Not Good

It appears that Donald Trump and some of his more unhinged supporters are considering meddling with the upcoming election with a martial law declaration. 

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

………

To head off a crisis, Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root, and Peters. At the same time, they have authorized as-yet-unsuccessful efforts to uncover actual evidence that would make the conspiracies more credible: Trump’s advisers gathered once-classified documents that he could share on genuine foreign efforts to influence elections, set up a prime-time address where he again falsely suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, authorized the seizure of Georgia election records, and reviewed voting equipment used in Puerto Rico. None of these efforts has revealed the type of large-scale fraud that Trump has alleged, though they have allowed the president to keep the idea of election theft in the news. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to persuade Senate Republicans to pass legislation, called the SAVE America Act, that would restrict mail-in voting and impose new voter-ID and citizenship checks on ballot access, and the Supreme Court has rejected his effort to restrict voting by mail.

………

But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible. Such measures are broadly opposed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and within Trump’s own administration, not least because they’re considered bad politics. Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout, particularly in red states, such as Florida, that have long embraced mail-in voting, according to a person who has reviewed the numbers.

We need to make sure that local and state authorities are prepared for this.

We also personally need to be prepared to push back against this personally. 

Unbelievably Fucking Lame

In an attempt to have Donald Trump install her as President of Venezuala, María Corina Machado offered to transfer her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.

The Nobel committee, deciding that this was a bridge too far, told her that this was not allowed.

Even if the committee allowed this, it would not have her installed in Caracas.

Even a cursory examination of her support in country shows that she is about as popular as a case of the  clap, and her stint as a US puppet would last about as long as a neutrino detection.

The organisers of the Nobel peace prize have said it “cannot be revoked, shared or transferred” after Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said she wanted to give her award to Donald Trump.

When Machado was named Nobel laureate in October, it was seen as a snub by the White House, despite Machado rushing to dedicate the prize to the US president and his “decisive support of our cause”.

Trump has made no secret of his strongly held desire to be awarded the Nobel peace prize, the winner of which is selected by an independent five-person committee in Oslo.

She thinks that Trump is a delicate snowflake whose feelings were hurt because he did not get an award, which is true, but she also thinks that Trump would be grateful enough to put her in charge if she gave him the prize.

Trump does not do grateful.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the Nobel Committee is beginning to regret giving the award to her inb the first place. 

 

F%$# Me, I Agree with Matt “Close Encounters with the Third Grade” Gaetz

The distinguished gentleman from Florida has introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that would require the Pentagon to issue detailed reports to Congress for all of the foreign soldiers that it has trained who later participated in a coup.

It's actually kind of weak tea, but it is a starT.

Given the record of such programs, there is a reason that the School of the Americas had to rename itself:

In response to a spate of coups by U.S.-trained military personnel in West Africa and the greater Sahel, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has authored an amendment to the 2024 defense spending bill to collect information on trainees who overthrow their governments. It would require the Pentagon for the first time to inform Congress about U.S.-mentored mutineers, Gaetz told The Intercept in an exclusive interview.

“The Department of Defense, up until this point, has not kept data regarding the people they train who participate in coups to overthrow democratically elected — or any — governments,” said Gaetz. “And that’s why in this National Defense Authorization Act … I have legislation that demands a collection of that data and a report to Congress about those outcomes.” Congress is set to take up the 2024 NDAA when it returns from recess in September.

The Intercept has found that at least 15 officers who benefitted from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes military personnel from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At least five leaders of the Niger coup in late July received American training, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors, according to the State Department.

There is a reason that US training correlates to coups against elected governments, and has for over 80 years.

This ain't a bug, this is a feature.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We'll Be Lucky to Live through It

Niger has closed its airspace in preparation for a threatened military intervention from ECOWAS nations to reverse a coup.

On the other side, Mali and Burkina Faso have offered to help Niger defend themselves from any potential military actions.

It appears that the coup is popular in Niger, at least in the capital of Niamey, where there have been large scale demonstrations in support of the coup, or least against the French presence in the country. 

This has the potential to get very ugly very quickly:

Niger closed its airspace on Sunday until further notice, citing the threat of military intervention from a regional bloc after coup leaders rejected a deadline to reinstate the country’s ousted president.

“In the face of the threat of intervention that is becoming more apparent … Nigerien airspace is closed effective from today,” a junta representative said in a statement on national television on Sunday evening.

He said there had been a pre-deployment of forces in two central African countries in preparation for an intervention, but did not give details.

“Niger’s armed forces and all our defence and security forces, backed by the unfailing support of our people, are ready to defend the integrity of our territory,” the representative said.

Defence chiefs of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) have agreed a possible military action plan, including when and where to strike, if Bazoum was not released and reinstated by the Sunday deadline.

………

Earlier, thousands of junta supporters flocked to a stadium in Niamey, the capital, cheering the decision not to stand down by Sunday following the power grab on 26 July that toppled democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

The coup, the seventh in west and central Africa in three years, has rocked the Sahel region, one of the poorest in the world. Given its uranium and oil riches and its pivotal role in a war with Islamist militants, Niger holds great importance for the US, Europe, China and Russia.

Niger last week revoked military cooperation agreements with France, which has between 1,000 and 1,500 troops in the country.

………

Any military intervention could be complicated by a promise from juntas in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso to come to Niger’s defence if needed, saying any military intervention against the new military rulers in Niger would be regarded as a “declaration of war”. France announced on Sunday that it was suspending development aid and budgetary assistance to Burkina Faso.

I'm not sure how much of this is the result of the various insurgencies in the region, how much is the result of military dissatisfaction with the deposed President, and how much is the result of France's continued semi-colonial involvement in many nations in Africa.

What I am sure of is that if there is a military intervention, and it isn't a cakewalk, the endgame will be chaotic and dangerous.

This Does Seem to be a Pattern

In Burkina Faso, we have yet another coup, and once again, the coup leader received extensive US training.

One can only conclude that that curriculum made notorious by the School of the Americas, which included a disdain for civilian authority and the seeds of war crimes, continues apace:

Earlier this week, the military seized power in Burkina Faso, ousting the country’s democratically elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.

The coup was announced on state television Monday by a young officer who said the military had suspended the constitution and dissolved the government. Beside him sat a camouflage-clad man whom he introduced as Burkina Faso’s new leader: Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the commander of one of the country’s three military regions.

Damiba is a highly trained soldier, thanks in no small part to the U.S. military, which has a long record of training soldiers in Africa who go on to stage coups. Damiba, it turns out, participated in at least a half-dozen U.S. training exercises, according to U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM.

………

Damiba is just the latest in a carousel of coup leaders in West Africa trained by the U.S. military as the U.S. has pumped in more than $1 billion in security assistance to promote “stability” in the region. Since 2008, U.S.-trained officers have attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania, and the Gambia. 

While we should be concerned about the very strong correlation between US military training and foreign coups, we should be more concerned that the culture of the military that foments foreign coups could foment a domestic coup.

The School of the Americas Correspondence Courses

The US military continues to train foreign soldiers to execute coups, though now they are doing so in situ, rather than at the notorious School of the Americas, they are doing so in the host country.

A case in point, the soldiers who executed the coup in Guinea were extensively trained by American troops:

American Green Berets were training local forces in the West African nation of Guinea last weekend when their charges peeled away for a mission not listed in any military training manual: They mounted a coup.

Gunfire rang out as an elite Guinean Special Forces unit stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Conakry, early Sunday, deposing the country’s 83-year-old president, Alpha Condé. Hours later a charismatic young officer, Col. Mamady Doumbouya, announced himself as Guinea’s new leader.

The Americans knew him well.

A team of about a dozen Green Berets had been in Guinea since mid-July to train about 100 soldiers in a special forces unit led by Colonel Doumbouya, who served for years in the French Foreign Legion, took part in American military exercises and was once a close ally of the president he overthrew.

………

For the Pentagon, though, it is an embarrassment. The United States has trained troops in many African nations, largely for counterterrorism programs but also with the broad aim of supporting civilian-led governments.

And although numerous U.S.-trained officers have seized power in their countries — most notably, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt — this is believed to be the first time one has done so in the middle of an American military course.

There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of coups initiated from the recipients of US training.

Either the US military is incredibly incompetent, or it's more of a feature than a bug.

The Coup in Myanmar

Yes, the coup was caught on an aerobics video

I'm hoping that there is a way for both sides, a genocidal and dictatorial military and a genocidal Nobel Peace Prize Winner, can both lose as a result of the military seizing power in Myanmar.

Last time around, Aung San Suu Kyi had the support of human rights activists everywhere, but after years of her enthusiastic support for the genocide of the Rohingya, the blush is off the rose.

One hopes that whatever happens, that the end result will be a true multiparty democracy where all of its citizens, including the Rohingya, can fully and freely participate:

Myanmar’s military said Monday that it took control of the country and declared a state of emergency for a year, after detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) in a predawn operation, staging a coup against the democratically elected government.

The raids came hours before a new session of parliament was scheduled to open and members who won the November elections were set to take their seats. Suu Kyi’s NLD won those elections in a landslide, capturing 396 out of 476 seats. It was Myanmar’s second democratic election since the country’s fragile transition from military rule to democracy.

………

Several hours after the raids, the military in a television broadcast said that a state of emergency had been declared in Myanmar and that power would be transferred to the commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing. Myint Swe, a former general and the military-backed vice president, will become the president, the broadcast added.

The sweep also included other prominent democracy activists who have been fighting against military rule for decades, leaders of other political parties and NLD lawmakers, according to social media posts and news reports.

………

Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest before her release in November 2010, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her resistance to military rule. The military-drafted constitution prevents her from leading Myanmar as president, but she is unequivocally the nation’s leader, revered as a deity, and rules through proxies. The military-drafted constitution also allows the army to step in in a situation that may “disintegrate” the country and national solidarity.

Since taking power, though, she has disappointed old allies in the West, particularly for defending Myanmar — and its military in particular — against charges of genocide over the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority. Suu Kyi has in recent years moved closer toward powers such as China and India, and grown increasingly estranged from countries such as the United States and Britain, which once led advocacy efforts to get her released from house arrest.

She is up there with Henry Kissinger, Barack "DronesR Us" Obama, Jimmy "Bought 4 decades of war in Afghanistan" Carter, and Elihu Root (Philippine insurrection) on a list of horrible recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

For some reason, I tend to take it personally when people engage in religiously based genocide, and the Junta and Suu Kyi have.