TV Programs worth watching
Sun November 24 — Sat November 30

Dynasties: From Macarthur To Murdoch (ABC 8.00pm Mondays) this 
week deals with the descendants of John Macarthur, once the country's 
largest private landholder. He wanted to establish an English-style 
aristocracy in Australia, complete with hereditary titles.

In this week's instalment, Quentin's Choice, the present-day 
patriarch, Quentin Macarthur-Stanham, a sixth-generation descendent of John 
and Elizabeth, has introduced the old English aristocratic tradition of 
primogeniture — leaving all his estate to just one son.

It seems the "Bunyip aristocracy" still lives.

Get ready for some high level militarist propaganda: Air Force is a five-
part series examining how "the RAAF will deal with the challenge of where 
and how wars will be fought over the next 40 years". Screening in the True 
Stories slot (ABC 10:00pm Thursdays), it asserts that "basically the 
issue is how to keep up with the USA".

Not because the RAAF is worried about how to defend us from what is, after 
all, the world's leading rogue state, but because "to be effective as an 
ally the RAAF must have compatible technology [with the US]".

Like all such official or semi-official programs it is big on future 
technology: "science offers a new world of unmanned aircraft, space defence 
systems and new radar that will change the air forces of tomorrow".

Although it makes a token effort to question "whether new weapons 
technology is the answer when it comes to maintaining peace and protection 
for the Australian people", the program-makers clearly think it is.

They devote considerable time to exploring technological issues and "the 
difficulties of selecting and developing highly trained personnel", and so 
on.

They also ask (rhetorically) the question: can we afford the new generation 
of air force weaponry? Frankly, can the US?

The cost of the military budget deprives Americans of health care, social 
services, education, housing, environmental protection, etc, etc. 
Unfortunately, this issue is not dealt with in the series.

The United States, in preparation for war on Iraq, substantially increased 
its national strategic stockpile of oil. However, it was recognised that 
the stockpile would not sustain the energy consumption of the most wasteful 
nation on Earth for very long.

Another, preferably Western-hemisphere, supply was needed if the US was to 
be able to make war wherever it pleased with confidence. The biggest source 
of oil in the Western hemisphere is Venezuela.

But as a reliable alternative source of oil for the US should the US go to 
war in the Middle East, Venezuela was looking a tad dubious. It had elected 
a left-wing President, Hugo Chavez, who must have looked to the Bush White 
House like a second Fidel Castro in the making.

When earlier this year Chavez arranged for Venezuela's national oil company 
to supply oil very cheaply to Cuba, in return for Cuba establishing a 
national health system for Venezuela's rural poor, the White House must 
have been livid with fury.

So they set about doing what the US always does now to states that annoy 
it: destabilising Venezuela's government, starting a disinformation 
campaign, bankrolling opposition parties and newspapers, looking for 
ambitious military officers who would be willing to become the "saviours of 
their country".

The program about the coup that was eventually engineered to overthrow 
Chavez, Venezuela: Anatomy Of A Coup was originally shown on SBS on 
Dateline. Now it is being repeated in the As It Happened slot (SBS 
7.30pm Saturday).

Hosted by Jana Wendt, it is worth a second look. Reporter Bentley Dean 
gained exclusive access to some of the main players including Chavez's 
short-lived replacement, Pedro Carmona, now exiled in Colombia.

Dean talks to a former US National Security Agency officer, Wayne Madsen, 
who confirms that a CIA agent was sent to Venezuela to foment a coup.

The directors of Venezuela's nationally-owned petroleum company — one of 
the largest energy companies in the world — had been obstructing Chavez's 
efforts to use the country's oil to fund the much-needed social program 
that was the basis of his electoral victory.

So Chavez sacked the oil company's directors and replaced them with loyal 
(but of course inexperienced) supporters ("Chavistas"). Two weeks later 
there was a coup.

Echoing Chile in the '70s, union leaders (but not the rank and file) joined 
with business leaders to demand that the President step down. Middle class 
and anti-worker elements staged a massive protest march on the petrol 
company headquarters on April 11.

When the crowd continued on to the presidential palace, Chavez's supporters 
rallied to their President and in the ensuing violence 24 people were shot 
dead. Loyal military officers were told that Chavez had lost the support of 
the people and the demonstration appeared to confirm it.

However, Bentley Dean outlines that what seemed to be spontaneous violence 
was in fact orchestrated. CNN correspondent Otto Neustaldt explains that he 
was telephoned on April 10, the day before the coup, and told that deaths 
would occur and the military would call for Chavez's resignation.

In a televised address to the nation, Vice Admiral Perez announced that 
Chavez had ordered snipers to fire on innocent civilians. The program 
reveals that this address had been recorded earlier in the day before any 
violence had erupted.

The program also has evidence that a televised tape which supposedly showed 
Chavez's supporters firing on unarmed protestors had been heavily doctored 
to misrepresent the Chavistas' defence as an attack.

After the coup leaders threatened to bomb the presidential palace Chavez 
permitted them to take him prisoner but did not resign. Nevertheless, 
Chavez 's resignation was announced and Pedro Carmona, President of 
Venezuela's most powerful business association, was sworn in as President.

The new junta dissolved all the democratic institutions of Venezuela. That 
bastion of global democracy the White House immediately supported Carmona 
[surprise, surprise].

However, a message from Chavez that he had not resigned was smuggled, in 
the underwear of a soldier's wife, to General Raul Baduel, a loyal officer. 
General Baduel organised the President's rescue from captivity and the 
retaking of the presidential palace.

By the evening of April 13, tens of thousands of Chavez's supporters were 
in the streets. On April 14 Chavez returned to power and continues to lead 
his country, in the face of continuing US destabilisation.