The War on Democracy Page #4

His wife Maria confirmed this

in a call to the radio station

He told me, "Let a handwriting expert

check that alleged signature -

"if it exists, because I never signed,"

And the people in the barrios

started to fight back.

Down from the shanties they came

too rescue their president

# The farther you take my rights away

#The faster l will run

(Chanting) Chavez, Chavez, Chavez,

# You can't deny me

# You can decide to turn your face away,,,

This is a dictatorship,

Chavez is the rightful president,

The people love him

and they will defend him.

# No matter,

cos there's something inside so strong

#I know that l can make it

# Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong

# You thought that my pride was gone

Oh, no!

#Theres something inside so strong...#

(Cheering)

Hundreds of thousands surrounded the palace

demanding the return of Chavez

Faced by such people power

the army turned

have re-sworn their pledge of allegiance

to the constitution

and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,

(Cheering)

Roared on by huge crowds

the presidential guard, whod gone into hiding

retook the palace

and the plotters fled

The young men, the military police who were

inside the palace, started to hoist the flag,

That made us feel stronger

as we realized that we were not alone,

We stayed there until we saw a helicopter -

it arrived in Miraflores at midnight,

Then we all knew Chavez was on board,

It was a glorious moment, seeing him arrive,

Just 48 hours after being kidnapped

Chavez was back in power

I think the supreme test

was the coup dtat of 2002,

I was made a prisoner, They took me away

and I thought I was going to die,

Now, the Venezuelan people,

the poor without weapons, went in,

Hundreds and thousands went onto the street

to ask for my life,

asking for Chavez to return,

And so, I have nothing left to do,

especially after that,

but dedicate all the life I have left

to those people,

and above all the most deprived,

the poorest,

As ordinary Venezuelans celebrated

the defense of their democracy

some of the leading plotters fled too Miami

and within days it was clear that Washington

had cast its shadow over the failed coup

The Bush administration had gone along

with the lies of the plotters

We know the action encouraged by

the Chavez government provoked this crisis,

As these CIA documents show

it was fully warned

and knew all about their conspiracy

Washington claims

that it warned Chavez about the coup

This is denied

by the Venezuelan government

Washington not only knew what was going on

it was backing and funding the coup indirectly

Documents recently released

show that the Bush administration

channeled millions of dollars

too the Venezuelan opposition

in the months leading up too the coup

The money was handed out

by its principal aid agency USAID

and an organization called

the National Endowment For Democracy

During the six-month period

prior to the coup in April 2002,

the US government invested more than

$2 million into financing these organisations

that they knew, at least six months before,

were planning to overthrow the government,

You're essentially saying

post hoc ergo propter hoc.

- Because,,,

- What was that again?

- Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

- I don't think our viewers will understand that,

Because,,, Just because it happened

after we provided support to these groups

doesn't mean it happened

because we supported these groups,

Of course,

- It is a logical fallacy,

- Right,

We,,, We would be very open and transparent

about what kind of support we provided

through the National Endowment

For Democracy and other institutions,

In fact

the National Endowment For Democracy

handed out money too groups

whose leaders were given cabinet positions

in the short-lived illegal regime

An official in Washington explained

that this was merely

"Part of President Bush's freedom agenda"

But I wanna just be very explicit about this

because there is,,, I think its very important,

in the interest of fairness,

to understand that the United States

did not support that coup,

President Bush

has promised to rid the world of evil

and to lead the great mission

to build free societies on every continent,

To understand such an epic lie

is to understand history -

hidden history, suppressed history,

history that explains why we in the West

know a lot about the crimes of others,

but almost nothing about our own,

The missing word is empire,

The existence of an American empire

is rarely acknowledged,

or it's smothered in displays of jingoism

that celebrate war

and an arrogance that says

no country has a right to go its own way,

unless that way coincides

with the interests of the United States,

For empires have nothing to do with freedom,

They're vicious, they're about conquest

and theft and control and secrets,

Since 1 945, the United States

has attempted to overthrow 50 governments,

many of them democracies,

In the process, 30 countries

have been attacked and bombed,

causing the loss of countless lives,

In my lifetime the following countries

in Latin America

have been assaulted by the United States

directly and indirectly

their governments replaced by dictators

and other pro-Washington leaders

One of the first too be attacked was Guatemala

one of the small countries of Central America

known dismissively as banana republics

(# Light orchestral theme)

(Male narrator) This is Guatemala City

as seen from the air,

People who live in the city dress very much like

the people in our own southern states,

There are many churches,

and people go to church regularly,

They speak. Spanish, of course,

as most of them are of Spanish descent,

In fact, most of the people of Guatemala

are not of Spanish descent -

they're indigenous Mayan people

and very poor

In the 1 950s

two per cent of the population of Guatemala

controlled the natural wealth

in collusion with giant US corporations

Like the United Fruit Company

which dominated banana growing

On the board of United Fruit

was John Foster Dulles

who happened to be US Secretary of State

His brother Alan happened too run the CIA

Booth were Christian fundamentalists

who regarded any opposition

as the work of communism and the devil

In 1 950, this man, Jacobo Arbenz

became the first Guatemalan leader

too be democratically elected

by a majority of his people

who saw in him the hope of social justice

He was the Hugo Chavez of his day

What was going on in Guatemala

is that there was a democratically elected

president in 1 950, Jacobo Arbenz,

who sought to institute a series

of New Deal style reforms

in which the state had a greater role

in both developing the economy

and redistributing wealth,

The centerpiece of that was a land reform,

Arbenz was far from radical

His land reform policies were modest

But Washington was having none of it

Howard Hunt was then working

for Alan Dulles's CIA

So they said, "A decision has been made

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