Coup assassination

SEE BIG LIE

this was originally for classic CIA type coups, but now more sophisticated? see brazil

includes failed attempts, cands

putin chem attacks UK

see death squad?

120 kill jrnl activ indig new node

===

the hill

At the end of January, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked security details for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Dr. Anthony Fauci— despite ongoing, credible threats against their lives.

“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” Trump asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something happened to any of them, Trump replied, “Certainly I would not … They made a lot of money. They can hire their own security.” The president offered to give them the phone numbers of “some good security companies.”

A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled the security detail protecting retired Gen. Mark Milley and ordered an inquiry to determine if he should be demoted.

Combined with his pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters and convicted seditious conspirators, and the cancellation of security clearances for dozens of his political adversaries, Trump’s actions have launched what could be called the “imperious presidency.”

The federal government has an obligation to protect its public servants from job-related threats. One can hope that all Americans will condemn putting these men in harm’s way because they corrected, criticized or condemned their former boss.

Think Tanks cashing in on dark money; orgs keep funding sources a secret: Interview

John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, had a well-deserved reputation as a brutally candid, hard-to-like foreign policy hawk. He replaced Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018. At the time, Trump praised Bolton as a patriot, “well-respected and a tough cookie,” saying he “has strong views on things but that’s okay.”

Bolton helped craft the administration’s hard line on Iran, but he opposed what he regarded as Trump’s dovish overtures to North Korea and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor was he a fan of the president’s “we’ll have to see response” to questions about whether the U.S. would recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Trump fired Bolton in 2019. “He wasn’t liked at all and wasn’t respected very much,” Trump declared in 2020. “Personally, I thought he was crazy.”

By then, Bolton was casting doubt on Trump’s fitness to be president. He subsequently Trump “incapable of advanced thinking” and as a way of life.”

In 2022, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged with plotting to murder Bolton. An Iranian was subsequently charged (in absentia) for offering $300,000 to kill Bolton. Officials in two federal agencies recently informed Bolton that the threat level is just as strong now as it was then.

Mike Pompeo, a member of the House from 2011 to 2017, occupied high-level positions throughout Trump’s first administration. When Trump elevated Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of State, the president declared he had “earned the praise of members of both parties” and would “do a fantastic job.”

Pompeo briefly considered running for president in 2024, criticized Trump for mishandling classified documents and “staring into the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood,” and promised voters “solutions, not tweets.” He still went on to endorse the former president and called Trump “a great guy” on the eve of the 2024 election.

Iran has vowed retaliation against Pompeo for helping plan the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Informed that Trump had revoked security details for members of his administration, a CIA officer predicted that “somebody is going to get killed.” Pompeo explained the order as “a reflection of Trump’s character or lack thereof.”

Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Freedom in 2007 as the architect of the President’s Emerging Plan For AIDS Relief, which saved millions of lives by distributing drugs in Africa.

As a member of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci was initially praised by Trump, who said, “He has become a major television star for all the right reasons.” But, while declaring that Trump’s briefings were “helpful,” Fauci corrected misstatements about, for example, the likelihood of COVID-19 disappearing with the onset of warmer weather, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and a claim that 99 percent of cases were harmless.

As Trump Republicans and libertarians condemned mask mandates and lockdowns of public buildings, Trump asserted that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” Before the end of Trump’s term, Fauci had become the administration official whom COVID critics loved to hate.

In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to drag Fauci, his wife and children into the street, beat them to death and set them on fire. Since then, the threats have kept on coming.

Trump appointed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019. A year later, Milley apologized for inserting himself into domestic politics by accompanying Trump as he walked through Lafayette Square, ostensibly to clear racial justice protestors, in what turned out to be a photo op.

At his retirement ceremony, Milley declared that he had taken an oath to the Constitution, not “to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Trump has said that Milley committed treason and deserves the death penalty for supposedly going behind his back in dealing with Chinese officials at the end of his administration. And like Bolton and Pompeo, Milley has been threatened with death by Iran for his role in the killing of Soleimani.

Trump has often compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. But he clearly has not yet signed on to the 16th president’s call for “malice toward none” nor for “charity for all,” let alone tried “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

*Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Tags Anthony Fauci Anthony Fauci Donald Trump Iran John Bolton Mark Milley Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo security protection

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mma 7 23

...Scheuer supports the assassinations of U.S. political leaders and Democrats

Scheuer wrote: “Fauci, Gates, Birx, the Bidens, Harris, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, and most media are all direct descendants of Mao Tse Tung, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Margaret Sanger, Adolph Hitler, and all UN leaders. … It is time to rid the United States of these depraved, murdering tyrants and their allies by any means that will permanently terminate their ability to harm anyone. Praise God for the 450 million firearms now in the hands of the increasingly poisoned and persecuted citizenry.”
Scheuer urged the “assassination” of George Soros, writing that if Israel refuses to kill him for the United States, the U.S. Marines should.
Scheuer suggested that Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt will get “retribution” for his support of Soros, writing: “Come retribution … and it is, God willing, coming soon.”
Scheuer wrote: “How much better would all of us be today, if the U.S. Air Force had staged simultaneous bombing strikes on the WEF’s [World Economic Forum’s] Davos Conference and the UN just as the last WEF meeting was occurring, with follow-on Warthog raids to make sure as few as possible of the gangsters were left alive amongst the rubble.”
Scheuer suggested, as the Daily Beast also previously reported, that numerous political leaders should be executed. His list included Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. He wrote: “Personally, I would prefer immediate and lethal, post-trial punishment –by loyal-citizen firing squads chosen by lottery – but will stand by any decision that is supported by the majority of loyal citizens.”

Additionally, as the Daily Beast previously reported, Scheuer said on his podcast: “The only thing I would be upset about if it came to war is that not enough Democrats would get killed.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/2024-election/

3 mil leaders warn 2024; pentagon new guidelines on RW

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-feedback-loop-generated-eastmans-presidential-coup-memo

no lnx vids

John Eastman’s coup memo was the result of the Fox-Trump feedback loop

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 10/04/21 1:59 PM EDT

The prominent conservative lawyer behind a memo explaining how to subvert the 2020 election for President Donald Trump reportedly first caught Trump’s attention while shilling on the president’s behalf during an interview on Fox News.

Trump’s obsession with Fox programming is well-documented. Throughout his presidency, he regularly tweeted in response to shows he was watching; staffed his administration and legal defense teams with Fox regulars; and shaped his decision-making around advice he received from its personalities, both in person and on the air. On issues as diverse as border wall contracting, pandemic response, and pardons, federal policy responded to what the president was seeing on the right-wing propaganda network.

John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who spoke to the pro-Trump mob in the hours before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, apparently put himself on Trump’s radar in similar fashion.

“Trump, who had never met Mr. Eastman, saw him on the Fox News talk show of the far-right commentator Mark Levin railing against the Russia investigation” in mid-2019, The New York Times reported Saturday. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting.”

Eastman remained in Trump’s orbit over the next year and a half, according to the Times, and, after Trump lost the 2020 election, the right-wing attorney created a plan by which Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans could use bogus claims of voter fraud to keep Trump in power. Eastman’s six-step scheme to end American democracy, revealed last month by The Washington Post and CNN, was foiled largely because Pence was ultimately unwilling to go through with it.

“Mr. Eastman’s appeal to Mr. Trump,” the Times reported, “rested in large part on his expansive views of presidential power — and his willingness to tell Mr. Trump what he wanted to hear.”

That description matches Eastman’s performance during the Fox interview that initially captured Trump’s attention. That appearance, for the May 12, 2019, edition of Life, Liberty, and Levin, followed the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters tried to spin that document as vindicating him. But it was actually incredibly damning, documenting, among other things, a variety of ways Trump had sought to obstruct the probe.

Over the course of his hour-long sitdown with Levin, who introduced him as a “brilliant” legal scholar, Eastman explained how the Constitution and federal law supported all of Trump’s most corrupt and bigoted impulses, while decrying Mueller’s team as biased political partisans whose probe was itself illegal and perhaps deliberately “set up to create a media frenzy.”

According to Eastman, it is impossible for a president to violate the law by interfering with a federal investigation, even if that investigation’s purpose was to review his activities or those of his associates. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” he claimed. Even if Trump had successfully fired Mueller himself it would be legal, according to Eastman, because “the entire executive branch is headed by one guy and the only constitutional check on that is through an impeachment power, not through statutes and not through regulations internal to the Department of Justice, because the president has the authority to change those whenever he wants.”

After Levin described one such incident mentioned in the report, when Trump allegedly ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, Eastman said that “directing McGahn to fire him is no different than him picking up the phone himself, and even that would not have been obstruction.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman went on to agree with Levin’s claim that the Mueller investigation was itself “fundamentally illegal” because “nobody in the administration itself [was] accused with any evidence of a crime,” which is required under the special counsel statute. In reality, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and his first White House national security adviser were among the litany of presidential associates who were ultimately convicted or entered guilty pleas through the probe.

When Levin asked later in the program, “This is really a rejection by the Democrat Party and the media and the rest of them, a rejection of the 2016 election, isn't it?” Eastman replied, “I think so. They still can't believe that they lost that election and they're trying to rationalize that there must've been something nefarious in order to produce it.”

He went on to say that “this is really a challenge to the results of the last election, which means it is a challenge to the American people and the very notion that we govern ourselves,” and that the intent is to create a “tyranny of the majority.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman also expressed support for Trump on a variety of other legal issues. He rejected the notion that payments foreign countries make to Trump through his hotel are violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and decried federal judges who blocked versions of Trump’s Muslim travel ban as “part of a resistance movement to undo the results of the 2016 election.”

At the conclusion of the interview, Eastman said that nothing Trump has done rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment under the Constitution.

“I've been stunned at how scrupulous Trump and his team have been in staying within the legal lines that they had,” he said, contrasting to how President Barack Obama “blew through the lines on executive power and constitutional authority on numerous occasions."

Video file

Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman was able to turn an interview on a Sunday night Fox show into a position of real political power because the president himself had been glued to the set. And after Trump and his propagandists at Fox created a web of lies about a “rigged” election, he was there to concoct a legal pretext to keep Trump in office. The coup plot failed -- but it did result in deadly violence when a crowd incited by speeches from Trump, Eastman, and others stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in hopes of preventing the peaceful transition of power.

Since then, the situation has only grown more dire, as the Republican Party and right-wing disinformation apparatus have institutionalized Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, laying the groundwork to rig future elections in favor of the GOP, through Eastman’s strategy or another one. And Fox was at the root of it all.

Trump lawyer John Eastman touted his plan to overturn the 2020 election in interviews with right-wing media

09/21/21 1:25 PM EDT

Broadcast news shows ignore Trump coup memo

09/22/21 4:32 PM EDT

CNN’s Brian Stelter highlights failure of news broadcasts to cover the Trump coup memo

09/26/21 2:44 PM EDT

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/28/cia_julian_assange_assassination_plot

yahoo isikoff

did the CIAunder the Trump administration plan to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a shootout in London? That is one of the explosive findings in a new exposé by Yahoo News that details how the CIA considered abducting and possibly murdering Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden for rape allegations, charges that were dropped in 2017. More than 30 former officials say formerCIADirector Mike Pompeo was apparently motivated to get even with WikiLeaks following its publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools, which the agency considered “the largest data loss in CIA history.” Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, lays out the plans and describes how the abduction plan “was one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the entire Trump era,” noting it ultimately spurred the Justice Department to fast-track its legal case against Assange. We also speak with Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson, who says the latest revelations should alarm American citizens, as well as journalists around the world. “This is the CIA talking about conspiracy to kidnap and murder an Australian citizen and an award-winning journalist and editor who has done nothing but publish truthful information.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/eastman-memo/

By now, you've read about John Eastman's secret memo outlining six points by which he believed the vice president could overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6.I defer to legal scholars to explain the memo's legal absurdities. I defer to political scientists to explain why the memo represents forces threatening our republic.

What I want to suggest is so plain I'm surprised that no one else has asked: isn't this evidence of a conspiracy to commit a high crime?

News of Eastman's memo put the debate over democracy reform into overdrive. The hope has been that the Democrats in the United States Congress, especially Senate moderates, will see the light. They must kill off, or seriously change, the filibuster in order to pass election laws that would not only reach or surpass the 1965 Voting Rights Act but also prevent a political party from pulling off a coup in broad daylight.

While the Eastman memo should, for obvious reasons, put that debate into overdrive, I'm wondering if we're misplacing our hopes. It's not that I think the filibuster is good. It needs to go. It's not that I think new election laws would be bad. We need more, in a hurry. It's that laws require enforcement, and enforcement of the law is pretty much the only thing that's going to stop people who have no respect for democracy, principle, the Constitution, tradition or anything else. Without equal treatment under law, in the form of prosecution, I don't see why new laws would stop people who hold themselves above it.

We really need to acknowledge the elephant in the room before we pin our hopes for democracy on changing a Senate rule. We really need to acknowledge the reason it's possible, in a rule-of-law country, for powerful and power-hungry people to hold themselves above the law. The reason is so obvious as to be invisible, and because it's invisible few people are talking about it right now. It's because powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above the law. "No one is above the law"? Pish. Anyone with senses, and sense, can see that's not true.

News of the Eastman memo only adds to what we already know. According to CNN, the plan was for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out "the results in seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors — there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors." That didn't matter, though:

Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222. Anticipating "howls" from Democrats protesting the overturning of the election, the memo proposes, Pence wouldinstead say that no candidate had reached 270 votes in the Electoral College. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. Since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump to win the election.

Two important points. One is about recognizing competing slates of electors when there were none. New laws in Georgia, Texas and other states now fill in what was missing in Eastman's memo. They allow for GOP-controlled legislatures to overrule election officials. They make room for assigning competing slate of electors when outcomes are undesirable. A future vice president might do what Mike Pence didn't.

My other point is about the impression made by CNN's reporting, and by the new book all this news comes from by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — that Donald Trump's GOP allies believed the US Constitution forbade a vice president from recognizing competing slates of electors. The impression is of a founding document that sets the rules. "You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II," Mike Lee reportedly said. "Congress can't do this. You're wasting your time." That's a dangerous impression to have in a rule-of-law country in which powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above it.

The Constitution is many things, but a set of unbreakable rules isn't one of them. It is whatever powerful and power-hungry people want it to be, when they want it to be and why. I don't know why Lee, Lindsay Graham and other high-profile Republicans were not all-in on the Eastman memo, but I do know the Constitution didn't stop them. I am confident, and you should be confident, that if they had reason to believe they could get away with it, they'd have found a way to make a coup by a political party in broad daylight seem "constitutional."

The Eastman memo is putting debate over democracy reform into overdrive. Fine and dandy. But the memo is also why we shouldn't pin our hopes on democracy reform. The incentives to cheat, steal, lie and otherwise commit treason in the pursuit of raw political power will be with us long after we've made all our dreams come true with the death of the filibuster. New laws won't take away corrupt incentives. The only way to do that is prosecuting the laws we already have. The only way to do that is prosecuting the principle of equal treatment under law so that powerful and power-hungry people are not in fact above it.

The Eastman memo is evidence of a conspiracy — a GOP conspiracy — to commit a high crime. And yet no one is being held accountable. No one will be held accountable as long as the Department of Justice is soft on high crime. Amid such lawlessness, why not give treason another go? By then, perhaps Lee, Graham and others will have found what they need to make a coup in broad daylight seem "constitutional."

trms trump could not get mil to do coup, so used mob 1/6; flynn bro stand down nat'l guard?!

pentagon "decapitated" sec of def tried to hold on a few more days ~ nunes wackos

experts warn of 'national emergency' after bombshell report reveals top general feared Trump would stage military coup

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

July 15, 2021

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Donald Trump, **General Mark Milley**, was so concerned the outgoing president would try to stage a military coup he warned the heads of the U.S. Military branches,...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-doesnt-care-that-trump-planned-a-coup-do-democrats

no lnx

mich AG scheuette #2 got promoted? GA AG? quit b/c he got headsup he was about to tweet trumped?]

CAPITOL RIOTS

The GOP Doesn’t Care That Trump Planned a Coup. Do Democrats?

‘PURE INSANITY’

OPINION

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

New emails show Jan. 6 was just a preview. The GOP and its allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media will attempt another coup when they lose another election.

Wajahat Ali

Updated Jun. 16, 2021 9:26AM ET / Published Jun. 15, 2021 10:58PM ET

Thanks to the bombshell documents the House Oversight and Reform Committee released just ahead of Tuesday’s hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection, Americans have a clear and unmistakable view of just how far former President Donald Trump went in trying to corrupt our democratic institutions, engage in a violent coup, and overturn our free and fair election.

“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Democratic committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney. She’s absolutely correct. I would add one simple edit: It’s Trump and the GOP. He attempted a coup—and, yes, we should all use the word—and he’s still trying, with ample help from Republicans.

If you consider that hyperbole, I direct you to those bombshell documents revealing how the Trump administration, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, attempted to pressure the Department of Justice to advance dangerous conspiracy theories of election fraud and influence courts to nullify the election results so Trump could stay in power.

Trump Pushed Barr’s Successor to Probe Big Lie: New Emails

‘BRAZEN CORRUPTION’

Justin Rohrlich

An hour before announcing his Attorney General Bill Barr would be stepping down, no doubt because he refused to promote “the Big Lie,” Trump’s assistant sent an email to Jeffrey Rosen, his incoming attorney general, showing evidence of alleged “election fraud” innorthern Michiganand “talking points” to advance the obvious lie. Two weeks later, Trump’s White House sent a draft brief to Rosen for the DOJ to submit to the Supreme Court intended to effectively nullify the 2020 election and help Trump usurp power.Transcribed interviews with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reveal he directly pressured DOJ officials at least five times to investigate batshit conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that satellite technology from Europe was used to tamper with US voting equipment.

It appears Rosen, and other senior members of the DOJ, were not willing to pledge allegiance to Trump over the United States. “Pure insanity” is how Rosen and Richard Donoghue, who was the acting deputy attorney general, described Meadows’ emails. Trump then considered replacing Rosen with a sympathetic sycophant, Jeffrey Clark, who was then acting head of the civil division, to continue influencing the DOJ to help him succeed in his criminal, authoritarian coup.

These revelations, which are shocking and should be thoroughly investigated, come on the heels of the equally jaw-dropping but totally unsurprising news that the Justice Department, acting as Trump’s Luca Brasi, decided to retaliate against Democrats and the media.Specifically, prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for phone records of Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, their aides and family members, including a minor. The Justice Department also sought to retaliate against reporters and media outlets for “leaks” and attempted to seize thousands of emails and phone records of news outlets’ reporters.

If this sounds like the thuggish tactics used by strongmen and corrupt rulers in authoritarian regimes, well, it is. Let’s not forget Trump continues to praise Putin, and was friendly with Hungary’s Orban, who was “Trump before Trump,” Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman, Israel’s Netanyahu, who is desperately copying Trump’s tactics to remain relevant, Egypt’s Sisi, and the Philippines’ Dutarte. None of them is particularly celebrated as champions of human rights, the free press, an independent judiciary or the small inconvenience known as a democracy by and for the people.

Thankfully, Trump lost and his efforts to erase his loss fell short, but his corrupting presence has contaminated not only the GOP but also the Department of Justice and law enforcement. We still don’t know the extent of how Trump and his allies pressured, corrupted and manipulated our democratic institutions from within to advance their perverse schemes for power and profit. What I do know after watching this hearing is that Jan. 6 was simply a sneak preview. The GOP and its right-wing allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media are going to attempt another coup when they lose another election.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee wanted to investigate why it took the National Guard nearly four hours to respond to the U.S. Capitol breach even though top officials at the Defense Department received 12 urgent requests for help[said flynn bro gen'l not involved, then 180]

from the Capitol police chief and mayor. Meanwhile, Army leaders told the National Guard to “stand by” five times even as violence escalated, which eventually claimed five lives. Pipe bombs were also found near the U.S. Capitol and some of the protesters came with weapons, intending to assassinate Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We also know that officers are being investigated for their alleged role in the insurrection and that white supremacist groups, sympathetic to Trump and the GOP, have tried to infiltrate law enforcement agencies across the country.

The committee had the opportunity to question FBI director Christopher Wray, Gen. Charles Flynn—the brother of Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s disgraced national security adviser and is a prominent promoter of both the QAnon conspiracy and “the Big Lie”—and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, director of the Army Staff. It was revealed that Gen. Charles Flynn and Gen. Piatt were both involved in a phone call in which Army leaders were worried about the “optics” of sending in the National Guard. That’s the same National Guard that quickly responded with massive force to peaceful BLM protesters and cleared others out of Lafayette Square with tear gas and violence last summer. No such concerns for “optics” were present then.

One would assume Republicans, who are allegedly so committed to law and order and national security that they held hearings on Benghazi and Clinton’s emails for years and have focused on antifa as a fake terrorist threat, would take the opportunity to dig deep into this massive failure of intelligence and law enforcement that allowed hundreds of armed, violent insurrections to take over the U.S. Capitol for the first time in 200 years. Or, they could ask FBI director Wray to do more to investigate and prosecute members of armed militias and white supremacist groups, some of whom participated in the violent insurrection, and are also the number one domestic terror threat in America.

Nope.

Instead, they used their time to whine, deflect and obstruct. They performed for their base and said the House should be spending its time and powers to investigate Dr. Fauci’s emails, the Wuhan lab theory, the border crisis, the threat of inflation and Biden’s economic policies. They also found time to whine about masking policies at the U.S. Capitol and to urge Americans to move on from the insurrection that Republican Rep. Clyde recently referred to as a “normal tourist visit.”

It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight.

If you were the party that was actively aiding and abetting a violent insurrection, you’d want to “move on” as well. It was a grotesque spectacle seeing Rep. Paul Gosar grill Wray on who “executed Ashli Babbitt,” and suggesting, without evidence, that the officer who shot her was hiding and waiting to kill her. Gosar didn’t spend time worrying about Officer Sicknick, who died trying to protect his colleagues from Babbitt and the violent mob. Neither did 21 Republicans in the House who just opposed a bill to award congressional gold medals for Capitol Police officers who defended them against a violent mob during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Like some other House Republicans, Gosar actively supports white supremacist conspiracy theories, has ties to armed militia movements, and cheered on many of the events of Jan. 6. Wray said the FBI has arrested 500 people so far and is currently overseeing hundreds of investigations. They could start by talking to some Republicans like Gosar as members of his party have blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection and acquitted Trump twice, with a majority of them even voting to cancel the election. Their conservative media ecosystem is actively gaslighting America and their base with dangerous conspiracy theories, as a majority of Republicans believe “the Big Lie” that Biden lost the 2020 election.

Thankfully, Democrats are in power. However, they retain a slim majority before the 2022 midterms that are stacked against them due to GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression. The question is whether this latest revelation of Trump and the GOP’s attempt to subvert democracy will force enough Democrats to finally abandon the dangerous illusion of “bipartisanship” and flex their power to fight for accountability and justice. One piece of good news is that Pelosi said Tuesday that the House committees will continue their investigations after Republicans blocked the Senate commission. Also, the House Oversight Committee said it will request Rosen, Meadows, and top Trump officials to appear for interviews in light of the latest revelations. Judging from what we’ve seen, Republicans won’t be forthcoming.

If they don’t comply, will Democrats finally flex their subpoena power, do a media blitz, and unite on messaging that Republicans are actively aiding and abetting the destruction of our democracy? One can only hope. It’s time for Democrats to unleash hell, as I’ve discussed before both here and here.

Our democracy is worth it. It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight. If they forfeit their power and principle for “bipartisanship” then they might as well acknowledge they are actively complicit with a counter-majoritarian, extremist GOP that is actively trying to subvert democracy in front of our eyes.

an 621

the second-most revered figure in the QAnon conspiracy firmament called for a military coup in the United States. Again. Retired three-star general and former Trump campaign national security advisor Mike Flynn called for the end of democracy during a question-and-answer session last weekend at a QAnon conference in Dallas.

"I'm a simple Marine," a grizzled audience member said, "I wanna know why what happened in Minamar (sic) can't happen here." The room erupted. Flynn waited for the cheering to subside and said, "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."

Flynn reportedly called the conference organizers to backtrack. He's now denying that he said what we all saw him say, but let's get one thing straight: Mike Flynn is a liar.

Trump fired him for lying to Mike Pence about Russia. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but he lied in his plea deal, so Trump had to pardon him. Now he's lying about how he called for a military coup in the United States. On video. This is nothing new for Flynn. After the 2020 election, Flynn privately urged then-president Donald Trump to send troops to "re-run" the election, an idea he'd previously floated in the media.

It's nothing new for QAnon either. QAnon supporters have been cheering on the coup in Myanmar since the military overthrew the democratically elected government in February. The junta has killed over 800 people, including more than 40 children, but QAnon supporters don't know anything about Myanmar's internal politics. They just like coups. After Trump's failed coup attempt on January 6, many of them found it comforting to know a military still could overthrow a democracy somewhere.

And why wouldn't they? The beating heart of QAnon's dark theology is The Storm, the military coup that is always right around the corner. The Storm is the day when Donald Trump and the armed forces liquidates QAnon's political enemies: Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, the media, and anyone who stands against them. The former president will retake his rightful place in the White House, democracy be damned.

According to a new poll, nearly a quarter of white evangelicals believe The Storm is coming to restore "rightful leaders." This mythology fits naturally with the Big Lie that Trump won the election. QAnon believers heard Donald Trump's call to come to Washington on January 6 as the coming of the storm. Many of them believed they were being summoned to take part in the long-awaited battle between good and evil.

Most normal people think of QAnon as the "pedo cabal" people. Indeed, QAnon talks a good game about saving the children from pedophiles. As disturbing as they sound, these child-abuse fantasies are good for recruiting unsuspecting converts. After all, everyone wants to prevent child abuse. QAnon has deep roots in evangelical Christianity and its most fervent proponents have thought long and hard—and written with uncharacteristic coherence—about how to best recruit. Attitude change begins with finding common ground. You can get almost anyone to agree that child abuse is a problem. That provides the common ground needed to begin a conversation in which the believer can plant seeds in the prospective convert's mind about other aspects of QAnon. This process is called "red-pilling," a reference to The Matrix, a movie during which the hero swallows the red pill to dissolve illusion and reveal ultimate reality.

The news media's focus on pedophilia obscures the core of QAnon's ideology, which is a longing for glorious, purifying and revelational violence. The pedophiles of QAnon mythology are the alter-egos of powerful Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, journalists and Jewish financiers George Soros and the Rothschilds. These are the villains who will be purged by the military when The Storm is finally upon us.

Unfortunately for QAnon, normal people love democracy as much as they hate pedophilia. So recruiters don't open with talk of a coup. The faithful avoid talking about it to journalists. That's why Flynn is taking pains to walk back his comment. While The Storm is normal in QAnon circles, it's still taboo in the outside world.

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RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

noose scaffold outside, hang mike pence (q shaman note], MOC hunted?

aha rhet morph from civil war (proslavery) to 1776, no one says so, but builds on Tea Party tobacco koch BS

https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/infowars-alex-jones-funded-and-fomented-mob

no vid

great banner pix saved jnzmegaphone

Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and coordinated with the White House in the organizing of a January 6 event that culminated in a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In comments made on Infowars broadcasts and during speeches delivered in Washington, D.C., in the days before January 6, Jones and his fellow Infowars host Owen Shroyer frequently used violent and revolutionary rhetoric in calling for the overturning of legitimate election results.

Five people lost their lives during the violent incursion in the Capitol that immediately followed an inciting speech given by the president on January 6. Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer as she attempted to breach the Speaker’s Lobby, which is close to the U.S. House of Representatives floor. U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by Trump supporters. Three other Trump supporters died after experiencing medical emergencies, including one who was trampled to death by the mob.

Some Trump supporters made it clear their purpose in the Capitol was to hunt down and kill lawmakers. The quick thinking of [AA] Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who faced down the mob alone, diverted rioters away from the Senate floor, as captured in a stunning video taken by HuffPo reporter Igor Bobic.

Jones’ Infowars outlet was promoting a January 6 event as early as December 31. In a video posted to Infowars’ streaming platform Banned.video, a man ranted about the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election, saying, “These liberals think they can just do whatever the fuck they want. You know why that is? It’s because we sit there and we say we want to talk it out.” The video transitioned to promotional material for Infowars’ January 6 event and included a voiceover of Jones saying “It’s 1776 time,” a reference to the Revolutionary War. vid]

on January 2, Jones said during a broadcast that “it takes money to put my crew and security in D.C., and it takes money to organize this, and we put a lot of money -- myself -- into paying for the event Trump is going to be at and the other event.” He then encouraged viewers tobuy nutritional supplements from the Infowars Store and told them they “are funding the second American Revolution.” AHA ITS TEA PARTY DERIVATIVE]

The next day, Jones again discussed his involvement in planning and paying for the event. During his broadcast, he excoriated Trump supporters who were hesitant to travel to Washington, D.C., claiming, “I’ve seen people making a lot of excuses. ‘Oh, antifa is dangerous.’ It’s a lot more dangerous walking across the street.There’s hardly no antifa. They are a bunch of cowards.” (After mayhem unfolded at the Capitol, Jones and his outlet falsely blamed antifa supporters for the violence that took place.) He added, “It’s not about Infowars getting the credit for this, it’s about the fact that no one would step up and put the money in. ... I stepped up and put the money in for the 5th and for the 6th and then a donor came along, a great patriot, and paid $400,000-plus for the rest of it. I’m in over $130,000, and I'm not complaining about that. I had to do it when no one else was two weeks ago.”

Jones, Infowars host Owen Shroyer, and other Infowars employees then traveled to Washington, D.C. During a January 5 speech in downtown Washington, Shroyer said, “Americans are ready to fight. We’re not exactly sure what that is going to look like, perhaps, in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election of Joe Biden.” He went on to “salute” Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) for their efforts to overturn the election and said of the people gathered there, “We are the new revolution.”

Meanwhile, Jones was at an event outside the Supreme Court, where he told a crowd, “We are facing Satan, and the answer to Satan’s 1984 is George Washington’s 1776.”

That evening, Jones and Shroyer regrouped to give more speeches in downtown Washington. Shroyer told a crowd, “Thomas Jefferson once said when the government fears the people, there is freedom. But for too long now the people have feared the government. … I can tell you that thecrooked politicians that occupy our Capitol are in fear right now. Do you know how I know this? Because they are scurrying around in secret tunnels to avoid ‘we the people.’ Right now as we speak they’re scurrying around like the little rats that they are to try to avoid you.”

When Jones took over the lectern, he told a cheering crowd that“we have only begun to resist the globalists” and that “they have tried to steal this election in front of everyone.” Jones also said,“I don’t know how all this is going to end, but if they want a fight, they better believe they’ve got one.”

He went on to say, “This will be their Waterloo. This will be their destruction.” (Waterloo refers to the pivotal battlefield defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte that ended the Seventh Coalition.) Jones also said that Winston Churchill “gave a famous speech where he said all I can promise you is blood, and pain, and war, and suffering. But the alternative is even worse:total slavery.” He then led the crowd in a “1776” chant.

The violent rhetoric continued the next day at Infowars’ event, which immediately preceded the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. During a January 6 speech in downtown Washington, Jones again told a crowd, “We declare 1776 against the New World Order.” Shroyer spoke from his own bullhorn while standing beside Jones, saying, “They said you lost this election in a landslide to [Joe] Biden. We said, ‘No, we don’t buy your bullshit.’ But, guess what? You want to feed us bullshit? We’re going to bring it right to your front door and you can eat it yourselves.” (Some Trump insurrectionists at the Capitol did in fact smear their own feces throughout the building’s hallways during the attack.)

At one point, Jones told the crowd to head to the Capitol “peacefully,” in contradiction to much of what he had said about what should happen on January 6. He also attempted to rile up the crowd by falsely telling them that Biden’s win in Arizona had been reversed and that “we have only begun to fight. This is 1776.” As people began to make their way to the Capitol, Shroyer yelled from a bullhorn that Democrats are “tyrants” and led the crowd in a “death to tyrants” chant. Jones then can be then heard attempting to privately confer with his crew, saying, “Let’s take it to the Capitol.”

While Jones and Shroyer did not enter the Capitol building and instead retreated to a “secure location” during the insurrection, an Infowars cameraperson, who identified himself only as “your boy Sam with Infowars.com,” did go inside as both a mob participant and a recorder of the events. Shortly before entering the building, he said, “We have had enough,” and “I got to be honest, this is not a peaceful protest.” Once he crossed the threshold, he yelled, “Guess what? We are in the Capitol, baby!” From a video uploaded to Banned.video with the title “Patriots Storm Congress Raw Footage Includes Execution of Ashli Babbitt,” it is apparent that “Sam” was just feet away from Babbitt when she was fatally shot near the Speaker’s Lobby. Although recent Infowars videos identify him only as “Sam,” older videos posted to Banned.video reveal that he appears to go by the name Sam Montoya.

As the attempted insurrection unfolded, Infowars’ Harrison Smith, who was guest-hosting The Alex Jones Show because Jones and Shroyer were in Washington, praised the “patriots” who were storming the Capitol, at least one of whom participated in beating officer Sicknick to death. The following day, Jones again claimed to have spent “close to a half a million dollars” organizing the gathering in Washington and also said that he organized the event in coordination with the White House.

Following the 2020 presidential election, Jones called on his supporters to “surround” the Georgia governor’s mansion and “rise up” because officials in that state refused to overturn Biden’s legitimate victory. In December, Shroyer praised the efforts of Trump supporters to violently disrupt the Oregon state legislature’s consideration of a COVID-19 relief bill.

Throughout the Trump presidency, Jones has often hyped the prospect of a second American Civil War that would pit conservatives against liberals, including saying that he would personally participate in violence and help execute supposed traitors. In recent months, Jones has hosted Oath Keepers militia founder Stewart Rhodes, who said during his Infowars appearances that his followers were on alert for a command from Trump to start carrying out mass violence against Democrats in Washington, D.C., and at other locations.

For his part, Shroyer said during a November 18 broadcast that prominent Democrats and members of the mainstream media “deserve” to be the victims of mass violence if Trump is not allowed to continue to be president, despite his defeat. He added, “I know I won’t have to be the one to get my hands dirty. I can sit right here in studio and just broadcast the whole thing.”

aha interesting morph of term: orig illegit use of mil force to take control, but soft coup is metaphorical, thus stop the steal is coup? // traitor

note rhet, note always defensive, it's kraken that is coup

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/prepare-for-war-gop-official-pushes-dangerous-conspiracy-theories-over-election-outcome/

It has been three days since the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden's victory, but an overwhelming number of Republicans are still refusing to accept the outcome of the election. Propaganda articles and infotainment videos on conspiracy theories are still circulating as Trump supporters continue their fight to "stop the steal."

Now, an article published by the Seattle Times highlights another problem with the spread of misinformation. The writer notes that it is one thing when dangerous falsehoods come from unknown websites that lack credibility, but some of the latest threats are coming from members of the Republican Party.

According to the publication, on Monday, Rep. Robert J. Sutherland, a representative of the 39th legislative district of Eastern Snohomish County along with Skagit County, took to Facebook with a number of dangerous claims about the election.

In multiple posts, he referenced reports and claims from right-wing influencers and propaganda sites as he said,"prepare for war. Joe Biden is not now, nor will ever be my President. Am I a sore loser? No. I'm pro-America and anti-communist. Joe Biden is a bought and paid for Communist China puppet. Stay tuned, big things happening soon at the Federal level."

In a series of other Facebook posts and discussions, Sutherland also insisted that he supported the idea of going to war over the so-called "coup against the sitting president."

"Is the 'coup' against the sitting President the start of a second 'Civil War' here in the USA?" Sutherland asked as he noted his support of Trump possibly using the military to maintain his presidential power.

"What good and decent person [xian crusade? deus vult?] would not conduct a war to defend Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of happiness, their families, their neighbors?" Sutherland asked.

1898 wilmington NC coup

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-coup-2649033376/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/experts-explain-the-economic-situations-that-beget-successful-coups/

matt r

Throughout history, coups and coup attempts are more often than not linked to economic distress: the coup's leaders side with one group of industrialists or power-brokers, and opposition groups are supported by another. Now, Trump's own refusal to concede in the 2020 presidential election after a legitimate election loss, and his machinations to remain in power, have led to public debate over whether he is trying to perform a coup — or if that's even possible given the political and economic climate.

Salon reached out to economists who explained the ways in which current America's economic struggles have, and have not, created the climate in which Trump's coup attempt is possible. The verdict? The situation may not be quite right for Trump to be successful — with some caveats.

Because of Trump's political disposition, his coup d'etat would epitomize a right-wing coup — in which an authoritarian seizes control to consolidate their power on behalf of the ruling classes, from which Trump originates. Disregarding the legal and (possibly) military elements required for success, Trump could very well have popular support from his base were he to seize power. Indeed, polls show that 70 percent of Republicans accept Trump's disinformation about the election not being "free and fair," and seem willing and ready to turn against the concept of democracy.

"As for the broader question, there are tensions," Dr. Ioana Marinescu, assistant professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice, wrote to Salon. "Rising inequality and stagnation of wages among the less educated should have empowered the left, but the left has increasingly become the party of the educated elites so they were not able to fully capitalize on this."

Marinescu noted that economist Dr. Thomas Piketty explored these themes last year in his book "Capital and Ideology," then added that "the populist or conservative right has then been able in some cases to speak to disaffected workers (those for example who lost their jobs to the China shock) by showing more respect for them and their values, and by promising a return to the prior state of the world (bring back manufacturing, something that is pretty hopeless given the economics)."

Dr. Richard D. Wolff,professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talked to Salon about how economic factors can usually be found in coups and attempted coups, although it would be a mistake to assume they are the only relevant variables.

"These are always multi-causal, multi-dimensional events," Wolff told Salon. "We can talk about the economics, but the economic aspects — and that's what they are — are never alone, or are never the only significant factor. . . . Economics always contributes to the attempt to make a coup, whether or not it's successful, and economics are always affected by a coup — again, whether it's successful or not. It's part of the story, but it's never some kind of dominating part, at least not in my experience. . . . but it's never absent either, and it wouldn't be here in the United States."

Wolff proceeded to explain to Salon that the United States "is in an extreme economic turmoil situation, fraught with enormous suffering coming at the end of a period of very profound changes and confronting [t]he upsurge in coronavirus cases all over the country." He noted that these conditions can make people either more politically active or resign themselves to political inactivity. The last occasion when America faced levels of unemployment, income inequality and lack of economic opportunity for young people was during the Great Depression in the 1930s, Wolff pointed out.

"Interestingly, during that Great Depression, the reaction of the mass of people was to become more politically active, not less so," Wolff said. "What struck so many of us was that, already at the period in 2008 and 2009 when we had the so-called Great Recession, was the level of non-activism. The fact that you didn't have the rise of a massive union organizing movement, the way you did in the 1930s with the CIO. You didn't have a mass upsurge of people joining two socialist and one communist party this time. You did have a bump up with the Democratic Socialists of America, but it was much smaller, much more modest, much more isolated, than what you had in the 1930s."

He added, "Now we have record-breaking inequality before and during the COVID-19 crisis, at least since it hit in March. The Bezoses of the world have gotten way richer, the mass of people the opposite, et cetera, et cetera. I think you've had pretty much the resignation of the mass of people, with the exception of a few signs, but I don't think they've congealed yet to give you the mass progressive upsurge that you had in the 1930s."

By contrast, America is finding itself in a situation now where a far right-winger like Trump is able to undermine the core institutions of democracy, although Wolff stopped short of saying that it will amount to a full-fledged coup.

"The bottom line of what I'm telling you is that the things that make coups happen, that have any kind of traction, don't seem to me to be present here," Wolff said, pointing out how American right-wingers misread public sentiment when attempting to pull off recent coups in other countries like Venezuela and Bolivia.

"My reading of the United States — and I'm frightened by it all too, so I'm not sitting on some pedestal of of self-assuredness — but I don't read a situation that would allow [Trump] to get away with anything more than either a quiet exit or, if that's not available, a blustery exit," Wolff explained. "If he's not smart enough to see that's his best option,some kind of coup-type event about which Stephen Colbert will have a lot of fun."

Dr. Karl Widerquist, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University–Qatar who has doctorates in political theory and economics, told Salon that economic factors were probably a "wash" in terms of the 2020 election, with some American voters likely blaming Trump for the current bad economy (and correctly so) while others may have blamed the COVID-19 lockdowns and supported Trump's opposition to them.

"He's taken advantage of being president to further his white nationalism, but I don't think that's his main goal," Wilderquist told Salon. "I think Trump's main goal for his entire life is to convince as many people as possible that he's a winner that he wins and wins and wins, and that he's the world's biggest winner.And like a lot of us, he doesn't want to be a loser. The way to step down without feeling like a loser is to convince his echo chamber that he didn't lose. He won and that it was stolen from him. He doesn't need a coup to do that. He just needs to complain a lot."

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aha war is cause and effect of chaos/ system fail, doom spiral?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/climate-change-future/

war burkina faso, [tigre ...] more drown meditt

...War on (of and for) Terror

One of the most dramatic drivers of displacement over the last 20 years, according to researchers from Brown University's Costs of War project, has been that conflict in Afghanistan and the seven other "most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001." In the wake of the killing of 2,974 people by al-Qaeda militants that September 11th and the decision of George W. Bush's administration to launch a Global War on Terror, conflicts the United States initiated, escalated, or participated in -- specifically, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen -- have displaced between 37 million and 59 million people.

While U.S. troops have also seen combat in Burkina Faso and Washington has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of "security assistance" into that country, its displaced aren't even counted in the Costs of War tally. And yet there's a clear link between the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libya's autocrat, Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011 and Burkina Faso's desperate state today. "Ever since the West assassinated Qaddafi, and I'm conscious of using that particular word, Libya has been completely destabilized," Chérif Sy, Burkina Faso's defense minister, explained in a 2019 interview. "While at the same time it was the country with the most guns. It has become an arms cache for the region."

Those arms helped destabilize neighboring Mali and led to a 2012 coup by a U.S.-trained officer. Two years later, another U.S.-trained officer seized power in Burkina Faso during a popular uprising. This year, yet another U.S.-trained officer overthrew yet another government in Mali. All the while, terrorist attacks have been ravaging the region. "The Sahel has seen the most dramatic escalation of violence since mid-2017," according to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/here-are-5-far-right-extremist-groups-or-movements-that-pose-a-national-security-threat-in-the-us/

alex h

Throughout the anti-racism protests that have rocked the United States since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, President Donald Trump and his obedient sycophants at Fox News have engaged in nonstop fear-mongering over the Antifa movement. But it isn't Antifa that is imperiling the United States from a national security standpoint in 2020 — it is far-right white nationalist and white supremacist groups and extremist militias. And on Thursday, October 8, the danger that white nationalists and militia groups pose was evident when theFBI announced that six men had been arrested in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Six men are facing federal charges, while seven of their allies are facing weapons charges at the state level in Michigan.

The men arrested include members of the Wolverine Watchmen, an anti-government militia group, as well as allies of the Boogaloo movement. As these groups see it, Democrats like Whitmer do not hold power legitimately: the alleged would-be kidnappers, according to the FBI, planned to take Whitmer to Wisconsin after kidnapping her, put her on "trial" and execute her for treason if found guilty.And there is no reason to believe that far-right white extremists will not engage in violence in the weeks ahead if they do not like the way the presidential election is going.

Here are five extremist groups or movements to be worried about in the months to come.

1. The Boogaloo Bois

According to NBC News, some of the Wolverine Watchmen arrested in connection with the alleged terrorist plot against Whitmer are also supporters of the Boogaloo movement — which has been calling for a civil war as well as a race war and seeks the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Boogaloo members also openly advocate killing police officers. In Northern California, Boogaloo supporter Steven Carrillo was arrested in connection with an armed attack on a federal courthouse in Oakland on May 29. That attack left a security officer from the Federal Protective Service dead.

Trump's claim that Antifa is a terrorist movement is laughable. For all their militant rhetoric, Antifa do not engage in terrorist activities like the alleged plot against Whitmer or the drive-by attack in Oakland. But far-right white nationalist groups do.

2. QAnon

The QAnon movement has been identified by the FBI as a possible source of domestic terrorism, and its sympathizers are making their way to the U.S. House of Representatives. In Georgia, QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a congressional primary on August 11, and given how deeply Republican her district is, it is entirely possible that she will win the general election in November and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021 — which is incredibly disturbing when one considers what QAnon believes. According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international ring of pedophiles and Satanists, and Trump was put in power to combat the ring. According to QAnon, an anonymous figure named Q is giving them updates on Trump's battle.

As ludicrous as QAnon's beliefs are, supporters take them quite seriously. And if Trump loses to former Vice President Joe Biden in November and QAnon members feel a sense of desperation, that could make them even more dangerous and unhinged.

3. The Proud Boys

During Trump's debate with Biden on September 29, moderator Chris Wallace (one of the more reasonable conservatives at Fox News) gave Trump every chance to condemn white nationalism and white supremacy. Instead, Trump expressed his solidarity with the far-right Proud Boys — a group of self-described "western chauvinists" who openly advocate violence and have been carrying out violent attacks against members of Black Lives Matter at anti-racism demonstrations. After Trump's endorsement, members of the Proud Boys expressed their feelings of empowerment and declared that they were ready to carry out acts of violence on the president's behalf.

Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs, following that debate, posted, "Trump basically said to go fuck them up! This makes me so happy." By "them," Biggs was referring to Antifa. And Biggs also posted, "President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA...well sir! we're ready!!"

4. The Three Percenters movement

The Three Percenters aren't one specific group, but rather, a movement of far-right militias. Three Percenters are well-armed and engage in military-like training, and they have made it clear that they are fully prepared for armed struggle. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Percenterism is one of three core components within the anti-government militia movement, along with the Oath Keepers and traditional militia groups. The reference to '3 Percent' stems from the dubious historical claim that only 3% of American colonists fought against the British during the War of Independence.

5. The Wolverine Watchmen

The Wolverine Watchmen are among the many militia groups that believe that liberals and progressives and anti-Trump conservatives do not hold power legitimately and that it is their duty to wage armed struggle against their enemies. According to the FBI, the Wolverine Watchmen believed that Whitmer had violated the U.S. Constitution by promoting social distancing restrictions in Michigan in response to the coronavirus pandemic — and after kidnapping her and putting her on "trial" for treason, they would execute her if found guilty. But the group's activities, the FBI said, went way beyond their alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer: they also hoped to kidnap other officials in Michigan, overthrow the state government and ignite a civil war.

'Tacit endorsement': The Proud Boys are celebrating Trump telling them to 'stand by'

dn 880

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/saudi-arabia-in-royal-purge-over-coup-plot/

riyadh (AFP) – Saudi authorities have detained three princes including King Salman’s brother and nephew for allegedly plotting a coup, three sources told AFP Saturday, signalling the de facto ruler’s tightening grip on power.The detentions, which cast aside the last vestiges of potential opposition to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, come at a sensitive time as the petro-state grapples with plunging oil prices and limits access to Islam’s holiest sites over fears of the new coronavirus.Royal guards detained Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a brother of King Salman, and the monarch’s nephew…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bolivia-coup-was-based-on-false-claims-of-election-fraud/

no lnx

Bolivia coup was based on false claims of election fraud

Written by Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams February 28, 2020

A new study released by a pair of MIT researchers Thursday reveals that, contrary to claims from the U.S.-backed Organization of American States, there was no fraud in Bolivia’s Oct. 20, 2019 elections — an accusation used by the OAS and others as a pretext for supporting the coup in the country that deposed President Evo Morales and replaced him with an unelected right-wing government.

“Good lord,” tweeted MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes. “Given the fact the entire Morales government was toppled over accusations of election fraud, the OAS has a lot to answer for.”

The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz took a similar approach to the findings and the OAS’ conclusions.

Jon Schwarz

@schwarz

In a surprising development, it appears that the same political forces and media that have lied about absolutely everything about Latin America for the past 100 years were lying againhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud/ …

Analysis | Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to...

Bolivians will hold a new election in May — without ousted President Evo Morales.

washingtonpost.com

593

9:01 AM - Feb 27, 2020

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MIT researchers John Curiel and Jack R. Williams reviewed the OAS report on the election for the Washington Post and found that the “election irregularities” cited by the group were based on “problematic” statistical claims. The OAS report rested its claim on the assumption that these so-called irregularities gave Morales a boost in numbers that raised his results over 10% higher than any other candidate, precluding a runoff election.

The researchers say they requested a response from the OAS about their findings, but received no reply.

Curiel and Williams’ study was commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). The group’s co-director, Mark Weisbrot, said in a statement that the OAS has a lot of explaining to do after facilitating the coup through faulty information.

“The OAS greatly misled the media and the public about what happened in Bolivia’s elections, and helped to foster a great deal of mistrust in the electoral process and the results,” said Weisbrot.

The orgnaization’s report bolstered the accusations of fraud in the Nov. 10 OAS report that precipitated the coup and the institution of hard-right legislator Jeanine Añez as president. The ensuing unrest and threats against he and his family, as Common Dreams reported at the time, forced Morales to flee the country for Mexico.

According to Curiel and Williams, the data used by OAS doesn’t line up with the organization’s conclusion:

Our results were straightforward. There does not seem to be a statistically significant difference in the margin before and after the halt of the preliminary vote. Instead, it is highly likely that Morales surpassed the 10-percentage-point margin in the first round. …

There is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find— the trends in the preliminary count, the lack of any big jump in support for Morales after the halt, and the size of Morales’ margin all appear legitimate. All in all, the OAS’ statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.

CEPR’s Weisbrot declared the researchers’ findings troubling and questioned the OAS’ credibility.

“This important analysis from MIT election researchers is the latest to show that the OAS’ statements were without basis, and that simple arithmetic shows that there is no evidence that fraud or irregularities affected the preliminary results, or the official results ? the ones that actually matter,” Weisbrot said. “The OAS needs to explain why it made these statements and why anyone should trust it when it comes to elections.”

“So much for that Bolivian election fraud,” tweeted the Intercept’s Ryan Grim.

The OAS is set to monitor new national elections in Bolivia set for May 3. Morales, still in exile, has effectively been barred from running.

Williams told Common Dreams that his and Curiel’s findings cast doubt on the organization’s impartiality and ability to act as a neutral arbiter.

“The OAS’s report has basic methodological and statistical errors that make it difficult to see the OAS as an impartial election observer,” said Williams. “The fact that they did not respond to researchers asking about their report on Bolivia seems to suggest they know this.”

National Nurses United director of communications Charles Idelson said on Twitter that the findings throw cold water on an attack line deployed by right-wing opponents of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, who have used his statement at Tuesday’s debate that the U.S. meddles in other countries against him.

“The fraudulent right wing military coup in Bolivia was carried out with Trump administration support,” said Idelson, “but some apparently still pretend the U.S. never overthrows governments of other countries.”

Curiel and Williams also point to the role in the media for uncritically regurgitating OAS claims on face value as the coup against Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS-IPSP) party was underway.

“The media has largely reported the allegations of fraud as fact,” the researchers write. “And many commentators have justified the coup as a response to electoral fraud by MAS-IPSP.”

Utah-based progressive activist Tom Taylor called for accountability on the part of the media.

“Our news outlets took what known liars like John Bolton said about Morales at face value,” said Taylor. “Zero critical thinking. The journalists were old enough to remember when we were lied into the Iraq War.”

“There’s no other way to put it,” Taylor added. “Our media supported a coup.”

an 220

The study also pointed to a particular area of concern: namely, the ability of these extremists to simply blend into existing power structures, including law enforcement and the military. One “boogaloo” enthusiast, Coast Guardsman Christopher Hasson, was arrested with a full arms cache and a plan to assassinate liberal political leaders. A Patriot Wave member is quoted in the study: “Some of the guys we were with aren’t exactly out of the military yet, so they had to keep their faces covered.”

Mexican Butterfly Conservationist Found Dead

dn 120

==

1119 morales 1st indig leader out in mil coup; same time as big protests in chile; Lula released.

Poisoned by Polonium 210: The Litvinenko murder - BBC News

https://www.bbc.com › news › stories-42100235 › poisoned-by-polonium-...

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:{Nov 25, 2017 - When a Russian dissident was :{poisoned:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: in London with a highly radioactive substance, the UK government accused the Kremlin of his murder.Alexander :{Litvinenko:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: had been a colonel in the Russian security services, but claimed the Putin government was corrupt.In November 2006 he ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

sidney gottleib poisoner in chief bk

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-21-2019/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/history-shows-that-protest-is-not-enough-to-topple-a-dictator-the-army-must-also-turn

See also: Operation Condor

During the Cold War, a series of left-leaning governments attained power via electoral polls in Latin America. These governments faced coups sponsored^{[15][16][17][18]} by the United States government as part of its geostrategic interest in the region. These included the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, 1973 Chilean coup d'état and 1976 Argentine coup d'état, among others. All of these coups were followed by United States-backed and sponsored right-wing military dictatorships as part of the United States government's Operation Condor.^[16][17][18]

These authoritarian regimes committed several human rights violations including illegal detentions of political opponents, suspects of be one and/or their families, tortures, disappearances and child trafficking.^[19][20] As these regimes started to decline due to international pressure, internal outcry in the United States from the population due to the involvement in the atrocities forced Washington to relinquish its support for them. New democratic processes began during the late 1970s and up to the early 1990s.^[21]

With the exception of Costa Rica, essentially all Latin American countries had at least one experience with a United States-supported dictator:^[22] Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Somoza family in Nicaragua, Carlos Castillo Armas in Guatemala, Juan María Bordaberry in Uruguay, Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, François Duvalier in Haiti, Artur da Costa e Silva and his successor Emílio Garrastazu Médici in Brazil and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, which caused a strong anti-American sentiment in wide sectors of the population.^{[23][24][25][26]}

https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

no lnx guk

Venezuela coup linked to Bush team

Specialists in the 'dirty wars' of the Eighties encouraged the plotters who tried to topple President Chavez

Observer Worldview

Ed Vulliamy in New York

Sun 21 Apr 2002 09.30 EDT First published on Sun 21 Apr 2002 09.30 EDT

The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has established. They have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.

Washington's involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

It also also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup. It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona. But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy. It reported in theory to the State Department, but Reich was shown by congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.

North was convicted and shamed for his role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to Caracas in 1986. His appointment was contested both by Democrats in Washington and political leaders in the Latin American country. The objections were overridden as Venezuela sought access to the US oil market.

Reich is said by OAS sources to have had 'a number of meetings with Carmona and other leaders of the coup' over several months. The coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.

On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democra tic rule, as he had resigned and was 'responsible for his fate'. He said the US would support the Carmona government.

But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for 'democracy, human rights and international operations'. He was a leading theoretician of the school known as 'Hemispherism', which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.

It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere. During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North.

Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding for the rebellion. Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry, he was pardoned by George Bush senior.[ cheney blocked invest by congress that shd have put him in jail?!]

A third member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making is John Negroponte, now ambassador to the United Nations. He was Reagan's ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US-trained death squad, Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered scores of activists. A diplomatic source said Negroponte had been 'informed that there might be some movement in Venezuela on Chavez' at the beginning of the year.

More than 100 people died in events before and after the coup. In Caracas on Friday a military judge confined five high-ranking officers to indefinite house arrest pending formal charges of rebellion.

Chavez's chief ideologue - Guillermo Garcia Ponce, director of the Revolutionary Political Command - said dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the US had plotted the president's removal.

'The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated in the conspiracy,' he said.

nyt

... its statement, the White House called the situation in Venezuela “a threat to regional security and democracy” and said that the Trump administration would continue to strengthen a coalition of “like-minded, and right-minded, partners from Europe to Asia to the Americas to pressure the Maduro regime to restore democracy in Venezuela.”

American officials have openly discussed the possibility that Venezuela’s military could take action.

On Feb. 1, Rex W. Tillerson, who was secretary of state at the time, delivered a speech in which he said the United States had not “advocated for regime change or removal of President Maduro.” Yet, responding to a question afterward, Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.

“When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can’t serve the citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition,” he said.

Days later, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has sought to shape the Trump administration’s approach toward Latin America, wrote a series of Twitter posts that encouraged dissident members of the Venezuelan armed forces to topple their commander in chief.

Venezuelans waiting to register with the Brazilian immigration authorities in April. The economic collapse has set off an exodus of desperate Venezuelans.CreditMeridith Kohut for The New York Times

Image

[pix Venezuelans waiting to register with the Brazilian immigration authorities in April. The economic collapse has set off an exodus of desperate Venezuelans.CreditMeridith Kohut for The New York Times

“Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid,” Mr. Rubio wrote. He then added: “The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator.”

In a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr. Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a “madman,” Mr. Cruz said all Venezuelans should “urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions. Honor your oath.”

As the crisis in Venezuela worsened in recent years, American officials debated the pros and cons of opening lines of dialogue with rebellious factions of the military.

https://www.thenation.com/article/our-gang-venezuela/

The National Endowment for Democracy has been busy--and far from alone.

By David Corn

JULY 18, 2002

david corn

In the weeks before the April 12-13 coup in Venezuela, Asociacion Civil Consorcio Justicia, a legal rights outfit, was planning an April 10 conference to promote democracy in that country. At the time, Venezuela was undergoing severe political strife. Business groups and labor unions were bitterly squaring off against President Hugo Chavez, a democratically elected strongman/populist. Using an $84,000 grant from the Washington-basedNational Endowment for Democracy,a quasi-governmental foundation funded by Congress, Consorcio Justicia was supposed to bring together political parties, unions, business associations, religious groups and academicians to discuss “protecting fundamental political rights,” as an NED document put it. In a proposed agenda Consorcio Justicia listed as one of the main speakers Pedro Carmona, president of Fedecamaras, a leading Venezuelan business group. But when the coup came, Carmona was handpicked by the plotters to head a government established in violation of the Constitution. Then he signed a decree suspending the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. Carmona, it turns out, was hardly interested in safeguarding “fundamental political rights.”

Fortunately for NED, the conference was part of a series that never happened. The program was canceled as Venezuela was hit by national strikes that would lead to the massive business-and-labor demonstration against Chavez on April 11, in which at least eighteen people were killed by unidentified gunmen.The murders provided Chavez’s military foes cause, or cover, to move against him early the next morning. (A recent Human Rights Watch report concluded, “Both sides bear responsibility for the shootings.”)But imagine if the NED-backed conference had occurred and Carmonahad appeared there–days before becoming a front man for the coup-makers. That was a close call for NED. Instead, the episode may be no more than a mild what-if embarrassment for NED, which is supposed to finance pro-democracy activism around the world. It shows, though, how democracy-promotion can slip, perhaps unintentionally, toward supporting the opposite–especially in a highly polarized political environment like the one in Venezuela.

Created by President Ronald Reagan and Congress in 1983, NED was designed to run a parallel foreign policy for the United States, backing and assisting entities that Washington might not be able to officially endorse–say, an opposition party challenging a government with which the United States maintained diplomatic relations. In a way, NED took public some of the covert political activity the CIA had previously mounted. The endowment–which devotes much of its budget to funding the foreign policy arms of the Democratic and Republican parties, the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO (its core grantees)–has been involved in both questionable and praiseworthy projects.It awarded a large grant to a student group linked to an outlawed extreme-right paramilitary outfit in France, helped finance the development of conservative parties in countries where democracy was doing just fine and played a heavy-handed role in Nicaragua’s 1990 elections. In the late 1980s it aided the pro-democracy opposition in Chile and antiapartheid organizations in South Africa. But even if its programs have indeed enhanced democracy on occasion, NED overall has long been problematic, as it has handed taxpayer dollars to private groups (such as the two major parties) to finance their overseas initiatives and has conducted controversial programs that could be viewed abroad as actions of the US government. What might the reaction be here, if the British government funded an effort to improve the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote operation in Florida?

Which brings us back to Venezuela–where the US Embassy was compelled after the coup to declare as a “myth” the notion that “the US government, through organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, financed coup efforts.”For months before the coup, Americans–including US government officials and officials of NED and its core grantees–were in contact with Venezuelans and political parties that became involved or possibly involved with the coup. This has provided Latin Americans cause to wonder if the United States is continuing its tradition of underhandedly meddling in the affairs of its neighbors to the south. And these contacts have prompted some, though not much, official probing in Washington. The issue is not only whether the United States in advance OK’d this particular coup (of which there is little evidence) or tried to help it once it occurred (of which there is more evidence). But did discussions between Americans and Chavez foes–such as those involving NED–encourage or embolden the coup-makers and their supporters? Give them reason to believe the United States would not protest should they move against Chavez in an unconstitutional manner? Much of the two-day coup remains shrouded in confusion. (It came and went so quickly: Carmona fled office the day after he seized power, once several military units announced they opposed the military coup, whereupon Chavez was returned to his office.) But enough questions linger about US actions in Venezuela to warrant a good look.

Consider some NED activities there. When Consorcio Justicia began to assemble the pro-democracy conferences, it approached the two main opponents of Chavez–Carmona and his Fedecamaras, as well as the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), the leading anti-Chavez labor union–according to documents obtained from NED under a Freedom of Information Act request. Christopher Sabatini, NED’s senior program officer for Latin America, says, “The idea was that the conferences (which were to include Chavistas) would be able to define a consensus-based policy agenda” for the entire country. But certainly NED’s core grantees were trying to beef up Venezuelan organizations challenging Chavez.The AFL-CIO, for example, was working (seemingly laudably) to bolster and democratize the CTV, which Chavez had been trying to intimidate and infiltrate.The International Republican Institute was training several parties that opposed Chavez. At one session, Mike Collins, a former GOP press secretary, taught party leaders how to mount photo-ops; at another he suggested to Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, a prominent Chavez foe,how he “could soften his aggressive image in order to appeal to a wider range of voters,” according to an IRI report. (Human Rights Watch found that at least two members of the police force controlled by Peña–now Chavez’s primary rival–fired weapons during the April 11 melee.) The question, then, is, since it was not explicit US policy to call for Chavez’s ouster–though his departure from office was desired by the Bush Administration, which detested his oil sales to Cuba and close ties to Iraq, Iran and Libya–should US taxpayer dollars have gone to groups working to unseat Chavez, even through legitimate means?

Moreover, NED and its grantees helped organizations that may have been represented in the coup government. When Carmona unveiled his Cabinet on the morning of April 12–hours after he was placed in power by the military at 5 am–his junta included a leading official from COPEI, the Christian Democrat party, and one from Primero Justicia, a new party. IRI had provided assistance to both. Carmona also named a member of the CTV board as minister of planning, even though he was not a recognized leader of the union. And when Carmona assumed power in the presidential palace, a leading CTV figure was supposedly nearby–though his whereabouts and his role have been subjects of debate. The CTV did denounce Carmona–but not until Carmona, on the afternoon of April 12, announced his decree to shutter the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. It’s not easy to determine whether Carmona’s Cabinet appointees were acting on behalf of their parties or freelancing. And as one current Venezuelan official says, “The appointees were never sworn in as ministers, so they can claim they did not approve of Carmona’s decree.”

On April 12 Carmona also said he was establishing an advisory council for his government. But he did not name the several dozen members of this group. After the coup, the Chavez government maintained that it found a list of council members. The roster supposedly included leading officials of COPEI, Primero Justicia and the CTV, including CTV head Carlos Ortega–all of whom had been in touch with and/or received assistance from NED or its core grantees. This document, if accurate, raises the prospect that recipients of NED assistance, when the crunch arrived, were more interested in overthrowing Chavez than adhering to the democratic process.

Asked whether it might be troubling if political figures who worked with NED and its grantees had agreed to assist the coup, NED’s Sabatini said, “It’s important to remember that these are independent groups, reacting–on their own–to their very difficult political environment. The NED’s programs with the groups…were very specific programs of technical assistance and training…. It’s also important to remember that these groups (when they were named to the Cabinet or to the advisory council) were acting under the belief that Chavez had resigned–as had been announced on TV.” But according to postcoup news reports, Chavez actually refused to submit his resignation. And, as Venezuelan human rights outfits argued while the coup was in progress, Carmona’s military-installed government was unconstitutional, whether or not Chavez had resigned.

At least two key NED partners did cheer the coup (as did the Bush Administration initially). On April 12 George Folsom, the IRI president, issued a statement supporting the action: “Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country.” Three days later, after the coup was reversed, NED president Carl Gershman sent Folsom a letter of rebuke, noting that by welcoming Chavez’s “removal through unconstitutional means,” Folsom had “unnecessarily interjected IRI into the sensitive politics of Venezuela.” Folsom’s statement, Gershman added, “will only make it more difficult for the IRI to work in Venezuela and the region as a whole.” Gershman, though, didn’t threaten to withdraw support from IRI. And on the night of April 12–after Carmona suspended the assembly–Mercedes de Freitas, a director of the Fundacion Momento de la Gente, a legislative monitoring project subsidized by NED, e-mailed the endowment defending the military and Carmona, claiming the takeover was not a military coup.

Not all NED allies were rooting for Carmona. On April 13Carlos Ponce, executive director of Consorcio Justicia, e-mailed NED that the coup was illegal and that the decision to eliminate the legislature was “terrible.” Yet several weeks earlier Ponce had almost jumped into bed with coup supporters. While developing NED’s pro-democracy conferences, he solicited the participation of the Frente Institucional Militar de Venezuela, an organization of former military officials. That prompted a swift reply from Washington. “This is a group that has proposed a military coup!” Sabatini exclaimed in an e-mail. He noted that NED “will NOT–I repeat–will NOT support anything that involves the FIM.” Ponce subsequently said that he was unaware of FIM’s position (noting that its participation had been suggested by Carmona), and he quickly booted the organization from the conference. Another potential embarrassment was averted.

But NED was only a part of the picture. For months before the coup, according to several US media reports, US officials in Venezuela had assorted conversations with Chavez foes, and these interactions, purposefully or not, may have led the plotters to believe the Bush Administration would look favorably on anyone who made Chavez go away. Newsday noted that long before the coup, business, union and civic leaders weremeeting to plan opposition to Chavez, and at one such meeting–attended by Carmona and held at the US Embassy–a coup was proposed. US officials, according to the newspaper, say they immediately killed the idea. But the officials continued to interact with these Chavez opponents. The newspaper quoted one Venezuelan source familiar with these discussions as saying, “All the United States really cared about was that it was done neatly, with a resignation letter or something to show for it.” And the Los Angeles Times reported that a “Venezuelan leader who visited Washington for an official meeting said he concluded after talks with US officials that the Americans would not necessarily punish the leaders of a government that overthrew Chavez.” A Western diplomat told the Washington Post, “I don’t think the US provided any active or material support for [the coup]. But the people involved may have seen all of these meetings and visits, added them all up, and come up with an idea that they were on the same team.” Last November then-US ambassador Donna Hrinak instructed the US military attaché in Venezuela to cut off contacts with dissident military officers. But Vice Adm. Carlos Molina, one of the leading military opponents of Chavez, said he had met with a US official several weeks before the coup.

After the coup failed, Chavez officials found inside the presidential palace documents left behind by the coup-makers. One was a note apparently written by Luis Herrera Marcano, chargé d’affaires in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington. He was reporting on a conversation he had had with State Department official Phillip Chicolawhile the coup was under way. According to a copy published by Proceso, a Mexican newsmagazine, Chicola said, “Given that the United States signed and fully supports the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which condemns any violation of constitutional rule, it is necessary that the transition currently under way in Venezuela, which [the United States] understands and sympathizes with, conserve constitutional structures.”

On the morning of April 12, according to the New York Times,Otto Reich, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told a gathering of Latin American and Caribbean ambassadors that they had to support the new government. The next day Reich spoke twice to Venezuelan media magnate Gustavo Cisneros,according to a Cisneros spokeswoman. Cisneros’s role in the coup–if he had one–has been a topic of speculation in Venezuela, for on the night of April 11 Carmona met with other opposition leaders at a TV station owned by Cisneros. (Cisneros denies he was a force behind the coup.) Cisneros’s spokeswoman maintains that Reich called on April 13 “as a friend” because Chavez supporters were protesting at media outlets in Caracas. And on the morning of April 13, US ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro met with Carmona. According to Carmona, Shapiro expressed concern regarding Carmona’s dissolution of the legislature and urged Carmona to be less antidemocratic. If Carmona is to be believed, Shapiro did not oppose the unconstitutional means by which Carmona seized power.

The Bush Administration claims that all the contacts before and during the coup were kosher. The US Embassy in Venezuela released a statement maintaining that “of course” US officials met with opposition figures, for “that is an Embassy’s job.” But it insisted that “officials in Washington and in Caracas consistently and repeatedly emphasized the United States’ opposition to any extra-constitutional alteration of power.” The embassy denied that US military officials were involved in coup activities. It noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell declared, “We condemn the blows to constitutional order.” But Powell said that on April 19–six days after the coup collapsed.

There has been no thorough public exploration in Washington of the precoup contacts or the efforts of Bush officials to nudge the coup in a direction that would permit the Administration to openly support the takeover. At the request of Senator Christopher Dodd, who chairs the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Latin America,the Inspector General of the State Department has been examining Bush Administration actions before and during the coup. Dodd asked the IG to review cables, e-mails and other records to determine what US officials told Chavez’s foes and to examine NED programs. The report is due at the end of July, and Dodd expects to hold hearings afterward. On April 23 the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was reviewing its actions during the coup to insure that no military officials had encouraged the plotters. But Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, says no formal review was initiated: “It was just a matter of getting the facts together. There were questions why people from the US defense attaché were on a Venezuelan military base while this thing was going on. It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

One matter that warrants scrutiny is a Washington Post report that two military officials who publicly challenged Chavez in the weeks before the coup–Vice Admiral Molina and Col. Pedro Soto–each received $100,000 from a Miami bank. The newspaper cited an unnamed diplomat in Venezuela as its source for this curious allegation. Who in the United States might have been secretly subsidizing Chavez’s foes? Any official body that wants to investigate could start by subpoenaing Soto. In April he fled Venezuela for the United States, and in June he asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Miami for political asylum, claiming that he feared for his life.

Postcoup Venezuela is a jittery place of deepening division, marked by rising gun sales, political violence, constant rumors of another coup and talk of assassination. Former President Jimmy Carter failed to broker talks between Chavez and his foes; on July 11 an estimated 600,000 people demonstrated against Chavez. For the time being, Consorcio Justicia has given up on holding a large pro-democracy conference. “It’s a nasty environment,” executive director Ponce says. “Wehave a radical opposition and a radical government. We are unable to find ways to negotiate.” So his group is now using NED money for smaller projects. The failed coup has changed his perspective. Has it affected the policies and plans of the Bush Administration, NED or NED’s grantees? If a Congressional hearing regarding Venezuela’s cloudy coup ever convenes, that is one of many questions that ought to be asked.

Pathological Deceit: The NYT Inverts Reality on Venezuela’s Cuban Doctors

LUCAS KOERNER AND RICARDO VAZ

A New York Times “exposé” of Cuban doctors’ supposed interference in Venezuelan elections was riddled with inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.

Afterdebunking Washington’s lies about the burning of “humanitarian aid” trucks on the Venezuelan/Colombian border (more than two weeks after being scooped by independent journalists), the New York Times quickly reverted to form in anarticle by Nicholas Casey headlined “‘It is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Voters” (3/17/19).

As the title not-so-subtly suggests, Casey claimed to present bombshell revelations regarding the Nicolás Maduro government’s alleged weaponization of Cuban medical personnel as a means of holding on to power. On closer inspection, however, the article is riddled with factual inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.

Dubious claims of politicized healthcare

Relying on the testimony of three Cuban doctors who have defected from the Venezuelan/Cuban health mission and taken up residence in other countries, as well as 16 anonymous sources within Venezuela, Casey provides the reader with shocking vignettes of how Cuban medical personnel have supposedly been used to manipulate Venezuelan politics.

One central allegation is that the Barrio Adentro healthcare mission staff, most of them Cuban doctors, are denying patients care on the basis of political affiliations. One Cuban doctor currently residing in Chile told the Times that one patient was refused treatment “because she was from the opposition.” The only other evidence to substantiate this grave accusation is the account of an opposition mayor who claims he was “denied medication.”

As has been widely documented (Guardian, 10/13/15), defector testimonies are often unreliable, given the political stakes involved. Similar reservations apply to a politician aligned with an opposition spearheading a foreign-backed coup in Venezuela.

Likewise worthy of skepticism is Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco, whose quote, “it is unspeakable,” gives the piece its headline, though a reader might assume these were the words of an actual doctor. Human Rights Watch, whose revolving door with the US national security state is now notorious, can always be counted on to attack the Venezuelan government, though its charges have been debunked on several occasions.

Vivanco is an especially dubious source, given his extremely biased track record on Venezuela. Just over a decade ago, the HRW official was publiclyrebuked by over 100 Latin America experts for a report on Venezuela that did “not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy or credibility,” which included similar sweeping allegations of politicized denial of care, based on the second-hand testimony of one individual.

Implausible electoral interference

The Times’ questionable allegations of denial of care quickly give way to even dodgier claims of Cuban doctors interfering in Venezuelan politics. “One former Cuban supervisor said that she and other foreign medical workers were given counterfeit identification cards to vote in an election,” Casey wrote, adding that Cuban doctors “were asked to vote with false identification” in 2013.

Anyone who knows how voting works in Venezuela would dismiss these allegations immediately. The first step upon entering a polling station is presenting ID and biometrically scanning fingerprints. Computerized voting screens will literally not open unless a valid fingerprint is presented. Cuban doctors, since they are of course not Venezuelans, would not have their fingerprints in the system, and thus not get past this first step. (It’s worth noting that Cuban doctors in Venezuela number roughly 30,000, in a country with an electorate of around 20 million, making the notion of a secret program to enable them to vote illegally in hopes of affecting electoral outcomes rather far-fetched.)

Another passage suggested a similar lack of familiarity with the Venezuelan electoral process:

On the day Mr. Maduro was elected to his first term, [a Cuban doctor] witnessed officials opening ballot boxes and tampering with votes, including destroying ballots that chose the opposition.

In Venezuela, the vote count is electronic, verified by paper receipts.

First off, there are no “ballot boxes” or “ballots,” because voting is fully automated. After the voter makes their selection on the computer screen, a paper receipt is printed and placed in a box. At the end of election day, 54 percent of all voting machines, chosen at random, have their electronic totals cross-checked with the paper receipts. Destroying the receipts (not ballots) would not serve any purpose, other than raising a red flag when they did not agree with the electronic tally. (If the Times’ source had bothered to name the voting center, one could check the results and confront the National Electoral Council with any discrepancy, since the paper tallies are kept for a number of years.)

Secondly, all parties or candidates have witnesses at every electoral center. At the end of the day, the witnesses and the electoral delegates all sign a certificate validating the results. In the case of the April 14, 2013 election, there was not a single electoral center where opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ witnesses did not validate the results, nor any reports of destruction of ballots, perhaps because there are no “ballots.”

For someone who covers Venezuela regularly, Casey makes a remarkable number of errors in his account of the country’s electoral system. For example, he wrote, “In mid-2017, Mr. Maduro made a bid to consolidate power: a referendum for a second legislature to replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly.”

What took place on July 30, 2017, was an election, not a referendum, for a national constituent assembly, a body that is outlined in Articles 347–349 of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution, and which is much more than a “second legislature.” Furthermore, the National Assembly was declared “null and void” by the Venezuelan Supreme Court in 2016 (BBC, 1/11/16), after defying a court order to unseat three legislators pending an investigation for electoral crimes.

Whitewashing opposition violence

Given their factual implausibility, Casey’s anonymously sourced claims of ballot-stuffing and illegal voting in the 2013 presidential election represent a thinly veiled maneuver to delegitimize Maduro’s victory, which was challenged by no country in the world except the United States—a fact that is conveniently omitted.

One unnamed source accused the Chavista government of “blackmail[ing]” voters that the opposition would eliminate the Barrio Adentro medical mission if Capriles won. Casey did not inform readers that the Venezuelan opposition has long vowed to suspend bilateral cooperation agreements with Havana should it come to power.

Cuban doctor hanged in effigy in Caracas. (The sign reads, “Out with Cuban ‘Doctors’!” (photo: News24.com,via **Venezuelanalysis**)

Nor did Casey mention the opposition’s repeated acts of violence against Cuban health professionals and clinics. Following Capriles’ US-sanctioned refusal to recognize the indisputable 2013 election results, and his call for his supporters to ” in the streets, seven people were killed in the ensuingstreet violence that saw 18 Cuban-staffed neighborhood health clinics set ablaze. The violent anti-government protests of 2014 likewise featured no less than162 attacks against Cuban doctors, who were prominently lynched in effigy. In omitting these rather important details, Casey succeeded in inverting reality: He presented Cuban medical staff as witting or unwitting gendarmes of a brutal regime, rather than frequent victims of opposition violence.

This whitewashing of right-wing terror extended also to Casey’s framing of the 2017 anti-government mobilizations, which he said led to 100 deaths in a “government crackdown,” leaving out the numerous killings carried out by opposition supporters, including mob lynchings of Afro-Venezuelan men and sniper assassinations of Chavista activists.

In addition to relitigating the internationally recognized 2013 election, Casey repeated the now-boilerplate allegations of fraud in the 2018 presidential elections, pointing to opposition figures barred from running, with “Leopoldo López…dragged between house arrest and a military prison,” and Capriles “banned from running, along with most opposition parties.” Casey didn’t mention that López was convicted of inciting violence during the 2014 street protests, while Capriles was barred due to corruption allegations that even the opposition has moved to investigate.

Casey’s highly selective picture of Capriles and López is particularly disingenuous, given that both politicians actively participated in the short-lived 2002military coup, with the former leading an against the Cuban embassy, and both of them involved in the mob of Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. That alone would have disqualified them from holding political office anywhere else in the world.

It is also false that opposition parties were banned, since what was required of them was to revalidate their legal status by collecting a minimum number of signatures following their boycott of the December 10, 2017, municipal elections. Whether or not this was a political hurdle, some opposition parties, such as Acción Democrática, fulfilled it. And the fact remains that opposition candidates did run against Maduro, notably former Lara Gov. Henri Falcón, who was actively undermined by the hardline factions of the opposition, and was even threatened with US sanctions for defying the opposition boycott.

Erasure of sanctions

In an article explicitly dedicated to uncovering alleged foreign interference in Venezuelan state and society, it is ironic that Casey entirely omitted the most egregious form of external intervention: US sanctions. Since 2017, Trump’s financial sanctions have battered the healthcare system directly, with recurring cases of medicine shipments blocked or assets destined for imports frozen as a result of US financial crimes enforcement directives, according to Torino Capital chief economistFrancisco Rodriguez. In one such case, the Venezuelan government denounced the freezing of $1.6 billion of its assets by Brussels-based financial services agency Euroclear, half of which was reportedly destined for medicine imports.

US economic sanctions also debilitate healthcare indirectly by decimating the Venezuelan economy overall. According to conservative estimates, US financial sanctions cost Venezuela at least $6 billion annually in lost revenues, or around six percent of GDP. For comparison, healthcare spending in Latin Americaaverages approximately seven percent of GDP, and, prior to the crisis, Venezuela was importing around $2 billion in medicine per year. Rodriguez estimates that the new US oil sanctions, amounting to an effective trade embargo, will cost Venezuela an additional 15 percent in real GDP loss, for a cumulative contraction of 26 percent in 2019.

Despite his stated concern for the “politicization” of healthcare in Venezuela, Nicholas Casey doesn’t think it relevant to mention his own government’s deliberate effort to destroy the Venezuelan economy, further devastating the country’s fragile health sector and killing thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Venezuelans. Rather, the New York Times’ Andes bureau chief mobilizes anonymous sources and defectors—whose testimony ranges from dubious to preposterous—to further demonize Venezuela and provide cover for Washington’s murderous regime change policy.

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https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuela-coup-leader/254387/

Project — Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s constitution.

But after a single phone call from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.

Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailedGuaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded him for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal declared him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government’s elite regime change factories.Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to undermine Venezuela’s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington’s halls of power.

“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,”Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”

Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet, Mision Verdad, agreed: “Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Sequera remarked to the Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”

While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.

“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to Leon, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”

But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: he is not expected to lead Venezuela towards to democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two-decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.

Targeting the “troika of tyranny”

Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Chavez’s socialist programs may have redistributed the country’s wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target on his back. In 2002, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition briefly ousted him with US support and recognition before the military restored his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chavez survived numerous assassination plots before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has survived three attempts on his life.

The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington’s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a “troika of tyranny.”Last year, Trump’s national security teamattemptedto recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed. According to the Venezuelan government, theUS was also involved in a plot codenamed Operation Constitution to capture Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace, and another calledOperation Armageddon:{ to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders }:{ with drone bombs during a military parade in Caracas.}:

More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand selected and groomed by an elite, US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela’s government and restore the neoliberal order.

Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”

On October 5, 2005, with Chavez’s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan “student leaders” arrived in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.

The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal emails from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,” “[CANVAS] may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”

CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame – and Hollywood-level promotion – by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic. This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/trump-administration-is-reportedly-holding-secret-talks-with-venezuelan-military/

In an effort to encourage defections from Venezuela’s elected President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration is reportedly holding secret talks with members of the Venezuelan military as top U.S. cabinet officials continue to issue aggressive threats and push for regime change.

According to Reuters, which cited an anonymous senior White House official, the U.S. “is holding direct communications with members of Venezuela’s military urging them to abandon President Nicolas Maduro and is also preparing new sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on him.”

“The Trump administration expects further military defections from Maduro’s side,” Reuters reported, “despite only a few senior officers having done so since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president last month, earning the recognition of the United States and dozens of other countries.”

As Common Dreams reported, Guaido’s move to declare himself “interim president”—which was denounced by experts and activists as the beginnings of a possible coup—was highly coordinated with the Trump White House, which vowed ahead of time to back the opposition leader in his attempt to seize power.

In an interview with Reuters, the anonymous Trump official said the White House believes the few officers who have defected from Maduro are the “first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger rocks rolling down the hill.”

News that the Trump administration is holding direct talks with members of the Venezuelan military comes after Venezuelan government officials said they discovered a crate of weapons and ammunition delivered by a U.S.-based plane this week to an airport in the city of Valencia.

Venezuela’s vice minister of citizen security said the weapons shipment was “destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States.”

With hawkish Trump White House officials like national security adviser John Bolton continuing to warn that U.S. military intervention in Venezuela remains “on the table,” Maduro published an open letter to the American public urging opposition to “warmongering and war.”

“I say this to the people of the United States of America to warn them of the serious and dangerous intent that factions in the White House have for invading Venezuela, which would have unforeseeable consequences for my nation and for all of the Americas,” Maduro wrote.

“The people of the United States should know that this complex, multi-form aggression is being carried out with total impunity and in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, which expressly forbids the threat or use of force, among other principles and resolutions in the pursuit of peace and relations of friendship amongst nations,” he added.

While criticizing Maduro for his crackdown on protesters and other abuses, progressive lawmakers in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration’s interference in Venezuela’s internal political affairs.

“We must condemn the use of violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of dissent,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote last month. “However, we must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups—as we have inChile, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.”

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https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/did_israel_kill_yasser_arafat_stunning

Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Ronen Bergman from writing “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” a stunning book exposing the details of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program. Israel even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent Bergman from gaining access to historical documents. Despite this, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, scouring thousands of documents and meeting with some 1,000 sources. The result is a stunning investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. We speak with Ronen Bergman about Israel’s many attempts to kill the former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and the possibility that they succeeded.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4436129/venezuela-maduro-coup-trump-officials/

Trump administration held a series of clandestine meetings with dissident Venezuelan military officers to discuss the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro, before ultimately deciding not to support their coup plot, according to a *New York Times* report.

The military officials in question claimed to represent a faction of a few hundred armed forces members who were fed up with Maduro’s authoritarian tendencies.

Current and former U.S. officials confirmed to CNN that several meetings were held with the rebellious officers over the past year.

According to the New York Times, the renegade group of officers were emboldened to reach out to President Donald Trump after he said last August that the U.S. was considering a military invasion of the crisis-stricken South American country.

Trump’s remarks attracted a wave of criticism; Venezuela’s defence minister branded the threat “an act of craziness,” while the country’s communications minister called it “an unprecedented threat to national sovereignty.”

But it came as music to the ears of the would-be military insurgents, who had previously been rebuffed in attempts to reach out to the Obama administration.

WATCH: President Trump says military option could be used for Venezuela [vid]

The Venezuelan commander told the New York Times that the group didn’t ask for American military intervention, but material support — they wanted to simultaneously detain Maduro and other senior government figures, and requested the U.S. to provide them with encrypted radios so that they could securely coordinate their plot.

Their request was denied.

The bombshell report comes amid growing reports of foiled plots to take down Maduro....

World’s most environmentally outspoken president forced to resign at gunpoint

Tuesday, we told you that Mohamed Nasheed, president of the climate change-threatened Maldives, stepped down from his office. Wednesday, it became clearer that he was forced to step down — at gunpoint. Tuesday, his aides said that Nasheed was being held against his will and his party, the Maldivian Democratic Party, called the move to oust him a “coup d’etat.”

On Wednesday, Nasheed was able to meet with supporters and, according to the BBC, told reporters: “I was forced to resign at gunpoint. There were guns all around me and they told me they wouldn’t hesitate to use them if I didn’t resign.”

Protesters in the Maldives had been clamoring against Nasheed’s arrest of a judge who had ordered the release of a government critic.

Nasheed has worked as president to raise awareness of climate change issues and the threat it posed to his nation and others. The climate campaigners have rallied to support him: Tuesday night, 350.org asked supporters around the world to tell their leaders to “put diplomatic pressure not the leaders of this coup to avoid violence and work for a peaceful, democratic solution to their conflict.” 350.org’s message said that Nasheed “has been one of 350.org’s strongest allies, and friends, for many years” and that “he needs your support to ensure his safety.”

The climate writer Mark Lynas, who was Nasheed’s climate change adviser for the past two years, wrote in the *Guardian*:

Those governments of the world that do value democracy and the rule of law should not be under any illusions about what has just taken place. The former dictator Gayoom and his forces never accepted the outcome of the 2008 elections, and their networks of power and influence were increasingly threatened by Nasheed’s campaign against corruption in the judiciary. Indeed, this crisis was sparked by the arrest of senior court judge who had repeatedly refused to prosecute corruption cases in order to protect powerful allies from the former regime.”

Sarah Laskow is a reporter based in New York City who covers environment, energy, and sustainability issues, among other things. Follow her on Twitter.

http://grist.org/list/worlds-most-environmentally-outspoken-president-forced-to-resign-at-gunpoint/