Nasser had overthrown a monarchy and remade his country as a thriving republic. ibid.
The United States also saw a threat growing in the country from a new socialist political powerhouse: he [Allende] was a doctor, he loved fine wine and expensive suits … Under orders from the White House, the CIA and National Security Council drew up a twin track plan … Track Two of the military plan was a military takeover. ibid.
America would support the forces in doing what ever they needed to do to tighten their grip over the country. ibid.
No country in the world has seen more coups than Thailand. Since 1932 the military there has intervened 18 times to seize control of the government. ibid.
Not President Clinton? OK. Forget the polls: Trump stole the election. Now my book is not a prediction, it’s a warning … The facts: They’ve already removed 17,000,000 people from the voter rolls, that’s federal government’ numbers for the past two years’ of record keeping. 17,000,000 voters. We’re going to be shocked that they don’t get their mailing ballot, and guess what, Max? … If you don’t get your ballot, you can’t mail it in. Greg Palast, author How Trump Stole 2020, interview The Keiser Report August 2020
2020: It has been stolen through the massive purge of the voter rolls and other trickery and through changes in the election law … But it can be stolen back. ibid.
Brand new tricks: see, in 2018 the Supreme Court handed a new weapon to the vote thieves … A new trick to remove voters … If you miss a couple of elections, that means you’re an inactive voter … and then you don’t answer [a] postcard. ibid.
They took it for a test drive in Georgia in 2018 and I was there … One third of a million voters in Georgia were wiped out illegally. In fact, three hundred thousand, one hundred and thirty-four. ibid.
‘Hundreds of thousands of voters from Brooklyn went missing from the voter rolls.’ ibid. Stacey Herbert
Democrats disenfranchise each other. ibid.
2016: You elected a kind of orange-stained porcine bloated bigot … We’ve had a coup d’etat: you’re slaves now. ibid.
Five million ballots disqualified … They can’t steal all of the votes all of the time … ibid.
People didn’t see Trump as a threat. When you have basically Gestapo-kind-of-proto-death-squads grabbing people on streets, I think it’s motivating young people. ibid.
You have to have a special ID to vote in Madison, to vote in Wisconsin, not just hand over a regular student ID. That’s over 100,000 … You have to prove you’re in good standing. ibid.
CNN: As I wrote this, the US Capitol building was being stormed by right-wing protesters trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
This was an attempted coup, encouraged by the President of the United States, in an attempt to derail today’s congressional certification of the electoral vote that will lead to Joe Biden’s inauguration in two weeks.
Donald Trump’s legacy is American carnage. Our country is far more divided and violent and deluded than before he entered office. His misrule has led to this moment, but it is not his responsibility alone. Trump’s fear-fuelled lies and extremism and conspiracy theories have been indulged for too long by partisans. His rhetoric has directly led to death threats against election officials who have done their job honestly and independently. Now we are all reaping what they’ve sown, as the President watches it all burn from within the White House. But then, there are some men who want to ruin if they cannot rule.
Make no mistake: this is sedition. And it’s coming at the hands of self-styled super-patriots who have been amped up by the President’s lies about non-existent mass voter fraud to excuse losing a free and fair election by a large margin.
They are not conservatives – they are radicals. Because patriots don’t break the windows of the US Capitol building and storm inside when they lose an election. No hostile foreign power has done more damage to what President-elect Joe Biden called ‘the citadel of our democracy’ since an invading British army burned down the Capitol in the war of 1812. But certainly, the enemies of democracy have taken great comfort from their actions today.
We are still in the fog of war. But some things are clear. The politicians and hyper-partisans who have coddled this President’s autocratic impulses have enabled this assault to our democracy. The Republican members of Congress – like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – who have tried to benefit politically from contesting the election results without any concrete evidence of fraud are culpable in this violence because they have stoked its fears. So is Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who demanded ‘trial by combat’ to resolve the election dispute at a ‘Save America’ rally this morning, after his legal team lost some 60 cases in court because of an absence of evidence. CNN online article 7 January 2021, ‘Donald Trump’s American carnage ends with a coup attempt’
The 6th January 2021: the day that shook the foundations of American democracy, where hundreds stormed the seat of government. And tried to overturn an election result. This assault didn’t come out of the blue. It was by people they were carrying out the wishes of the sitting president, wishes they felt he signalled to them loud and clear. News report: Storming the Capitol, Aleem Maqbool reporting, BBC 9th January 2021
‘I call on President Trump to go on national television now and demand an end to this siege.’ ibid. Biden
He was caught pressuring an official to re-calculate the votes in a state he lost in the November election. ibid.
But Wednesday 6th January was always going to be the day it came to a head. Congress was due to do what’ normally procedural, formalize the results of the election. ibid.
Fight for Trump: At his [Trump] request thousands of his supporters had gathered from all over the country … ‘You’ll never take back our country with weakness; you have to show strength and you have to be strong.’ It was all his supporters wanted to hear. ibid.
Many point to the relative restraint shown by the security forces as compared to some of the scenes we saw as the Black Lives Matter protests law summer. ibid.
Many Americans described feeling numb at the events the previous day. ibid.
Democrats are adamant Donald Trump needs to leave office immediately … ‘an armed insurrection against America.’ ibid. Pelosi
A brazen assault on American democracy. The warning signs I heard just an hour before. And what it means for America as it confronts the threat of extremism from within. It was just after 2pm on Wednesday. This was the protest march that became a riot, that became an insurrection. Storming the Capitol: The Inside Story, Robert Moore reporting, ITV 2021
These last four years have been different: anger has been weaponised on social media. The election didn’t calm America, with a president who refused to accept his loss. The anger became fury. The drumbeat of incendiary rhetoric has been growing louder by the day. ibid.
‘Our lives are at stake. This is our last stand.’ ibid. protester
And so they did. Although the president never joined them. ibid.
Louisville: The resurgent militia movements: I saw these emboldened and empowered militias take over the very centre of Louisville … Why on earth were the police retreating and ceding territory to a private army? What signal was that sending? ibid.
The communist old guard stages a coup. Cold War Armageddon s1e8, Discovery 2016
The man who was once a lowly foot-soldier in the colonial army now controls the military … With his loyal army behind him he stages a coup. Dictators’ Rulebook s1e6: Idi Amin, National Geographic 2018
He seized control of the government in a bloodless coup on November 9th 1999, becoming the First Consul of France. History’s Most Hated s1e5: Napoleon Bonaparte
There is another story: seventy years ago King Edward VIII was pushed off the throne. It was a coup engineered by a powerful conspiracy of court, church and government. Abdication: A Very British Coup, BBC 2006
Many members in the government fear Edward’s mass appeal and apparent disregard for the established order. ibid.
Edward was as popular as ever with his subjects. ibid.
The future Queen Mother detested everything about Wallis Simpson. ibid.
The King had played straight into Baldwin’s hands. ibid.
Four days later Baldwin drove to Fort Belvedere and told the King that the Empire was unanimous in its opposition to the Morganatic marriage. But he was not telling the full truth. ibid.
Not a word of the crisis had yet appeared in the British press. ibid.
‘The storm is best; the fat is now properly in the fire.’ ibid. Henry Chips Channon
Parliament and country were divided over the crisis … a groundswell of popular support. ibid.
Baldwin was delighted and relieved. ibid.
He had been king for 326 days. ibid.
In 1937 the Queen’s father, George VI, was crowned in Westminster Abbey. George did not expect to become king. His older brother Edward inherited the crown. But within a year at the centre of a scandal that rocked the nation Edward had abdicated. Edward VIII: The Plot to Topple a King, Channel 4 2012
George VI became King to be followed by our Queen because of ... the Most Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury. ibid.
Lang turned his back on a young king in crisis. ibid.