Venezuela: Another Coup Attempt – and Why it Failed

How come we’re not at war with Venezuela? They have all that oil”.

-- Donald Trump

Keith Brooks
Off Guardian

was in Caracas Venezuela on April 30th, the day of the failed coup. There were eight of us, five from NYC, one Vermonter and one Canadian, along with the leader of our group, a Venezuelan with whom I had traveled to Venezuela once before, in 2012 when Hugo Chavez was still alive.

Chavez was elected to power in 1999 leading what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution. Less than three years later, a 2002 U.S. backed coup failed to overthrow him.

I witnessed back then Chavez’s wide base of support, and the reasons for it: a new constitution guaranteeing as human rights health, education, housing and social welfare, and the laws and projects designed to make those rights a reality. 

The results were impressive: one million new low-cost housing units, a dramatic drop in the poverty rate, infant mortality rate down from 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand by 2012. 

Health Care was made free for all Venezuelans, reflected by an increase in life expectancy. Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week, without loss of pay while the minimum wage became the highest minimum wage in Latin America. In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy. The malnutrition rate fell from 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.

The national management of the oil industry in 2003 put Venezuela in control over its most valuable natural resource, and used it to fund many of the social reform programs. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves which the U.S. has coveted ever since and admittedly seeks to control as John Bolton made clear on Fox News:

It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela”

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How the Venezuelan intelligence service defeated the CIA

Al Manar
ICH

The small Venezuelan counterintelligence service SEBIN (Bolivian National Intelligence Service) managed to humiliate the CIA, revealed the Romanian expert Valentin Vasilescu. According to him, the US intel service had undertaken an initiative in Venezuela aiming to overthrowing the president, Nicolás Maduro making use of its HUMINT section (human intelligence), that is, espionage carried out by infiltrated US agents, who in turn have networks of local informants.

But, says Valsilescu, SEBIN has managed to infiltrate all opposition groups trying to seize power in Caracas through its counterintelligence agents.

He (SEBIN; ndt) has also infiltrated his officers into the US-funded press and there has been an operation aimed at selecting and publishing the most miraculous but false news related to political events in Venezuela. Therefore, there were several “leaks” that were delivered to the CIA, such as, for example, the intention of some generals to betray Maduro.

To earn the trust of CIA agents, SEBIN members even organized conspiracy meetings with Venezuelan generals, under the full control of Venezuela’s intelligence service and military counterintelligence. The “desertion” of General Manuel Figuera, head of the SEBIN, the release of Leopoldo López from his house arrest and the provision, for Juan Guaido, of a platoon of more than 1,000 soldiers belonging to the SEBIN to take the garrison of Carlota, in Caracas, they were part of the intoxication operation directed at the CIA agents to convince Washington of the success of the coup.

When the White House finally gave the green light to the action on April 30, it became one of the biggest failures for the CIA in recent decades.

Venezuela has shown that fighting with patriotism and professionalism, even for an embargoed country, can disrupt the plans of the CIA, according to the Romanian expert.

Translation by Ana - original: http://spanish.almanar.com.lb/315636


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Washington Goes For The Jugular: Puppet 'Leader' in Venezuela Launches 'Military Coup' Against Maduro Government

Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Self-declared Venezuelan 'interim president', Juan Guaido, aka RGN (Random Guy Named) Guaido (aka 'Guido', to the US State Department) - whose uncanny resemblence to former US president Barack Obama continues to amaze - has today outright called for a military uprising. So far, it just amounts to rioting at one location in Caracas, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends that way.

With his bosses in Washington perplexed over the failure of their color-revolution attempt back in January, they're going for the jugular by attempting to instigate a military coup.

Appearing in a video that was apparently shot at (or near) a Caracas military airbase, and accompanied by a number of what appear to be Venezuelan soldiers, along with fellow 'revolutionary', Leopoldo Lopez, Guaido announced that:

"The moment has come to start the end of the usurpation."

This, ironically, is exactly what might happen now that Washington has gone 'all in' with an attempted coup: they have gifted Maduro all the justification he needs to round up Guaido and his accomplices.

Leopoldo Lopez, incidentally, was arrested in 2014 and - because the Maduro government has been far too soft in its treatment of what are de facto rabid terrorists - was held under house arrest after being found guilty of inciting violence during that first post-Chavez round of bombings, murder and mayhem. Lopez claims that he is in attendance for today's outbreak of democrazi because he was "released by the military under Guaido's orders." More likely, he simply walked out of his house... 

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“Soft Coup” Ongoing Against Trump? Impeachment is the End Game

Stephen Lendman
Global Research

Turkey’s Daily Sabah broadsheet believes a soft coup is ongoing to oust Trump. It’s been brewing since his triumph over Hillary and inauguration in January 2017 – my view, not the newspaper’s.

Last year, I said pro-Hillary dark forces and other anti-Trump coup plotters keep throwing endless amounts of dirt against the wall, hoping enough sticks to oust him or undermine his presidency if removal efforts fail.

Things aren’t getting easier for him. Special council Mueller’s Russiagate witch hunt continues – despite discovering no evidence of Kremlin US election meddling nor an improper or illegal Trump connection to Russia.

Controlling the House, the undemocratic Dems plan investigations into Trump’s affairs, likely to continue to harass him for the wrong reasons, ignoring what’s most important – US policies both right wings of the nation’s war party agree on, along with serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people.

Once Mueller’s probe ends and a report is issued, House impeachment of Trump may follow – a likely futile effort to remove him from office with Republicans controlling the Senate.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 2 empowers House members to impeach a sitting president, Senate members with sole power to try them – a two-thirds super-majority required to convict, what’s highly unlikely with Republicans controlling the upper house.

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Are We Witnessing a Coup Operation Against the Trump White House?

Patrick Lawrence
The Nation

A couple of books come to mind amid the relentless leaks emanating from the spooks on either side of the Potomac and, not to be missed, their high approval ratings among our patriots of liberal persuasion.

One is The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, published two summers ago. This is David Talbot’s history of the infamous CIA director’s quite successful effort to turn Langley, Virginia, into a state within a state, perfectly capable of taking on the one whose leaders Americans elect. We now call this “the Deep State,” and Glenn Greenwald put the debate on this point to bed in 140 characters a few days ago: “To summarize journalistic orthodoxy: only fringe conspiracists think a Deep State exists, but all sane people know Kremlin controls US Govt.”

President Kennedy fired the Deep State’s godfather in 1961, after the Bay of Pigs calamity and Dulles’s never-acknowledged support for a failed coup against de Gaulle (believe it, the French president). Taking this to the ultimate, Talbot, who founded Salon 20-odd years ago, makes a persuasive case that Dulles retreated to Georgetown, gathered his loyalists, and probably architected JFK’s assassination two years later. Talbot’s book does not include this incident, but I have it from a former spook of great integrity, now noted for blowing whistles: A few years into Barack Obama’s presidency supporters asked at a fundraiser, “Where’s our progressive foreign policy, Mr. President?” Obama’s reply: “Do you want me to end up another JFK?”

The other book is I.F. Stone’s The Haunted Fifties, 1953–1963. The great Izzy’s commentary in I.F. Stone’s Weekly during those egregious years was among the few available sources of sanity in a nation of anti-Russian zombies. “To have kept his head in the hurricane of corrupted speech, ritualized patriotism, paranoid terror, and sudden conversions to acceptability,” Arthur Miller wrote in a foreword to the collection, “required something more than his wits and investigative talent and a gift for language.” It did—and does, so let us take a lesson. Stone endured, Miller observed, because he had faith that “a confident, tolerant America” would eventually come back to life.

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The Anti-Trump Institutional Coup and the Visible Operatives

Prof. James Petras
petras.lahaine.org

There are various types of coups: the seizure of executive power by military officials who disband the elected legislature, judiciary and executive, shut-down the media that criticizes the military take- over and and outlaws’ independent social movements. The most recent coups are led by institutional forces which ouster the elected President through the intervention of congressional, judicial , security forces, (including the intelligence apparatus) and the mass media.

Four examples of institutional coups took place during the Obama regime : the Ukraine (2014), Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012) and Brazil (2016). These coups serve as a model for the ouster of US President-elect Trump before he takes office and during his selection of Cabinet appointments. In this essay we will analyze the unfolding of the anti-Trump coup by examining the process, the step by step means by which the principle operatives intervene against the electoral result.

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'Elite' coup is being orchestrated against president-elect Trump

Bernhard
Moon of Alabama

• There is an "elite" coup attempt underway against the U.S. President-elect Trump.
• The coup is orchestrated by the camp of Hillary Clinton in association with the CIA and neoconservative powers in Congress.
• The plan is to use the CIA's "Russia made Trump the winner" nonsense to swing the electoral college against him. The case would then be bumped up to Congress. Major neocon and warmonger parts of the Republicans could then move the presidency to Clinton or, if that fails, put Trump's vice president-elect Mike Pence onto the throne. The regular bipartisan war business, which a Trump presidency threatens to interrupt, could continue.
• Should the coup succeed violent insurrections in the United States are likely to ensue with unpredictable consequences.

The above theses are thus far only a general outline. No general plan has been published. The scheme though is pretty obvious by now.

The priority aim is to deny Trump the presidency. He is too independent and a danger for several power centers within the ruling U.S. power circles. These are:

• The CIA which has become the Central Assassination Agency under the Bush and Obama administrations. Huge parts of its budgets depend on a continuation of the war on Syria and the drone assassination campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Trump's more isolationist policies would likely end these campaigns and the related budget troughs.
• The weapons industry which could lose its enormous sales to its major customers in the Persian Gulf should a President Trump reduce U.S. interference in the Middle East and elsewhere.
• The neoconservatives and Likudniks who want the U.S. as Israel's weapon to strong arm the Middle East to the Zionists' benefit.
• The general war hawks, military and "humanitarian interventionists" to whom any reduction of the U.S. role as primary power in the world is anathema to their believes.

The current CIA director Brennan, a leading figure of the CIA torture program and Obama consigliere, is in the Clinton/anti-Trump camp. The former CIA heads Hayden and Panetta are public Clinton supporters as is torturer king and former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.

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14 Signs That There Is A Plot To Use Russia As An Excuse To Steal The Presidency From Trump On December 19th Or January 6th

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse Blog

Donald Trump could have the election legally stolen from him on either December 19th when the Electoral College casts their votes or on January 6th when a joint session of Congress gathers to count those votes.  The establishment is in full-blown panic mode at this point, and they seem to have settled on “Russian interference in the election” as the angle that they plan to use to try to deny Trump the presidency.  As you will see below, there is an all-out effort to try to persuade members of the Electoral College that are supposed to be committed to Donald Trump to cast their votes for someone else instead.  And if that doesn’t work, the groundwork is being laid for the Electoral College votes to potentially be invalidated when a joint session of Congress meets to count those votes on January 6th.  I will explain how that would work later on in this article, but first let’s take a look at 14 signs that indicate that there is a plot to use Russia as an excuse to steal the presidency from Donald Trump…

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Turkey's Shift Towards Russia & the Grand Chessboard

Jay Dyer 

 

As with so many CIA-backed leaders, tyrants and despots, once your usefulness to Washington and Langley expires or your policies go off script, a coup or regime change magically emerges.  With Turkey's Erdogan, we have seen these familiar patterns as NATO and its globalist backers are more and more revealed to be aggressors against Eurasian interests.  Indeed, it was Brzezinski himself who wrote in his Grand Chessboard that control of Eurasia is key to control of the globe:

"... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book.” (p. xiv)

"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

And,

“The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." (p.125)

Indeed, the pipeline projects through these regions dictate much of the geopolitical kerfuffle. Turkey's pivot away from NATO towards Russia is precisely the reason for the coup, as the CIA and Hillary Clinton-connected charter school mastermind, Fethullah Gulen.  The Gulenists and their western backers, formerly allied with Erdogan and the Kemalists, now oppose the AKP and sought, through apparent U.S. aid, to enact a regime change before Turkish second thoughts on NATO. 


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BOMBSHELL Exposé: The U.S. Military Used Incirlik Air Base To Stage Failed Coup In Turkey

Turkey Purges Nation of Every Gülen Supporter and Sympathizer

 

The Millennium Report

‘TURKEY ALERTED TO COUP BY . . . RUSSIA!’

 

The exposé posted below in its entirety is as BIG as it gets.  Here are 2 excellent source as to why this coup is so highly consequential:

US Commander Campbell: The man behind the failed coup in Turkey
Former NATO commander ‘behind failed coup against Erdogan’ – Turkish daily

The unsuccessful coup d’état in Turkey, that was implemented by the US Military in concert with NATO, has precipitated an unparalleled sea change in the Middle East.  The highly defective coup execution plan was destined to fail from the very start.  Consequently, the CIA, MI6 and MOSSAD coup plotters have succeeded in flipping Turkey away from the Anglo-American Axis* toward the BRICS Alliance.

Coup d’état In Turkey: MIHOP, LIHOP, CIAOP, Or All Three

If ever there was a paradigm-ending bombshell report, the revelations that follow in the whistleblower post below are that explosive. Everything that has occurred in Turkey since the failed coup is consistent with the specific details of this insider’s account.  Hence, there will inevitably be a continuing series of nation-altering events throughout the Republic of Turkey for the foreseeable future.

Turkey’s Failed Coup: “A Gift from God” or from Washington?

This single geopolitical development will likely shift the whole balance of power away from the AAA and toward the BRICS.  Because of Turkey’s highly strategic position within the Mideast, especially due to its size, location and “gateway to the East” function, whoever effectively controls it controls the whole regional chessboard.  The recent and cataclysmic ebb and flow of the immigrant crisis has only significantly accentuated this international dynamic.

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Alexander Dugin speaks on the coup d'etat in Turkey: Officials say considering leaving NATO, want stronger ties with Russia

Alexander Dugin 

Sott net via Katahon

Transcript of video:

Greetings, you are watching Dugin's Guideline. At the end of last week, an attempted coup d'etat took place in Turkey. It was thwarted.

It just so happened that on Friday, July 15th, I was live on Tsargrad TV from Ankara speaking about the terrorist attack in Nice. Who could know that literally just a few hours later, a coup would begin.

And so here is what happened. Given that during my visit I had met with a number of senior officials in Turkish politics and in particular with the mayor of Ankara, Ibrahim Melih Gokcek, the overall picture of the political alignment of forces in Turkey on the eve of the putsch seemed to me to be completely clear. That very same Ibrahim Melih Gokcek, a figure very close to President Erdogan, told me during our conversations of a parallel state, paralel devlet in Turkish, which the sect of Fethullah Gulen succeeded in establishing in Turkey. This sect has its headquarters in the US, in Pennsylvania, from which a developed network of agents of influence which have penetrated Turkish society are managed. Melih Gokcek confessed that he had not immediately figured this out, but that it had later become clear that CIA-managed structures were operating under the guise of humanitarian programs and charity.

What's more, Melih Gokcek said in a private conversation something that, once the coup had already begun, he announced publicly: it was none other than Fethullah Gulen's sect which stood behind the downing of our plane and murder of our pilot. The US' objective was embroiling Ankara and Moscow at a time when both countries were coming to an understanding. The plane and the death of the pilot were a tool of geopolitical intrigue. Meanwhile, the Americans understood that Erdogan's positions, whom they wanted to replace with their direct protege, Davutoglu, would become shaky thanks to a boycott of Russia. Thus, two forces formed in Turkey: one of them was made up of conditional Kemalists, patriots who wanted to immediately restore relations with Russia and then pushed Erdogan to apologize, and the the Gulen sect and other purely pro-American structures who, on the contrary, did everything they could to prevent this.

When Melih Gokcek and I parted ways two hours before the coup, he said: "We underestimated the power of the parallel state that the Americans and Gulen's supporters established inside Turkey. This was our mistake. But now we are going to fix it, the first step being new rapprochement with Moscow." 

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Writing on the wall for Erdogan: Align with Russia, Iran and Syria or Turkey's destruction awaits

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

So, has everyone noticed what's going on? Has everyone taken stock of the 'brink' on which we now stand? July 2016 has been a month of absolute mayhem all over the world, with brutal and bloody terror attacks occurring almost everywhere - much of it no doubt organized and premeditated, and some of it 'spontaneous' madness resulting from the former. The main event, however, has undoubtedly been the attempted coup in Turkey, which was effectively an act of war by NATO's largest member-state against its second-largest.

What happened in Turkey on July 15th was clearly a US-sponsored/supported coup attempt, probably thwarted at the 11th hour by Russia in the form of intel and advice to Erdogan and Co. Do we expect the world's exceptional superpower to accept such impertinence? Unlikely. If there's one thing the global warmongers-in-chief have learned over the past 70 years, it's that they rule the world, and any nation with the temerity to stand in their way will be severely punished.

As Erdogan and friends go through the process of rooting out the NATO fifth columnists in Turkey (3 of the 5 Turkish army regiments that took part in the coup are part of NATO's Rapid Deployable Corps), unnamed British 'defence sources' are already floating the possibility of another coup: "If there is another coup attempt then civil war will follow. If that happens there will be a major international crisis," the source told British tabloid the Daily Star on Sunday.

"Civil war" and "major international crisis", i.e. just the kind of scenario on which US and British political psychopaths thrive and have lots of experience in manufacturing. If Erdogan has any sense, if he has learned anything about the true nature of Western powers over these last 9 months (and the decade he spent in power as prime minister before becoming president in 2014), he will be in no doubt about what he has to do next, and what awaits Turkey if he does not. 

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Behind The CIA Desperate Turkey Coup Attempt

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook

On the evening of July 15, a group of Turkish army officers announced that they had staged a military coup d’etat and had assumed control of the country. They claimed that Erdogan was in a desperate flight for his life and that they were now in the process of restoring order. The only problem for those army officers and their sponsors far away in Langley, Virginia and Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania– where Turkish political operator, Fetullah Gülen, hides in exile under CIA protection–is that they did not succeed. Behind the coup attempt is a far more dramatic story of the huge geopolitical shift that the often unpredictable political survivor, President (still) Recep Erdogan, was in the midst of making when Gülen’s loyalists made their desperate, now apparently failed coup attempt. What follows is a series of Q&A remarks to the background of the dramatic events unfolding in a pivotal part of the geopolitical order.
 
Q: How would you comment on the events of Friday to Saturday evening, when the army carried out a coup? Are these events were predictable? WE: The coup was a reaction to the recent dramatic geopolitical shift of Erdogan. It was instigated by networks in Turkey loyal to the CIA. It clearly was a desperate move, ill-prepared.

Q: What do you think are the real reasons for such a move of the army? WE: This was a network of officers inside the Army loyal to the Fetullah Gülen Movement. Gülen is a 100% CIA controlled asset. He even lives since years in exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania having gotten safe passage and a green card by former top CIA people like Graham Fuller and the former US Ambassador to Ankara.

Gülen has been a decades-long mad project of the CIA to weaponize political Islam as an instrument of regime change. Recall that in 2013 there were mass protests against Erdogan in Istanbul and elsewhere. That was when Gülen, who previously had made a deal with Erdogan’s AK Party, broke and criticized Erdogan as a tyrant in the Gülen-controlled media such as Zaman. Since then Erdogan has been moving to root out his internal most dangerous adversary, Gülen and friends, including raids on Zaman and other Gülen-controlled media. This is not about a battle between the White Knight and Evil Knievel. It is about power pure in Turkish politics. If you are interested in the details of the Gülen CIA project I urge readers to look in my book, The Lost Hegemon (German: Amerikas Heilige Krieg).

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Erdogan benefits from Turkish coup attempt because it failed, not because he engineered it

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net

On Friday night, a portion of the Turkish military staged an attempted coup against Erdogan's government. While there is still the possibility for further internal conflicts between the government and those who supported the coup, at this point it's over. You can read our coverage of the events related to the coup here, in the SOTT editors' commentary section. Analysts in the mainstream and alternative media are now trying to put the pieces together, asking the question: "Who's responsible?" For the most part, the answers they've given so far don't account for all the evidence.

Three main possibilities are currently on offer: 1) the Turkish government's claim that the coup was organized by Turkish exile Fethullah Gulen in collaboration with the U.S. (CIA, NATO); 2) an authentic, Turkey-based military faction (usually identified as secular Kemalists) unhappy with Erdogan's 'Islamist' policies; and 3) the "#TheaterNotCoup" meme sourced to Politico's Ryan Heath, which alleges that Erdogan planned the coup as a false-flag operation, his very own Reichstag to purge opposition and solidify his dictatorial control (unsurprisingly, Gulen supports this version). None of these options quite work. Or at the very least, if one of them is true, it is not that simple.

The fact that the coup failed shows that it wasn't very "professional". It was obviously a 'rush job' and downright sloppy. While the plotters managed to take over some state media, and most social media, they did not get all of it, allowing Erdogan to appeal to the masses via FaceTime on CNN Turk. They failed to get public support by presenting a public face. They took a few key personnel hostage, bombed Parliament, but failed to detain those leaders who really mattered. These facts don't necessarily point to one particular scenario. Due to the nature of compartmentalization, it is difficult to assign blame simply based on course of events during the coup.  

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