AFP

FOXES in a chicken coop would admire the effect that Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, has had with his attempt to buy Dow Jones. His unsolicited $5 billion bid for the media company, whose assets include the Wall Street Journal and a respected news-wire service, has caused a furore. Dow Jones shareholders and assorted journalists have said they fear editorial interference. Trade unions have tried to inveigle competing bids from friendlier tycoons. Rivals have scrambled to see how they might profit. Even so, events this week have reinforced Mr Murdoch’s status both as the favourite to win and as the best bet for Dow Jones’s future.

Rival bids range from the uninspired to the unproven. Brad Greenspan, an internet entrepreneur who was once part-owner of MySpace, another News Corp acquisition, said on Wednesday June 20th that he had offered to invest in the company at $60 per share, matching Mr Murdoch. But Mr Greenspan’s offer is for just a quarter of Dow Jones and he cannot begin to match the strategic logic of News Corp’s bid.

A more plausible rival is a consortium that may well never exist. The Wall Street Journal itself reported that General Electric (GE) and Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times (which owns half of The Economist), were plotting to buy Dow Jones and combine it with their own business-media assets in a separate company. A minor stake in this new entity would be given to the Bancroft family, which holds a majority of Dow Jones’s voting shares and has been queasy about selling to News Corp.

Both GE and Pearson have been tight-lipped about the story in public. Talks would make sense, as each has good reason to oppose Mr Murdoch. A reinvigorated Wall Street Journal could threaten the Financial Times and provide content and credibility for News Corp’s planned business news channel, a rival to GE’s CNBC. Bringing the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal together could save them both money while creating a beefy global advertising platform. Pearson said on June 19th that it was considering a sale of Les Echos, a French business paper, fanning speculation that it wants to raise cash to finance a Dow Jones bid.

But the obstacles remain daunting. Mr Murdoch’s offer was pitched high to deter other suitors. Pearson has spent the past few years carefully building up its educational-publishing business—splurging to protect the Financial Times would take some explaining to shareholders. Previous discussions on sharing costs between the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal came to nothing. Joint ventures are hard to negotiate (GE has already had abortive discussions with Microsoft about a bid for Dow Jones) and even harder to run.

Others may yet enter the fray. Ron Burkle, a Californian supermarket tycoon who has been approached by Dow Jones employees, is rumoured to be considering a bid. Brian Tierney, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, has expressed an interest. But these are long shots. The Bancrofts are concerned by risks to the integrity of the Wall Street Journal (in response Mr Murdoch has offered to set up an independent editorial board like the one he has in place at the Times, a similarly storied British newspaper). But the news on June 20th that the Dow board would take the lead in bid negotiations, wresting control from the Bancrofts, may signal a quick resolution to the battle.

Despite the opposition Mr Murdoch has generated, that would be good news for Dow Jones's shareholders and workers. Of the potential buyers, Mr Murdoch is the most likely to invest heavily in the Wall Street Journal. (GE would certainly take a more ruthless view of underperformance, and some would doubt that the world’s second-largest company would take any more care than Mr Murdoch to protect editorial ethics.)

As for Mr Murdoch’s alleged downmarket tendencies, he is too shrewd to ruin the brand that makes Dow Jones attractive in the first place. In any case, he could find other ways to satisfy those vulgar inclinations. According to Peter Kreisky, a media consultant, there is room in the American market for a populist national paper. Bringing together News Corp’s undoubted tabloid editorial skills and the Wall Street Journal’s impressive production and distribution arms might just make it possible to fill that gap.

AS BEFITS an event in its back yard, the Paris Air Show has brought good cheer for Airbus. As the show opened on Monday June 18th, the European jetmaker announced a raft of new business. It says it has gathered new or confirmed orders and more tentative commitments for 339 planes with a list price of $45.7 billion, beating previous air-show records.

The news brought little more than a disdainful response from Boeing, its arch-rival. The American firm chooses not to save up news of big sales for set-piece events, although it did announce on Tuesday June 19th a deal for 60 planes worth some $8.8 billion. Before that, totting up orders for the year so far, Airbus and Boeing were at roughly the same level of over 400 orders apiece. Airbus, which had slipped behind its transatlantic competitor over the past couple of years, may be starting to catch up again.

Not all is rosy for Airbus. The company expects to suffer a loss this year, just as it did in 2006. The main reason for Airbus’s ongoing troubles is also one of the star turns at Paris—the A380 superjumbo. It is destined to become as readily recognisable as Boeing’s hump-backed 747, another plane that saw a far from comfortable birth. Production delays have pushed back its entry into service by two years to October which, along with the strains of the weak dollar, is responsible for Airbus’s losses. Yet Airbus might hope that the worst is over for its 555-seat monster.

A clutch of new orders in Paris suggests that the A380 will eventually start to pay. Emirates, a Gulf-based airline and the first to take the plunge with the vast aircraft, has agreed to buy another eight planes. Qatar Airways wants another three. But the delays are hitting Airbus’s bottom line. The European firm admits that it needs to sell more than 420 planes just to break even. So far orders are around 170 and growing slowly. But even Boeing admits that the market for passenger jets with over 400 seats should top 960 over the next 20 years.

Just as important to Airbus is the fate of its A350-XWB. This long-haul, wide-bodied jet also caused much grief last year. Customers turned up their noses at its original design. In contrast Boeing’s competitor, the 787 Dreamliner, has grabbed some 660 orders. Airlines wanted Airbus to match the advantages offered by Boeing’s new composite body. This lighter and more rigid material allows a larger fuselage and greater fuel efficiency. But redesigning the plane will cost Airbus some $10 billion.

Before Paris, Airbus had managed to extract just a handful of orders for this plane. Now, in a day, it has amassed 127 firm orders and caught the eye of other airlines. Huge discounts must surely have been offered, yet the interest also reflects booming demand for passenger jets. Airbus expects sales of around 22,700 new passenger and freight aircraft up to 2025. Both firms have bulging order books. The 787s ordered today will not start to roll off production lines until 2014, the year that the A350 should enter service, making more of a straight fight for future business.

In a periodic plea for more state aid Louis Gallois, Airbus’s boss, says that the firm was in “the worst state it has ever been”. But Airbus is restructuring and may be past its darkest days. Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French president, also seems keen to break the political stalemate with Germany that is hobbling EADS, Airbus’s parent company. Airbus is beginning to copy Boeing’s practice of outsourcing production and sharing risk with partners.

The rivalry with Boeing will continue, not least because the strong euro could force Airbus to turn to suppliers in dollar-denominated regions, reigniting political warfare. But another rival may be on the horizon. China’s leading state aerospace firm says that it will bid for six plants that are being auctioned off as part of Airbus’s restructuring. The Chinese firm has also signed important deals with Bombardier, a Canadian company that makes smaller regional jets but could have bigger ambitions. Jim McNerney, Boeing’s boss, admits that “There is room for a third large planemaker in the next two decades,” and that China is the likely source.

AFP

LIKE a movie star, he is late, but that only whets his fans’ appetite to see him. Thousands stand under the vicious midday sun in a park in Reno, Nevada. No other presidential candidate could pull such a large, passionate or politically diverse crowd. Reggie Willis, a medical student, voted for George Bush in 2004 but now says Barack Obama is “the guy America is waiting for”.

Mr Obama eventually moseys onto the stage and starts massaging the crowd with his seductive baritone. He calls for a new, less selfish, less timid politics that “reflects the core decency of the American people”. The crowd is too wound up in loving him to wonder what, in practice, that might actually involve.

Three years ago no one had heard of Mr Obama—he was just a local politician in Illinois. Then he gave a keynote address at the Democratic Party’s convention in 2004, when he was running for a seat in the US Senate. He was, he told the convention, the son of a Kenyan man who grew up herding goats and went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father got a scholarship “to study in a magical place, America”, where he married a white woman from Kansas. Although they were not rich, their son went to Harvard. “In no other country on earth is my story even possible,” he said.

He won his Senate race easily. Could he go further? The idea that he could run for president at first seemed absurd. But Mr Obama’s evident star power makes it seem plausible.

It probably helps that he is black (or, at least, mixed-race). A generation ago, this would have been a fatal disadvantage. But now many white Americans would love to elect a black president, to demonstrate to the world and themselves that they are not bigots. In a recent study by the Pew Research Centre, 92% of Americans said they would be prepared to vote for a black candidate, up from 37% in 1958. This is a big change, and Mr Obama is well-positioned to take advantage of it.

Some black Americans worry that he is not really one of them because his ancestors were not brought to America as slaves and he played no role in the civil-rights movement. He addressed such worries, brilliantly, in a speech in Selma, Alabama, on the anniversary this year of a voting-rights march that was violently dispersed. Without the civil-rights movement, he said, his white mother and black father might not have wed. “So don’t tell me”, he said, “I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.”

Can all this charisma win him the nomination? The polls say probably not. He cannot match Hillary Clinton’s organisation on the ground. He trails her by ten points or so in national polls of likely Democratic primary voters (see chart), and he leads in none of the early primary states. On the other hand, he raised more money for the primaries than Mrs Clinton in the first quarter of this year—an astonishing feat for a newcomer. So he must be taken seriously. What, then, does he stand for?

On Iraq, his position is clear. Unlike his main rivals, he opposed the war from the start. But he is no dove. He says that “no president should ever hesitate to use force”, unilaterally if necessary, when America or its vital interests are attacked or threatened.

On foreign policy more broadly, he is both ambitious and idealistic. He would strengthen NATO, build new alliances in Asia, halt the genocide in Darfur, push for peace in the Middle East and help the world’s poorest countries build functioning market economies. Admirable goals, but he gives only a sketchy idea as to how he would achieve any of them.

His support for free trade is tepid. He favours trade deals only if foreigners agree to a host of labour and environmental standards and if American workers who lose their jobs are well looked after. He favours universal health care, but his plan is both less bold and less rigorously costed than that of his Democratic rival, John Edwards.

An Obama presidency would signal to many, in and outside America, that the American dream still works. His opposition to the two policies that have hurt America’s image most—invading Iraq and making use of torture—will convince many that he represents a fresh start. But his inexperience is worrisome, and the source of Mrs Clinton’s greatest advantage over him. As George Will, a conservative columnist, put it, he is asking Americans to “treat the presidency as a nearly entry-level political office”.

They Always Come Out Ahead; Bet on It

AFP

DESPITE the row over Russian missiles that preceded it and the mob of angry protestors outside, the G8 meeting probably helped in the quest for global stability. The top industrial countries ended their summit in Heiligendamm on Friday June 8th with a handful of agreements aimed at just that goal. The most positive outcome of the three-day summit was America's apparent shift closer to the G8 mainstream.

The most important agreement was on climate change: a commitment at least to “consider seriously” the goal of halving global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. There was also a pledge of $60 billion to combat HIV and AIDS, with the aim of giving all victims access to treatment by 2010.

The G8, without surrendering their status as the world’s most powerful countries, also invited leaders of the strongest developing economies—Brazil, Mexico, India, China and South Africa—to join them in four initiatives: on climate change, safeguarding intellectual property, encouraging cross-border investment, and developing Africa. Africa was in the spotlight at the final day of meetings.

The German hosts coined the term “Heiligendamm Process” to describe the inclusion of the big developing countries, in some of the G8’s endeavours. The intention is to bind these countries, particularly China, more closely to policies of the G8, and to avoid “China-bashing”, according to German officials. It was not clear, after meetings of this quasi G13, whether the Heiligendamm Process would catch on.

The summit, held at a wedding-cake hotel on the Baltic coast, brought a surprise offer from Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Russia's threat to target Europe if America put its planned missile-defence stations there had looked as if it might overshadow proceedings. But in bilateral talks with America's president, George Bush, Mr Putin proposed joint use of radar stations in Azerbaijan, as an answer to American defence concerns east of Europe. Mr Bush said he would consider the offer.

The agreement on climate change is a modest triumph for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and the summit's host. Although there was no firm commitment on numbers, the agreement accepts the need to develop a global framework, under UN auspices, by the end of next year, ready to replace the Kyoto protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012. There had been fears that Mr Bush would reject a UN-sponsored programme just as America has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol whereby leading countries pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at least 5% below 1990 levels.

Another German initiative, to introduce a code of conduct for hedge funds in the interests of financial stability, got no further. American and British financial regulators, and the financial firms they oversee, believe that improving best practice and their own vigilance are enough to prevent a problem in the $1.6 trillion hedge-fund industry from triggering a wider financial crisis.

Beyond the smooth lawns and swish setting of Heiligendamm, well-organised bands of anti-G8 protesters kept a 16,000-strong police force busy. Several times they evaded the police and occupied areas near a specially built perimeter fence. The protests were mainly peaceful, though they had been heralded at the weekend in nearby Rostock by violent clashes between police and black-clad radical protesters known as Autonomen.

The main message of the protesters was rejection of policy-making that kow-tows to “global capitalism”. As helicopters roared overhead, and water cannon readied for action, they pleaded for more debt forgiveness for the world’s poorest countries, as did a rock concert against poverty in Rostock, led by the combined vocal talents Bob Geldof, Bono and Herbert Grönemeyer. Non-governmental organisations said the G8 pledges fell short. Oxfam, an aid group, argued that the $60 billion proffered to combat disease added only $3 billion a year to what had already been promised up to 2010. Greenpeace, an environmental group, said that despite the inclusion of America in work to reduce emissions, the Bush administration was “as far away as ever” from agreeing such reductions itself.

For Ms Merkel, at any rate, such objections are swept away. The headline in Bild, a popular daily newspaper, hailed her as “Miss World” for achieving three goals: on climate change, more money for Africa, and détente between Mr Bush and Mr Putin. And, given the inauspicious lead up to the meeting, she may well have earned the title.

In the wake of the arrests on June 2nd of several Caribbean nationals in an alleged plot to attack John F Kennedy airport in New York, questions are swirling over the threat of terrorist cells sprouting up across the region and its potential use as a base to launch attacks against the US. Until now there has been no evidence that this is the case, but attention to the Caribbean, the movement of its nationals and its countries’ security arrangements will now surely be ratcheted up.

Although the region has very little history of Islamic militancy, US officials claim the area has been of growing concern. Security analysts publicly argue that it could become an attractive base for terrorist groups because of its geographical proximity to the US, its relatively permeable borders and its high poverty levels. Moreover, drug trafficking and crime are rampant in several Caribbean countries, suggesting that local governments have little institutional capacity to control the activities of criminal networks.

According to US authorities, the four suspects in the alleged terror plot had links to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a Muslim organisation based in Trinidad and Tobago with a predominantly Afro-Trinidadian membership. Three of the men are Guyanese nationals, while the fourth is Trinidadian. One of the men, a naturalised US citizen, was once a cargo handler at Kennedy Airport. Another was a former member of the Guyanese parliament. All four are said to hold Islamist beliefs “of a violent nature”, according to an FBI representative.

While the men are reported to have sought out Jamaat's leadership for "operational expertise, means and, most importantly, their blessing," no concrete indication has yet emerged that the men were acting on the group's instructions.

Jamaat al Muslimeen, or "Society of Muslims," is a group that is well known in the twin-island republic. It was the group’s controversial leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, who led an attempted coup against Trinidad's elected government in July 1990, holding members of the government (including the then-prime minister, ANR Robinson, and the cabinet) hostage for six days at gun-point while looting and violence shook Port of Spain and left 24 people dead.

The crisis ended when Jamaat's leadership surrendered in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a deal later honoured by Trinidad's judicial system. Mr Abu Bakr and 114 followers initially were offered a presidential pardon. Although the offer was subsequently retracted, after putting the men on trial the courts ruled that the pardon should be upheld and the coup participants were freed.

The decision to free Mr Abu Bakr was highly controversial and had a long-lasting impact on Trinidadian society, as it suggested that even those who would dare to violently hijack the government would be exempted from prosecution. The group has had several run-ins with the law since 1990. Although Jamaat was linked to a series of bombings in Port of Spain in 2005, it denied any involvement. That same year a member of Jamaat was convicted in the US for attempting to ship 70 assault rifles from Fort Lauderdale to Trinidad.

In 2006, Mr Abu Bakr was acquitted of charges of the attempted murders of two former Jamaat members–a botched plot in which a woman with no ties to the organisation was killed. In the first case brought under Trinidad's new Anti-Terrorism Act, Mr Abu Bakr is now facing sedition and terrorism charges for a threatening sermon in which he vowed to declare war on wealthy Muslims unless they increased their contributions to charity. The state is also attempting to seize land with a value of TT$32m (US$5m) from Mr Abu Bakr and his associates, to compensate for damage to government property during the attempted coup in 1990.

Yet Jamaat al Muslimeen is a small group, consisting of only several hundred members, and it represents only a tiny fraction of Trinidad's Muslim population. Importantly, there is no precedence of Jamaat acting outside of Trinidad, which makes the recent links with the terror plot at JFK all the more perplexing if substantiated. It is also a Sunni-based Muslim group. By contrast, according to Trinidadian newspapers, two of the men arrested, Kareem Ibrahim and Abdul Kadir, were imams of Shia mosques in Trinidad and Guyana, respectively.

Nevertheless, the arrests and the subsequent trials will surely focus more international attention on Trinidad and Tobago and the radical Muslim movement that calls it home. Guyana and its nationals will also be subject to greater scrutiny.

Further, the US now can be expected to more intensely monitor the entire Caribbean region’s security arrangements. In the past, efforts to strengthen the Caribbean’s security systems have been directed at pursuing drug traffickers and their money, and in some cases, such as Haiti, impeding an outflow of illegal aliens. Despite its advocacy of a "third border" concept—which views the Caribbean as another border area besides Mexico and Canada, requiring special treatment—the US had until now paid little policy attention to the area as an integral part of its fight against global terrorism.

That has now changed. At the same time, however, there is as yet no substantial reason to believe that the Caribbean will soon become a major terrorist hub.

AFP/EPA

• LEADERS of the G8 countries meet on June 6th in Germany for two days of what are sure to be heated discussions. Protestors will ensure that the atmosphere around the venue is just as combustible. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and host, wants to focus on tackling global warming and has proposed ambitious cuts to emissions. George Bush in advance of the meeting, has also called on big economies to join together in setting greenhouse-gas emission targets but without setting any targets or time-scale. Aid is also on the agenda, as the G8 countries appear to be slipping on the promise to double foreign aid promised in 2005.

• RUSSIA’s regulators will now decide the fate of BP’s investment in the Kovykta gas field after the G8 conference—the government had previously seemed likely to order the confiscation of the field on June 1st. The British oil firm’s Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, is likely to lose its licence to develop the giant source of natural gas in Siberia. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has gone off foreign investment in energy. Last year, under duress, Royal Dutch Shell and its partners agreed to sell a majority stake in a big oil and gas project called Sakhalin II to Gazprom, the state-owned gas firm.

• THE French head for the polls again, shortly after electing a president, to vote in the first round of parliamentary elections on June 10th. The Union for a Popular Movement, led by the new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is in command. And he will need a clear majority in parliament to fulfil his recent campaign promises. Meanwhile, the defeat of Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate, has left that party in fratricidal disarray. François Bayrou, a centrist, finished a strong third in the race for the presidency. But his newly formed party, the Democratic Movement, has failed to enthuse French voters this time.

• LEWIS “SCOOTER” LIBBY will be sentenced on June 5th. The former chief of staff to America’s vice-president, Dick Cheney, was known by some as “Cheney’s Cheney”. He was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a complicated case involving a CIA agent, Valerie Plame. Democrats say Mr Libby intentionally outed her as revenge for her husband’s criticism of the Iraq war. No such charge was proven. Instead, Mr Libby’s story of his role did not square with many other witnesses’ version of events and he was convicted of lying to the FBI. Conservatives think Mr Libby has been treated unfairly, and want George Bush to pardon him. The prosecutor has asked for a three-year sentence.

Reuters

UNLIKE all other rich countries bar Australia, the United States never ratified the Kyoto protocol, and formally withdrew from it in 2001. The United Nations’ treaty on climate change restricts emissions from rich countries while allowing those of poor countries to grow unfettered. That would put American firms at an unfair disadvantage to Chinese and Indian ones, the Bush administration says, and would prompt the most polluting industries to move to poor countries.

But America is not happy with the notion that it shirks its responsibilities to the planet, but nor does it want to sign up to tough emissions targets. So on Thursday May 31st George Bush announced a new initiative designed to reconcile those concerns. The American plan involves negotiations between the world’s big emitters, including developing countries such as China and India, which were not required to cut their emissions under the Kyoto protocol. The aim of the talks would be to set targets by the end of 2008—which, given America’s previous hostility to targets of any sort, looks like a concession to the Europeans ahead of next week’s summit of the Group of Eight, which will address climate change among other topics.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, wants the G8 countries to agree that the increase in the world’s average temperature due to global warming should not be allowed to exceed 2°C. To that end, she wants them to pledge to cut their 1990 levels of greenhouse-gas emissions by half by 2050. These steps, she hopes, will pave the way for negotiations on a new global pact on climate change; talks could get under way as soon as December. Mrs Merkel has told the German parliament that she is not sure a deal can be reached. She is planning to have lunch with Mr Bush on June 6th, the opening day of the summit, in the hopes of breaking the deadlock. But the chances of success are slim: the rowdy debate about climate change at the summit might even drown out the howls of anti-globalisation protestors outside the venue.

The new American initiative seems an admission that its previous strategy has failed. At a conference in Laos in 2005 it recruited Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea to an outfit called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Canada’s conservative government toyed with joining the partnership and announced that it would not be able to reduce emissions by as much as it promised at Kyoto. But it recently pledged instead to reduce emissions by a more modest amount by 2020, and says it has no objections to Mrs Merkel’s 50% target by 2050.

Australia’s government, too, seems to be wavering in its opposition to mandatory emissions caps. Indeed, world leaders seem to be competing with one another to churn out ever more ambitious targets on global warming. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, has decided to make climate change one of the centrepieces of his tenure. He too has produced a plan for a 50% cut in global emissions by 2050. Tony Blair, Britain’s outgoing prime minister, has an even more ambitious reduction in mind, of 60%. The European Union as a whole has agreed to reduce its emissions by 20% by 2020, and offered to increase the figure to 30% if non-European countries make commitments of their own. Norway, meanwhile, hopes to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” country, by reducing its emissions to zero by 2050, or paying for equivalent reductions elsewhere.

All these proposals are much more ambitious than America’s, and it will take a lengthy debate—and perhaps another president—to reconcile them. In the meantime, global emissions continue to grow. Indeed, the growth appears to be accelerating. A study recently published by America’s National Academy of Sciences found that worldwide emissions, which had been growing by 1.1% a year in the 1990s, grew by more than 3% a year between 2000 and 2004. That is faster than the most pessimistic projections of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body set up to make authoritative pronouncements on the science of global warming. It is also faster than economic growth, implying that the world is not just consuming more energy, but also making it ever more dirtily.

Reuters

IN THE ultra-modern, digital newsroom of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), a message taped to a room-divider reads: “If you’re looking to buy consciences, ours are not for sale”. RCTV’s journalists are unable to broadcast their news programmes in the normal fashion since the channel was taken off the air just before midnight on Sunday May 27th. President Hugo Chávez decreed last December that there would be no more television concessions for what he calls “fascists” and “coup plotters”. His supporters argue that the concession expired on Sunday and was simply not renewed. The channel’s owners and staff, along with many human-rights organisations, see the move as revenge for their critical editorial line.

Channel 2, where RCTV had broadcast for more than half a century, is now home to a new government-run channel. Gone are Venezuelans’ favourite soap operas, the world’s longest-running comedy show, “Radio Rochela”, and a breakfast talk-show called “The Interview” that has earned its outspoken anti-Chávez host, Miguel Angel Rodríguez, a stream of insults and threats from sources supporting the president. Polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans oppose what they consider as interference with their choice of viewing.

On Sunday and Monday many took to the streets, and to the airwaves—or at least, those that are still open to dissenting voices. That means, primarily, Globovisión: the 24-hour news station is the only remaining anti-government channel. Students from Caracas’s main universities, and others across the country, braved tear-gas and plastic bullets from riot police. They were joined by journalists and, in a remarkable show of solidarity, by soap stars and news anchors from RCTV’s rival, Venevisión. Its boss, Gustavo Cisneros, caved in to government pressure several years ago and removed anti-Chávez commentary and news items from his station.

Mr Chávez won re-election last December, after nearly eight years in power, with more than 60% of the vote. Since then, he has taken a sharp turn to the left, in a bid to install in Venezuela what he calls a “21st century socialist” regime. But many of his own supporters oppose the closure of RCTV. The second-largest party in his parliamentary coalition, the social-democratic Podemos, refused to attend a recent session in support of the decision. Party sources say that not one of its legislators agrees with the closure of RCTV. International reaction has scarcely been more encouraging for Mr Chávez.

On Monday the European Union expressed concern that the non-renewal of the concession took place without any open competition for a successor. Germany called on the Venezuelan government to respect the principle of press freedom. Non-governmental organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have all condemned the move. Carlos Lauría of the CPJ called it “a predetermined and politically motivated effort to silence critical coverage [which] sets a chilling precedent.”

RCTV, along with Venezuela’s other TV channels, are not without blemish. In April 2002, when Mr Chávez was briefly ousted in a coup attempt, they blacked out news of protests that helped to restore him to power. And their role as behind-the-scenes power brokers has often distorted their coverage. But the government’s growing number of media outlets, both broadcast and print, pump out an unremitting diet of pro-Chávez propaganda, belittling and even slandering opposition figures on a daily basis. Moreover, the government holds all the regulatory powers, as well as controlling the Supreme Court, whose rulings seldom challenge its interests.

Has Mr Chávez made a significant miscalculation, which could affect his apparently firm grip on power? Enrique ter Horst, a lawyer and a former UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, says Mr Chávez remains strong but that, “he clearly overestimated his forces in this case”. The circumstances “open a new chapter” in the country’s political crisis.

Mr Chávez seems to have two options: a further crack-down on dissent, or to ease up on the revolutionary accelerator. A legal move on Monday to prosecute Globovisión for allegedly hinting that the president should be assassinated, by Venezuela’s information minister suggests that the government does not plan to climb-down. If so, tension is sure to rise.