Posted on 04/18/2002 7:22:51 AM PDT by jern
By Ted Rall
Bush Backs a Botched Coup in Venezuela
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"They hate what America stands for. They despise freedom. They now know we love freedom, and we will defend our freedom with all our might."
-George W. Bush, March 28
NEW YORK-You didn't have to blink to miss it. Let the record show that George W. Bush, reconstituted Cold Warrior and ardent defender of democracy, has suffered his first Bay of Pigs. Whether this experience will chasten him as much as it did JFK remains to be seen.
In a stunning reminder that the Resident's 76 percent approval rating stops at the Rio Grande, an American-backed coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez went from fait accompli to farcical footnote in a matter of hours.
It all began at three o'clock in the morning of the 12th of April, when flamboyant populist Chávez was arrested by mutinous army officers and unceremoniously replaced by "interim president" Pedro Carmona Estanga. Carmona, chief of a national businessmen's association, immediately reverted to the right-wing strongman's play book. He suspended scheduled elections, tossed out laws regulating big business and promised "a pluralistic vision, democratic, civil and ensuring the implementation of the law." Following that declaration of devotion to democracy he dissolved both the National Assembly and the Supreme Court.
It comes as little surprise that the Bush Administration, itself the beneficiary of a coup, would endorse similar subversion elsewhere. But the American media also proved astonishingly sanguine at the replacement of a legally-elected leader by a `70s-style junta composed of right-wing army officers and corrupt businessmen. "We know that the Chávez government provoked this crisis," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) in a statement welcoming news of the unfolding coup d'état. Describing Carmona as "a respected business leader" in a glowing puff piece, The New York Times slammed Chávez as "a ruinous demagogue."
Ruinous, perhaps. Demagogue, maybe. Nonetheless, Chávez was the legally-elected president of Venezuela. What had Chávez done, in the minds of the American establishment, to justify overthrow, exile and the subversion of democracy?
"According to the best information we have, the government suppressed what was a peaceful demonstration of the people," said Fleischer, in reference to an April 11th incident in which armed men wearing clothes indicating loyalty to Chávez shot 13 anti-government strikers to death and wounded more than 100. Was Fleischer suggesting that the Kent State shootings in 1970 should have precipitated a coup to remove President Richard Nixon?
Chávez's real crime was refusing to suck up to the U.S. or to its powerful corporate interests. A maverick elected with the overwhelming support of Venezuela's poor in 1998, he referred to his nation's upper classes as "squealing pigs" and "rancid oligarchs." He had a point, too: Venezuela's tiny elite have hogged its immense oil revenues for itself while millions starved.
Unfortunately for the downtrodden masses whose votes propelled Chávez into office, Venezuela produces 15 percent of America's oil. This makes the nation of particular economic and geopolitical interest to Washington. In February Chávez, acting on a campaign promise to distribute his country's oil revenues more evenly throughout its impoverished population, replaced Brigadier General Guaicaipuro Lameda with a politically progressive ally as head of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela.
The business community howled in fearful anticipation of further reform. Company officers, fearing that decades-old systemic corruption was drawing to a close, ordered work slowdowns, company-mandated strikes and street demonstrations against their own government in the hope of crippling the economy and destabilizing Chávez's rule.
The Times summed up the case against Chávez succinctly: "He courted Fidel Castro (news - web sites) and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), battled the media and alienated virtually every constituency from middle-class professionals, academics and business leaders to union members and the Roman Catholic Church." He visited nations hated by the U.S., including Libya and Iran, and criticized the "war on terror." And he dedicated his rule to forcing business to share profits with ordinary citizens. In short, Chávez remained loyal to his leftist principles and to the desperate constituency who had elected him.
But it didn't matter whether or not the Venezuelan people liked him or approved of him. Chávez had to go.
It's too soon to know for certain whether the CIA (news - web sites) tried to engineer an Allende-style operation in Venezuela, but anyone who's read ex-spy Philip Agee's seminal "Inside the Company" recognizes classic signs emanating from New York and Washington: official statements of encouragement are laced with just enough ambiguity to provide plausible deniability; blithe dismissals of democratic principles in friendly media are followed by rapid reversals when things start to go wrong. Don't be too surprised if those gun-toting "Chávez supporters" who opened fire on the April 11th ultimately turn out to be CIA-employed provocateurs.
It gets better: Chávez, while being held on the Venezuelan Caribbean island of La Orchila, noticed an American jet on the runway, and presumed it was waiting to take him into exile. "I saw the plane. It bore the markings of a private plane from the United States, not an official plane...What was it doing there?" Chávez asked, noting that the American ambassador to Venezuela recognized the plane. Days passed without a Bush Administration denial of involvement in the coup. Finally, on April 16th, Ari Fleischer acknowledged that State Department assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs Otto J. Reich called coup leader Carmona hours after the ouster of Chávez. In that call, according to Fleischer, Reich asked Carmona not to dismiss the National Assembly in order to avoid offending world opinion.
Operation Caracas went wrong nearly the second it started. A fervent U.S. ally, Mexican President Vincente Fox, joined Fidel Castro in condemning the coup and refusing to acknowledge the new regime. Soon every government in the Western hemisphere except our own had condemned the coup. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets demanding Chávez's return. By April 13th, Carmona had replaced Chávez in the pokey and the U.S. State Department was calling for the "return of democracy."
Asked whether the U.S. knew about the coup in advance, Fleischer waffled. True, numerous anti-Chávez activists had visited the White House in recent weeks to request U.S. help in deposing the president. "We explicitly told opposition leaders that the United States would not support a coup," he said. He wouldn't say, however, whether or not the U.S. ultimately green-lighted a covert action.
The moral high ground has eroded out from under the U.S. in the months following September 11th. First our bombing campaign killed 10,000 innocent Afghan civilians as we sought vengeance for the murder of 3,000 Americans. Then we supported Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s murderous rampage in the West Bank. Now we're back in the business of creating-or trying to create-banana republics in South America. Not only are we reinforcing the worldwide perception that Americans are pompous hypocrites; we're setting the stage for the kind of instability that followed U.S. coups in Iran.
"I haven't said that this conspiracy (against me) has its roots in the United States," President Chávez said April 15th. He didn't need to.
(Ted Rall's new book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Back," hits stores next week. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)
....and novels
Who gained from this little piece of Kabuke theater? Certainly not the United States. Not the people of Venezuela (who were polling at about 80% against Chavez before the "failed coup." Not the Church. Not the CIA. Not the forces of freedom and reform in Latin America (such as they are). Not really even the dreaded oil companies.
The only ones who gained are Chavez and his inner circle. I have no doubt that "we" were hoping this coup would work (I know I was). But I am convinced that the reason you didn't see us jumping for joy and moving to consolidate the new government's hold on power was because it was orchestrated by Chavez himself--right down to his noble washing of his own underpants in the holding cell.
If there's no evidence the CIA was involved, that in itself is evidence that they were [/sarcasm].
Yeah, Ted. Why wait for evidence when speculation and conjecture is so much easier?
In fairness to Rall -- as opposed to fairness by Rall, something I am not sure exists -- he didn't do that cartoon with Bush flying into the Twin Towers marked "Social Security." But it wouldn't be surprising if he had.
Also, please don't make the mistake the "good guys" always make in history: thinking that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend.
WWI and WWII should have drilled that lesson into our heads.
Chavez IS Luciferian, even though the New York Times, the Economist, etc. say he is.
If you feel the need to, sure, I'll give you advice.
Your attitude is refreshing.
I'll help you.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0%2C4273%2C4396083%2C00.html
Don't believe everything you read in the papers about Venezuela
Contrary to the reports of a spoonfed western press, Hugo Chavez was not unpopular and did not resign, says Greg Palast
Greg Palast
Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday April 17, 2002
Here's what we read this week: On Friday, Hugo Chavez, the unpopular, dictatorial potentate of Venezuela, resigned. When confronted over his ordering the shooting of antigovernment protestors, he turned over the presidency to progressive, democratic forces, namely, the military and the chief of Venezuela's business council.
Two things about the story caught my eye: First, every one of these factoids is dead wrong. And second, newspapers throughout the ruling hemisphere, from the New York Times to the Independent to (wince) the Guardian, used almost identical words - "dictatorial", "unpopular", "resignation" - in their reports.
Let's begin with the faux "resignation" that allowed the Bush and Blair governments to fall over their own feet rushing towards recognition of the coup leaders. I had seen no statement of this alleged resignation, nor heard it, nor received any reliable witness report of it. I was fascinated. In January, I had broadcast on US radio that Chavez would face a coup by the end of April. But resign? That was not the Chavez style.
I demanded answers from the Venezuelan embassy in London, and from there, at 2am on Saturday morning, I reached Miguel Madriz Bustamante, a cabinet member who had spoken with Chavez by phone after the president's kidnapping by armed rebels. Chavez, he said, went along with his "arrest" to avoid bloodshed, but added: "I am still president."
The resignation myth was the capstone of a year-long disinformation campaign against the populist former paratrooper who took office with 60% of the vote. The Bush White House is quoted as stating that Chavez's being elected by "a majority of voters" did not confer "legitimacy" on the Venezuelan government. The assertion was not unexpected from a US administration selected over the opposition of the majority of American voters.
What neither Bush nor the papers told you is that Chavez's real crime was to pass two laws through Venezuela's national assembly. The first ordered big plantation owners to turn over untilled land to the landless. The second nearly doubled, from roughly 16% to 30%, royalties paid for extracting Venezuela's oil. Venezuela was once the largest exporter of oil to the USA, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This explains Chavez's unpopularity - at least within that key constituency, the American petroleum industry.
There remains the charge that, in the words of the New York Times, "Chavez ordered soldiers to fire on a crowd [of protesters]." This bloody smear, sans evidence, stained every Western paper, including Britain's newest lefty, the Mirror. Yet I could easily reach eyewitnesses without ties to any faction who said the shooting began from a roadway overpass controlled by the anti-Chavez Metropolitan Police, and the first to fall were pro-Chavez demonstrators.
I have obtained a cable from the CIA to its station chief in the Capitol: "Re: Coup. Activities to include propaganda, black operations, disinformation, or anything else your imagination can conjure... "
Admittedly, this is old stuff: written just before the coup against Salvador Allende. Times have changed. Thirty years ago, when US corporations demanded the removal of a bothersome president, the CIA thought it most important to aim propaganda at the Latin locals. Now, it seems, in the drumbeat of disinformation buzzwords about Chavez - "dictatorial", "unpopular", "resigned" - the propagandists have learned to aim at that more gullible pack of pigeons, the American and European press.
· Greg Palast is the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, out this month from Pluto Press
OK, help me with this one...the allegations that this was all about oil is expected from Palast, but that is the second raison d'etre listed; the first is the seizing of land to be distributed to "the landless."
What's Bush's beef with that? Why doesn't Palast elaborate? Does he actually know what he is talking about?
Trudeau doesn't even draw his own strips anymore. He sends roughs to some guy in Colorado who does the actually artwork.
Who sez? Michael Milken, the rare junk bond guy who served time in the pen as a white-collar crook. Trudeau went after him and UCLA after they hired him to do some sort of instruction, and Milken retaliated by, among other verbal attacks, revealing the arrangement.
Take a look at the early Doonesbury strips vs. the ones of the past decade or so. The composition and depth is superior now than it used to be, suggesting that either Trudeau had improved as an illustrator or that he simply hired a better illustrator.
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