Republished from MintPress News

Fresh off a successful military coup deposing leftist President Evo Morales in Bolivia last week, the United States attempted to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela this weekend. The events, however, went barely noticed outside the South American nation, as the attempt proved to be a complete fiasco.

U.S.-backed self-declared President Juan Guaidó, who had tried multiple times earlier in the year to depose Maduro to no avail, had long publicly targeted November 16 as the date of his latest insurrection, calling on all Venezuelans to rise up and fight in the streets against the “dictatorship.” That way, he explained on social media, they could build up national and international pressure on Maduro

The United States lent its considerable weight to the attempt. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave his blessing to the coup, stating:

Venezuelans continue to take to the streets, as they have day after day, in city after city, to demand their basic needs be met. Maduro’s illegitimate corrupt regime attempts to silence them, but as the world saw in #Bolivia, the will of the people will always prevail.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 16, 2019

Vice President Mike Pence took to Twitter to openly call for the military to overthrow Maduro as the Bolivian army had done to Morales:

Maduro and his gang of thugs continue to repress democracy. Yesterday’s raid on President @jguaido’s Party Headquarters is reprehensible and shows how weak and paranoid they are. Maduro has no respect for #libertad or the rule of law and he must go!

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) November 16, 2019

We urge the Venezuelan military to stand with the people of Venezuela, not a despot. The Venezuelan military should be a force of good! The power to change for the better is in your hands!

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) November 16, 2019

U.S. Southern Command, responsible for all American military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, effectively turned its social media accounts over to the coup, constantly sharing or retweeting pro-regime change messages from American officials or from Guaidó himself.

Yet, despite this enormous signal boosting online, the coup attempt fell completely flat, like in January, Venezuela’s armed forces failed to defect to Guaidó’s side. Furthermore, he was unable to muster significant public support in the streets, his demonstrations poorly attended with large counter-demonstrations neutralizing his efforts […]

via Another Failed U.S.-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela Goes Unnoticed — Red Revolution Media

By Tom Angell

A key congressional committee plans to hold a historic vote on a bill to end the federal prohibition of marijuana next week, two sources with knowledge of the soon-to-be-announced action said.

The legislation, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and set aside funding to begin repairing the damage of the war on drugs, which has been disproportionately waged against communities of color.

Those programs—such as job training and legal aid for people impacted by prohibition enforcement, loans for small cannabis businesses owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and efforts to minimize barriers to licensing and employment in the legal industry—would be paid for with a new federal five percent tax on marijuana sales instituted under the bill, and some of them would be administered by a new Cannabis Justice Office in the Department of Justice.

The proposal, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, would also provide for resentencing and expungement of records for people previously convicted of cannabis offenses and would shield immigrants from being denied citizenship status over marijuana.

A Senate companion is being led by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a 2020 presidential candidate, though it has not yet been scheduled for action in the GOP-controlled chamber.

Sputnik-América Latina
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced that the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia approved a decree that authorizes the military to participate in tasks of restoring internal order with “all means available” and exempts them from criminal responsibility […]

via IACHR Denounces Bolivian De facto Government Releasing Military from Criminal Responsibility

via Bolivia: Coup-Born Government Threatens Independent Journalists

RT | November 12, 2019

Google has teamed up with one of the largest health providers in the US to gather detailed medical records on millions of patients across the country without their knowledge, in a secret project the firm tried to keep under wraps.

Dubbed “Project Nightingale,” the secretive program brought together Google and healthcare giant Ascension in an effort to collect medical records on patients across 21 states, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The data sharing began last year, and has only accelerated in recent months.

At least 150 employees at Google’s Cloud division now have access to the bulk of the data, which amounts to information on tens of millions of patients, according to a source familiar with the records.

The details shared include patient names and dates of birth, hospitalization records, lab results and doctor diagnoses, which together provide a complete medical history for many of the patients – all without their consent.

Google says it hopes to use the data to develop an application employing AI and machine learning to track patients and recommend treatments, and ultimately has its eye on creating a search engine that can aggregate disparate patient data in one place.

“Wow – this is downright alarming. Do you trust Google with your blood test results, diagnoses, sensitive health information?” asked attorney and Republican National Committee member Harmeet K. Dhillon in a tweet. “Google’s secret ‘Project Nightingale’ gathers personal health data on millions of Americans.”

The company launched Google Health in 2008, but shuttered it less than four years later after failing to persuade enough users to hand over their medical records willingly, perhaps uncomfortable with the firm having access to such sensitive information. The tech giant has since cut individual consent out of its quest to amass healthcare data, going over the heads of patients to make deals with health providers instead […]

via Google sucks up & analyzes healthcare data on millions of Americans in secret AI project… after voluntary opt-in flops

“U.S. shale is slamming on the brakes”

via US Shale Oil Boom Rapidly Going Bust

Posted by Internationalist 360° November 12, 2019

Against the backdrop of the media siege that confronts the truth in our country, the Movement Toward Socialism communicates to the Bolivian people and the international community that since November 10, 2019 a plan of assassination by the UMOPAR and the Bolivian Police was activated during the final phase of the coup d’état against our leaders Evo Morales and Álvaro García, which is why the Mexican government’s offer of asylum was accepted.

During the entire day of November 11, the coup plotters put the lives of our leaders Evo and Álvaro at serious risk, first with public threats from police to proceed with operations to apprehend them, then with the closure of our air space, preventing the entry of the Mexican plane that came to pick them up with administrative obstacles under the responsibility of the Bolivian Air Force.

The Bolivian people are living through terrible moments, with police officers and motorcyclists storm the streets and the military high command deciding to attack the citizens as a means of pacification, including preventing prominent people, religious leaders and political leaders from finding constitutional and democratic solutions to the crisis we are facing.

The military are in the streets, shooting at our people from helicopters in Cochabamba, mobilizing tanks, troops and weapons in La Paz to annihilate our people simply for resisting injustice and outrage, racism, violence and the infamous strategy of preventing our leaders from continuing to lead the country.

The coup d’état was a construction of several stages, first installing the idea of electoral fraud to generate disorder in the streets, denying our victory, and using the OAS audit report, distorting its content, when it categorically speaks of irregularities and not fraud; then asking for the nullification of the elections, then the resignation of our leaders, to finally concretize their strategy with the police mutiny, coordinating the anti-democratic plan, installing a regime of terror, threats and persecution […]

Marco Teruggi“It was possible,” said Jeanine Añez at the end of her speech after proclaiming herself president of Bolivia. As she spoke, you could hear them whispering to her what to say. Then she went to the presidential balcony and saluted wearing the tricolor sash. Thus ended one of the most important phases of the coup d’état in Bolivia: building an institutional fiction.

Añez proclaimed herself outside the Constitution and without a quorum. It was known that this was the only way to do it, since the majority in both chambers belong to the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and that the decision was made not to hold a session.

Añez, therefore, first proclaimed herself president of the Senate – a figure who must assume the position of interim president after the resignation of the president and vice-president – and then proclaimed herself president. There followed the applause of the few people present in the precinct.

This step was essential in the strategy of a coup d’état that always had the objective of presenting itself as democratic. From the beginning, this presentation had the backing of the United States, as well as the Secretary of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, who on Tuesday accused Evo Morales of carrying out a coup d’état, accompanied by a protective media machine.

However, even with those endorsements, the absence of a formal presidency created a governmental vacuum – and the real authorities continued to function – that had to be resolved. The leading bloc then decided to accelerate the process by jumping over all legality to place the sash on the shoulders of their chosen person.

None of this would have been possible without the participation of those who hold the actual power. Morales, who arrived in Mexico in the morning with Álvaro García Linera, denounced that Añez proclaimed herself “surrounded by a group of accomplices and supported by the Armed Forces and Police that repress the people”.

It was not a political image: the police and the military repressed while Añez and the entire right wing celebrated in Bolivia. It happened in the center of La Paz, around Plaza Murillo, where all afternoon there was a mobilization led by those who came down from the city of El Alto, one of the places where the country’s biggest protests took place.

The mobilization of El Alto was one of the points of greatest conflict. On Monday the first moment of the uprising took place -its genesis had been on Saturday night- with thousands of men and women in their great majority belonging to the Aymara nation. That day ended with three dead. The images were of blood stains on the streets.

On Tuesday the arrival to La Paz was announced, and the residents of the city center locked themselves in their houses, while others went out to applaud the massive mobilization holding the Whipala flag.

The street action again showed the power of El Alto, at the same time that it evidenced a directional struggle, similar to the one that occurred in the days before the coup d’état was consummated and where now the different parts of the process of change are.

In El Alto, where daily town meetings are held, the demonstrations are not the only events in progress. The Coordinadora de las Seis Federaciones del Trópico called for mobilization on Thursday, and the Confederación Sindical Única de Campesinos de Bolivia decreed a plan of struggle to block the country’s highways and generate a siege on the city of La Paz that, 48 hours after the coup, has begun to present difficulties in the supply of gasoline and food due to the fact that many stores are closed.

Against this backdrop, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) announced “48 hours to re-establish constitutional order”. Will the COB consider what happened with Añez a re-establishment of constitutional order or will it embark on a general strike?

There are many questions regarding the situation in Bolivia, advances made by those who lead the coup bloc, as well as the growth of resistance in a situation where information channels are few. It is difficult to know what is happening, both in the political epicenter of the debates, and in different areas of La Paz, El Alto, and in particular in the most remote, rural areas of the country.

There are numerous reports of deaths, repression, humiliation, persecution, within the context of a coup offensive which, before overthrowing Morales, unleashed a wave of violence with armed shock groups, which, once in power, with or without a government, has maintained its offensive in order to decapitate the process of change […]

via Fascist Senator Appoints Herself President of Bolivia

via Bolivia: President Evo Morales Resigns Amid Right-Wing Coup

By Edu Montesanti