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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.


CounterPunch: Complete Coverage of 9/11 and the War on Afghanistan

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Occupied Ramallah Close Up: Large and Small Change in a State of Siege; Feed Your Goats, Maybe Get Shot; Snipers on Main Street; Hiding in Your Back Room for Three Days; Humor, Heroism and Bravado Amid Bullets; Occupied DC: Legislators' Daily Gauntlet of Searches; Only in America: His Dad Was CIA; He Hated Blacks; He Robbed Banks, and Liked to Dress Up Like a Woman; A Tribute to Billy Wilder. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

April 14, 2002

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


CounterPunch:
Complete Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath


Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published March 15, 2002

  • Facing Down Rehnquist and Scalia:
  • Jennifer Harbury at the Supreme Court;
  • ADL Throws in Towel, Pays Up:
  • How They Worked for Apartheid Regime and Spied on NAACP:
  • Cockburn on America the Bully:
  • From Teddy Roosevelt to George W.
  • St. Clair on Musicians Against the Death Penalty & The Legacy of the Mekons.


    Search CounterPunch

Read Whiteout and Find Out How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden

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 Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair

Buy This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
 

Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

April 14, 2002

The CIA and the Venezuela Coup

Hugo Chavez: A Servant Not Knowing his Place

by William Blum

How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chavez?

Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That's what it's always done and there's no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.

Consider Chavez's crimes:

Branding the US attacks on Afghanistan as "fighting terrorism with terrorism", he demanded an end to "the slaughter of innocents"; holding up photographs of children killed in the American bombing attacks, he said their deaths had "no justification, just as the attacks in New York did not, either." In response, the Bush administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador.

Being very friendly with Fidel Castro and selling oil to Cuba at discount rates.

His defense minister asking the permanent US military mission in Venezuela to vacate its offices in the military headquarters in Caracas, saying its presence was an anachronism from the cold war.

Not cooperating to Washington's satisfaction with the US war against the Colombian guerrillas.

Denying Venezuelan airspace to US counter-drug flights.

Refusing to provide US intelligence agencies with information on Venezuela's large Arab community.

Questioning the sanctity of globalization.

Promoting a regional free-trade bloc and united Latin American petroleum operations as a way to break free from US economic dominance.

Visiting Sadaam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gaddafy in Libya.

And more in the same vein which the Washington aristocracy is unaccustomed to encountering from the servant class.

The United States has endeavored to topple numerous governments for a whole lot less.

The Washington Post reported from Venezuela on April 13: "Members of the country's diverse opposition had been visiting the U.S. Embassy here in recent weeks, hoping to enlist U.S. help in toppling Chavez. The visitors included active and retired members of the military, media leaders and opposition politicians.

"The opposition has been coming in with an assortment of 'what ifs'," said a U.S. official familiar with the effort. "What if this happened? What if that happened? What if you held it up and looked at it sideways? To every scenario we say no. We know what a coup looks like, and we won't support it."

Right. They won't support a coup. So what happens when a coup occurs which they want to support? Simple. They don't call it a coup. They call it a "change of government" and say that Chavez was ousted "as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people." Veritable grass-roots democracy it was.

Opposition legislators were also brought to Washington in recent months, including at least one delegation sponsored by the International Republican Institute, an integral part of the National Endowment for Democracy, long used by the CIA for covert operations abroad.

Overthrowing a man such as Hugo Chavez, guilty of such transgressions, was a duty so "natural" for the CIA that the only reason it might not have been intimately involved in the operation would be that the Agency had been secretly disbanded.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" Blum can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com