|
echoed throughout the corpo-fascist 'news' media, is part of the coup attempt. They had their "talking point" all ready for the shill press to disseminate, in case of failure, to provide cover for the coup planners.
I don't remember where I got it, but I knew the police had shut down the legislature. It was one of the things--along with others, like the shutdown of three airports--that indicated, early on, that this was an organized, pre-planned coup attempt, not just a police "bonuses" protest that got out of hand.
Airports assaulted and shut down, roads blockaded, barracks takeovers, and police rioting in three cities, legislature assaulted and shut down in Quito, all on the same day, and then a police assault on a hospital (a hospital!) where the wounded president of the country was being treated, and not just an assault but a siege with police snipers on buildings and police open firing on the hospital--while loyal police tried to defend it--and shooting at the president's car and other accompanying cars (killing one of his guards), when the military finally broke through the police attack on the hospital to rescue the president.
The riot in which President Correa was caught, earlier in the day, looked just like that--a riot. Except for the couple of calm operatives in the crowd, who were watching Correa in the midst of that melee, clearly looking for opportunities to move in on him and harm him--the two that I could see in the vid tried to tear off his tear gas mask but had to reach over his body guards to do so, and couldn't get close enough for serious harm (a shooting or knifing?), and maybe the third one, reported to have hit Correa's knee (the one he'd just had surgery on) with a rifle butt--this event seemed spontaneous. The police were protesting loss of their bonus system (though Correa had doubled their salaries); Correa went to talk to those protesting at the barracks in Quito; they wouldn't talk to him and they rioted. But you simply don't shut down airports, blockade roads, etc., in the country's major cities, shut down the National Assembly, and everything else they did, simultaneously, without pre-planning and a command structure in place giving orders.
Later, we heard that someone was giving commands on police radios--"Kill Correa! Get Correa!" There is some indication that, when the military didn't join the coup, the goal of the coup changed from destabilization and shutting down the government, to assassination--and that, too, required command. Who changed the goal? Who ordered the assault on the hospital? It's hard to believe that ordinary policemen, uncommanded, would have done that--laid siege to a hospital, all night, to get at a wounded man and kill him. That just doesn't make any sense at all. After rioting, they would go get drunk at a bar, right? Or go home? They wouldn't form into an "army" and besiege a hospital--over bonuses!
It's interesting that, when Correa first tried to talk to the police at the Quito barracks, he asked them, had any of them read the legislative bill that changed the bonus system? Correa said that none of them had read it. This points to a disinformation campaign prior to the riot--somebody playing upon their ignorance of the bill and stirring them up. Considered by itself, this could "merely" have been senior officers who were used to a corrupt patronage system working up anger and resentment among the troops. But combined with the other events, it now looks like a quite deliberate "psyop" aimed at creating a riot that would be the trigger for these other treasonous acts, not to change the reform bill but to topple the government.
Police laying siege to a hospital and shooting at and trying to kill the president, and simultaneously blocking the entry and exit of legislators to the National Assembly, IS a coup! --apart from everything else they did. The only question is WHO plotted and commanded it? And that's where the "talking point" denying that it was a coup attempt comes in. It is cover for the coup plotters--with the utterly disgraceful worldwide corporate media establishment aiding and abetting.
What would have happened if they HAD killed the president? Succession of the executive would be the next issue, as to government continuity. And the police were controlling the legislature! I'm not sure how succession works in Ecuador, but if there is a vice president, and he or she tried to take command and was prevented from doing so by the treasonous police, then the National Assembly would likely be the next line of defense of the legitimate government. And they had that covered, too. A riot about "bonuses" is one thing. A focused effort to kill the president--a siege!--and surrounding and controlling the legislature is quite another.
Preventing the entry and exit of elected legislators has a long history in common law. And there is a reason that free access of our senators and congresspeople to their Senate and House chambers is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. NO ONE--not the president, not the police, not the courts--can stop or detain a senator or congressperson in the course of doing the public's business. The arrest of members of parliament was a favorite tactic of monarchs in England and other countries before the concept of "equal branches of government" was firmly established. Our Founders knew this history well, and specifically prohibited this kind of interference with the legislative branch. I haven't read the Ecuadoran Constitution (except the part that gives Mother Nature--'Pachamama'--her right to exist and prosper--the first such provision in the world), but I presume that it is modeled on most democratic constitutions and includes this protection of the legislators. It is, in any case, a plainly tyrannical act, in itself--quite apart from trying to kill the president--to detain legislators. And it more than likely means that a coup government was waiting in the wings.
One more thought on coups and definitions of coups: This matter came up during the rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras. The president of the U.S. is obliged, by law, to immediately suspend all financial aid and all diplomatic relations with any country in which a coup against the legitimate government has taken place. What occurred in June 2009 in Honduras was plainly, obviously, blatantly a coup d'etat against the legitimate government. The military shot up the president's house, dragged him out of bed, put him on a plane and flew him out of the country, at gunpoint (not incidentally stopping for refueling at the U.S. airbase in Honduras). But the Obama administration refused to designate this as a coup, and continued funneling money to these bastards, who were beating up, jailing, torturing, raping and killing Hondurans who had peacefully protested this assault on their democracy. And the U.S. ultimately funded and organized a so-called 'election' UNDER MARTIAL LAW that 'legitimized' the coup's choice for president.
The definition of a coup is an important issue--even when the scofflaw U.S. government ignores it. So this 'meme' going around the corpo-fascist press that trying to kill the president of Ecuador and shutting down the legislature is NOT a "coup attempt" smells of U.S. participation--at the least of the participation of Washington P.R. firms like those that spread "talking points" throughout the corpo-fascist press that the Honduran coup d'etat was not a coup-- Washington P.R. firms paid with our taxes, funneled to the coupsters through the USAID and other agencies. The same "talking points" all over the world. "It is not a coup." Who has that kind of power?
And what is the purpose of this "talking point" subsequent to a failed coup--if not to protect the real perpetrators?
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
