CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his decision not to renew the license of a popular opposition-aligned television network and warned Tuesday he might crack down on another TV station, accusing it of trying to incite attempts on his life.
Chavez said his refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television, which went off the air at midnight Sunday, is “a sovereign, legitimate decision.”
He said another station Globovision _ one of the few channels that is still harshly anti-government _ had encouraged attempts on his life and could also face sanctions.
“I recommend (Globovision) take a tranquilizer, that they slow down, because if not, I’m going to slow them down,” Chavez said in a speech.
Roger L. Simon tries to get into the heads of “liberals” and Hollywood celebrities who can always be counted on to make excuses for the world’s most obnoxious dictators:
What is it that makes people able to overlook so much? To preserve their leftist ideals people like [actor Danny] Glover are able to ignore the likes of Castro murdering the (often very liberal) opposition, jailing artists and homosexuals and so forth. They can turn the other way as Chavez embraces Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad or closes television stations and arrests hundreds of students protesting for free speech, as he did this week. (At least he didn’t throw them through the dormitory windows, as his friends in Iran did in 1999 when the “reformer” Khatami was in power.)
It’s sad when talented people you admire, like Glover, do crazy things. I wonder at the source of the disconnect. I mean the deeper source - not the obvious Bush hatred or racial grievance that seems unabated in era when race-baiting now cuts both ways. I suspect that people like Glover, although they are not aware of it, are expressing a pain that goes considerably beyond issues of race or supposed social injustice to something buried in their DNA or imbued in early childhood. Why else would an essentially good man give allegiance to such an obviously ruthless horror?