Today's Stories

February 13 - 15, 2009

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

George Cicarriello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 13 - 15, 2009

More Hypocrisy From the New York Times

Venezuela's Term Limits

By GEORGE CICARRIELLO-MAHER

The story is a familiar one. Amid the collapse of two-party dominance, an independent leader rises to power. In an effort to calm frazzled nerves, he insists he will respect the rule of law and the will of the voters by maintaining the peaceful transfer of power at the end of his legally-established term. “There’s no organization that I know that would put somebody in charge for a long period of time,” he insists, “you always want turnover and change.” But in power for nearly eight years, having established a fervent support base and concentrated power in his own hands, our fair leader no longer feels the need to comfort his opponents, and his discourse radicalizes as his view of term limits shifts. Dismissing his opposition as rigid “dogmatists,” the leader now insists on the need to change course flexibly to meet circumstances. True and sustained change, he argues, requires the continuity of his successful leadership.

Unsurprisingly, his opponents fiercely oppose the move as dangerous: “It shows a fundamental contempt for the democratic process,” one maintains, “and it’s changing the rules to benefit yourself directly.” Ironically, it was this very same argument that the leader himself had made five years prior, when vetoing efforts to loosen term limits. Not without controversy, then, was the decision of the region’s largest newspaper--aligned politically with the leader--to wade into these conflictive waters with the following declaration:

The bedrock of… democracy is the voters’ right to choose. Though well intentioned… the term limits law severely limits that right, which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset… Term limits are seductive, promising relief from mediocre, self-perpetuating incumbents and gridlocked legislatures. They are also profoundly undemocratic, arbitrarily denying voters the ability to choose between good politicians and bad.

While the paper had previously insisted that any change to term limits come through popular referendum, it now reverses this view, taking the position that for reasons of political expediency, a simple vote in the small executive council will do.

Of which banana republic are we speaking, where thinly-veiled authoritarianism threatens democratic checks and balances, and weak-kneed apologists parade about under the banner of free press? Why, the place is none other than New York City, the leader none other than Michael Bloomberg, and the newspaper none other than the New York Times. Patience: we haven’t even gotten to the hypocrisy part yet.

“Hugo Chávez’s Choice”

Term limits have a long history, dating from ancient Greece and Rome and Aristotle’s concept of “ruling and being ruled in turn.” With a trademark selectiveness (see, e.g., Senate Report 104-158), those upholding the sanctity of this standard in U.S. politics do so with no mention of the other elements Aristotle would associate with democracy, most obviously the filling of all positions by random lot (except for generals, or strategoi, who in an intriguing inversion of our own system, were to be elected). And nor is there much mention of those countries in the wealthy world which see no need for such limitations, or those celebrated leaders who have accomplished purportedly historic tasks without such fetters: Tony Blair served for 10 years, Margaret Thatcher for 11. Franklin D. Roosevelt, consistently ranked among the greatest U.S. presidents served for 12, and would have served for 16 had he survived. And this is not to mention the unlimited terms available to U.S. senators and representatives.

In fact, the North American obsession with term limits as political cure-all is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating largely to the 1990s and the cynical populism of House Republicans, who raised the mantle of term limits as a silver bullet against corruption. Some even seem impervious to this fervent faith: most notably, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), who recently proposed lifting presidential term limits in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election. Obama himself would add, “I’m generally not in favor of term limits… I believe in one form of term limits. They’re called elections.” Given all this, then, we might expect Obama, but also Mayor Bloomberg and the editorial team at the New York Times to wholeheartedly embrace efforts at rolling back such undemocratic limitations worldwide. And who knows? Were it possible to exclude the most popular democratically-elected leader in the Western Hemisphere, they might.

But for anyone familiar with past Times coverage of Venezuela (including the paper’s now-notorious celebration of Chávez’s 2002 overthrow at the hands of an authoritarian group of right-wing leaders), it would be of little surprise to know that the paper breathed a sigh of relief when “Venezuela’s voters wisely blocked his plans for indefinite re-election” in 2007. And facing what the Times incorrectly considered a defeat in recent local elections, the paper’s tone turned simultaneously celebratory and stern:

The lesson from Sunday’s defeat — less than a year after voters rejected his plan for a power-grabbing constitutional reform — is that Venezuelans don’t want to give Mr. Chávez even more power. He should heed the message… He should abandon for good his push to change the Constitution so that he can run for a third term in 2013. Venezuelans deserve the chance to choose a competent government.

But this is where it gets interesting for the elephant in the room named Colombia.

“Mr. Uribe’s Choice”

Now the New York Times has never been bashful about the crush it has on this tale of hypocrisy’s third character: the narco-terrorist president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. Uribe is currently engaged in an effort to change the Colombian constitution for a second time to allow his own re-election, doing so not through popular plebiscite, but rather indirect legislative vote. But not that you would know this from reading the press: a recent report by FAIR shows that press coverage of Colombia and Venezuela represent an inverted mirror-image of reality, exaggerating abuses in the latter while downplaying them in the former and condemning re-election in one while ignoring it in the other. And so one might expect the paper to champion the diminutive Colombian strongman’s own efforts to eliminate term limits for himself, doing so, as in New York, through indirect vote in the legislature rather than the popular referendum Chávez has pursued. But rather than take the more openly-hypocritical route of supporting Uribe’s bid for unlimited re-election, the Times has elected a more subtle, if no less hypocritical path.

In parallel editorials published three months apart, we needn’t get past the titles to realize where we’re headed: whereas Chávez is diminutively called by his first name, Uribe is “Mr.” But both men have a choice, according to the Times. For Chávez, who has wrought unprecedented destruction, the broadsheet recommends quitting while he’s ahead, and before the people lose patience with his childish, anti-democratic antics. For Uribe, on the other hand, the suggestion is the same, but for very different reasons: to assume his place in the Pantheon of great Latin Americans “the leader who brought Colombia back from the brink and onto a path toward peace.” Chávez must leave because he is evil; Uribe should choose to do so because he is great.

So let us review, briefly, the record of this harbinger of peace that is “Mr. Uribe”:

• According to a declassified 1991 report by the U.S. government’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Uribe was described as “a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar… dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel a high government levels.”
•  His legitimacy is questionable, since in a country as divided as Colombia only 27% of the population voted in the last presidential election (compared to 43% in neighboring Venezuela).
•  And even among that limited electorate, the “Para-Politics” scandal made clear that Uribe’s election depended on the violent duress provided by paramilitaries who have admitted to forcing local populations to vote for Uribe. By mid-2008, 62 members of Congress, mostly Uribe allies,were considered official suspects.
•  And from the Times glowing review: “After the Supreme Court started investigating dozens of his Congressional allies for alleged ties to right-wing paramilitaries, he accused the court of being politically motivated. He has now proposed reforms that would remove the investigation of members of Congress from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction.”
• All of this is not even to mention the accusations of bribery in Uribe’s prior effort to change the constitution, or his role in the recent pyramid investment scheme controversy.

But if Colombia’s friendliness toward U.S. interests is enough to explain the inverse correlation between Uribe’s reality and Times coverage, this political alliance falls short of the paper’s endorsing his unlimited re-election, as their political principles might suggest. It seems as though the racist assumptions of who is capable of self-government trumps principles, and for the New York Times institutional flexibility is to be determined more by the division of First versus Third world than the simple Manichaeism of friends versus enemies.

Chávez Poised to Win

If the western and opposition media is to be believed, the idea of lifting term limits in Venezuela has already been defeated in an election, namely the constitutional reform effort that was narrowly voted down in December of 2007. But while the U.S press focused on unlimited re-election as the cause of the loss for the Chavistas in that election, this is simply incorrect. Let this be clear: were the 2007 reform solely about Chávez’s re-election, it would have passed. This much is clear to those on the ground, and attested to by both Chavista and opposition strategy during the election, as the Chavistas sought to associate the reform with Chávez, and the opposition sought to oppose it without seeming “anti-Chavista.” Rather than the question of re-election, what sunk the 2007 constitutional reform effort was its complexity (it contained 69 provisions), poor campaigns (by conservative Chavistas who felt threatened by the changes), clear opposition to some elements (i.e. education, etc), and above all a failure to mobilize or even interest the Chavista base.

As Sunday’s referendum vote approaches, all indications are that it enjoys the support of a clear, and increasing, majority of the Venezuelan electorate. This fact is borne out in recent polling data released in Venezuela by polling firm GIS XXI. According to the polling firm, 52.9% of voters currently support the effort to eliminate presidential term limits, with only 40% opposing. Moreover, when faced with the statement, “If the people support him, President Chávez has the right to run in the elections as many times as he likes,” nearly 70% expressed agreement, and almost 75% characterize the President’s leadership as either “very good” or “good.” The more independent Venezuelan Data Analysis Institute (IVAD) has, surprisingly, given a more significant margin of victory to the “yes” vote, which it estimates at 54.6% versus 45.5% against (the margin separating the two having increased a full 3 points in recent weeks).

Even Datanálisis, a notoriously anti-Chavista polling firm whose director once insisted to the Los Angeles Times that Chávez needs to be assassinated, currently gives the referendum a margin of more than 3 points.  While such a margin may seem unsurprising to anyone familiar with the reigning political atmosphere in Venezuela, it comes as somewhat of a surprise from Datanálisis, which just in December had the referendum losing by nearly 15 percentage points. And another opposition pollster, Hinterlaces, shows the election to be a dead heat, but does so only on the basis of misleading, urban-only polling, knowing full well that Chávez regularly outpolls the opposition by more than 20% in rural areas.

But if there is one thing that Chavista and anti-Chavista pollers share, it’s a significant shift in support for the referendum in recent weeks. To fully grasp why this has happened, we need to look more closely at the political dynamics underlying the process, and how these dynamics have come to bear on the impending election.

“Military Targets”

As is by now customary in Venezuelan electoral seasons, the dialectic of conflict and polarization has kicked in full-force, deepening contradictions and clarifying the degree of support that either side can claim. This is a risky business for both sides: heightened tension could well chase away moderate Chavistas, but it can equally well damage the opposition, and if the recent shifts in polling data are of any indication, the effect has been more to Chávez’s benefit. But this was as much through opposition bungling as through Chavista stage-management.

In late January, anti-Chávez students led a march against the referendum effort through the streets of Caracas. While the mayor of western Caracas rejected their request to march on the Supreme Court, since a pro-Chávez march would be gathering there and confrontations would be inevitable, the recently-elected metropolitan mayor Antonio Ledezma, a ferocious anti-Chavista, granted a permit. At points, students hurled bottles and rocks at the police, who responded with tear gas (a scenario repeated in various other cities). When a large truck that had been leading the march was detained by police, however, it was found to contain 100 Molotov cocktails, some fully prepared and ready for deployment.

This certainly won the opposition students no sympathy from undecided voters, the so-called “ni-ni’s” (the neither-nors), notwithstanding their efforts (against all video proof) to claim that the Molotovs had been planted. But such a claim would be readily accepted by their far-right base, and seemingly impermeable to hypocrisy, the opposition students continued their efforts to cultivate their image as victims of a tyrannical government by running a half-page ad in El Nacional showing the fierce repression of students by police, under the slogan: “Punish the Criminals, Don’t Repress Our Children – No to Indefinite Re-election.” The problem? The picture was not even taken in Venezuela, but rather at a 2003 march in Greece. Much like the whisky these opposition students sip at luxurious bars on the weekends, it seems even their own repression is in short supply domestically and must be imported.

But it hasn’t been only the opposition who have sought to heighten tensions in the run-up to the February 15th referendum vote. Radical Chavistas, perhaps knowing that the President has tended to gain more than he has lost as a result of conflicts with the opposition, have also sought to raise the electoral temperature. The revolutionary La Piedrita Collective, whose members told me in a recent interview that such heightened tensions have a purgative effect on the revolutionary process, have recently taken the fight to the opposition, declaring various opposition parties, far-right television station Globovisión, and the Vatican offices to be “military targets,” carrying out tear gas attacks against them. But this was merely a warning, according to an interview given by La Piedrita founder Valentín Santana to the newspaper Quinto Día: up to this point, Santana insists, the violence has come from the opposition, and La Piedrita’s targets are precisely those who “call for war, for hatred, for magnicide.” Repeating what he told me earlier, Santana insists that Chávez is the only thing preventing open conflict in Venezuela, and if the referendum doesn’t pass, “we’re headed for a war.”

Initially, the government’s position was subtle. Without endorsing La Piedrita’s actions, Interior and Justice minister Tarek El-Aissami insisted on shifting the discourse of violence back toward those more deserving of it: the students caught with Molotovs and the opposition press that has been calling for violence against a legitimate government for nearly a decade. However, after Santana’s interview in Quinto Día, in which the leader tacitly threatened the lives of opposition leaders, including media magnate Marcel Granier, Chávez himself stepped into the fray, calling for Santana’s arrest. But the effort to appear presidential by opposing the threats issued by his supporters is a double-edged sword, one which threatens to alienate Chávez’s most fiercely devoted base, and it’s unclear if arresting Santana (if this is even possible given the de facto autonomy enjoyed by La Piedrita, would be at all desirable from a political standpoint).

Puerto Rican Vacation

But in this case the strategy of tension encouraged by both far left and far right would have produced little more than a stalemate on its own, with radicalized bases contemplating one another across a chasm populated by undecideds, were it not for the latest in blunders by the anti-Chavista opposition. Returning from a trip to Puerto Rico, representatives of all major opposition parties alongside Globovisión director Federico Ravell were surprised at the airport by a young reporter, Pedro Carvajalino, from the government-sponsored youth-oriented Ávila-TV. When the journalist accused the opposition leaders of meeting with representatives of the United States’ government, and specifically deemed Ravell a palangrista, or a corrupt journalist, the situation became tense, with Ravell spouting offensive slurs and threatening to punch Carvajalino. Luckily for the Chavistas, Ravell displayed a surprising lack of media saavy for a media magnate, and the whole thing played out in front of the cameras.

Things were not going well for the opposition’s electoral strategy. Carvajalino, it seems, had been leaked an email in which Ravell discusses with opposition political leaders a meeting with U.S. embassy officials in Puerto Rico, insinuating that some $3 million would be provided toward defeating the February 15th referendum. On this basis, those involved were subpoenaed to testify before the state Attorney General, where Ravell insisted that, rather than meeting with U.S. government officials, they had instead met with Chilean strategists involved in the unseating of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. As to why a meeting with Chileans took place on
U.S. soil, Ravell provided the rather unconvincing answer that the Chileans, who had braved the Pinochet dictatorship, were deterred from entering Venezuela by the high crime rates.

This is ertainly not the press the Venezuelan opposition needed in the run-up to next week’s vote. But is it surprising? Not particularly, for those who have unashamedly eaten out of the poisoned hand of the North far too many times without learning their lesson. While financial support from the U.S. is probably tempting for a discredited opposition utterly lacking any mass base, it is still worth wondering if the money is worth the risk it entails when the media hypocrisy is free.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley. He is currently writing a people’s history of the Bolivarian Revolution entitled We Created Him, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.

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