Actueel Nieuws

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA is receiving a "huge" increase in anti-terrorism funds this year, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Richard Shelby said on Wednesday. The CIA's budget is classified, but is estimated by intelligence experts to be roughly $3 billion a year, which is about 10 percent of the overall intelligence budget that also funds programs in the Defense Department and other agencies.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020418/pl_nm/budget_cia_dc_1&printer=1

Irish filmmaker's eyewitness account of Venezuelan coup d'état

Michael McCaughan speaks to Kim Bartley, who witnessed last weekend's coup attempt in Venezuela
Reprinted from Irish Times 16 April 2002

Ms Kim Bartley and Mr Donnacha O'Brien have spent the past three months filming a documentary on Venezuelan President Mr Hugo Chavez for Power Productions, an independent film company based in Galway.

"I arrived in the centre of town just as the shooting started," says Kim. "I filmed a while then took cover in a doorway. Whoever was firing aimed directly at the crowd, which was pro-Chavez. I filmed two dead bodies, both of them beside the podium set up to rally Chavistas to defend the presidential palace.

"A woman working in the vice-president's office identified the bodies as a legal secretary and an archivist, both working inside the building. A 10-year-old girl was then taken away, fatally injured.

Read the full article
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/witness.htm

'This is a media insurrection'
Telephone Interview with Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez conducted 12 April - in midst of coup d'état

Excerpts from interview by Stella Calloni in Argentina
Reprinted from LA JORNADA (Mexican daily)
12 April 2002

"What we have before us is a conspiracy, open and shameless, and yesterday you could already hear them talk of being ready for a civilian-military insurrection, and the TV stations lined up to transmit this. This is unheard of. A wave of rumors and falsehoods was presented to the world and we can demonstrate that each and every one of these was a lie," said President Hugo Chávez to La Jornada by telephone from Caracas.

"They brought [to the anti-government demonstration] a lot of people whom they had duped, telling them that I was already a prisoner and they were going to seize Miraflores [the presidential palace]. It must be said also that this is a media insurrection and one must consider what that means for the future of all democracies. I must thank the workers in the oil, petrochemical, education, health, steel, and air transport industries, and so many others who worked, resisting this almost unbelievable campaign [of disinformation]," he continued.

Read the full article
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/jornada.htm
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Chávez comeback exposes U.S. government & media lies

By D. Baatar, Jared Israel, Nestor Gorojovsky & Nico Varkevisser

To paraphrase an old proverb: "Celebrate in haste; repent at leisure."

On April 13th the New York Times rushed to gloat that one more opponent of the US Empire had been crushed.
Never mind that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been elected by overwhelming popular vote. (In contrast, might we note, to George Walker Bush.) All the same, an editorial in the Times described the Venezuelan military/big business coup d'état as an effort to reassert democracy:

"Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator...[because] the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader." - N Y Times
And the Times added:

"But democracy has not yet been restored, and won't be until a new president is elected."
In the bad old Cold War days, the US Establishment used to attack its opponents for not holding multiparty elections. Well, Venezuela did hold multiparty elections and Chávez won by a landslide. But this was not sufficient.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)