arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Google-Search Venezuela news sites. Some sites (such as MotherJones.com, NarcoNews.com, Guardian.co.uk, CommonDreams.org, and San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia) are indexed daily by Google News. Click the "News" tab in the Google search results page. Then click "Sort by date." Some sites (such as Vheadline.com) have search engines onsite that index daily. Google indexes some sites more often than others. So for the very latest info you may have to go to the websites directly, and browse there, or use their site search engines there if they have one. 

Venezuela news sources. For the latest news click the links below. If needed, use onsite search engines.
http://www.elistas.net/lista/lea/archivo  (Spanish, English). Venezuela environmental email list archive.
http://www.motherjones.com  (English). Onsite search. Some URLs indicate year and month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela  (English) Comprehensive Venezuela compilation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/archive  (English). Chronological link list.
http://www.alainet.org  (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French).
http://www.alainet.org/venezuela.phtml  (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French). Venezuela page.
http://www.thegully.com/essays/venezuela/021220_media_mindshock.html See links to mid-left of page.
http://www.narconews.com  (English, Spanish).
http://www.narconews.com/docs/ven_archive.php3  Narco News: Venezuela Full Coverage.
http://www.vheadline.com  (English). "Venezuela's Electronic News."
http://www.zmag.org/venezuela_watch.htm  (English). Venezuela articles page.
http://www.flashpoints.net  (English). KPFA Flashpoints Radio. Text, photos, audio.
http://www.petroleumworld.com  (English, Spanish).
http://www.aporrea.org  (Spanish). Venezuela news.
http://www.aporrea.org/english.php  (English). Link compilation.
http://www.americas.org/venezuela  (English). Up-to-date Venezuela news links.
http://www.commondreams.org  (English). Use onsite search for daily indexing. URL indicates exact date.
http://www.einnews.com/venezuela  (English). Must pay monthly fee.
http://italy.indymedia.org/features/guerreglobali/#395  (Italian). Venezuela news link compilation.
http://belgium.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=44547  (English, French, Dutch). Link compilation.
http://sf.indymedia.org  (English, Spanish) Onsite search engine returns many Venezuela articles and comments.

Bold formatting and larger text sizes have been added to some of the text in the excerpts below. 

-------NarcoNews.com excerpt begins----------------

[snip. First part deleted. Excerpt begins]
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article549.html 

Here's a photo of the "anti-strike day" [Dec 2, 2002] mega-market organized by defenders of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution and the elected presidency of Hugo Chávez that the pro-coup elements want to abolish…

----end of NarcoNews article excerpt---

--------------------

Media War. 

"They also control the media. All of Venezuela's private television stations and national newspapers are owned by the opposition, and all are employed to deliver an unadulterated flow of anti-Chávez propaganda in the form of news, popular music, even soap operas. The distortions can be dramatic. Today's anti-Chávez march is covered by all four TV channels from five in the morning until midnight. The pro-Chávez march three days later -- though twice as large -- is ignored entirely by three of the channels, and covered only sporadically by the fourth. (The American media also played up the anti-Chávez march, inflating its turnout to a million.)" 
 -- Barry C. Lynn. Mother Jones article. January/February 2003 Issue. 
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/02/ma_208_01.html 

"While in New York, President Chavez Frias will also officially hand over the presidency of the Group of 77 to Morocco and will hold a press conference at UN HQ scheduled for midday Thursday [Jan 16 2003], New York time. Opposition leaders Carlos Fernandez (Fedecamaras), Carlos Ortega (CTV), Juan Fernandez and Timoteo Zambrano are also in New York as guests of billionaire Gustavo Cisneros at a Council of the Americas $80 cover charge breakfast meeting tomorrow, Wednesday." 
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=1256 

The April 2002 coup by media. 

"The conspirators, including Carmona, met at the offices of Venevisión. They stayed until 2am to prepare "the next stage", along with Rafael Poleo (owner of El Nuevo Pais) and Gustavo Cisneros, a key figure in the coup. Cisneros, a multimillionaire of Cuban origin and the owner of Venevisión, runs a media empire - Organización Diego Cisneros. It has 70 outlets in 39 countries (9). Cisneros is a friend of George Bush senior: they play golf together and in 2001 the former US president holidayed in Cisneros's Venezuelan property. Both are keen on the privatisation [theft] of the PDVSA [Venezuelan oil company] (10). Otto Reich, US assistant secretary of state for Interamerican affairs, admits to having spoken with Cisneros that night (11). At 4am on 12 April [2002], to avoid bloodshed, Chávez allowed himself to be arrested and taken to the distant island of Orchila."
 -- Maurice Lemoine. Le Monde Diplomatique. August 2002. 
http://mondediplo.com/2002/08/10venezuela  and 
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1551768.php  and 
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=2321 

"After the shooting began, authorities of the government of President Hugo Chávez immediately apprehended some of the rooftop snipers who had lit the fuse to the violence. But after Chávez himself was placed into custody later that day by military generals, the rooftop assassins, whose identities are still unknown, were incredulously set free by the dictatorship of Pedro Carmona - and this tells us everything about which side hired those snipers - as the dictator-for-a-day Carmona simultaneously abolished the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution. For a more detailed history of these events, in which the Venezuelan people overthrew the U.S.-sponsored dictatorship within three days and changed the history of our América, see "Three Days that Shook the Media," (Narco News, April 18, 2002: http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html  ).
 -- Al Giordano of NarcoNews.com - Summer 2002. 
http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html 

Venezuela opposition, state waging battle through media. 
Caracas, Dec 21 2002. AP 
http://www.petroleumworld.com/story0048.htm 

[Excerpt begins]

In recent days, seven national private TV channels repeatedly have broadcast slickly produced ads blaming Chavez for everything from street crime to gasoline shortages. The gas problem stems from the TV-supported strike.

"We will not give up the fight, we won't give up until he resigns," one ad drones on Venevision.

"Not one step backward. Out! Leave Now!" states another, paid for by the Democratic Coordinator opposition umbrella group and repeatedly broadcast on the Globovision 24-hour news network.

Yet another ad, titled "History of a Failure," shows clips of dirty street kids, long unemployment lines and acts of political violence. A voiceover repeatedly accuses Chavez of "Failure! Failure!"

Commercials for Christmas gifts have been replaced by political propaganda since the strike began Dec. 2. Normal programming - soap operas, cartoons, sitcoms - has been swapped for near-constant news coverage and marathon talk shows with opposition politicians.

[Excerpt ends]

------------------

Associated Press. Centralized propaganda. 

[Excerpt begins]
"Associated Press (AP) is a 'non-profit' company run by the AP Managing Editors Association; your local managing editor or news director is technically the boss, and therefore responsible for the errors and distortions of fact that have plagued AP's coverage from Venezuela and other lands.

"But there's zero accountability at AP. 'The AP is unaccountable to its millions of readers,' notes Feder. 'Unlike at many newspapers, there is no AP ombudsman who 'speaks for the readers.' There is no letters page for the AP, and individual newspapers rarely print letters responding to wire stories.'

"And it's only going to stop when your local managing editors and news directors find the backbone to send inaccurate stories back to AP - like they would with one of their own reporters - and insist on a rewrite."
 -- Al Giordano. NarcoNews. Dec 18 2002 email to his Yahoo Group:  
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews/message/478  --Many more details at links below: 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article567.html  and 
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2775 

--------------------

From San Francisco Indymedia homepage: 
http://sf.indymedia.org 

Narco News on the Venezuelan Coup, the Media and How to Stop Both of Them

-----end of San Francisco Indymedia homepage excerpt---

-----------------

Venezuela's oil coup-strike-lockout for the rich. Help President Chavez!

In 1974 80% of oil income went to the state. Today 80% of Venezuelan oil income goes to the rich, and to "operating costs." Only 20% goes to the state. Chavez reforms will help reverse this in 2003. This is why the coup-plotters are in such a hurry to overthrow the fairly-ELECTED Chavez government, to prevent these reforms, and to reverse others already-implemented. Reforms that help the poor and lower middle class. Massive corporate-media disinformation, destabilization campaign going on inside Venezuela. Support President Chavez! News Search Form, search shortcuts, and compilation of Venezuela news excerpts.  
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555816.php  Older version. Comments add latest Venezuela news sites, search shortcuts. 
http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=43838  --Later version with more excerpts from articles. 

Outside observers and organizations find Venezuelan elections to be free and fair. 
"Human Rights Watch, in 2000, cited Venezuela as the only Latin American country where human rights had improved. The viciously anti-Chávez Organization of American States sent a team of election observers to monitor both the 1998 and the 2000 elections in Venezuela, and despite all motive to discredit the vote, was forced by the facts to conclude that the elections were scrupulously fair. As for press freedom, Venezuela has stood alone among Latin American nations: Not a single journalist has ever been imprisoned under Chávez's watch..."
 -- Al Giordano. NarcoNews.com - April 15 2002. 
http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html  and many more articles: 
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+fair+election+site:narconews.com  --Search shortcut. 

"When Andres Perez tried to give the country away to the rich in 1989 the poor complained and Perez had 1000 of them gunned down in the riots called the Caracazo. Chavez led a coup against Perez in 1992. Perez was impeached for corruption in 1994 and Chavez was freed from jail. Chavez was elected President in 1998 and 2000 by landslide votes. In 1998 Chavez had the luxury of a mandate to purge and restructure the judicial, military and administrative branches of the government. Even the right wing in the US applauded some of these efforts." 
 --December 18 2002 article: 
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1551928_comment.php 
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/02/ma_208_01.html  --Much more on 1989 Caracazo deaths. 

"And when the big oil dollars started flowing in the early 1970s, it was a system that organized one of the longest-running fiestas of the 20th century. Awash in a seeming sea of money, Venezuelan elites built themselves wide highways, a sparkling subway, a glittering array of office towers and luxury apartments, a beautiful national theater. They imported great chefs, danced in glamorous clubs, vacationed in Paris, annexed large chunks of Miami. Jeep Wagoneers, bottles of Johnny Walker Black, kilos of French cheese -- all were heavily subsidized with public money.

"In February 1989, the era of black gold came to a sudden, violent end. Oil prices had been falling for years, and everyone knew the party had to slow. But when the Pérez government tried to pass much of the bill on to the country's poor through higher bus fares and bread prices, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. At first the mobs burned buses, then they looted and burned stores, then they looted the apartments and houses of anyone who seemed to have more. Scores died in battles among neighbors. And when the army came, many hundreds more were shot down. Yet thousands of people refused to go home, even after soldiers opened fire with automatic rifles. In some neighborhoods, mobs armed only with sticks and rocks repeatedly charged ranks of terrified soldiers trucked in from the countryside. No one knows exactly how many people died, but many estimates put the total at well over 1,000. "The Caracazo," as the riot was called, was the single bloodiest uprising in Latin America in the last half century. ...

"Even at the height of the good times, the country's democracy was a preserve of the upper and middle classes, and it was protected at gunpoint. Anyone who tried to oppose the government from outside the two-party system ran a risk of being arrested, beaten, or killed by the National Guard or the federal police known as the DISIP."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/02/ma_208_01.html  Excerpts from January 2003, Mother Jones article.

-------------

The vast majority of Venezuelans are poor or poor lower middle class. 

"The average annual salary of these 22 'strike' leaders is $426,000 U.S. dollars a year; almost 100 times the per capita income of the average Venezuelan citizen of $4,760 dollars per year."
 -- Al Giordano of NarcoNews.com - December 22 2002. 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article571.html

"When the captain of the Pilin Leon first dropped anchor, he was expressing his solidarity with the anti-government strike in Caracas. But the tanker's crew were opposed to the strike and their captain's piratical action. When the marines boarded, on the orders of the embattled president Hugo Chavez, only the captain needed to be replaced. ... The trump card of the opposition, in April as in December, has been the state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, often described as the fifth largest oil exporter in the world, and an important supplier to the US. Nationalised more than 25 years ago, it has been run over the years for the exclusive benefit of its employees and managers - its profits being invested everywhere except Venezuela. Before the arrival of Chavez, it was being prepared for privatisation, to the satisfaction of the engineers and directors who would have benefited. But with a block placed on privatisation by the new Venezuelan constitution, the company's middle class and prosperous elite has been happy to be used as a shock weapon by the leaders of the Pinochet-style opposition, and they have tried to bring their entire industry to a halt." 
 -- The Guardian, Dec 10 2002. Richard Gott: Racist rage of the Caracas elite. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,857027,00.html 

"They also said that some banks are forcing their own employees to sign for 'el paro' ... that if they don't sign they'll be fired ... they mentioned that they will give interviews on this matter today (January 9, 2003) at the location of one of the banks that is using this scare tactic."
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=1029 

"But [New York Times] Thompson's reporting has also been laden with distortions. Last week she reported that there had been a 'strike' by 'bank workers' when, in fact, it was a lockout by bank owners supported only by the executives 'union' -- which represents only one percent of bank workers in the country. (That the bank lockout of its customers -- conducted by 60 percent of bank branches over two days -- constituted a theft of people's access to their own money was not raised by Thompson's article.)" --  NarcoNews. January 14 2003. 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article584.html 

"The organizers of this so-called "strike" are the very same collection of slimy forces that backed the April [2002] coup d'etat and Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona, who, once in power, abolished the Supreme Court, the Congress, shut down Community TV and Radio Stations, assassinated 50 political activists, and nullified the Constitution. Carmona also freed the sniper-assassins who had fired shots from rooftops on April 11th into crowds of people, creating the pretext for what was, back then, a military coup. (Stay tuned for our upcoming report about the undisclosed conflicts-of-interest of one of the foreign reporters that helped to create this pretext last April.)"
 -- Al Giordano of NarcoNews.com - December 22 2002. 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article571.html 

"Carmona's fate was sealed when the military refused to fire on the slum dwellers, leaving the repression to the metropolitan police force. The police, controlled by Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, killed dozens of Chávez supporters after the coup, according to Human Rights Watch, but proved unable to defend the new regime. ... Today, despite an oil industry that generates $30 billion a year, 80 percent of Venezuela's 24 million inhabitants are poor, according to government figures, and half of those are malnourished. ... The main business group, Fedecámaras, and the largest labor organization, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), united to organize one "general strike" December 10 [2001] and another that began April 9 [2002]. Fedecámaras didn't accept a Chávez offer to talk. And the government refused to negotiate with the CTV leadership, which appeared to have won its October 25 [2001] election through fraud (the union's filings with the national electoral commission included signatures for only half of the alleged voters)." 
 -- May 2002 article. 
http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200205_Venezuela_Coup/20020501_index.htm 

"April 4 [2002]: Another work stoppage led by PDVSA managers interrupts oil production. But the three main oil unions, including the Petroleum Workers Federation (Fedepetrol), urge Venezuelans to go to work and defy calls for a general strike." 
http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200205_Venezuela_Coup/20020501_Timeline.htm 

"Much of this struggle is about oil.  Venezuela is the world's fourth largest oil producer and its oil industry is critical to its economy.  Chavez's 'bolivarian revolution' argues for a role for the state in the oil industry, the redistribution of oil income, and the use of revenues from this resource to build economic independence.  But since 1974, the oil industry has been moving in the opposite direction.  At that time [1974] , the state-run-oil company kept 20% of its revenue in operating costs and turned 80% over to the state.  In 1990 it was 50-50 and in 1998, when Chavez was elected, the company kept 80% and turned 20% over.  What the neoliberals had in mind in the late 1990s was full privatization-not a reversal of the trend of the previous 20 years.  Added to this, the administration of the oil industry is in the hands of anti-Chavez forces, making it possible for them to go on strike in order to promote privatization.

"What are Chavez's other crimes?  Severance pay was restored in the constitution of 1999, after being eliminated in 1997.  Social security was set to be privatized in 1998, but was also impeded by the constitution of 1999.  The Land Law, passed last year, was an agrarian reform law that tries to make rural life viable for Venezuelans and slow rural-urban migration at the expense of large plantation owners and real-estate speculators." 
 -- by Justin Podur.  ZNet, December 10, 2002. 
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=2729 

---------------------------

Search shortcuts to pass on. Sometimes this is easier or more convenient than passing on the search form. Click any of the links below. If the site is not one of those indexed daily by Google News, then go to the sites themselves for the very latest news. 

SEARCH Venezuela news sources. Standard Google searches. Click, and then add additional search terms.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:alainet.org  (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:americas.org  (English). 
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:aporrea.org  (Spanish).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:commondreams.org  (English). Click the Google News tab, too.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:einnews.com  (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:flashpoints.net  (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:guardian.co.uk  (English). Click the Google News tab, too.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:motherjones.com  (English). Click the Google News tab, too.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:narconews.com  (English, Spanish). Click the Google News tab, too.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:petroleumworld.com  (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org  (English, Spanish). Click the Google News tab, too.
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:thegully.com  (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:vheadline.com  (English).
http://google.com/search?q=venezuela+site:zmag.org  (English).

Google News. Very up-to-date Venezuela news. Daily indexing.
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela  Around 4000 Google News sites. Click "sort by date."
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:commondreams.org  (English).
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:guardian.co.uk  (English).
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:motherjones.com  (English).
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:narconews.com  (English, Spanish).
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:indymedia.org  Indymedia.org sites. Only San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia shows up.
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org&scoring=d  San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. Sorted by date.
http://google.com/news?q=venezuela+site:sf.indymedia.org  San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia. Sorted by relevance.

Google does not seem to be indexing the "Local News" or "Global News" columns on the San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia homepage here: http://sf.indymedia.org  - The Google- News spider seems to be indexing only the items in the "Other/Breaking News" column. If an item is transferred too quickly out of "Other/Breaking News", then the spider may not see the item during its daily (or more often?) indexing of selected news sites. I suggest the Indymedia staff leave copies of items in "Other/Breaking News" because, for now, San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia seems to be the ONLY Indymedia news site indexed by Google News. 

----------------- 

*Terrorism of USA. Death Squads, Drug War. LINKS worldwide. Revised. Millions killed over decades. Mostly US-run or US-aided terrorist death squads worldwide. Other death squads, too. Today's death squads, and older ones such as the US-run Phoenix Program during the Vietnam war. Terrorism and corruption at all levels of politics, police, society, media, business, unions, government, etc.. Lists in alphabetical and chronological order. Huge LINKS list. 
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/squads.htm and  
http://corporatism.tripod.com/squads.htm  

Hemp for Oil! Stop Big Oil! 
Hemp biomass conversion to fuel. No more oil wars, oil politics, and oil coups. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction

Some allies critize me this over-paranoia too

Also contributes the fact that I am working with so little resources, always improvising due to this same fact.

I don't know what do you mean with "yuppie environmentalist branch", a yuppie is a rich, no?, a young enterpriser or so, and I am sure I am nothing sort of that... can you explain more this yuppie thing?, please, if I am Yuppie as you say without being noticed by myself, maybe I can understand you.

I will work in an auto-biography not only for you, unknown and anonymous e-pal eco-man, but for me to reasure myself that mine is not a wrong way.

And I don't think I am burning any bridges, the bridges are so rotten that it are being collapsing by itself. It is not my will to being here posting, it is pure instinct, basic ancient thinking, mystical signals from mother earth, cosmological energy thru my fingers at the keyboard directly to the chemical signals connecting your neurons to make your mind.

And for you, I will need then to test if the bridge connecting you with me is rotten too, I don't feel the stink yet if it so, or if our bridge can be improved, or is it already perfect as it is, only mother earth will tell that to me.

Trastor

Trastor comment is probably misplaced. It refers to this thread:
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/1561258.php

The regular comments form does not make links clickable. Hopefully this link is clickable.
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/1561258.php