The Coup in Venezuela- Russia Redux?

Perusing social media, I came across a Russian commenting that in the US-backed coup in of 1991, when the Soviet Union was destroyed, there were also two presidents and two parliaments operating for a while.
I had never heard of this before. Back then, there was no social media, so people had no way of communicating horizontally with each other. We were forced to rely on the top down "news" handed down by the mainstream media, and, as I recall, they were full of enthusiasm for the destruction of the USSR. I do remember the photo of Yeltsin sitting on the tank that was shelling the Russian Parliament, but I don't remember the "news" reporting that hundreds of legislators were killed in that attack. There were no other reports of the resistance of the Russians to the destruction of their society, nor were there reports of the hundreds killed resisting. The deaths of millions of Russians from the ensuing neoliberal reforms and poverty were reported by our media as "life expectancy dropped dramatically in only one year", which is the most amazing spin possible for mass death. Russia is only now, 28 years later, recovering the population it had in 1991, before the coup.
We, the people, may not remember the destruction of the Soviet Union, but our ruling overlords surely do. After it was destroyed, US oligarchs moved into Russia and looted it for the entire decade of the 90s. The first thing they took was the gold, but they also went for oil, timber (wiping out forests in Siberia), factories and other resources. I do remember a story from the 90s talking about caviar, and how the Soviets had carefully harvested it, but that the new oligarchs had almost wiped out the sturgeons in Russia with their greed.
There can be no doubt that our oligarchs want to loot Venezuela in the same way.
The US has tried to bribe the military and the government functionaries of Venezuela for some time, (which is how they managed to take over the former USSR). The US has kept Colombia under its thumb, and the US military has been operating there for decades.
Why the increased attempts now? As I pointed out in a previous post Venezuela has switched selling oil in petrodollars, (which was the death sentence for Hussein and Ghaddafi), and became president of OPEC on Jan. 9th, with the stated goal of encouraging diversity in oil sales currency. Losing the petrodollar would mean the end of US imperialism, since the US relies on the resources and labor of countries around the world which must sell in dollars, in order to buy the oil that is necessary for almost all production and transportation on the planet.

Is this why Trump shut down the US government to get a border wall? Starting a war in Venezuela would create millions more refugees.

Is this why our rulers are cracking down so severely on social media? People sharing news, information and opinions freely, across borders, is a threat to their plans of destruction and conquest.

This article makes the case that the US has been moving to make it possible to attack Venezuela. They point out that FARC in Colombia was a hinderance to such a move in the past, but they have now been disarmed.

Of course, the US would prefer to have a 1991 Russian-type situation, in which Venezuelan traitors will self-destruct the country, and the US can in afterwards to scavenge its riches. We will see if that is possible.

The Covington Uproar

What happened in Washington, DC., (home of the Redskins football team, but we don't talk about that), last Friday?

A group of black religious cult members, a group of mostly white teenagers, and a Native American group of demonstrators were all present on a piece of public land.

There were words exchanged, and also some non-verbal communication (or miscommunication) going on, and after a couple of hours, the groups dispersed peacefully, with no blows being exchanged, and no police involved.

This could have as easily been spun as an example of a peaceful, multi-cultural learning exchange, instead of the spin the boys in the Media Control Room actually gave it, an incipient race war.

The viral picture could have been captioned with this- "Teenager smiles as he hears Native American music for the first time", just as easily. Then everyone would be saying "Aaahh, how sweet", instead of "Lock those kids in their school and burn it to the ground".

It just goes to show how easily we are manipulated.


I refuse to participate.

Why The US May Hestitate to Attack Venezuela Directly

This is an interesting article from 2 years ago, predicting that the US would not attack Venezuela militarily, because WMD sales might drop if the world saw that the US War Machine is not invincible.

They pretty much predicted the method the US would use to destroy the country instead, bribery and starvation. I'm thinking they nailed it.

"Should Venezuelan SAMs or fighters down American F-22 fighters or B-2 bombers it would be a disaster for the image of the American military and for the prestige of the country's arms industry...….Ultimately the risks to the United States' global power will likely prove far too great to risk testing Venezuela's military - and the United States will need to rely on covert means, support for opposition movements and economic sanctions should it seek to depose the Venezuelan government. Against the Venezuelan state, whose intelligence services are far from world leading and whose economy has proven fragile, military strikes to confront its advanced air defence forces appear to be the most difficult and by far the most risky means of bringing about regime change. So long as the country's air force and air defence capabilities remain in service therefore, U.S. military action against the country remains unlikely".

However, the risk to the petrodollar entailed with Venezuela's OPEC presidency may have prompted the US ruling class to decide to take the risk. We'll see what happens.

Venezuelan Coup

The USA, which refuses to let international monitors observe its elections, (because, as we all know, they are corrupt, restrictive and unaccountable), has accused Venezuela, (certified to have free and fair elections), of being "undemocratic", and is supporting a right wing coup. A 35 year old right winger swore himself to be president of Venezuela yesterday, and instead of facing world-wide ridicule and hysterical laughter, has been "recognized" as the "legitimate" leader by the US, and its usual lackeys, including Canada, the UK and France, along with the Latin American countries it has already managed to subdue, such as Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil, as well as the OAS.

This is an outrage, and all Americans should vehemently condemn the President, the Vice President and Congressional members who support it. You would think that the "Resistance", after years of crying about "foreign influence" in the US 2016 election ($45,000 worth of Facebook ads), would be in the forefront of finally "resisting" Trump for something more outrageous than incoherent tweets.
You would be wrong. The silence is deafening. Apparently, the McResistance is fine with election interference, regime change and coups, as long as the US is the country responsible.
Venezuela has been subjected to economic warfare and outright theft of its resources for years. Their Citgo refinery is located in Houston, Texas, and the US has confiscated an estimated billion dollars a year from the proceeds. The US also has maintained a blockade on consumer items in Venezuela, and supported the oligarchs in their attacks on the well-being of the 99% in Venezuela.

It takes a LOT of nerve for a country to steal billions of dollars, maintain a blockade, support terrorists and death squads, and then sanctimoniously proclaim that the ensuing scarcity and unrest are due to "socialism" and "governmental incompetence".

But no one can say that the US isn't magnificently able to commit enormous crimes while simultaneously presenting itself as the World's Greatest Policeman, righteously upholding law and order by smashing all attempts at alternative ways of living by people in other countries.

What I can't understand is why Americans fall for it, over and over. As Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out 51 years ago, the US was already the world's biggest purveyor of violence and was approaching spiritual death, back then. How can Americans, 51 years and millions of dead bodies and destroyed countries later, still cling to their self image of themselves as a force for good?

Meanwhile, Venezuela became president of OPEC on Jan. 9th, and presented plans designed to lessen the hold of the US on the world's economy, by breaking the stranglehold of the petro-dollar, which allows the US to control and exploit the rest of the world's labor and resources, since almost all industrial and transportation activity in the world depends on oil to function. All other countries must get the dollars they need for oil by selling their labor and/or resources for dollars, which allows the US to run endless deficits and live beyond its means.

Venezuela announced that it would push for an end to the petrodollar. They also announced that they want the billions of dollars the US has stolen from them, back.

"Another issue which Venezuela is due to promote in its new position as OPEC president is to push for oil payments in non-dollar currencies or in cryptocurrencies, such as Venezuela’s oil and mineral-backed Petro. As part of efforts to break dollar hegemony of the oil market, Venezuela now prices its oil in Chinese Yuan.
Likewise, Caracas will try to use its OPEC position to counter US-led financial sanctions which block Venezuela’s access to credit, debt restructuring, and other financial dealings, as well as prohibiting the return of over US $1 billion of profits a year from PDVSA’s US subsidiary CITGO. Independent analysts have estimated sanctions as costing the country over US $6 billion in lost oil revenue whilst President Maduro claims that they cost the country more than US $20 billion in general during 2018."

I assume that the US-backed coup yesterday was designed to put a stop to those plans. Remember that the attacks on and destruction of, Iraq and Libya, were precipitated by Saddam and Ghaddafi, respectively, announcing that they would sell their oil outside of the petrodollar.

We will now watch as the US tries to destroy Venezuela, as it did Iraq and Libya, while US citizens dither over the latest outrage that the Boys in the Control Room present to them in the media and ignore the pain, misery and death about to be unleashed on yet another targeted country.

Ebola in Pakistan?

I ran across a BBC article talking about an Ebola-like virus which had struck refuge camps in Pakistan, during the attack on Afghanistan in 2001.

That seems odd. How would an African virus find its way to refugee camps for Afghans driven from their homes by US bombs?

Remember in 2014, when we were all going to die from Ebola and the US insisted that the stricken countries accept US troops to fight the virus? I do. I was working in the ER in the middle of flyover country in the USA, but we still had to do drills and practice suiting up for when it hit us. Luckily, the affected countries managed to stop the spread with public health measures. (Who would've guessed that public health measures work better than troops, to stop the spread of disease? Maybe our leaders should take some lessons from Nigerian public health officials).

Stratfor also wrote about the virus, pointing out that "Victims of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) first manifest symptoms of the flu. The virus then quickly breaks down human tissue and prevents blood from clotting. As a result, the infected person "bleeds out," as blood pours from orifices while the body quite literally liquefies. "

But not to worry! "It is also unlikely that U.S. Special Forces and troops, which may be involved in possible operations in Afghanistan, are at risk of infection. Most of the troops already in the region have been deployed into Uzbekistan — on the other side of Afghanistan — and even if operations were conducted near at-risk areas, forces would still have to go into the camps themselves to be at danger."

They also casually mention that there were 30 cases in Kosovo earlier in 2001. Say what? How does an African virus manage to get to such remote places? Kosovo, of course, was where the US built a giant military base, Camp Bondsteel, (now a center of drug running of Afghanistan heroin. But, I'm sure that's just a coincidence) after destroying the nation of Yugoslavia in the 90s, culminating with the bombing of Serbia in 1999, only 2 years before the Ebola outbreak.
Odd that this deadly virus seems to turn up whenever targets of the US need to be removed. No doubt it is another coincidence.

Intellectual Property and the War on China

Tthe US is openly talking about war with China, and speculating on the possible outcomes. This article, written in 2016, under Obama, and updated this year, under Trump, links to a number of sources in, or advising, the US government on the rosy prospects of provoking China. Here is an example of the proposal of the Rand Corp. (on why a war with China could be limited to "over there" and not escalate to a nuclear war)….."However, even under such desperate conditions, the resort to nuclear weapons would not be China’s only option: It could instead accept defeat."
Well, then, that seems logical.

The current propaganda is that China is unfairly using the superior brains and technological development of the US to advance in their industrial capacity, especially in high tech areas, which is called "theft of intellectual property rights". (This is hilariously skewered in this satirical article, complete with pictures. )They were supposed to provide cheap labor, not to copy the products they were producing for US corporations.

Who made these rules? And when?

Humans have been around for 200,000 years, and the really big advances of our species are lost in the past, but I think that we can say with certainly that they were not subject to patent or copyright laws. Language, conquering fire, learning which plants were safe to eat and which were poisonous, how to make arrowheads and pottery, etc.

What's more, we know that human advances tend to come around the same time in different areas. And not just the most well-known ones, like electricity, cars and telephones either.

Human agriculture started around 10,000 years ago in places as far apart as Mesopotamia, China, Peru, Central America and India. I'm again going to say that no patents were involved.

Patents and copyrights came with capitalism, a couple of hundred years ago, in the capitalist countries. They were originally introduced as an economic benefit, for a limited time, to allow an inventor to be the sole beneficiary of any profits derived from the invention, or book, but then reverted to the commons for all to use.

That is how we get the stories of inventors in different countries coming up with the same ideas at the same time, but one making it to the patent office first, and the other one losing out on the profits. But the idea that only one human on the planet at a certain time can come up with an invention, and that one human can thereafter claim privileged rights to that invention from then on, is clearly wrong. And that idea is an American invention, as far as I can tell.

By WW2, the story of the brilliant individual who invents a better mousetrap, and deserves to profit from its manufacture, was already outdated. Most advances came from teams, and the really big advances came from government-funded research.

In the US, we the people fund the research, and then any brilliant advances are turned over to private corporations, and then we pay the corporations for what we funded. And we call that the Free Market. We are told that this is an infinitely superior system to the Chinese system, in which the government does not hand over free inventions to the private sector, and that we should therefore prepare for war. (Which our government paid Rand Corporation assures us will be good for our corporations, because Chinese trade will be severely impacted. Well, OK, then).

Most people know that microchips came from government research, but so did microwave ovens. Duct tape, GPS, radar, digital cameras, computers, Superglue, and the internet all came from government research, and now we pay corporations for them. Sometimes, we all told that the trillions we spend on the military is not wasted, because look at the great products we have gained from the research. Insulin pumps and epi-pens were also developed by the military and drug companies are profiting handsomely from that research, as well as other government-funded medical and drug research, which is turned over to the medical-industrial complex.

Corporate charters used to be as limited in time as copyrights and patents, with the proceeds reverting to common use when the charter was up (usually in 5-20 years). Corporations won the right to Eternal Life in the 1800s, and they are now working on keeping human knowledge and creativity as an unlimited source of profits. The Disney corporation is still managing to profit from the Mickey Mouse image, decades after its creator passed into the Great Freezer. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was passed, in part, to protect the profits of the Disney corporation.

Richard Dawkins invented the word "meme" in 1976 to explain how human knowledge passes, not through our genes, but throughout our societies, passed from person to person. (Apparently he didn't copyright the word).

We are now being programmed to believe that humans have no right to our common heritage of knowledge. Americans can (usually) see that copyrighting the song "Happy Birthday to You", sang for generations to our friends and families, but suddenly seized by the Warner corporation, is wrong. Most of us can see that patenting the neem tree, grown by Indians for centuries, who were then suddenly in violation of patent law for using it, is wrong. There were even people who tried to copyright the two words "Let's roll", when we were told that a passenger in one of the planes on 9-11 said those words, and others decided to profit from it.


Perhaps the push for not allowing "cultural appropriation" is part of the propaganda pushing the meme that an entire society can tell another society that they "own" entire categories. If tacos, dreadlocks and kimonos can be declared off-limits for anyone but those originating from the societies that are identified with them, so can cellphones, right? So how dare China make or improve on any electronic device, since electronic devices are strongly identified with the USA. Clearly, this is cause for war, right? Let's roll!

Or not.

Pompeo: Ignorant or Baldfaced Liar, or Both?

Secretary of State of the USA, Mike Pompeo, gave a speech at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, titled "A Force For Good". He spewed a lot of nonsense, but here are a couple of doozies....
"For those who fret about the use of American power, remember this: America has always been, and always will be, a liberating force, not an occupying power. We’ve never dreamed of domination in the Middle East."

"When the mission is over, when the job is complete, America leaves."

As someone pointed out, what is next? Does he go to Howard University and give a speech praising the benevolence of the slave holders?

Pompeo is fourth in line for the presidency and he is every bit as crazy as Mike Pence. From Wikipedia:

" In 1986 Pompeo graduated first in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point ....
In 1994, Pompeo received a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School where he served as one of 78 editors of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy ....
In September 2017, [then CIA head] Pompeo sought authority for the CIA to make covert drone strikes without the Pentagon's involvement, including inside Afghanistan.
During his confirmation hearing, Pompeo said that Russia "has ... invad[ed] and occup[ied] Ukraine, threatening Europe, and doing nearly nothing to aid in the destruction and defeat of ISIS"
[In 2017] ... Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service" and described founder Julian Assange as a narcissist, fraud, and coward.
"... we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now ....
In February 2016, Pompeo said Snowden "should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence".
In 2014, Pompeo told a church group that Christians needed to "know that Jesus Christ as our savior is truly the only solution for our world". In 2015 ... "politics is a never-ending struggle ... until the Rapture."

How did Pompeo graduate first in his class at West Point without taking military history or learning where US military bases are stationed?
The US attacked Spain in 1898, using the excuse that they were "freeing" the Cubans. The US still has a base in Cuba, 121 years later. While they were at it, they took Guam and the Philippines (which involved killing 3,000,000 resisting Filipinos). Still there.

And in every subsequent attack, of almost every subsequent country, the US has stayed, like roaches in a roach motel, never leaving, not just in the countries they attacked, but also the allied countries.
And they are now in every country in Africa, save one.

But, yeah, "a force for Good".

The Adults In The Room

The USA, which has announced that it is gearing up to fight wars with Russia AND China, is meeting with China in trade talks. At the same time, the US military is provoking China in the South China Sea, claiming that they are upholding a treaty that the US has not signed, to make sure that the Chinese don't shut off the trade routes that they use to ship their goods to the rest of the world. Cause that makes sense.

The Chinese responded with a beautiful statement showing that they refuse to take the bait.
"It is hard to determine if the US is using this provocation as a bargaining chip....If that is the case, the US' strong willingness to reach an agreement is abundantly clear."
I have never seen such a Pollyannish spin on a war provocation in my life, but I find it delightfully amusing. What if they gave a war and nobody came?

We have been told, with straight faces, that Mad Dog ("It's fun to shoot some people") Mattis is "the adult in the room" when it comes to the US government. It seems that the Chinese government has actual adults in the room, which is good for people interested in avoiding nuclear war.
The Chinese consistently refer to "win/win" solutions to conflicts, and speak of negotiating peaceful compromises.
In this statement they refer to the usual US position as "zero sum", but the actual US position is Full Spectrum Dominance. But it is clear that that policy is no longer viable, when other countries in the world have adults leading them, who refuse to bend over and allow the US to dominate them. It is time for the US to use diplomacy and compromise, instead of Smash and Grab.

Are there any actual adults in our government? I guess we'll find out.

War Preparations March On

From 1945 to 1991, the US military-industrial complex used the fear of the Soviet Union to gain Americans support for endless tax money being funneled to the War Machine.

In 1991, that abruptly ended, when the USSR dissolved, stopped central planning, and turned to the "free market" system that the US touted. (Their citizen's wealth was looted, they were thrown into destitute poverty and millions died...but they were 'free').

Americans, flush with the success and joy of destroying the Soviet Union, expected that the billions of dollars being spent on preparing for war, obviously being no longer necessary, could be used to take care of the needs of US citizens, instead. It was called the "Peace Dividend".

Ha, ha, joke is on you, Americans. The purpose of the military industrial complex is to enrich the war profiteers, not to "protect" you. If our ruling overlords were worried about US citizens being attacked by a foreign military, they would have some sort of civil defense system set up. There would be shelters to protect Americans. Instead, as Hawaiians learned in Jan. 2018, US "defense warnings" consist of them texting you that there are incoming missiles, and you should perhaps try to find some safe place to hide. You're on your own, though.

The US military attacked Iraq and Yugoslavia in the 90s, but those countries were pitifully unable to mount a strong defense, so a trillion dollar military was clearly not needed. What to do?

In 2001, the problem was solved, when non-state actors were said to have shut down the entire US military defense, hijacked 4 planes and destroyed, not just 3 skyscrapers in New York, but the actual headquarters of the entire US military, the Pentagon!, which was strangely as undefended as Hawaii in 2018.

Well, if spending trillions of dollars on the military for 60 years was worthless when the US was up against 19 young Arabs and their boxcutters, clearly there was only one solution! More money for the military, of course, to protect against "terrorists". Oh, and throw in a couple more trillion to set up a massive internal repressive apparatus for US citizens, while you're at it.

So, for the next 17 years, the US military was awash in money. They had so much money thrown at them that they lost track of 21 TRILLION dollars. Whoops!

Meanwhile, US citizens, "protected" by having their every communication spied upon, their movements recorded on camera, their police turned into an occupying military force, their bodies groped and their possessions x-rayed if they traveled, only sunk deeper into debt and/or poverty.

Last year, the Pentagon announced that they have changed their enemies again. They are going back to getting ready to attack Russia, but they have added China to the list of targets. Oh, and Iran and North Korea, because...why not?

You're never going to guess the problem! The Pentagon, which has had its budget more than doubled since 2001, and has lost more money than they officially have been given (and how does that happen?) is woefully underfunded, they tell us. It is SO sad, to have to limp along, scraping to get by, on $717 billion, especially when the money just keeps disappearing. Scary, scary Russia is spending almost as much as last year's budget increase, so clearly the US war machine is underfunded.


It's all been planned. It's right there in black and white. So any propaganda you hear against Russia or China or Iran or North Korea? They are just riffing on the general song, the Song of Perpetual War.

Alexander's Sword

The story of Alexander and the Gordian Knot is used to illustrate the idea that sometimes problems are too complex to be solved by picking at the strands, and it might be better to just cut it off and be done with it.

The US economy is said to be so intricate and complex that only Yale educated economists can understand it. Our role as citizens is just to keep working and paying taxes, while they run the thing.

If the economy worked for all citizens, that might be a wise thing to do, but how many Americans living on the streets and in doorways, how many hungry children, how many elderly fast food workers do we have to see before we realize that the economy is NOT working for us?


Odd that our media tells us that the leaders whose countries we are attacking still have the responsibility to their people to make sure that they are fed and housed, even as we drop bombs on them, but here in the good ol' USA, our leaders have no such responsibility at all to us. There is no one dropping bombs on us, but many parts of our cities look like they have been bombed. There is no one enforcing sanctions on us, but we still have millions going without basic health care. There is no naval blockade, but we still have hungry children.

In the meantime, when Wall Street crashed in 2008, the 1% went running to the government for help, and the government obliged. During Obama's entire presidency, the banks were handed $85 billion a MONTH, all of which was put on the taxpayer's tab. The federal debt soared to $21,000,000,000,000, to be paid off by American workers.

How are we supposed to come up with that kind of money, when even members of the working class who can actually find work are working for such low wages? Over half of US workers make less than $40,000/year, but we are supposed to pay off a 21 trillion dollar debt run up by those who fly their private jets to their multiple mansions to have lavish parties with other members of the global elite?


How, then, can we pay their debt? Oh, that's simple. Our ruling overlords have informed us that they will simply use our Social Security and Medicare funds, (which are separately billed from the federal income tax, to be used only for the stated purposes) to pay off their debt, while we tighten our belts.


Yes, those who have looted the public treasury, stripped and polluted public lands and waters, used the public military to attack and loot other people's countries, are now trying to take over the public pension and health care funds, to further enrich themselves.


Meanwhile, when it comes to maintaining the Empire, the sky is not the limit. They just raised the military budget (the announced part, not the Black Budget) to $712 billion, including projects to extend into space. There is never an outcry about austerity when it comes to bombing other people. Money is no object. Please note, though, the screams of outrage when Trump stopped the war games in Korea during the Olympics or announced that the US will leave Syria. (The occupation of 30% of Syria is so blatantly illegal that any other country would be ostracized for such a war crime of aggression). So, we can't afford health care, education or feeding children, because......where will the money come from? But, no one ever asks why we are dropping million dollar bombs on impoverished peasants if we are so broke?


No. That is enough. Sometimes, as with spoiled children, you have to set limits. Our overlords have run wild, destroying, killing and stealing, but those days are now over. That is, if Americans are smart enough and brave enough to set those limits.


We didn't run up the tab, we don't have to pay it. They can pay it, or declare bankruptcy. We don't need to keep the Wall Street gambling regime going in order to make sure that Americans are fed, housed and educated. Wall Street, the war machine, and the 1% are leeches on the economy, not the economy.


Soon, "the economy" will collapse, which means that the gambling debts will be too high for Americans to pay even the interest, and the banks and Wall Street will fail. At this point, they will throw everyone out of work, and intensify the stripping of public wealth for export.

Either we cut the Gordian Knot of debt, get rid of the leeches, and figure out a way to feed and house all Americans, or watch ourselves fall deeper into 19th century American poverty, (now playing in the 21st Century in Indonesia, for those who don't know what it looks like).