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Today's Stories April 13, 2007 George Ciccarriello-Maher April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Joshua Frank Lee Sustar Joseph Grosso Nirmal Ghosh Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Paul Rockwell Mario Joseph
and Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alan Maass Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Richard W. Behan Gabriel Kolko William S. Lind Stedjan / Weis Kevin Zeese David Busch Fidel Castro CounterPunch
News Service Website of the Day
Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Dave Lindorff Arthur Neslen Michael Dickinson Ingmar Lee Aseem Shrivastava Marlene Martin Mahmoud El-Yousseph Michael Foley Website of the Day
March 28, 2007 Nicole Colson Harry Clark Larry Everest Jonathan M.
Feldman Dave Zirin Jane Stillwater Ayesha Ijaz Khan Jim Wilfong Hawra Karama Website of
the Day
Iain Boal /
Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Corporate Crime
Reporter Joshua Frank Harvey Wasserman Sen. Russell Feingold Tillman Family Patrick Bond David Judd Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Greg Moses Bill Hatch John V. Walsh Diane Christian Dan La Botz Frederico Fuentes Sunsara Taylor Mickey Z. Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair David Rosen Ron Jacobs Robert Fantina Alan Maass Atul Gawande Marianne McDonald China Hand Kaz Dziamka Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Anthony Papa Matthew Provonsha Missy Beattie Stephen Fleischman Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Song of the Weekend
March 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Greg Moses Rep. Ron Paul Franklin Lamb Stephen Gowans Roger Burbach Dave Lindorff William S. Lind Alan Mammoser Russell Hoffman Website of
the Day
March 22, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Robin Blackburn Michael Donnelly Uzma Aslam
Khan Lee Sustar Robert D. Skeels Rev. William Alberts Anne McElroy
Dachel Mickey Z. Website of
the Day
Tao Ruspoli James Petras Fred Gardner Corporate Crime
Reporter Faisal Kutty Robert Fantina Isabella Kenfield and Roger
Burbach Lucinda Marshall Winslow Wheeler Website of
the Day
March 20, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Winslow T.
Wheeler Sharon Smith Uri Avnery Stan Cox Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Alan Farago Richard W.
Behan Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On David Krieger Peter Rost, MD Mickey Z. Website of
the Day Webclip of
the Day
March 19, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Patrick Cockburn Stauber / Rampton Werther Noam Chomsky Jeff Leys Richard May Ron Jacobs Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
March 17 / 18, 2007 Alexander Cockburn John Scagliotti Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig
Roberts Greg Moses Harry Clark Brian Cloughley Mehran Ghassemi William Loren Katz John Ross Ralph Nader Walter Brasch Samer Assad Dave Zirin Ron Jacobs Missy Beattie Don Santina Sami Adwan Dr. Susan Block Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
March 16, 2007 R. T. Naylor Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Diane Farsetta Tom Barry Stephen Lendman Al Krebs Jackie Corr Ramzy Baroud Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
March 15, 2007 Alison Weir Patrick Cockburn Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Franklin Spinney Standard Schaefer Conn Hallinan Maureen Webb Sonja Karkar Margaret Kimberly Anthony Papa Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost Video of the Day Website of
the Day
March 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Philip Agee Bruce Dixon John Walsh Sunsara Taylor William Johnson Richard Thieme Jeffrey Klein Nicola Nasser Dave Lindorff Website of
the Day
March 13, 2007 Catherine Wilkerson,
M.D. Jonathan Cook Robert Bryce Corporate Crime
Reporter Pierre Rimbert Dave Lindorff Elizabeth Schulte Norman Solomon Kevin Zeese Jeff Conant Website of the Day
March 12, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Col. Dan Smith Paul Craig Roberts Ingmar Lee Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader John Ross Stephen Fleischman Eva Carazo Vargas Website of
the Day
March 9 / 11, 2007 Sameer Dossani Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Marsh Patrick Cockburn Jennifer Van Bergen James P. Stevenson Arthur J. Versluis Corporate Crime
Reporter Missy Beattie Michael Simmons Kevin Zeese David Swanson John A. Murphy Dave Lindorff Nikolas Kozloff Christopher
Fons Mike Roselle Mike Mejia Susie Day Michael Donnelly Tao Ruspoli Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 8, 2007 Elaine Cassel Yifat Susskind Corporate Crime Reporter Col. Dan Smith William S. Lind Mark Engler Roger Burbach Dana Cloud Isabella Kenfield Lucinda Marshall Tao Ruspoli Website of
the Day
Christopher Ketcham Christopher
Ketcham Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey
St. Clair Winslow T.
Wheeler Sean Donahue Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Tao Ruspoli Website of the Day
March 6, 2007 Gary Leupp Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Mike Roselle P. Sainath Joshua Frank Aniket Alam Dave Zirin Website of
the Day
March 5, 2007 Greg Moses Patrick Cockburn James Petras Frida Berrigan Marjorie Cohn Douglas Kammen
and S.W. Hayati Sen. Barack Obama Michael Young Dave Lindorff Sonja Karkar Website of the Day
March 3 / 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Corporate Crime
Reporter Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader M. Shahid Alam Gilad Atzmon Fred Gardner George Ciccariello-Maher Rock &
Rap Confidential Gillian Russom Michael McPhearson Kevin Zeese Sunsara Taylor Wendy Thompson Kenneth Rexroth Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Tina Louise Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 2, 2007 Roger Morris Phil Gasper Mike Roselle Robert Bryce John V. Walsh Sherwood Ross China Hand David Rosen Chris Genovali Peter Harley Website of the Day
March 1, 2007 Laura Carlsen Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Christopher
Brauchli Najum Mustaq Brent Bowden Tina Richards Ethan Nadelman Mike Stark Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
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April 13, 2007 Every 11th Has Its 13thThe Failed Chávez Coup, Five Years OnBy GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER Caracas.
There is perhaps only one event more revealing than a coup, and that's a failed coup. If a coup reveals ruptures and fractures within a society, the effort to reverse a coup reveals where exactly the real power in that society lies. The mobilization of the Venezuelan masses in opposition to the coup of April 11th 2002 represents the best evidence to date that the sovereign people of Venezuela have the will and capacity to defend their vision of a new society. A planned mediatic coup On April 11th 2002, the Venezuelan opposition activated snipers who fired on a largely pro-Chávez crowd that had gathered near Miraflores Palace to defend the president from the threat of an approaching and aggressive opposition march. Film footage from the ensuing gun battle was inserted into a pre-fabricated media strategy which sought to convince the Venezuelan population that government supporters were responsible for the deaths, and that they had acted directly on the orders of Chávez himself. That the opposition planned to slaughter innocents is clear from the fact that the public statement by members of the high military command, which cited a specific number of casualties and urged Chávez to resign, had been filmed long before the deaths had even taken place. That the role of the media was paramount is clear from the revelation that this pre-filmed statement was recorded at the house of opposition journalist and host of 24 Hours Napoleón Bravo. Indeed, it would be on that very same program that Venezuelans would first learn of what had transpired overnight. Bravo opened his April 12th program with the following statement: "Good morning, it is 6:14 a.m. Thanks to society and the armed forces, today we awake differently. Good morning, we have a new president." Bravo continued, reading a falsified letter of resignation from Chávez and discussing the momentarily successful coup with some of its leaders, who expressed their indebtedness to "all the private media." The media is a force to be reckoned with, this much we know, and one of the coup leaders openly declared it "our most powerful weapon." But equally clear in retrospect is that the golpistas overestimated the hegemonic control that these media outlets exercised over the population as a whole. Despite the carefully-calculated media strategy, despite the collusion of almost every single media outlet, despite the media blackout that ensued in the aftermath of Chávez's ouster, the coup was short-lived. Why? Because, as a recent commemoration of the event puts it, every 11th has its 13th. Popular rebellion against the coup was immediate, as millions of poor Venezuelans streamed spontaneously down from the cerros, the hills that surround Caracas and which house her massive shantytown population. For Samuel Moncada, former Minister of Higher Education and professor of history at the Central University, this event disproved centuries of elitist ideology, an ideology which still had a surprising degree of influence on the coup leaders: "Those intellectuals who said that this was a government of brutes and that they represent the enlightened part of the country, well as it turns out, the 'darkest,' the people from the barrios, recognized that they had woken up without rights on that Saturday [April 12th] The Venezuelan people understood that we were being enslaved." Indeed, despite media distortions, those present at the initial mobilizations on the 12th demonstrated a remarkable grasp of the situation: signs could be seen blaming the "fascist right" for the deaths of Chavista protestors on the 11th, and demanding that the human rights of Chávez's ministers be respected. A banner read "No to the mediatic dictatorship," while a printed flyer affirmed that, "We will not tolerate this dictatorship of economic power and the media." I recently spoke to a participant in the April 13th uprising. What he remembers most is the sheer quantity of people flooding down from the poor barrios, blocking every highway and street, and converging on the historic center of Caracas. That this onlooker would be shocked in a country which regularly sees more than a million in the streets speaks to the magnitude of the rebellion. Mobilizations concentrated specifically on the historic center of Caracas near the presidential palace and Fort Tiuna, a military base in the south of the city that was the site of frenetic negotiations among coup participants, civilian and military alike. Similarly crucial spontaneous mobilizations occurred outside the military base in Maracay, housing Chávez's old parachute regiment. Agustin Prieto, an electrical engineer who helped to organize the mobilizations outside Fort Tiuna, recalls the shock that the coup represented, but also the determined struggle that it sparked: "This process, for many Venezuelans, has meant a heavy sacrifice and years of struggle. This is why we will never erase from our memories what happened on April 11th and 12th. Immediately following that impact, which was as much spiritual and emotional as it was a consciousness of what was happening, the majority of Venezuelans began to exchange opinions, to evaluate the situation and what we could figure out about the Armed Forces We began to mobilize the concentration of all residents of Caracas at Fort Tiuna, and that's where it began, starting at noon on the 12th." Repression was swift and severe. At Fort Tiuna, the Metropolitan Police waited until nightfall to attack the assembled crowd with tear gas, armored personnel carriers, and live rounds. Video documentation shows the crowds scattering at 10:45 p.m., and victims in nearby hospitals declaring that, "We are living in a dictatorship." As Moncada puts it: "On that day, more human rights were violated than had been violated in the past, not 3, but 30 years." Illegal searches and detentions, a witch hunt and public flogging of Chavista leaders, the besiegement of the Cuban embassy, and people shot dead in the street: such was the rabid fury of Venezuelan fascism. But the hatred of the minority couldn't compensate for their small numbers, and their fury couldn't compare to that of a people robbed of their legitimate representative. The media's role in this fleeting dictatorship wasn't limited to putting it in power: Chavista mobilization and police repression would not even make the headlines in the private media. Jesse Chacón, later Minister of the Interior, would observe: "There are protests in central Caracas, Guarenas, Petare, and you are seeing soap operas and movies. Ask yourselves: Why aren't these protests being covered? Why didn't they report the 20 deaths last night outside Fort Tiuna? Where is our media?" The media, as it turns out, were fully aware of the popular efforts to reinstate Chávez, but journalists were under orders from above, to show "zero Chavismo on the screen" according to Andrés Izarra, then a contributing journalist to RCTV's news program El Observador. This mediatic veil was briefly and crucially ruptured when Attorney General Isaías Rodríguez appeared live on the private media: having promised to step down in favor of the illegitimate government, Rodríguez instead announced to the nation that Venezuela had suffered a coup d'etat. But the people already knew that. On April 13th, despite the best efforts of the private media's continued blackout, a tipping-point was reached. With millions in the streets, loyal members of the military were emboldened to act, thereby reconstituting the "military-civilian alliance" that has been so essential to the Bolivarian Revolution from the beginning. The opposition claim that Chávez's return was a largely military affair, relying on decisions which had little to do with popular mobilizations (some even claim that the Chavista mobilizations were limited to a few hundred), simply do not square with people's memories of the event, be they civilian or military. The military acted, but it did so at the signal of the people. Despite a total media blackout and the closure of state-run Channel 8, despite widespread police repression, this signal came across loud and clear to those on both sides of events. For the loyal sectors of the military, the presence of the masses in the streets was decisive: it cemented their conviction that it was necessary to fight, and that the fight could be won. Soldiers, led by the people In her Soldiers Alongside the People, Marta Harnecker interviews several of the key military actors in Chávez's return to power. General Raúl Baduel, then commander of the 42nd Parachute Infantry Brigade in Maracay was the first to openly reject the coup and arguably the principal strategist of the efforts to reverse it. This is perhaps unsurprising, since Baduel was one of the founders of Chávez's revolutionary movement in the military, and since it was from Maracay that Chávez and others, leading parachute regiments, sought to take power in February of 1992. Baduel's declaration, however, only emerged on the afternoon of April 13th, long after the popular crowds had massed outside military installations in Maracay and Fort Tiuna, and outside the presidential palace. The announcement of an effort
to return Chávez to power, deemed the "Plan to Restore
National Dignity," represented for Baduel the "detonator"
of the entire situation, a rallying point for loyal troops like
those who proceeded to recapture the presidential palace. Baduel's
refusal to recognize Carmona gave the green light to Colonel
Jesús del Valle Morao Cardona to put into motion a plan
by loyal members of the Honor Guard to take back the palace late
that afternoon. And this, too, took place at the behest of the
people: Miraflores Palace had become one of the epicenters of
popular mobilization, and Morao recalls that "there were
no fewer than a million people" outside the palace, "demanding
the President's return." Members of the Honor Guard could
be seen celebrating with the overjoyed multitude. General Wilfredo Ramón Silva, also stationed at Fort Tiuna, recalls that after the Honor Guard had retaken the presidential palace, coup leaders began efforts to seize he and García Carneiro, at which point they fled to seek refuge in the crowds outside. From there, within the crowds of people, they created a command post to organize the re-taking of various military installations and eventually, in collaboration with Baduel and others, the return of Chávez himself. As one participant recently recalled, at one point General Carneiro appeared before the crowd that had occupied the bridge near Fort Tiuna with tears in his eyes, thanking the people for making military action possible. On the role of the people in facilitating this turn of events, moreover, Ramón Silva estimates that some 70% of those who turned out to return Chávez to power did so spontaneously: "It didn't surprise me that the people came down from the hills. It was nothing new, I experienced it in [the Caracazo riots of] 89 when those defiant hills came down the people came down from the hills, the people in the country's interior came out and they returned their President, whom they had elected, to power." A revolution with two weapons
The events of April 13th 2002, the spontaneous popular insurgency which returned Chávez to power against all odds, are the best proof of the popular character of the Bolivarian Revolution. But that's not all they prove. They also prove that "the people" are far more than the inert mass that many consider them to be. The failure of the coup derived in part from the oligarchy's belief in this caricature. But the fact that it took the coordinated action of a conscious and prepared population to return Chávez to power proves much more than that: it proves that the revolutionary leadership in Venezuela relies fundamentally on popular support. Were it not for this support, Chávez would not be in power today, and were this support to be withdrawn tomorrow, his days would be numbered. The most radical sectors of Chavismo are not bound to Chávez the man at all, but only to what he represents. As long as he represents what they represent, as long as there is proximity between the top and the bases, he will have their support. Paradoxically, the threat posed by the opposition, international and domestic, the material and ideological odds stacked against the Revolution, represent the best guarantee that the Bolivarian Revolution will continue to deepen according to the wishes of the awakened masses. In Venezuela, one often hears mention of the September 11th 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile. The error of Allende's revolution, one is told, is that it was "unarmed." While this refers in part to the fact that Allende's support within the military was far from consolidated, it also alludes to a second necessary weapon of successful revolutions: the autonomous organization of the popular masses. Perhaps in a self-deceiving effort to prove its "democratic" nature, Allende's government relied too heavily on the passive mobilization of the ballot, failing to cultivate the necessary degree of active popular organization to withstand an attack from the armed forces. The Bolivarian Revolution is far from an electoral revolution: it is a revolution that, to borrow the words of Lenin and Fidel Castro, "knows how to defend itself." As the popular saying goes: "If they bring it like the 11th, we'll give it back like the 13th." On April 11th, a multi-faith religious ceremony was held on Puente Llaguno, site of the massacre, to commemorate those murdered by the opposition, and Chávez himself made a surprise appearance. The opposition continues to deny responsibility for the deaths and blame them on the government. The Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, Juan Barreto, has declared the week April 13th-19th as "The Week of Insurgent Caracas" to celebrate the role of the popular masses in returning Chávez to power. George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political
theory at U.C. Berkeley. He lives in Caracas, and can be reached
at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.
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The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn           CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
