Of course, a US state department official is trained to hear the sound of an oil well tap turning from several thousand miles away. Chavez is no friend to the US. He went on television to denounce the US bombing of civilians in Afghanistan, brandishing pictures of dead children. He is a public friend to Fidel Castro. It wasn't mentioned here, but he has had his meetings with Saddam Hussein and Gadafy. In Bush's list of those "either with us or against us", he's with the axis of irritants. "We are concerned with some of the things said by President Chavez, and his understanding of what a democratic system is about," said Colin Powell, with the hemmed in anger of a boss who has an employee he wants to sack, but the union won't let him.
<snip>
The world's press carried reports that could have been written by the coup leaders themselves, and, because they were based on these pictures, to a certain extent they were. This film punctured every lie. The world accused the pro-Chavez crowd of carrying out the shootings; O'Briain and Bartley's camera proved it wasn't so, filming the victims almost before they hit the ground. The coup leader Pedro Carmona's speech about this "profoundly democratic process" and Colin Powell's parroting of Carmona's lie was inter-cut with film of the police shooting at protestors. As Carmona was on CNN declaring that the "the country is in a state of total normality", the camera was in the palace from which he had just been ousted. It followed the palace guard as they moved to strategic positions, took the building back and reinstated Chavez.
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/review.htm===
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED / ***1/2 (Not rated)
October 31, 2003
With Hugo Chavez, Pedro Carmona,
Jesse Helms and Colin Powell.Vitagraph Films presents a documentary directed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain. Running time: 74 minutes. No MPAA rating. In English and Spanish with English subtitles.
BY ROGER EBERT
Was the United States a shadowy presence in the background of the aborted coup in Venezuela in 2002? The democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown by
a cabal of rich businessmen and Army officers, shortly after their representatives had been welcomed in the White House.
Oh, the United States denied any involvement in the episode; there's Colin Powell on TV, forthrightly professing innocence. But earlier we heard ominous rumblings from Jesse Helms, Ari Fleischer and George Tenet, agreeing that Chavez was no friend of the United States, and after the coup, there was no expression of dismay from Washington, no announcement that we would work to restore the elected government.<snip>
This was, you may agree, a fair and obvious solution. But not to the 20 percent, of course. And not to other interested parties, including our friends the Saudis, whose people get poorer as the sheiks get richer. Charging Chavez with being a communist who wanted to bring Castroism to Venezuela,
the rich and powerful staged a coup on April 12, 2002. Chavez was put under arrest and held on an island, and the millionaire businessman Pedro Carmona was sworn in as president. This was in violation of the constitution, but he blandly assured TV audiences he was in power because "of a mandate better than any referendum." There was no disagreement from Washington.
Incredibly, the coup failed. Hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters surrounded the presidential palace, and the loyal presidential guard put the interlopers under arrest. Although the state-run Channel 8 was taken off the air and the private channels told lies and showed falsified news footage, Venezuelans learned from CNN and other cable channels that Chavez had not resigned and a coup had taken place; they demanded his return, and a few days later he arrived by helicopter at the presidential palace and resumed office.
These events are recounted in "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a remarkable documentary by two Irish filmmakers that is playing in theaters on its way to HBO. It is remarkable because the filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, had access to virtually everything that happened within the palace during the entire episode. They happened to be in Caracas to make a doc about Chavez, they had access to his cabinet meetings, they were inside the palace under siege, they faced a tense deadline after which it would be bombed, they stayed after Chavez gave himself up to prevent the bombing, they filmed the new government, and there are astonishing shots such as the one where Chavez's men, now back in power, go down to the basement to confront coup leaders who have been taken prisoner. Why no one on either side thought to question the presence of the TV crew is a mystery, but they got an inside look at the coup -- before, during and after -- that is unique in film history.
<snip>
http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg53902.html
Deja vu except that they learned from their mistake in Venezuela and got Aristide off the island immediately :(
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