Letter Never Sent

From the Guardian: Greg Palast weighs in on the lies and distortions passed off as journalism about the Chavez coup:

…
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.

Related links:

1. U.S. Regrets Hasty Embrace of Chavez Coup They only regret that it failed. This would be a whole different story otherwise. If they weren’t distrustful before Central and South American governments have learned to be wary of the US and especially the corruption in the Bush administration.
2. Guardian: US ‘gave the nod’ to Venezuelan coup:

   
   The same message was echoed on Saturday by the US ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS), Roger Noriega, at an emergency meeting in Washington.

   One OAS diplomat said: “We were in that room for 14 hours, and for most of that 14 hours, Noriega was pushing the line that it was Chavez that had created the problem.”

   The OAS denounced the coup attempt, as did all Venezuela’s neighbours. Washington, however, acknowledged the new government. “A transitional civilian government has been installed,” Mr Fleischer said on Saturday. “This government has promised early elections.”

   Some of the key participants in US meetings with Venezuelan figures in the run-up to the coup were veterans of Reagan-era “dirty tricks” operations. Mr Pardo-Maurer served as the chief of staff to the Nicaraguan contras’ representative in Washington between 1986 and 1989.

   Mr Reich was the head of the office of public diplomacy in the state department, which was later found to have been involved in covert pro-contra propaganda.
   

3. Washington Post: Media’s Role in Crisis Becomes the Big Story in Venezuela Of course, the media says they only failed to show enough of both sides rather than truthfully admit to being completely dishonest and manipulative.
4. U.S. Embassy Workers Leave Venezuela Time for the vermine to get while the getting is good.

Military visitor of the day:

17 Apr, Wed, 07:39:24 WCS3.NORFOLK.NIPR.MIL Netscape 3 Other

According to this site “NIPR hosts are most likely fat, secure proxies for all DoD access. This implies that there need not nessisarily be surveilance going on (might be guy simply interested in the contents of my page).”

From what I could gather WCS3.NORFOLK.NIPR.MIL is either most likely from Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic (NCTAMS LANT) or DOD Regional Command Center in Columbus, Ohio. By the way, I forgot to announce that someone else will be adding posts to LNS. You can see his debut right below this entry. It should be very interesting as he and I agree on a lot of things, but disagree on a lot of other things. He is completely wrong in those cases, of course. :p

My good friend, George, sent me a great link today about a film-maker who was in Caracas during the failed US-backed coup against Hugo Chavez. He describes how the private business media attempted to influence and manipulate the situation with meticulously planned propaganda. The aim was to legitimize the coup leaders and to delegitimize Chavez. Most members of the elite understand how much of power rests in perception and when you can alter perception you can create ‘legitimacy’. This is exactly what took place in Venezuela last week.

“More shots. We ran for cover like everyone else. We made it to the palace through back streets as the firing continued and as soon as we got in the gate another sniper started aiming at the crowd. We were all thrown to the ground behind a wall and later ran for cover into the building. Three of the snipers were arrested . . . “Chavez was about to explain what was happening in a live television broadcast but the state channel’s signal was cut just as he began to speak.

As Wayne Madsen reported, the US government provided signal jamming capabilities from inside Colombia and off the coast of Venezuela. This is most likely why the signal was cut.

The army generals arrived and went off for a meeting with Chavez. The evening passed in a flash as we waited for news inside the presidential palace. A tearful Environmental Minister, Ms Analisa Osorio, emerged in the early hours of Friday, announcing the end of an era. ‘He’s under arrest,’ she said. Chavez emerged, barely visible with all the bodyguards and junta soldiers jostling both to protect and arrest him. “The atmosphere turned ugly. Radio and television immediately announced the resignation of Chavez and began broadcasting upbeat messages: ‘Venezuela is finally free’ was the banner across all private TV channels.“The government went into hiding. Everyone fled for their lives. The witch-hunt began. We decided not to go home, checking into a hotel instead, for safety . . . “The media kept repeating footage of the swearing-in ceremony of the interim president [Pedro Carmona] which was followed by images of empty streets, everything in perfect tranquillity. We were about to book a ticket to Panama when a well-dressed passer-by told us to get off the streets. ‘The Chavistas are coming’ he said. It was Saturday afternoon. …

“The television continued to broadcast a steady diet of soap operas, saying nothing about the huge mobilisation, which was now making a deafening racket outside. Then came the news that Chavez had been freed and was taking a helicopter to Miraflores. The crowds went wild. The presidential guard made a tunnel from the palace gates to a helicopter pad across the street. The sound of choppers buzzing overhead.

In other Chavez coup news, the US has caved-in to international outrage and has begun to admit more and more details of their support for the coup against Chavez. The US acknowledged that Iran-Contra criminal and convicted propagandist, Otto Reich, was in contact with the leaders of the failed coup attempt. Reich, who is Bush’s secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, telephoned the ‘interim’ president, Carmona, to offer advice and words of caution on Friday. Reich, who is rabidly anti-Castro, shared an interest in overthrowing Chavez because of his policy of detente with Cuba. Pentagon spokesman, Victoria Clarke, further admitted that “the chief of the Venezuelan military high command, Gen. Lucas Romero Rincón, met recently with Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, a Pentagon official responsible for Latin America. She did not provide details of the meeting, or say whether intelligence was shared.”

As I said, Reich is a convicted propagandist and he showed his true colors clearly in libelous statements directed toward Chavez:

In the closed door briefing, Mr. Reich said the administration had received reports that “foreign paramilitary forces” — suspected to be Cubans — were involved in the bloody suppression of anti-Chávez demonstrators, in which at least 14 people were killed, a Congressional official said today.

Mr. Reich, who declined to be interviewed today, offered no evidence for his assertion, the official said.

He is clearly trying to poison the well for Chavez. Most of the people killed were actually Chavez supporters. I challenge Reich to produce evidence of this pack of lies. Make no mistake about Otto Reich. He is a snake. Under his watch the US government planted false domestic propaganda in American newspapers often writing fake letters to the editor among other things. Read more about his crimes at the National Security Archive.

Italians showed the power of the general strike when millions of Italian workers staged the biggest strike in decades. They are protesting new proposed rules by the pro-business premier, Silvio Berlusconi. From the NY Times:

The main impasse is over a reform that would eliminate rules requiring employers to take back workers found to have been fired for “unjust causes.” Employers complain those rules hamper their ability to get rid of unneeded workers. Under the proposed reform, employers would have to pay the workers compensation but not take them back.

The government insists the reforms are necessary to make the Italian economy more competitive and attract foreign investment. The unions say the reforms will cost dearly in hard-won job security, widen the gap between rich and poor and undermine Italy’s social stability.

One day there will be the resurrection of American labor.

The ‘newspaper of record’, the NY Times, reported today that high-level Bush administration officials had met several times in recent months with the leaders of the failed coup against Hugo Chavez. The Bush administration admitted today that they did meet with the coup leaders and agreed with them that Chavez should be removed, tacitly providing the go ahead for the coup d’etat.

We were not discouraging people,” the official said. “We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don’t like this guy. We didn’t say, `No, don’t you dare,’ and we weren’t advocates saying, `Here’s some arms; we’ll help you overthrow this guy.’ We were not doing that.”

The disclosures come as rights advocates, Latin American diplomats and others accuse the administration of having turned a blind eye to coup plotting activities, or even encouraged the people who temporarily removed Mr. Chávez. Such actions would place the United States at odds with its fellow members of the Organization of American States, whose charter condemns the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

In the immediate aftermath of the ouster, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, suggested that the administration was pleased that Mr. Chávez was gone. “The government suppressed what was a peaceful demonstration of the people,” Mr. Fleischer said, which “led very quickly to a combustible situation in which Chávez resigned.”

According to an article in The Washington Post, The Bush administration has been cleaning up the speech transcripts of their lead buffoon, GW, editing out gaffes and presidential bloopers. While this might seem like a minor issue it amounts to a falsification of official records of historical importance. In Bush’s case this is almost forgivable since he is such an obvious moron, but this practice has been extended even to comments made my White House Spokesman, Ari Fleischer. Laste September, “when White House press secretary Ari Fleischer warned that Americans “need to watch what they say.” The phrase did not at first appear in the White House transcript.” The White House transcripts have even cut out heckling, boos, and laughter while preserving cheers and applause. Is there any doubt that the Bush administration has some serious problems with honesty and respect for the democratic process?