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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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By Alexander
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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
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The
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Al Gore:
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April 16,
2002
Citizen Coup?
The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
By Jack McCarthy
"With yesterdays resignaton of President
Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by
a would be-be dictator."
"Hugo Chaves Departs",
New York Times editorial, 4/15/02
"...the violation of of democracy
that led to the ouster of President Hugo Chavez Thursday night
was not initiated by the army but Mr Chavez himself."
"Venezuela's Breakdown",
Washington Post editorial 4/15/02
The annual Pulitizer awards have already been
handed out but the two glittering editorial gems quoted above
remind us there should be a journalistic equivalent for the worst
movie awards given out each year just before the Oscars.
If they did, no doubt the dubious distinction
this year would be shared by the two compulsive sermonizers on
Democracy, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
These sanctimonious editorials in praise
of the overthrow of Democracy in Venezuela rival "Freddie
Got Fingered" for bad taste and just bad everything.
The two self-regarding papers of "record"
wasted no time in parroting the official line from Washington
and Caracas following the Orwellian announcement of Chavez's
"resignation."
And both were shining the Venezuelan
coup plotters jack boots before the ink on that phony "resignation"
was even half dry.
You almost wonder if they weren't written
before the coup.
The rank hypocrisy is so obvious it's
almost a waste of time to even point it out.
Imagine if the during the cold war the
Soviet Union had announced that Lech Walesa, under house arrest
and unseen by anyone for 24 hours, had "resigned."
Nay, only recall the guffaws of the U.S.
press when the soviet coup plotters announced that Mr. Gorbachev
wasn't feeling well and would no longer be available to serve
in public office.
Of course the Post and the Times weren't
alone in pissing on Chavez and welcoming the coup with editorial
arms wide open.
Most of the sheep-like press, print and
television, baa-baaed in complete harmony at the patently ridiculous
story that Mr Chaves "resigned" and Democracy had been
restored.
Imagine the nervous shuffling which must
have been going on in the editorial rooms of the Post and the
Times after it became clear that--no small thanks to constitutionalist
military personnel, the Venezuelan masses, most of the rest of
Latin America and the world at large-- that Chavez not only didn't
resign, but would soon be back at the helm.
Most galling is the dishonest and patronizing
tone like this nugget from the Washington Post editorial.
" If Venezuela is to avoid a similar
hangover(referring here to other populists overthrown by military
regimes unsettled by populism), it must shape a transition that
eases rather than accentuates the country's political polarization,
and its next government must act aggressively against the poverty
and iequality that Mr. Chavez exploited but failed to relieve."
The Times and the Post love to chide
revolutionaries for exploiting those whose miseries they "fail
to relieve."
It reminds me of the old National Lampoon
parody of Irving Howe and Dissent magazine.
The Lampoon described Howe as a socialist
who supported all revolutions "except those which actually
occured."
When all is said and done, who needs
Don Rumsfield's Ministry of Un-Truths, when we have the New York
Times and the Washington Post?
Jack McCarthy
is CounterPunch's Florida correspondent. He lives in Tallahassee.
He can be reached at: jackm32301@yahoo.com
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