Now that Hugo Chavez has closed yet another independent source of news in Venezuela, the true nature of his regime is being revealed:

CARACAS (AFP) – President Hugo Chavez’s clampdown on opposition television stations widened Monday as police used rubber bullets and tear gas on demonstrators protesting what they called an attack on free speech.

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After 54 years on the air, RCTV went dark at midnight Sunday after the government refused to renew its license. It was promptly replaced by TVes, a state-backed station which began broadcasting cultural shows.

On Monday several people were injured as police in Caracas fired rubber bullets and tear gas to put down a demonstration against the RCTV shutdown, following the fifth straight day of protests.

A policeman’s leg was broken in the fracas, a police official said.

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One of the country’s leading dailies, El Nacional, denounced it as “end of pluralism in Venezuela,” and slammed the government’s growing “information monopoly.”

The archbishop of the city of Merida, Baltasar Porras Cardoso, compared Chavez to Hitler, Mussolini and Cuban leader

Fidel Castro — who is a close friend of the left-wing Venezuelan president.

“This is the first time in eight years (of Chavez as president) that the university students hold a massive protest,” said Leopoldo Lopez, an opposition leader and neighborhood mayor.