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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
CounterPunch:
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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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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
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 16,
2002
Wake Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead
The Coup in Venezuela
By Ron Jacobs
I left for Boston early in the morning on April
12, 2002 with my son, who was going to visit a couple of colleges
he is considering attending next year. Since it was so early,
there wasn't a lot of conversation between the two of us. Indeed,
we mostly listened to some CDs he had brought along.
When we got within range, he turned the
car radio to WEEI, the local all-talk station that carried the
Red Sox games live. Since the Yankees were in town that night,
we thought there might be some good-natured talk about the evil
Yankee empire and the Red Sox' chance of defeating them this
year. Instead there was a quiz show about the news. Most of the
questions had to do with the tragedy in Palestine and Israel.
Then, the guy asking the questions said something about a Latin
American leader who had apparently just resigned. One of the
contestants answered Hugo Chavez and the buzzer went off. I was
very surprised.
I knew Chavez was not well-liked by the
powerful of the world. Indeed, as a member of a group actively
involved in ending US involvement in Colombia, I knew his government
stood a very likely chance of meeting the same fate Salvador
Allende's did back in 1973 in Chile. However, I didn't think
it would happen so soon, despite IMF warnings in fall 2001 to
the contrary.
I was almost certain that the groundwork
for such an action had not yet been laid and that the CIA and
its protégés in Venezuela would take their time
to ensure that any coup would be a success.
Sure, some of the ingredients already
existed: a coalition of members of the comprador class, union
bureaucrats, corporate media and businesspeople had organized
a series of employers' "strikes" or lockouts that had
shut down the country, primarily because workers were prevented
from going to work, and the Catholic hierarchy was using its
weight to convince its parishioners that Chavez was evil. Still,
it didn't seem like the momentum for a coup was quite there.
Once we got to Boston and parked, my
son went off to his campus tour and I found a coffee shop and
a newspaper. There it was on the front page-a completely different
version of events than what really happened. That and the note
that the United States had recognized the government, calling
it good for democracy. How a coup could be good for democracy
was beyond me, but I just read the news, I don't make it up.
As reports coming from Washington now
assert, Bush administration officials had met with some of the
leaders of the coup on the weekend before. (NY Times 4/16/2002)
Since I couldn't access any alternative sources for the time
being, I surmised that, despite what the New York Times said,
Chavez had not resigned, that his supporters had not fired into
the crowds, that the protest against him was considerably smaller
than the couple hundred thousand that the Times reported, and
that the new "government" was not a done deal.
The next day I checked in on some independent
media websites and discovered that my surmisals were correct
and that resistance to the new regime was already building in
the cities of Venezuela and amongst other governments in the
region.
By nightfall, Chavez was once again the
president and the head of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce
who had taken over the position was nowhere to be found. The
people had restored the democracy they had elected.
Unfortunately, this isn't the end. Chavez
is still disliked by Washington for, among other things, his
support of Cuba, his opposition to the US war in Colombia, and
his government's positive relations with some members of GW's
"axis of evil."
If one looks to the history books (s)he
will discover that there was an unsuccessful coup attempt against
Salvador Allende's government in June 1973-three months before
the September coup that took down his popular government and
killed him.
In fact, the leader of that coup was
the general that Allende had appointed as a concession to the
armed forces after the failed coup in June-Augusto Pinochet.
Let's hope that Mr. Chavez does not make
a similar mistake.
Ron Jacobs
can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu.
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