Hugo's next move: Kill the media
Check out my piece on Pajamas Media today about the next steps in the Hugo Chavez playbook:
"After he spends time pondering his referendum defeat – and, of course, all of the conspiracies that led to it, considering he’s more obsessed with 'the empire' than a 'Star Wars' groupie – Chavez will slowly, surely, take what he originally wanted by force. He will justify this by calling his 2006 re-election a mandate for his 'Bolivarian revolution,' referendum or no referendum.
'We should be alert to the possibility that these changes will be imposed through a different route than the constitution,' former Chavez ally and ex-Defense Minister Raul Isaias Baduel said on Globovision after the results were announced.
Who will be the first victim of Chavez’s tighter, crushing grip on the nation? The entity that, in his mind, orchestrated Sunday’s defeat: the independent media.
In an ominous sign of things to come, Chavez swore Friday that he would shut down Globovision – the last independent TV station in Venezuela since Chavez shuttered Radio Caracas TV earlier this year, and the station that has been in his crosshairs ever since – and kick foreign journalists out of the country if they 'break rules' in covering the referendum. This is Hugo-speak for any coverage that may not have presented Chavez’s slate of 69 'reforms' in anything less than a rosy red, socialism-loving light..."
The headline, by the way, may be truer than one might imagine. Consider the editor of an opposition Web site whose car mysteriously exploded last summer...
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