Whether seen as a shadowy, villainous presence or, possibly, a heretofore tight-lipped benefactor, the “Deep State” has recently risen from the far-fringed depths of obscure conspiracies to seize the public discourse with a Leviathan-like tentacle. On the surface, President Trump, the quid pro quo‘ster boy of impeachable note, either looks like a paid clown of the “Deep State”; or, alternatively, the tin-skinned hero of a globalist, “Deep State” witch hunt. Whichever direction you look, left or right, the conspiratorial “Deep State” talk has become normalized in mainstream media.
Nevertheless, there are limits to how far this newly acknowledged “Deep State” awareness extends. Take the recent — and ongoing — coup d’etat in Bolivia, for example. This coup has been so slow-rolling that most North American media consumers never saw it coming, since Bolivia is never seen as a country of note. Indeed, for well over a year, the New York Times, and other corporate news presenters, have been trumping up the regime change operation in Venezuela, instead.
At first glance, most Venezuelan coup subscribers probably felt a shock at this sudden Bolivian substitution. However, when their new “Deep State” awareness sinks in, they will realize that Venezuela is more “in play” than ever, since that “red devil” Maduro’s now three-quarters surrounded by a “troika of…” — Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia, as the still-wet concrete of the Bolivian coup continues to harden.
In Greater South America, one could ask, in this “Jeopardy” capitalist world, like Alex Trebek: “What is Lithium?” One could even clue in the contestant that “social” and “indigenous” are excluded from the correct answer; “corporatist Bible-thumping,” however, will be admitted, as the Bolivian coup actors have brazenly brandished their Bibles while overthrowing the “satanic” Evo Morales. Does one sense a Pompeo-Pence connection, perhaps? Maybe something deeper than that? Certainly, the Trump regime has vigorously endorsed the militaristic ouster of Morales while, ironically enough, having its own legitimacy put on trial through a carnivalesque impeachment proceeding. Could the “Deep State” be working both angles at once: executing a coup down there while staging a “quid pro quo” show up here?
Who “quid pro” knows, but a tentacle of the “Deep State” (now that everyone’s talking about it) can also be surmised in the Kafkaesque case of the Gray Zone editor-journalist Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal was recently arrested by Washington D.C. police on a warrant that had been thrown out by a judge five months previously. The charge stemmed from Blumenthal’s participation in a civilian operation to supply activists in the Venezuelan embassy besieged by a throng of anti-Maduro, pro-Guaido apparatchiks who were literally blockading the Venezuelan embassy: a microcosm of the United States illegally blockading the entire country of Venezuela. In late October, 2019, someone in the Leviathan Apparatus revived the moribund warrant against Blumenthal, which caused the D.C. police to forcefully paddy wagon the journalist off to a local jail cell for 36 hours, during which time the anonymous authorities denied Blumenthal his right to make a phone call.
“Calling Kafka –”
“Hello, Patriot Act: are we reaching?”
In the event, Blumenthal’s Kafkaesquely incarcerated status, his “disappearment,” was just as mysteriously lifted, and the contrarian pen-wielder of note was just as suddenly free to commit more of his pen-wielding atrocities — such as exposing the Academy Award winning alt-terrorist group, the White Helmets, in Syria. The Blumenthal “redaction,” plus the gest apo — or “Police State” — tactics involved raises the question: who in our government signs off on such secretive detentions?
Interestingly enough, Blumenthal had no prior criminal record, beyond reporting on crimes of the state (“Deep” or just plain obvious), which is not yet considered to be a crime in “America” — unless, of course, you are a Snowden, Manning, or Assange, who is not even a U.S. citizen. If the “pen is mightier than the sword,” then Blumenthal’s pen appears to have crossed an undisclosed “red line.” Whoever signed off on Blumenthal’s arrest, going so far as to list the journalist as “Armed and Dangerous,” remains in the shadows –– an invisible authority, if you will. There’s more than a shred of “quid pro quo” hanging over the Blumenthal abduction, about which major media journalists have maintained an icy silence.
Now, back in March, 2019, mainstream media types also missed a “strange” and “unusual” detail of newly elected Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s first state visit to the United States. Bolsonaro is unabashedly chauvinist, and the ostensible purpose of his trip was to meet with his American doppelgänger, Donald Trump. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the Oval Office: Bolsonaro stopped at the CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, first. Far from stopping the presses, the peculiarity of a major hemispheric — not to mention world — leader seeing the CIA at all (never mind before meeting the American president) was scarcely reported on here.
In Brazil itself, news of Bolsonaro’s CIA visit raised eyebrows all the way back to the 1964 CIA-engineered coup d’etat (Code Name “Brother Sam”), which ousted the democratically elected Joao Gaulat. Gaulat was Brazil’s last liberal leader until Lula da Silva in 2003. “Lula,” the popular front-runner in Brazil’s 2018 election cycle, was jailed on corruption charges under a hastily expedited anti-corruption probe (lava jato, or “Car Wash”) orchestrated by the Brazilian judge Sergio Moro, who was working with both the U.S. FBI and DoJ. In jail, da Silva was banned from running for president, blazing a path to victory for the right-wing firebrand Bolsonaro. In quid pro coup fashion, Sergio Moro was quickly appointed Minister of Justice by Bolsonaro after his election, and accompanied Bolsonaro on his “unusual” visit to CIA headquarters.
There’s more to the Brazilian story, of course, including the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, who had cancelled a state visit to the Obama White House in 2013 after leaked revelations that the NSA had been spying on her government for years, as if…
So, the near distant trajectory of Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to the presidency of Brazil bears all the Leviathan-like tentacle marks of a slow-rolling coup, too. Bolsonaro’s “strange” visit to the CIA HQ, obviously, bolsters this view. Moreover, Bolsonaro’s trip also checked off a telling wish on a shadowy wish list: the U.S. Military now has basing rights at Brazil’s Alcantra Aerospace Launch complex, a little less than a rocket-propelled stone’s throw from — Venezuela.
One further incident deserves mention in this context: peace activist Medea Benjamin’s recent dust-up with the “Venezuela Democracy Caucus.” Three days after the Bolivian coup, coincidentally enough, U.S. congress members Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Democrat) and Mario Diaz-Balart (Republican) held an open air press event to launch their caucus, which is the latest D.C. platform for regime change in Venezuela. Medea Benjamin was there, in protest.
Somehow, a scuffle ensued, involving pushing, shoving, and an arm bar on Benjamin. Claiming to have been “touched” during the melee, Wasserman Schultz complained vociferously to D.C. Capitol Police, who arrived in force at Benjamin’s residence an hour later to apprehend the offending civil disobedient, in an eerie replay of the Blumenthal incident scant weeks before. In this case, however, the “hall monitors” were truly warrantless, and Benjamin was left undetained, but shaken. Clearly, the pro-Guaido crowd has pronounced aggressive tendencies that are not troubling to the D.C. gendarmerie (nor the corporatist press, for that matter), who prefer to harass non-violent journalists and activists, instead.
Whatever the state of the “Deep State” in the United States, the Blumenthal and Benjamin incidents suggest we have a resurgent “Police State” waiting in the wings to crack down on dissent. The more virulent version of this crackdown is presently on display in coup-stricken Bolivia and, if the “Deep Staters” get their way, Venezuela will be the next exhibit.
Nota bene: as of December 6, the U.S. government has mysteriously dropped the warrant against Max Blumenthal. “Trial balloons, folks; nothing but (impeachment?) trial balloons!”