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April 16, 2002
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
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Cockburn
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 16,
2002
The Oilman, the General and
the Coup That Wasn't
By Gabriel Ash
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was ousted on
Friday by a group of conspirators lead by an oilman and a general.
The international press hastened to bury Chavez with summaries
of his ill-fated career. But after spending only two days in
military limbo, Chavez returned triumphantly to his palace on
Sunday, carried by huge popular support. The events were stunning.
Chavez was democratically elected in
1998 in a landslide that signaled the bankruptcy of the old political
order. He is a hard and polarizing figure, but those who call
him a demagogue are wrong. Chavez is a real populist. Under his
eye, Venezuela ratified one of the most progressive constitutions
ever written. Using the new political procedures, Chavez dismantled
the power of the old elite. Then, not only did he push policies
of land redistribution and free education and health services
for the poor, but in order to pay for these policies he found
the courage, or the temerity, to take on U.S. corporate oil interests.
Nobody can accuse Chavez of not taking his pledges to the voters
seriously.
But the tiny former ruling class has
not accepted the loss of power. Using its ownership of the media
and control of oil production, and with the help of the dubious
trade union leaders, the old elite has been trying to bring Chavez
down through chaos. Chavez's own genius of alienating supporters
and his divisive rhetoric helped his enemies recruit the small
but significant middle class.
The recent fight was over the control
of the national oil company. The oligarchs mobilized a huge strike
and demonstration. Taking advantage of a fire exchange near the
palace that left a number of people dead, the coup leaders accused
Chavez of disregard for human rights and kidnapped him after
he refused to resign. It is not clear who shot whom and on whose
orders, but that did not stop the Associated Press from reporting
without qualifications that Chavez ordered the army to shoot
at demonstrators. In fact, the international press churned uncritically
what was essentially the press releases of the coup.
It almost worked.
But "almost" is the distance
between the palace and the jailhouse. Many people have a lot
to learn from this stillborn coup d'etat.
Many forces combined to defend the constitutional
order. The interim president installed instead of Chavez, Pedro
Carmona, revealed the deep hatred that animates the oligarchy
when, barely seated in his new office, he annulled practically
everything Chavez did - the constitution, the National Assembly,
the laws, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and Comptroller
offices, etc. He then sent the police to arrest all the cabinet
ministers and hunt Chavez supporters. This vengeful demolition
job frightened and divided the top brass. And for good reasons.
A significant portion of the army, especially
the field units, remained loyal to Chavez. These soldiers closed
ranks with the civilian population, not with their generals.
On the other end of society, parliamentarians and ministers refused
to accept Chavez's alleged resignation, demanding adherence to
the constitution, which requires the National Assembly to ratify
the resignation. No less important was the refusal of many Latin
American governments to recognize the new government. The Organization
of American States (OAS) was apparently considering sanctions.
But the counter coup would not have materialized without the
popular mobilization throughout Venezuela, and especially the
people of Caracas, who took to the streets, surrounded the presidential
palace, and, joined by the soldiers, demanded Chavez back.
The first message of the coup is a new
strength of constitutionalism in Latin America. The rule of law
is no longer the gift of soldiers. It is an idea that begins
to command allegiance from politicians, soldiers, and common
people alike. Generals cannot expect a "no questions asked"
deference from other governments, and they cannot trust their
armies to march against a popular elected president. Since unpopular
ones can be defeated at the polling booth, one can hope military
coups become rarer. That message should not be lost on Argentina,
whose political elite is as discredited as was that of Venezuela
in 1998.
The second message of the coup is directed
to the U.S., which finds itself again with egg yolk dripping
from its face. The White House, virtually alone in the world
(but how trite and overused this phrase sounds), welcomed the
new regime with barely disguised glee. Even the obedient Vicente
Fox declined to follow Washington's example, choosing instead
to condemn the coup. Likewise, inside Venezuela, Chavez's defiance
towards Washington is popular with his supporters, some of whom
hold the quite plausible belief that the U.S. was privy to the
conspiracy.
It is a disgrace that this Administration
sold America's most hallowed principle, respect for the rule
of law, for thirty barrels of oil. But then, how can we expect
that this president, himself owing his office to finessing the
law, would come out in defense of another country's constitution,
when he holds his own in such poor esteem?
The message for this Administration is
that a foreign policy that stands for nothing leads nowhere because
nobody follows it.
The third message is for Chavez himself.
Having survived, Chavez is stronger today than before the coup.
But the source of his strength is not where he believed it to
be. The army, on which he has so far relied, could not decide
where it stood. With its political unity shattered, the army
is now a far less important political factor. Chavez was saved
by the trust of the people, but also by the constitution he has
himself shaped. He ought to remember that as he tries to rethink
his role as president after the coup.
His "Bolivarian Revolution"
has a better chance to become reality if he gives up the habit
of barking orders to his country. His government should stop
the inflammatory rhetoric, and provide instead a unifying legal
framework in which policy follows the active participation of
the people. And he should strive to neutralize the corrupt oligarchs
who resent the political opening of Venezuela through the court
system. Was that not the whole point behind drafting an ultra
progressive constitution?
The last message is about the media.
The Venezuelan media, mostly privately owned, participated in
the coup. The media campaigned against Chavez, provided steady
information about mobilization against him, and a free platform
for the coup leaders. Once Chavez was arrested the media put
a blackout on the mobilization against the coup. Chavez supporters
had to physically conquer the broadcasting station so that the
messages of the constitutional government could be made public.
The U.S. corporate media has followed
the Washington line and served the anti-Chavez oligarchs. Almost
all information the media provided related to Chavez's unpopularity.
A New York Times editorial applauded the coup, showing how little
the editors cared about democracy. Even after Chavez was restored
to power, the Times implausibly asserted that the demonstrators
against him were the more numerous.
The systematic repression of information
about popular mobilization is not unique to Venezuela. The U.S.
networks barely showed the angry demonstrations that welcomed
Bush on inauguration day, forcing him to give up walking the
last mile according to custom. The press routinely minimizes
the numbers of demonstrators by a factor of two at least, when
it bothers to report about them at all. What happened in Venezuela
should be one more alarm bell going off about the dangers of
a press controlled by a handful of private interests.
The message is clear: an anti-democratic
media is a danger to democracy in the U.S., in Venezuela, and
everywhere.
Gabriel Ash
is a columnist for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org.
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