The introduction from a non officially approved version of what happened in Bolivia by Jeff Mackler and Lazaro Monteverde writing for Counterpunch:
“On Sunday, October 20 Evo Morales was re-elected president of Bolivia with 46.85 per cent of the vote against his nearest competitor, Carlos Mesa, who received 36.74 percent. In anticipation of a Morales victory the U.S. corporate media launched a fake news disinformation barrage nine days earlier aimed at discrediting the result and setting the stage for a well-orchestrated fascist-led coup. Presented to the world as a popular democratic revolution against a dictator, the coup was led by fascist groups in alliance with Bolivia’s defecting police and army. The relentless media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), aptly reported: “The New York Times’ editorial (11/11/19) accused Morales of “brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate. The Washington Post (11/11/19) alleged that ‘a majority of Bolivians wanted [Morales] to leave office’ –a claim for which they provided no evidence – while asserting that he had ‘grown increasingly autocratic’ and that ‘his downfall was his insatiable appetite for power.’ The Wall Street Journal (11/11/19) argued that Morales ‘is a victim of his own efforts to steal another election,’ saying that Morales ‘has rigged the rules time and again to stay in power.’” FAIR’s corporate media accounting goes on to list several major media outlets in the country that dutifully sang the same song. Not a single major daily challenged these baseless accusations. These “manufacturing consent” specialists were unanimous in denouncing Morales and his re-election long before the votes were tallied. The Bolivian coup was conceived as a relatively quiet U.S.-supported regime change endeavor in comparison to the overt and monstrous full court failed coup that U.S. imperialism conducted against the Venezuelan government of Nicholas Maduro several months earlier.
On November 10, twenty-one days after his election victory Morales, in the name of “peace” and to avoid “violence and bloodshed,” resigned the presidency and fled to Mexico at the invitation of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. On November 22 Morales told a New York Times reporter in Mexico that the coup leaders had placed a $50,000 “wanted dead or alive” price tag on his capture. Mexico’s air force jet sent for the rescue operation arrived via a circuitous route including a stop in Paraguay after several nations – including U.S.-allied Peru and Ecuador – denied flyover or refueling rights. Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who greeted Morales upon his arrival, denounced the coup as well as the concerted interference with Mexico’s effort to retrieve Morales. No doubt the U.S.-backed coup makers had informed their allies of Morales’s departure plans, while evaluating the merits and demerits of arresting, if not murdering him by the still-undeclared formal coup leaders.”
Funny, this coup seem to just come and go. The overthrow of democratically elected government not really a big deal. As to the reasons why, I would assume that Morales was not big business friendly enough and thus, regime change was the way to go.
Contrast this with Pinochet coup and bloody dictatorship, that was open for business, and deemed quite acceptable by the major Western powers.
This is the world we live in, and the majority of people don’t even have the slightest clue about the depth of treachery and malfeasance being carried out in their name.
1 comment
December 7, 2019 at 9:51 am
Bill Malcolm
Hardly a revelation. The alternative press was on this as it happened. The replacement for Morales, a new dictator name of Anez, a white person who got 2.7% of the vote in the election only five or six weeks ago compared to Morales’ 47%, told the indigenous people to leave the cities and return to the jungle where they could practise their satanic religion. She’s a fundamental Christian who also told the electorate that they should leave government to the urban sophisicates.
And who was in charge of the so-called Lima Group of countries “owned” by the US bashing Morales and before that Maduro in Venezuela? Our very own Chrystia Freeland, for whom I have zero time.
One has to be able to decode what a “democratic government” is in Latin America. It’s one that kowtows to the US foreign policy and business line regardless of its actual form. Like us, the northern poodle with a GG and a throne speech. Bolivia has vast reserves of lithium needed for electric vehicle batteries. Venezuela has vast resources of heavy oil that doesn’t need a shovel to a dig up and steam-cleaning to process out the sand. And both governments have been raising the standard of living of the people, who in both cases are about 70% indigenous. Mining and oil companies can’t have that sort of independence and costs impeding them, now can they? Or have the Chilean government facing a million protesters due to bus fare and gasoline increases but no increase in wages – Chile has a lake of lithium as well.
The whole thing is sickening. But as I said, the alternative press was on this as it happened, Canadian Dimension and Yves Engler, too, right here on ProgBlog. Does anyone read it? Or Decarie’s links? Apparently not. If progressives were not so all-consumed about Trump’s removal and re-bleating nonsense from the NYT and WaPo, we’d be much better informed of the total horsesh!t carried out in our Western societies’ names. It’s excruciating hearing CBC newsreaders and reporters repeating what is the standard State Dept pack of lies when one knows better. So here I am in my seventies, tired of body, neither left nor right, just trying to source some actual truth, and since my retirement when I got the time to really contemplate, finding out that the West is a sham, just like Russia and China are in their own ways. So any chance of the environmental disaster being reined-in is zero.
Here in Canada we have another “Christian”, your Jason Kenney, wanting to flood the world with synthetic oil and willing to tell any lie and screw any societal segment to get his way. Good thing I’m so old I’ll be croaking soon just as the rich finally own everything and everyone. My brain would explode and die from trying to process contradictions for decades anyway if I were younger. Because there’s absolutely nothing any average soul can do about it, we’re hemmed in from all sides. All we have left is the freedom of expression, and nowadays everyone has an opinion and not many have knowledge. Our betters love the online wars, and the fact that society hasn’t figured out it’s been had, dragooned into working for The Man without realizing it. It deflects society away from knowing about the true business of running the world the way they like it and truly complaining.
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