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Today's
Stories
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
25, 2004
Hysteria Mounts
Is
Venezuela Next?
By SAUL LANDAU
Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought
of Western civilization.
"I think it would be a good idea,"
he replied.
Democracy in Latin America might also
prove nice if the United States would allow it to occur. Traditionally,
when Latin Americans elect governments that show even vague intentions
of redistributing the lopsided national wealth toward the poor,
US officials get their knickers in a twist and force new elections:
the pro-US candidate then emerges. But Washington's rhetorically
concealed fusion between popular elections and imperial appointments
hardly assures Latin American stability.
Indeed, since 1999, seven Hemispheric
heads of state have left office before finishing their terms.
In October, four months before US and French officials dispatched
Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, pro US President
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado fled Bolivia to Miami. Massive popular
protests erupted against his pro-American economic policies.
Similarly, Paraguay's Raul Cubas had to quit when faced with
heavy opposition, some of it turbulent. Ecuador's pro free trade
president, Jamil Mahuad, also got 86'd. Peruvians sort of elected
the fascistic Alberto Fujimori, currently exiled in Japan and
facing criminal charges in Peru -- and also hoping to return
to Peru to grab the presidency again. President Alejandro Toledo,
who replaced the disgraced Fujimori, followed US dictates on
free trade that has created deep unrest. In December 2001, Argentina's
economy collapsed and Fernando De la Rua resigned in the face
of popular revolts against neo-liberal policies. Pro-US economic
(free trade) policies caused the undoing of these regimes.
"Pro-US," however, hardly describes
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, the current target for covert destabilizing.
In 1998, the 49 year old former paratrooper won massive electoral
support for president. Chavez was elected again in 2000 for a
six year term.
Opposition leaders claim that Chavez
wanted to convert Venezuela into a Cuba-style system. Having
botched a 2002 coup attempt, Washington-Caracas plotters launched
a recall referendum to force a new vote. But the Venezuelan election
council announced on March 9 that only 1,830,000 of the 3 plus
million signatures passed muster; 2.4 million would force a recall
election. On March 15, Venezuela's Supreme Court overruled the
Council.
The Electoral Council appealed to another
branch of the Supreme Court, which ordered the Council to hand
over all material relevant to the case. The Council maintains
that constitutionally is alone is qualified to decide on recall
procedures. Chavez says he will abide by the decision of the
Court.
Paradoxically, members of the Bush administration
who helped rig the 2000 Florida election charged Chavez with
electoral hanky panky. Bush officials call Chavez "Castro's
little buddy," and mock his verbal assaults on US imperialism,
which they see as a sign of disobedience.
The wealthy, their politicians, media
owners and top executives and former managers at the state oil
company, along with their labor leader partners from the elite
oil workers union, all tried and failed to dispatch Chavez in
the April 2002 coup. These former coup makers and their Washington
backers have the chutzpah to claim that Chavez -- not they --
has undermined democracy. Imagine US officials daring to charge
others with undermining democracy as they keep their contaminated
hands in Haiti following their overthrow of Aristide.
In recent speeches, Chavez quoted from
documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act that
show US agencies funded the efforts of former coup makers. Chavez
demanded that the US "get its hands off Venezuela."
The documents he cited show that "Sumate,"
a group that directs the signature collection for Chavez' recall,
received $53,400 from the congressionally funded National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), whose mandate is to fund causes that strengthen
democracy.
The recall campaign organizers have also
fomented vehement street rallies that have cost at least eight
lives. Members of the elite bang pots and pans in their own neighborhoods--only
servants use them in their homes -- but some of Venezuela's massive
poor get paid by US-backed operatives to do more violent protesting.
These tactics resonate with memories
of tested CIA formulas, like the one used to foment revolt against
the government of Salvador Allende in Chile 1970-3.
"It's done in the name of democracy,"
said Jeremy Bigwood, the journalist who obtained the documents
proving US complicity, "but it's rather hypocritical. Venezuela
does have a democratically elected President who won the popular
vote which is not the case with the US" (Andrew Buncombe,
13 March 2004 Independent).
NED targets foreign leaders who believe
insufficiently in free trade and privatization or who want the
government to play an active role in the economy.
For example, NED targeted Aristide for
his refusal to comply 100% with the demands of the privatizers,
like the IMF and the US government. It sent money to his opponents
while the US government itself cut off loans, credit and aid
to the Haitian government.
Washington can't very well try these
tactics with Venezuela without fear of a retaliatory oil policy
by Chavez. But it did enlist its old Cold War ally, the foreign
policy wing of the AFL-CIO union, the American Centre for International
Labor Solidarity. The AFL-CIO, losing membership at home, nevertheless
spent workers' money to train and advise opposition anti-Chavez
forces. The US government acts as a loose organizer to bring
together the anti Chavez unions and discredited political parties
like Democratic Action and Copei, whose past governments have
looted their nation's treasury over some four decades.
Chris Sabatini, NED's Latin America director,
claims his agency only wants to "build political space"
(Independent, March 13). Such statements seem laughable. But
ridicule alone cannot combat this democracy posture. Indeed,
US concern about democracy shows only when that ancient Greek
form begins to function for the poor. In Chile in the early 1970s
and in Venezuela today, the wealthy chant "democracy"
only when tax policies designed to help the poor threaten their
fortunes.
The media, owned by the rich, don't report
facts about how past "democratic" governments routinely
looted Venezuela's treasury. But they have spread panic about
Chavez' budget, which prioritizes public health and education--areas
the rich don't use--and hope the US intervenes more forcefully.
US troops routinely intervened throughout
the region in the 19th and 20th Centuries. After 20 years of
occupying Haiti (1914-34) marines handed over the reins of government
to militarized lackeys who repressed their own people, but pledged
loyalty to Washington. After World War II, as democracy became
an exportable national value--even racial integration by the
1960s -- the CIA redefined the word to coincide with US policy
interests around the world.
The world's greatest democracy overthrew
elected governments in Iran (1953) for their intention to nationalize
oil and in Guatemala (1954) for distributing some of United Fruit
Company's uncultivated acreage--after compensating the Company
according to its declared tax value -- to landless peasants.
Traditionally, the US removes "undesirable" candidates
who win elections, and substitute a more obedient candidate.
In the 1960s, US covert operations helped
depose reformist President Joao Goulart in Brazil (1964) and
poured money into the coffers of its candidates throughout Latin
America. In response to the Cuban Revolution, US-backed counterinsurgency
campaigns strengthened the most undemocratic elements of Latin
America while, simultaneously, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
extolled the virtues of the Alliance for Progress to build democracy.
The Alliance received far less funding than the military in Latin
America.
Nixon authorized the overthrow of the
elected socialist coalition of Salvador Allende in Chile--accomplished
by bloody coup in 1973--and the formation of what Reagan's UN
Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick distinguished as only "authoritarian"
governments, as opposed to the truly evil "totalitarian"
ones.
Authoritarian regimes could change, she
opined, while totalitarian remained immutable. She didn't say
that US-backed authoritarian governments in much of South and
Central America also murdered their opponents. The totalitarian
ones at least offered services and, as it turned out, they also
changed--collapsed.
Kirkpatrick maintained that "Central
America is the most important place in the world." Picture
her saying this at a sanity hearing! However ideologically bizarre,
Kirkpatrick and her ilk proved coldly calculating in backing
covert wars to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979-90)
and supporting military coups (authoritarian) against elected
governments in the 1970s and 80s.
In the 21st Century, Washington shows
its evolution by ousting Aristide, and cites his antipathy to
democracy as the reason. National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice explained: "We believe that President Aristide forfeited
his ability to lead his people because he did not govern democratically."
(March 14, 2004 NBC's "Meet the Press") She offered
no evidence.
The Chavistas watched the Haitian drama
with the understanding that they are next on the Bush hit list.
Otto Reich, Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, and Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega,
have barely disguised their aggressive intent.
As hysteria mounts, Chavez followers--mostly
among the 80% of Venezuelans who are poor -- gain greater understanding
of both their enemies and their own roles in changing their history.
They elected their president, and democracy demands that their
will, the majority, prevail. The day George W. Bush believes
in such a simple formulation grass will grow on my palm. So stay
alert, Companero Hugo and members of the Bolivarian Circles!
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. His new film is Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard
Place, now available from the Cinema
Guild. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
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