The more I examine the goals and tactics of the GOP, the more they resemble an old-fashioned banana/oil republic coup. You know, the kind the CIA pulled against Guatemala, Iran, and Chile.
While the title here is a reference to Spiro Agnew's infamous "the party of acid, amnesty, and abortion" line, it is also exactly the behavior on display in 'covert action' coups against legitimately elected democracies that were deemed "too close to communist" by our corporate masters during the Cold War hysteria.
The title also points to a "true equivalency" that the media and even the Democratic Party will not say in so many words. Namely that today's GOP is more radical and far more dangerous than the 1960s hippie/anti-war movement - and that movement was crucified as un-American, subversive, the tool of Communism.
Today's GOP uses the Citizens United ruling to secretly raise immense amounts of money from who knows where. Romney has initiated the practice of doing fundraisers in foreign countries, ostensibly (read deniably) from American ex-pats. Sheldon Adelson is arguably a foreign agent for China, since there is no way to disentangle his money from that of Chinese investors.
When 1960s hippies or 2010s Occupy protestors publicly opposed policy they were investigated and cointelpro-ed by the FBI. When a crook under investigation (i.e., Adelson) goes to a closed-door (i.e., secret) fund-raiser for a Presidential candidate of dubious financial history in a foreign country - nada, zip, zilch.
To hear more on how this whole political atmosphere starts to smell pre-coup, come below the secret orange symbol.
Troubadour's recent diary got me started thinking about what this election season will be like:
Republicans rig elections. They do it whenever they want it bad enough and have the people in place in state government to make it possible - when they are not willing to leave an outcome to chance, and have the option of a guarantee...
the US will soon be inundated with a full-spectrum, integrated propaganda onslaught that makes every information medium a window into an alternate universe - as if past, present, and future have been magically erased and replaced with the messages that are convenient for Mitt Romney's fellow oligarchs...
All of the sturm und drang of their propaganda is merely a foundation to confuse, occupy, and disrupt - to create an atmosphere whereby people would be more amenable to accepting a fraudulent result.
The real election, as far as they are concerned, will be determined in the orders of Republican state officials to purge voters, withhold resources from polling precincts in Democratic areas, and obstruct and misdirect people trying to vote; and beyond that, where they deem it worthwhile, in the opaque programming of voting machines, vote-counting machines, and the computers that tabulate and report the results.
From there, it was a short jump to the resemblance between GOP tactics and classic third-world coups.
Those coups are always about a super-rich elite that can't stand a democracy which curbs their absolute power over a country. Their agitation is not bound by scruple, morality, or law. They will make secret deals with foreign intelligence agencies. They will sabotage their own economy. They, and their cronies in the legitimate government, will commit seditious acts against a legitimate government that they perceive is illegitimate.
All of the above is going on in America today - its just that the time scale is so stretched out, compared to a banana republic coup, that many people do not notice. This bankster-led coup is the final revenge against FDR for curbing the absolute power of Guilded Age plutocracy. (Yes, those people have not stopped hating FDR after 80 years - but this is not surprising; we still hate Cuba after 50 years.) I will never forget Pat Buchanan ranting in 1992 that it was "time to end this Long Parliament" of Democrats. These people never, ever forgive. It has taken them 40 years to destroy what it took FDR and his successors 40 years to create.
Let's plug GOP behavior into the template for coups (un-referenced block quotes are from Appendices G(uatemala), I(ran), or C(hile) ):
1. Secrecy
Secrecy is the watchword in covert action coups. In fact, if you are the CIA, the secrecy extends beyond the grave.
"A historian who was a member of the C.I.A. staff in 1992 and 1993 said in an interview today that the records were obliterated by 'a culture of destruction' at the agency. The historian, Nick Cullather, said he believed that records on other major cold war covert operations had been burned, including those on secret missions in Indonesia in the 1950s and a successful C.I.A.-sponsored coup in Guyana in the early 1960s. 'Iran—there's nothing', Mr. Cullather said. 'Indonesia—very little. Guyana—that was burned.'"
"C.I.A. Destroyed Files on 1953 Iran Coup 29 May 1997 The New York Times
The next step is to move from the organizational behavior of covert action agencies to the mental state of covert action operatives:
To the clandestine operatives of the CIA, nothing could be more normal than the use of 'dirty tricks' to promote the U.S. national interest, as they and their agency determine it....Perhaps as a consequence of the confused morality that guides him, a clandestine operator is dedicated to the utmost secrecy...nearly always accompanying this passion for secrecy comes an obsession with deception and manipulation...The same habits may at times carry over into his dealings with his colleagues and even his family...
He is quite often on the brink of the underworld, or even immersed in it, and he frequently turns to less savory types to achieve his goals. Criminals are useful to him, when he does not want to perform personally some particularly distasteful task, or when he does not want to risk any direct agency involvement in his dirty work.
- V. Marchetti and J. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Chapter 8, "The Clandestine Mentality"
(Just FYI - In his 1978 memoir, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA,
William Colby, a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, endorsed Marchetti's critique and adopted the use of the expression "cult of intelligence".)
With that background in mind, consider the entrance, stage far right, of Mitt Romney. He refuses to divulge his tax returns. He refuses to explain his many foreign bank accounts. When he exited the Massachusetts' Governor's office, he literally bought and destroyed every hard drive of every PC in that office - in violation of state records laws. He cozies up to anyone who might give him some votes, like the creepy Pat Robertson who owns gold and diamond mines in the conflict region of Africa or the crooked Sheldon Adelson.
Does not Mitt's and Lyin' Ryan's constant lying and manipulation fit the profile of a covert operative? If the CIA ran for President, it would behave like Romney: stonewalling, disinformation, destruction of records, alliances with shady thugs. Troubadour noted that, despite the dismal state of his campaign, Romney seems not to care; he seems to behave like the fix is in. Is this not the behavior of someone who has secret resources that will carry the day?
1A. Disinformation
Propaganda, in some aspects, depends on keeping secrets - who is funding it, what is the unspoken truth. Hence, I will discuss it under the heading of secrecy, rather than sedition.
As troubadour noted, we are inundated with propaganda, disinformation, and outright lies. The media half-heartedly calls out the lies; but they just pilloried Krugman for telling the truth. So, its pretty obvious that that, once again, the media is in the tank for the coup plotters:
the United Fruit Company public relations officer Thomas P. McCann, said:
For about eight years [1953–1960] a great deal of the news of Central America, which appeared in the North American press, was supplied, edited, and sometimes made up by United Fruit’s public relations department in New York. It is difficult to make a convincing case for manipulation of the press, when the victims proved so eager for the experience.
— An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (1976)
The CIA provided extensive support for black propaganda against Allende, funneled largely through El Mercurio, but also using other media outlets. Propaganda targeted both the people and the military. Financial support was also provided for anti-Allende political opponents and for organized strikes and unrest to destabilize his government...The CIA used ITT as a conduit to financially aid opponents of Allende's government.
But beyond the normal kowtowing of media to Washington power, we have overt propaganda - the kind normally directed at third world targets:
The CIA army for the liberation of Guatemala was part of a complex of diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaigns. To disseminate the propaganda and the disinformation (black propaganda) that misrepresented the Árbenz Government as Communist, the CIA established Voz de la liberación (Voice of Liberation, VOL), a radio station that transmitted from suburban Florida, USA — whilst claiming to be in the Guatemalan jungle with Col. Castillo Armas's liberacionista army. The liberationist propaganda and disinformation misrepresented the VOL as the spontaneous voice of domestic, counter-revolutionary Guatemalan patriots who opposed “the Communism of the Árbenz Government”.
I mean, seriously folks, Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing propagandists constantly rail against "the Socialism of the Obama Government" from a studio in suburban Florida. Do I have to draw you all a picture?
2. Sabotage
There have been several OPs about GOP economic sabotage in furtherance of getting rid of Obama:
Matt Apuzzo Fact Check This> 2009 Paul Ryan Plotted To Sabotage America's Economy+
Who killed Washington? Republicans caught red-handed
As soon as he took office,Chris Christie killed the biggest transportation project in the country; and his reasons were lies - not even deniable ones.
GOP governors are fighting to kill Medicare. GOP congress refuses to fund recovery measures.
My only point here is that you have to be a blind ideologue to deny that the GOP is committing economic sabotage. (Of course, Rand Paul just proved to be one, as he denied that government employment was down under Obama.) And, if you accept that, you have to ask, on behalf of what power is that sabotage being committed?
If you consider multi-national corporations and rootless billionaires (like the Facebook shit who moved to Singapore to dodge taxes) as "foreign countries", then the GOP sabotage of America begins to look a lot like fomenting disruption of the legitimate government on behalf of foreign masters. They have already imposed the WTO on us - an unaccountable international bureaucracy that tears up our environmental laws, our labor laws, and our legitimate tariff barriers - but they want the suckers to worry about the toothless UN.
3. Sedition
We have had many examples of seditious behavior from the GOP.
For example, all the GOP office holders who took a pledge to Grover Norquist not to raise taxes have violated their oath of office. They have placed an oath to a revolutionary (who has a picture of Lenin on his wall) above their oath to represent their constituency.
Rick Perry flirted with Secession, which is sedition.
The Citizens United decision is high level judicial sedition, overturning a century of settled law on trumped up grounds in a case hand-picked by the Chief Justice and then warped completely away from its limited purpose. It was a corporate power grab of immense proportions - the kind you get in countries being set up for a coup.
Justice Scalia is increasingly given to denouncing various parts of the Constitution in public. Were he in any other office, his statements would be sedition on their face. He, himself, is corrupt, biased, and out of control. That he and the even more corrupt and sycophantic Justice Thomas remain on the bench is testimony to the power of money in this country.
Large numbers of GOP governors, secretaries of state, and voting officials have been sued in court and gone right to the point of being hauled before the bench to answer their sedition - at which point, and only that point, do they actually relent.
In the Majlis election in the spring of 1952, Mosaddegh "had little to fear from a free vote, since despite the country's problems, he was widely admired as a hero. A free vote, however, was not what others were planning. British agents had fanned out across the country, bribing candidates, and the regional bosses who controlled them. They hoped to fill the Majlis with deputies who would vote to depose Mosaddegh. It would be a coup carried out by seemingly legal means."
All of this is to be expected from a party that is really the cats paw of a foreign power.
The stateless rich think its time to finish the US coup they started in 2000. They think they now own everything, including the Congress, the media, and the courts. So they can just steal the government and turn us into the biggest banana republic in the WTO empire - an empire whose foreign ideology is neoliberalism (aka
inverted Marxism).
Mitt Romney is just like any other banana republic dictator wannabe audidtioing for his corporate masters. He is corrupt, vicious, eminently bribable, and loyal to money. Other than that he is a vacuous zero. He is just what Grover Norquist ordered: A pair of hands to sign legislation:
We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget…We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it.
4. "The Price of Democracy is Eternal Vigilance" - Thomas Jefferson
I fully agree with Troubadour's call for vigilance and preparation for active resistance to a coup. A 'legal coup' (see Appendix P) could begin with voting machine manipulation of the election, or from a SCOTUS replay the 2000 election theft, or from Congressional sabotage or impeachment, or from Homeland Security in response to yet another idiot entrapment scam or false flag operation. Or, the rich always have the option of spending another four years torturing the country until it finally collapses or surrenders. There is a lot to guard against.
In closing, let me remind you one more time: legality is not in the dictionary of the 1%.
Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent.
In contrast, (Allende) said that Congress was promoting a coup d’état or a civil war with a declaration full of affirmations that had already been refuted before-hand and which, in substance and process (directly handing it to the ministers rather than directly handing it to the President) violated a dozen articles of the (then-current) Constitution. He further argued that the legislature was usurping the government's executive function.
I don't trust the GOP at all. I don't believe them at all. I do not doubt they will break every law they can to win. They are still coming for my country, whether they succeed or fail in this Presidential election. They have access to infinite secret money; and the population is less aware of facts and more terrified than ever before. I am not breathing any easier just because Romney/Ryan are idiots. They should be forty points behind, not four points. These poll numbers scare the crap out of me; and it should scare you too.
Read the excerpts in my appendices. Read the entire Wikipedia articles, if you can stomach them. Read about what just happened in Paraguay. Or what happened in 2009 in Hondouras.
Whether you pay attention or not, they are still plotting.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
-----------------------------------
Appendix G: excerpts from - Wikipedia 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
During 1953, as the land expropriations occurred, the United Fruit Company asked the Eisenhower Administration to confront the Árbenz Government, in order to compel the reversion of Decree 900. To involve the politically reticent President Eisenhower, the UFC employed the public relations-and-advertising expert Edward L. Bernays to create, organise, and direct a psychologically inflammatory, anti–Communist disinformation campaign (print and radio, film and television) against the liberal Árbenz Government of Guatemala. The public-opinion pressure generated by the UFC disinformation campaign compelled President Eisenhower to become involved in the private-business vs. national-government quarrel of the United Fruit Company, lest he appear to be “soft on Communism” in Guatemala — a serious personal imputation and great political accusation of which the American public took serious note, especially during the McCarthy Era.[25] Hence, the US State Department reduced economic aid to and commercial trade with Guatemala, which harmed the Guatemalan national economy, because 85 per cent of exports were sold to the US, and 85 per cent of imports were bought from the US. Such economic sabotage of Guatemala was secret, because economic warfare violated the Latin American non-intervention agreement to which the United States was a signatory party; public knowledge that the US was violating the non-intervention agreement would prompt other Latin American countries to aid Guatemala in surviving the American economic warfare.[26]
In third-world Guatemala, few people owned radio receivers; nonetheless, Guatemalans considered the medium of radio as an authoritative source of information. As directed by CIA case officers, from Florida, right-wing student groups successfully conducted internal propaganda, such as publishing El combate (The Combat), a weekly political pamphlet, covering walls and buses with the number 32 — referring to Article 32 of the Guatemalan Constitution, which forbade foreign-financed political parties; the propaganda claims received much attention from the local and the national press. Other psychological warfare techniques included character assassination with signs that read: A Communist Lives Here affixed to the houses of Árbenz supporters; and the month-long daily delivery of false death-notices to President Árbenz, his Cabinet of Advisors, and known Communists.
the United Fruit Company public relations officer Thomas P. McCann, said:
For about eight years [1953–1960] a great deal of the news of Central America, which appeared in the North American press, was supplied, edited, and sometimes made up by United Fruit’s public relations department in New York. It is difficult to make a convincing case for manipulation of the press, when the victims proved so eager for the experience.
— An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (1976)
The paramilitary invasion of Operation PBSUCCESS (1953–54) featured El ejército de liberación, an army of liberation recruited, trained, and armed by the CIA, composed of 480 mercenary soldiers under the command of Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, an exiled, right-wing Guatemalan army officer.
The CIA army for the liberation of Guatemala was part of a complex of diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaigns. To disseminate the propaganda and the disinformation (black propaganda) that misrepresented the Árbenz Government as Communist, the CIA established Voz de la liberación (Voice of Liberation, VOL), a radio station that transmitted from suburban Florida, USA — whilst claiming to be in the Guatemalan jungle with Col. Castillo Armas's liberacionista army. The liberationist propaganda and disinformation misrepresented the VOL as the spontaneous voice of domestic, counter-revolutionary Guatemalan patriots who opposed “the Communism of the Árbenz Government”.
Appendix I: excerpts from Wikipedia 1953 Iranian coup d'état
The National Iranian Oil Company suffered decreased production, because of Iranian inexperience and the AIOC's orders that British technicians not work with them, thus provoking the Abadan Crisis that was aggravated by the Royal Navy's blockading its export markets to pressure Iran to not nationalise its petroleum. The Iranian revenues were greater, because the profits went to Iran's national treasury rather than to private, foreign oil companies. By September 1951, the British had virtually ceased Abadan oil field production, forbidden British export to Iran of key British commodities (including sugar and steel),[44] and had frozen Iran's hard currency accounts in British banks.[45]
In mid-1952, Britain's boycott of Iranian oil was devastatingly effective. British agents in Tehran "worked to subvert" the government of Mosaddegh, who sought help from President Truman and then the World Bank but to no avail. "Iranians were becoming poorer and unhappier by the day" and Mosaddegh's political coalition was fraying.
In the Majlis election in the spring of 1952, Mosaddegh "had little to fear from a free vote, since despite the country's problems, he was widely admired as a hero. A free vote, however, was not what others were planning. British agents had fanned out across the country, bribing candidates, and the regional bosses who controlled them. They hoped to fill the Majlis with deputies who would vote to depose Mosaddegh. It would be a coup carried out by seemingly legal means."
The CIA used propaganda in the forms of political rumour, air-dropped pamphlets, poster campaigns, and radio (the mass communications medium that successfully deceived most of the Iranian populace to accept the foreign deposition of the elected PM Mohammad Mosaddegh).
Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent.[53] ... The Shah, fearing a popular backlash, fled to Rome, Italy...The CIA sent Major general Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. to persuade the exiled Shah to return to rule Iran. Schwarzkopf trained the security forces that would become known as SAVAK to secure the shah's hold on power.[60][61]
Iranian fascists and Nazis played prominent roles in the coup regime. Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, who had been arrested and imprisoned by the British during World War II for his attempt to establish a pro-Nazi government, was made Prime Minister on 19 August 1953. The CIA gave Zahedi about $100,000 before the coup and an additional $5 million the day after the coup to help consolidate support for the coup. Bahram Shahrokh, a trainee of Joseph Goebbels and Berlin Radio's Persian-language program announcer during the Nazi rule, became director of propaganda. Mr. Sharif-Emami, who also had spent some time in jail for his pro-Nazi activities in the 1940s, assumed several positions after 1953 coup, including Secretary General of the Oil Industry, President of the Senate, and Prime Minister (twice). [69][70]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix C: excerpts from Wikipedia 1973 Chilean coup d'état
Supreme Court's resolution
On 26 May 1973, Chile’s Supreme Court unanimously denounced the Allende régime’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions. It refused to permit police execution of judicial resolutions that contradicted the Government's measures.
[edit]Chamber of Deputies' resolution
On 22 August 1973, with the support of the Christian Democrats and National Party members, the Chamber of Deputies passed 81–47 a resolution that asked "the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, and members of the Armed and Police Forces"[18] to "put an immediate end" to "breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans."
Two days later, on 24 August 1973, President Allende responded,[20] characterising the Congress's declaration as destined to damage the country’s prestige abroad and create internal confusion, predicting It will facilitate the seditious intention of certain sectors. He noted that the declaration had not obtained the two-thirds Senate majority constitutionally required to convict the president of abuse of power: essentially, the Congress were invoking the intervention of the armed forces and of Order against a democratically elected government and subordinat[ing] political representation of national sovereignty to the armed institutions, which neither can nor ought to assume either political functions or the representation of the popular will.
Allende argued he had obeyed constitutional means for including military men to the cabinet at the service of civic peace and national security, defending republican institutions against insurrection and terrorism. In contrast, he said that Congress was promoting a coup d’état or a civil war with a declaration full of affirmations that had already been refuted before-hand and which, in substance and process (directly handing it to the ministers rather than directly handing it to the President) violated a dozen articles of the (then-current) Constitution. He further argued that the legislature was usurping the government's executive function.
The CIA provided extensive support for black propaganda against Allende, funneled largely through El Mercurio, but also using other media outlets. Propaganda targeted both the people and the military. Financial support was also provided for anti-Allende political opponents and for organized strikes and unrest to destabilize his government.
...The CIA used ITT as a conduit to financially aid opponents of Allende's government.
Appendix P: excerpts from L.A. Times(not used, but relevant) Paraguay's 'legal' Coup
Editorial
President Fernando Lugo was charged, tried and thrown out of office in less than 24 hours, illustrating the immaturity of Latin American democracy.
Appendix H: excerpts from Wikipedia 2009 Honduran coup d'état
The 2009 Honduran coup d'état, part of the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis,[1][2] occurred when the Honduran Army on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court ousted President Manuel Zelaya and sent him into exile on 28 June 2009.[3] It was prompted by his violation of the constitution through attempts to schedule a non binding poll on holding a referendum about convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.[4][5] After Zelaya refused to comply with court orders to cease, the Honduran Supreme Court secretly issued a warrant for his arrest on 26 June.