OMNI
COLLECTION OF
REPORTING AND EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21 arranged in
reversed chronological order
January 1, 2021
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT: US IMPERIALISM
The Astounding Record of United States Interventions in Latin
America http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958
By John
H. Coatsworth, History News Network, posted December 22, 2014
SOURCE: ReVista:
Harvard Review of Latin America
12-22-14
(accessed)
John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin
American Affairs. Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, a two-volume
reference work, edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde.
“Ending Regime Change—in Bolivia and the World”
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies. Covert Action Magazine, October 28, 2020.
Bolivian woman votes in October 18 election. [Source: elcomercio.pe]
Less than a year after the United States and
the U.S.-backed Organization of American States (OAS) supported a violent
military coup to overthrow the government of Bolivia, the Bolivian people have
reelected the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and restored it to power.
In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime
changes” in countries around the world, rarely have a people and a country so
firmly and democratically repudiated U.S. efforts to dictate how they will be
governed. Post-coup interim president Jeanine Añez has reportedly
requested 350 U.S. visas for herself and others who may face
prosecution in Bolivia for their roles in the coup.
The narrative of a rigged election in 2019 that the U.S. and the OAS
peddled to support the coup in Bolivia has been thoroughly debunked. MAS’s
support is mainly from indigenous Bolivians in the countryside, so it takes
longer for their ballots to be collected and counted than those of the
better-off city dwellers who support MAS’s right-wing, neoliberal opponents.
As the votes come in from rural areas, there
is a swing to MAS in the vote count. By pretending that this predictable and
normal pattern in Bolivia’s election results was evidence of election fraud in
2019, the OAS bears responsibility for unleashing a wave of violence against
indigenous MAS supporters that, in the end, has only delegitimized the OAS
itself.
It is instructive that the failed U.S.-backed
coup in Bolivia has led to a more democratic outcome than U.S. regime change
operations that succeeded in removing a government from power. Domestic debates
over U.S. foreign policy routinely presume that the U.S. has the right, or even
an obligation, to deploy an arsenal of military, economic and political weapons
to force political change in countries that resist its imperial dictates.
[Source: amazon.com]
In practice, this means either full-scale war
(as in Iraq and Afghanistan), a coup d’état (as in Haiti in 2004, Honduras in
2009 and Ukraine in 2014), covert and proxy wars (as in Somalia, Libya, Syria
and Yemen) or punitive economic sanctions (as against Cuba, Iran and
Venezuela)—all of which violate the sovereignty of the targeted countries and
are therefore illegal under international law.
No matter which instrument of regime change
the U.S. has deployed, these U.S. interventions have not made life better for
the people of any of those countries, nor countless others in the past. William
Blum’s brilliant 1995 book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, catalogues 55 U.S. regime change operations in 50
years between 1945 and 1995. As Blum’s detailed accounts make clear, most of
these operations involved U.S. efforts to remove popularly elected governments
from power, as in Bolivia, and often replaced them with U.S.-backed
dictatorships: like the Shah of Iran; Mobutu in the Congo; Suharto in
Indonesia; and General Pinochet in Chile. MORE
https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/medeabenjaminnicolasjsdavies/
Bolivia’s triumph over U.S.-backed regime
change is an affirmation of the emerging people-power of our new multipolar
world, and the struggle to move the U.S. to a post-imperial future is in the
interest of the American people as well. As the late Venezuela leader Hugo
Chavez once told a visiting U.S. delegation, “If we work together with
oppressed people inside the United States to overcome the empire, we will not
only be liberating ourselves, but also the people of Martin Luther King.”
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several
books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the
US-Saudi Connection and Inside Iran: the
Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a
researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
The following entries are in reversed
chronological order.
When Bolivians defeated U.S. imperialism with
democracy. Mronline.org
(1-1-21). The resounding victory of
the MAS presidential ticket in the elections held on October 18 came after a
year of struggle against the U.S.-backed coup regime. | more… 
Evo Morales: Lithium was the reason for the coup in Bolivia. Mronline.org (11-14-20).
The
former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, assures that the large deposits of
lithium in the Andean country and his government’s attempt to industrialize the
reserves were why the coup d’état against him in 2019 occurred. | more…
One Year After Coup in Bolivia, 'Democracy Has Won' | News &
Views. Common Dreams (10-19-20).
'Democracy Has Won': Year After
Right-Wing Coup Against Evo Morales, Socialist Luis Arce Declares Victory in
Bolivia Election by Jake Johnson, staff writer
"Brothers and sisters: the will of the people has been asserted,"
Morales declared from exile in Argentina.
|
Inbox
~ please post wherever appropriate ~ The Association
for Investment in Popular Action Committees and its sponsored
organizations International
Solidarity Movement - Northern California International
Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity Free Palestine Movement Syria Solidarity
Movement Resumen
Latinoamericana Serena Shim Award NakbaTour One State Assembly extend their
congratulations to the Bolivian people upon their free election of a
government that asserts their resolute sovereignty and determination to defy
external intervention and international imperialism. Although it is a great
victory for Bolivians and free people everywhere, we know that sovereignty
and popular will are only the beginning, as experienced by the continuing
resistance struggles of the peoples of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Lebanon,
Palestine and other nations, including the first nations of the Americas and
all first nations everywhere. We pledge our support to Bolivia and all
peoples asserting and struggling for their freedom and independence in
defiance of the repression of imperialist powers seeking to dominate and
exploit them. Long live the
Bolivian people and all free peoples! The sponsored
organizations of the Association for Investment in Popular Action
Committees |
|||||||||
Evo
Morales was the Americas’ greatest president.
Jacobin Roundup. 10-19-20. When Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006,
he was the first indigenous president of Bolivia — a country historically
structured around racism. The son of impoverished llama herders in Oruru,
Morales cut his teeth in the semitropical Chapare region as a coca grower,
quickly rising through the ranks of the powerful coca growers’ union federation
to become a nationally prominent figure.
Under his presidency, MAS
won successive elections with unprecedented margins in 2009 and 2014, running
on an economic agenda of modest wealth redistribution and partial hydrocarbon
nationalization coupled with an evocative discourse of decolonization. news@jacobinmag.com
Why U.S. political scientists are arguing that Evo Morales should be the
President of Bolivia.
Mronline.org (8-30-20)
Three political
scientists from the United States closely studied allegations of fraud in the
Bolivian election of 2019 and found that there was no fraud. These
scholars—from the University of Pennsylvania and Tulane University—looked at
raw evidence from the Bolivian election authorities that had been handed over
to the New York Times. | more…
NYT Acknowledges Coup In Bolivia
While Shirking Blame For Its Supporting Role.
Popular Resistance.org (7-16-20)
By Camila Escalante with Brian
Mier, FAIR. The New York
Times (6/7/20) declared that an Organization of American States (OAS)
report alleging fraud in the 2019 Bolivian presidential elections—which was
used as justification for a bloody, authoritarian coup d’etat in November
2019—was fundamentally flawed. The Times reported the findings of a
new study by independent researchers; the Times brags of
contributing to it by sharing data it “obtained from Bolivian electoral
authorities,” though this data has been publicly available since before the
2019 coup. The article never uses the word “coup”—it says that President Evo
Morales... -more-
Studies Say Morales Won Fairly, UN
& Latin American Institutions Must Take Action
By Ekaterina Blinova, Sputniknews.com. Popular Resistance.org. (3-21-20). The latest statistical analyses say that the
Organisation of American States' conclusions about the alleged fraud in
Bolivia’s October vote don't hold water. Ex-UN official Alfred de Zayas has
explained what steps could be taken by international and regional bodies in the
aftermath of the exposure and shed light on the US role in the Bolivian
coup. -more-
Sent to blog and ws, 12-19-19
BOLIVIA COUP NOVEMBER 2019 –
I am tired of holding other worlds in my fist. Mronline.org (2-15-20)
In November 2019, the Bolivian
army–with a nudge from the shadows–told its President Evo Morales Ayma to
resign. Morales would eventually go to Mexico and then seek asylum in
Argentina. Jeanine Áñez, a far-right politician who was not in the line of
succession, seized power; the military, the fascistic civil society groups, and
sections of […]
COLLECTION OF REPORTING AND
EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21 arranged in reversed
chronological order
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/12/bolivia-coup-2019.html
Readings gathered by Dick Bennett, arranged in roughly
reversed chronological order, except for the 2014 historical introduction at
the beginning .
The Astounding
Record of United States Interventions in Latin America http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958
By John
H. Coatsworth, History News Network, posted December 22, 2014
SOURCE: ReVista:
Harvard Review of Latin America
12-22-14
(accessed)
John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin
American Affairs. Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, a two-volume
reference work, edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde.
In the
slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has
intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at
least 41 times. That amounts to once every 28 months for an
entire century (see table).
Direct
intervention occurred in 17 of the 41 cases. These incidents
involved the use of U.S. military forces, intelligence agents or local citizens
employed by U.S. government agencies. In another 24 cases, the U.S. government
played an indirect role. That is, local actors played the principal roles, but
either would not have acted or would not have succeeded without encouragement
from the U.S. government.
While direct interventions are easily identified and
copiously documented, identifying indirect interventions requires an exercise
in historical judgment. The list of 41 includes only cases where, in the
author’s judgment, the incumbent government would likely have survived in the
absence of U.S. hostility. The list ranges from obvious cases to close calls.
An example of an obvious case is the decision, made in the Oval Office in
January 1963, to incite the Guatemalan army to overthrow the (dubiously)
elected government of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes in order to prevent an open
competitive election that might have been won by left-leaning former President
Juan José Arévalo. A less obvious case is that of the Chilean military coup
against the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The
Allende government had plenty of domestic opponents eager to see it deposed. It
is included in this list because U.S. opposition to a coup (rather than
encouragement) would most likely have enabled Allende to continue in office
until new elections.
The 41 cases do not include incidents in which the United
States sought to depose a Latin American government, but failed in the attempt.
The most famous such case was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.
Also absent from the list are numerous cases in which the U.S. government acted
decisively to forestall a coup d’etat or otherwise protect an incumbent regime
from being overthrown.
Overthrowing governments in Latin America has never been
exactly routine for the United States. However, the option to depose a sitting
government has appeared on the U.S. president’s desk with remarkable frequency
over the past century. It is no doubt still there, though the frequency with
which the U.S. president has used this option has fallen rapidly since the end
of the Cold War...
READ ENTIRE
ARTICLE AT REVISTA: HARVARD REVIEW OF
LATIN AMERICA
-See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958#sthash.htStaMuH.dpuf
Getting away with murder: ‘clash’ as media euphemism for ‘massacre’. mronline.org
(12-19-19).
After deposing Evo Morales in a
U.S.-backed coup November 11, Bolivia’s military selected Jeanine Añez as
president. Añez immediately signed a decree pre-exonerating security forces of
all crimes during their “re-establishment of order,” understood by all sides as
a license to kill. Those same forces have now conducted massacres of Morales
supporters near the cities […]
Members of Argentine Delegation in Bolivia tell the horror they recorded (Coup
Repression). Mronline.org (12-4-19)
Disappearances, murders, arbitrary
detentions, rapes, torture and hospitals that refuse to take care of those
wounded by the repression were some of the events recorded during the first day
of work. They were held and kicked at the airport by a pro-coup mob. Then the
Minister of Government of Añez, Arturo Murillo, came out to […]
|
|
|
|
We Continue to Fight
for Justice for Indigenous Bolivians, Thanks to You!
|
Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:27 PM (21 hours ago) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
...
[Message clipped] View entire message
|
|
ReplyForward |
News Coverage of Our
Protest of the U.S.-backed Bolivian
Coup
|
10:13 AM (1 hour ago) |
|
||
|
|
||||
Dear Friends,
In case you missed it,
40/29 News covered our protest of the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia. We are
not only reaching the dozens or hundreds of cars that drive by, but when we get
news coverage we are speaking to tens of thousands of people. This is why
even small protests are so important. This is especially important on
this issue of the Bolivian coup, where most of the political and media
establishment are not even admitting that it was a coup. Thanks again to
everyone that showed up in the cold and on such short notice!
40/29 News
Coverage: https://www.4029tv.com/article/arkansans-protest-violence-in-bolivia/29872726
|
'Years From Now, It'll
Be Clear to Everyone There Was a Coup in Bolivia'
|
11:41 AM (4 minutes ago) |
|
||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
We Condemn the U.S.
Backed Coup in Bolivia!
11-21-19 |
8:01 AM (40 minutes ago) |
|
||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||
|
Next 2 from mronline.org (11-17-19)
OAS involvement in Bolivia precipitated the coup
Let’s put an end to this nonesense
that’s peddled by MSM.
Communiqué of the Movement to Socialism (MAS-IPSP)
The Bolivian people are living
through terrible moments, with police officers and motorcyclists storm the
streets and the military high command deciding to attack the citizens as a
means of pacification, including preventing prominent people, religious leaders
and political leaders from finding constitutional and democratic solutions to the
crisis we are facing.
Fwd: Bolivia
right-wing coup with escalating deaths of Morales supporters and threats to
journalists+ How corporate media covers-up U.S. role in Lula's imprisonment
|
Nov 16, 2019, 10:35 PM (8 hours
ago) |
|
||
|
|
||||
----------
Date: Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:59 PM
Subject: Bolivia right-wing coup with escalating deaths of Morales supporters
and threats to journalists+ How corporate media covers-up U.S. role in Lula's
imprisonment
To:
SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOLIVIA ARTICLE
BRIAN MIER,NOVEMBER 14,
2019, FAIR, https://fair.org/home/as-lula-emerges-from-prison-us-media-ignore-how-washington-helped-put-him-there/
As Lula Emerges From Prison, US Media
Ignore How Washington Helped Put Him There
The
Brazilian Supreme Court reversed a 2018 ruling on November 7, upholding the
principle of innocent until proven guilty in the 1988 Constitution and
declaring it illegal to jail defendants before their appeals processes have
been exhausted. Within 24 hours, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was
released to an adoring crowd of hundreds of union members and social movement
activists who had maintained a camp outside the police station where he was
held, shouting “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good night” to him for 580
consecutive days.
The New York Times (8/25/17)
depicted Judge Sérgio Moro as “the face of the national reckoning for Brazil’s
ruling class.” He now heads the Justice Department in the fascist government of
Jair Bolsonaro.
The
Supreme Court had previously ruled, on April 5, 2018—after
a threat from Brazilian Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas—that defendants
could be preemptively jailed before their appeals processes played out.
Directly afterwards, Judge Sérgio Moro pressed for an immediate election-year
arrest warrant for the PT party founder at a moment when he was widely leading
in all polls. (The far-right candidate who won in the wake of Lula’s removal
from the race, Jair Bolsonaro, went on to name Moro his “Super Justice
Minister.”)
Lula’s
arrest came as part of a wide-ranging international investigation, ostensibly
aimed at corruption, called Lava Jato (“Car Wash”), which
involved the US Justice Department, US Security and Exchange Commission and
Swiss federal police, working with Judge Moro and a public prosecutor team
based in the conservative Brazilian city of Curitiba (CounterSpin, 6/21/19).
The only charge that prosecutors had been able to stick on Lula was that he had
committed “indeterminate acts of corruption.”
At
the time, the Anglo media ignored US involvement in the investigation, built
Moro up as a superhero, and failed to provide any kind of critical
analysis of the proceedings against Lula, despite complaints from
some of the world’s leading legal scholars and human rights
activists that the former president was victim of a politically motivated
kangaroo court proceeding designed to remove him from the presidential
elections.
There
was no material evidence linking Lula to any crime. His conviction was based
on coerced plea bargain testimony by a single convicted criminal
named Leo Pinheiro, director of the OAS construction company, which built the
building where an apartment that featured in Lula’s case was located. Sentenced
to ten years and eight months for paying bribes to Petrobras Petroleum company,
Pinheiro originally testified that Lula had not committed any crime,
then changed his story twice, implicating Lula before having his sentence
reduced to two years and six months. His third and final story stated that Lula
had received free renovations on the beach-side apartment in exchange for
political favors.
Seventy-three
witnesses, including executives from the OAS company, testified that neither
Lula nor anyone from his family had ever owned or lived in the apartment.
Furthermore, a judge in Brasilia determined in January 2018, as part of a
different case, that the vacant apartment still belonged to OAS. The
prosecutors were unable to prove that the renovations had ever actually taken
place. Although Sérgio Moro had barred the press from visiting the site, the
MTST housing movement broke in and filmed a video which proved that,
contrary to prosecutors claims, the strikingly cheap-looking apartment had
never had any of the renovations listed by the prosecutors, including installation
of a private elevator and luxury appliances. The Lava Jato task force
prosecutors and Judge Moro were unable to prove that they had any
legal jurisdiction over a case involving an alleged crime in a different state,
São Paulo, which has its own court system, after they dropped an initial
frivolous charge alleging a connection between the apartment renovations and a
money-laundering scheme involving the Petrobras petroleum company. Finally, the
alleged renovations, which prosecutors were unable to prove ever took place, in
an apartment that they were unable to prove belonged to Lula, supposedly
happened three years after he left public office, meaning that it was
legally impossible to prove abuse of authority.
“Brazilians call him SuperMoro, chanting his
name on the streets of Rio de Janeiro as if he were a soccer star,” Time‘s
Bryan Walsh (4/21/16) reported.
When
Moro, who was declared a Time personality of the year in 2016
(4/21/16), declared Lula guilty of committing indeterminate acts of
corruption, Western corporate media made little to no mention of prosecutorial
misconduct, which was written about extensively in independent Brazilian media
and legal publications. Moro had broken the law on multiple occasions in his
zeal to put the former president behind bars. Using a legal
loophole dating back to the Inquisition that enabled him to both
oversee the investigation and rule on it, he ordered the Federal Police
to wiretap Lula’s defense lawyers. This enabled the prosecutors to map out
all possible moves by the defense and plan their reactions in advance. Moro
also illegally wiretapped President Dilma Rousseff, then illegally leaked
out-of-context audio to Brazil’s largest TV network on the eve of her
impeachment hearings. In 2017, US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco
bragged about informal communications with his friends in the Lava Jato
task force, which violates Brazilian law by bypassing security protocols.
There
was certainly enough information out there to suggest that Lula might be the
victim of a political witch hunt to keep him from becoming president. This is,
in fact, what the AFL-CIO, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Bernie
Sanders and 29 Members of Congress were all saying at the time.
However, no shadow of a doubt was allowed to fall over the proceedings in Anglo
media. In the New Yorker (7/13/17), Alex Cuadros gushed that
Lula’s conviction was “the most important criminal conviction in Brazil’s
history.” And the week of Lula’s arrest, the Guardian (4/3/18)
erroneously claimed that his conviction was connected to an “R$88 million graft
scheme” involving Petrobras that Judge Moro had specifically explained in
his ruling was not the case.
Behind
bars and (illegally) barred from speaking to the press, Lula continued to run
for president. Three months after he was arrested, he still led all
election polls, with double the support of his nearest competitor. Then the UN
Human Rights Committee issued a ruling, legally binding according to both
international and Brazilian law, stating that Lula had the right to run
for president. But as in the April 5, 2018, Supreme Court ruling, the judiciary
decided to make an exception to the law, specifically to bar Lula from the
campaign. Less than one month before the elections, the PT party was forced to
provide a replacement candidate.
All
things considered, the electoral results were better than expected. The PT
party remained the largest party in Congress and became the
party with the most governors. Last minute candidate Fernando Haddad made it to
the final round and received 47 million votes, but it was not enough.
The Intercept‘s revelations (6/9/19)
of judicial collusion were mentioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling that
ordered Lula da Silva’s release, but were often ignored in US media coverage of
his return to freedom.
Months
after Bolsonaro took office, the Intercept’s Glenn
Greenwald revealed thousands of hours of social media
conversations between Lava Jato prosecutors and Moro. They showed the
supposedly impartial judge giving instructions to the prosecutors, not only on
how to improve the accusations, but on how to conduct a media strategy to
commit character assassination against Lula. They exposed collusion with a
Supreme Court Justice to issue a gag order preventing Lula from speaking to the
press during the leadup to the 2018 presidential elections, in order to aid
Bolsonaro’s campaign. They showed Lava Jato prosecution task force leader
Delton Dallagnol praying to God that Bolsonaro would win the presidential
election. Most damning of all, perhaps, is the conversation conducted between
Dallagnol and the other prosecutors, only a few hours before the final trial,
revealing that they didn’t think they had any proof, but that Moro was
going to guarantee a conviction.
The
US Department of Justice announced in March 2019 that it was going to give
Dallagnol and his Lava Jato task force $682 million to open a privately
managed “anti-corruption” foundation in Curitiba. The money would come
from the $3.5 billion in fines that the DoJ and SEC collected in Lava
Jato’s process of bankrupting and dismantling Brazil’s largest
companies in the leadup to the 2016 legislative coup against
President Rousseff.
The
move was blocked by the Superior Justice Court, but it raised questions among
some US lawmakers about how deep the US government’s role went in Lava Jato. On
August 21, Rep. Hank Johnson (D.-Georgia) and 12 other members of
Congress delivered a letter to Attorney General William Barr
demanding answers to a series of questions about possible legal and ethical
violations committed by the DoJ during its partnership with Moro and Lava Jato.
One of the questions reads, “Did DoJ provide assistance with the collection or
analysis of evidence compiled by the Lava Jato Task Force and Judge Moro for
President Lula’s case?”
On
September 25, Rep. Raul Grijalva and 14 other members of Congress
introduced House Resolution 594, “expressing profound concern about
threats to human rights, the rule of law, democracy and the environment in
Brazil.” Moro is repeatedly criticized in the text of the resolution, which
mentions the Intercept leaks, and states that
Sérgio
Moro, the presiding judge in da Silva’s case, acted in a clearly biased manner
toward da Silva, violating his right to a fair and impartial judicial process under
Brazilian law.
One
might think that by now US corporate media would finally begin to question the
narrative that Lula is somehow guilty of corruption. Wouldn’t American readers
be interested in learning about the role their Justice Department played in
this process? Aren’t the leaked social media chats published by the Intercept relevant
to the story of Lula’s release, especially since they were mentioned in the
Brazilian Supreme Court ruling?
The New York Times (11/8/19)
waited until the 18th of 28 paragraphs to mention “questions about the fairness
of Mr. da Silva’s prosecution.”
Unfortunately,
since Lula’s release, none of the major corporate media outlets have mentioned
the US Department of Justice role in Lava Jato at all. Although a few papers mentioned
the Intercept revelations, they are reframed and rendered less
threatening to the narrative, presented in the context of “raising doubts among
some” about the investigation.
On
the day Lula was released, Bloomberg (11/8/19) ran an article
which does not mention illegal collusion between judge and prosecutors. It
states instead:
The
ex-president was convicted of corruption in 2017 and lost two appeals since
then, but he has not exhausted the entire process. He has repeatedly denied
wrongdoing and has said he’s victim of political persecution.
The Washington
Post’s first article (11/8/19) on Lula’s release also failed to mention the
corruption scandal which has enveloped Lava Jato, although it provided a link
to a previous article (6/17/19) on that subject.
In
two articles about Lula’s release, the BBC (11/9/19) likewise
ignored the illegal collusion between judge and prosecutors in Lava Jato.
On
the day Lula was released, the Guardian, whose Latin America editor
Tom Phillips wrote 22 articles normalizing Bolsonaro in October 2018
in the leadup to the elections, made the editorial decision to rerun
an AP article that makes no mention of the leaked social
media conversations. One day later, the Washington Post‘s Dom
Phillips (11/8/19), who was one of the biggest cheerleaders for
Lula’s political imprisonment in the international media, briefly mentioned
the Intercept revelations and Moro’s ethical problems in the
context of an article that misrepresented Lula’s conviction as being connected
to “money laundering,” and ended with an uncritical treatment of
other frivolous charges against the former president.
The New
York Times (11/8/19) mentioned the leaked audio messages, saying that
they “made clear, for instance, that Mr. Moro had actively advised prosecutors
on strategy in the case, conduct that legal analysts have called an ethical and
legal transgression,” then quoted Moro on the case and stated that he disputes
the idea that he acted improperly.
Despite
the evidence of Lula’s innocence and illegal persecution, with the cooperation
of the US DoJ, that removed him from the 2018 presidential elections,
establishment media cling to a false narrative that, while weakened by the
subsequent actions of current “Super Justice Minister” Moro, still attempts to
damage the public image of the most popular president in Brazilian history.
As
the smear campaign continues, it is important to remember that Lula represented
a social democratic national development project, in the tradition of what
Brazilians call desenvolvimentalismo, based on strategic control
over natural resources and their use to fund public services like health and
education, strong minimum wage policies and labor rights, increased access to
free public universities, and strong investment in scientific research. This is
the project that was dismantled after the 2016 coup, to the benefit of
corporations like Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Boeing. History shows that
every Brazilian president who ever tried to implement desenvolvimentalista policies—from Getúlio
Vargas, Juscelino Kubitschek and Jango Goulart to Rousseff
and Lula—has been subjected to a coup, political imprisonment
or assassination, with perennial suspicion of US involvement. And as
we see corporate media working to normalize the military coup in Bolivia (FAIR.org, 11/11/19),
it is clear that this problem is not limited to Brazil.
Bolivia:
Coup-Born Government Threatens Independent Journalists
Supporters of Bolivia's President Evo Morales carry Wiphala flags
as they block roads in El Alto, Bolivia, Nov. 15, 2019 | Photo: Reuters
Four Cuban officials
were also accused of demonstrating against a de facto regime headed by
Senator Jeanine Añez, who self-proclaimed president on Tuesday.
Independent journalists
who are covering protests in Bolivia were accused of carrying out "sedition"
by Communications Minister Roxana Lizarraga, who was paradoxically appointed by
a US-backed government that emerged from a coup d'etat against the socialist President Evo Morales.
"Law will be fully
enforced against those journalists or pseudo-journalists who are seditious,
whether they are nationals or foreigners," Lizarraga said and took the opportunity
to blame Cuba and Venezuela for the ongoing social unrest in Bolivia.
“They want to put us on
their knees,” she added and warned that the Interior Ministry already has a
list of the journalists who are stirring up resistance or rebellion against the
coup-born regime.
After these
announcements, four Cuban officials were arrested and accused of demonstrating
against the interim government headed by Senator Jeanine Añez, who
self-proclaimed president on Nov. 12.
According to identity
documents to which international journalists had access, however, the detainees
are cooperating technicians who are part of the Cuban Medical Brigade.
Physician Ramon Emilio,
economist Idalberto Delgado and electromedical engineer Amparo Lourdes are
currently being held at the Police Operations Tactical Unit (UTOP) in La Paz.
The fourth detainee's identity is not yet known.
The Organization of American States (OAS) is a coup plotter and
must answer for its complicity in kidnappings, torture, and deaths of Bolivian
citizens, who are resisting and denouncing Bolivia's coup d'etat that was
executed with interference from the U.S. Enough of media censorship! The
United Nations should disseminate information and intervene.
Despite the blockade
that mainstream media are making to what is happening in the Andean
country, expressions of international solidarity with the Bolivian people are
multiplying.
In Mexico City, for
instance, human rights defenders and social activists on Friday will hold a
rally in front of the U.S. embassy in rejection of the coup d'etat, which
is being consummated under the auspices of the Organization of American States
(OAS).
"We are all invited
to denounce the U.S. empire blatant interference in this country,"
the rally organizers said and added that the Bolivians will keep a
stubborn resistance against the racist oligarchy.
Bolivia:
9 Corpses in 24 hours Prove Dictatorship's Violence
Telesur, Nov. 15, 2019, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolivia-9-Corpses-in-24-hours-Prove-Dictatorships-Violence-20191116-0001.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=8
Teresa Zubieta, the Ombudsman's office delegate,
holds that 23 people have died amidst the coup d'etat.
Over the last 24 hours,
at least nine Bolivians have died as a result of repressive actions
carried out by the security forces that support the coup-based
government headed by Senator Jeanine Añez.
"23 people have
died since the coup. The most recent victims are four people shot
dead in La Paz and five in Sacaba," La Paz Ombudsman'
Office delegate Teresa Zubieta told teleSUR.
"They have killed
our brothers as if they were animals," Zubieta said and explained that
Añez's regime is generating "a setback of more than 30 years with
respect to the protection of people."
Judging by the
complaints filed before the Ombudsman's office, far-right paramilitary
groups have been activated to "repress and intimidate people even when
they are simply walking home from work."
Coup in Bolivia: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) condemned the Sacaba massacre. Five dead and dozens injured by the
repression. After the murder of five protesters, the IACHR reminded the
self-proclaimed president of her "obligation to ensure the right to life
and physical integrity of those who protest peacefully" and condemned the
"disproportionate use of police and military force."
As a consequence of the
prevailing institutional chaos, however, the figures on human rights violations
vary constantly.
Until Nov. 14, for
example, the Ombudsman's Office maintained that 536 people had been
injured and 12 people killed in the midst of intense repression against the
people who resist in the streets.
On the other hand,
according to the international news agency EFE, the conflict in Bolivia has
left at least 18 dead and more than 500 injured since the presidential
elections held on October 20.
Despite the evidence on
violence against Bolivians, the governments of the United States, the United
Kingdom and Colombia recognized the regime of Jeanina Añez as their direct
interlocutor.
While that was
happening, however, the governments of Uruguay, China and Russia have joined
the voices that forcefully reject the coup in Bolivia.
Bolivia: repressive forces at the service of Jeanine Añez killed 7
people. Amid the pain, the people shout: "Añez, murderer!"
In the midst of
the political crisis, the Senate on Thursday elected the Movement Towards
Socialism (MAS) Senator Monica Cota as its new president.
She will replace Ariana
Salvatierra, who was forced to resign on the weekend in which
the right-wing politicians also managed to press for President
Evo Morales' resignation.
By electing a new
president, the Senate attempts to rebuild the normal functioning of democratic
institutions amid the persecution and repression which the self-proclaimed
president Añez is leading.
11-16-19
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Following from mronline.org
(11-12-19)
The coup in Bolivia: five lessons
The Bolivian tragedy
eloquently teaches several lessons that our peoples and popular social and
political forces must learn and record in their consciences forever. Here, a brief
enumeration, on the fly, and as a prelude to a more detailed treatment in the
future.
Source
Evo Morales slams coup plotters for keeping up violence
“Mesa and Camacho,
discriminators and conspirators, will go down in history as racists and coup
plotters,” Morales said in a tweet early Monday morning.
Source
Following written before
Morales forced out of office
Bolivian President Evo Morales calls new presidential elections
Morales also called for calm
and peace amid opposition protests and mobilizations, which have turned
violent, against his victory in the Oct. 20 elections.
Bolivia on alert: Coup plot
underway!
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez
denounces destabilization campaign and violence.
END COLLECTION OF REPORTING AND
EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21
No comments:
Post a Comment