I worship the ground that Greg Palast walks on. He is one guy doing some great investigative journalism. He needs to start a school for this. Anyway, good interview with him from June 6, 2002 at Buzzflash.com.
The media said Chavez is unpopular. Where’d they get this? In fact, not only did they say he was unpopular, but they put out as a fact that his popularity dropped to 30 percent. Where’s the 30 percent figure? Who did you get that from? You know what it was? It was the leaders of the coup. The leaders of the coup owned the media, literally, in Venezuela. And they issued these statements. Well, the truth is that there’s only one poll that counts. It’s called a presidential election. I know that George Bush doesn’t have much faith in a presidential election, but Chavez won 58 percent of the vote recently. And I got to tell you — no one doubts that he won 58 percent of the vote, because the opposition controls the electoral machinery.
Bravo!
Oh, and, by the way, the American Ambassador Shapiro ran down to Mira Flores after the coup and had his picture taken with the coup leader, Mr. Pedro Carmona himself. Then, the U.S. had the nerve to say we weren’t endorsing the coup. Since when does the United States ambassador go running off within 24 hours of a democratically-elected president’s kidnapping, and has his picture taken with the kidnappers? I mean, why didn’t Shapiro just go off and meet with the guys who killed Danny Pearl? It would have been about as appropriate.