New Internationalist  A tale of two coups  Issue 347  The big
business-led coup in Venezuela failed, where international
finance’s coup in Argentina has succeeded. Greg Palast gives us
the inside track on two very different power-grabs.  Blondes in
revolt  On May Day, starting out from the Hilton Hotel, 200,000
blondes marched East through Caracas’ shopping corridor along
Casanova Avenue. At the same time, half a million brunettes
converged on them from the West. It would all seem like a comic
shampoo commercial if 16 people hadn’t been shot dead two weeks
earlier when the two groups crossed paths. The May Day brunettes
support Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. They funnelled down
from the ranchos, the pustules of crude red-brick bungalows,
stacked one on the other, that erupt on the steep, unstable
hillsides surrounding this city of five million. The bricks in
some ranchos are new, a recent improvement in these fetid,
impromptu slums where many previously sheltered behind cardboard
walls. ‘Chávez gives them