This is my mea culpa dispatch. Below you’ll find Naomi Klein’s latest column from the Nation on the media in Venezuela. I normally send out whatever Klein writes and her media criticism certainly fits these dispatches, but her piece is also a reminder of everything, with regret, I don’t manage to cover, starting with the crisis in Venezuela, including the deepening American role in the Columbia civil war, Lula’s election in Brazil, and so on. I’ve also added an op-ed by law professor Jack Balkin, first spotted in the Los Angeles Times, misplaced, but fortunately found again at the always useful www.warincontext.org site. It’s a heads-up on the next round of Bush administration preemptive attacks on our liberties — in this case on the very concept of citizenship itself. Just another subject I’ve managed to miss.
The fact is, while I’ve concentrated on war plans for Iraq, this administration is at war with the earth itself, and, it seems, just about everything on it. I couldn’t keep up or cover it all if I had the resources of a major paper. I don’t, but I do regret the missing stories. I just wanted you to know that I’m well aware of at least some of them. Tom
Venezuela’s Media Coup
By Naomi Klein
The Nation
March 3, 2003Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela’s big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. “Here comes Chávez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez.” Or “This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people.”
In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media’s open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. “I think their licenses should be revoked,” he says.
It’s the sort of extreme pronouncement one has come to expect from Chávez, known for nicknaming the stations “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Izarra, however, is harder to dismiss.
Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela’s big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. “Here comes Chávez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez.” Or “This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people.”
In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media’s open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. “I think their licenses should be revoked,” he says.
It’s the sort of extreme pronouncement one has come to expect from Chávez, known for nicknaming the stations “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Izarra, however, is harder to dismiss.
Ashcroft Readies New Assault on Civil Rights
By Jack M. Balkin
Newsday
February 18, 2003Just as the Bush administration is preparing a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, its Justice Department has been preparing yet another pre-emptive strike – a new assault on our civil liberties.
For months, Attorney General John Ashcroft and his staff have been secretly drafting the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, designed to expand even further the new government powers for domestic surveillance created by the 2001 USA Patriot Act. Justice Department officials have repeatedly denied the existence of the draft bill, dubbed the “Patriot Act II,” but a copy leaked out recently and has been posted on the Web at www. publicintegrity.org.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the government has rounded up hundreds of people in secret and refused to disclose even their names, on the spurious grounds that this protects their privacy.
Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, is the author of “The Laws of Change.”