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Thread: Turmoil in Bolivia

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    Default Turmoil in Bolivia

    BREAKING: Evo Morales declares state of emergency in Bolivia because of coup attempt

    By Paul Antonopoulos FRN
    On Oct 23, 2019
    Latin America Bolivia Headline News


    The Bolivian government has called on the EU and the OAS to check the ballot box across the country following allegations of fraud [by the] opposition, which it called a “coup d’état” process.

    Bolivian President Evo Morales has denounced that his country is undergoing a coup d’état, coordinated by the right and with international support.
    “I report to the Bolivian people and the world in process a coup d’état that was prepared by the right with international support. I appeal to international organizations to defend democracy,” said the Bolivian leader.
    “We will not seek confrontation, but we will defend democracy,” he emphasized.
    Earlier, the president invited observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States to check “the ballot boxes across the country” one by one after his main opponent, Carlos Mesa, denounced vote counting fraud.
    According to Morales, he declared a state of emergency, albeit without defining its scope, while calling on society to respond peacefully, as well as calling on the international community to defend Bolivian democracy.

    Evo Morales won the first round elections with 46.86% of the votes, while his opponent Carlos Mesa won 36.74%.


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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Bolivia opposition contests election count as rival protesters & police clash in streets

    RT
    Tue, 22 Oct 2019 04:47 UTC


    Riot police use pepper spray on demonstrators during a protest in La Paz, Bolivia, October 21, 2019. © Reuters / Ueslei Marcelino

    Bolivian President Evo Morales is slated for victory in a highly contentious election after authorities issued a fresh vote tally, prompting claims of fraud from the opposition and chaotic protests across the country.

    Following a 24-hour pause in the vote count by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the agency updated its tally late on Monday - accounting for over 95 percent of the ballots - putting Morales just over the 10 percent lead needed to win and avoid a run-off election with rival Carlos Mesa. Morales is currently vying to serve an unprecedented fourth term as president under the Movement for Socialism Party.

    The previous figure - issued before the pause on Sunday with some 84 percent of the votes counted - suggested Morales was unlikely to secure the needed margin for victory, sparking allegations of fraud from the Citizen Community Party leader Mesa and his supporters, some of whom took to the streets to protest ahead of the final count.

    In videos posted online, opposition demonstrators could be seen setting fire to a TSE headquarters in Bolivia's capital of Sucre, while similar angry crowds were spotted burning election materials in the southern city of Tarija.

    Demonstrators also vandalized property elsewhere in the country.

    Earlier on Monday, thousands of opposition voters gathered outside a TSE building in La Paz to protest; police responded with tear gas.

    Slamming the updated result as "shameful," Mesa told reporters he believed citizens would not accept the outcome, after earlier accusing the government of "manipulation."

    "This government has created an impossible situation," Mesa said. "It's mocking the popular vote."

    The Organization of American States (OAS), a regional institution based in Washington, DC, also issued a statement noting "deep concern" and "surprise" at the sudden shift in the vote tally, adding "We hope that the result of the final calculation will adhere to the will of the voters expressed at the polls."




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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Lithium, a Strategic Resource: Here’s Why The US Wants To Break Bolivia To Bits With Hybrid War

    By Andrew Korybko Global Research,

    October 26, 2019
    Gpolit.com 26 August 2016




    Of relevance to the political crisis in Bolivia, first published by Global Research in August 2016

    So I was scanning Telesur’s website the other day and a pretty interesting story caught my eye. It said that Bolivia had begun exporting 10 tons of lithium to China as the start of what the country hopes will flourish into a multimillion-dollar partnership in the near future.

    The reason why this is such a big deal and I’m talking about it with you all is because lithium is an integral component of most of our cell phones and electric car batteries, and estimates vary over the size of Bolivia’s deposits, with the article saying that the government says it holds 70% of the global total, while the US retorts that this is just about 7%, or 10x less. Regardless of what the actual number really is, the fact that China – the factory of the world – is able to diversify its imports of this rare earth mineral strengthens Beijing’s supply strain security with this strategic commodity, and it also pairs well with the billion-dollar coltan investment that it made in the Congo a few months back and which I also covered at the time on Context Countdown. Taken together, China is positioning itself for dominance in the cell phone and electric car industries, which will make it a future leader in these industries.
    So what Bolivia is doing is very helpful for the emerging Multipolar World Order in general, and since we’re on the topic of the country’s contribution to geopolitics, it’s worthwhile including a few of its other projects that are just as helpful. Russia is deepening its cooperation with the Andean state in the oil, gas, and nuclear energy industries, and Russian representatives have said that they’re interested in military exports to the country and in boosting bilateral commercial trade. Furthermore, China and Bolivia have signed agreements on military cooperation too, particularly for Beijing to send it new armored personnel carriers which it just made good on a few weeks ago.
    Everywhere we turn, it seems, it looks like Bolivia is more and more becoming the latest joint project of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership in helping to construct a multipolar world, but precisely for that reason, we need to watch out for Hybrid War threats against the plurinational state, as Bolivia is officially called. These include the threat of foreign-provoked conflict between the 38 ethnic groups in the country, militarized labor unrest such as the mining strikes that are ongoing right now, transnational drug cartels that operate along the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders, a traditional Color Revolution, and the possibility of a ‘regime reboot’ campaign to promote the divisive Bosnification of Bolivia into an Identity Federation of quasi-independent statelets that the US could more easily divide and rule. Bolivia had better watch out, because the more that it bravely stands up to the US by embracing the multipolar leaders of Russia and China, the bigger the bullseye on its back becomes.


    The original source of this article is Gpolit.com
    Copyright © Andrew Korybko, Gpolit.com, 2019


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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Bolivia’s Boiling with Color Revolution Unrest

    By Andrew Korybko Global Research,
    October 31, 2019


    Featured image is from OneWorld

    The narrow re-election of long-serving Bolivian President Evo Morales earlier this month during the first round of voting has been exploited by his internal and external foes alike as the trigger event for inciting preplanned Color Revolution unrest in this lithium-rich landlocked socialist state.

    Bolivia’s boiling with Color Revolution unrest after the narrow re-election of long-serving President Evo Morales during the first round of voting earlier this month. The socialist leader is the only survivor of the “Pink Tide” that swept most of South America in the first decade of the 21st century but has since forcibly receded following the US’ covert continental-wide regime change operation colloquially referred to as “Operation Condor 2.0”. Morales’ landlocked country is geostrategically located in the South American heartland and is rich in the lithium that’s recently become an essential component in many modern-day gadgets that form the basis of contemporary society, hence why it’s been targeted for destabilization.

    Color Revolutions and the Hybrid Wars that they oftentimes lead to are commonly driven by the external exploitation of preexisting identity differences in diverse states, with Bolivia being no exception. The country is still mostly inhabited by its indigenous people, though severe socio-economic disparities exist within this demographic and between it and the non-indigenous minority, a state of affairs that was institutionalized for decades until Morales’ rise to power rectified this historic wrong and sought to promote equality among the population. The non-indigenous people are predictably much better off than the indigenous ones, and it’s they who historically formed the core of the anti-Morales opposition.

    It should also be said that they mostly reside in the eastern lowlands rich in gas while the indigenous population lives mostly in the highlands where lithium is mined, and the former have been vehemently against Morales’ wealth redistribution policies that they feel are unfairly depriving them of the revenue that they believe that they deserve from their natural resource sales. Their activism even briefly took the form of the “Media Luna” (half moon) quasi-separatist movement that might even be revived in the present day if the destabilization intensifies. Having said that, there are also some indigenous people who have turned against Morales for their own reasons, whether out of “leadership fatigue” or the Amazon rainforest fires.

    Returning to the present moment, this state of affairs made it relatively easy for external forces to encourage unrest after the latest election, especially since Morales’ campaign for a fourth term was previously denied after he narrowly lost a referendum on this issue a few years ago but was then eventually overturned by the courts that allowed him to run again. This backdrop seeded doubts about his legitimacy, which were watered by the brief pause in reporting the recent election results that ultimately found that he won 10% more votes than his closest opponent by a razor-thin margin and thus avoided a second round that could have seen the anti-Morales forces pool their efforts into collectively defeating him as was most probably planned in advance.

    It’s for this reason why the US and its regional vassals are doing everything that they can to discredit his latest re-election since they bet on the vote going to a second round where they believed that they had the best chance of “democratically” unseating him. The ethno-political and domestic regional context within the country makes it ripe for Color Revolution unrest, which serves the strategic goal of either overthrowing Morales or compelling him into cooperating with the US to the point of becoming yet another of its proxies in order to relieve the Hybrid War pressure that’s being increasingly put to bear on his country. The greatest obstacle to this plan, however, is that since Morales has many passionate supporters who would fight for his presidency.

    He’s done more than any leader in his country’s history to right the historical wrongs of ethno-regional inequality and finally bring dignity to Bolivia’s majority-indigenous population through his effective implementation of socialist policies, so millions of previously destitute people feel like they literally have everything to lose if he’s illegally deposed and the progress that he made over the past decade and a half is rolled back to the old days of neo-colonialism. Bolivia could therefore very well be on the path to civil war in the worst-case scenario, especially since opposition leader Carlos Mesa already declared that he won’t recognize the outcome of the OAS’ audit of the recent election, which strongly suggests that powerful forces are pushing him to provoke a Color Revolution that could rival the ongoing destabilization in Venezuela and ultimately dwarf the humanitarian crisis that it created by virtue of the landlocked country’s greater vulnerability to logistical disruptions.

    *
    Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

    The original source of this article is Global Research
    Copyright © Andrew Korybko, Global Research, 2019


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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    From https://aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/bolivia-leader-warns-bloodshed-opponents-vow-oust-191104024749454.html

    Bolivia's Morales warns of violence as opponents plan his removal
    3 Nov, 2019

    Interior minister also alleges a 'coup strategy' was under way as opposition calls for repeat of presidential vote.

    Morales is looking to remain in power until 2025 with a fourth term

    Bolivia's government has accused its rivals of plotting deadly violence against it after an opposition figure vowed to overthrow leftist President Evo Morales and called for the military's support.

    Deadly unrest has gripped the South American country since Morales was named winner of the October 20 election, giving him a fourth term.

    His opponents have branded the result a fraud and Carlos Mesa, who ran against Morales in the recent polls, has called for a new vote to be held.

    "We believe... that the best solution to this crisis in the current circumstances is a new election, administered by an impartial new (electoral body) and with rigorous observation of the international community," Mesa said on Sunday.

    Late on Saturday, a conservative opposition leader in the eastern Santa Cruz region threatened to drive Morales out.

    "He has 48 hours to step down, because at 7pm (23:00 GMT) on Monday, we are going to take decisive action right here and we are going to make sure that he goes," Luis Fernando Camacho told a gathering of supporters.

    He called on the military to "be on the side of the people".

    Morales responded by accusing his opponents of seeking bloodshed.


    Opposition presidential candidate Carlos Mesa accused President Morales on Sunday of pushing Bolivia to the limit

    "They want people to be killed by the police and the military," he said in a televised interview.

    Interior Minister Carlos Romero alleged a "coup strategy" was under way.

    He told reporters the government had intelligence "indicating that a violent confrontation is being prepared" for Monday night near the presidential palace in La Paz.

    "Whoever asks for military intervention is asking for blood and is asking for death," Romero said.

    History of coups

    Camacho did not specify what kind of action he had in mind. His supporters have previously taken over public buildings.

    The military has so far stayed neutral in the electoral dispute but calling on it to intervene is a delicate move in Bolivia.

    The country saw numerous military uprisings and dictatorships before civilian rule was established in 1982.

    Morales is looking to remain in power until 2025 with a fourth term.


    His election win was ratified by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal - but only after an abrupt and unexplained shift in the vote count in his favour.

    The Organization of American States is carrying out an audit of the vote but the opposition has rejected that as a distraction to help Morales hold on to power.

    Bolivia's constitution limits a president to two successive terms. But the constitutional court authorised Morales to stand for a fourth mandate.

    The court, like the election tribunal, is made up of members appointed by Morales's Movement for Socialism.

    The interior minister last week said two demonstrators had been killed in clashes. State authorities say 140 people have been hurt in the unrest.

    Unrest has also erupted in recent weeks in other Latin American countries, including neighbouring Chile and Ecuador where protesters are angry at rising inequality.

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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    ‘Military dictatorship style’: Bolivia’s Morales condemns takeover of state TV & radio stations (VIDEOS)

    RT
    10 Nov, 2019 02:50
    Updated 4 hours ago
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    Protest against Bolivia's President Evo Morales in La Paz, Bolivia, November 9, 2019. © REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

    Bolivian leader Evo Morales slammed attacks on state media that saw rioters forcing journalists to leave their offices unless they want them to be trashed. In a separate incident, a radio chief was tied to a tree.

    Bolivia TV (BTV) and Patria Nueva (RPN) radio stations were forced to cut off their broadcasts after a rowdy crowd of 300 protesters descended on their HQ in La Paz, effectively placing it under siege on Saturday.

    The demonstrators, reportedly enraged over the way the protests that have gripped the nation since mid-October are being portrayed by state media, demanded journalists vacate the premises if they do not want their offices to be raided.

    Forty employees of both BTV and RPN eventually caved in to the demands and left the building as they were heckled by chanting protesters.

    Patria Nueva director Ivan Maldonado said the journalists, who were vastly outnumbered by the protesters, “were evicted by force after receiving constant threats from people gathered outside.”

    In a comment to Sputnik, Maldonado stressed that the employees were taken hostage by the crowd.

    “Protesters surrounded our studios and held us captive for two hours, threatening to destroy our equipment... if we did not stop our journalistic work,” he said, noting that the station eventually went off air and resorted to playing music and films.

    The takeover was denounced by Morales on Twitter. The socialist leader noted that while the protesters say they have taken to the streets to defend democracy, their actions speak otherwise.
    “They say they defend democracy, but they are acting like dictatorial regimes”
    Morales also condemned what he called “a cowardly and savage attack” on a radio station run by a labor union – Unified Syndical Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) – of which Morales is a member.

    The station was overrun by a group of protesters on Saturday, who then tied its director, Jose Aramayo, to a tree. Videos and photos of the capture have been gaining traction on online, drawing backlash from Morales supporters.

    There have also been reports that the station’s offices were ransacked by the protesters.

    Tensions have been running high in Bolivia, with the opposition accusing the government of election fraud after Morales narrowly secured a 10-point lead against primary challenger Carlos Mesa in an October 20 general election, thus avoiding a runoff. Morales has denied allegations of tempering with the vote count, and invited the Organization of American States (OAS) to audit the results. The review is still underway.

    The protests sweeping across the country have been marred by violence. Footage emerged online Sunday showing the residence of Oruro city governor Víctor Hugo Vásquez engulfed in flames after protesters reportedly set fire to the building. The house was reportedly looted before it was ravaged by the blaze.

    The governor, who is an ally of Morales, has been moved to a safe place.

    In a statement on Saturday, the Armed Forces said that they wouldn’t confront people “to whom [they] have a duty.” There have been reports that some police and military were spotted marching along with the protesters.

    On Friday, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry denounced the servicemen who “abandoned their constitutional role” of protecting society and state institutions.

    See Twitters in Spanish at : https://www.rt.com/news/473061-boliv...s-state-media/
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Evo Morales Resigns From Bolivian Presidency Amid Calls From Military, Police

    Sputnik
    23:57 10.11.2019
    (updated 00:30 11.11.2019)


    © AP Photo / Juan Karita

    Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his resignation on Sunday after the nation's military and police urged the leader to step down amid ongoing violent protest across the Latin American country.

    Following the resignation of Morales, Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Marcelo García Linera also submitted his resignation.

    Morales, in his resignation speech, expressed hope that the turmoil and unrest across Bolivia would cease on Sunday evening.

    ​"My fight will continue, but I have an obligation to try to secure peace. It hurts that Bolivians are fighting with one another and it hurts that civil committees and leaders that have lost [in the election] are resorting to violence and confrontation among Bolivians. For this and many other reasons I am resigning and sending my letter of resignation to the Plurinational Legislative Assembly". Morales said.
    ​​Earlier on Sunday, the commander of the Bolivian armed forces, Williams Kaliman, urged President Evo Morales to step down to "bring peace and stability for the benefit of Bolivia". These demands were echoed by the nation's police chief Vladimir Yuri Calderon, who also called on the president to leave his post.

    Amid the ongoing political turmoil in the country prompted in part by opposition demands for a recount in the 20 October presidential election, unconfirmed reports circulated Sunday alleging that the former president's plane had requested a flight plan to Argentina.

    Protests in the country sparked after Morales secured a new term in a hotly-contested presidential election. Peaceful rallies quickly morphed into unrest following a heavy-handed police response and incidents of arson and looting, including offices of the state-owned media, increased.
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Journalist Amya Parampil commenting on the situation in Bolivia. She calls it a coup and provides details on the threats against Morales, members of his party and journalists.


    Quote Published on Nov 10, 2019
    The Grayzone's Anya Parampil took over an Al Jazeera interview to provide a point-by-point rebuttal of major myths surrounding the coup in Bolivia and placed the ouster of Evo Morales in proper historical context.
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Perhaps this is part of the story:

    Quote Ian56
    @Ian56789
    Flashback June 2019:

    Morales Announces Plans To Make Batteries For Export Instead of Exporting Lithium As A Raw Material, Adding GDP Growth & Wealth to Bolivia's Economy.

    Is this why the CIA plotted to overthrow him? CIA wants to keep Latin America POOR

    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/...0619-0009.html
    *I have loved the stars too dearly to be fearful of the night*

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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Bolivia Coup Led by Christian Fascist Paramilitary Leader And Millionaire - With Foreign Support

    Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton The Gray Zone
    Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:32 UTC



    Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.

    When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia's abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales's sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.

    With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country's Native heritage from government and "return God to the burned palace."

    "Pachamama will never return to the palace," he said, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. "Bolivia belongs to Christ."


    Far-right Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho in Bolivia’s presidential palace with a Bible, after the coup

    Bolivia's extreme right-wing opposition had overthrown leftist President Evo Morales that day, following demands by the country's military leadership that he step down.

    Virtually unknown outside his country, where he had never won a democratic election, Camacho stepped into the void. He is a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia's wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.

    Camacho hails from a family of corporate elites who have long profited from Bolivia's plentiful natural gas reserves. And his family lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the country's resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.

    In the lead-up to the coup, Camacho met with leaders from right-wing governments in the region to discuss their plans to destabilize Morales. Two months before the putsch, he tweeted gratitude: "Thank you Colombia! Thank you Venezuela!" he exclaimed, tipping his hat to Juan Guaido's coup operation. He also recognized the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, declaring, "Thank you Brazil!"

    Camacho had spent years leading an overtly fascist separatist organization called the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista. The Grayzone edited the following clips from a promotional historical documentary that the group posted on its own social media accounts:

    Quote Bolivia coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a rich oligarch and far-right cadre who emerged from Nazi-saluting fascist movements. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the US-backed Venezuela coup regime By @MaxBlumenthal and @BenjaminNorton

    143 replies 3,878 retweets 3,962 likes

    The Grayzone‏ @GrayzoneProject

    The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia's right-wing coup, Luis Fernando Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group. Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it published: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/ …

    10:02 PM - 11 Nov 2019
    89 replies 1,637 retweets 1,602 likes

    121 replies 1,025 retweets 1,028 likes
    While Camacho and his far-right forces served as the muscle behind the coup, their political allies waited to reap the benefits.

    The presidential candidate Bolivia's opposition had fielded in the October election, Carlos Mesa, is a "pro-business" privatizer with extensive ties to Washington. US government cables published by WikiLeaks reveal that he regularly corresponded with American officials in their efforts to destabilize Morales.

    Mesa is currently listed as an expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a DC-based think tank funded by the US government's soft-power arm USAID, various oil giants, and a host of multi-national corporations active in Latin America.

    Evo Morales, a former farmer who rose to prominence in social movements before becoming the leader of the powerful grassroots political party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), was Bolivia's first Indigenous leader. Wildly popular in the country's substantial Native and peasant communities, he won numerous elections and democratic referenda over a 13-year period, often in landslides.

    On October 20, Morales won re-election by more than 600,000 votes, giving him just above the 10 percent margin needed to defeat opposition presidential candidate Mesa in the first round.

    Experts who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia's publicly available voting data found no evidence of irregularities or fraud. But the opposition claimed otherwise, and took to the streets in weeks of protests and riots.

    The events that precipitated the resignation of Morales were indisputably violent. Right-wing opposition gangs attacked numerous elected politicians from the ruling leftist MAS party. They then ransacked the home of President Morales, while burning down the houses of several other top officials. The family members of some politicians were kidnapped and held hostage until they resigned. A female socialist mayor was publicly tortured by a mob.

    Following the forced departure of Morales, coup leaders arrested the president and vice president of the government's electoral body, and forced the organization's other officials to resign. Camacho's followers proceeded to burn Wiphala flags that symbolized the country's Indigenous population and the plurinational vision of Morales.

    The Organization of American States, a pro-US organization founded by Washington during the Cold War as an alliance of right-wing anti-communist countries in Latin America, helped rubber stamp the Bolivian coup. It called for new elections, claiming there were numerous irregularities in the October 20 vote, without citing any evidence. Then the OAS remained silent as Morales was overthrown by his military and his party's officials were attacked and violently forced to resign.

    The day after, the Donald Trump White House enthusiastically praised the coup, trumpeting it as a "significant moment for democracy," and a "strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua."

    Emerging From The Shadows to Lead a Violent Far-right Putsch
    While Carlos Mesa timidly condemned the opposition's violence, Camacho egged it on, ignoring calls for an international audit of the election and emphasizing his maximalist demand to purge all supporters of Morales from government. He was the true face of the opposition, concealed for months behind the moderate figure of Mesa.

    A 40-year-old multi-millionaire businessman from the separatist stronghold of Santa Cruz, Camacho has never run for office. Like Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó, whom more than 80 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of until the US government anointed him as supposed "president," Camacho was an obscure figure until the coup attempt in Bolivia hit its stride.

    He first created his Twitter account on May 27, 2019. For months, his tweets went ignored, generating no more than three or four retweets and likes. Before the election, Camacho did not have a Wikipedia article, and there were few media profiles on him in Spanish- or English-language media.

    Camacho issued a call for a strike on July 9, posting videos on Twitter that got just over 20 views. The goal of the strike was to try to force the resignation of Bolivian government's electoral organ the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). In other words, Camacho was pressuring the government's electoral authorities to step down more than three months before the presidential election.

    It was not until after the election that Camacho was thrust into the limelight and transformed into a celebrity by corporate media conglomerates like the local right-wing network Unitel, Telemundo, and CNN en Español.

    All of a sudden, Camacho's tweets calling for Morales to resign were lighting up with thousands of retweets. The coup machinery had been activated.

    Mainstream outlets like the New York Times and Reuters followed by anointing the unelected Camacho as the "leader" of Bolivia's opposition. But even as he lapped up international attention, key portions of the far-right activist's background were omitted.

    Left unmentioned were Camacho's deep and well-established connections to Christian extremist paramilitaries notorious for racist violence and local business cartels, as well as the right-wing governments across the region.

    It was in the fascist paramilitaries and separatist atmosphere of Santa Cruz where Camacho's politics were formed, and where the ideological contours of the coup had been defined.


    Cadres from the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC), the Bolivian fascist youth group that Luis Fernando Camacho got his start in

    Cadre of a Francoist-style Fascist Paramilitary
    Luis Fernando Camacho was groomed by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fascist paramilitary organization that has been linked to assassination plots against Morales. The group is notorious for assaulting leftists, Indigenous peasants, and journalists, all while espousing a deeply racist, homophobic ideology.

    Since Morales entered office in 2006, the UJC has campaigned to separate from a country its members believed had been overtaken by a Satanic Indigenous mass.

    The UJC is the Bolivian equivalent of Spain's Falange, India's Hindu supremacist RSS, and Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Its symbol is a green cross that bears strong similarities to logos of fascist movements across the West.

    And its members are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes.

    Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described UJC members as "racist" and "militant," noting that they "have frequently attacked pro-MAS/government people and installations."



    After journalist Benjamin Dangl visited with UJC members in 2007, he described them as the "brass knuckles" of the Santa Cruz separatist movement. "The Unión Juvenil has been known to beat and whip campesinos marching for gas nationalization, throw rocks at students organizing against autonomy, toss molotov cocktails at the state television station, and brutally assault members of the landless movement struggling against land monopolies," Dangl wrote.

    "When we have to defend our culture by force, we will," a UJC leader told Dangl. "The defense of liberty is more important than life."

    Armed members of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista

    Camacho was elected as vice president of the UJC in 2002, when he was just 23 years old. He left the organization two years later to build his family's business empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee. It was in that organization that he was taken under the wing of one of the separatist movement's most powerful figures, a Bolivian-Croatian oligarch named Branko Marinkovic.

    In August, Camacho tweeted a photo with his "great friend," Marinkovic. This friendship was crucial to establishing the rightist activist's credentials and forging the basis of the coup that would take form three months later.


    Camacho's Croatian Godfather And Separatist Powerbroker
    Branko Marinkovic is a major landowner who ramped up his support for the right-wing opposition after some of his land was nationalized by the Evo Morales government. As chairman of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, he oversaw the operations of the main engine of separatism in Bolivia.

    In a 2008 letter to Marinkovic, the International Federation for Human Rights denounced the committee as an "actor and promoter of racism and violence in Bolivia."

    The human rights group added that it "condemn[ed] the attitude and secessionist, unionist and racist discourses as well as the calls for military disobedience of which the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee for is one of the main promoters."

    In 2013, journalist Matt Kennard reported that the US government was working closely with the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee to encourage the balkanization of Bolivia and to undermine Morales. "What they [the US] put across was how they could strengthen channels of communication," the vice president of the committee told Kennard. "The embassy said that they would help us in our communication work and they have a series of publications where they were putting forward their ideas."

    In a 2008 profile on Marinkovic, the New York Times acknowledged the extremist undercurrents of the Santa Cruz separatist movement the oligarch presided over. It described the area as "a bastion of openly xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the former Spanish dictator Franco."

    The Bolivian Socialist Falange was a fascist group that provided safe haven to Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie during the Cold War. A former Gestapo torture expert, Barbie was repurposed by the CIA through its Operation Condor program to help exterminate communism across the continent. (Despite its antiquated name, like the German National Socialists, this far-right extremist group was violently anti-leftist, committed to killing socialists.)

    The Bolivian Falange came into power in 1971 when its leader, Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, ousted the leftist government of Gen. Juan Jose Torres Gonzales. The government of Gonzales had infuriated business leaders by nationalizing industries and antagonized Washington by ousting the Peace Corps, which it viewed as an instrument of CIA penetration. The Nixon administration immediately welcomed Banzer with open arms and courted him as a key bulwark against the spread of socialism in the region. (An especially ironic 1973 dispatch appears on Wikileaks showing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger thanking Banzer for congratulating him on his Nobel Peace Prize).

    The movement's putschist legacy persevered during the Morales era through organizations like the UJC and figures such as Marinkovic and Camacho.

    The Times noted that Marinkovic also supported the activities of the UJC, describing the fascist group as "a quasi-independent arm of the committee led by Mr. Marinkovic." A member of the UJC board told the US newspaper of record in an interview, "We will protect Branko with our own lives."

    Marinkovic has espoused the kind of Christian nationalist rhetoric familiar to the far-right organizations of Santa Cruz, calling, for instance, for a "crusade for the truth" and insisting that God is on his side.

    The oligarch's family hails from Croatia, where he has dual citizenship. Marinkovic has long been dogged by rumors that his family members were involved in the country's powerful fascist Ustashe movement.

    The Ustashe collaborated openly with Nazi German occupiers during World War Two. Their successors returned to power after Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia - a former socialist country that was intentionally balkanized in a NATO war, much in the same way that Marinkovic hoped Bolivia would be.


    German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler meets Ustashe founder Ante Pavelić in 1941

    Marinkovic denies that his family was part of the Ustashe. He claimed in an interview with the New York Times that his father fought against the Nazis.

    But even some of his sympathizers are skeptical. A Balkan analyst from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, which works closely with the US government and is popularly known as the "shadow CIA," produced a rough background profile on Marinkovic, speculating, "Still don't know his full story, but I would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude's parents are 1st gen (his name is too Slavic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sympathizers fleeing Tito's Communists after WWI."

    The Stratfor analyst excerpted a 2006 article by journalist Christian Parenti, who had visited Marinkovic at his ranch in Santa Cruz. Evo Morales' "land reform could lead to civil war," Marinkovic warned Parenti in the Texas-accented English he picked up while studying at the University of Texas.

    Today, Marinkovic is an ardent supporter of Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, whose only complaint about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was that he "didn't kill enough."

    Marinkovic is also a public admirer of Venezuela's far-right opposition. "Todos somos Leopoldo" — "we are all Leopoldo," he tweeted in support of Leopoldo López, who has been involved in numerous coup attempts against Venezuela's elected leftist government.

    While Marinkovic denied any role in armed militant activity in his interview with Parenti, he was accused in 2008 of playing a central role in an attempt to assassinate Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party allies.

    He told the New York Times less than two years before the plot developed, "If there is no legitimate international mediation in our crisis, there is going to be confrontation. And unfortunately, it is going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians."

    An Assassination Plot Links Bolivia's Right to International Fascists
    In April 2009, a special unit of the Bolivian security services barged into a luxury hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two others remained on the loose. Four of the alleged conspirators had Hungarian or Croatian roots and ties to rightist politics in eastern Europe, while another was a right-wing Irishman, Michael Dwyer, who had only arrived in Santa Cruz six months before.

    The ringleader of the group was said to be a former leftist journalist named Eduardo Rosza-Flores who had turned to fascism and belonged to Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic cult that emerged under the dictatorship of Spain's Francisco Franco. In fact, the codename Rosza-Flores assumed in the assassination plot was "Franco," after the late Generalissimo.

    During the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croatian First International Platoon, or the PIV, in the war to separate from Yugoslavia. A Croatian journalist told Time that the "PIV was a notorious group: 95% of them had criminal histories, many were part of Nazi and fascist groups, from Germany to Ireland."

    By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to crusade on behalf of another separatist movement in Santa Cruz. And it was there that he was killed in a luxury hotel with no apparent source of income and a massive stockpile of guns.

    The government later released photos of Rosza and a co-conspirator posing with their weapons. Publication of emails between the ringleader and Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who served as a double agent for the CIA, cemented the perception that Washington had a hand in the operation.


    Rosza and Dwyer with their arms cache in Bolivia

    Marinkovic was subsequently charged with providing $200,000 to the plotters. The Bolivian-Croatian oligarch initially fled to the United States, where he was given asylum, then relocated to Brazil, where he lives today. He denied any involvement in the plan to kill Morales.

    As journalist Matt Kennard reported, there was another thread that tied the plot to the US: the alleged participation of an NGO leader named Hugo Achá Melgar.

    "Rozsa didn't come here by himself, they brought him," the Bolivian government's lead investigator told Kennard. "Hugo Achá Melgar brought him."

    The Human Rights Foundation Destabilizes Bolivia

    Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had founded the Bolivian subsidiary of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an international right-wing outfit that is known for hosting a "school for revolution" for activists seeking regime change in states targeted by the US government.

    HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of the late Venezuelan oligarch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen Hellum. The first cousin of the veteran Venezuelan coup plotter Leopoldo Lopez, Halvorssen was a former college Republican activist who crusaded against political correctness and other familiar right-wing hobgoblins.

    After a brief career as a firebrand right-wing film producer, in which he oversaw a scandalous "anti-environmentalist" documentary financed by a mining corporation, Halvorssen rebranded as a promoter of liberalism and the enemy of global authoritarianism. He launched the HRF with grants from right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel, conservative foundations, and NGOs including Amnesty International. The group has since been at the forefront of training activists for insurrectionary activity from Hong Kong to the Middle East to Latin America.

    Though Achá was granted asylum in the US, the HRF has continued pushing regime change in Bolivia. As Wyatt Reed reported for The Grayzone, HRF "freedom fellow" Jhanisse Vaca Daza helped trigger the initial stage of the coup by blaming Morales for the Amazon fires that consumed parts of Bolivia in August, mobilizing international protests against him.

    At the time, Daza posed as an "environmental activist" and student of non-violence who articulated her concerns in moderate-seeming calls for more international aid to Bolivia. Through her NGO, Rios de Pie, she helped launch the #SOSBolivia hashtag, which signaled the imminent foreign-backed regime-change operation.

    Courting The Regional Right, Prepping The Coup

    While HRF's Daza rallied protests outside Bolivian embassies in Europe and the US, Fernando Camacho remained behind the scenes, lobbying right-wing governments in the region to bless the coming coup.

    In May, Camacho met with Colombia's far-right President Ivan Duque. Camacho was helping to spearhead regional efforts at undermining the legitimacy of Evo Morales' presidency at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, seeking to block his candidacy in the October election.


    Camacho with Colombian President Ivan Duque in May

    That same month, the rightist Bolivian agitator also met with Ernesto Araújo, the chancellor of Jair Bolsonaro's ultra-conservative administration in Brazil. Through the meeting, Camacho successfully secured Bolsonaro's backing for regime change in Bolivia.

    This November 10, Araújo enthusiastically endorsed the ouster of Morales, declaring that "Brazil will support the democratic and constitutional transition" in the country.

    Then in August, two months before Bolivia's presidential election, Camacho held court with officials from Venezuela's US-appointed coup regime. These included Gustavo Tarre, Guaido's faux Venezuelan OAS ambassador, who formerly worked at the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.

    After the meeting, Camacho tweeted gratitude to the Venezuelan coup-mongers, as well as to Colombia and Brazil.

    Mesa and Camacho: a marriage of capitalist convenience
    Back in Bolivia, Carlos Mesa occupied the spotlight as the opposition's presidential candidate.

    His erudite image and centrist policy proposals put him in a seemingly alternate political universe from fire-breathing rightists like Camacho and Marinkovic. For them, he was a convenient front man and acceptable candidate who promised to defend their economic interests.

    "It might be that he is not my favorite, but I'm going to vote for him, because I don't want Evo," Marinkovic told a right-wing Argentine newspaper five days before the election.

    Indeed, it was Camacho's practical financial interests that appeared to have necessitated his support for Mesa.

    The Camacho family has formed a natural gas cartel in Santa Cruz. As the Bolivian outlet Primera Linea reported, Luis Fernando Camacho's father, Jose Luis, was the owner of a company called Sergas that distributed gas in the city; his uncle, Enrique, controlled Socre, the company that ran the local gas production facilities; and his cousin, Cristian, controls another local gas distributor called Controgas.

    According to Primera Linea, the Camacho family was using the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee as a political weapon to install Carlos Mesa into power and ensure the restoration of their business empire.

    Mesa has a well-documented history of advancing the goals of transnational companies at the expense of his own country's population. The neoliberal politician and media personality served as vice president when the US-backed President Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada provoked mass protests with his 2003 plan to allow a consortium of multinational corporations to export the country's natural gas to the US through a Chilean port.

    Bolivia's US-trained security forces met the ferocious protests with brutal repression. After presiding over the killing of 70 unarmed protesters, Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami and was succeeded by Mesa.

    By 2005, Mesa was also ousted by huge demonstrations spurred by his protection of privatized natural gas companies. With his demise, the election of Morales and the rise of the socialist and rural Indigenous movements behind him were just beyond the horizon.

    US government cables released by WikiLeaks show that, after his ouster, Mesa continued regular correspondence with American officials. A 2008 memo from the US embassy in Bolivia revealed that Washington was conspiring with opposition politicians in the lead-up to the 2009 presidential election, hoping to undermine and ultimately unseat Morales.

    The memo noted that Mesa had met with the chargé d'affaires of the US embassy, and had privately told them he planned to run for president. The cable recalled: "Mesa told us his party will be ideologically similar to a social democratic party and that he hoped to strengthen ties with the Democratic party. 'We have nothing against the Republican party, and have in fact gotten support from IRI (International Republican Institute) in the past, but we think we share more ideology with the Democrats,' he added."



    Today, Mesa serves as an in-house "expert" at the Inter-American Dialogue, a neoliberal Washington-based think tank focused on Latin America. One of the Dialogue's top donors is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department subsidiary that was exposed in classified diplomatic cables published on Wikileaks for strategically directing millions of dollars to opposition groups including those "opposed to Evo Morales' vision for indigenous communities."

    Other top funders of the Dialogue include oil titans like Chevron and ExxonMobil; Bechtel, which inspired the initial protests against the administration in which Mesa served; the Inter-American Development Bank, which has forcefully opposed Morales' socialist-oriented policies; and the Organization of American States (OAS), which helped delegitimize the Morales's re-election victory with dubious claims of irregular vote counts.

    Finishing The Job
    When Carlos Mesa touched off nationwide protests in October by accusing the Evo Morales government of committing electoral fraud, the right-wing firebrand hailed by his followers as "Macho Camacho" emerged from the shadows. Behind him was the hardcore separatist shock force that he led in Santa Cruz.

    Mesa faded into the distance as Camacho emerged as the authentic face of the coup, rallying his forces with the uncompromising rhetoric and fascist symbology that defined the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista paramilitary.

    As he declared victory over Morales, Camacho exhorted his followers to "finish the job, let's get the elections going, let's start judging the government criminals, let's put them in jail."

    Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Trump administration released an official statement celebrating Bolivia's coup, declaring that "Morales's departure preserves democracy."


    Full article with more picture and Twitter videos at: https://www.sott.net/article/423819-...reign-Support#
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Another view on Trump's successful Bolivian coup.

    November 13, 2019

    Top Bolivian coup plotters were School of the Americas grads, served as attachés in FBI police programs

    Commanders of Bolivia’s military and police helped plot the coup and guaranteed its success. This investigation reveals that they were educated for insurrection through notorious US military and FBI training programs.
    By Jeb Sprague


    The U.S. played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November 10.

    Just prior to Morales’ resignation, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces Williams Kaliman “suggested” that the president step down. A day earlier, sectors of the country’s police force had rebelled.

    Though Kaliman appears to have feigned loyalty to Morales over the years, his true colors showed as soon as the moment of opportunity arrived. He was not only an actor in the coup, he had his own history in Washington, where he had briefly served as the military attaché of Bolivia’s embassy in the US capital.

    Kaliman sat at the top of a military and police command structure that has been substantially cultivated by the US through WHINSEC, the military training school in Fort Benning, Georgia known in the past as the School of the Americas. Kaliman himself attended a course called “Comando y Estado Mayor” at the SOA in 2003.

    At least six of the key coup plotters were former alumni of the infamous School of the Americas, while Kaliman and another figure served in the past as Bolivia’s military and police attachés in Washington.

    Within the Bolivian police, top commanders who helped launch the coup have passed through the APALA police exchange program. Working out of Washington DC, APALA functions to build relations between U.S. authorities and police officials from Latin American states. Despite its influence, or perhaps because of it, the program maintains little public presence. Its staff was impossible for this researcher to reach by phone.

    It is common for governments to assign a few number of individuals to work at their country’s embassies abroad as military or police attachés. The late Philip Agee, a one-time CIA case officer who became the agency’s first whistleblower, explained in his 1975 tell-all book how US intelligence traditionally relied on the recruitment of foreign military and police officers, including embassy attachés, as critical assets in regime change and counter-insurgency operations.

    As I found from the more than 11,000 FOIA documents I obtained while writing my book on the paramilitary campaign waged in the lead up to the February 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected government and the post-coup repression, U.S. officials worked for years to ingratiate themselves and establish connections with Haitian police, army, and ex-army officials. These connections as well as the recruitment and information gathering efforts eventually paid off.

    In Bolivia, too, the role of military and police officials trained by the US was pivotal in forcing regime change. U.S. government agencies such as USAID have openly financed anti-Morales groups in the country for many years. But the way that the country’s security forces were used as a Trojan Horse by US intelligence services is less understood. With Morales’s forced departure, however, it became impossible to deny how critical a factor this was.

    As this investigation will establish, the coup plot could not have succeeded without the enthusiastic approval of the country’s military and police commanders. And their consent was influenced heavily by the US, where so many were groomed and educated for insurrection.

    Leaked audio exposes School of the Americas grads plotting a coup

    Leaked audio reported on Bolivian news website la época (and by elperiodicocr.com and a range of national media outlets) reveals that covert coordination took place between current and former Bolivian police, military, and opposition leaders in bringing about the coup.



    The leaked audio recordings show that former Cochabamba mayor and former presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa played a central role in the plot. Reyes happens to be an alumni of WHINSEC (the School of the Americas [SOA]) who currently resides in the US.

    The other four who are introduced or introduce themselves by name in the leaked audio are General Remberto Siles Vasquez (audio 12); Colonel Julio César Maldonado Leoni (audio 8 and 9); Colonel Oscar Pacello Aguirre (audio 14), and Colonel Teobaldo Cardozo Guevara (audio 10). All four of these ex-military officials attended the SOA.

    Cardozo Guevara, in particular, boasts about his connections amongst active officers.

    The identities of these individuals are confirmed by cross-checking the data of the Schools of Americas Watch lists of alumni with Facebook and local Bolivian news articles and the leaked audio recordings.

    The School of the Americas is a notorious site of education for Latin American coup plotters dating back to the height of the Cold War. 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.

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    A protest vigil outside the School of the Americas at Fort Benning


    For many years, anti-war protesters have staged a protest vigil outside the SOA’s headquarters at the Fort Benning military base near Columbus, Georgia.

    The leader of those protests, Father Roy Bourgeois, has described the SOA as: “a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call counter insurgency warfare. Who are the insurgents? We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers, they become the insurgents, they’re seen as El Enimigo, the Enemy. And they are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.”

    Bourgeois was deported from Bolivia in 1977 when he spoke out against the human rights abuses of Gen. Hugo Banzer, a right-wing dictator who rose to power through a US-backed coup that toppled a leftist government. History repeats itself today as Banzer’s ideological heirs drive another socialist leader from power through time-tested destabilization tactics.

    In the recently leaked audio recordings, coup plotters discuss plans to set ablaze government buildings, get pro-business unions in the country to carry out strikes, as well as other tactics – all straight out of the CIA playbook.

    Also alluded to in the leaked audio is that the coup attempt would be supported by various evangelical groups as well as by Colombian President Iván Duque, ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, and most notably Brazil’s neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro.

    The plotters also mention the strong support of ultra-right U.S. senators Bob Menéndez, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, who is said to have the ear of U.S. President Donald Trump when it comes to U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.

    Military and Police Attachées in DC: A breeding ground for U.S. intelligence networking

    As tensions built over recent weeks, it was the Commander General of the Bolivian Police, Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal, who broke the stalemate by leading large parts of the police force to revolt on November 9th, just a day prior to the resignation of Morales.

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    Then-Col. Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal (third on the left) with other APALA officials in 2018.

    In 2018 Calderón Mariscal served as President of Police Attachés of Latin America in the United States of America (APALA), which is based in Washington DC.

    APALA has been described as a “multidimensional security” program that works to build relations and connections between U.S. authorities and police officials from many of the Organization of American States members.

    At APALA’s founding in 2012, then-OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza (center in photo below) met with the group’s leadership.



    Today APALA hosts police attachés from ten countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

    According to its Facebook page, the group “was created, with the objective of generating, promoting, and strengthening ties of solidarity, friendship, cooperation and support between the members of the group and their families through social, cultural activities, which allow to generate integral development.”

    It claims to be facilitating the “integration and exchange of the police institutions that comprise it, in addition to promoting the exchange of successful experiences developed by the different police forces of Latin America.”

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    Photo of Calderón Mariscal (center-right) at the FBI training academy that is 36 miles outside of Washington, DC


    A mysterious organization, APALA has shut down its website www.ApalaUSA.com and does not answer phone calls. It functions in some capacity as an arm of U.S. federal agencies as its social media platform and now defunct website showcase numerous meetings and photos of APALA officials and participants alongside FBI, DEA, ICE, and other U.S. officials.

    As Philip Agee explained in his book Inside the Company, the CIA often uses other U.S. government agencies such as the FBI and USAID, as well as various front-organizations, to carry out its clandestine activities without leaving fingerprints.

    Below: APALA participants at the FBI headquarters in Washington DC



    One of APALA’s key local members is Alex Zunca, a police officer in Baltimore, who is the Director of International Affairs for the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association which is based in Washington, DC.

    APALA’s street address listed on its now defunct website is the same address as the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC. The group was apparently run out of the Mexican Embassy, at least between 2017 and 2018 when its website was active during the administration of the US friendly former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

    Interestingly, a colleague of Calderón Mariscal’s and also a former President of APALA is an Associate Minister of the Federal Police of Mexico named Nicolás González Perrin.

    Below, he can be seen seated beside a Mexican national flag and an FBI hat.
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    In a 2017 interview with the Washington Hispanic, a DC-based Spanish language newspaper, González Perrin declared “that APALA holds meetings, permanently, with the most significant federal agencies in the United States, ‘from INTERPOL to DEA, ICE and the FBI, who work with us, based on mutual needs.’”

    Another important APALA participant is Hector Ivan Mejia Velasquez, the former General Commissioner of Honduras’s National Police, who has led brutal operations against protesters in his own country, and regularly posts anti-leftist screeds on social media.



    Calls to APALA’s public contact Alvaro Andrade Sejas went unanswered. My messages to his number, which is listed as being located in Rockville, Maryland, went straight to a voicemail stating that it was restricted.

    Andrade’s Linkedin profile states that he is based in Panama and is the CEO of an ATM system and the chief executive officer of a group that specializes in giving advice on computer hacking.

    Click image for larger version

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    Previously, Andrade was an advisor for an Ecuadorian based group working in forensic information and focusing on “computer crimes and computer intelligence”, and prior to that he worked for the telecommunications company Nuevatal PCS of Bolivia as its chief information security officer.

    Between 1998 and 2002 he attended Bolivia’s Military School of Engineering.

    APALA – whose Facebook page Andrade appears to operate – has worked with other Bolivian police officials as well, such as another one of Bolivia’s Police Attaché’s Heroldina Henao.



    The other key official that helped to bring about the November 10th coup is General Williams Kaliman, the current head of Bolivia’s military. He served as a Military Attaché for his country’s embassy in Washington D.C. in 2013. A decade prior (as previously mentioned) he took part in training at the SOA. Little is known about his time in the United States.

    At different times both Kaliman and Calderón Mariscal appear to have either been loyal to or feigned loyalty to the constitutional government, but ultimately split from it or were convinced over time to carry out a military putsch.

    For his part, deposed President Morales has claimed that a member of his own security team was offered $50,000 to betray him.

    The November 10 coup d’état did not materialize out of thin air. Events that have transpired inside Bolivia are intimately connected to U.S. efforts to influence military and police forces abroad through programs like SOA and APALA.

    While U.S. President Donald Trump cheers on a “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” Bolivians are suddenly under the control of de facto military regime.


    Jeb Sprague
    Jeb Sprague is a Research Associate at the University of California, Riverside and previously taught at UVA and UCSB. He is the author of “Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the transnational capitalist class” (Temple University Press, 2019), “Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti” (Monthly Review Press, 2012), and is the editor of “Globalization and transnational capitalism in Asia and Oceania” (Routledge, 2016). He is a co-founder of the Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism. Visit his blog at: http://jebsprague.blogspot.com
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Indigenous people in Bolivia are protesting the coup:



    Quote Sarah Abdallah
    @sahouraxo
    Wow!

    The Indigenous people of #Bolivia - who make up 70% of the country’s population - are marching en masse against the illegal ouster of Evo Morales.

    But this footage won’t be on the likes of CNN/BBC because the Western media refuses to call it a coup.
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Media Support for the CIA Coup in Bolivia

    By Stephen Lendman Global Research,

    November 14, 2019



    Without establishment media support, US planned aggression, color revolutions, old-fashioned coups, and other hostile to peace, equity and justice actions wouldn’t get out of the starting gate.

    Propaganda support is crucial, manipulating the public mind. Media operate as gatekeepers, proliferating the official narrative, suppressing vital hard truths essential for everyone to know.

    Orwell called it “reality control,” substituting managed news misinformation and disinformation for truth-telling.

    Discussing the coup in Bolivia, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said the following:
    Bolivian “(a)rmy generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup,” adding:

    “And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia. No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup,”
    concealing reality, exclusively reporting state-approved propaganda, saying the following:
    NYT: An “infuriated population” was angry about “election fraud” — ignoring Bolivia’s free, fair and open process, Evo Morales elected and reelected four times.

    Fox News falsely called his government a “full-blown dictatorship” — ignoring Bolivian democratic rule under his leadership.

    When establishment media refer to a “coup,” Morales and his government are falsely accused of the made-in-the-USA plot to topple him.

    FAIR: “The New York Times did not hide its approval at events, presenting Morales as a power-hungry despot who had finally ‘lost his grip on power,’ ” adding:
    Removing him from office marked “the end of tyranny.”
    CNN highlighted the Big Lie of “election fraud,” proving again why it’s the most distrusted name in so-called television news.

    Across the board, establishment media suppressed how Morales was “forced (from office) at gunpoint by the military,” FAIR stressed.

    CBS News falsely said Morales resigned over “election fraud and protests.”

    FAIR: “Delegitimizing foreign elections where the ‘wrong’ person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media.”

    FAIR: “No mainstream outlet warned its readers (or viewers) that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments.”

    USAID earlier said the organization “promotes US interests in the Western hemisphere, countering the influence of” sovereign independent governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia under Morales.

    The same script followed the US 2016 presidential election, establishment media furious about Trump’s triumph over Hillary.
    Russiagate and Ukrainegate scams are all about wanting him delegitimized and weakened for winning an election he was supposed to lose.

    Over-entertained, uninformed Americans are so out of touch with reality they’re easy to fool no matter how many times they were duped before.

    Famed imperial state critic Gore Vidal once said:
    “We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.”
    Noted oral historian Studs Terkel responded to Vidal, saying:
    “Gore, it’s not the United States of Amnesia. It’s the United States of Alzheimer’s.”
    Information passes through the public mind like water through a sieve — understanding something today, erased from memory when new or dissimilar information replaces it.

    Vidal railed against establishment media, calling them “bandits,” adding “(t)he infantilizing of the republic is one of the triumphs of American television.”

    “Everybody with an IQ above room temperature is onto the con act of our media. They are obeying bigger, richer interests than informing the public—which is the last thing that corporate America has ever been interested in doing.”

    Commenting on the nation’s ruling class, Vidal said he was “around (its members) all (his) life,” stressing his awareness of “their total contempt for the people of the country” — serving their own interests exclusively, supported by dominant media.

    In its latest edition, the NYT falsely claimed self-declared, unelected, coup d’etat president in Bolivia Anez aims “to reconstruct democracy.”

    Like other establishment media, it failed to explain that toppling Morales was all about eliminating democratic rule under his leadership, wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing him.

    The Times and likeminded media support what demands denunciation. No election “fraud” occurred as falsely reported.

    General Carlos Orellana Centellas replaced Williams Kaliman as Bolivian military chief, both officials and other key ones in their chain of command trained at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA.

    According to Bolivia’s Ombudsman’s Office, street violence since October 20 resulted in eight deaths, over 500 injuries, and hundreds arrested.

    On Wednesday, Telesur reported that “legitimate” Senate President Adriana Salvatierra “was violently assaulted by the police as she was trying to enter the Senate on Wednesday in order to comply with the constitutional rule that automatically proclaims the head of the upper chamber the Interim President when the President steps down, after Evo Morales was forced to resign on Sunday.”

    During a Wednesday press conference, she said that she’s ready to convene parliament and assume the presidency as constitutionally mandated, adding:

    “After the attack, we can observe that we have no guarantee for us to fulfill our legislative mandate.” Separately, she tweeted:
    “#Bolivia | Senate President Adriana Salvatierra was assaulted and her entrance to the senate was blocked by police officials and coup supporters.”
    Telesur tweeted:
    “After a violent attack by coup supporters and police, Bolivian President of the Senate suffered minor injuries, but she was not able to go back to work and fulfill her mission at congress.”
    On Wednesday, Pompeo issued a statement, expressing support for Bolivia’s coup d’etat president Anez, saying:
    The Trump regime “applauds (her) for stepping up…to lead her nation through this democratic transition” — what the CIA orchestrated coup went all out to eliminate.
    In response to events in Bolivia, the anti-imperial Black Alliance for Peace expressed solidarity with its population, urging that “people of conscience in the West join us to defeat the US/EU/NATO Axis of domination for the good of humanity,” adding:
    “People of Bolivia, you are not alone.”
    Note: On November 16, anti-imperial demonstrations are planned in Washington, New York, and other US cities against the CIA orchestrated coup in Bolivia — in coordination with similar actions abroad.

    They’re all about wanting legitimate Bolivian President Evo Morales restored to the office he democratically won.

    *

    Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

    The original source of this article is Global Research
    Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2019
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    While out and about on Tuesday I heard on the radio that Morales had been denied airspace by several countries while on his way to asylum in Mexico.

    Evo Morales Endures Banned Airspace During Flight to Mexico

    Evo’s odyssey: Morales endures banned airspace, unplanned pit stop during flight to political asylum in Mexico

    12 Nov, 2019 17:14

    Former Bolivian President Evo Morales has landed safely in Mexico, but his journey to political asylum had twists and turns as neighboring states reacted to the ongoing turmoil back home.

    After landing in the North American country Morales said that Mexico saved his life and vowed to continue in politics as long as he is alive. He also told reporters that his home in Bolivia has been ransacked along with his sister’s house.

    The Mexican Air Force aircraft ferrying Morales to safety made a stop in Paraguay to refuel on Tuesday, after reportedly being denied permission to land in Peru. The plane had been allowed to refuel in Peru on its way to fetch Morales, suggesting that the Peruvian government had a change of heart due to the aircraft’s political cargo.

    Initial reports claimed that Chile and Brazil had refused to allow Morales’ aircraft to pass over their airspace, but flight tracking enthusiasts noted that the plane was allowed to fly across Brazil on its way to Mexico.

    Also, Mexico’s foreign minister said that another country which denied permission for the plane to land and refuel, and also fly over its airspace was Ecuador.

    Despite the setbacks, Morales appears to be upbeat. One photograph shows him holding up a Mexican flag on board the plane delivering him to political asylum, while another photo is of Morales waving to the camera as he prepares to leave Paraguay for his final destination.



    Mexico’s foreign ministry said it had decided to take in Morales for humanitarian reasons. According to Foreign Minister Marcelko Ebrard, Morales’ “life and physical integrity” were at risk in his home country. Bolivian opposition leaders had claimed that police and the military were looking to capture the former president – but the country’s police chief later dismissed these reports.

    It’s believed that several Bolivian officials, including former Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and Senate President Adriana Salvatierra, may also have traveled with Morales – but the Mexican government has declined to comment on these reports.

    Morales said in a tweet announcing his departure that he was grateful to the Mexican government and its people for granting him asylum to “defend our lives” – and that he would soon return to Bolivia.

    It hurts to leave the country for political reasons, but I will remain vigilant. Soon I will return with greater strength and energy.

    Morales resigned on Sunday after leading Bolivia for more than a decade, following what many have described as a military coup in the country. The Bolivian president had called for fresh elections as a way to avoid conflict over accusations of fraud stemming from a close presidential race in October. However, the announcement did not placate the opposition, which took to the streets to demand his immediate resignation. Shortly after, Bolivia’s military chief called on Morales to step down.
    Last edited by Franny; 14th November 2019 at 18:49.
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Manufacturing consent is easy when you have digital media:



    Quote FAIR
    @FAIRmediawatch
    ·
    16h
    "There are 3612 accounts that participated in #BoliviaNoHayGolpe and have between zero and one follower. And the most scandalous thing is there are 4492 accounts that were created between yesterday and today to participate in the HT."

    https://www.telesurenglish.net/amp/n...mpression=true
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Let me see if this cast fits:

    This is a nearly fascist, racist suppression of indigenous people by Conquistadors.

    This is at the same time that lithium might as well be the "new oil" due to batteries, and Bolivia provides about 70% of global supply, and nationalizing the industry and trading to China is not in the plans of the strong arm. Tesla stocks have skyrocketed since the coup. Pachamama or the remarkable achievement of the 2009 Constitution will essentially be erased.

    Kutirimunapaq is Right to Return or a piece of music for Bolivian herbalists before they go hiking for medicine, in hopes they make it back successfully. As it has served them, may it serve the country as a whole:



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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    OAS official names the ouster of Morales a coup:



    Quote Ben Norton

    @BenjaminNorton
    Even the ex OAS chief admits there was a coup in Bolivia:

    "There was gonna be a second round and they launched a coup... When the military tells a president to resign, that's a coup, certainly"

    Current OAS chief Almagro, a US puppet, refuses to say this http://www.nanduti.com.py/2019/11/18...stado-bolivia/
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    10 years in 7 days: Bolivia reverses Morales policies quickly under Jeanine Áñez

    FRN
    By Paul Antonopoulos
    Last updated Nov 20, 2019


    LA PAZ – The self-proclaimed president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, has completed seven days in office. The interim government, which claims to have the sole purpose of calling for new elections, has already modified domestic legislation and foreign policy in the Andean country.

    The de facto government that took power in Bolivia following the fall of Evo Morales on November 10, in only seven days and adopted measures that substantially modify the character of the policies of the Bolivian state.

    Carte blanche for military and police
    While the international community called for moderation and an end to repression of protesters, Bolivia’s de facto government issued a decree authorizing the military and police forces to suppress the population and exempt them from further trial.

    “Members of the Armed Forces participating in operations for the restoration of order and public stability shall be exempt from criminal liability when, in the performance of their constitutional functions, they act in self-defense or in a state of necessity,” the decree states.

    Break with Venezuela
    One of the first pronouncements of the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez was about Venezuela. The president acknowledged the government of her self-proclaimed colleague Juan Guaidó as “president in charge” and, via Twitter, invited him to appoint an ambassador in Bolivia.
    “I thank the President (in charge) of the Republic of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, for the recognition of my government. As constitutional president of Bolivia I invite you to designate a new Venezuelan ambassador to Bolivia, who will be recognized immediately by our government,” Áñez wrote in Twitter.
    At the end of her first week in office, Áñez went further and decided to break Bolivia’s diplomatic relations with Venezuela. Bolivian Foreign Minister Karen Longaric has accused the Venezuelan diplomatic mission of “intervening in the internal affairs” of her country and is considering expelling the diplomats from the country.

    Withdraws from ALBA and UNASUR
    On Friday, the interim government decided to make other significant changes in Bolivian foreign policy. Minister Longaric announced Bolivia’s withdrawal from the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA) and the group’s Trade Treaty, which includes Venezuela and Cuba. The ALBA was created in 2005 as a response to the North American Free Trade Area (FTAA) project.

    The minister also removed the country from UNASUR, the South American regional organization created in 2004, based in Quito. UNASUR was the subject of controversy for creating a South American Defense Council, which played a decisive role in the Colombian decision to deny the US the right to build a military base on its territory in 2009.

    Laic State?
    In 2009, Bolivia undertook a comprehensive constitutional reform that defined the state as multi-national and secular. The reference to Catholicism as an official state religion was removed and the constitution established that “the state is independent of religion.”

    However, the self-proclaimed president took office with a Bible in hand, stating that “He [God] allowed the Bible to re-enter the presidential palace.” The issue is very relevant to the country, whose ethnic, linguistic and religious composition is very heterogeneous.

    Prison for opponents
    Although the interim government’s stated goal is to call elections, the interim president has already stated that she will not allow Evo Morales to be a candidate in the next election. Not only Evo, who is in exile, but other leaders of his party, the MAS, are at risk of being excluded from the electoral process.

    The threats came mainly from de facto government minister Arturo Murillo, who on November 14 announced the beginning of a “hunt” against former MAS minister Juan Ramón Quintana.

    “Whoever rebels from tomorrow, take care of himself,” Murillo threatened, adding that he would create a special division in the prosecution to arrest MAS leaders who, according to the interim government, incite the protests.

    At the same time, the interim president noted that the participation of the MAS, which holds the majority in both houses of the Bolivian parliament, is not assured in the upcoming elections, and that it would be up to the Supreme Electoral Court to decide “whether or not to rejoin the elections.”

    Bolivia has entered a series of political crisis after the opposition failed to acknowledge the results of the October presidential election , published by the Supreme Electoral Court, the same body to which Áñez will now entrust the ruling on President Evo Morales’s party.
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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    Hervé, I just want to stop and thank you for all your efforts to help us keep abreast of major world events and agendas, and for having the wisdom and discernment to find and present supporting materials that are factual and grounded in reality (as opposed to the MSM poopstorm of propaganda), and taken from a sane, anti-imperialist/pro-citizen perspective. Brilliant and tireless work.

    You're a gem, brother!


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    Default Re: Turmoil in Bolivia

    He's lucky he got out and found refuge in Mexico, persons associated with him and his administration who are still in Bolivia are in danger of being rounded up.

    A million galaxies are a little foam on that shoreless sea. ~ Rumi

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