Bolivia: Post-Coup Update
Eric Zuesse
With every passing day, it becomes clearer that the military coup in Bolivia on November 10th was masterminded in Washington DC.
This reality will create yet a new difficulty in relations between the U.S. regime and Mexico to its direct south, because the Mexican Government, under progressive President Lopez Obrador, took the courageous and very meaningful step of providing refuge to the U.S.-couped Bolivian President Evo Morales and therefore posed overtly a resistance to the U.S. dictatorship.
Unlike the US itself, which has abandoned the substance of democracy while adhering to its fascist Supreme Court’s interpretations (distortions) of the original intent of the Founding Fathers in their US Constitution, Bolivia’s imposed regime isn’t even nominally legitimate in any democratic sense, because it has abandoned that country’s Constitution, ever since it grabbed power.
One of the first indications that this was another U.S. coup was that on November 10th, the New York Times, which along with the Washington Post is one of the regime’s two main mouthpieces, refused to call it a “coup” at all, though it obviously was.
Headlining on November 10th with the anodyne “Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down”, they lied and alleged that “Mr. Morales was once widely popular” — as if there were any objective measures, such as polls, which indicated that he no longer was.
Their concept of ‘democracy’ was like that of fascists everywhere: violent mob actions against a democratically elected Government. “Angry mobs attacked election buildings around the country, setting some on fire.” Far-right mobs are ‘democracy to ‘journalists’ such as at the New York Times.
The next day, November 11th, that fascist ‘news’-paper headlined an editorial “Evo Morales Is Gone. Bolivia’s Problems Aren’t.”
Here is how they expressed their contempt for democracy:
“When a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done.”
‘Bolivians’ — meaning there that extreme-rightist minority of Bolivia’s electorate. The NYT even had the gall to say contemptuously:
Predictably, Mr. Morales’s left-wing allies across Latin America, including President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, President-elect Alberto Fernández of Argentina and President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, joined by the British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, cried ‘coup’.”
Britain’s BBC, on November 11th, was considerably more circumspect in their anti-democratic propaganda: for example, in this video, at 13:00, the BBC asks “Why are so many of the people out there on the streets now then do you think [demonstrating against Morales]?” and the respondent didn’t say that this is the way practically every CIA coup is done.
So, the desired implication was left with gullible viewers, that this was an expression of democracy instead of the expression of a fascist mob.
It was left to governments which are resisting U.S. rule to express more honestly, as the Turkish Government’s more honest propaganda-organ, the newspaper Yeni Safak, did finally on November 17th, “Bolivia’s Morales was overthrown by a Western coup just like Iran’s Mosaddeg”. Their columnist Abdullah Muradoğlu wrote:
There are indications that the U.S. was involved in the ousting of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in a military coup.
Secret talks between American senators and Morales’ opponents were brought up before the elections on Oct. 20. The talks, which were leaked to the public, discussed action plans to destabilize Bolivia if Morales won the elections.
It was stated that the Evangelical Church would support the coup attempt. The fact that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known as “Tropical Trump”, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are passionate Evangelicals, points to the ideological link to the Evangelical architects of the Bolivian coup. …
Bolivia has abundant resources of tin, copper, silver, gold, tungsten, petroleum and uranium, as well as large quantities of lithium. Lithium is a strategic mine for space technology.
Morales became the target of a pro-U.S. military coup, and policies aimed at allocating the country’s resources to the poor rather than a small group played an important role in his demise. …
But it wasn’t only foreign news-media but also a very few honest alternative-news media which were reporting the realities. For example, on November 11th, The Gray Zone headlined “Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support”.
The next day, on November 12th, Moon of Alabama’s anonymous blogger bannered “Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia” and he summarized the popular democratically elected and re-elected overthrown leader Evo Morales’s enormously successful record of leadership there, such as:
During his twelve years in office Evo Morales achieved quite a lot of good things:
Illiteracy: 2006 13.0% – 2018 2.4%
Unemployment: 2006 9.2% – 2018 4.1%
Moderate poverty: 2006 60.6% – 2018 34.6%
Extreme poverty: 2006 38.2% – 2018 15.2%
It’s no wonder, then, that Morales is so popular in Bolivia.
Then, further about the fascist character of the U.S.-imposed regime, Mint Press News headlined on November 18th, “Media Silent as Bolivia’s New Right-Wing Gov’t Massacres Indigenous Protesters”.
On November 19th, Peoples Dispatch bannered “Hatred of the Indian. By Álvaro García Linera”, and presented a statement by Linera, who was Morales’s Bolivian Vice President. He opened:
Almost as a nighttime fog, hatred rapidly traverses the neighborhoods of the traditional urban middle-class of Bolivia. Their eyes fill with anger. They do not yell, they spit. They do not raise demands, they impose. Their chants are not of hope of brotherhood. They are of disdain and discrimination against the Indians.
They hop on their motorcycles, get into their trucks, gather in their fraternities of private universities, and they go out to hunt the rebellious Indians that dared to take power from them.
In the case of Santa Cruz, they organize motorized hordes with sticks in hand to punish the Indians, those that they call ‘collas’, who live in peripheral neighborhoods and in the markets. They chant “the collas must be killed,” and if on the way, they come across a woman wearing a pollera [traditional skirt worn by Indigenous and mestizo women] they hit her, threaten her and demand that she leave their territory.
In Cochabamba, they organize convoys to impose their racial supremacy in the southern zone, where the underprivileged classes live, and charge – as if it were a were a cavalry contingent – at thousands of defenseless peasant women that march asking for peace. They carry baseball bats, chains, gas grenades. Some carry firearms. …
On November 26th, the Libya 360 blog headlined “Bolivia: they are killing us, comrades!” and reported:
We are receiving audios all the time, from different parts of Bolivia: Cochabamba, El Alto, Senkata, La Paz… They bring desperate cries from women, from communities that resist with dignity, under the murderous bullets of the military, police, and fascist groups armed by the oligarchies with the support of Trump, Macri, and Bolsonaro.
They also bring voices that denounce, voices that analyze, voices that organize, voices that are in resistance. There are weeping voices that are remade in slogans. The united peoples will never be defeated!
The racist, fascist, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist coup d’etat seeks to put an end to all these voices, silence them, erase them, make them inaudible.
The communicational fence seeks to crush and isolate the words of the people. The conservative, capitalist restoration, goes for lithium, goes for the jungle, goes for bad examples.
The voices continue to arrive. New spaces of communication are generated. The social and family networks, the community radio stations, the home videos made from cell phones are functioning by the thousands. It is heartbreaking to hear bullets.
To see their journey through the flesh, invading the bodies that rise from all humiliations. It generates anger, impotence, indignation, rage. …
On the same day, that same blog bannered “The People Will Not Allow the Coup in Bolivia, says Venezuelan Ambassador”. This opened:
One of the first ‘promises’ made by the self-proclaimed, de-facto government of opposition senator Jeanine Áñez was to “hunt down” ex-minister Juan Ramón Quintana, Raúl García Linera – brother of vice-president Álvaro García Linera -, as well as the Cuban and Venezuelan people that live in Bolivia.
The threat was publicly declared by the interior minister Arturo Murillo, designated by Áñez.
Later on, the communications minister of the de facto government, Roxana Lizárraga, accused Cuban and Venezuelan diplomats of being responsible for the violence unleashed in the country.
The statements came after an attack on the Venezuelan diplomatic office in La Paz on November 11. Armed paramilitaries surrounded the embassy with explosives and threatened to invade the building.
However, the aggression did not begin with the coup. According to Crisbeylee González, who served as the Venezuelan ambassador in Bolivia for more than 10 years, since 2008, the embassy has suffered threats from the organizations in opposition to Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera.
During the days of tension, Crisbeylee, who is also a personal friend of Morales, decided to protect her team and she returned to her country.
On November 17, the Venezuelan diplomatic staff, made up of 13 functionaries and their family members, flew with the Venezuelan state company Conviasa from La Paz to Caracas.
Upon returning to her country, the ambassador spoke to Brasil de Fato and denounced the terror she suffered in the last couple of days.
Brasil de Fato: How did you all take the news that you would have to leave the country? Was there any hostility before the coup?
Crisbeylee González: For a while now, the opposition has talked about a “Chavista bunker” referring to the Venezuelan embassy, where we would supposedly be “ideologically orienting” the Bolivian people’s movements and youth. They even talked about us supposedly exerting pressure on Evo so that he would not abandon the socialist, Bolivarian proposal.
There were always certain times when the xenophobia increased, especially during elections. Every time that there were elections or a coup attempt, the principal target is always of course president Evo Morales but right after that, it’s the Venezuelan embassy. The diplomatic mission has always been an element that must be combated.
Since 2012 when there was a coup attempt by the police, they began to say that our embassy carried out military training with the Bolivians. A very similar discourse to what was created in Chile against the Cubans during the rule of Salvador Allende.
And with this, they were able to create a strong expression of xenophobia within the Bolivian middle classes against Venezuelans. The media also helped to create this adverse discourse against Venezuelans.
In these past couple of days [since the coup], one of the first things that they did was to say that the Venezuelans had to leave and that they were going to attack the Venezuelans. Before the elections on October 20, they already talked about attacking the embassy.
The next day, on November 27th, they headlined “The U.S. Launches Itself in the Most Violent Way Imaginable to Definitively Seize Bolivia”. They…
…interviewed Argentine sociologist Atilio Boron, one of the most internationally renowned political analysts today, so that in just three questions he can give us his vision of the crisis Bolivia is going through.
How would you characterize the coup d’état in Bolivia?
Without a doubt, the coup d’état in Bolivia is part of the tradition of the old military coups sponsored by the United States since the end of World War II. However, this practice dates back even further, as the history books show us.
That means that the soft coup that was applied against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, Lugo in Paraguay and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, has been abandoned and the old formulas have returned. In Bolivia, the old formulas were applied, because in reality there was no possible propagandistic basis for the coup.
There was no fraud in Bolivia and therefore the OAS avoided using that expression, instead making euphemistic recommendations.
Furthermore, recent studies from the United States convincingly prove that such fraud did not exist.
The University of Michigan study (which is the most important center for electoral studies) confirms this. However, the coup plan was not going to stop in the face of these details. They wanted to get Evo out and take revenge.
It was a very clear lesson against those Indians who, as they did in 1780, revolted against the Spanish viceroyalty. Somehow what is happening now is a replay of Túpac Katari’s deed. The scenarios have changed and imperialism is different, but the essence is the same.
And now, as yesterday, it is being repressed with unprecedented ferocity. …
On November 28th, Peoples Dispatch and Libya 360 simultaneously headlined “Bolivia: What Comes After the Coup?” and opened:
It has been over two weeks since the coup d’état which forced the resignation and exile of President Evo Morales and Vice-president Álvaro García Linera. Since then, thousands of working-class and Indigenous Bolivians have been resisting on the streets the coup and the illegitimate government of Jeanine Áñez.
They have been met with extreme violence from the Armed Forces and the National Police, over 30 have been killed, hundreds injured and hundreds have been arrested.
On Monday night, a new agreement was announced reached between the de facto government of Áñez and the legislators from the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) to hold elections in the country in the next 3-4 months.
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Marco Teruggi, an Argentine sociologist and journalist who spent several weeks in Bolivia before and after elections were held in order to understand the agreement reached on elections and the state of resistance in the country.
Peoples Dispatch: Starting with the most recent, what do you think about the agreement that MAS made with the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez? Did they have another option? Was there enough force on the streets and in the Assembly to achieve anything else?
Marco Teruggi: The first thing to keep in mind is that in the design of the coup d’état, from the beginning, the possibility of an electoral solution was always contemplated in order to gain legitimacy.
If you had to arrange it in steps, there is the first step which is the overthrow, a second step which is the creation of a de facto government, and all of this accompanied by persecution, repression and massacres. The third moment is the call for elections and the fourth moment is when the elections themselves happen.
This was always proposed in the basic design, it was never about an old-style coup d’état where a de-facto government is installed for an undetermined amount of time, but precisely part of its presentation was to show itself as a democratic process, recognized internationally, under the condition that later they would go to elections.
It was always expected, the question was in what moment, with what conditions, both for the coup supporters and for those who are confronting it. In this sense, this issue was being discussed in the Assembly, where MAS has a majority, and as they had been announcing, they gave the OK for an agreement, in law, to call for elections, wherein the results of the elections of October 20 are also annulled.
I think that just as it was clear that the coup strategy counted with an electoral resolution to legitimize itself, it also was clear early on that the strategy of the MAS legislators was to hold these elections in the most favorable conditions possible.
Basically that MAS could present itself in the elections, which it achieved, and with guarantees for Evo, not to participate, but to prevent political-juridical persecution.
And also the retreat of the soldiers, for them to return to their barracks, and that the decree which exempts them from penal responsibility in operations of “re-establishing order” is withdrawn.
As such, it is not surprising that MAS has said yes to the elections because it was not going to be possible to remove Áñez through street pressure, even though the actions on the streets conditioned the initial strategy of the coup.
It is very important to keep this in mind because otherwise, one could think that MAS proposed a change of tactics, of strategy. But no, it was always the electoral solution, and either way, the streets were an important component to accelerate this process on both ends. …
So, in short: rigged ‘elections’ will be held, in which Evo Morales is to be excluded, and in which there will be no repercussions against the U.S.-stooge-regime participants if their side fails to win those s’elections’.
The Bolivian people won’t have any legal right to hang the coupsters. The U.S. regime will see to that.
Originally posted at Citizen Truth
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Let’s see…
First the legal stuff:
Next, the political stuff:
In sum:
So, my question is this: How, exactly, is this coup supposed to pass muster as a legitimate expression of democracy?
It takes courage on a very large scale to stop this sort of thing.
Even way back, when Thatcher was beginning to hack away at the roots of British cultural excellence, as well as everything else which didn’t directly concern high finance and the military; even then, as her next hatchet job loomed large on the horizon, people were saying, “No, she would never do that; she wouldn’t go that far”…
But she did do it; she did go that far, and, to her credit, she never pretended she would do otherwise.
“There’s no such thing as society”, she crowed, as she did her level best to ensure that there never would be such a thing again.
Forty years on, and we still believe that our western governments have our best interests at heart.
And we do nothing, although at least many of us take the trouble to inform ourselves.
As I said, it takes a lot of courage, although it would have taken a lot less courage in the early 1980s to stop the Leaden Lady in her tracks, especially before her little Falklands jaunt, undertaken to relieve her tiny mind of its chronic boredom with life.
Now, you have to dig pretty deep to find influential media which would not vote for two planks of wood if they had “c/o money and power” stamped on them.
O’Colmainè balls? A writer from the extrème left who seems to have lost his way,talented without doubt but his style has changed dramatically.
Couldn’t help noticing this little gem in Yesterday’s Guardian. No comments allowed of course. It ran as follows:
From the Guran 02 November 2019
‘’Leaked NHS papers ‘put online by posters using Russian methods’
”Questions about dissemination of documents do not mean they are fake, but pose new puzzle.
Leaked documents said by Labour to prove that the NHS was “on the table” in trade talks with the US were initially disseminated online by anonymous posters operating in a way similar to a Russian information operation known as Secondary Infektion, according to a social media research firm.
A 19-page report published on Monday by the consultancy Graphika said that while it could not conclusively prove a Russian origin to the leak, the early distribution of the cache of files via Reddit, three German-language websites and an anonymous Twitter account reflected a method of operation seen repeatedly over recent years.
There is no suggestion either that the NHS documents, produced by Jeremy Corbyn at a dramatic press conference last week, were fake, but the Graphika investigation highlights an intriguing series of efforts to get the leak picked up more widely at the end of October and beginning of November.Ben Nimmo, the head of investigations at Graphika, said: “What we are saying is that the initial efforts to amplify the NHS leak closely resembles techniques used by Secondary Infektion in the past, a known Russian operation. But we do not have all the data that allows us to make a final determination in this case.”
Get the message: nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we can’t prove Russian meddling but this looks very much like a Russian-style operation.
Such is the methodology of the mass media, Ministry of Truth (minitru).It is based on a disarmingly simple but false syllogism where the conclusion doesn’t follow from the initial premises. This runs as follows:
1. Leaked message (premise 1)
2. Resembles other Russian operations (premise 2)
3. Russia did it. (Conclusion)
In fact the initial premises are probably not true either. Of course there are no facts to back the hunches, but there is constant repetition on these types of statements insinuate themselves into the collective consciousness. Simples!
It is a sad fact but the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He has been the recipient of learned ignorance.
”He argues and analyses in such a way which he would recognise as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective. Information is plentiful but it does not seem to make any difference … and he is impatient of long and/or complicated arguments. All of which goes to show that without out the initiative which comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct. (J.A.Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy)
Digging for facts, just the facts, Ma’am. Gearóid Ó Colmáin is an Irish journalist and political analyst based in Paris. Morales’s record as head of the Bolivian Coca Growers Union:
https://www.gearoidocolmain.org/narco-socialist-cartel-morales-the-pope-and-the-chaos-in-bolivia/
“Farmers who obtained government grants for alternative crops received death threats from Morales’s henchmen. Far from the working class hero leftists like to see him as, many peasants in Chapare viewed him as an agent of narco-trafficking interests backed by the left-liberal wing of the US ruling élite.
According to journalist Jaime Bayly, Morales expanded the coca production in Chapare after taking power in 2006. 94% of coca grown there is processed into cocaine. Morales used tax-payers money to construct the cocaine laboratories.
The cocaine is then sold to Mexican cartels, in particular, the Sinaloa cartel of the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman Loera alias El Chapo.”
[Ocolmain’s facts could explain why Mexico gave asylum to Morales. It also suggests that Bolivian politics is as historically enmeshed in global cocaine production as British politics is enmeshed in global opium production]
[Some other facts in reply to Ocolmain’s piece above.]
anti_republocrat BTL SyrPer News #306398:
“The author starts out saying the world is not black and white, but then portrays Morales as pure evil. He accuses Morales of working with Israelis, but Morales cut relations with Israel and now the interim government has restored them.
It’s almost impossible to know what’s really going on in another country, which is why….”.
[It’s almost impossible to know whats really going on in one’s own country, which is why it is so important for the wells of truth to be kept sweet and clean].
PS There’s a lesson here for Old Labour socialists. Even if Corbyn is voted prime minister, the AZC could force him to resign via public unrest from a Soros run on the pound (a la Harold Wilson 1967) followed by a New Liebour coup (BLiarites) in collusion with Conservatives supported to the hilt by MSM. It is not enough to say, it couldn’t happen here. Local constituency activism by Old Labour socialists is essential to avoid a Bolivia / Brasil / Iraq “Lawfare coup” against the only socialist Prime Minister in post-Thatcher England.
Vexarb: just went on Gearoid O’Colmain’s Blog and Facebook page.
Yes – I agree with his statement on his FB page that “condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance” however…
He asserts that Morales was in cahoots with the CIA, United States National Intelligence Agency, and the Israeli’s.
And that he ran a Narco State with them!
I’m honestly trying to keep an open mind here Vexarb, but if that was true, why was he overthrown?
There were some things I found on his blog that are quite bizarre – like the Chilean protesters against austerity and Neoliberalism are actually tools of the Global elite! (according to O’Colmain) and the Spanish Falangists (during Franco’s dictatorship) were progressive!
I do agree on his assessment of the forces Behind action on Climate Change viz Extinction Rebellion, Greta; Avaaz, Soros, Al Gore, etc, and the trillions $$$ to be made in greenwashing Capitalism.
I’ll go and further check his earlier articles.
Do you know much about him? I take it he’s a Marxist and is most definately Not your doe eyed Amy Goodman type!
@Gezzah Potts: “He asserts that Morales was in cahoots with the CIA, United States National Intelligence Agency, and the Israeli’s. And that he ran a Narco State with them! I’m honestly trying to keep an open mind here Vexarb, but if that was true, why was he overthrown?”
Gezzah, why was Noriega (CIA spy and drug runner) overthrown? Why was Saddam hung by the U$UK regimes that installed him in power and supplied him poison gas to use on the Kurds? Why was Osama bin Laden (Carter’s and Regan’s freedom fighter in Afghanistan rebranded as and shot as a terrorist?
Truthing is not keeping an open mind: it is honestly verifying the facts and honestly trying to find the best fit, between competing hypotheses, for all the available facts.
“On a high mount, cragg’d and steep sits Truth
And he who would approach her
About it and about must go”. — John Donne
Vexarb… Some things of what O’Colmain says I agree with, but other things just seem very weird and very ‘out there’. . Several examples: “Franco the Anti Fascist” “Patriarchy Is Good For Women’s Freedom” and… “Fascism was originally a radical left wing movement”
Disturbingly for me, he seems to be quite an admirer of Generalissimo Franco.
And I also noted he said he ‘used to be a communist’. I hope he’s not going the same way as Christopher Hitchens.
And his argument that the protestors in Chile are puppets of the same Global Elite that are pushing Neoliberalism in the first place, all because Pinera is pro family. What? Hello?
With respect Vexarb, I think I’d rather have the analysis of Eric Zuesse, Frank Lee, John Steepling or Cory Morningstar any day.
O’Colman must have an Irish Catholic streak if he praises Franco; at least Franco kept Spain out of the Hit & Muss Axis and arranged a nonviolent transition to democracy, two very good points for him. The point is: are O’Colmain’s facts fact? If so, the best fitting hypothesis (to my mind for the time being) is that Morales, like Saddam, was brought to power as a CIA tool (drug runner) but once in power he crossed an AZC red line by improving life for ordinary Bolivians (income and education) hence the current AZC/CIA/MSM/OAS “Lawfare” onslaught.
George Orwell would be extremely surprised to find out that his book’s warnings have been surpassed to a level even he could not have fathomed,if he could come back for a moment in time , as he would probably not want to stay .So much hell has manifested upon this earth by such evil.
Orwell intended his work as a warning.
Our current rulers have taken it as an instruction manual.
This article translated from Spanish is informative
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/19/hatred-of-the-indian-by-alvaro-garcia-linera/
The Global Green New Deal – fronted in the UK by Labour for green finance capital – is a coup over all life and all indigenous folk everywhere. Green imperialism and green gilt neo-colonialism is the price for our ‘just transition’ and coming decarbonisation to ‘clean'(ish) by 2030. By when we will all be driving electric vehicles – made in the UK in three Tesla-style gigafactories. With internal ‘end-to-end’ supply and value chains: from three recyclable steel plants; four metal reprocessing plants; and new (unspecified in number) plastics manufacturing plants. Which will go a long way to provide a million ‘green industrial revolution’ unionised jobs for the global consumption/pollution bourgeois Few. For which the resource cursed Many will have to pay again …many with their lives.
Our ‘just transition’ to clean commodity consumption requires an awful lot of mass aggregate biophysical material source to sink throughputs. And an enormous amount of ‘renewable’ democratically decarbonised energy. Especially when you consider that due to planned decommissioning (of coal and nuclear): we will be more or less stating from scratch with the re-Nationalised Grid.
Just for the EVs we need 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper [NHM]. That is without any electrification infrastructure, or, crucially, any LGV or HGV EVs (as previously explained: unless you are the ‘Electric Jesus’ Musk – there are no currently viable battery EV equivalents for these). That means plenty of oil too: watch out Nicolas. For the infrastructure: one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic. Plus more Venezuelan oil. Plus significant amounts of rare earth minerals – for EVs and solar PVs. Which even LabourGND admit would quickly outstrip known supplies.
For a 100% renewable grid – or regionalised grids – we need capacitors and battery storage. Lots of battery storage (as we have limited opportunity for pumped storage). Here: Alice Friedemann has calculated the a Li-ion battery to hold a single days backup (for the US Grid) would be would cost $11.9 trillion dollars, take up 345 square miles, and weigh 74 million tons. Presumably: ours will be on a scale to match. This excludes ’round trip efficiency’ of 75% which means the grid would have to be another 33% larger. All this points to insane amounts of solar PV’s; wind farms; tidal barriers etc. And the impossibility of the 100% ‘actual zero’ decarbonised electrification of the grid in ten years …or even by 2050. And ‘net zero’ by any date is a green finance capitalist accounting scam: as I think we all know.
Decarbonisation is not dematerialisation or even de-energisation. Replacing FFs with ‘ 90% renewables’ for ‘net zero’ by 2030-ish requires at least a 1:10 replacement ratio. Estimates vary but Long-Bailey has claimed that the Grid will have to the three times or (on a separate occasion) seven times larger. The latter is probably even an underestimate – but my maths is shocking – so I do not know by how much. But it involves an insane commitment to extractivism and coups and species extinctions globally. That much I do know.
Then there is nuclear – lots of nuclear – designed, commissioned and active by 202? in order to decarbonise by 90% in 2030-ish. But no one will admit they have been had. And no one will connect our increased mass aggregate material demand with extractivist expropriation, destabilisation and dehumanisation globally. Every ‘X’ is a species extinction.
But all that energy; and all that material; and all those e-tech minerals; will have to come from somewhere. Lots of somewheres: lots of coups. Lots of murdered indigenous brothers and sisters to blame on the hollow and tired excuse of ‘American imperialism’. Sure, America carried out this bloody and murderous coup: but now they have secured a cheap supply – who is going to consume the mass aggregate demand? If you want to see the real imperialism: all we need is a mirror.
And if we want post-extractivist solutions – and an end to capitalist coups and exponential extinction – we are going to have to stop hiding behind ‘American imperialism’. The new imperialism and endo-colonialism is green gilt finance capital imperialism. Who wants an EV soaked in indigenous blood and costing the Earth? Bourgeois socialists do: so they can blame America and feel all self righteous because of their solidarity for our indigenous internationalist comrades. Which is why they cannot connect our increased consumption fetishism and materialist addictions with actual extinctions and murders. Or connect the vote with capitalisms endless *bellum omnium contra omnes*: the one they are driving with their incessant expansionist extractivist violence.
The Fascist Coup Regime has obviously started as it means to go on.
The US trained military has been given complete impunity to kill whoever it likes, and it is taking full advantage of this to kill scores of people.
There is a continuing reign of terror against Morales and his supporters, and Indians in general.
Telesur and RT Spanish have been banned.
Morales’s party has been banned from contesting elections.
Morales and other elected politicians are facing trumped up criminal charges.
Gweedo has been recognized as Venezuelan president.
Cuban doctors and nurses and Venezuelan diplomats have been expelled from the country.
A Washington groupie has been dispatched as new ambassador to the US.
Just a bog standard CIA regime change.
Change a few names and the story is identical to Ukraine and dozens of other places.
The IMF, Wall Street vulture funds and the big mining multi nationals will shortly be setting up shop in Bolivia.
The lesson to be learnt is universal and does not only apply to South America.
Democracy, elections, rule of law, are a complete sham.
Any country that values its sovereignty needs to close down the US embassy and ban its bogus NGOs and poisonous lying media.
It needs to be ready to get down in the gutter and fight fire with fire.
In particular, reactionary quisling elements in the armed forces, police, spook organisations, judiciary and MSM need to be ruthlessly purged and brought to heel. They cannot be left free to plot and scheme. There has to be a popular militia ready, willing and able to deal forcibly with foreign orchestrated coup attempts. The oligarchic comprador elite needs to know that it will be dealt with in an exemplary fashion if it continues to serve foreign interests – as ruthlessly as Stalin dealt with the kulaks or Hitler dealt with the Brownshirts.
Any country that fails to bow the knee to Anglo Zio empire will be demonized and vilified anyway, so it need not concern itself over much with constitutional niceties.
The alternative is to surrender and meekly submit to Fascist rule in the service of US imperialism, as has happened in Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti and other places recently.
The same lessons apply in Hong Kong, and even the UK. The ruling elite can be expected to behave with complete ruthlessness with no regard for civilized standards. They need to be repaid in their own coin.
You can add Thailand to the list… Impunity for the army to shoot protesters, and murder anti-monarchy people. No mention in MSM of the rigging of the last election, which the army almost lost…
I think it plausible to surmise that the US and its British/Israeli lapdogs are at war with almost everyone who is not part of their imperial domain. It could be said that these were the opening stages of WW3: a multi-facted war on a number of fronts using local proxies as the shock troops for the US drive into all points south, east, and central: Asia, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, all aimed ultimately at over-running Russia and China. This would seem to correspond to the theories of Alexandr Dugin who criticized the “Euro-Atlantic” involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election as a scheme to create a “cordon sanitaire” around Russia, much like the French and British attempt post-World War I. And apparently since the great Russian retreat from Eastern Europe in 1991. The question which arises in this respect is how long can Putin hold the line against the increasing agitation of his own hard-liners who have had to swallow his some-what over-concilliatory adaptation to the relentless push of the US hardliners?
Can the Anglo-Zionist be stopped? Moot point. But if they cannot we will be the inheritors of an Anglo-Zionist global slave state. On the other hand the whole thing will simply eventuate in a Nuclear war. I have even hear US officials talking of a winnable nuclear war. That’s how deranged they are. But maybe its a bluff. We shall see in due course.
Well said, one of the few posts of yours that I wholeheartedly agree with ;o)
“..But if they cannot we will be the inheritors of an Anglo-Zionist global slave state.”
No we won’t. At least 99% of us won’t. Look around you: we will be slaves too. It is that which people in the metropole need to realise-“The Bell you hear in Bolivia (Venezuela/Haiti/Syria/Yemen/Honduras/Brazil etc etc) tolls for thee.”
It never was a victory bell-as most veterans of Waterloo realised- for any except the few.
Francis Lee
Certainly agree we are really in the stages of world war 3. I think John Pilger said this in a recent speech or article. You could debate how long we have been in this condition. Probably a good few years. Perhaps an analogy the ‘phoney war’of the last. This one slower though.
In this case, another successful regime change operation somewhere else ( after unsuccessful ones in Syria and Venezuala) may embolden the lunatics and that could kick it all off. You have a number of choice flashpoints to choose – Iran, Hong Kong and China, back to Syria after another fabricated attack, Lebanon – or perhaps Chile, Central America, somewhere in Africa perhaps. Or an incident with Russia whom we no longer have much dialogue with.
Anyone in this background who does not recognise 2019 as likely to be one of the last year’s the majority of human beings live on this planet is seriously deluded. Every single chemical fabrication in Syria is a Cuban Missile crisis with no Kennedy to reign in the warmongers and media taking us to ruin. But I remain hopeful and things can and do change.
As far as I am concerned WW3 kicked off with the false flag of 911. That was the point at which the global fascist takeover started.
US officials have always talked of a winnable nuclear war. There is no such thing and it may be the case that they know that and that all this talk is just to scare the shit out of everyone so that whatever happens won’t be as bad as that. On the other hand, maybe they don’t know that and they really are batshit.
Let it be remembered that Canada’s “Liberal” government was the first to employ the OAS to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the re-election of Evo Morales ans the renewal of the Movement Towards Socialism’s mandate.
And let the growing list of the victims of Bolivia’s new fascistic government be attributed, in very great part, to the enabling work that Ottawa has done here, as it has in Venezuela, Haiti and Honduras, to deliver the people of Bolivia, two thirds of whom are the direct descendants of the post Incan peoples mercilessly exploited, literally worked to death in the mines of Potosi and elsewhere.
And let the people of Canada, most particularly the First Nations and those who identify with them, ponder the question that Ottawa’s ready cooperation with fascist, kleptocrats and tyrants from Ukraine to Arabia to Latin America raises: “What will these people do to us, or anyone, if the chance arises to sell us into slavery?”
And let the supporters of Israel digest the fact that, the first move of the coup regime in Bolivia, after it had despatched its death squads into the villages to hunt down any likely to prove formidable opponents of its neo-liberal plans was to call upon Israel to re-establish cordial relations and to withdraw any suggestion that Bolivians might be disgusted by the cruel and sadistic treatment of the people of Palestine.
The world is a very small place.
We have a new foreign relations Minister now , Francois-Philip Champagne and his first pronunciations are very different from Chrystia Freelands .Case in point see attached link.
But I am not holding my breath to think that the Liberal party has had an epiphany.
Cheers.
https://www.newcoldwar.org/israel-protests-canada-for-un-vote-supporting-palestinian-state/
He could not be worse. Looking at the House of Commons there is no evidence that the NDP would be any better, once more the closest thing we get to principled MPs will be found among the Bloc.
Bolivians need a strong leader like Castro or Guevara to give their own collaborating scumbags the bum’s rush. So if it’s not oil it is lithium now. The barbarians on the make.
In the new era of the New Green Deal, Lithium is the new oil.