|
April 15, 2002
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
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
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
|
April 15, 2002
The Media, the CIA and the Coup
By Christopher Reilly
In a rare sequence of events, democratically elected
leader President Hugo Chavez was overthrown in a military coup
led by the business elite, only to be reinstated as president
days later due to the support of the Venezuelan people.
The democratic leader, winning office
in 1998 with 60 percent of the national vote, was disliked by
the business class due to his socialist stance on many political
issues, such as redistribution of land.
Then on April 12th, business leaders
angered at Chavez's handling of the oil industry, organized a
large strike. The strike turned into an open street protest marching
toward the presidential palace. The local media, operated by
the business elite, apparently continued to lambaste the president
on television, causing Chavez to temporarily halt all private
broadcasting in Venezuela in fears of it causing panic and violent
revolt.
The protestors continued to the outside
of the palace where they confronted pro-Chavez supporters. Both
sides began to clash, resulting in 16 deaths and hundreds of
injuries. The media quickly reported that Chavez supporters fired
into the crowds of demonstrators. The Western media was quick
to follow; one newspaper after another publishing only the version
of events reported by the same business community that was attempting
to overthrow the Venezuelan democracy.
The version of events made official by
Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the Bush Administration, claimed
that Chavez shut down the media to stifle opposition and then
ordered those loyal to him to fire into the crowd of protestors.
Or, in Fleischer's exact words, "Chavez supporters, on orders,
fired on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. Venezuelan military
and police refused to fire ... and refused to support the government's
role in human rights violations."
The State Department was next to come
out in support of the violent military coup, expressing their
regret that Chavez did not "act with restraint and show
full respect for the peaceful expression of political opinion."
However, the State Department failed
to mention the number of dead Venezuelans was also made up of
Chavez supporters. According to one South American newspaper,
sympathizers of the president were killed, along with the Vice
President Diosdado Cabello's personal driver, shot in the face.
Not only that, but it has not even been
confirmed that Chavez ordered his forces to shoot into the crowd
of people. The military men that reported this fact were the
same military figures who supported the coup. They could have
easily fabricated the story in order to give justification for
junta. For example, news broadcasts stated, as printed in London's
The Independent, that "half a dozen men - one wearing a
Chavez party T-shirt - firing automatic pistols into a crowd
from an overpass, while police launched tear gas canisters into
the crowd. Shortly after, 10 officers from the National Guard
and armed forces accused Mr. Chavez of 'betraying the trust of
the people.' "
This statement was simply taken as fact
in media circles, largely ignoring how convenient it was for
news cameras to pin the blame on Chavez while those firing on
demonstrators wore "Chavez party T-shirt[s]," proving
to viewers that Chavez was responsible for the deaths.
Either way, the campaign worked temporarily.
Military figures removed Chavez from
the palace, telling the corporate media in both Venezuela and
the world that Chavez had resigned. Without investigating the
statement, newspapers across the world began to announce that
Chavez resigned after the will of his people turned against him,
often citing that Chavez's approval rating fell to 30 percent
before the coup, never explaining where that number came from.
Now after Chavez has been reinstated as president, the figure
seems to have disappeared from news reports.
The Bush Administration continued to
show their support for the coup, with the State Department announcing,
"We wish to express our solidarity the Venezuelan people
and look forward to working with all democratic forces in Venezuela
to ensure the full exercise of democratic rights."
Yet if the Bush Administration truly
cared about "democratic forces in Venezuela," they
would have sharply condemned the coup as many neighboring South
American countries did. After all, the business leader who took
power after the coup, Pedro Carmona, became a dictator and completely
dissolved the constitution, National Assembly, Supreme Court
and other institutions on a vague promise that elections would
be held again in December.
Despite all these forces working against
Chavez, protestors hit the streets again, but this time to demand
Chavez be brought back to power. They succeeded and the military
brought Chavez in on a helicopter, saving democracy from the
dangerous forces of a greedy business elite.
Why was the Bush Administration so quick
to voice tentative approval with the military coup? Judging by
history, the CIA may have been involved once again in another
South American coup. After all, it was the CIA that mounted a
coup in Guatemala that overthrew the democratically elected government
in 1954, supporting subsequent right-wing regimes, resulting
in some 200,000 dead civilians, according to the a recent column
in the New York Times. That same column, written by Tim Weiner,
cites the CIA's involvement in the Panama coup in 1989, along
with the CIA support for opposition to Nicaragua's leftists in
the 1980s, ending in a disaster called the Iran-Contra Affair.
And the CIA was also involved in overthrowing
democratically elected leader Salvador Allende in Chile, only
to replace him with a ruthless right-wing dictator - General
August Pinochet, whose abysmal human rights record is well-known.
Therefore, it would not be a surprise
should the CIA be involved in yet another overthrow of democracy,
showing the hypocrisy of American government administrations
who use the words "freedom" and "democracy"
as a justification to take military actions on some countries,
but then frequently destroy "freedom" and "democracy"
in other countries.
William Blum, author of "Killing
Hope," summed this up in a recent column. Blum believes
that the CIA was involved in this overthrow. He states his reasoning
in the following few sentences: "Same way we know that the
sun will rise tomorrow morning. That's what it's [the CIA] always
done and there's no reason to think that tomorrow morning will
be any different."
Blum cites a Washington Post report from
Venezuela on April 13 that states: "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."
Judging by reasons of previous CIA orchestrated
coups in South America, Chavez may have broken nearly every rule
the CIA demands South American leaders follow unless they want
to seek the wrath of their northern neighbor. These rules, all
broken by Chavez, include supplying oil to Cuba at discount rates;
meeting with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, along with Saddam Hussein;
not allowing the U.S. to use Venezuelan airspace for its "War
on Drugs"; accusing the Bush Administration of "fighting
terrorism with terrorism" by its assault on Afghanistan,
saying that deaths due to U.S. bombardment had "no justification,
just as the attacks in New York did not, either."
All of these reasons would have been
enough for the CIA to approve of Chavez's removal, despite the
fact that he was democratically elected. To add to it all, as
Forbes magazine writes, "Venezuela is the only OPEC member
in the western hemisphere, exporting nearly 1.3 million barrels
per day of crude oil and 250,000 barrels per day of refined products
to the U.S., accounting for 13% of imports to the world's largest
oil consumer."
The desire to have a puppet in Venezuela
must have been high in the CIA and the Bush Administration. Unfortunately
the world will have to wait many years until the truth finally
comes out in declassified internal U.S. government documents.
Christopher Reilly is a columnist for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: creilly@YellowTimes.org
|