Venezuelan government stops artist

[R_P_A_S]

is this really democratic? do you guys think that Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz has major political influence? come on now. this is the type of shit that gives socialism a bad name. this kind of bone head restrictions that are irrelevant.
<_<

from the BCC

Concert ban for &#39;Chavez critic&#39;
By Will Grant
Americas editor, BBC News


A popular Spanish singer has been banned from performing in a Caracas stadium over remarks he made about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
A government minister accused Alejandro Sanz of criticising Mr Chavez three years ago while touring Venezuela.

The musician has been banned from staging a concert at a state-run stadium but the government says he can perform at any privately owned venue.

Some 15,000 fans hoped to see Sanz at the gig in the capital on 1 November.

Expulsion

The pop singer may have sold 21 million albums and won more than a dozen Latin Grammys, but the Venezuelan higher education minister, Luis Acuna, is not among his admirers.

He accused the musician of railing against Mr Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution.

Mr Acuna asked how the Venezuelan people would respond to such an artist using the state-controlled stadium.


The comments which sparked the controversy were made by the singer during his last tour of Venezuela in 2004, when he said he did not like Mr Chavez.

He also said that he did not like a number of other presidents elsewhere.

And he made reference to a controversial recall referendum against Mr Chavez which was brought by the opposition to try to remove him from power.

So far, Sanz has made no comment on the government&#39;s decision.

It comes a few months after Mr Chavez warned foreigners they faced expulsion if they came to Venezuela to criticise him or his political agenda.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7040800.stm

[Herman]

is this really democratic? do you guys think that Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz has major political influence? come on now. this is the type of shit that gives socialism a bad name. this kind of bone head restrictions that are irrelevant.

I really hate Alejandro Sanz and his music is awful, so I really don&#39;t care if he was banned.

In any case, according to the article he can still perform in a "privately owned venue". So what&#39;s the problem? He&#39;ll just have to pay a little more for his own stage (as if he doesn&#39;t have millions already&#33;). Besides, it&#39;s not smart to criticize the legitimate government of a country and then expect to perform in a stage owned by the state.

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 07:51 am

is this really democratic? do you guys think that Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz has major political influence? come on now. this is the type of shit that gives socialism a bad name. this kind of bone head restrictions that are irrelevant.

I really hate Alejandro Sanz and his music is awful, so I really don&#39;t care if he was banned.

In any case, according to the article he can still perform in a "privately owned venue". So what&#39;s the problem? He&#39;ll just have to pay a little more for his own stage (as if he doesn&#39;t have millions already&#33;). Besides, it&#39;s not smart to criticize the legitimate government of a country and then expect to perform in a stage owned by the state.
Im just saying. more excuses to blame "socialism" for their "anti-democratic" policies <_<

[Spirit of Spartacus]

Originally posted by R_P_A_S+October 12, 2007 07:59 am--> (R_P_A_S @ October 12, 2007 07:59 am)
[email protected] 12, 2007 07:51 am

is this really democratic? do you guys think that Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz has major political influence? come on now. this is the type of shit that gives socialism a bad name. this kind of bone head restrictions that are irrelevant.

I really hate Alejandro Sanz and his music is awful, so I really don&#39;t care if he was banned.

In any case, according to the article he can still perform in a "privately owned venue". So what&#39;s the problem? He&#39;ll just have to pay a little more for his own stage (as if he doesn&#39;t have millions already&#33;). Besides, it&#39;s not smart to criticize the legitimate government of a country and then expect to perform in a stage owned by the state.
Im just saying. more excuses to blame "socialism" for their "anti-democratic" policies <_< [/b]
RPAS, do you think the class enemy will stop "blaming" socialism if we didn&#39;t fight them?

Did they stop attacking the Allende regime, just because Allende&#39;s government didn&#39;t fight back?

NO.

The class enemy will never stop "blaming" socialism, no matter how "nice" we are to them.

[ComradeR]

He attacks Chavez and the "Bolivarian revolution" and then expects the state to allow him to preform at a state owned stadium? that&#39;s ridiculous. He&#39;s still allowed to preform at any "privately owned venue" so I fail to see how this is an issue.

Im just saying. more excuses to blame "socialism" for their "anti-democratic" policies dry <_<
Like Spirit of Spartacus said, it doesn&#39;t matter what the left does Socialism will always be attacked as "undemocratic" by our class enemy&#39;s.

[bootleg42]

I support this. Let him go to any private arena he wants. Can he honestly expect to perform on public property while bashing the revolution. Fuck him.

Que viva Chavez&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 12:51 am
I really hate Alejandro Sanz and his music is awful, so I really don&#39;t care if he was banned.
Seconded.

He can always go play in Miami and cry for attention on Univisión.

[LSD]

A popular Spanish singer has been banned from performing in a Caracas stadium over remarks he made about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In other words, he made statements which angered the venue&#39;s owners and so was pulled off the bill. Happens every fucking day.

Does anyone remember a certain American country group which, a few years back, was banned from virtually every country station in the US because they insulted their "commander in chief"?

Stadiums get to pick who they feature and who they don&#39;t, sometimes they make those decisions for really petty reasons. It sucks if you&#39;re a fan of a canceled act, but it&#39;s hardly unprecedented and certainly doesn&#39;t indicate some sort of "secret agenda" on the part of the Chavez government.

I do agree, however, that this was probably a bad move, politically, coming as it does from a government already famous for its rather casual relationship with censorship.

On its own this decision is meaningless, coupled with published "rules" on how one "may" or "may not" refer to the president... well, it can&#39;t help but come off as a little creepy.


is this really democratic?

In the technical meaning of the word? No. But in the liberal representative sense, however, absolutely.

A thrice democratically elected president apppointed a minister to handle issues of culture. That minister has made a decision regarding scheduling at a state owned venue.

Happens in the US all the time.

[Wanted Man]

The stadium is government-owned, right? So if they went through with the concert, the Venezuelan government would basically be paying this guy to talk shit about them. Well, I&#39;ll be damned, how low will these totalitarian Venezuelans sink next???

[Killer Enigma]

I looked this up right after reading through this thread because I was greatly dissatisfied with the responses. As I suspected, there is more to the story. The best article I have found so far was on a blog. Here&#39;s the link (http://theredmantis.blogspot.com/2007/10/chavez-dictator.html).

[RGacky3]

How would this work in the United States, as far as I know the State cannot do something like that in the United States, Public places cannot be Politicized.

[Cheung Mo]

So an artist who had advocated a military coup against the democratically elected leader of a country is crying foul because he&#39;s banned from government-owned venues in said country?

I don&#39;t see how Chavez managed to come out as the bad guy here in any objective analysis.

[Enragé]

In any case, according to the article he can still perform in a "privately owned venue".

The problem is that our goal is to have everything owned by the people. The (in my mind perverted) form of this which is used almost all the time is that the state would own everything, and in most cases the state is not nearly democratic enough to do this (which is why it is perverted). If the state were to own everything that would mean that some people simply couldnt perform, make their ideas known, and those people would be those who are a threat to the rulers, those in command of the state (which, if the state is not as democratic as it should be, which it most often is, does not equal posing a threat to the revolution, the people etc).
Now this particular guy was a real bastard, but if we justify this we run the risk of justifying state censorship of just about everything in the end since there&#39;s always a (mostly shitty) argument to be found why its justified.

So, we should be principally opposed to this bullshit, even though the guy banned from performing was a real bastard.

[R_P_A_S]

i agree with many of you. I guess im just so fucking annoyed on how the media cries wolf everytime

[Comrade Rage]

The media tends to overblow the events in Venezuela.
It&#39;s funny since right-wing pundits want the end of tenure for Ward Churchill, they want the end of NPR, and the blocking of Cuban radio stations--but they claim this is a violation of &#39;free speech&#39;. :rolleyes:

[WallyWest]

sorry, but banning him in any way you look at it is WRONG. So, because this man has views different than the state, he can&#39;t perform anywhere owned by the state? my god, do you mean to tell me that even AMERICA has more rights than Venezuela? Even Stephen Colbert, who constantly makes fun of the president, was invited to the presidents dinner a while back, and pubicly made of him...

stop making justifications and really look at whats happening, socialism is supposed to involve democracy, yet right now, Chavez, whom i once HEAVILY supported, is doing things that go AGAINST that. you all feel justified if you want, but if even this country, the USA, which you so heavily criticize (as do i) allows certain things to happen, yet Venezuela doesn&#39;t...we&#39;re on a bad path.

[Herman]

sorry, but banning him in any way you look at it is WRONG.

Nope, good decision. We don&#39;t want conservative sexist fools playing in a publicly-owned place. Besides, he has MILLIONS in money, what&#39;s it to him? Nothing.

All Spanish artists (and many of these are right-winged) are allowed except for him (despite that he can just finance his own concert), because he&#39;s an idiot.

[ComradeR]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 12:42 pm
sorry, but banning him in any way you look at it is WRONG. So, because this man has views different than the state, he can&#39;t perform anywhere owned by the state? my god, do you mean to tell me that even AMERICA has more rights than Venezuela? Even Stephen Colbert, who constantly makes fun of the president, was invited to the presidents dinner a while back, and pubicly made of him...

stop making justifications and really look at whats happening, socialism is supposed to involve democracy, yet right now, Chavez, whom i once HEAVILY supported, is doing things that go AGAINST that. you all feel justified if you want, but if even this country, the USA, which you so heavily criticize (as do i) allows certain things to happen, yet Venezuela doesn&#39;t...we&#39;re on a bad path.
Well Socialism (i.e. DotP) is democracy for the workers not the bourgeoisie, it&#39;s the dictatorship of one class (the proletariat) over another (the bourgeoisie).
Watch how fast those "freedoms" the US lets us (the working class) enjoy disappear when they are truly threatened by us, it&#39;s a simple fact of class war.

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 07:51 am

is this really democratic? do you guys think that Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz has major political influence? come on now. this is the type of shit that gives socialism a bad name. this kind of bone head restrictions that are irrelevant.

I really hate Alejandro Sanz and his music is awful, so I really don&#39;t care if he was banned.

In any case, according to the article he can still perform in a "privately owned venue". So what&#39;s the problem? He&#39;ll just have to pay a little more for his own stage (as if he doesn&#39;t have millions already&#33;). Besides, it&#39;s not smart to criticize the legitimate government of a country and then expect to perform in a stage owned by the state.
I think it was a non-strategic decision by Chávez which will hurt the Bolivarian revolution. The state should be neutral in opinions, will the government should have opinions.

[Killer Enigma]

No one seemed interested in reading the article from this one blog that I posted on the matter, so I&#39;m simply going to paste it onto the forum for all to read. Bear in mind this is not mine. It can be accessed here (http://theredmantis.blogspot.com/2007/10/chavez-dictator.html).


&#39;Chavez the Dictator&#39;
...Or at least this is what the international bourgeois media would have us believe. They adopted this line after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "shut down" RCTV. They adopted this line in regards to the Venezuelan constitutional reforms which "would allow Chavez to become a dictator for life". I highly suspect they will adopt a similar line in regards to this story published by the BBC today. It&#39;s headline: "Concert ban for &#39;Chavez&#39; critic."

"A popular Spanish singer has been banned from performing in a Caracas stadium over remarks he made about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. A government minister accused Alejandro Sanz of criticising Mr Chavez three years ago while touring Venezuela."

To the credit of the BBC, they go on to note that although "[t]he musician has been banned from staging a concert at a state-run stadium...the government says he can perform at any privately owned venue." I suspect that this aspect of the story will fall on deaf ears. After all, isn&#39;t it dictatorial for a leader to not allow a musician, especially a dissident musician to perform?

It is ironic that this particular scenario happened to occur right now when much of the American public is still criticizing the privately-owned educational institution, Columbia University, for allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. Moreover, Ahmadinejad was denied the right to visit and speak at Ground Zero by the New York Police Department and the Secret Service (1) (2). I believe that dissidents should be allowed an opportunity to express their voice but the government is under no obligation to honor the requests of international figures.

In both cases, free speech was/is still served, as both men were/are able to make an appearance at privately-owned venues. The knee-jerk reaction from the bourgeois media is astounding and should make any reasonable person question the validity of the news they are receiving.