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April 13, 2002
Please Distribute Widely
DAY III:
DEMOCRACY HELD HOSTAGE IN BOL�VAR'S VENEZUELA
Dear Colleagues,
Today's Press Briefing in the Narco Newsroom, conducted by Barry Crimmins
and I, is being enclosed with this email alert.
That's because it contains 24 questions the the media is not asking about
the coup d'etat in Venezuela, and if you're a reporter, or if you know a
reporter, we'd like to suggest that the time is now to start asking them.
Also included is the commentary on the Coup that Barry Crimmins sent to his
mailing list today, in order to reward, with some vital satire at this dark
moment, any of your reporter friends who have the courage to at least look
at the questions they are not asking about the Venezuela coup d'etat.
It all appears at http://www.narconews.com/ with many other stories and
links we've published, now, three days into Democracy Held Hostage.
from somewhere in a country called Am�rica,
Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Coup Questions
for Journalists
Time for Civil Society to Insist
on Accurate Venezuela Coverage
A Narco News Press Briefing
By Al Giordano
With Barry Crimmins
They've really overplayed their hand this time. They, being the commercial
media with their fictional and dishonest coverage of the violent coup d'etat
in Venezuela.
Yesterday's Q & A posed to Narco News by authentic journalist Jules Siegel
has brought some comments and further questions into the Narco Newsroom,
which we will answer today. During that exchange, I said:
"But the sorriest group of all has been the US news correspondents in
Venezuela. Not a single one of them has asked the right questions, much less
answered them."
Our first question today comes from journalist Ron Mader of the Latinscribes
mailing list -- a group of 268 reporters who cover Latin America -- where
the original Q & A with Jules Siegel took place.
Ron asks:
To Al and others --
"What are top three questions you think should be asked?"
Narco News answers:
There are many more than three questions that must be asked by the
journalists covering Venezuela. Here are some of them.
1. Where is President Chavez?
2. On what charges is he being held?
3. What are the names and locations of the other political leaders
who have been rounded-up?
4. Where are they being held?
5. Why are they being kept incomunicado? Why can't we interview them?
6. Why have they been denied access to attorneys?
7. If Chavez has "resigned" where is his resignation letter?
8. Are you keeping us from interviewing President Chavez because he has not
resigned?
9. If he did resign, why hasn't the Vice President substituted him?
10. On what legal grounds does the military installed dictator Pedro Carmona
abolish Congress, the Supreme Court and even change the name of the country?
11. To the US Embassy: The Washington Post today reports, "Members of the
country's diverse opposition had been visiting the U.S. Embassy here in
recent weeks, hoping to enlist U.S. help in toppling Chavez. The visitors
included active and retired members of the military, media leaders and
opposition politicians." Who are these individuals who, the US had prior
knowledge, were organizing a coup d'etat?
12. Which US officials did they speak with?
13. To the media: On what basis do almost all of you claim that the shots
fired on Thursday came from the government?
14. How do you explain that Chavez supporters were also shot?
15. Where did those shots come from?
16. On what basis do almost all of you claim that Chavez "resigned"?
17. Particularly after his daughter, his attorney general and his ambassador
to Mexico have proclaimed that he has not resigned, why do you keep
repeating this knowingly false lie?
18. On what basis, since he is held incomunicado, do you claim he asked for
asylum in another country?
19. Why do you refer to the military installed dictator Pedro Carmona as
president without at least placing the word in quotation marks?
20. On what basis do you call this military coup a popular revolt?
21. On what basis do you portray a relatively small effort by the "spoiled
brat" oligarchy classes in one city of a country of 24 million people as at
all representative of the national public will?
22. Why is there no examination of the vested interests that the military
brass, the oil industry (including dictator Pedro Carmona), the corrupt
petrol workers union, the Church hierarchy and the five TV networks had to
stage a military coup?
23. What were their real motives for imprisoning a democratically elected
leader?
Those questions may soon be bypassed by events more grave in the days to
come.
24. What dishonest spin will the inauthentic journalists place on the story
when the Venezuelan majority begins to fight to restore its constitutional
government?
Anything can happen in the next 72 hours. Anything.
And the US correspondents have showed themselves, already, to be unprepared
or unwilling to conduct the most basic inquiries of journalism.
For more information, see:
http://www.narconews.com/
(Thanks to Jules Siegel for yesterday's Q & A, which is now published along
with other analysis and breaking news).
salud y abrazo,
Al Giordano
A Real Coup for the
Bush Administration
A reader writes:
Dear Al,
I know that democracy has been defeated, the CIA fired at those crowds in
Venezuela and then blamed Chavez, the jackbooted thugs are going house to
house right now in Venezuela to round up the democratically elected leaders,
and the New York Times is lying through its dentures -- you should see that
corrupt rookie asshole Forero's story today! -- but, jeez, Al, you sound so
angry and serious. Can't you have a sense humor about all this, even if the
joke is on We, the People?
Signed,
Laughless on Long Island
Dear Laughless,
Um, I'm going to have Barry Crimmins handle that question.
Barry sent this commentary out to his mailing list this morning.
from somewhere in a country called Am�rica,
Al Giordano
Quips & Comments 4-13-'02
by Barry Crimmins
http://www.barrycrimmins.com
This Venezuelan thing is a real coup for the Court-appointed Bush
Administration.
If you want to know what's going on in Venezuela just read, and invert, the
New York Times.
The State Department's own newsletter contains more material it objects to
than can be found in a month's worth of the New York Times.
It's nice to see it didn't take long for the CIA to make good use of its
unchecked power and unlimited budget.
The Dulles Brothers are cackling in Hell over the restoration of America's
ability to reverse the democratic will of sovereign nations, without so much
even mild cross-examination by the media.
William Randolph Hearst is sitting in the same bonfire as the Dulles boys,
beaming proudly at the ease with which the contemporary corporate media is
able to mislead the public.
On the other hand, Simon Bolivar is on a rotisserie in his grave.
Remember the Maine? Well keep it in mind when you are reading anything in
the corporate media concerning the Venezuelan coup.
Remember the Latin American hoaxes!
The new corporate junta in Venezuela so loves freedom that it is now
delivering it door-to-door, at the end of a gun barrel.
The US-backed Venezuelan coup installed "President" Pedro Carmona who in
just 24 hours dissolved the legitimately elected congress, delayed elections
and declared he has the right to remove any elected official from power. At
this rate he should be naming John Ashcroft Attorney General sometime later
today.
Bush and Carmona are forming a new group: The Organization of Illegitimate
Leaders or "OIL."
The Venezuelan coup is about the drug the US simply cannot kick-- oil.
Fingerprints of the oily Bushes and their family-owned subsidiary, the
Central Intelligence Agency, are all over this removal from power of a man
who had the gall to assert that Venezuelans should benefit from Venezuela's
natural resources.
Anyone in the Court-appointed Bush Administration will tell you, Chavez
Frias' fidelity to the people of Venezuela is proof positive that he is
anti-American.
If you think the snipers that killed the people in Venezuela were doing so
at the behest of overthrown democratically-elected (by landslides) President
Hugo Chavez Frias, you probably believe Wag the Dog was a documentary.
I'm not saying that there are a zillion parallels to the overthrow of
Allende in Chile, I'm just saying that if Jack Lemmon has any kids in
Venezuela, now would be a good time for them to get the hell out of there.
That figure of 150,000 protesters at the anti-Chavez Frias rally in
Venezuela includes 110,000 previously uncounted participants from earlier
peace, environmental and civil rights rallies in the United States. When the
Court-appointed Bush Administration saw the need to make Pedro Carmona seem
legitimate, it immediately ordered the National Park Service to send down a
healthy amount of uncounted masses to help in the rationalization of the
installation of this corporate junta.
The actual figure of 150,000 was provided to the Venezuelan Corporate Junta
courtesy of Katherine Harris.
The presidents of Mexico and Peru have announced that they do not recognize
the illegitimate regime of Carmona but what do elected leaders matter?
And while we're at it-- for the best coverage and analysis of the Venezuelan
Coup and all matters concerning affairs south of the Land of the
Court-appointed Gringo, read Narco News:
http://www.narconews.com
� 2002 Barry Crimmins
To join Barry Crimmins' mailing list: http://www.barrycrimmins.com/Mail.html
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