Obama budget Tweaks Broadcasts to Cuba, VENEZUELA

Wasn't broadcasting to Venezuela Connie Mack's idea? I didn't think it ever got implemented.
magbana

From Karen Wald, editor of Cuba Inside-Out list

----Original Message-----
From: Karen Lee Wald <kwald@sfo.com>

Subject: Despite financial crisis, Obama budget still funds broadcasts to Cuba, Venezuela

It seems incredible to me that in the midst of the financial crisis we are suffering the Obama administration and Congress could still give more than 32 million dollars to Miami propagandists whose message is irrelevant at best and unseen at worst. But then, I am still horrified that bankers and other already obscenely wealthy individuals are receiving millions, billions and trillions of the dollars the rest of us pay in taxes. klw
**************


The Miami Herald

Posted on Tue, May. 12, 2009
Obama budget tweaks broadcasts to Cuba, Venezuela

The Associated Press
President Barack Obama might be trying to reach out to Cuban leaders, but he isn't looking to cut U.S. broadcasts to the communist island any time soon.
The Miami-based Office of Cuba broadcasting beams Radio and TV Marti to Cuba to counter the island's government-run media. Obama's 2010 budget proposal calls for $32.5 million for the broadcasts, down slightly from the previous year's budget.
The budget request d oes call for some retooling: shorter, more frequent TV news segments and an all-news radio format. But it signals Obama is still moving cautiously in upending the country's decades-old policies toward Cuba.
The Obama administration also wants to boost broadcasts to Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez has cracked down on independent media.

Published on Friday, July 22, 2005 by the Inter Press Service
Venezuela vs US: Looming War of the Airwaves
by Humberto Márquez

CARACAS -- The Venezuelan Congress approved a resolution opposing a decision by the U.S. House of Representatives to finance radio and TV broadcasts to Venezuela with the aim of countering Telesur, a new pan-Latin American station.
Telesur, a Venezuelan government initiative undertaken in association with Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, has already drawn the wrath of the United States even before it goes on the air this Sunday.

The U.S. lower house of Congress passed an amendment Wednesday "to initiate radio and television broadcasts that will provide a consistently accurate, objective, and comprehensive source of news to Venezuela" to counter Telesur's "anti-Americanism," in the words of Republican Rep. Connie Mack of Florida, who sponsored the amendment.

Telesur will begin to broadcast from Caracas on July 24, the anniversary of the birth of South American independence leader Simón Bolívar.

The station's goal is to foment regional integration with newscasts, films, documentaries and music by Latin American and Caribbean producers, and to provide a counterweight to programming from the United States, like what is offered by CNN.

"It is a preposterous imperialist idea that should not surprise us because we know what the U.S. government is capable of," said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, referring to the amendment. "There is nothing more dangerous than a desperate giant."

If the amendment makes it through the Senate and Washington tries to interfere with Venezuela's airwaves, "we will take measures to neutralize the attempt, and what we will have is a kind of electronic warfare," said the left-leaning leader.

Aram Aharonian, the Uruguayan journalist who heads Telesur, told IPS that the decision by the House of Representatives "is clearly a measure to intimidate other Latin American countries and media, to prevent them from joining the initiative, which has awakened growing interest in the region."

He noted that at the Andean Community summit in Peru on Monday, the leaders of the bloc's other four member countries - Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru - expressed interest in exchanges and alliances with Telesur.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0722-03.htm

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_nWpwm6lhWUs/R2VnvOSrGoI/AAAAAAAAAyk/uW1Mxdwg5og/s320/Mary%2BBono%2B%26%2BConnie%2BMack.jpg

Connie Mack, with his new bride, Mary, the
ex-wife of California right-wing genius, Sonny Bono.

This poor, mentally challenged man has been in the back pocket of the Miami Mafia from the beginning.

In 1990, either he or his father got the "Mack Amendment" passed:

October. The U.S. Congress passes the Mack Amendment, which prohibits all trade with Cuba by subsidiaries of U.S. companies located outside the U.S., and proposes sanctions or cessation of aid to any country that buys sugar or other products from Cuba.

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/time/timetbl5.htm

Poor Connie was just devastated by the overnight raid by government agents to retrieve the little Cuban boy, Elián Gonzales from the home of his drunken great-uncle who was standing in defiance of a court order to surrender him to government agents to be returned to his biological father.

But Republicans repeated their call for a congressional investigation. "I'm going to recommend to the majority leader that the Senate engage in a hearing or a set of hearings into the use of force," the Florida senator, Connie Mack, said, declaring himself "horrified" by the raid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/apr/26/cuba.usa

Hope it's not going to take forever before this new President decides he can't take the shame of being subservient to our violent dirtbag right-wing, and pulls himself out of their reach. Sure they'll kill anyone they can't control, but how long does anyone want to live without honor, anyway?