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9/11, the Coup that Failed. The Role of the Memesphere

9/11, the Coup that Failed. The Role of the Memesphere

Octavianus Augustus Caesar (63 BC – 14 AD). Perhaps the most successful leader in history, he didn’t just become the absolute ruler of the Roman State, but took over the role of the highest religious authority (the “Pontifex Maximum”) and transformed himself into a living deity. Turning a democracy into a dictatorship is a pattern that was repeated many times in history, but that was not always successful. It was the case of the 9/11 attacks that did not lead to an absolute dictatorship in the United States. Here, I argue that it was because of the different structure of the memesphere in the 21st century.

In 30 BC, Octavianus, later to be known as “Augustus Caesar,” defeated his remaining competitors for the control of the Roman state, Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra, and took the title of “Augustus,” the absolute ruler of the Empire. The most fascinating element of this story is how Octavianus established the pattern of how a successful leader takes over the government and concentrates all power on himself. The recipe goes as follows:
  1. Obtain sufficient funds for the task
  2. Build up support among the poor and the disgruntled.
  3. Enlist your supporters in a para-military or military organization.
  4. Obtain a high-level government position using a mixture of intimidation and legal means.
  5. Exploit a dramatic event to scare everyone and obtain special emergency powers.
  6. Never relinquish your emergency powers, but always increase them.
This is what Augustus did: his money came initially from the inheritance he obtained from his grand-uncle, Julius Caesar, but surely also from the support of high-level people who wanted tight control of the Roman State. He used the money to acquire a military force that he used to intimidate the Senate and defeat his competitors…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The “COVID Coup”

The “COVID Coup”

What we are experiencing is a COVID coup.

While Joe Biden (apparently) won the election, the entire process was dominated by COVID precautions and distortions.

Nearly 80% of Joe Biden’s vote — according to the exit polls — named COVID as the key issue. A similar 80% of Trump’s vote saw the economy as the key issue.

In the name of COVID fears, election day was essentially cancelled and more than half the votes were cast by mail, many of them weeks before.

With the Democrats leading the push for early mail-in voting, people who feared to go to the polls (because of COVID) were overwhelmingly Biden voters.

Republicans across the country allowed the Democrats to intimidate voters with COVID myths and then use the myths as a pretext for voting by mail from home.

On the assumption that it was perilous to vote in person, mail-in ballots were authorized everywhere. More than 100 million votes were mailed-in.

Breaking the links between personal presence, IDs, signatures, ballots, and individual voters, the new procedures fostered a murky and error-prone system that should not be repeated.

The mail-in operations prolonged the voting period and changed the electoral dynamic. We can only hope that the American future was not “lost in the mail.

The Myth and Mantra of COVID

The ruling theme of the campaign was the myth and mantra of 220,000 “COVID deaths.” This claim the media inculcated and propagated relentlessly and even Trump disastrously seemed to condone. The electoral campaigns pivoted on the myth of the 220,000 or more deaths.

Actual COVID-caused deaths were less than 10% of this number and the average age of deaths was higher than the average age of all-cause deaths.

Measured by years of lost life, COVID was insignificant compared to ordinary flu, pneumonia, TB or other diseases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inside Canada’s Outsized and Under-Scrutinized Bid to Overthrow Maduro

US Canada Venezuela Feature photo

VENEZUELAN COUP

Inside Canada’s Outsized and Under-Scrutinized Bid to Overthrow Maduro

Canada has been a major player in orchestrating repeated coup attempts in Venezuela since Juan Guaido declared himself president in January.

OTTAWA — Canada’s foreign policy, under the auspices of Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, is bucking the country’s long standing tradition of generally staying out of the affairs of governments to its south in Latin America. Indeed, Canada has been one of the major players orchestrating repeated coup attempts in Venezuela since Juan Guaido declared himself president in January.

One opinion piece in a major Canadian publication, the Toronto Starnotes:

Almost immediately after Guaido anointed himself president, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that he was Canada’s guy and that Maduro should cede power to him.

Maduro won’t do that without a fight. So what Freeland was really saying was that Canada would support anything, including an armed coup, to remove Maduro.”

Meanwhile, another major Canadian publication, the Globe and Mail, reports:

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke with Juan Guaido to congratulate him on unifying opposition forces in Venezuela, two weeks before he declared himself interim president.

Separately, Ottawa was told by opposition groups, former diplomats and a Venezuelan émigré to expect a major announcement.”

That was reported based on sourcing from a “senior Canadian government source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.”

Perhaps it should be no surprise that Freeland — who said she was “proud” of her grandfather, a Nazi collaborator — sympathizes with Popular Will, the political party of Leopoldo Lopez, who appears to have kept a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in his library.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pompeo Threatens Military Intervention After Maduro Declares Victory Over ‘Attempted Coup’

Pompeo Threatens Military Intervention After Maduro Declares Victory Over ‘Attempted Coup’

Update (7:16 am ET): Here we go again…

Now that the monthslong simmering rebellion against Maduro has exploded into a full-fledged uprising – one that’s in danger of being brutally suppressed by the Maduro regime – it’s time for the US to revive its threats of military intervention with the added subtext of ‘this time, we mean it’.

After footage from yesterday’s riots showed regime tanks brutally crushing opposition supporters, Mike Pompeo appeared on Fox Business this morning and said that the US hasn’t ruled out military intervention.

  • U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE POMPEO SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN VENEZUELA IS POSSIBLE ‘IF THAT’S WHAT’S REQUIRED’, WOULD PREFER PEACEFUL TRANSITION -FOX BUSINESS INTERVIEW

His comments come as supporters of the regime and opposition prepare to take to the streets for another wave of massive demonstrations on Wednesday.

* * *

Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido has called for a second day of street protests on Wednesday, but after the Venezuelan government successfully beat back the Guaido-led “popular uprising” – as the vast majority of Venezuela’s military remained loyal to Nicolas Maduro – it’s looks like the Russia- and China-backed socialist regime has resisted this latest challenge to its rule.

The coup attempt was hardly bloodless – there were horrifying incidences of extreme violence – but for all the jawboning from President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NSA John Bolton, it appears Guaido’s most prolific attempt yet to force Maduro from power was a spectacular failure. Some members of the military defected, but Maduro by and large retained control over the military and other levers of power. Presenting a surprising lack of confidence in Guaido, opposition supporters celebrated the release of Leopoldo Lopez from house arrest, the former opposition leader immediately sought refuge in the Chilean embassy.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Watergate—the First Deep State Coup

Watergate—the First Deep State Coup

James Fulford writes: The Mueller Report, which was supposed to be about alleged “Russian collusion” with Trump, is due out, and many people in the Democrat/Media conglomerate are hoping for a rerun of Watergate, which they think of as a victory for the Rule of Law. It wasn’t, and we need to have one of those famous “conversations” about what it was, and why it mustn’t happen again.

In 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected with 520 electoral votes. He was running on winning the Vietnam War and also fighting a War on Crime. His opponent, George McGovern (17 electoral votes) was running on a plan to lose the Vietnam War, and surrender on the War on Crime.

But by August 1974, Nixon was removed from office, and in April 1975, Vietnamese Communist troops occupied Saigon. What finished off South Vietnam was the “Watergate Congress” which voted to cut off all supplies. For details see James Webb’s Peace? Defeat? What Did the Vietnam War Protesters Want?American Enterprise Institute, May/June 1997.

Who did this? Well, the Democrat-controlled Senate investigated the hell out of a break-and-enter committed by Republicans, which they never did when LBJ, JFK, Truman, and FDR engaged in similar activities. See It Didn’t Start With Watergate , [PDF]by Victor Lasky, published in 1977. On the Senate investigative staff was a young, far-Left Wellesley graduate named Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic media, which hated Nixon with the same kind of hate they now display towards Trump, did the same thing, led by the famous Woodward and Bernstein, who probably get too much “credit” for this.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Venezuela Strategy: Coup By Sheer Narrative Control

America’s Venezuela Strategy: Coup By Sheer Narrative Control

The Trump administration is working to overthrow the government of Venezuela. They are not at this time doing this by military invasion, nor by funneling thousands of armed militants into the country, nor even solely with starvation sanctions and CIA ops. The first and foremost means of overthrowing Venezuela’s government currently being utilized by the United States government is the low-risk, low-cost plan to simply control the stories that everyone tells themselves about who is in charge in Venezuela.

Adept manipulators understand that humans are storytelling animals. The only thing keeping the powerful powerful, keeping money operating the way it operates, and keeping government running the way it runs is the stories we all agree to tell each other about those things. If everyone collectively decided today that poker chips are the new currency and Kim Kardashian is the Supreme Ruler of the Entire World, those stories would be the new reality, and tomorrow we’d all be doing whatever Empress Kim commands and Las Vegas would be the new Wall Street.

The Trump administration is exploiting this exact principle in Venezuela by singling out some guy named Juan and calling him Mister President, despite the fact that he’s never received a single vote for that office and holds no actual power. If they can persuade enough Venezuelans (particularly the ones with the big guns) and the rest of the world’s governments to do the same, then Guaido will indeed become the functional president of the country.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Planning of a Coup against Venezuela: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup. The Imposition of a Neoliberal Agenda

The Planning of a Coup against Venezuela: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup. The Imposition of a Neoliberal Agenda

Chicago Economics: Neoliberal Dress Rehearsal of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)

The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was to impose the neoliberal economic agenda. “Regime change” was enforced through a covert military intelligence operation. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatization, price liberalization and the freeze of wages) were implemented in early October 1973. 

Barely a few weeks after the military takeover, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This “economic shock treatment” had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys.” “While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen.  From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into abysmal poverty.

In 1973, I was teaching economics at the Catholic University of Chile. I lived through two of the most brutal US sponsored military coups in Latin America’s history: Chile, September 11, 1973 and less than three years later, Argentina, March 24, 1976 under Operation Condor, which initiated Argentina’s Dirty War: “La Guerra Sucia”.

And today, the Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela with a view to “restoring democracy”, replacing an elected president (casually described by the Western media as a “dictator”) by a US proxy, speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly. 

***

Author’s Introduction

More than forty-five years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende.

The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.

The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.   

Is Washington’s ongoing initiative directed against Venezuela modelled on Chile?

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Deep Hurt: Lessons From American Coups

The Deep Hurt: Lessons From American Coups

As the world watches aghast at another US and allies’ attempt to engineer a coup in Venezuela, I would like to offer a few insights from Stephen Kinzer’ provocative chapter, “The deep hurt,” (pp. 227-250) in his book, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire (2017). This remarkable text carries some hope and lessons for all of us. It tells the story of the great conflict around the turn of 20thcentury about the role that the US might play in either dominating the world or building a cosmopolitan democracy where all people feel secure that they reside in one country, the earth. Indeed, Kinzer states: “Anti-imperialists decisively influenced American history by helping to ensure that the first burst of American annexation would be the last” (p. 228).

Even swash-buckling Teddy Roosevelt was influenced, losing his zest for the idea of conquest.  When he charged into the White House he held two views simultaneously, intervene to help other people, without oppressing them. Kinzer thinks that this dichotomy “torments our national psyche” (p. 229). In the early parts of the book Kinzer sets out the anti-imperialist (Mark Twain) and pro-imperialist visions (Henry Cabot Lodge). These speeches are worth gathering round for reflection.

During the following hundred years much of what the anti-imperialists predicted has come to pass. The United States has become an “actively interventionist power. It has projected military or covert power into dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica”(ibid.).  George Frisbie Hoar was right, Kinzer points out, when he “warned that intervening in other lands would turn the United States into a ‘vulgar, commonplace empire founded upon physical force”” (ibid.).

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Making Globalism Great Again

Making Globalism Great Again

Maybe Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as I thought. I’d hate to have to admit that publicly, but it does kind of seem like he has put one over on the liberal corporate media this time. Scanning the recent Trump-related news, I couldn’t help but notice a significant decline in the number of references to Weimar, Germany, Adolf Hitler, and “the brink of fascism” that America has supposedly been teetering on since Hillary Clinton lost the election. I googled around pretty well, I think, but I couldn’t find a single editorial warning that Trump is about to summarily cancel the U.S. Constitution, dissolve Congress, and proclaim himself Führer. Nor did I see any mention of Auschwitz, or any other Nazi stuff … which is weird, considering that the Hitler hysteria has been a standard feature of the official narrative we’ve been subjected to for the last two years.

So how did Trump finally get the liberal corporate media to stop calling him a fascist? He did that by acting like a fascist (i.e., like a “normal” president). Which is to say he did the bidding of the deep state goons and corporate mandarins that manage the global capitalist empire … the smiley, happy, democracy-spreading, post-fascist version of fascism we live under.

I’m referring, of course, to Venezuela, which is one of a handful of uncooperative countries that are not playing ball with global capitalism and which haven’t been “regime changed” yet. Trump green-lit the attempted coup purportedly being staged by the Venezuelan “opposition,” but which is obviously a U.S. operation, or, rather, a global capitalist operation. As soon as he did, the corporate media immediately suspended calling him a fascist, and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, and so on, and started spewing out blatant propaganda supporting his effort to overthrow the elected government of a sovereign country.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Role in the Venezuela Coup

Canada’s Role in the Venezuela Coup

A letter was sent today to the Science for Peace list-serve in response to the Science for Peace Statement on the Government of Canada’s ongoing campaign to overturn the elected government of Venezuela. 

Science for Peace is based in the Dept of Physics of the University of Toronto.

***

What is most welcome in this statement is its expeditious issue and wide-lensed comprehension of the hypocritically self-serving role of Canada’s state, major mining corporations and banks in the plundering of Latin American societies and interference in their internal affairs to ensure that it can continue on and grow against elected governments seeking self-determination.  (now for the first time our foreign minister mendaciously publicly leading the alliance of the externally orchestrated oppression, exploitation and coup in Venezuela).

This exact passage deserves verbatim support:

“Canada has, in recent years, supported the replacement of elected governments in Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and now in Venezuela, and its relations with Latin America are problematical in broader terms.

Canada provides a financial and legal haven for businesses that exploit labour and decimate the forests, agriculture, and watersheds in these countries. Canadian banks mire these countries in debt and buy up public utilities.

Protests against Canadian mining companies in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala are met with police and military brutality. In addition, Canada needs to maintain a distance from the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Bolsonaro, among other policies, threatens our common future by opening up the Amazon, the lungs of the planet, to deforestation for profit.”

I would like to add, however, that it is not only or primarily “the Trudeau government” that is “shaping its interventionist stance toward Venezuela”. It is, more specifically, Foreign Minister Freeland who also leads Canada and NATO towards massive militaristic operations on Russia’s borders, as well as warlike policies of the violent-coup established government of Ukraine with, as the right-wing states of Latin America, a chilling fondness for fascist military rule of the past.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order

The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order

The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order

The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia. 

In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the elite.” 

This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government, and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world, leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing demonstrations. 

In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over the last few months. 

In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Oil Behind Washington’s Venezuela Coup Madness?

Is Oil Behind Washington’s Venezuela Coup Madness?

On January 23 US Vice President Pence sent a message via Twitter that Washington recognized the 35-year-old Speaker of the Venezuela National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the “legitimate” President of the troubled country, and not elected President Maduro. The fact that it was first Pence and not the US President, who seemed forced to play catch-up, says much about the intervention. The question is whether oil was the reason as neo-con Security Council adviser John Bolton claimed or something else. The evidence suggests something else, but what something?

The Washington “recognition” of Guaido as “legitimate” president of Venezuela is not only a blatant breach of international law. It goes back on Donald Trump’s repeated campaign promises to stop US meddling in internal affairs of other countries. The attempted coup is being run on the ground by the same criminal operators, call them the deep state, who were behind the regime change operations of repeated US Color Revolutions from Ukraine to Libya, including CANVAS and the CIA’s surrogate, National Endowment for Democracy. Many are asking why, after twenty years of Chavez and Maduro versions of central socialist economics, just now Washington makes such a brazen and dangerous step. One explanation is oil, but if so, not in a simple sense some may think. 

In an interview on Fox News following US claims that Guaido was the legitimate interim president, John Bolton declared that, aside from declaring Maduro was “authoritarian” as reason for the Washington move, oil was a major factor. Bolton told Fox News, 

“We’re looking at the oil assets…We’re in conversation with major American companies now,” he continued.


 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America

Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times’ Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro flashes victory signs, declaring he will prevail amid a “coup,” during a press conference at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday. (Ariana Cubillos / AP)

On Friday, The New York Times continued its long, predictable tradition of backing U.S. coups in Latin America by publishing an editorial praising Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This will be the 10th such coup the paper has backed since the creation of the CIA over 70 years ago.

A survey of The New York Times archives shows the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America, with two editorials—those involving the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 2009 Honduras coup—ranging from ambiguous to reluctant opposition. The survey can be viewed here.

Covert involvement of the United States, by the CIA or other intelligence services, isn’t mentioned in any of the Times’ editorials on any of the coups. Absent an open, undeniable U.S. military invasion (as in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada), things seem to happen in Latin American countries entirely on their own, with outside forces rarely, if ever, mentioned in the Times. Obviously, there are limits to what is “provable” in the immediate aftermath of such events (covert intervention is, by definition, covert), but the idea that the U.S. or other imperial actors could have stirred the pot, funded a junta or run weapons in any of the conflicts under the table is never entertained.

More often than not, what one is left with, reading Times editorials on these coups, are racist, paternalistic “cycle of violence” cliches. Sigh, it’s just the way of things Over There. When reading these quotes, keep in mind the CIA supplied and funded the groups that ultimately killed these leaders:

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

People Who Care About Democracy Don’t Plot Coups Abroad

People Who Care About Democracy Don’t Plot Coups Abroad

Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair

For some months now, Venezuela’s socialist government has lurched through a series of escalating crises — hyperinflation, mass protests, political violence — while both the government and its opposition have flirted with authoritarianism.

It isn’t pretty — and to hear the right wing tell it, it’s the future the U.S. left wants for our own country. As if to prevent that, the Trump administration is now fomenting a coup in Venezuela.

They’ve publicly recognized an unelected opposition leader as president, discussed coup plans with Venezuela’s military, and sanctioned oil revenues the country needs to resolve its economic crisis. They’re even threatening to send U.S. troops.

They’ll tell you this about restoring “democracy” and “human rights” in the South American country. But one look at the administration officials driving the putsch perishes the thought.

Take Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who recently spoke at the United Nations calling on countries to stand “with the forces of freedom” against “the mayhem” of Venezuela’s government.

This fall, the same Pompeo shared a photo of himself beaming and shaking hands with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — just as the prince’s order to kill and dismember a U.S. resident journalist was coming to light. The same prince is carrying on a U.S.-backed war in Yemen, where millions are starving.

Does this sound like a man who gives one fig for democracy, or against mayhem?

Or take Pompeo’s point man on Venezuela, the dreaded Elliott Abrams. Pompeo said Abrams was appointed for his “passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples.” More likely, it was Abrams’ history as Reagan’s “Secretary of Dirty Wars” (yes, that’s a real thing people called him).

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bank of England tears up its Gold Custody contract with Venezuela’s central bank

Bank of England tears up its Gold Custody contract with Venezuela’s central bank

In early November 2018, it first came to light that the Bank of England in London was delaying and blocking the withdrawal of 14 tonnes of gold owned by the Venezuelan central bank, Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV). At the time, Reuters and The Times of London both reported that according to unnamed British ‘public officials’, the delays were being caused by the difficulty and cost of obtaining insurance for the gold shipment back to Venezuela, and also due to “standard measures to prevent money-laundering“.

As I explained in a BullionStar article on 15 November titled ‘Bank of England refuses to return 14 tonnes of gold to Venezuela’, the explanations given to Reuters and the Times for the withdrawal delays were completely bogus, and that the real reason for blocking the BCV gold withdrawal was undoubtedly US and UK joint government interventions to stall the withdrawal. As I wrote at the time:

“The reasons put forward by official sources in the Reuters and Times articles for why Venezuela can’t withdraw its gold from the Bank of England are clearly bogus. The more logical and likely explanation is that the US, through the White House, US Treasury and State Department have been liaising with the British Foreign office and HM Treasury to put pressure on the Bank of England to delay and push back on Venezuela’s gold withdrawal request.”

As it turns out, this was an entirely correct prediction, since by 25 January, Bloomberg confirmed in an ‘exclusive report’ (two and a half months later) that:

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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