Moscow Has a Mosque Controversy Too - World News - ABC News Radio:

"The Moscow media have already christened this patch of green 'the Russian Ground Zero' in a reflection of strife over the mosque being built near Ground Zero, the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood in New York City before the terror attack of 9/11.

The country's largest online newspaper, Gazeta.ru, drew parallels with other European controversies surrounding Islam: The burqa ban in France and the immigration debate now raging in Germany. Europeans are frightened of Islam because the religion's values are utterly foreign to them, the article said. 'Now we are experiencing something similar in Moscow and St. Petersburg.'"

Another moron. No one is afraid of Islam. Every Western human being with common sense is angry at politicians saying they support separation from State and Religion. But there come several barbaric "Islamic clerics" who are supporting seggregation of women and men and Muslims and non-Muslims, Jihad, the Caliphate, stoning of "dirty women" and several other pre-historic ideas and, as they threat with "riots", "violence" and several other "peaceful" and "loving" things, and end "convincing" those same politicians that they should implement their religious law. If those same politicians would be somewhat coherent would fight whatever attempt to hack that separation. Of course, they aren't.

According to estimates by the Moscow council of muftis (equivalent to a council of deacons in the Christian faith), up to 20 million Muslims live in Russia today. Muslims have dominated some parts of the country for centuries. While the predominantly Muslim Republic of Tatarstan in the Volga region is regarded as moderate, guerrillas are fighting to set up an Islamic state in the northern Caucasus. Islamic extremists were behind the suicide bomb attacks that shook the Russian capital this March and killed 40 people.

The planned mosque would only be the fifth in Moscow, even though this metropolis of 10.5 million has more than 1.5 million Muslim residents. In comparison, Berlin, which has a proportion of Muslims amounting to less than a sixth of Moscow's, has at least six large mosques. That is why the Moscow council of muftis wants more mosques to be built and says Moscow should have up to 40.

The Moscow mufti council, which is responsible for building the mosque, is convinced that nationalists are behind the protests against their house of worship. They say that the mosque will be built at the edge of the park anyway, leaving plenty of room for recreation and dog walkers. "The problem lies elsewhere," says Ildar Aljautdinov, the imam at Moscow's largest mosque. He warns that some Muslims may become radicalized if they don't have mosques to worship in. "We must build more mosques," he says. "Otherwise something bad will replace the religion."

See? Let us build the mosque or else! Imagine what these Muslims would tell if Christians in Saudi Arabia would do the same. Laugh at them and then call the Police against Vice to arrest them. Even if they are foreigners.

The Islamic Development Bank was set up in the 1973 by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a major special-interest group composed of 57 Muslim-majority countries (it is in fact the second-largest international organisation in the world after the UN), which, despite its stated aim of ‘promoting Islamic values’ seems to do little other than make repeated attempts to ban criticism of Islam via its placemen on the UN Human Rights Council. (My Note: perhaps that's their way of promoting Islamic values...).

Basically, it says that this morning a Somali national, who is living in Italy as a political refugee, danced ON the High Altar from Firenze's Doumo, that is the Catholic Cathedral of Firenze. Imagine if this would have happened in a mosque with a Catholic: every Western country would have been made to apologize about the "insult" to Muslims.

More comments in IBA, The Anchoress and Patrick Madrid.

...Salas decided to go undercover with his hidden cameras after the bombings that killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains on 11 March 2004. He had been as stunned as other Spaniards by the blasts, despite the country's experience of Basque terrorist group Eta. "I wanted to know what goes through the mind of a person who is capable of killing for an ideology."

Salas's previous undercover investigations – as a skinhead supporter of Real Madrid football club, and in the world of prostitute-trafficking – had taken him to the heart of some of the most violent groups in Spain. "My aim was to understand terrorism in the same way that I came to understand skinheads or prostitute-traffickers."

...Salas picked the Venezuela of President Hugo Chávez as his base. "I had been told Venezuela was a mecca of international terrorism," he says. "The Farc group from Colombia was there, as were people from Eta." Numerous other small revolutionary groups had also set up under Chávez's benevolent gaze. There, in what the New Yorker journalist Jon Lee Anderson calls "the parallel reality that is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela today", Salas established himself as yet another niche radical – flying the flag for Palestine and running a local branch of Hezbollah. More importantly, he got close to the family of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – Carlos the Jackal.

...By tracking the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera, Venezuelan TV and the internet for mentions of The Jackal, Salas discovered that Chávez himself was one of his biggest fans. "For him, Carlos is not a terrorist but a revolutionary – a model internationalist, like Che Guevara. Just as Che went to fight for other peoples, so Ilich went to fight for the Palestinians. Whenever Chávez mentioned The Jackal, I would record it and send it to him, which he loved."

Not that Salas agrees with Chávez's view of The Jackal. "He is considered responsible for 82 killings; I don't call that being a revolutionary. I call him a terrorist." – though he would probably not, he admits, use the term to his face. "It helps that he is in jail."

...In Venezuela's fringe community of political extremists, he bumped into people from Eta, the Túpac Amaru (a group of armed Venezuelan radicals who support Chávez), and other groups. Repeated requests for hands-on training eventually saw him invited to a camp in Venezuela, where he learned to handle pistols, rifles and machine guns, including a Kalashnikov AK-103, an Uzi sub-machine gun, the American M4 carbine and a Belgian-designed FN FAL. He also practised with a sniper's telescopic sight and received explosives training. "I learned all that a jihadist might need to take his message of terror to a city in Europe or the United States," Salas says. "There was nothing glamorous about it. It was just a question of learning to kill better."

His instructors included a Venezuelan army colonel, though Salas insists the camp was not run by the Chávez regime. "It just so happened that my instructors, as well as being supporters of revolutionary causes, were Venezuelan army officers."

...So what conclusions does Salas draw from rubbing shoulders with international terror? His answer is coloured by the fact that half a dozen people he met during his investigation have since died – often violently. "I don't justify violence, but I can understand it. I never found any glamour or sophistication in that world, nor anyone especially intelligent – except for The Jackal. Terrorists really have only two ends – they either die or go to jail. You have to be a bit stupid to do that."

Read it all.

Iranian officials have canceled today the residence of the correspondent of El País in Tehran, Angeles Espinosa, who has been given two weeks to leave the Islamic Republic. The move is further evidence of the nervousness of the regime against any criticism. Espinosa, who was credited to work in Iran for five years, was arrested in Qom last July when he went to interview Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who died last year, and since then authorities had withdrawn the journalist card.

"Journalists have no freedom to travel outside Tehran. We must apply for permission and I never would have obtained for that interview," admits Espinosa. However, after a severe reprimand those responsible for the Office of Foreign Press gave it that recover your card when she return from vacation.

Back in Teheran the journalist tried to regain her accreditation, but instead, she was deprived of her passport for three weeks. All foreigners residing in Iran need an exit visa to leave the country and Espinosa was unable to be stamped with the seal, which kept it in a troubling limbo. Until yesterday, when they finally surrendered her passport with the residence permit canceled and an order to leave Iran before Oct. 24th.

"Nobody has given me any explanation. Since returning from my vacation, the General Director for Foreign Press has refused to see me and the new head of the office made me understand that he could not help me, that the orders came from the other side" Espinosa said. "Through others, I have been informed that the interview with Montazeri, in which he criticized the Supreme Leader, has been the drop that overflowed the glass, but they were already very upset with my work since the last elections and El País campaign in defense of Sakineh Ashtiani.

The sentence by stoning imposed on that woman has mobilized the international community. Iran, one of the few countries that still maintains the stoning in its criminal code, has tried unsuccessfully to neutralize this new blow to its already tarnished image.

"The level of tolerance of criticism has been greatly reduced since the arrival to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," said Espinosa. Last year, following protests that the Iranians were his controversial re-election, Iran also expelled the BBC correspondent and urged the departure of the envoys who had come to cover the elections. Since then the Govt has given visas sparingly and censorship has grown exponentially internal.

There are no reformist newspapers in the streets and at least fifty Iranian journalists in prison, which according to Reporters Without Borders makes Iran the biggest prison for reporters. Although initially many independent journalists took refuge in the blogs, the regime has also increased control of the internet and imprisoned numerous bloggers. A few days ago, Hossein Derakhshan, known as the father of blogging, was sentenced to 19 years and six months in jail. Another well-known blogger, Hengame Shahidi, has been denied necessary medical care in prison.

Source.

“We have a little bit of freedom,” said Khaled al-Ekhetyar, a 29-year-old journalist for a Web site whose business card shows a face with hands covering up the eyes and mouth. “We can say things that can’t be said in print.”

But that slim margin is threatened by an ever present fog of fear and intimidation, and some journalists fear that it could soon be snuffed out. A draft law regulating online media would clamp down on Syrian bloggers and other journalists, forcing them to register as syndicate members and submit their writing for review. Other Arab countries regularly jail journalists who express dissident views, but Syria may be the most restrictive of all.

Most of the Syrian media is still owned by the state. Privately owned media outlets became legal in 2001, as the socialist economy slowly began to liberalize following the accession of President Bashar al-Assad. But much of the sector is owned by members of the Syrian “oligarchy” — relatives of Mr. Assad and other top government officials. All of it is subject to intimidation and heavy-handed control.

“The first level is censorship,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, the founder of All4Syria.info, the independent Web site where Mr. Ekhetyar works. “The second level is when they send you statements and force you to publish them.” Like many other journalists and dissidents, Mr. Abdel Nour has left the country and now lives abroad.

The Qatar-based media giant Al Jazeera has purchased a broadcasting station in the Bosnian capital. The operation is slated to begin January 2011 in Sarajevo and later be extended to the entire region. News of the Arab broadcaster's Bosnian expansion has produced diverse reactions.

"People aren't afraid of a new war, exactly, but rather political upheaval," said Boro Kontic, head of the journalist training institution Media Center Sarajevo.

Kontic likens the arrival of the Arab media conglomerate to the atmosphere before the start of the Bosnian war, when it was announced that Sarajevo was to become regional headquarters for the European TV channel Euronews.

A bombing suspect who is accused of blowing up a hotel toilet in Copenhagen, along with himself, is a one-legged amateur boxer who was born in insurgency-racked Chechnya and has shown what one scholar calls "highly professional" tradecraft in concealing his identity and purpose from Danish authorities.

The would-be bomber's target, Danish police said, was likely the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world in 2006 by publishing 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and has been the object of at least one foiled terrorist attack since.

"We are reasonably sure that was the target," Chief Superintendent Svend Foldager of the Copenhagen police, the lead investigator in the case, said at a briefing Friday.

"We're dealing with a letter bomb," said Mr. Foldager, adding that the parcel contained small steel pellets designed to maximize casualties and would have exploded with a force of a small hand grenade. "It was capable of injuring a lot of people, depending on where it exploded."

Mr. Foldager also said the device used triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a volatile acetone-based explosive used by al Qaeda in the July 2005 London subway bombings and other attacks.

The Guardian is extremely critical ... with ISAF for having arrested them. Why? Because these "apparently objective and impartial" cameramen were, supposedly, filming and saying what the Taliban "suggested" them to ... Al-Jazeera, on the other hand, calls that "comprehensive coverage".

PS: Afghanisation. How about checking your writing, Mr. Greenslade?

Somali insurgent groups opposing the transitional federal government (TFG) of Somalia have confiscated two main radio stations and TVs: Horn Afrik and GBC editors and eye witnesses confirmed Sunday.

Heavily armed militants from the Al-Qaeda-proxy in Somalia, Al-shabab who have been surrounding Horn Afrik for the past three days have stormed the station on Saturday evening and looted it.

"As soon as they entered the station, they directly went to the archive and destroyed it and they then started to loot all equipments including the FM transmitter" one of the radio editors who demanded anonymity because of security reasons told Somali Sports Press association (SSPA) which also lobbies for rights of journalists and the spread of democracy throughout Somalia.

Not only Al-Shabaab has closed TV and radio stations. The other terrorist Al-Qaeda-linked group in Somalia, Hizbul Islam, has also threatened radio stations in the past if they didn't close at its request.

Image via Wikipedia. Flowers outside Australian embassy in Jakarta, days after the 2004 bombings.

Six years after the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta, the two militants on death row for the attack say they have no remorse and they are ready to die as “mujahideens.”

Iwan “Rois” Dharmawan Muntho and Achmad Hasan were among six people jailed for helping to plan the Sept. 9, 2004, bombing that killed nine people and wounded 150.

In an exclusive interview with the Jakarta Globe at their prison on Nusakambangan Island in Central Java, Rois and Hasan said that the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad legitimized the attack.

“Why should we apologize if we believe that we did right in waging jihad [holy war] against the infidels?” Rois said. “Why must we show any remorse?”

He said it was “legitimate to attack Australian interests worldwide” because of Canberra’s close ties to Washington and its “targeting of Muslims.”

They are clear enought, aren't they?

I don't normally copy entire articles but in this case I'm making an exception. Ynet News:

A few weeks back, the well-known author Alfonso Ussia wrote in Spain’s La Razón about a young Catalan woman picked up by Israeli police in Ramallah. Ussia relates that she was presumably campaigning against the Jewish state while holding an expired entry visa on her Spanish passport. Had she been in an Arab state doing something similar, writes Ussia, she would be - most probably - stoned to death in the public square. Instead, Ariadna Jové Martí was sent in good health back to Spain, with an airplane ticket – probably paid for by the State of Israel.
How was all this viewed in Spain? The Foreign Relations Office expressed outrage to Israel’s diplomats over the affair, while the press got busy lambasting the Jewish state. All this, as Ussia rightly points out, while ignoring or justifying every ignominy of any other country around the globe.
Are Israelis aware of the Israel-bashing and demonizing carried out in the Iberian press?
Do they know, for example, the case of Madrid’s El País? With 430,000 daily copies and an Internet readership of over two million, El País is considered the “leader of the mainstream press in Spain.” And alongside every single article about Israel on the website of this pre-eminent newspaper is a profile of Israel that lists Tel Aviv as the country’s capital.
In its section “Corresponsales” (reporters), El País explains that reporter Juan Miguel Muñoz reports from “Jerusalem, Near East.” No other reporter is identified like this as based in a geographic area; they are all in a named country (except those who report on the EU from Brussels).
ReVista de Medio Oriente, a Spanish media watchdog organization, asked El País’ editors why this different treatment of Israel. About their placement of Israel’s capital in the “Near East,” they said that Muñoz “reports from Jerusalem on Lebanon and Syria too” - hardly a convincing answer on the face of it, and even less so because the reporter almost never writes about those countries but writes practically daily on Israel. About Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, the editors told ReVista that the “directive to maintain this designation the way it is comes from the paper’s directors and can’t be changed.”
Analysis of Muñoz’s biased reporting has been published at ReVista for two years and recently, a further, in-depth review examined all his articles in El País during an arbitrarily-selected three week period in January and February of 2010. The study showed that Muñoz mainly picked up material from the “local press” (as he calls the Israeli press) and re-wrote it in Spanish. He selectively chose topics that cast Israel in a negative light and presented them without context, creating an image of a nation populated by lunatics and killers.
In this vein, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is portrayed continuously as cynically posing for the press, and his concerns about Iran are all cast as politically motivated rather than justified on security grounds.
In two such articles (February 7th and 10th) Muñoz includes not even one sentence on Iran’s threats to world order. Although many nations in the West and Middle East are increasingly alarmed at the peril posed by a nuclear Iran, to read and believe Muñoz is to conclude only Netanyahu has problems with Iran (and they are actually just political posturing). “Benjamin Netanyahu has a fixation: To stop Iran’s nuclear program”, Muñoz writes. “Possessing atomic weapons, and not a signer of the Non Proliferation Treaty, Israel will not accept losing the monopoly in the Middle East.”

Relentlessly derogatory 

In the Muñoz rendition, Israel is overbearing and unreasonable and Iran doesn’t seem to deserve sanctions or isolation. The only mention of Iran’s policies is: “In any case, it doesn’t seem to be sufficient for Israel that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad agrees to have the uranium enriched in Russia and France”.
Another Muñoz story on February 7th lashes out at Netanyahu’s family with familiar interjection of editorial comment; his 15-year-old son, described as a “know-it-all”, is ridiculed for winning a Bible contest; and his wife Sara is judged as guilty of being a tyrant with her house help. “On the stage (of the child’s contest) the image was perfect: flag, religion and army, since, for the idyllic picture to be complete, his brother Yair showed up dressed in khakis.” Muñoz’s stereotype of the Likud leader’s family is crudely signaled as nationalistic, religious and militaristic.
Two more articles (on the 1st and 2nd of February) deal with white phosphorus allegedly used “profusely” in the Gaza war, and two officers being “disciplined” for that, according to the “local press.” Although the army denied that the officers were disciplined about white phosphorus use, and although the report sent to the UN doesn’t mention white phosphorus in this regard, Muñoz repeated a Ha’aretz article by Anshel Pfeffer to serve his purpose of vilifying Israel as much as possible, regardless of the accuracy of the information he repeated.
To complete the lineup, Muñoz reports on a fashion model who refused to serve in the army, only saying that army leaders attacked her mercilessly and publicly for her action but never producing any context to explain the army’s point of view, which is that all citizens are required to serve.
All in all, like Ms. Jové Martí, Muñoz enjoys Israel’s hospitality while indulging consistently in biased reporting in his native language unbeknownst to his naïve hosts. His reporting on Israel is relentlessly derogatory, typified by omissions of key information, lack of context and informational errors. In his rendition, Israel is violent, irresponsible, or plain ridiculous. In contrast, his treatment of Hamas is always respectful and understanding. 

As Mr. Ussia writes about the Jové Martí story, perhaps Israel should encourage Muñoz to live permanently in one of the other Near East countries he covers, whose oppressive policies he almost totally ignores. At least then he wouldn’t be able to enjoy living in Israel while making any “insignificant thing something big against Israel” as Ussia writes.
Perhaps when El País reports on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and Muñoz gets his facts straight on the Middle East as a whole, Israel could consider welcoming Muñoz back.  

Background:
Dor Chabab hosts event about Spanish Jews at the Center for Jewish history (theblogmocracy.com).
Spanish Amnesty International's campaign for Judeophobia in schools.
A New Judeophobia has replaced the old one.
Judeophobia in Spanish MSM: El Mundo' interview with David Irving.
Judeophobia supported by Spanish Govt.

Ibrahim Za'ir, columnist for the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra, stated

that the U.S. had carried out the attacks with the aim of forcing Russia into making concessions to help resolve the crisis with Iran, and also to push Russia into signing the arms reduction treaty: "Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that regional and international elements may have been behind the criminal operation that caused... the killing of 40 innocent civilians...

"Like the innocent victims of terror operations in Moscow, Dagestan, and other places in the world, the perpetrators of these operations also did not know the political goals of the operations [that they carried out]. [These perpetrators are] young men or women, in the full flower of their youth, who have been brainwashed with hatred and whose minds have been filled with elements of religious and ideological consciousness removed from the textual context of the books [holy to] the monotheistic religions – particularly [those] of the religion of Islam [i.e. the Koran] that bans the killing of innocents.

"But the planners of the terror operations know full well how to exploit the religion to accomplish their unique goals. It is they who are the most distant from Islam and its commandments... [The fact is that] the leader of the terror operations in the Caucasus, who was killed by Russian intelligence about a month before the recent Moscow operations, was... Sa'id Buryatsky, a Russian whose real name is Alexander Tikhomirov, who was connected to several foreign intelligence networks, particularly the American CIA.

"The U.S.'s condemnation of this does not mislead us. Many terror organizations have weapons and explosives... manufactured by the U.S. and Israel, sent to them via Georgia and other countries close to the U.S.

"Against this backdrop, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's trip to Venezuela to sign 30 agreements with President Hugo Chavez can be understood. Several U.S. and Western newspapers [saw these agreements] as Russia's response to Washington, and as an indirect accusation against it, vis-à-vis the two Moscow subway bombings... [Washington had] hoped that this terror operation would pressure the Russian leadership to make many concessions in all things regarding the signing of the Strategic Missile Arms Limitation Treaty – SALT II [sic][1] with Russia not demanding that the U.S. stop its missile defense project in Eastern Europe and change its position towards Iran, and [forcing] Russia to impose harsh sanctions on Iran [in accordance with Washington's wishes]...

Syria, that country which is a dictatorship and which is giving Scud missiles to Hizbullah.

Taponier (left) and Ghesquière (AFP).

The Committe to Protect Journalists explains in their official webpage the situation they are in.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the new demands made by a Taliban group that is holding captive two French television journalists, Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, translator Mohammed Reza, and the group’s driver. They were taken in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, in December.
...In a statement on one of their Web sites, the Taliban said they sent the Afghan government a list of detainees whose release they demanded in exchange for the French prisoners. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan submitted a list of very ordinary prisoners to the French government for release in exchange for the two French citizens and their Afghan colleagues. But the French government showed no interest, consideration or compassion for the release of its citizens. There is no other option.

“If those involved in this issue do not show swiftness and urgency, then the life of the French will face danger,” said the Pashto-language statement, which was widely translated by Afghan and Pakistani news outlets.

France Television, which owns France 3, had been withholding the identities of Ghesquière, 47, and Taponier, 46, explaining that it was doing so to protect their safety. After the release of the video, the France 3 Web site said, the families of the hostages gave permission for the release of names and photographs of the two French journalists. 

Afghan Taliban militants, holding two French journalists since December, have said in a video they'd kill the captives if France doesn't meet their demands.

The Taliban demands include the release some detainees in France, CNN reported.

The two journalists were shown separately in video clips posted online, the report said.

A statement said the journalists, their translator and driver would be killed if the video is not shown on French television, the report said. Only the voices of the journalists are heard on the video.

The Taliban in a written statement said it has submitted a list of the "most ordinary detainees to the government of France for release as an exchange for the two Frenchmen and their Algerian colleague," the CNN report said. "There is no other option for the release of the said detainees except the option of detainees exchange."

Un update on this story. From La Prensa:

“Every one of these  legislative or administrative measures are used to stop freedom of expression, while the worldwide trend is precisely to erase every limit to freedom of expression, as happens in the region with the abrogation of the crimes of insulting authorities or the elimination of censorship”, Abreu, ex president of the Interamerican Human Rights Court.

Tomás Terán, a member of the executive committee of the Movement to Socialism, denounced just yesterday that the announcement made by the Minister of Education, Héctor Navarro, related to the control of the MSM by the new Education Act, "only wants to control all the MSM's schedule to let Hugo Chávez achieve a total control of the information given to Venezuelan society".
He also added this Govt. action is not surprising nor improvised, but that "this law to control all the independent media is passed at the same time as the Criminal Procedure Organic Code to reach the real MSM censorship so much wanted by Chávez".

Some days ago, CONATEL (MSM authority) has revoked the concessions to 240 radios because they didn't give their information on time, but in the same press conference Venezuelan Minister Cabello added they wanted to "make a more democratic use of the MSM", as "27 families controlled 31% of the radios". And??

Recently International Press Society critisized the harrasment some MSM han in Venezuela. As the blog K-Minos says:

"No one can say there are no freedom of expression in Venezuela, but we can safely say that the freedom of expression is menaced and at risk, because of the hateful statements and speeches, because of the menaces expressed against journalists and MSM nearly daily, because of shutting radio channels just because they are denouncing regional leaders, because they consider internet as a luxury so as to stop the public from using it to "save", because of expelling from the country anyone who speaks uncomfortable ideas to the Government, whether they are HRW's director or a Spanish MP. Because of recording journalists' private conversations in a clear violation of the terms of our constitution and because of a lot of other cases that any of you can have knowledge of, just visiting any of the published dailies".

It's not the first time. Recently he was menacing Globovisión, because he does not like what the channel says, the latter in an important campaign against the TV station:

The government has raided the property of Guillerma Zuloaga, Globovisión's president, whom it accuses of usury and "environmental crimes". It has also fined the channel $4.2m (€3m, £2.5m) for allegedly failing to pay taxes six years ago. Such action has provoked widespread criticism that the government is harassing a powerful opponent.
Mr Chávez has made his feelings abundantly clear. "I can assure you, this network will not remain on the airwaves much longer" if it does not change its ways soon, he warned this week.

But now the General Prosecutor has had another idea: passing as a law the "MSM crimes": they pretend to punish as such, "every individual who, using false informations by any mean, would cause panic or maintain the citizenry in a state of anxiety", with 2-5 years in prison.

Of course, this is just another part of the same reality: the agression against the private property. Some days ago, they have forbidden some ads praising private property and against the law dubbed as "the Cuban Law".