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Posts Tagged ‘Evo Morales’

The overthrow of Evo Morales and the first lithium war, by Thierry Meyssan

Posted by M. C. on March 17, 2021

It appears that the overthrow of President Morales was a commission from the Foreign Office and elements of the CIA that eluded the Trump administration. Its aim was to steal the country’s lithium, which the UK covets in the context of the energy transition.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article212423.html

The world was used to oil wars since the end of the 19th century. Now the wars over lithium, a mineral that is essential for mobile phones, but above all for electric cars, are beginning. Foreign Office documents obtained by a British historian and journalist show that the UK engineered the overthrow of Bolivian president Evo Morales to steal the country’s lithium reserves.

JPEG - 27.9 kbWhile you were watching him clown around, Boris Johnson oversaw the overthrow of President Morales in Bolivia, occupied the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen, and organised Turkey’s victory over Armenia. You haven’t heard any discussion of this.

Remember the overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales in late 2019. At the time, the mainstream press claimed that he had turned his country into a dictatorship and had just been ousted by his people. The Organisation of American States (OAS) issued a report certifying that the elections had been rigged and that democracy was being restored.

However, President Morales, who feared he would end up like Chilean President Salvador Allende and had fled to Mexico, denounced a coup d’état organised to seize the country’s lithium reserves. But he failed to identify the principals and was met with nothing but sarcasm in the West. Only we revealed that the operation had been carried out by a community of Croatian Ustasha Catholics, present in the country in Santa Cruz since the end of the Second World War; a NATO stay-behind network [1].

A year later, President Morales’ party won new elections by a large majority [2]. There was no challenge and he was able to return triumphantly to his country [3]. His so-called dictatorship had never existed, while that of Jeanine Áñez had just been overthrown at the ballot box.

Historian Mark Curtis and journalist Matt Kennard had access to declassified Foreign Office documents which they studied. They published their findings on the Declassified UK website, based in South Africa since its military censorship in the UK [4].

Throughout his work, Mark Curtis has shown that UK policy was hardly changed by decolonisation. We have cited his work in dozens of articles on Voltaire Network.

It appears that the overthrow of President Morales was a commission from the Foreign Office and elements of the CIA that eluded the Trump administration. Its aim was to steal the country’s lithium, which the UK covets in the context of the energy transition.

The Obama administration had already attempted a coup d’état in 2009, which was repressed by President Morales and led to the expulsion of several US diplomats and officials. In contrast, the Trump administration apparently gave the neoconservatives a free hand in Latin America, but systematically prevented them from carrying out their plans.

Lithium is a component of batteries. It is found mainly in the brines of high-altitude salt deserts in the mountains of Chile, Argentina and especially Bolivia (“the lithium triangle”), and even in Tibet, the “salars”. But also in solid form in certain minerals extracted from mines, particularly in Australia. It is essential for the transition from petrol cars to electric vehicles. It has therefore become a more important issue than oil in the context of the Paris Agreements supposed to combat global warming.

In February 2019, President Evo Morales gave permission to a Chinese company, TBEA Group, to exploit his country’s main lithium reserves. The UK therefore devised a plan to steal it.

Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, became president of Bolivia in 2006. He represented the producers of coca; a local plant essential to life at high altitude, but also a powerful drug banned worldwide by the US virtue leagues. His election and governance marked the return of the Indians to power who had been excluded since Spanish colonisation.

- As early as 2017-18, the UK sent experts to Bolivia’s national company, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB), to assess the conditions for Bolivian lithium mining.
- In 2019-20, London funded a study to “optimise the exploration and production of Bolivian lithium using British technology”.
- In April 2019, the UK Embassy in Buenos Aires organised a seminar with representatives from Argentina, Chile and Bolivia mining companies and governments, to present the benefits of using the London Metal Exchange. The Morales administration was represented by one of its ministers.
- Immediately after the coup, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) was found to be financing the British projects.
- The Foreign Office had commissioned – long before the coup – an Oxford company, Satellite Applications Catapult, to map lithium reserves. It was not paid by the IADB until after the overthrow of President Morales.
- A few months later, the UK embassy in La Paz organised a seminar for 300 stakeholders with the help of Watchman UK. This company specialises in how to involve people in projects that violate their interests, in order to prevent them from revolting.

Before and after the coup, the British embassy in Bolivia neglected the capital La Paz and focused on the Santa Cruz region, where the Ustasha Croats had legally taken power. There, it multiplied cultural and commercial events.

To neutralise the Bolivian banks, the British embassy in La Paz organised a seminar on computer security eight months before the coup. The diplomats introduced DarkTrace (a company set up by the British internal security services), explaining that only banks that used DarkTrace for their security would be able to work with the City.

According to Mark Curtis and Matthew Kennard, the US did not participate in the plot as such, but officials left the CIA to prepare it. DarkTrace, for example, recruited Marcus Fowler, a CIA cyber operations specialist, and especially Alan Wade, the agency’s former head of intelligence. Most of the operation’s personnel were British, including the heads of Watchman UK, Christopher Goodwin-Hudson (a former career military officer, then director of security at Goldman-Sachs) and Gabriel Carter (a member of the very private Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge who had distinguished himself in Afghanistan).

The historian and the journalist also state that the British embassy provided the Organisation of American States with the data it used to ’prove’ that the election had been rigged; a report that was later refuted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [5] before being refuted by the Bolivians themselves during the following elections.

The current situation proves Mark Curtis’s work as a historian right. For example, in the three years since the coup in Bolivia (2019), we have shown London’s role in the Yemen war (2020) [6] and the Nagorno-Karabakh war (2020) [7].

The UK conducts short wars and covert operations, if possible without the media picking up on its actions. It controls the perception of its presence through a multitude of news agencies and media outlets that it secretly subsidises. It creates unmanageable living conditions for those on whom it imposes them. It uses them to exploit the country to its advantage. Moreover, it can keep this situation going for as long as possible in the certainty that its victims will still appeal to it, it only being capable of calming the conflict it has created itself.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

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WaPo Prints Study That Found Paper Backed an Undemocratic Bolivia Coup | FAIR

Posted by M. C. on March 10, 2020

If the Post editorial board knew anything at all about the scathing criticism the OAS had received, it kept completely quiet about it. And it’s actually quite possible the editorial board members knew nothing, if they relied on their paper’s own reporting.

https://fair.org/home/wapo-prints-study-that-found-paper-backed-an-undemocratic-bolivia-coup/

Washington Post depiction of pro-coup demonstration

 

WaPo: Bolivia is in danger of slipping into anarchy. It’s Evo Morales’s fault.

President Evo Morales won re-election in Bolivia’s presidential election last October 20, as pre-election polls predicted. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout. He beat his nearest rival by just over 10 percentage points, which meant a second round was not required.

But the day after the election, the Organization of American states (OAS), whom Morales had allowed to monitor the election, put out a press release claiming there had been a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” It was an obviously false claim (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

Even though the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) immediately put out a statement (10/22/19) pointing out the basic flaw in the OAS’s analysis—it overlooks that precincts that report early can be different from ones that report late—the OAS continued to claim that the change in trend was evidence of fraud. CEPR persisted in exposing the OAS deception—for example, in a paper the think tank published on November 8 and an op-ed in MarketWatch (11/19/19) by CEPR co-founder Mark Weisbrot.  On December 12, at a permanent council meeting, the OAS—which gets 60% of its funding from the US government—refused to allow Jake Johnston to present CEPR’s preliminary response to the OAS’s final report on the election.

In the meantime, the OAS’s disparagement of the election ignited violent protests that (combined with the treasonous behavior of Bolivia’s military and police) forced Morales to flee Bolivia on November 10 to avoid being lynched. Bolivia’s security forces “suggested” Morales resign, allowing him to be run out of the country (with his house ransacked), but then sprung murderously into action to consolidate the coup. Within two weeks, 32 people were killed protesting against the dictatorship that took over after he fled. The dictatorship openly says it will arrest Morales if he returns to Bolivia.

WaPo: Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to suspect fraud.

Late last month, MIT Election Data and ScienceLab researchers John Curiel and Jack R. Williams published an analysis of the election results in the Washington Post (2/27/20). The study was commissioned by CEPR to show that its analysis could be independently verified. The MIT researchers concluded that there “is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find,” and that “the OAS’s statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.”

That’s a scholarly but overly polite way to put it. The OAS repeatedly made statistical claims about Bolivia’s election that were clearly false. In layperson terms, that’s called lying.

The OAS’s lies proved lethal to Bolivians and devastating to their democracy, but the OAS evaded all accountability because, when it mattered most, corporate media shielded it from scrutiny. Between the October election and December 26, Reuters published 128 articles about the political situation in Bolivia that all failed to mention the efforts to get the OAS to retract its bogus statistical claim. Instead, Reuters regurgitated that claim many times without a trace of skepticism (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

Days after the election, the Washington Post editorial board (10/24/19) uncritically quoted the OAS expressing “worry and surprise about the drastic and hard-to-justify change in the tendency of the preliminary results.” The editorial added that “the [US] State Department issued a similar message,” as if that boosted OAS credibility. The day after Morales fled, the Post (11/11/19) followed up with another editorial headlined “Bolivia Is in Danger of Slipping Into Anarchy. It’s Evo Morales’s Fault.”

If the Post editorial board knew anything at all about the scathing criticism the OAS had received, it kept completely quiet about it. And it’s actually quite possible the editorial board members knew nothing, if they relied on their paper’s own reporting. The Post’s search engine turns up only ten articles since the October 20 election that contain the terms “Bolivia,” “Morales” and “OAS.” Only two of those mention any criticism of the OAS: One is a November 19 op-ed by Gabriel Hetland (11/19/19), the other is the piece the Post just published by the MIT researchers (2/27/20).

Guardian: The OAS has to answer for its role in the Bolivian coup

On December 2, the Guardian published a letter signed by 98 economists and statisticians asking the OAS to retract its false statistical claims. Such breaks with the silence over the CEPR’s efforts to hold the OAS accountable were all too rare. Even a Guardian oped by Hetland that opposed the coup (11/13/19) mentioned OAS claims about the election without saying anything about the criticism they had received from CEPR.

Just like the Post, the day after Morales fled Bolivia, the New York Times editorial board (11/11/19) described the coup as a risky but necessary step towards restoring democracy:

The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.

Like the Post, the Times editorial board members were breezily ignorant (or unconcerned) about the OAS repeatedly lying about the election. The Times recently published a news article (2/28/20) about the MIT researchers who rejected the OAS lies. The article said that the researchers “waded into a fierce domestic and international debate over Mr. Morales’s legitimacy.” That “fierce” debate was essentially buried by the corporate media when it might have prevented a coup. Incidentally, now even Reuters (3/1/20) has prominently reported the MIT study.

Stung by its lies belatedly getting some high-profile criticism, the OAS responded angrily to the study. The researchers looked at only one of the allegations it made, the OAS complained, saying other “irregularities” validated its assessment of the election. Amazingly, the OAS also said it continues to “stand by” its bogus statistical analysis.

All elections have some “irregularities” and “vulnerabilities,” as any US voter should be well aware. That does not automatically justify throwing the results in the garbage. If it did, any election could be unjustly discredited by unscrupulous monitors. Moreover, CEPR did address other allegations, in the presentation the OAS refused to allow it to make (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

At this point, the OAS report on Bolivia’s election should be discarded, except for the purpose of a credible investigation into how such appalling work ever came to be done—and promulgated uncritically, and turned to such devastating effect. In a just world, jobs would be lost, and OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro would resign. But when you have election monitors beholden to the US government, and a corporate media willing to cover for them, it is only duly elected officials in poor countries that need fear those kinds of consequences—and much worse.

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Everything you know is a lie !: A Timeline of CIA Atrocities

 

 

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The New York Times’ Long History of Endorsing US-Backed Coups

Posted by M. C. on November 28, 2019

https://www.mintpressnews.com/long-history-new-york-times-endorsing-us-backed-coups/263059/

By Alan Macleod

Bolivian President Evo Morales was overthrown in a U.S.-backed military coup d’état earlier this month after Bolivian army generals appeared on television demanding his resignation. As Morales fled to Mexico, the army appointed right-wing Senator Jeanine Añez as his successor. Añez, a Christian conservative who has described Bolivia’s indigenous majority as “satanic”, arrived at the presidential palace holding an oversized Bible, declaring that Christianity was re-entering the government. She immediately announced she would “take all measures necessary” to “pacify” the indigenous resistance to her takeover.

This included pre-exonerating the country’s notorious security services of all future crimes in their “re-establishment of order,” leading to massacres of dozens of mostly indigenous people.

The New York Times, the United States’ most influential newspaper, immediately applauded the events, its editorial board refusing to use the word “coup” to describe the overthrow, claiming instead that Morales had “resigned,” leaving a “vacuum of power” into which Añez was forced to move. The Times presented the deposed president as an “arrogant” and “increasingly autocratic” populist tyrant “brazenly abusing” power, “stuffing” the Supreme Court with his loyalists, “crushing any institution” standing in his way, and presiding over a “highly fishy” vote.

This, for democratic-minded Bolivians, was “the last straw” and forcing him out “became the only remaining option,” the Times extolled. It expressed relief that the country was now in the hands of “more responsible leaders” and stated emphatically that the whole situation was his fault; “There can be little doubt who was responsible for the chaos: newly resigned president Evo Morales,” the editorial board stated in the first paragraph of one article.

The Times, according to Professor Ian Hudson of the University of Manitoba, co-author of “Gatekeeper: 60 Years of Economics According to the New York Times,” remains America’s most influential news outlet in shaping public opinion.

“Despite the changing media landscape and the financial troubles of old school journalism models – including the New York Times – it remains the agenda setter. Social media often use or respond to Times stories. It is still probably the single most referenced news outlet in the U.S. Other websites, like Yahoo get more hits, but they do not report or create their own stories. The New York Times still ranks as the top investigative and opinion setting news organization” he told MintPress News.

 

The first draft of history

Newsrooms across America are sent advanced copies of the Times’ front page so they will know what is “important news” and adjust their own coverage accordingly. In this way its influence extends well beyond its nearly 5 million subscribers, its output becoming the first draft of history. Yet, when it comes to U.S. intervention, the Times offers its “consistent support” for American actions around the world, Hudson says, claiming that the latest Bolivia example “very much followed this trend.” Indeed, there has rarely been an effort at regime change that the paper did not fully endorse, including the following six examples.

 

Iran 1953

In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup against the administration of Mohammad Mossadegh, installing the Shah as an autocrat in his place. Mossadegh, a secular liberal reformer, had angered Western governments by nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, arguing that the country’s resources should be owned by and used to benefit the people of Iran. The Shah presided over decades of terror and human rights abuses, finally being overthrown in the revolution of 1979.

The Times expressed a “deep sense of relief,” many felt that Mossadegh, a “fanatical power-hungry man” and a Kremlin stooge who had “wrecked the economy” in his “bid for dictatorship” had been deposed. The editorial board gave a warning to others who might try to nationalize industries owned by American corporations: “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism,” it wrote, two days after Mossadegh’s ouster.

 

Brazil 1964

Like Mossadegh, Brazilian President Joao Goulart was far from a communist; the center-left reformer who had been in power since 1961 modeled himself after John F. Kennedy. He was overthrown in a U.S.-supported military coup d’état that brought about over twenty years of fascist dictatorship that saw tens of thousands of people arrested and tortured.

Two days after the event, the Times’ editorial board announced, “We do not lament the passing of a leader who had proved so incompetent and so irresponsible.” As with Bolivia, it refused to use the word “coup,” instead claiming that Goulart, who “had almost no supporters,” was deposed in “another peaceful revolution.”

One month later, a report entitled “Brazil relieved by Goulart’s Fall” claimed there was “no outcry or even concern” over the events, but instead a “widespread feeling of deep relief and optimism” in the country. It stated that all of Brazil had “written off” the “extremist” and “far leftist” “regime” and supported the “revolt” against him. In particularly Orwellian fashion, it claimed that the “nation appears to have been yearning” for a “political clean up” of “extremists,” applauding the widespread imprisonment of officials in the Goulart administration on the grounds that they were “communists.”

 

Chile 1973

The overthrow of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist Salvador Allende in 1973 and his replacement with the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet is one of the most well-known and infamous events in CIA history. The fallout from Pinochet’s economic mismanagement and reign of terror continues to this day and provides the backdrop for the enormous anti-government protest movement currently engulfing the country.

As soon as Allende was elected, the Times began a campaign to demonize the new leader, claiming that Chile’s “free institutions” likely would not survive the “sharp turn to the left” he was proposing. The day after the coup, when Pinochet’s forces bombed the presidential palace and forced Allende to commit suicide, the Times editorial board blamed the President for his own downfall, just as it did with Morales and with Mossadegh, claiming:

No Chilean party or faction can escape some responsibility…but a heavy share must be assigned to the unfortunate Dr. Allende himself. Even when the dangers of polarization had become unmistakably evident, he persisted in pushing a program of pervasive socialism for which he had no popular mandate.

New York Times US Foreign policy

It also pre-determined that the very obvious involvement of the U.S. government, conducting a campaign of economic war against Chile, in order to “make the economy scream” in the words of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to the CIA, was non-existent. The board advised that “It is essential that Washington meticulously keep hands off the present crisis…There must be no grounds whatsoever for even a suspicion of outside intervention.”

 

Venezuela 2002 and 2019

In April 2002, the U.S. government bankrolled and supported a coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In a consistent pattern, the Times editorial board came out to heartily endorse proceedings, again deliberately refraining from using the word coup. Two days after the event it noted:

 With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.”

And like with other coups, the Times immediately treated the idea of U.S. involvement as utterly impossible, adding, “Rightly, his removal was a purely Venezuelan affair.”

What was unique about this event was that the coup was dramatically overturned by hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, who convinced military units loyal to Chavez to retake the presidential palace. Since then, successive U.S. governments have dedicated significant resources to regime change in Venezuela. The Times also applauded self-declared President Juan Guaidó’s attempt to gain power earlier this year, presenting him as a man of the people, claiming he was “cheered on by thousands of supporters in the streets and a growing number of governments, including the United States.”

But as Guaidó’s attempt collapsed under the weight of its own unpopularity, the Times expressed its anger that Maduro, a corrupt Russian agent, who pushed Venezuela “to utter ruin,” remained in power. “It would be a great relief for Venezuela to be rid” of Maduro, the editorial board mused, “the sooner the armed forces evict the thieves” the better, it said, disappointed that, for once, it could not celebrate a successful U.S. coup.

 

Manufacturing consent

Studying the Times’ coverage of U.S.-orchestrated coup attempts, it becomes clear that there is a checklist of talking points it employs time and again to justify events.

  1.   Blame all economic and political problems on the government; ignore the effect of any U.S. sanctions.
  2.   Constantly present the targeted leader as a tyrannical autocrat crushing dissent, no matter what the reality is.
  3.   Insist that the leader is actually a Russian plant controlled by the Kremlin.
  4.   Refrain from using the word “coup”. Prefer instead words like “uprising”, “revolt” or “transition”.
  5.   Express ridicule at the idea that the U.S. could be involved in the affair.
  6.   Depict the new U.S.-backed rulers as democratically-minded and downplay any violence they commit in establishing their rule.
  7.   Blame the deposed leaders for their own overthrow.

To be sure, the New York Times is not the only major media outlet guilty of reflexively supporting every U.S. action around the world. The Economist and the Washington Post both came out to support the coup in Bolivia, as they had done before with Venezuela. But the Times’ position as “the paper of record” sets it apart in terms of importance.

This position makes it a crucial weapon in the propaganda war waged on the American people in order to manufacture consent for regime change abroad.

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The Battle for Iran, 1953: Re-Release of CIA Internal ...

 

 

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Bolivia’s U.S.-backed Coup Government Has Given The Military A License To Kill Protestors

Posted by M. C. on November 20, 2019

http://infobrics.org/post/29786/

Paul Antonopoulos

The de facto and unelected president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, signed a decree that exempts all military personnel from being criminally responsible, even in the cases of murder, in the midst of demonstrations against the coup d’etat that ousted democratically elected first Indigenous President of Bolivia, Evo Morales. Effectively, Bolivian security forces have a license to kill now.

Since the decree was signed last Thursday, it has inevitably caused controversy with demonstrators and social media users alike. And it very well should – it is a blatant U.S.-orchestrated coup against Morales who helped his country reduce unemployment, poverty and illiteracy by at least 50% from 2006 to 2018, and liberated his country from strangling neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The decree was immediately denounced by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), by Morales, and by regional leaders such as the newly elected president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández.

Although the decree is dated November 14, it was only made public on Saturday, a day after an anti-government march of coca growers in the department of Cochabamba left at least nine dead and 115 injured, according to the Office of the Ombudsman. For its part, the United Nations High Commissioner, Michel Bachelet, has expressed concern about the growing violence in the Andean country and the actions taken by the unelected government.

There is “information that at least seventeen people have died in the context of the protests, including fourteen only in the last six days,” Bachelet said in a statement from Geneva, adding that “while the first deaths occurred as a result of violent clashes between rival protesters, the most recent seem to derive from an unnecessary or disproportionate use of force by police or military personnel.”

However, this should not even be the least bit surprising for the UN commissioner since the U.S. has a long history of violent regime change in Latin America. It was revealed in a report by the Gray Zone that at least six of the main coup plotters were alumni of the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, a notorious training center that since the times of the Cold War has orchestrated regime operations against anti-U.S. Latin American leaders.  The report explained that “brutal regime change and reprisal operations from Haiti to Honduras have been carried out by SOA graduates, and some of the most bloodstained juntas in the region’s history have been run by the school’s alumni.” While U.S. President Donald Trump cheered on a “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” the U.S.-trained Bolivian military have now killed at least 23 people, mostly Indigenous…

Although Bolsonaro dreams of a Brazil that is purged of most of its native population, like what was achieved in the U.S., Áñez has begun her own U.S.-backed campaign against the Indigenous populations by already greenlighting the murder of Morales supporters, who are overwhelmingly Indigenous just as the population of Bolivia is.

Her license to kill has not just seen many Indigenous murdered, but it will mean we will continue to see the Indigenous being murdered by the Bolivian military as they continue their peaceful mass demonstrations in support of the exiled Morales.

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Marco Rubio's Coup d'Etat is America's Coup de Grace ...

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US Hand in Bolivia Coup – Sputnik International

Posted by M. C. on November 14, 2019

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201911111077282341-us-hand-in-bolivia-coup/

by

Only days before Evo Morales stepped down as Bolivia’s president audio tapes were published implicating opposition politicians, the US embassy and American senators in a coup plot.

Among those US senators mentioned in the leaked tapes by the Bolivian politicians seeking Morales’ ouster were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, according to a report by Telesur.

It is believed that the US embassy in La Paz helped coordinate a deliberate campaign of street violence and media disinformation in order to destabilize the Andean country and force Morales to quit.

The whole scenario fits Washington’s standard-operating procedure for instigating coups or regime change against governments it disapproves of. Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales was in Washington’s cross-hairs for toppling.

What has happened in Bolivia is similar to the US-backed violent protests which earlier this year rocked the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Fortunately for Maduro, the Venezuelan military has remained loyal to the constitution and was not turned by Washington’s pressure.

Unfortunately for Morales, however, sufficient pressure was exerted on the Bolivian military and police. When those institutions called for Morales to step down on Sunday, he did so in order to spare his nation from further deadly conflict. “The coup mongers are destroying the rule of law,” said Morales, who was re-elected for a fourth term on October 20.

Several countries have denounced what they see as a coup against the democratically elected leader. Russia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina have all condemned the subversion of Bolivia’s constitution.

When Morales won the election last month, the Organisation of American States (OAS) alleged “manipulation” of the voting system. Such claims by the OAS were predictable because it has long served as a pro-Washington agency which is vehemently opposed to left-wing governments in Latin America. Critics call it a relic of the Cold War…

The implication of US senators colluding with Bolivia’s rightwing opposition to create a climate of hate and fear is straight out of the same playbook for subversion that Washington has used most recently in Venezuela and in dozens of other countries around the world. The coup d’état that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 leading to a takeover by neo-Nazi parties is just one other example.

The irony is that Washington and its European partners are consumed with accusations made against Russia for allegedly interfering in their political systems. US and European media relentlessly claim with scant evidence that Moscow is running “influence campaigns” to distort elections.

Just this week the New York Times has published yet another report in a recent series of reports alleging that Russia is cranking up interference and meddling in African states.

Meanwhile, the evidence is glaring that the US has just moved blatantly to destroy the democratic process in Bolivia, to terrorize a nation and blackmail its president to resign. Yet Western media dutifully turn off that narrative to keep chasing their fantasies about Russia. Another illustration of why corporate Western media are more accurately defined as propaganda channels, not news outlets.

 

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Washington Has Disassociated America from Good and Deprived Her of Moral Basis – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on November 13, 2019

That some Americans are unable to comprehend the difference between endorsing Trump and endorsing accountable government is frightening. How can our country survive in accordance with our Constitution if Americans are incapable of rational thought, if they cannot understand their clearly written native language, if they cannot understand that a coup is a coup against democracy?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/11/12/washington-has-disassociated-america-from-good-and-deprived-her-of-moral-basis/

Paul Craig Roberts

Not long ago I read that a US Assistant Secretary of State, or perhaps it was a member of the National Security Council, said that now that Washington had reestablished control over Ecuador, it would not be long before the governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba would be overthrown.

Venezuela is proving to be hard for Washington to crack. Washington was banking on its NGO forces paid to stage protests, together with monetary bribes to the Venezuelan military, to chase Maduro out of office. But so far the Venezuelan military has refused to desert their country for Washington. Washington can, of course, raise the offer to the generals. Perhaps the generals are awaiting larger bribes.

However, the Bolivian military took the money and on the basis of protests organized by US-financed NGOs and the National Endowment for Overthrowing Democracy forced Evo Morales out of office. This is a huge loss for Bolivia.

Morales is the first president since the founding of Bolivia to come from the indigenous population. His seventy-nine predecessors were all members of the Spanish colonial elite allied with Washington. Together they plundered the country.

Washington considers Morales “leftist” because he focused on using Bolivian resources to reduce Bolivian poverty and to create a better life for Bolivians instead of for the profits of US corporations and banks and the Spanish elites who ruled Bolivia for Washington.

Self-determination in the southern hemisphere is simply not permitted by Washington or by its overthrow agent, the misnamed US “National Endowment for Democracy,” which is a well-financed organization for overthrowing real democracy.

Now that Bolivia is back in Washington’s hands, you can count on Wikipedia to rewrite Morales biography and cast him as a corrupt politician who was oppressing the Bolivian people.

Indeed, president Trump has already disposed of Morales as a man of the people. The hapless American president has praised the corrupt Bolivian military, which accepted Washington’s money to force out of office a president who represented Bolivia instead of Washington, as an agent of freedom and democracy.

The coup engineered by Washington used an election disputed only by Washington and its NGO protesters to charcterize Morales as an illegitimate president who tried to “overtride the Bolivian constitution and the will of the people.”

Trump actually described America’s overthrow of the democratic governemnt in Bolivia as “bringing the world one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

Trump went on to describe the American overthrow of democratic government in Bolivia as a warning to the “illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail.” What Trump means by “democracy and the will of the people” is the interests of the New York Banks and American corporations known for their exploitation of Latin America. A “free Western Hemisphere” means free for exploitation by US business interests. An “illegitimate government” is one elected by the people instead of one put in office by Washington.

The former Ecuadoran president, Rafael Correa, who gave Julian Assange asylum and has been forced to seek safety abroad from Lenin Moreno, the corrupt tyrant Washington has imposed on Ecuador, said that the elected president of Bolivia was forced out in a Washington coup and that the Organization of American States is an instrument of US domination. He is correct. Moreno himself is proof of it. Moreno, a Washingon imposition unacceptable to the people of Ecuador, has been driven out of the capital by protesters.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/10/08/ecuador-protestors-move-into-captial-president-leaves-quito/3914546002/ Nevertheless, Washington still claims that Lenin Moreno, who sold Julian Assange to Washington for a $4.3 billion IMF loan, brought freedom back to Ecuador.

The Venezuela government sees the situation the same as Rafael Correa. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/statement-bolivarian-republic-venezuela-coup-bolivia

Trump has presided over a major crime against humanity. This would be a valid reason to impeach him.

I will receive emails from some readers wanting to know how I can attack Trump and still endorse him. Such letters show the failure of American education. I have never endorsed Trump. I endorsed the goals that got him elected—normalization of relations with Russia and bringing the offshored American middle class jobs home. I predicted accurately that Trump knew nothing of Washington and would be unable to appoint anyone capable of serving his agenda. Trump undertook to drain the swamp while staffing himself with the proprietors of the swamp.

In my recent columns—https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/11/07/a-successful-coup-against-trump-will-murder-american-democracy/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/11/08/only-donald-trump-can-save-american-democracy-and-only-with-our-support/ — I do not endorse Trump. I endorse American Democracy and truth. If an elected American president can be removed in an orchestrated coup as Morales was, the American people will have lost all control over their government. Both political parties seem to desire this result. Those Democrats and progressives who just want Trump out of the White House and those Republicans who won’t defend him from false charges do not comprehend the price to democracy of removing an elected president via orchestrated coup.

That some Americans are unable to comprehend the difference between endorsing Trump and endorsing accountable government is frightening. How can our country survive in accordance with our Constitution if Americans are incapable of rational thought, if they cannot understand their clearly written native language, if they cannot understand that a coup is a coup against democracy?

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US: Bolivia Junta Takeover ‘Not a Coup’ – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on November 12, 2019

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/11/11/us-bolivia-junta-takeover-not-a-coup/

Jason Ditz

Bolivian President Evo Morales went from promising fresh elections to a forced resignation and exile in very short order this weekend. Though there were disputes about the last election, Bolivia’s military wasted no time in declaring themselves to be in control, and vowing to move against “vandals” who resist their rule.

There are suggestions some civilians may retain nominal authority within Bolivia, though the armed forces are very clear that they ultimately will be in charge. The White House, never fans of Evo Morales, has made it clear that’s fine with them.

A statement Monday from President Trump declared Morales’ ouster in favor of the military to preserve democracy. The statement also applauded the Bolivian military for showing that “democracy and the will of the people will always prevail.” The US is not going to consider this military takeover a coup d’etat, but rather a democracy with less pretense of the military not ultimately being in charge.

Trump’s statement also took shots at Venezuela and Nicaragua, declaring them “illegitimate regimes.” This once again points to the US being perfectly comfortable with military coups, and pretending not to notice them, so long as people they don’t like are being forced from power.

The US not wanting to recognize a coup as a coup is not just about superficial appearances. Rather, US law forbids the US from providing military aid to a nation under military rule. The US has often used a failure to recognize to dodge that requirement, with Egypt a major recent example of a nation where an overt, violent military takeover went unrecognized by the US, in no small reason because the US preferred the junta to the elected government.

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