezuela-elections-wiretaps

    Kepler

    ReplyDelete
  3. If it is the illegal recording of conversations, the way so many opposition candidates are refusdes to be elegiable without trial, the are the nice speeches of El Commandante telling about the tanks HE will send (to Zulia and than a 2nd speech with the same content in Carabobo) if the opposition wins, in Sucre he tells that Venezuela will swim in blood if the opposition wins.... the horrible state of the roads and bridges, the hospitals, the schools, the building of houses for the poor .... whatever, there is no outcry in Venzuela ! People are still saying they will not go to vote as "their" favorite candidate is not on the list !!
    I just can not understand it ....
    I guess we are back to "each country gets the government its deserves ....."

    ReplyDelete
  4. The thing is: which people?
    I am sorry for the children.

    Quico added a link to an interesting article by a former chavista:
    http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2008/11/too-long-to-translate-chronicles.html

    It is incredible what is happening in the Bolivar state with the opposition divided when it could win so easily, how unable oppos are of proposing a concrete plan of development,
    how Venezuelans in general are more interested in the whiskey today (yeah, drink more Scotch than a Scottish) or getting under the knife for beauty purposes
    than in trying to get the country
    into the path of development.
    Kepler

    ReplyDelete

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